Is there anyone in the US who doesn't know what's going on in NOLA?

If there is, here's a little catch-up:
The Unrest Intensifies at Superdome Shelter

At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry, desperate people who were tired of waiting broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find.

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

``I don't treat my dog like that,'' 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. ``I buried my dog.'' He added: ``You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here.''

Just above the convention center on Interstate 10, commercial buses were lined up, going nowhere. The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, melled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage.

``They've been teasing us with buses for four days,'' Edwards said.

People chanted, ``Help, help'' as reporters and photographers walked through."

Guardian Unlimited(UK)
September 1, 2005

Fats Domino missing in New Orleans floods

Fats Domino was missing Thursday, days after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, said his longtime agent, Al Embry.

AP
Sept. 1, 2005

Bush and the Politics of Katrina

So why is Bush going back to Washington now? When asked yesterday what Bush could do in Washington for hurricane relief that he couldn’t do from his Texas ranch, McClellan told reporters no less than five times that it was the president’s “preference” to return to the White House. Asked if the decision was more “symbolic” than logistical, McClellan said, “I disagree with the characterization.”

From the moment Katrina set aim for the Gulf Coast, White House officials have had two other storms on their minds: last year’s devastating tsunami, to which Bush was criticized for responding too slowly, and the political turmoil that Bush faces here at home over the war and the economy. Indeed, August has not been a good month for the Bush administration. White House officials had hoped to capitalize on a slow news cycle to tout the president’s second-term agenda and his accomplishments so far. Yet a spike in casualties in Iraq this month has deepened already widespread worries about the war. That bad news was only compounded by the stampede in Baghdad on Wednesday that left more than 800 Shia pilgrims dead after rumors of a suicide bomber sparked panic.

That dismal news from Iraq, combined with rising gas prices here at home, has sent Bush’s poll numbers plummeting to new lows. An ABC News/Washington Post survey released Wednesday has Bush’s approval rating at 45 percent—down 7 points since January and the lowest every recorded this president by that particular poll.

Bush and other administration officials repeatedly say they don’t pay attention to polls, but they do admit paying close attention to the images of the war and the presidency that Americans see on TV. That’s partly why Bush abruptly called reporters to his ranch Sunday morning to make a statement about Hurricane Katrina as it inched toward the Gulf Coast states. The message: that Bush was ahead of the storm and would be there to respond to its certain devastation. It was in strong contrast to last December’s tsunami, when Bush didn’t make a public statement about the tragedy until three days later, well after the death toll had reached into the tens of thousands.

Newsweek
Sept. 1, 2005

It's that 'An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him' bit in the first story that gets me. It's almost an aside, seemingly cast into the story in much the same way a story might have a sentence about a seemingly pointless bit of trivia, only to set a mood: His desk was cluttered and chaotic and flies buzzed fatly and lazily above it, secure in the knowledge that here there would be no predators only this time its 'An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him'.

Probably that affected me in a particularly strong way because my infant daughter was hungry and bawling in the next room. I picked her up and walked with her a long while, holding tight for reasons she couldn't have understood now and I hope she never has to in the future.

I'm a 'survivor' of two 'storm(s) of the century' in Chicago: January 1967 and January 1979. I use quotes around survivor here because having experienced two massive Midwest snowstorms which probably claimed less than a hundred lives combined seems like tiny potatoes compared what hell Katrina's survivors have lived through. The second played a big part in ushering in a brief change in the rulership of that city's machine(If HRM can’t keep its streets open, what’s it good for?).

Let's take a look:

Our municipal leaders were slow to accept offers of snow-clearing equipment from other jurisdictions, thereby unnecessarily prolonging our agony, inflicting further damage on our economy and running the risk the snow would freeze into immovable ice while they dithered.

Yet at the same time as they were praising residents' co-operative attitude, they were seizing absurd and disproportionate police powers, imposing curfews and threatening us with $1,000 fines if we went outside at night. All that was necessary was barriers at either end of streets that needed clearing. But even after the imposition of these draconian measures downtown, the snow-clearing effort there was more ceremonial than effectual for days.

Communications were a disaster. Curfews were threatened and cancelled with dizzying speed, and the story changed hourly as to what employers and employees were to do as the new week began.

Huh. Reluctance to accept offers of help from outside municipalities. Uh-huh. 'Seizing absurd and disproportionate police powers'? Hmmm. Does that include shooting looters - whether malicious or just trying to gather subsistence? I gotta say 'check' to that one. Stories change hourly as to what citizens should and what the government will do? Well, only as the polls dictate.

Do I think BushCo will take note of their failings within their own country (never mind those elsewhere)and try to rectify them, like a drunkard confessing his sins on his deathbed - before they meet the same unfortunate end as other despots?