Notes from the hospital

(This is literally notes written on paper in the hospital, with the TV on and nurses coming in and out, so it's a little rough, and definitely fragmented. Posted pretty much unedited.)

Miles O'Brien is on CNN talking about the "reckless rhetoric" of people talking about shooting all the looters. Since the word has obviously been used pretty much indiscriminately to refer to both the armed bands of thugs and to normal people scavenging for food and water, I think he's clearly right about that.

My dad called me last night and as soon as the conversation turned to Katrina, he started trying to make excuses for the government, without me even saying anything the least bit critical. I thought that was odd. Is this how all the conservatives are reacting?

I've decided to put whatever ranting I do about Katrina on my political weblog. My indignation is pretty politicized in the sense that I think there are very clear racial issues here, and that all of this reflects on the true nature of so-called "compassionate conservatism." Even though I realize that it's a very complex situation and there are a lot of factors that figure into it, I still firmly believe that if these people had been white, this would not have happened. Certainly not have been allowed to go on so long, at the very least. (Although I also think there are issues about the lack of any evacuation plan whatsoever for people without their own cars. I've seen accusations that they were just deliberately left to die, and I can't really believe that there was that level of malice involved. But it does seem like nobody cared very much.)

CNN: "Bush acknowledges some problems with response"

Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff: We need a new model for "ultra catastrophes" (there were two catastrophes, he says - (1) the hurricane, and (2) the collapse of 300 feet of levee)


We were just discussing the "Katrina timeline" - it wasn't until last Friday that it started looking like a major hurricane, right? I remember sending Col the link with all the projections - and in the middle of the afternoon Friday they moved west in a rather dramatic fashion, from mostly-Pensacola to mostly what turned out to be more or less the correct projection - New Orleans/Biloxi. Saturday it became a cat 5 (and hadn't turned west yet, which is when I briefly started worrying that it might be us doing the evacuating). When did FEMA start mobilizing? I'm wondering. When did serious evacuations start?

(Funny, there is now a "Katrina timeline" slide up on CNN, but then it does follow from what they've been discussing. Basically they are saying that they had a pretty good idea that NO was going to get hit by a cat 4 by Friday afternoon - 2-1/2 days out.)


It seems to me that there's an arrogance to the way that people keep saying "This is an American city?" - this isn't supposed to happen here, I guess.