When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts

Yup, like I said, too soft on Nagin. However, the Parker column goes overboard. Lee's angle was no worse than Discovery Channel kissing Michael Brown's butt last night.

 

When somebody writes that Spike Lee's film is "about as destructive as was the disaster it depicts," that position is unworthy of argument. It has no basis in fact, no connection to the reality of the topic under discussion.
Which, I suspect, is why it found a home at ClownHall.

 

That was a good read, Fenian.

The sense of "detachment" is what really gets me, too.

How can anyone, politician or not, act like he doesn't care in the face of some of that stuff. I've seen him on television and very badly wanted one interviewer to just say, " At the very least, Mr. Mayor, couldn't you swing a hammer? Drive a truck?

Just fucking do something, for the love of god.

 

What do you expect from a guy who holed up in a hotel during the entire tragedy? But the voters of New Orleans apparently like a detached mayor. They preferred him over a guy who was actually out in the muck saving people.

 

Sean Penn ran for mayor?
Damn.

 

C'mon, Ly, come back to us. Point being . . . you'll get old waiting to ever see me post anything
from, say, daily kos . . . because stuff specificially from spin-addicted, far-out opinion sites from either
end of the spectrum
is 99.44% predictable/obvious, and designed primarily to pander to closeminded true-believers/ravenous primary voters.
Everybody firmly based in the real world knows precisely what's coming within such drivel, once they know the site of origin,
the author, and the topic at hand. And townhall is one of the pacesetters in the presentation
of such unsubtle tripe.

. . . and, by the way, as long as the Karl Roves of the world -- and their hand-puppets -- continue to operate from the
Animal Farm / Third Reich debate-tactic playbook, you're going to keep hearing about it . . .

 

Anyone watching?

 

Exactly.

 

I have set my TiVo to record all 4 acts.

Star Parker is a sellout.

 

Exactly.

 

I don't have HBO, so I haven't seen the documentary. But I wonder if it gets into something that I find interesting. The Bush administration durings its Homeland Security/FEMA overhaul made a policy of decentralizing emergency management to states and localities because they presumably were closer to the ground and could respond more quickly. In theory a good idea -- and it probably works for the odd tornado or flood or, for lack of a better term, everyday disaster. However, in the case of a historic event like Katrina, it works horribly. Especially when, as it probably would be in most cases, the scale of the event is something that would overwhelm local authorities, especially stupid ones like Blanco and Nagin. Decentralize if you will, but there's got to be some sort of emergency plan for events such as a major hurricane or earthquake. (Of course, a hurricane is the only sort of disaster you know is coming, so the failures for that are magnified exponentially.)

By the way, speaking of Homeland Security, while cops are diverted to catch terrorists, crime is going through the roof in many cities:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14137625/

Of course, there are other factors -- growing population of young people (always correlates with higher crime rates), release of prisoners who were tossed in jail during urban crackdowns in the early 1990s (and in Indianapolis, persistent jail overcrowding that has never been addressed, thus putting people on the street who shouldn't be there), budget cuts, and even Katrina refugees in some cities.

But the emphasis to sniff out terrorists isn't helping. Maybe we don't have someone blowing up a building, but the trade-off is we have more homegrown violent crime.

 

the film is absolutely fascinating. i misse the first half hour but was riveted for the next 3.5. it's criminal that folks had to wait that long for help (insert "criminal" joke here).

like the one woman said at a town meeting, a lot of those folks were poor but they were working-poor, homeowners and taxpayers. and how about the way the feds screw louisiana out of its fair share of oil and gas money due to a 3-mile rule? anyone who doesn't think the feds' response would be different if katrina had hit palm beach county is in denial.