Texas wins first-ever matchup with Ohio State

Time for a hurricane break. From the Austin American-Statesman:

The stakes could not have been bigger for such an early-season matchup. The victory puts Texas at 2-0 and trailing only Southern Cal in the polls. The road victory at Ohio State makes the Longhorns an early favorite to stay in the national title picture.

Fittingly, this matchup of two of the sport's heavyweights played out like a heavyweight fight. Texas took a 10-0 lead in the first quarter, only to see Ohio State counterpunch its way to a 16-13 lead at halftime.

And

That left Texas needing a score with five minutes on the clock.

The Longhorns' game-winning drive was aided by a costly pass-interference penalty against the Buckeyes and culminated with a catch in the end zone by a falling Sweed. Officials reviewed the the 24-yard touchdown and ruled that the catch was good. Pino added the extra point for the victory.

The Longhorns recovered a fumble and nearly punched in another touchdown but came up 1 yard short. That led to Larry Dibbles' sack of Smith deep in the end zone for a safety with 19 seconds left and a 25-22 win.

Click here for the rest.

This was a total nail-biter. I had pretty much written the Longhorns off, even though they were only down by six points, when they scored that last touchdown with only 2:37 left on the clock. Becky was already in bed when I started yelling "Yes! Yes!"

She called out, "I'm glad you're having fun, honey."

I called back, "I'm not sure if I'm having fun or if I'm horrified; I'll let you know when the game's over."

When Ohio State fumbled the ball and Texas recovered moments later, I was pretty sure that I wasn't horrified. Then that safety got me doing the hook 'em 'Horns sign with my hand while I was hopping around the room. God, what a great game! At last, something to shout about.


Limas Sweed's touchdown catch late in the fourth quarter

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OUR WOMAN IN NEW ORLEANS (part two)
Guest Blogger Becky Updates Debbie's Story

Read part one here.

My friend evacuated from New Orleans Tuesday, 9/06 with her 86 year old step-dad, 20 year old son and wife, and six cats. They stopped in Gonzales, LA and left four cats at a shelter there, to be picked up as soon as possible.

The young couple and dad had a place to stay, and Debbie came to our house. She brought just a few small bags, along with her elder cat, and a kitten she rescued during the storm.

She got the kids and dad on a plane to Sacramento Thursday, and then left Friday with a couple from New Orleans; they were headed to somewhere near Los Angeles.

While she was here, I met a couple of dozen NOLA evacuees while driving them to various places. With one exception, they were in good spirits, which continues to amaze me. I stuffed my despair, in hopes of feeling useful while doing some small favors for those displaced.

I heard horror stories of Armageddon-like post-hurricane survival, told with humor and hope. Even while lamenting lost neighborhoods, schools, merchants and restaurants/bars/coffee shops, my friends spoke of dreams, plans and ideas for reconstruction and revival.

New Orleans will rebuild.

But can it ever be the same?

An interesting commentary from locals was about the Mardi Gras Indians. They speculated that the generations-old tradition of the Indians could easily be lost; so many people, while high in stature in their tribe, or krewe, are still desperately poor, and may have little chance to return to their home. They described the Indian’s fierce determination to participate in a cultural tradition, despite economic impossibilities: costumes are recycled every year, with sequins saved like gems. They also described those costumes as some of the very best of Mardi Gras, creative and wonderfully elaborate.

Another conversation focused on possible scenarios for the nouvelle New Orleans: an Amsterdam-like fantasy of canals; a smaller city with more art and less crime; a place of hard work and unfailing determination. There were a dozen more spin-offs of various themes. Hope was obvious, sadness yet to be visited.

So, I ask myself and the seemingly-fractured universe: can New Orleans ever be the same? How can it truly be the same, when so many are housed in air-conditioned, impersonal camps, possibly never able to return? I think I might be learning the concept of faith.

In the past few days, I never saw a single person from New Orleans cry.

And now that Debbie’s on her way to a forced vacation in California, and her cats are miraculously managing to temporarily integrate our household, and Baton Rouge is thronging with shell-shocked New Orleanians, we’re trying not to cry.

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Trapped in New Orleans

From CounterPunch courtesy of the Socialist Worker, two radical EMS workers from San Francisco who were attending a conference in the Big Easy when Katrina hit relate the tale of their eventual escape:

Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.

From a woman with a battery-powered radio, we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the city. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway. The officials responded that they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking city) was accurate. Just as dusk set in, a sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces and screamed, "Get off the fucking freeway." A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims," they saw "mob" or "riot." We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" attitude was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of eight people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements, but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

Click here for the rest.

There's actually a six degrees and Kevin Bacon thing going on for me with this essay. Becky's friend Debbie from New Orleans who has been staying with us the past few days is originally from San Francisco and still has lots of contacts there. The above linked story was sent to me as a forwarded email, first sent by people who know the authors. Small world. It just goes to show how Katrina has affected the entire nation.

As far as the content of the story is concerned, which mostly explains how, in the absence of any official relief inside the city, people had to depend on each other but were continually thwarted by what little official presence there actually was, I think we're going to hear a lot in the coming weeks about how large numbers of evacuees have been treated like utter shit by officials at all levels of government. For crying out loud, earlier today I read about what amounts to a secluded detention center under heavy security in Oklahoma where "the occupants of the camp cannot leave the camp for any reason" for the next five months!!! Really, it's starting to look like last week's debacle was only Act I.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING
Two from New Orleans Temporarily
Join Our Usual Cast of Furry Neurotics

Little Sheba, the kitty from New Orleans who we've been taking care of for about a week, left us yesterday to move into her new apartment here in Baton Rouge. However, Becky's friend Debbie, also from the Big Easy, left her two cats in our care while she sets up a temporary life in San Francisco. So without any further ado, I present our latest hurricane kitties:

Kali



Triangle



But let us not forget our usual cast of feline divas:

Frankie



Phil



Paz



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Hurricane Reality vs. Right-Wing Ideology

From AlterNet:

While Katrina didn't have any direct impact on the debate, images are more visceral than statistics. It's hard to sit in a comfortable, dry place watching the abandoned poor fight for their lives, and argue that the growing class divide in this country is a figment of the left's imagination, or that our current socio-economic arrangements are the best we can do.

Directly related to class is the idea of social cohesion. "United we stand" is a central tenet of the American narrative. Whatever your background, your status, your ideology, we pull together when the chips are down. But in New Orleans it became clear just how transparent that fiction is. Our sense of community -- if the ideal ever truly existed -- has now deteriorated to such a degree that only the threat of deadly violence holds the whole show together.

Click here for the rest.

I posted another essay hitting on this topic recently, a picture, too, but it's a message that bears repeating: neither "small government," nor the private sector is capable of dealing with a disaster like Katrina. Actually, there are about a billion problems with which "small government" and business cannot deal, but Katrina is vividly fresh in everybody's minds, and serves as a terrifying illustration of what conservatives want America to be. That is, I don't really think that conservatives actually wanted a disaster like what hit New Orleans to happen, but their anti-government, pro-wealthy policies ultimately amount to that--it's all very much about ignoring what you don't like to hear. Conservatives insist that the only way to a prosperous and healthy nation is by this maxim: "The government which governs least governs best." That means no intervention for the poor. That means allowing big business to do whatever it wants. That means ending virtually all social services and forcing citizens to fend for themselves.

Well, oftentimes people are indeed quite capable of fending for themselves. But not always. Any ideology that overemphasizes "rugged individualism" is off in fantasy land. And that's where many American conservatives are right now.

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NEW POLLS SHOW DISAPPROVAL
FOR BUSH'S HANDLING OF KATRINA

From CBS News courtesy of the Daily Kos:

President George W. Bush's overall response to Katrina meets with disapproval today -- a dramatic change from the public’s reaction just after the storm hit on August 29th. Last week, in the two days immediately after Katrina made landfall, a majority of Americans said they approved of Bush's response, although more than a third were not sure. Now, only 38 percent approve. A majority disapproves.

Click here for the rest.

And from Zogby International, again courtesy of Kos:

President Bush’s job approval rating took a hit in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, dropping to a historic low of 41%, a new Zogby America poll reveals. The same survey found the nation’s forty-third president would lose election contests against all of his predecessors since Jimmy Carter.

The Zogby America survey of 1157 likely voters, conducted from September 6 through 7, 2005, has a margin of error of +/-2.9 percentage points.

The public rates the performance of all levels of government in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina negatively, with 36% giving the President passing marks on his handling of the crisis—slightly higher than the 32% who give government in general good marks for its handling of the storm that devastated New Orleans and much of the Gulf coast.

Click here for the rest.

These numbers make much more sense than the Gallup numbers I posted yesterday--I don't understand how any honest person who watched the real life drama unfold in New Orleans last week can believe that Bush did a good job. I have no idea how Gallup got such a different result. Heck, for all I know, Gallup had the more accurate poll, but the Zogby and CBS polls do what Gallup couldn't; that is, they help make it easier to believe that Americans are compassionate and intelligent people. It is important to note that that both of these new polls also show great dissatisfaction with the state and local response as well. Indeed, as many have observed, there's plenty of blame to go around. However, the lion's share of blame belongs to the President, whose Department of Homeland Security has "primary responsibility" for dealing with disasters such as Katrina: it was their job to make sure that state and local officials did their jobs, and in that they failed utterly.

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THE WHITE HOUSE AND KATRINA: STONEWALL AND LIE

The White House, trying to control the political damage in the wake of Katrina, is currently engaged in a two-prong counteroffensive against its critics. They're relying on Rovian tactics that have worked well for them in the past, lying and stonewalling. The first part, lying, has manifested itself in terms of blaming state and local officials, despite DHS's proclamation that they assume "primary responsibility" for dealing with disasters, and attacking critics as being partisan. An example of the second part, stonewalling, was evidenced today at a White House press briefing.

From Editor and Publisher, courtesy of BuzzFlash:

White House Press Briefing: Angry Reporters Hit
McClellan Hard on Hurricane, Ask if Heads Will Roll

Q I just want to follow up on David's questions on accountability. First, just to get you on the record, where does the buck stop in this administration?

MR. McCLELLAN: The President.

Q All right. So he will be held accountable as the head of the government for the federal response that he's already acknowledged was inadequate and unacceptable?

MR. McCLELLAN: The President's most important responsibility is the safety and security of the American people. He talks about that often. That is his most important responsibility. Again, there's going to be plenty of time to look at the facts and determine what went wrong and what went right and how the coordination was between the state and federal and local authorities. Right now we've got to continue doing everything we can in support of the ongoing operational activities on the ground in the region to help people.

Q Well, the President has said that this government can do many things at once: It can fight the war on terror, it can do operations in Iraq, and aid and comfort people in Louisiana. Can it not also find time to begin to hold people accountable? It sounds, Scott, as if the line that you're giving us -- which is, you don't want to answer questions about accountability because there's too much busy work going on --

MR. McCLELLAN: Wrong. No, wrong.

Q -- is a way of ducking accountability.

MR. McCLELLAN: You don't want to take away from the efforts that are going on right now. And if you start getting into that now, you're pulling people out that are helping with the ongoing response, Terry. Not at all. The President made it very clear, I'm going to lead this effort and we're going to make sure we find out what the facts were and what went wrong and what went right. But you don't want to divert resources away from an ongoing response to a major catastrophe. And this is a major catastrophe that we -- and we must remain focused on saving lives and sustaining lives and planning for the long-term. And that's what we're doing.

Q And there are people in Louisiana and Mississippi who are doing that job very well. Your job is to answer the questions.

MR. McCLELLAN: And I have.

Q By saying you won't answer.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, by saying that there's a time to look at those issues, but now is not the time, Terry.

Click here for the rest.

And the whole thing just goes on like that. Reporters ask hard questions, and Press Secretary McClellan snakes around them. It was a frustrating read, but I suppose I should be used to this by now--after all, it's what they've been doing since it was obvious that there were no WMDs in Iraq. What 's really sad is that, as usual, Karl Rove's masterful manipulation of the media and public opinion appears to be working to some extent.

Again, from Editor and Publisher courtesy of BuzzFlash:

First Gallup Poll on Hurricane Response
Finds Americans Extremely at Odds

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released this morning shows that the country very divided over who is primarily to blame for the poor emergency response to the hurricane castastrophe on the Gulf Coast.

Despite much criticism directed at the White House and federal government in the past week, President Bush seems to be maintaining much of his core support.

While 42% of respondents characterized Bush's response to the disaster as bad or terrible, 35% said it was good or great. Federal agencies got exactly the same marks. State and local officials fared only a little better--their response was described as bad or terrible by 35% and good or great by 37%.

Again, the views were strongly based on partisan leanings, with Republicans giving the president good grades on this issue by a 69% to 10% margin, while Democrats' views were precisely the opposite. But independents gave Bush a thumbs down by 47% to 29%.

Click here for the rest.

At least the swing vote doesn't seem to be fooled. But the conservative base, as usual, is ready to believe whatever bullshit Republican loyalists drop on the road, and that is, at least, disheartening. The truth is that Bush fucked up big time, and thousands of innocent Americans are dead as a result. Like I keep saying, this is not debatable: Bush swore to the US public after 9/11 that he wasn't going to let chaos and confusion get in the way of disaster relief ever again. It was his job to make sure everything ran smoothly, but he just straight-up failed.

For more on Bush's paralysis in the face of Katrina, check out this well documented timeline, from Think Progress courtesy of Eschaton, of Katrina related events from Friday, August 26th to Saturday, September 3rd. It's quite damning.

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New Orleans Activist Malik Rahim Blasts Mayor Nagin

Lest anyone think I'm being unfair by attacking only the Federal Government, from Democracy Now, an interview with a former Black Panther and longtime New Orleans activist about the failure of local authorities:

The very first thing he should have done is made sure that one, that the medical assistance he knew it was going to be needed was made available. He should have had that in place. He should have had food in place. He should have had water in place. He should have had ice in place. He should have had generators in place. That's something that the city could have done. Even if they had to commandeer them from these stores. You know, you have backup generators in every one of these high rise buildings. What's in them? People not living in them? So, why couldn't he take them? Or he could put people in them. You know, he didn't do either. You know? It's all about property. Everything is about property. I tell you what, look at Cuba. Any time a hurricane -- when that -- when Hugo was passing through Cuba, and it was about to hit Havana, Cuba -- the Cuban government came through there and took everybody out of Havana. I mean, everybody was safe. They didn't have this kind of madness. So, I mean, so why are we going through it?

Click here to read, listen to, or watch the rest of the interview.

I've been very clear, I think, about the fact that the disaster response for New Orleans was riddled with failure from top to bottom. So why go after the feds as unmercifully as I have? In the wake of the emergency response failures and chaos of 9/11, Bush decided that it had to be the Federal Government that would make sure that such a thing never happened again. Billions of tax dollars have flowed into DHS since then for that very purpose. The long and the short of it all is that, since the spring of 2003, the Federal Government has "primary responsibility" for coordinating and dealing with disasters such as Katrina. When Governor Blanco declared a state of emergency in Louisiana on August 26th, days before the hurricane actually hit New Orleans, it was DHS's show. They were in charge. And they were nowhere to be found for many days. That's why it's their fault. There's simply no debate here. There's no discussion as to responsibility for the overall failure. It was DHS's job to make sure that the system didn't collapse, and they failed to do so.

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Dealing With Political Disaster

From the Washington Post courtesy of the Daily Kos:

But now, facing what is clearly a full-scale political disaster, Rove and a handful of other masterful political operatives have gone into overdrive. They are back in campaign mode.

This campaign is to salvage Bush's reputation.

Like previous Rove operations, it calls for multiple appearances by the president in controlled environments in which he can appear leader-like. It calls for extensive use of Air Force One and a massive deployment of spinners.

It doesn't necessarily include any change in policy. It certainly doesn't include any admission of error.

It utilizes the classic Rovian tactic of attacking critics rather than defending against their criticism -- and of throwing up chaff to muddle the issue and throw the press off the scent.

It calls for public expressions of outrage over the politicization of the issue and of those who would play the "blame game." While at the same time, it is utterly political in nature and heavily reliant on shifting the blame elsewhere.

Click here for the rest.

Down here in Louisiana, we know better, but I fear that the rest of the country might not be so lucky. Heh. "Lucky." It takes the destruction of a major city and thousands of deaths to make us all so "lucky" to know that the White House is full of shit. But I digress. Karl Rove, who really ought to already be in jail, is currently doing what he does best, what he has been wildly successful doing for years now. Remember last November? Bush was able to minimize discussion of his own awful record and focus the media and just enough of the public on the slime campaign against Kerry such that he won. That sad truth, especially in this journalistically disabled environment, is that lies and mud-slinging work. And Rove is the master.

This morning I heard a couple of minutes of that scumbag drug addict Rush Limbaugh trashing state and local officials in Louisiana: "They're blaming the President because they're the ones who actually failed, and they're all Democrats!!!" As usual, that's a fucking lie, especially because local Republicans have harshly criticized the President as well. But lies work, and Rove's campaign-mode gambit is paying off with the base--my Dad, one of the faithful, has already sent me a couple of forwarded emails blaming both America's "socialist" policies for the disaster and, as usual, gays and lesbians. Thank god for the "delete" button. Those bastards are going to keep this up, and if national Democrats are true to form, they'll be too scared to "politicize" an event that was blatantly political before Hurricane Katrina even had a name. There's a good chance that the US political culture may learn absolutely nothing from New Orleans, and that thought is so sickening that I almost cannot bear it.

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The Post-Katrina Era

From AlterNet, UC Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff on the language of post-Katrina politics:

The moral of Katrina is mostly being missed. It is not just a failure of execution (William Kristol), or that bad things just happen (Laura Bush). It was not just indifference by the President, or a lack of accountability, or a failure of federal-state communication, or corrupt appointments in FEMA, or the cutting of budgets for fixing levees, or the inexcusable absence of the National Guard off in Iraq. It was all of these and more, but they are the effects, not the cause.

The cause was political through and through -- a matter of values and principles. The progressive-liberal values are America's values, and we need to go back to them. The heart of progressive-liberal values is simple: empathy (caring about and for people) and responsibility (acting responsibly on that empathy). These values translate into a simple principle: Use the common wealth for the common good to better all our lives. In short, promoting the common good is the central role of government.

The right-wing conservatives now in power have the opposite values and principles. Their main value is Rely on individual discipline and initiative. The central principle: Government has no useful role. The only common good is the sum of individual goods. It's the difference between We're all in this together and You're on your own, buddy. It's the difference between Every citizen is entitled to protection and You're only entitled to what you can afford. It's the difference between connection and separation. It is this difference in moral and political philosophy that lies behind the tragedy of Katrina.

Click here for the rest.

In other words, the man-made disaster in New Orleans this past week has been years in the making. Noam Chomsky has observed on multiple occasions that the net effect of the last quarter century of conservative "reform" has been to destroy the civil society. It doesn't matter if the guy in the apartment upstairs has a heart attack because it's his problem, not yours. It doesn't matter if 200,000 people got stuck in New Orleans because they couldn't afford to leave: they should have gotten themselves into a better financial position like all of us responsible people.

To this day, despite my middle age sense of leftism, I still believe that there is a kernel of truth within a lot of conservative maxims--free money for the poor, for instance, does indeed strike me as a disincentive to work and self-improvement; "personal responsibility," when it means getting up and going to work everyday and doing a good job, or making sure that your loved ones have enough to eat and a roof over their heads, is quite a good thing. But Bill O'Reilly's "Who's Looking Out for You?" style of mindset (answer: no one) is sadism, pure and simple. "Personal responsibility" is one thing; "fuck you, too bad" is another. Conservatives, sadly, have abandoned the former and embraced the latter. Really, New Orleans is but the most spectacular example of many.

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Tension apparent as Bush visits Louisiana

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

BATON ROUGE, La. — Like estranged in-laws at a holiday gathering, President Bush and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco kept their distance as both toured a relief center for storm victims day. At their next stop, the Republican president kissed the Democratic governor on the cheek, but it wasn't clear whether they had made up.

State and federal officials are all facing public criticism for a slow response to the crisis. Behind the scenes, each suggests the other is to blame.

In front of the cameras during Bush's visit to the Gulf Coast states today, the president and Blanco said little to each other, focusing instead on thanking relief workers.

"I know I don't need to make any other introduction other than 'Mr. President,'" Blanco said tersely, turning the microphone over to Bush after praising emergency management officials during a stop with Bush at an emergency operations center.

Click here for the rest.

Down here in Louisiana, officials and rescue workers are openly mocking the Federal Government. Just a while ago I heard a Washington Parish official on the radio talking about all the progress they had made, but he went the extra mile to point out that FEMA had nothing to do with any of it. Nationally, Republican loyalists, including DHS Secretary Chertoff, have been trying to lay the blame for all the chaos on the locals. But we know better. Bush's FEMA fucked New Orleans. That's not going to be forgotten here for many years to come.

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Can FEMA Do Anything Right?

From the Daily Kos:

Just take a look at this list of stories:

FEMA won't accept Amtrak's help in evacuations
FEMA turns away experienced firefighters
FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks
FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel
FEMA won't let Red Cross deliver food
FEMA bars morticians from entering New Orleans

We know FEMA's budget and operations have been gutted. We know FEMA's currently run by a washed-up hack attorney who couldn't even get a job at Jacoby & Myers. But this is beyond outrageous. I am sure there are plenty more stories like this; I collected these in just ten minutes on Google News and DKos. Looking at this list, it would be hard to blame you if you thought FEMA actively wanted rescue and relief operations to fail.

And

FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid
FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board
FEMA to Chicago: Send just one truck
FEMA turns away generators
FEMA: "First Responders Urged Not To Respond"

Click here for the rest.

Where have all our tax dollars been going? We would have probably been better off spending our money on heroin and whores. At least we'd be getting a little carnal fun. Instead, New Orleans lies in ruins, and thousands are dead. And it's Bush's fault.

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Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top

From the Washington Post courtesy of...well, I forget; it's probably from Kos or Eschaton, maybe This Modern World:

New leaders such as Allbaugh were critical of FEMA's natural disaster focus and lectured senior managers about the need to adjust to the post-9/11 fear of terrorism. So did his friend Michael D. Brown, a lawyer with no previous disaster management experience whom Allbaugh brought in as his deputy and who now has the top FEMA post. "Allbaugh's quote was 'You don't get it,' " recalled the senior FEMA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "If you brought up natural disasters, you were accused of being a pre-9/11 thinker." The result, the official said, was that "FEMA was being taxed by the department, having money and slots taken. Because we didn't conform with the mission of the agency."

"I'm guilty of saying, 'you don't get it,' " Allbaugh said. "Absolutely." The former FEMA chief said he had encountered bureaucratic resistance to thinking about a "monumental" disaster, such as Katrina or 9/11, rather than the more standard diet of "tornadoes and rising waters."

But experts in emergency response inside and outside the government sounded warnings about the changes at FEMA. Peacock said FEMA's traditional emphasis on emergency response "all went up in smoke" after 9/11, creating a "blind spot" as a result of a "police-action, militaristic view" of homeland security. When it came to natural disasters, "It was not only forgetting about it, it was not funding it."

Jack Harrald, director of the Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management at George Washington University, said FEMA's natural disaster focus was nearly liquidated. "We ended up spending a lot of money on infrastructure protection and not the resiliency of the actual infrastructure," Harrald said. "The people who came in from the military and terrorist world thought we had the natural disaster thing fixed."

Click here for the rest.

This sounds very much like the attitude evidenced by the Bush administration toward terrorism in the months before 9/11. That is, early on, Bush staffers are on record as having criticized the Clinton administration as being "obsessed" with Osama bin Laden--the White House then proceeded to de-emphasize terrorism as a priority, and started focusing on missile defense and other cold war toys and games. Then 9/11 happened, and Bush changed his priorities accordingly. I think. Anyway, the long and the short of all this is that it appears that FEMA simply lost sight of what it was supposed to be doing. Now, thousands more than were lost on 9/11 are dead, and Bush, through his negligence, is responsible.

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POLITICS, KATRINA, AND SHOPPING AT THE WINN-DIXIE

I’ve been so overwhelmed by what’s going on in New Orleans and how it’s affecting life here in Baton Rouge that I haven’t really written much about the political fallout from Katrina’s destruction. But I’ve been reading about it. Indeed, the left wing of the blogosphere was hitting the issue in full force by last Tuesday afternoon at the latest, which is when we got back to Baton Rouge, allowing me to make my daily rounds. I thought about jumping into the criticism of the Federal response, myself, but decided that I had plenty going on in my own life to write about, and that’s what I did. That’s what I’m continuing to do.

I heard on Saturday that the NAACP had issued a statement to the effect that now is not the time to be pointing fingers; now is the time to deal with the crisis. Usually, if one can ever think of a major crisis as being “usual,” I think that’s a wise thing to say. But this has not been a “usual” crisis, at least not for the United States. Compounding immeasurably the damage from the hurricane itself was the incredibly slow response from the Department of Homeland Security: it strikes me that all the finger pointing of the last week was crucial in getting the Feds to get to work. That is, the people who were supposed to “assume primary responsibility” for rescue and recovery, as the DHS proudly proclaims on its site, did not do it. They weren’t dealing with the crisis, and it is my belief that America’s massive outpouring of outrage essentially stuck a bee in the bottom of the Federal Government, forcing them to finally do something.

I have a great deal of respect for the NAACP, but they’re wrong this time. Given their failure thus far, I think public discourse really, really needs to dog the Feds in order to make sure that they complete the job. It took a lot of heat to get them to act, and I fear if that heat lets off, the action will end, or at least greatly lessen. Indeed, this is the most obvious lesson of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States: the government will not serve the people unless the people insist that it does so. Democracy only works if citizens participate.

Personally, I prefer the wisdom of African-American singer Kayne West: “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Ain’t that the truth. It’s amazing how this disaster has left utterly exposed the vile racism that conservatives insist no longer exists. Most of the people who rode out the storm in New Orleans didn’t do so by choice; they did it because they didn’t have the economic means to get out. In other words, they’re poor. And most of them are black, essentially left behind by whatever evacuation programs the city and state were able to put together without Federal help. The Feds should have filled in the gaps on this, but didn’t. You may be uncomfortable calling that racism, but, whatever you want to call it, it’s a bunch of non-white people getting majorly shafted. There’s no getting away from that. Government inaction clearly and explicitly fucked over thousands of black people, killing many of them, a high-tech lynching of Biblical proportions.

Of course, that’s been going on slowly and quietly for decades. We just don’t talk about it. Well, we’re talking about it now.

The reactions of many white Americans simply add insult to injury. As West pointed out in his off-script speech on television the other night, the news media has been true to form, naming blacks “looters” and whites “finders.” I, myself, participated in a commenting debate at one of the Houston Chronicle’s blogs on the subject of NO evacuees coming to the Astrodome. I was utterly disgusted by what some Houstonians had to say about how the city was going to go to hell because of all those (black) people coming to town. My buddy Mike G emails me from H-Town:

The white New Orleanians have been on the talk radio shows warning Houston about the black people from NO coming to get them and some middle class subdivisions are trying to stop the smaller shelters from opening there. I guess the upshot of this storm is that the strong racial and economic divides of not just NO will be examined but of all over the country.

This is still a deeply racist nation. I know that many Americans are not racist, but we’re fooling ourselves to think that everybody, in their heart of hearts, agrees with us. All it took was one major crisis for the morons to start shooting their mouths off.

Beyond the race issue is the question about why FEMA, which is now a sub-agency of the Department of Homeland Security, waited so long before doing anything. The conservative response to that question that seems to be shaping up is that no one asked them to help until it was too late. But that’s total bullshit: Bush declared an emergency in Louisiana and called in FEMA on August 26th, days before the hurricane made landfall. Where were they? Why didn’t they take charge and coordinate the entire effort? Why did Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff not know about the horrors of the convention center until Thursday afternoon? This was their responsibility, and they failed utterly. DHS is an agency under Bush’s authority. Consequently, Bush failed utterly.

As Atrios over at Eschaton has asked, “what have they been doing for four and a half years?” All these billions of dollars they’ve been spending to revamp Federal response to disasters like this has apparently gotten us nothing. Nothing. What happens if there is another major terrorist attack? We’re screwed, big time.

And what's all this business about the Army Corps of Engineers budget for maintaining and improving the levees being gutted and transferred to the war effort? For god's sake, it was just a few hundred million! Now they're spending billions to clean up. The thing that really gets me is that I and countless other Americans have been loudly insisting for years that Bush’s evil isn’t simply because of his own weird brand of wrong-headed conservatism; the man is straight-up incompetent. Incompetent. People bashed Michael Moore, saying that his use of the footage of Bush reading My Pet Goat while the Twin Towers collapsed in Fahrenheit 9/11 was a cheap shot, but it’s pretty clear that he did the same thing again with Hurricane Katrina, eating birthday cake and rocking out with a country and western singer while people were dying in New Orleans.

I am sickened and disgusted by this man, which is surprising because I already thought that I had been as grossed out as I could get by the Iraq war. But these are fellow Americans Bush’s incompetence has killed. This is my favorite city that he seems content to drown. This is just down the road from where I type this right now. Throughout all these years of his awful leadership, if it’s fair to even use the word “leadership,” I have never felt hate for George W. Bush. But I do now.

So here I sit in a city that has doubled its population in a week’s time. The traffic, already nightmarish, has gotten worse. Stores are under stocked. The crime rate has gone up, but that’s all okay, because we’ll sort it out, and all these people have to live somewhere, don’t they? Just this afternoon, Becky and I went grocery shopping at the Winn-Dixie. For the first time, the majority of people there were not LSU students. No, these shoppers were middle aged and well dressed. I traded jokes with one woman who spoke with the distinctive New Yorkish dialect of a person born and raised in the Big Easy. I later reached between two suburbanite looking women in their 50s to get a bag of potato chips and heard this exchange: “Hey, you’re here too?” “Yeah, I’m a refugee like all the rest of us.” After that, one of the store’s employees was a bit more helpful and friendly than usual; “Are you finding everything that you need allright? Just let me know if you need help.” It seemed like he thought Becky and I were evacuees. Once he walked away, I realized that I hadn’t shaved in three days and was wearing a ragged Ocean Pacific tee shirt that I bought in 1982, and Becky still had grass in her hair from mowing the yard this morning. I guess we did look the archetypal part, but the funny thing is that most of the homeless there looked way better than we did. Hurricane Katrina has obviously hit across class lines—not even that fact, however, seems to have been enough to get the President to do his job. The couple in the checkout line in front of us bought $237 dollars worth of groceries, and much of that was pots, pans, plates, and cooking utensils. They were obviously setting up to stay for a while.

The point is that political and personal have become deeply intertwined here in the state of Louisiana. This is no longer simply an abstract debate on TV about events thousands of miles away in the Middle East. This is right here, right now. This is about peoples’ lives. This is about peoples’ deaths. For me, now, there is no difference between politics and my personal life. I’ve watched from the sidelines, fifty yard-line seats in fact, while politics have destroyed both a city I love deeply and the lives of every other person I meet on the street.

You bet I’m going to talk about politics.

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French Quarter Holdouts Create 'Tribes' to Survive

From the AP via AOL:

In the absence of information and outside assistance, groups of rich and poor banded together in the French Quarter, forming "tribes'' and dividing up the labor.

As some went down to the river to do the wash, others remained behind to protect property. In a bar, a bartender put near-perfect stitches into the torn ear of a robbery victim.

While mold and contagion grew in the muck that engulfed most of the city, something else sprouted in this most decadent of American neighborhoods - humanity.

"Some people became animals,'' Vasilioas Tryphonas said Sunday morning as he sipped a hot beer in Johnny White's Sports Bar on Bourbon Street. "We became more civilized.''

Click here for the rest.

Becky, who still uses AOL even though I dropped it last year, read this and said, "Oh my god. It's just like Debbie was telling me." Indeed, as this story, and Becky's conversation with her pal in Bywater (see post below) reveal, there are still many, many people inside New Orleans, and they are doing what they have to do in order to survive. This is as uplifting as the stories of raping and killing are depressing. The human spirit prevails.

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OUR WOMAN IN NEW ORLEANS
Guest Blogger Becky Hears from a Friend

Earlier today, my wife heard from the one friend that we knew for sure had stayed in the city before Katrina came. Here's the lowdown:

I Heard From My Friend in New Orleans Today

About eight o’clock this morning, while I was outside doing yard work, I could hear my cell phone ringing. When I retrieved my message, it was from my friend Debbie, who called to say that she was fine.

I met Debbie a little over a month ago, via the internet. After getting acquainted by email, I drove to New Orleans for the day to meet her in person. We went to a museum, a commie bookstore and ate a falafel sandwich on Frenchman Street. I was delighted to have made an interesting new acquaintance from my generation and with many similar interests. She’s originally from San Francisco, and lives in the Bywater neighborhood, which is only a mile or two from the French Quarter if one follows the river to the East. Debbie is 56, and a bona-fide San Francisco hippie who was there for the summer of love. She lives in NOLA with no air conditioning. She works six part time jobs, doing everything from paralegal work to jewelry making. She’s a breast cancer survivor, and was divorced about a year ago from her 20-years-younger musician husband. A wacky, fun, cool chick.

I knew she did not intend to evacuate. Her 86 year old stepfather lives with her part time, and is there with her now. She also has six cats, a young son and wife who live in the back house, and a car with no air conditioning. Her reasoning was that she’d rather hunker down for the storm than try to transport her family.

Needless to say, I’ve been concerned about her. I wrote her an email Tuesday night when we got back, simply saying that I hoped she got out and if she didn’t I hoped she was ok and to let me know if she needed any help. I decided against trying to call her cell phone, thinking that if it was working, she needed it for more important communiqués.

Listening to her message, I found out that she had some roof damage, but in general her house was ok. She was scared when the water started to rise, but flooding stopped one block short of her house. She said that the “lawlessness (was) fucking intense”, but guards were finally starting to show up. She mentioned her six cats, and signed off by saying “when this is all over and I get electricity back in a week or two, we should make plans to do something”.

I had to call, even if only to say that I was fairly certain it would be more than a week or two before she had power restored, and she should consider leaving, and could come here if needed.

She was in good spirits on the phone. She told me that everyone was fine, she had plenty of supplies, and was “having a ball”. She told of shots being fired constantly, and the “crackers” of the neighborhood: armed, patrolling and trying to prevent looting of abandoned houses. To the best of my knowledge, “cracker” is a derogatory name for white people, but I got the sense she meant the tougher young people who were brave enough to hit the streets. She said the crackers had found food and water in ruined stores, and were taking requests from neighbors for specific needs. They brought her more water, and her stepdad a bottle of scotch. Another day, they brought her a bottle of wine because it was her birthday. They brought her a generator, but she hasn’t been using it. It would make noise, and someone with bad intentions might get ideas. The man across the street is running his generator, though, and is charging cell phones for whoever asks.

She told of an elderly woman who went into a store with a flashlight looking for food, and was killed. Another neighbor was walking his dog and was shot in the face; it’s not clear why. The only news source she has is one radio station, and the word from the street.

She had to hang up because her “family was about to try to convince (her) to leave.” I’m betting she stays, at least for now.

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GOOD NEWS FOR NEW ORLEANS

It's about time. I just heard on local radio that the 17th Street Canal, through which all water pumped out of the metro area flows into the lake, has been patched! And without any Federal help as far as I can tell: this was an effort by the Louisiana National Guard and state and local officials. As soon as the pumps are working again, they can start to drain out the city. Of course, they still have to patch the levee, but that should be completed in the next couple of days.

Finally, something to celebrate.

UPDATE: I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. This completed repair is on the Jefferson Parish side of the canal, but I believe there is also break on the Orleans Parish side which hasn't been fixed yet. In other words, I didn't even realize that the canal was breached on two sides, which makes me realize I'm not quite sure about how all that anti-flooding infrastructure actually works. Suffice it to say, some progress has been made, but there's much more work to do.

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The natural outcome of decades of extreme conservatism

I got this from the Daily Kos, but I have no idea who first put it together:



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WITHOUT A DOUBT, THIS IS BUSH'S MESS

From the Department of Homeland Security's site, courtesy of AMERICAblog:

In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort. The new Department will also prioritize the important issue of citizen preparedness. Educating America's families on how best to prepare their homes for a disaster and tips for citizens on how to respond in a crisis will be given special attention at DHS.

Click here for more.

According to their own statement, the buck stops with the Federal Government. I'm certain that local and state governments have made their fair share of mistakes, too, but "primary responsibility" for dealing with Katrina belongs to Bush. I've been hearing something to this effect coming from scores of liberal bloggers these last few days: there were actually two disasters in New Orleans, one natural, and one man-made. Much of the carnage in the storm's wake could have been avoided, but wasn't. The President has a lot of explaining to do when this is all over. I'm especially interested in why Bush's apointee to run FEMA has absolutely no experience in dealing with disaster relief.

Thanks to Kos for that last link.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING ON SATURDAY
Special Hurricane Edition: Cat from New Orleans

The New Orleans woman staying with relatives next door about whom Becky wrote yesterday brought her cat with her. Unfortunately, someone there is extraordinarily allergic, so the kitty in question is now housed in our study. Here she is:

Sheba



Isn't she cute? And she looks a hell of a lot like Phil.

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Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?

From the American Red Cross courtesy of ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES:

Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

Click here for the rest.

That's completely insane. The Salvation Army is there--Bush was trying to send residents to them yesterday afternoon. Why allow the Salvation Army but not the Red Cross? The cynic in me suspects that the answer might have something to do with the Salvation Army's fundamentalist leanings being more valued by the Bush administration than the Red Cross' new-agey inclusivity. The pragmatist in me, however, suspects that the answer is simply gross incompetence. At any rate, this is totally outrageous.

UPDATE: Scratch the cynical thought. The Salvation Army thing was actually in Biloxi. Nonetheless, keeping aid agencies out of New Orleans because they "would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city" is just plain nuts. Thousands of people are slowly dying there. They need help right now. This is total insanity.

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EXODUS AFTERMATH
Guest Blogger Becky

(My wife fills in some of the gaps in my story about our evacuation from the hurricane zone, and brings us up to speed on what's been going on since then.)

Ron gave a great description of our so-called exodus, and relatively quick return. The only missing element was the fact that I really, really didn’t want to leave.

I was more fearful about hitting the road into the great unknown (in an eleven year old car with a re-built engine) than staying in our battened-down abode with plentiful supplies. I wanted to scream and argue against our leaving, but Ron’s dad was adamant, and Ron trusted his dad unequivocally. Something happened to my normal behavior and I acquiesced. In a reluctant, intentionally slow-moving daze, I tried to think of everything necessary that could fit into a Toyota Tercel. Ron deftly organized the payload, half of it being the cats and their supplies.

Instead of feeling like Hans’ co-pilot, I was an unwilling evacuee whose mild anxiety about the impending hurricane was kicked into bona fide fright. While I served my purpose along the way as route-planner and shelter-scout, I was otherwise useless. I broke down into sobs several times. I was oddly more afraid for the fate of the cats than for us: I imagined nightmare scenarios of their demise, or their simply being stuck in their carriers for what might be days.

In calmer moments, I pondered my reluctance to leave. I realized that if we owned our home here in Baton Rouge, I would have fought harder to stay. I thought about a friend in New Orleans who told me she intended to stay. She has her 84 year old stepfather living with her, and her young married son living on the second floor of her house. I haven’t heard from her. I hope she got out or had at least a week’s worth of supplies. I’m fairly certain her neighborhood didn’t flood significantly, due to it’s proximity to the river. But now fires are burning in various places, and she lived close to the chemical plant that was burning today.

I can understand why some people didn’t evacuate. I like to think if we lived in New Orleans, I would have left early and prepared. But would have I have clung desperately to my imaginary shotgun house, feeling some weird control in not jumping ship? Maybe.

Then again, that’s not why so many stayed behind. The vast majority of those stranded were desperately poor, without transportation or funds of any consequence.

The reality of what’s happening continues to sink in. The news is being broadcast 24 hours from Baton Rouge, with both local and New Orleans personnel. And I’m watching it too much, but it’s hard to drag myself away.

I went to work Thursday, where five people showed up to take their graduate nursing exams. One young woman was an evacuee from New Orleans, a June newlywed whose newly purchased home was probably destroyed. She was amazingly chipper considering her circumstances.

On the way home, I encountered a couple at the Circle K who were asking directions. I found out that they were in a frantic search to buy a house here. I didn’t get a chance to ask any details, as I was trying as best I could to relate what little I know about neighborhoods here. I gave them my city map, and wished them luck.

Later last night, Ron and I went outside to pry the iron lawn furniture I had tied together with bungee cords out from under a big pecan branch. While we were there, we met my neighbor’s mother’s friend, Barbara, who was hanging out in the back yard with her wine and cigarettes. The two women had left New Orleans late Sunday evening with their two dogs, heading north. They found a room in McComb, Mississippi that night, but were denied a room on Monday due to reservations that were being held for rescue personnel. They had nowhere to go, and literally drove through the storm, avoiding tree branches in populated areas and torrential rains in others. They spent Monday night on the sidewalk – I’ve forgotten where. They made it here to Baton Rouge Tuesday evening, and have managed to secure a small apartment as long as the landlord can evict a deadbeat LSU student.

Late this morning, my neighbor Ryan came over with his small chain-saw and another evacuee from New Orleans, Blaise, who was helping to clear big branches from both our yards. I didn’t ask them – they just came on over. I went outside to carry the pieces they were cutting. I wasn’t sure what to say to Blaise. I found out that his neighborhood probably wasn’t terribly flooded. I found out that Ryan helped him to rent the house behind us from our mutual landlord on a month-to-month basis. I found out that he didn’t necessarily expect his house to remain intact, due to potential looting or fire. He carried heavy branch parts from our back yard to the street for pickup someday. I offered our washer/dryer and bathroom if they need it until they get power turned on – which could be a week, since utilities are still not completely restored here. I felt lame and useless.

I came inside and watched more news and thought about what else I could do, besides staying off the roads as the local authorities have requested. Ron came back from his cancelled rehearsal – their director decided volunteering was more important. I would agree. Someone wake me from my air-conditioned haze, thank you. We called 211, the emergency volunteer telephone number. They took our information, but after four hours, we haven’t been contacted. Not surprisingly, medical personnel and truck drivers are needed. I told them we have cars.

We decided that if we don’t hear from 211 today, tomorrow we’ll check the website again for who needs what. It changes several times a day. Earlier today it was diapers and baby supplies, then I heard that need had been filled. Whatever it is tomorrow, we’ll go shopping and try to make a tiny dent. Tiny, tiny dent. And I’ve been staring at the boob tube, like a deer in the headlights, finishing off my 24-pack of Miller Light I bought Sunday afternoon when I figured we’d just be holed up for a day or so without power.

We have power. We have everything we could need. Others are dying in the streets of New Orleans.

I’ll save the political/social/organizational/structural commentary for our dear Ron, who has a significantly better handle on such things. I will only say that the hurricane happened Monday – it’s now Friday night, and many are still stranded, and I’m pissed…again…does it take a horrible natural disaster to make people wake up?

I’m off to languish in my air conditioning.

(Read Becky's last stint as guest blogger here.)

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Life goes on...

Paz



Phil



Frankie



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EXODUS or HAN SOLO, COOLEST MAN IN THE UNIVERSE
Running the hell away from Hurricane Katrina

Last Sunday afternoon, as Becky and I were making final preparations for riding out Katrina here in Baton Rouge, I called my parents. No one was home, so I left a message: “Um, isn’t anybody worried about us? Well, don’t; we’re taping windows, and have supplies, so everything should be okay.” I hadn’t yet heard from them, because they had only just returned from a vacation trip to Corpus Christi.

About an hour later, my Dad returned the call. He was worried about the fact that it was a category five storm. “Let me watch the news for a while and I’ll call you back,” he said. In my family, Dad is the hurricane expert. As a former lifelong telephone man, he had worked through four hurricanes, sometimes outdoors. I’ll always remember him getting in his car at the height of Hurricane Alicia back in 1983 and driving to work: communications are an essential service during an emergency—indeed, his work for Southwestern Bell was so important that it superseded any emergency obligations he had as a chief master sergeant with his Air National Guard unit, which was always activated during hurricanes. While I was growing up, I also watched him reading obsessively about hurricanes, and tracking them on his own map whenever one seemed to have the potential to be headed for Houston. It’s hard for me not to think of him as something as my personal tribal elder when it comes to the enormous storms that the Atlantic periodically shoots at the Gulf coast.

I was really hoping he was going to tell us to stay put. We weren’t really ready to bug out, and our three cats made things all the more daunting. I heard from him again pretty quickly. “Ron, I’ve never run from a hurricane before. But this thing is a category five storm, and I have to admit that the heaviest I’ve ever dealt with is category three. This is a really, really dangerous storm. I know it’s not supposed to be hitting Baton Rouge head on, but all it has to do is swing a few miles to the west, and then you’d be right in the middle of it. Please, please, please, get out of there now.” His logic was impeccable: the odds were in my favor, but if I lost the roll of the dice I could lose everything. This was an easy decision for me.

Becky got out the maps and asked where we could go—I 10 was at that point a virtual parking lot. My older brother, through my Mom, suggested that we head north, to Alexandria, where he had clerked in the early 90s at a Federal court. Becky plotted a course. We packed a few days worth of clothing, put the cats in their carriers, and headed out at around 4:30, knowing fully well that there would probably be no place for us to stay once we got to Alexandria. In other words, we hit the road not really sure of where we would end up. Having stayed up really late the night before, however, I was prepared to drive all night if necessary.

We did get stuck in traffic for about an hour trying to get over the Mississippi River and out of town, but once we got on Louisiana Route 1, it was smooth sailing. The traffic was heavy, of course, but not bumper to bumper. Really, Route 1 is something of a back road, which is how we were able to avoid the parking lot conditions we would have faced heading west toward Houston.

It was totally surreal seeing numerous military vehicles headed south while we and other evacuees were headed north.

As we finally approached Alexandria, we caught the only bit of storm that we would see. The rain started coming down heavily, in sheets blown by heavy winds. One of my windshield wipers was starting to come loose due to a botched replacement job I had done a couple of weeks before, so we pulled into the first convenience store we could find. Unfortunately, the parking lot had some enormous potholes that I just couldn’t see because the rain was so intense. I hit bottom twice, and my stress level ratcheted itself up accordingly. Now I had to check for damage under my car in addition to figuring out how to repair my windshield wiper.

At first glance, everything seemed okay under my car, so I looked at the wiper and decided it could be temporarily repaired with a twist tie. I headed into the store and bought the most expensive loaf of bread I’ve ever bought, at a whopping $2.17. But that was okay, because my repair job worked well enough. We headed into downtown Alexandria.

Soon after, we pulled into the local Holiday Inn at around 9:00. Becky went inside to check out the situation, while I stayed with the cats out in the car. I also called my parents to let them know that we had made it to Alexandria. My Mom told me to call my brother because he had been talking to a friend there who might be able to help us out. Becky got back in the car and told me that she had learned that the entire state of Louisiana was booked solid, and that maybe Longview, Texas was our best bet. Longview was like four hours away. The rain continued.

I pulled the car into the hotel’s parking garage and called my brother. Unfortunately, the “help” he offered was directions to the nearest Red Cross shelter, which had some sort of provision for dealing with pets, albeit elsewhere. That is, we were going to have to trust somebody else, in a wild and chaotic situation, to take care of our beloved kitties. Becky and I both felt that we were better off driving into the night. My brother was clearly disturbed when we rejected his suggestion, but it all worked out in the end. Still, Becky and I had no idea what we were going to do at that point: we didn’t know there was a room for us in Longview; we only had a suggestion from a random hotel clerk. But off we went.

We figured that we’d head up to Shreveport, and see what the situation was like there. If we couldn’t find a place, we’d cross the border into Texas. At this point, the rain had stopped, and I was feeling less stressed out, which was the perfect time to discover that there actually had been some damage from the massive pothole in Alexandria. I heard something dragging along my front right tire, and felt a drag on the car’s acceleration. Damn. I pulled the car over to the side of I 49, which we had transferred to in Alexandria, to check it out. Cars zoomed by at 70mph while I got out into the darkness with a flashlight to take a look. At this point, I feared the worst, being stranded on the road, with three cats, waiting for the hurricane to blast us. I’m not even a car guy; I only know how to change tires, batteries, and headlights. What if this was beyond my engineering abilities? I was pretty scared.

Quickly, I discovered that it was just a piece of molding that had come loose, and shoved it back up such that it seemed secure. I got back in the car, and once again we were on the road. I had to repeat this emergency repair job a couple more times until I removed a screw that was holding part of the molding up near the tire, allowing me to cram it further into whichever dark crevice I had been using. That seemed to do the trick, but I couldn’t get away from the fact that I felt like I was in the Millennium Falcon, making repairs on the fly, trying to escape a dark malevolent force, not knowing where to go.

Okay, I’m a geek, but little fantasies such as this make a nerve-racking situation a bit less painful: I’m not some schlep running away from a hurricane that probably wouldn’t even hit my home; rather, I’m Han Solo, coolest man in the universe. I said I’m a geek, didn’t I?

As we drove toward Shreveport, we looked at the parking lots beside all the roadside motels we saw: every single one of them seemed totally packed, no doubt, with New Orleans residents fleeing the storm. When we got to there, it was the same thing. All the motels appeared to be completely full. We even pulled into one place, but no one was at the front desk, and no one answered the bell—their parking lot was full, too. Onto Longview.

Somewhere along the way, Becky, our intrepid navigator, got a great idea. She called her friend Jeanne up in Ohio and asked her to hit the Internet to try to find us a room. This got a bit tricky because Becky was unable to charge her phone before we left, and my crappy phone has only a limited number of minutes, which are charged double when roaming. We had to conserve our phone time, which meant that we had to periodically check in with Jeanne to see if she had found anything. Just another stress-inducing difficulty to make our exodus all the more interesting. Or maddening. I forget which one. No, wait, I remember. It was maddening.

Finally, she found something in Tyler, Texas, hometown of football great Earl Campbell, but also a home for the Ku Klux Klan. Just our luck. We kept losing phone service, which was no surprise given that we were traveling—we also found out later that the Baton Rouge area code was jammed solid; no one could call in, but we could call out. Jeanne gave us a number right before we lost her. So we called Tyler’s Scottish Inn, and got some vague and confusing responses from the guy managing the place. Maybe he had a room; he wasn’t sure. Becky sweet talked him for a time, but in the end we had to wait for him to call us back. For a short time we were headed for Tyler, not quite sure if there was anything for us there. It was a pretty agonizing ten minutes.

Fortunately, he said he could set us up, and gave us directions. We continued to drive through the east Texas night.

When we got there at around two in the morning, the manager checked us in, but was again vague about our prospects for staying the next night. He said that maybe he had a room, but needed to see “how the reservations would work out.” We pressed him further on what he meant by that, but he simply repeated himself and told us that he would know better after lunch the next day. Becky and I speculated that, because this guy seemed to be a Middle Eastern immigrant, this was just some sort of cultural thing. Maybe it was some weird Bedouin-trading ritual, of which we had no knowledge, but I just couldn’t figure out what he hoped to gain by being so weird with us—it’s not like he was going to change his clearly posted rates by playing us for rubes. I still haven’t figured out what it was all about, especially because he immediately let us keep the room for a second night once we called him the next morning.

Because this place prohibited pets, we had to sneak the cats in, which was easy enough in the middle of the night. Our two older cats, Paz and Phil, were happy to be out of the car and their carriers, but our one-year-old, Frankie, went almost catatonic. He stayed in his carrier for a couple of hours, and then crawled under the bed. He didn’t emerge until I pulled him out when we left. Actually, we were a bit worried because he didn’t want to eat; he didn’t even want to hit the litter box that we brought with us. Fortunately, he recovered quite nicely once we returned to Baton Rouge.

In the room, I set up my laptop and used Becky’s AOL service to get on the net for some info. Unfortunately, our only option was dial-up, so it seemed to take forever for pages to load. Again, the Han Solo feeling guided me through yet another stress out. He dealt with crappy equipment during a crisis, and I did too—I keep telling you, I’m a geek at heart. Anyway, that’s why I didn’t really try to post from Tyler. The damn thing was taking too long. I can’t believe I’ve been using broadband for only three years. At least I managed to find out that LSU had cancelled classes Tuesday, which also eased my stress.

Still more Han Solo stuff: my car’s brake lights somehow got stuck in the “on” position. My Dad had no idea what to do about it and suggested unscrewing the bulbs in order to preserve the battery. Fortunately, a guy in the Wal-Mart automotive section suggested that it might just be a stuck sensor button, and he was right. I fixed it with duct tape. Just like Han Solo would have done.

It is also important to note, if only for local color’s sake, that I was slightly menaced by a big burly redneck in the Wal-Mart parking lot: he was walking right past me as I was getting out of my car and I said, “Hey, what’s up?” He just stared at me and moved toward his huge pickup truck, which, ironically, didn’t start. I really should have seized the moment, loved my enemy, and offered to help him jump-start it, but he made me nervous, and I had my own problems. I’ll do what Jesus would have done next time, I guess.

At the motel, we noticed that most of the license plates in the parking lot were from Louisiana. The scale of the evacuation was slowly sinking in. Here we were in the middle of nowhere, eight hours from the Big Easy, and most of these people appeared to be from the New Orleans area. Here’s what I wrote a couple of days ago about a brief conversation I had with one of the evacuees:

I spoke with an older woman who told me that she had lost everything and that she was pretty sure that a couple of family members had drowned. What can you say to that? My simple statement, "that's terrible; I'm so sorry," seemed trite, especially because I then broke off the conversation because Becky and I had to check out to leave for our home in Baton Rouge.

Indeed, the night before, we had seen on television what appeared to be the first report about the levees breaking. Even then, I still hadn’t quite figured out that my favorite city’s goose was cooked. Actually, it’s still pretty difficult to accept now, even after the wall-to-wall television coverage, even after witnessing the enormous triage set up just a few blocks away from where we live.

After sneaking the cats out, we hit the road again Tuesday morning, not knowing what the situation was like at our house in Baton Rouge, but happy to know where we were going. The trip back didn’t take nearly as long as the trip there and, with no hurricane threatening us, and plenty of daylight, it was much more pleasant. In addition to more military humvees and trucks, we also saw quite a few trucks and emergency vehicles, which had “disaster relief team,” or something to that effect written on them, headed south with us. Surreal. We made sure to get some more batteries, candles, and gasoline along the way, given that we expected the power to be out all over Louisiana’s capitol city. Amazingly, all was well at our house, just one tree branch down in the back yard, and the lights were on. Nothing bad had happened to us.

We unloaded the car and turned on the TV. Then we started to cry.

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