Note To Self

Stop reloading Ike projections. It's a waste of time.

Still Playing Games With Our Lives

It seems awfully hysterical to call for mandatory evacuation for a storm that isn't even yet in the Gulf of Mexico, who's path to date has been extremely wobbly, and who's projected path is trending to the West.

Earlier this week, many New Orleans bloggers rightly became upset with the suggestion of some that a tragedy in the Gulf South would be excellent fodder to use against the Republicans given their convention would be coinciding with the projected landfall of Hurricane Gustav.

Certainly, using our lives as fodder to score political points is abhorrent. Yet, the GOP indeed took notice of the political risk. They floated the possibility of postponing their convention due to their "concerns."

Yet when one really considers the logistics of putting on a convention - remember this week was picked years in advance - you realize that the GOP actually cannot afford to postpone the thing. I mean we're talking about flights, hotel reservations, individual schedules, venue availability, paying production crews, and so on and so forth. That's a financial and logistical nightmare for a party already straining to keep up with Obama's grassroots funding infrastructure and the Dems' precedent-setting convention pitch to the public.

So they have their Republican governor Bobby Jindal, eager to prove himself in a time of supposed crisis, call for mandatory evacuations - premature evacuations - so that the GOP has the political latitude to proceed with the convention, even if it means that Bush and Jindal have to steer clear. Not only that, but it provides an opportunity for the feds and the GOP to distance themselves from what happened three years ago because they'll be able to pat Jindal on the back for taking every precaution and executing the state's revamped plans - all while exclaiming the importance of competent local leadership.

Now this is a lot of speculation, I know, especially since the storm could project far enough to the west over the next 12 hours to preempt tomorrow's anticipated order.

Yet, I wanted to go 'on the record' with this scenario right now.

This premature evacuation is brought to you by the GOP.

Less of hassle to force hundreds of thousands into a panic-filled week of supply hoarding, gas guzzling, and money wasting than it is to reorganize convention logistics for all those rich white people.

They Pit Us Against Each Other

I hate this Gustav b.s.

I worked a day shift at a service industry job uptown and the tension is very in your face. Everyone is discussing this storm and what their evacuation plans.

At more rational moments, everyone agreed that it is too early to tell if this storm truly threatens us.

Yet, at other moments, people came in and reported that Walmart was running out of drinking water and that hotel reservations were becoming scarce.

So though I was content to wait for more accurate hurricane forecasts, given that this thing won't even be in the Gulf until the weekend, I was helplessly compelled to buy my own supply of potable water as soon as I left work. And then I gave my car a full tank of gas.

Everyone understands that our levies are structurally unstable. Everyone understands that our pumping stations are worthless. Nobody has faith in any level of government to provide anything to anyone. You have to go get it yourself and this inherently turns you into a competitor with your neighbor for basic survival necessities: gas, water, canned food, batteries, ice, etc.

It makes me sick to my stomach.

I mean everyone is friendly with each other and it's not like there have been fistfights in the water aisle of the grocery store - but there's a fear in the air and I didn't expect it to be so ubiquitous. Nobody came into the restaurant today. The street was silent.

This sucks.

Inexcusable Callousness from a Hometown Favorite (updated)

Will Bunch, a Daily News writer and blogger at Attytood is a favorite of mine from Philadelphia. I have always held Mr. Bunch at high regard because when I was younger, he was way ahead of the curve on new media and the use of the internet for national and local progressive reform and he is a big influence on what I'm doing here at WCBF.

But I'm about to rip him.

Because this post is absolutely disgraceful.

I hope for the sake of the beleaguered Gulf Coast that this doesn't come to pass -- but from a realpolitik point of view, there is a potential nightmare for the Republican Party swirling around the warm Caribbean waters right now.

His name is Gustav.

That's real cold.

I agree that Republicans should be forced to defend themselves on the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, their refusal to properly investigate levee failures, and their reluctance to facilitate a faster and more equitable recovery - but in Bunch's mind, New Orleans needs to be on the brink of extinction for that to happen.

You know, the Republican convention will be right around the Katrina anniversary too. Isn't that enough pretext for bringing up GOP policies that exacerbate poverty and GOP ideology that inherently leads to ineffective governance?

As a matter of fact, why do we even need to have the anniversary of the greatest natural disaster in American history as a pretext to discuss the domestic implications of another neoconservative administration?

Mr. Bunch, do you think the Dems need the threat of Hurricane Gustav to be able to hit the GOP on the Katrina response right at the three-year anniversary mark, or is it merely 'fortuitous' timing?

Yo Will!

What the hell dude?

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This is something I wrote at First Draft after encountering this Daily Kos thread.

The callousness is incredible. These bloggers want to talk about the FABULOUS political implications of Gustav's landing in the Gulf South but largely have nothing to say about the disgustingly reactionary recovery policies being imposed by the Bush administration and our own horrid Mayor. Where is their support for local progressive reform efforts? Where is the advocacy for an 8/29 investigation? It's sickening.

If these fools were really being wise to the political implications - instead of their reason d'etre being sickeningly beholden to posting SOMETHING relevant to a name in the news, they'd realize that if they wanted the GOP to have to answer for poverty, reactionary recovery policies in New Orleans, and the inherently ineffective neoconservative government in general - they would have been elevating progressive voices from New Orleans all along.

Now they find themselves epitomizing the most sickening comparison: they're no different from conservatives that wish for another terrorist attack in order to play on the Dems-can't-protect-America meme.

I meant it.

Especially because people really are worried about this storm. It's a constant topic of conversation. Already, everyone is asking everyone whether or not they have evac plans.

First thing tomorrow morning, I gas up the car and buy drinking water.

Is it the Heat or the Humidity?

This tropical storm doesn't make me nervous, it looks like it's gonna go west of us. Besides, I have 68% confidence that our half-finished category 3 levees made of paper would withstand a measly tropical storm.

What makes me nervous is that this tropical storm formed in the Gulf of Mexico very very quickly. Meteorologists haven't been watching Edouard slowly crawl across the Atlantic, he just kind of showed up right in our backyard. When the Gulf is already so warm on August 1st that it is able to manufacture it's own hurricanes, we're really going to have to keep an eye out as the water temperature will continue to rise into October.

I think the solution here is more off-shore drilling.

What is this "Comfort" of which you speak, FEMA?

No more ice for disaster relief.

It's not like we need it for anything.

Old Wounds Reopened, Covered in Salt

Then, doused with gasoline and lit on fire.

You know that if it's a post about FEMA, it's probably going to make you angry as hell.

Unfortunately...

Oyster and Judy B. refer to FEMA's new plan to sell trailers to residents at $13,000 a pop with the nothing but the most concrete assurances that the trailers they're planning to sell aren't the ones that have poisonous levels of formaldehyde:

Henderson is shocked the agency would do that after a FEMA test of her unit found elevated levels of formaldehyde gas, which she says has made her kids sick.

"One day I get a letter telling me my trailer is contaminated; the next day they want to sell it to me," Henderson said.

FEMA spokesman James McIntyre said the agency won't sell units that test high for formaldehyde. He could not say what FEMA has determined to be a safe level.

WOW! YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!!!!!!

I don't even know where to start.

Judy B. mentions that FEMA, in a panic, had already sold tons of its trailers to the public but was forced to buy them back in January after they FINALLY admitted what we had known for a year or more: that the trailers were making people sick.

Now FEMA is restarting the sale agenda though they won't say what constitutes a contaminated trailer and at least one family in Mississippi is being repeatedly asked to purchase a unit that has caused illness in the little ones.

Yet there's something else to remember here from only three months ago:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency misspent millions of dollars it received from selling used travel trailers, government investigators have found.

Instead of buying more trailers — as allowed under the law — FEMA used more than $13 million toward fully loaded sport-utility vehicles, travel expenses and purchase card accounts, according to a draft report by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general obtained by The Associated Press.

Did Brownie get his job back somehow too?

No, but R. David Paulson seems to be doing a heckuva job as well.

How is this crap being allowed? This is absolutely sickening.

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In other news about the Federal government's push to murder the citizens of the Gulf Coast . . .

dsb reports that one of the levees that breached during Katrina but has since been repaired is leaking once again. Is that wall stuffed with newspaper as well? Is that the reason?

It's important to know right now because, well there's bad news here. Sorry.

There is a sales tax holiday for the purchase of evacuation supplies in Louisiana THIS SATURDAY AND SUNDAY.

HERE is a list of useful evacuation items you can purchase without the additional burden of the state sales tax.