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?
[link]
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.
I'm wondering if Braun was privy to government plans in case of a mass disaster. She may know what the plans were if such a tragic event ever occurred.
I hope the public finds out if they do mass cremations/burials, etc.
from a post on dailykos
I am in OKC and when I was getting my hair cut this morning, I started talking to a woman whose grown son is in Biloxi. She said she spent two days in hell, not knowing if he was alive or dead until he found a cell phone with an active signal and he called her.
She said he was working with the rescue effort and that they had recovered hundreds of dead.
She said this after I mentioned that I had seen a death toll of over 100 in Mississippi.
She said that they were keeping all the bodies together but weren't releasing the full number of what they were finding because they didn't want there to be "a panic."
Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu issued a press release today basically saying that Bush's appearance in NOLA yesterday was one big photo op.
Including the fact that equipment that had been brought in that seemed to be for repairs to the 17th St. levee was TAKEN AWAY WHEN THE PHOTO OP WAS OVER.
"But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast -- black and white, rich and poor, young and old -- deserve far better from their national government."
Why?!???? Just....why????
Wow Steph.
I hear GWB is going back over the Gulf Coast on Monday.
I'm wondering if Braun was privy to government plans in case of a mass disaster. She may know what the plans were if such a tragic event ever occurred.
She hasn't been walking the corridors of power for a good long time; any plans she might be aware of are years old.
No, I don't have any CMB issues, why do you ask?
t /bitter
Jesus. There are no words. I am choking on my hate.
