Grab bag, because I'm still too upset (read: livid) to write at length about Katrina:

• While Bush was posturing, Al Gore quietly got hospital patients out of New Orleans.
• Scott McClellan dissembles, has his ass handed to him.
• Rob Walker (of Slate et al.) writes a gorgeous, elegiac piece about why you should care about New Orleans.
• AP: Fema Chief Waited Hours To Ask For Homeland Security Help.
• When Congress finally got around to considering $10.5B in emergency funding, where was House Speaker Dennis Hastert?  At a fundraiser.
• Speaking of absent high-ranking politicos, has anyone seen Dick Cheney?  Is he still on vacation in Wyoming?  Or has Site R installed a new PlayStation or something?
• S-P Times: On Sunday the 28th, the director of the National Hurricane Center briefed Bush on Katrina's force and destructive potential.  (Photographic evidence!)
• Bush to lead investigation into himself.  Wonder what it'll find?  (Is O.J. Simpson available to testify on his investigative methods in his "search for the real killers"?)
• Salt Lake Trib:  1,000 firefighters, summoned by FEMA, learn their primary function is to be "community-relations officers" and hand out fliers.  That is, when they're not being dispatched to serve as a human backdrop for a photo op featuring....you guessed it, President Bush.

Comments

[arto]

I don't know if you've seen this yet, but there's a fantastic post on Making Light right now about a couple of paramedics from out of town trapped in the storm, and how the local authorities--the Gretna police in particular--actually did everything in their power to stop them trying to help themselves and hundreds of others.

I'm not usually the type to attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence, but bloody hell, it's starting to look that way to me.

Check out some of the links in the comments, too--the Charmaine Neville interview damn near had me in tears.