In Search of Utopia's Charity of choice is the Red Cross. I have been working on ways we can help and have come up with a couple of ideas. I am still working with The Commissar to figure out a way for he and I to work together on some kind of bipartisan effort, but that for now is stalled. In the interim, here is what we are planning. At the end of September, I will personally donate a selection of Costa Rican Gourmet Coffees, or a box of premium cigars (eh, the kind you can not get in the U.S., lets just say), to the person who donates the largest ammount to any Katrina Related Charity.

All I require is a reciept of some sort showing the amount of your donation. Due to the cost of these items, minimum donation is $50. I will buy both items and the runner up will recieve whatever the high bidder did not choose. I will pay for shipping anywhere in the world.

I will also be working with my Costa Rican Business Parners to see what we can come up with. Stayed tuned for developments.

I still have hopes that we can create some sort of Bipartisan effort to raise money. I would appreciate any trackbacks and linking to this post.

"There are still a lot of things I want to say about Hurricane Katrina and the savage, apocalyptic vision of America that she revealed, floating face down in the water. But last night I came across an account of the search for real bodies -- not metaphorical ones -- in the stinking ruins of New Orleans. It's like something out of the charnel houses of World War II:

Volunteer rescuer Gregg Silverman, part of a 14-boat contingent from Columbus, Ohio, said he expected to find many more survivors in his excursion through the city's flooded streets. Instead, he found mostly bodies.

"They had me climb up on a roof, and I did bring an ax up to where a guy had tried to stick a pipe up through a vent,'' Silverman said. "Unfortunately, he had probably just recently perished. His dog was still there, barking. The dog wouldn't come. We had to leave the dog just up there in the attic.''

As for other bodies his group encountered: "Obviously we are not recovering them. We are just tying them up to banisters, leaving them on the roof.''

It is reported that the state of Louisiana has placed an order for 25,000 body bags.

For some reason, it wasn't until I read that story that the full horror of what happened in New Orleans finally hit home for me. Maybe it's because I was on the road part of last week, and missed most of the live broadcasts during the days when the city was in complete chaos. Maybe it's because I don't watch TV much even when I am home. But until now I've thought about the catastrophe more in terms of the loss of a great American city -- and less in terms of the individual human lives that were destroyed.

No longer. The image -- of a man frantically trying to breath through a pipe stuck in a ventilator grate as the waters rise over his head -- is too searing to hold at an emotional distance. How long did he survive, submerged in total darkness? And how many others died in the same bizarre trap -- too weak or terrified to break through the layers of plywood and asphalt that had suddenly become the lids on their underwater coffins?

Thinking about those deaths is like looking at pictures of people jumping, hand in hand, from the windows of the World Trade Center on 9/11 -- forced in a moment of howling panic to choose between the flames and the long fall to the pavement below. Such images are unendurable. The mind recoils from them as if we ourselves were caught in the same trap.

p>And suddenly all the backbiting over who failed first -- or most often, or most spectacularly -- seems too vile to worry about, much less write about." Billmon

He's right, and I can't take it anymore either... I have so much I want to say, so much anger. I want to rage against the injustice of what happened in New Orleans and elsewhere. I want someone to blame. I NEED someone to be angry with, even to HATE. I need it in a visceral way that surprises me at times with it's force. I just finished reading several posts by one of my Blog Daddies, Billmon, and I feel anger rising up in my like acidic bile, that no amount of Alka Seltzer will suppress.

I am an American, and yet I am ashamed of being an American right now... My driver asked me yesterday how a country as Rich as America could let so many die. I had no answer. Tomorrow is 9/11 and there will be solemn ceremonies and the trotting out of stories of heroism and personal reflection. I once took part in all of that. I wont tomorrow, because honestly, I don't have the stomach to look back any more. I will instead be thinking about a Disaster that did not have to happen. I will be thinking of a man desperately drowning while trying to breath through a pipe. I will be thinking about Racist cops denying people escape. I will be thinking about a Horse Breeder put in charge of saving lives. And I will be thinking about other heroes. The ones who tried desperately to help their fellows, even as their government city, state and federal failed them miserably.

The accountability argument has been made on both sides, usually drawn down party lines, and Billmon is right, it all seems pretty shallow now. There is a part of me so filled with anger that I want to stand on my roof and scream for justice, scream for retribution, but I see little changing, in spite of the outrage. When this is all over, I have no doubt that Karina will make 9/11 look insignificant in its human toll. Louisiana has ordered 25,000 body bags. Wrap your mind around that one for a minute. And yet, shamefully, I doubt that any politician or leader will drape themselves in the flag of this disaster. Instead we will likely see a whitewashing of the entire event.

So I am done. This will likely be my last post on Katrina and it's aftermath. Leave history and God to be the judge of the failures of men, because I have no doubt my country and those who support those who failed, have not the stomach for that judgement....

Some Other Posts you might want to Read:

Digby Expresses the Outrage that I feel right now.

The New York Times chronicles what went wrong. Hat Tip: Talk Left.

Brother Cobb answers his Conservative Brethren's criticism of Ray Nagin, and does a helluva job of it!

And Newsweek demonstrates just how disconnected from Reality Bush really is.

And this... Cop... Should be lined up against one of the levees and shot.

No... I don't want to talk about it any more, but I am sure as hell glad someone does...

UPDATE: Welcome Daou Report Readers

UPDATE II: Welcome Readers of The National Review Online.

Update at bottom of page.

From Frumious Blues:

Through the day, I saw sporadic reports on various blogs that the military in New Orleans are trying to keep journalists out of the city. Via Atrios (via Josh Marshall) comes this confirming report from NBC anchorman Brian Williams:

National Guard soldiers are ubiquitous. At one fire scene, I counted law enforcement personnel (who I presume were on hand to guarantee the safety of the firefighters) from four separate jurisdictions, as far away as Connecticut and Illinois. And tempers are getting hot. While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won’t be any pictures of this particular group of guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media

obvious members of the media armed only with notepads. Her actions
(apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the
scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

What are they trying
to hide? Their dicks have been hanging out on national TV for a week
now. The only possible rationale for prohibiting press access is to
keep us from knowing exactly how badly they fucked over the country.

You know what I find most offensive in all this.... It is that the media has been complicit in their own defanging. Where has the outrage been for five years as this administration has operated time and time again in secret. The no bid contracts, Abu Gharib, Camp Delta, Downing Street, Gannongate, 9/11... Time and time again this administration has played it's Rovian games unquestioned by the Press. The Majority of the American public have went about their business oblivious to the putrid stench of a political system rotten to the core.

The Press, long champions of "the truth," have served as miserable lap dogs to an unacknowledged "Ministry of Propaganda," run by Karl Rove. The Republican Spin Machine, supported by Conservative Blogs have fed the American public a constant steam of "truthspeak," creating an impression of Leadership when it never existed beyond the photo op and sound bite. A couple of two bit lawyers and a call center manager from the Midwest become celebrities while shamelessly calling dissenters, "traitors." While the real treason lies among those who fail to question. We have lost our way as a Democracy because some people have feel in love with the idea of power, power at the cost of freedom.

What happened in the Gulf remains a National Embarrassment. No amount of censorship will rid the American mind of the sense of powerlessness we all now feel. Nor will it change the fact that the sense of Safety Americans have had, the promise of Security was a sham, and God help us if another disaster or terrorist strike happens in the U.S. anytime soon. The utter ineptitude of the people running our country, long ago exposed to those us who immune to the snake charmer tactics of Rove and Company, has now been exposed to the entire world. Unfortunately thousands of Americans may have died to finaly demonstrate that indeed... The Emperor has no clothes.

Unfortunately there are still those who refuse to believe what their own eyes and ears tell them. I had a long discussion with a conservative friend tonight who absolutely refused to believe that Bush said that no one anticipated the levies not holding. Even confronted with video of Bush saying those very words, he still insisted that video can be edited and he wanted to see a transcript. How does one fight that kind of partisan lunacy. I have come to the conclussion that you dont... If New Orleans in all of it's horror did not serve as a wake up call for these people, then nothing less than a catastrophic terrorist attack will. I am affraid that even with that, they will find a way to spin Bush out of responsibility for it. My conclussion is that they all suffer from a sense of guilt, that will not allow them to acknowledge their own culpability in a disaster that far exceeds the carnage of Katrina.

And the Spin Continues... (I discovered this piece from Wizbang as part of the same Daou Report.) I applaud Paul for acknowledging the obvious,

"Of course FEMA, and the idiot who runs it, are a different matter."

But the premise of the post, that Lefties are being unfair to Bush for being on vacation, is way off the mark. The Photo of Bush being briefed before the storm means nothing, if it took five days for his team to adequately address it. FEMA, Homeland Security... They were missing in action for days as people died, and this falls directly on Bush's doorstep. There is NO excuse for it. As for the contention that others shared the blame for what went wrong. I agree. Every politician from the local, state and Federal governments share blame in what was a failure of unimaginable proportions. What has happened since has been even more disgraceful. The lying and spin in particular. So Paul may feel comfortable excusing the failures of the Administration, after all, he survived... His brethren who didn't, or who lost people in the aftermath, may not be so generous.

And while the press is effectively shut out of reporting the real tragedy... There is THIS.

You angry yet???

What I truly DON'T understand, is how some Republican Appologist are trying to make Bush a victim in all this.... HELLO! The victims are the potentially thousands who have died.

In the age of video, it is "hard work," lying...

Yeah... Real Hard Work...

Anyone who can watch this video and still claim that this is all about Bush Hatred is... well... delusional at best.

It has been a week since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, leveled New Orleans and left hundreds of thousands of Americans homeless. We saw the best of America during that time—millions of people stepped forward to offer help. Meanwhile, the Bush administration failed at their most important job: keeping America safe. The federal effort was too little, too late and it is now becoming obvious that hundreds or even thousands of people died as a result.

Then, starting Friday, in a Karl Rove-led campaign, the White House started to blame state and local officials and even the victims who were stranded without transportation when the Hurricane arrived. Sign our petition demanding that the Bush administration stop blaming victims, including state and local officials, and focus on helping them.

Timeline

Friday, Aug. 26: Gov. Kathleen Blanco declares a state of emergency in Louisiana and requests troop assistance.

Saturday, Aug. 27: Gov. Blanco asks for federal state of emergency. A federal emergency is declared giving federal officials the authority to get involved.

Sunday, Aug. 28: Mayor Ray Nagin orders mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. President Bush warned of Levee failure by National Hurricane Center. National Weather Service predicts area will be "uninhabitable" after Hurricane arrives. First reports of water toppling over the levee appear in local paper.

Monday, Aug. 29: Levee breaches and New Orleans begins to fill with water, Bush travels to Arizona and California to discuss Medicare. FEMA chief finally responds to federal emergency, dispatching employees but giving them two days to arrive on site.

Tuesday, Aug. 30: Mass looting reported, security shortage cited in New Orleans. Pentagon says that local authorities have adequate National Guard units to handle hurricane needs despite governor's earlier request. Bush returns to Crawford for final day of vacation. TV coverage is around-the-clock Hurricane news.

Wednesday, Aug. 31: Tens of thousands trapped in New Orleans including at Convention Center and Superdome in "medieval" conditions. President Bush finally returns to Washington to establish a task force to coordinate federal response. Local authorities run out of food and water supplies.

Thursday, Sept. 1: New Orleans descends into anarchy. New Orleans Mayor issues a "Desperate SOS" to federal government. Bush claims nobody predicted the breach of the levees despite multiple warnings and his earlier briefing.

Friday, Sept. 2: Karl Rove begins Bush administration campaign to blame state and local officials—despite their repeated requests for help. Bush stages a photo-op—diverting Coast Guard helicopters and crew to act as backdrop for cameras. Levee repair work orchestrated for president's visit and White House press corps.

Saturday, Sept. 3: Bush blames state and local officials. Senior administration official (possibly Rove) caught in a lie claiming Gov. Blanco had not declared a state of emergency or asked for help.

Monday, Sept. 5: New Orleans officials begin to collect their dead.

(Adapted from: Katrina Timeline.

Those are the facts. State and local officials BEGGED for help as people in their city suffered. The Bush administration didn't get the job done and when their failure became an embarrassment they attacked those asking for help.

The New York Times reported on Friday that Karl Rove and White House communications director Dan Bartlett "rolled out a plan...to contain the political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina." The core of the strategy is "to shift the blame away from the White House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana."

This is the same pattern of smearing that the Bush political machine has used for a decade. John McCain and John Kerry had their war records smeared. The CIA cover of Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife was blown after he criticized the Bush Iraq policy. Now, Hurricane victims are attacked when the Bush administration failed to do their duty to help them.

It isn't just the Bush administration. Republican Senator Rick Santorum blamed victims in a TV interview and House Speaker Dennis Hastert suggested New Orleans should not be rebuilt.

Excerpted from a MoveOn.org mailing. Sign their petition here.

I don't have much to say about this. I mean expressions of outrage just seem to bounce off the walls these days. These people are truly disgusting in their ability to play politics with disaster, and to put it simply... LIE. That there are people out there who still, after all this, refuse to deal with the truth is Frankly MIND BOGGLING!

Liberal Blogs for Hurricane Relief

"There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America."
Bill Clinton

Hurricane Katrina destroyed thousands of lives. Together, we're raising $1 million for the American Red Cross and prove that the liberal blogosphere can help our fellow citizens.

Please donate now

You can also get the advertisement on the Right for your blog, here. Please spread the word on this, and get your own ad to place on your blog.

Note: This post will remain at the Top of my blog for the next two weeks, or as long as is needed.

Michael from Comments from left field posted this list today. Lets keep these going:

No punditry today, instead I urge you please review the following links.

• Random Fate
• The Rogue Angel
• The Commissar
• Unpaid Punditry Corps
• Katrina Relief - What You Can Do
• The Skippy Challenge
  
• Wizbang Hurricane Relief Auction
• Liberal Blogs for Hurricane Relief
• Sticky Post - ISOU doing it's part for Hurricane Relief

If you are aware of any efforts to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina please leave a comment below with the details including any links. This is effectively an open thread with the sole purpose of collecting relief links, please contribute whatever you can. I will update this post with any links provided in the comments section.

.

Likewise, I will update the list if anyone posts comments here. This is a meme worth repeating on all our blogs, even if it helps raise $1, it is a dollar more than they had!

Michael from Comments from left field posted this list today. Lets keep these going:

No punditry today, instead I urge you please review the following links.

• Random Fate
• The Rogue Angel
• The Commissar
• Unpaid Punditry Corps
• Katrina Relief - What You Can Do
• The Skippy Challenge
  
• Wizbang Hurricane Relief Auction
• Liberal Blogs for Hurricane Relief
• Sticky Post - ISOU doing it's part for Hurricane Relief

If you are aware of any efforts to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina please leave a comment below with the details including any links. This is effectively an open thread with the sole purpose of collecting relief links, please contribute whatever you can. I will update this post with any links provided in the comments section.

.

Likewise, I will update the list if anyone posts comments here. This is a meme worth repeating on all our blogs, even if it helps raise $1, it is a dollar more than they had!

The Red Cross link for donations to help out hurricane victims....

Also, I will auction off any cartoon (the original artwork) on Zencomix and donate all proceeds to the Red Cross. If there is a cartoon you want, bid on it in the comments section at Zencomix. Minimum bid is $5