I Actually Do have a 10 1/2 EEEE Feet
ArchPundit
John Kass suggests that’s the size of foot in Barbara Bush’s mouth after her comments the other day.
Looking at my feet–she has a pretty sore jaw right now.
September 2005
Human Scum Gets His
The Missouri attorney general, Jay Nixon, filed a lawsuit this afternoon against InternetDonations.org, the hub for a constellation of Web sites erected over the last several days purporting to collect donations for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Also named in the lawsuit, Mr. Nixon said, is the apparent operator of the donation sites, Frank Weltner, a St. Louis resident and radio talk show personality with ties to neo-Nazi organizations and the notorious Web site JewWatch.com.
That site, which indexes Adolf Hitler’s writings, transcripts of anti-Semitic radio broadcasts, and other materials, drew wide headlines last year when it appeared at or near the top of Google search results for the query “Jew.” It remains at No. 2 today.
The Missouri lawsuit seeks to freeze the assets of Internet Donations Inc., a nonprofit entity registered with the Missouri secretary of state’s office by Mr. Weltner on Sept. 2, and to shut down the dozen or so Web sites with names like KatrinaFamilies.com, Katrina-Donations.com and NewOrleansCharities.com. Those sites appear to have been hastily registered and mounted since Hurricane Katrina devastated large swaths of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi last week.
The Web sites, which use similar imagery and slight variations on the same crude design, all point back to InternetDonations.org, which advises visitors interested in donating to the Red Cross, Salvation Army or other relief organizations, that “we can collect it for you in an easy one-stop location.”
Most of the affiliated Web sites appear to have been registered using DomainsByProxy.com, a service that masks the identity of a domain name registrant. But Mr. Weltner’s name appeared on public documents obtained through the Missouri secretary of state’s Web site, indicating that he had incorporated Internet Donations as a nonprofit entity last Friday.
It is unclear whether any of the sites successfully drew money from any donors or if Mr. Weltner, who did not respond to repeated telephone calls and e-mails, had channeled any proceeds to the better-known charities named on his Web site.
“It’s the lowest of the low when someone solicits funds” this way, Mr. Nixon said in an interview prior to announcing the lawsuit. “We don’t want one more penny from well-meaning donors going through this hater.”
Of course, since Weltner is a Neo-Nazi and a member of the National Alliance, collecting money on the back of thousands of black victims only enrages me further.
Weltner’s been mentioned previously here, here and here. Weltner used to have a radio show here in St. Louis.
You can see his normal site here
The Intelligence Report covers his show. And yes, I’m the guy who got the tirade from another racist WGNU host here.
Ben Westoff does a good article on dipnuts here.
Here is one of his other sites. He’s currently has Chertoff and Lenin on the front.
I’d like nothing more than to see Weltner find the inside of a largely black prison–no I don’t want him hurt, but I do want him really, really, uncomfortable for a long time.
How Bureaucracy Can Work
Lots of cynicsim about bureaucracies, but some did a bang up job:
In the control tower at Armstrong, air traffic controllers and
technicians worked long shifts just after Katrina passed to clear the runways and help bring in the first “mercy flights” by several airlines, which brought in supplies and took out evacuees.Within 24 hours of the storm, a Federal Aviation Administration truck loaded with radar and telecommunications gear rolled west from Jacksonville, Fla., stopping at airports along the Gulf Coast to get their radar and communications systems back online. At Armstrong, the technicians placed a radio repeater atop the 220-foot-tall control tower. The repeater replaced many that were lost in the storm.
“Not did it enable our people to talk with each other, but it helped
police and firefighers communicate in 37-mile radius of the tower,” Brown said.By Sept. 1, three days after Katrina passed, the airport’s primary radar site near Slidell was back on line. With the help of E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System military aircraft, it began steering the fleet of rescue aircraft into Armstrong.
To Be Clear–No one Is Blameless
I’ve been explaining the situation with relation to New Orleans evacuation plan and I don’t think anyone is going to say it was a plan that served anyone very well. The basic idea was that an after storm evacuation would occur quickly after the storm and it didn’t. And that exacerbated the problem of an evac plan built on available resources.
Going back to 2004 and earlier this year, there were a number of modifications to the New Orleans evacuation plan. The problem was the biggest improvement simply helped move people with cars out faster–that’s important in itself when you look at the Ivan fiasco. Nagin, and he was the first to do this, actually did initiate programs to reach out and educate people without their own transportation–click the link to the previous post for links to all of this. In addition, he was planning retrofits to the Superdome to make it more suitable to being a large shelter in such cases. Unfortunately, Katrina hit first.
The most important point is that the evacuation plan was understood by federal, state and local officials. Everyone signed off on it and were working with Nagin and other City officials to improve education to those without their own transportation. He did exactly as the three level of governments planned to do except he didn’t call a mandatory evacuation as soon as he should have.
FEMA knew there would be a large number of individuals left in the City in need of evacuation immediately after a horrible storm. They reportedly signed off on a document to be actively responding within 48 hours.
Blaming Nagin for doing what every level of government planned to do in the case of a Hurricane is silly since every level of government agreed. Does that mean it was adequate? Hell no. Does it mean Nagin shouldn’t have been pushing harder to get federal and state help in such a scenario? Hell no.
Does it mean this was all his fault? Hell no. He did exactly what everyone planned for him to do–and as with many tragedies we look back and see our collective stupidity at not doing more soon (notice I don’t blame Bush for not funding the levees–that’s why–that’s all of our responsibilities). We make these compromises concerning safety all of the time–the problem is that you can’t remove risk from life. However, when you have a situation of not if, but when such as New Orleans we can and have to do better.
After the jump (Meaning click the continued link), today’s Times-Picayune Editorial on Turf Wars
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Memo To My Father
He lives about 6 blocks from the ocean in Cocoa Beach.
Dear Dad:
When they say get the hell out, GET THE HELL OUT FROM NOW ON!
Let’s be Clear on Who Was Involved in the Emergency Planning in New Orleans
Jeff takes on Nagin trying to make it sound as if he deviated from the emergency plan in New Orleans. The problem is that no one is reading what I’ve already posted on this nor the Hurricane response plan. Jeff’s not the only one, but since he mentioned me, I’ll point out the problems with the arguments.
First, though, he ordered the mandatory evacuation late. He did it about 24 hours out when the plan called for 50 hours. Why? Some legal silliness concerning whether he could make exceptions. Tourists had flights cancelled and the hospitals couldn’t get out in time so he had some legal debate about whether he could order the evacuation and make exceptions. This was incredibly stupid. That said, almost all estimates indicate he improved the evacuation rate of any previous evacuation by 10-20%.
I’ve updated and made the posts on New Orleans Hurricane planning over at Kos for the full context of what I’ve said.
Join me after the jump…
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Obama’s Statement
Which brings me to the next point. Once the situation is stable, once families are settled – at least for the short term – once children are reunited with their parents and enrolled in schools and the wounds have healed, we’re gonna have to do some hard thinking about how we could have failed our fellow citizens so badly, and how we will prevent such a failure from ever occurring again.
It is not politics to insist that we have an independent commission to examine these issues. Indeed, one of the heartening things about this crisis has been the degree to which the outrage has come from across the political spectrum; across races; across incomes. The degree to which the American people sense that we can and must do better, and a recognition that if we cannot cope with a crisis that has been predicted for decades – a crisis in which we’re given four or five days notice – how can we ever hope to respond to a serious terrorist attack in a major American city in which there is no notice, and in which the death toll and panic and disruptions may be far greater?
Which brings me to my final point. There’s been much attention in the press about the fact that those who were left behind in New Orleans were disproportionately poor and African American. I’ve said publicly that I do not subscribe to the notion that the painfully slow response of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security was racially-based. The ineptitude was colorblind.
But what must be said is that whoever was in charge of planning and preparing for the worst case scenario appeared to assume that every American has the capacity to load up their family in an SUV, fill it up with $100 worth of gasoline, stick some bottled water in the trunk, and use a credit card to check in to a hotel on safe ground. I see no evidence of active malice, but I see a continuation of passive indifference on the part of our government towards the least of these.
And so I hope that out of this crisis we all begin to reflect – Democrat and Republican – on not only our individual responsibilities to ourselves and our families, but to our mutual responsibilities to our fellow Americans. I hope we realize that the people of New Orleans weren’t just abandoned during the Hurricane. They were abandoned long ago – to murder and mayhem in their streets; to substandard schools; to dilapidated housing; to inadequate health care; to a pervasive sense of hopelessness.
That is the deeper shame of this past week – that it has taken a crisis like this one to awaken us to the great divide that continues to fester in our midst. That’s what all Americans are truly ashamed about, and the fact that we’re ashamed about it is a good sign. The fact that all of us – black, white, rich, poor, Republican, Democrat – don’t like to see such a reflection of this country we love, tells me that the American people have better instincts and a broader heart than our current politics would indicate.
We had nothing before the Hurricane. Now we have even less.
I hope that we all take the time to ponder the truth of that message.
A Question that Keeps Bothering Me
Other than the Thursday interview, Nagin has pretty much treated the Governor and the Feds equally–with contempt for not making decisions–why are the most coherent critiques of Blanco not being pointed out by those defending the Administration?
I have a couple ideas–one that many people don’t like to make nuanced arguments. A second is doing that is admitting that virtually no one performed to expectations and many with a strong position don’t want to see broad incompetence being pointed out.
The Disconnect Between Pundits and The Reality of Poverty in New Orleans
Tierney’s column in the New York Times has several problems, but the biggest is the lack of understanding as to what concentrated poverty brings on a community. He compares New Orleans system of evacuation with that of the Hampton Roads area surrounding Newport News, Virginia.
From a small sampling of that area you have a poverty rate between 10-20% in the communities in that area. I’ll virtually guarantee the institutions even in the poor neighborhoods of that area are far stronger than those of inner-city New Orleans. The comparison is just silly. Perhaps you can make some reasonable comparisons to places like Jefferson Parish, but the type of debilitating concentrated poverty in New Orleans is nothing like the demographics in the area Tierney points out. It’d be fascinating to compare police protection per 1000 people and other numbers as well.
Furthermore, New Orleans didn’t have any fantasies about what would happen–they knew exactly the problem they had. They were attempting to mitigate that problem and frankly, were just starting some serious efforts when the hurricane hit. As a community that is apalling, but the treatment of the poor in that City has long been appalling. I’m somewhat relieved to know that someone was starting to pay attention. You certainly didn’t see that under former Mayor Morial.
And again, this isn’t to say that Ray Nagin did everything perfect, but this fantasy that New Orleans was blithely unaware and didn’t do anything is demonstrably false.
Senator Lott Meet Mayor Nagin, Mayor Nagin Meet Senator Lott
Trent Lott’s complaints sound oddly familiar:
Lott said he has been trying to get FEMA to send 20,000 trailers “sitting in Atlanta” to the Mississippi coast, and he urged President Bush during a meeting Monday to intervene. He said FEMA has refused to ship the trailers until contracts are secured.
“FEMA and MEMA need to be saying, ‘Yes’ to Mississippi’s needs, not, ‘No.,” the former majority leader said in a written statement.
“Mississippians are homeless, hungry and hurting.”
Similar stories of governmental red tape have been reported elsewhere, including a case of 100 surgeons and paramedics hindered from caring for hurricane victims in rural Mississippi.
But Mississippi isn’t having any problems with the Feds….