Tropical Storm Ophelia is hanging out off Florida's east coast, awaiting further orders from God. Yesterday's projected path was due west across Florida into the Gulf of Mexico. Today it's predicted to wiggle towards South Carolina, but Jeff Masters believes it will head northeast for a few days, do-se-do, alaman right, and come back to the U.S.:

After heading east for a few days, all the models except the GFS agree that Ophelia will eventually loop back and hit the U.S. as a hurricane, perhaps even a major hurricane, seven or more days from now. The GFS takes Ophelia out to sea, but the latest NHC discussion notes that the GFS performed poorly in a similar situation with Hurricane Jeanne last year, and is probably on the wrong page this time around, too.

Florida · Jacksonville · 2005/09/08 · Comment · Link

The United States of Emergency

Our Nation is prepared, as never before, to deal quickly and capably with the consequences of disasters and other domestic incidents. -- FEMA Chief Michael Brown, Senate testimony, March 9, 2005

Now that the initial shock of the disaster in New Orleans has worn off, Republicans have mobilized to defend President Bush, who appears to have replaced "I'll keep you safe" with a more nuanced slogan:

I'll protect you -- unless of course your local officials fail you, in which case I'll let you die a horrible death on national TV.

I don't understand Americans who are more concerned about damage to President Bush than damage to the Gulf. He's a lame duck in six months, 12 tops, so politicians who have aspirations beyond Jan. 20, 2009, will soon be abandoning him in droves. Burning your credibility in his defense is like working to rehabilitate the reputation of Michael Dukakis.

Clearly the local and state authorities share the blame for deaths after the storm passed New Orleans, but the whole reason to fund the multi-billion dollar FEMA is because there will be disasters far beyond the scope of states to handle on their own. A category 4 hurricane that devastated 90,000 square miles of three high-poverty states is one of those times.

It should have been mind-numbingly obvious to the federal government by Tuesday morning that huge resources must be marshalled to provide relief, restore order, and rescue survivors. President Bush issued an emergency disaster declaration before Katrina struck, according to Brown in a FEMA press release published two days before the storm:

FEMA will mobilize equipment and resources necessary to protect public health and safety by assisting law enforcement with evacuations, establishing shelters, supporting emergency medical needs, meeting immediate lifesaving and life-sustaining human needs and protecting property, in addition to other emergency protective measures.

This didn't happen, to such a spectacular degree that five days after the storm made landfall, Fox News anchors were reduced to live on-air begging for thousands trapped in misery at the Convention Center and Superdome.

When you hear Bush say "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" and Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff claim newspapers reported "New Orleans dodged the bullet" and Brown assign relief workers to "convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials" and send 1,000 firefighters to sex-harassment courses, it's clear that our government is totally incompetent at the mission it assumed after 9/11, the task that became the entire centerpiece of Bush's re-election campaign: We will protect the country and be ready for the next major attack.

Throw the bums out, in any order you like -- either from Bush all the way down to New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin or from Nagin all the way up to Bush.

At a minimum, Bush should fire FEMA Chief Mike Brown and the two people below him on the ladder. None of the three had emergency management experience prior to joining the agency under President Bush, and it shows.

Shortly after Bush won on a tiebreaker in 2000, Saturday Night Live opened with A Glimpse Into Our Possible Future:

President Bush: Hey, America! So, how we all doing out there, huh? Yeah, not so good. I broke the Hoover Dam ... we had that war thing happen. But I mean, who ever heard of a Civil War, anyway? ... the Great Lakes are on fire -- even I know that's not good.

I think we may have reached a point where any other presidential candidate, past or future, would be better at the job. I'm trying to think of a nationally ambitious politician I wouldn't prefer over Bush at this point -- Alan Keyes, Leonard Peltier, even Ralph Nader. Is Lyndon LaRouche thinking of running again?

Politics · Hurricane Katrina · 2005/09/08 · 26 COMMENTS · Link

Cindy Sheehan and the Veterans for Peace Bus have rerouted their tour to Louisiana, setting up a Camp Casey in Covington with food and supplies collected in Crawford, Texas:

We have set up a permanent Camp Casey at the Pine View Middle School, 1115 West 28th Avenue, Covington, LA. We are using the school to support Veterans For Peace hurricane relief efforts for the people of the region. We are supporting The Red Cross with power, medical supplies, kitchen service, food bank and distribution, internet communications and trained medical personnel.

They're looking for donations of relief supplies like baby food and sterile gloves and equipment for a mobile Internet center to "communicate needs and direct displaced people to services."

If we could get John Roberts and Kanye West on that bus, we'd have a harmonic news convergence.

Hurricane Katrina · Politics · 2005/09/07 · Comment · Link

I awoke this morning to 40 mph winds from an outer band of Tropical Storm Ophelia, which Jeff Masters of Weather Underground expects to become stronger:

TD 16 gathered enough strength last night to be given a name -- Ophelia. Ophelia will be a name we will hear a lot of over the coming week. She is going to cause plenty of trouble, and will be moving slowly enough that we'll still be talking about her a week from now. ...

With so much time over warm water, and the shear likely to decrease once the trough bypasses her, Ophelia will have a good chance of attaining at least Category 1 hurricane status and making landfall somewhere on the Southeast U.S. coast. All interests along the Southeast coast from Miami to Cape Hatteras need to watch this storm.

The current strike probability for Jacksonville/St. Augustine is around 20 percent. Ophelia is currently so mild by hurricane standards that even I'm not panicking, but it reminded me of something I learned during news coverage last week: Scientists are much better at predicting the path of an approaching hurricane than its intensity.

Florida · Jacksonville · 2005/09/07 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superuser

The Detroit Free Times covers Michael Barnett, the network admin barricaded in downtown New Orleans who's been publishing a post-hurricane journal called The Interdictor.

Barnett, an unabashed libertarian with a military background, has covered the disaster with his blog and streaming webcam while remaining online, which is both a journalistic and technological feat. To my knowledge, his connection never went down.

Last night, some of the troops stationed in the city found them:

Sometime around midnight, a squad of 82nd Airborne guys accompanied by a US Marshall busted into our Data Center with their M4-A1s to investigate the lights and movement. Personally, I know they were just bored -- there's no way they honestly thought there was some kind of threat up here just yards away from several huge military and police presences.

Hurricane Katrina · Journalism · 2005/09/07 · 1 COMMENT · Link

A friend lives in Baton Rouge in a house that fared well in the hurricane, so he's taken in around a dozen relatives as they decide what to do next.

One is an architect for a small firm based in New Orleans who has a wife, eight-month-old, and father living with him. Since his company may be out of business, he's looking for a job, primarily in the Baton Rouge or Lafayette areas of central Louisiana, but might consider other locations.

"He's a bit of a jack of all trades and I think he could be a contractor or a key guy for a contractor," according to my friend. If anyone has any job possibilities or advice for the suddenly unemployed, let me know.

Hurricane Katrina · 2005/09/06 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Barbara Bush's Texas Hospitality

As Presidents Clinton and Bush toured the Astrodome yesterday, an NPR reporter recorded an amazing comment from First Lady Barbara Bush:

Almost everyone I've talked to says we're going to move to Houston. ... What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this -- this is working very well for them.

Indeed. Losing your home, possessions, and loved ones is a small price to pay for the chance to live like a zombie in a strange place with thousands of people, on constant guard to protect your children, clothes, and cot.

On Air America, Al Franken retold the infamous story of his meeting on a plane with Barbara Bush, which I've attached as an eight-minute podcast. The story's hilarious, if you don't mind a little name-calling:

I told people this story the next day. And this is people who are Republicans, there were Democrats there -- this was just a journalistic thing ... Everyone laughed at the story, but what they laughed at the most was that I thought Barbara Bush was kidding. And they went oh no, no, no, no, no, she's horrible.

Radio · Politics · Podcasts · Hurricane Katrina · 2005/09/06 · 71 COMMENTS · Link

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