Mal ,'Serenity'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
GWB, 1912: "The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic movie someday. Out of the shipwreck in the North Atlantic -- and we've lost the entire boat -- there's going to be a fantastic Hollywood spectacle. And I'm looking forward to sitting down with a big bowl of popcorn and watching 'Titanic.'"
This one cracked my shit up.
Seriously, folks, she's kind of a crackpot, and unlikely to be in possession of any information outside of the mainstream. I'd wait for confirmation on this one. Until then, I'll keep hoping she's talking out her ass.
brenda, you are right about the crackpot part. I can see it happening if 10K people are dead.
Some of the Maryland NG that flew out yesterday expect to be tasked in building emergency morgue facilities. So I'll wait, as Brenda suggested.
le nubian, you're quick!
Back from Fry's. So...
Is there some reason why Arkansas and Oklahoma are being brushed over if people are going to Arizona and WV?
Fort Chafee (outside Ft. Smith) is supposedly taking 4000 evacuees. 2000 are expected at Camp Gruber (outside Braggs, OK -- shoutout to Sarah Vowell), but apparently there's some massive miscommunication that's postponed the setup in Oklahoma (per the Tulsa World). Oh, and another 3000 will be at a Baptist youth summer camp in NE Oklahoma.
Oh, and there's some word that Tulsa itself may get refugees, which is kinda ironic when you consider the role of refugee camps in the post-Greenwood Riot era.
Oklahoma City, OTOH, said screw refugees, give us the Hornets. [link]
(OK, they didn't say "screw refugees.")
The fuck the fuck the fuck? Their families, all the kids and grandkids and parents all over the country who've been posting on check-in websites looking for any news, good or bad, just wanting to know... Just... fuck. No words.
I know it sounds harsh, but in huge catastrophes like these, it's sometimes more practical to go the mass grave route.
But what they'll likely do is try and identify remains based on personal articles and some DNA, return the bodies to the family, and bury the ones left in a mass grave. Aboveground, of course. Or, maybe they won't.
10,000 dead would mean the largest loss of life in a disaster since Galveston, but in Galveston's case most of the bodies washed away. We're kind of in unknown territory here. There's a spot in a Tulsa cemetary that's supposed to have hundreds of unidentified bodies from the Greenwood Riot, but the ground radar survey they did in the late 90s showed no human remains.
Oh, and let's see... collapse of civil order, a military stretched too thin, a dismissive president, Halliburton... boy, it just needs one more thing before NOLA == Iraq. Can someone say the secret word and win $50?
While some fight the insurgency in the city, other carry on with rescue and evacuation operations. Helicopters are still pulling hundreds of stranded people from rooftops of flooded homes.
DING DING DING DING!!!!!
Okay, yeah, I just went poking around, and it doesn't look like anyone but Mosley-Braun is saying anything about this; every other talking head and media outlet is saying that identifying all the dead so they can be claimed and buried by their beloveds will be a ghastly task, but it's going to be done. As long as it's just her saying it, I'm'a wait a bit to get hysterical about it.
Possibly I shall distract myself by pondering the Viggoness of Viggo. That seems like a good plan.
Okay, yeah, I just went poking around, and it doesn't look like anyone but Mosley-Braun is saying anything about this; every other talking head and media outlet is saying that identifying all the dead so they can be claimed and buried by their beloveds will be a ghastly task, but it's going to be done. As long as it's just her saying it, I'm'a wait a bit to get hysterical about it.
The only thing worrying me is that so many of the victims are poor they're likely to be pushed aside. They can't afford DNA testing on their own, and the general corruption of NOLA and the screw-the-poor attitude of Dubya and Co. worries me.
It's strange. Monday I was an old-school internationalist Republican. Today, I'm saying things that would get me branded a Communist. But God damn, we have rampant classism in this country, and this week showed us what we're reaping from a generation of sowing selfishness, greed, and ignorance.
$deity save us.
Monday I was an old-school internationalist Republican.
There are at least a few old-school Repubs on the board, IIRC, me included. Whatever the hell Bush and Co. are, it's not the Republican party my parents taught me about.