"Katrina demonstrated that modern civilization would unravel into anarchy after two days without food and civil authority.— Allan J. Feifer
Section 1:
Looters, thugs, gangs, and their enablers
The latest:
5 NOPD officers guilty in post-Katrina Danziger Bridge shootings, cover-up. A jury this morning [8/5/2011] convicted all five New Orleans police officers accused in the Danziger Bridge shootings, which took place amid the chaos after Hurricane Katrina and claimed the lives of two civilians, and a cover-up of startling scope that lasted almost five years.
Officers charged in post-Katrina bridge shootings. Four New Orleans police officers have been charged with federal civil rights violations in the deadly shootings of unarmed people on a bridge in the chaos after Hurricane Katrina, officials said.
Post-Katrina looters get 15-year sentences. Three people convicted of hauling away liquor, wine and beer from a grocery store after Hurricane Katrina were sentenced Wednesday [6/28/2006] to 15 years in prison.
Rumors of deaths were greatly exaggerated. Widely reported attacks were false or unsubstantiated. Six bodies found at the Dome; four at Convention Center.
The Year of the Looter. What a year! First of all we got to see New Orleans looters calmly pushing shopping carts full of plasma TVs and expensive athletic shoes down the flooded streets of the Big Easy. Then we saw the rioters of the Paris banlieus calmly torching the cars of their neighbors and friends. … Almost everyone agrees that they are thugs. The big problem is the looting that does not provoke outrage from the chattering and the moralizing classes.
The Day the Glue Came Undone. Scenes of the devastation and suffering inflicted by Hurricane Katrina will long remain in our memories. Equally horrifying were the pictures of New Orleans residents — and policemen — helping themselves to goods from stores. They weren't just taking food, water, and diapers; some were taking television sets, jewelry, and other luxury items.
Neighbors tell of gun battles after the storm. After the storm came the carjackers and burglars. Then came the gun battles and the chemical explosions that shook the restored Victorians in New Orleans' Algiers Point neighborhood. "The hurricane was a breeze compared with the crime and terror that followed," said Gregg Harris, a psychotherapist who lives in the battered area.
Rep. Peter King: Gangs Blocking Relief Efforts. Armed gangs of roaming thugs are the primary reason relief efforts in flood-ravaged New Orleans have been delayed, a prominent New York congressman said Friday morning [9/2/2005].
Throwing out the thugs. Why is it not only common knowledge but also accepted practice that organized crime and gangs hold much of the power and control much of the commerce in New Orleans? Will New Orleans return to business as usual? Or will you uplift the entire community by throwing out the thugs and their vile wares for which New Orleans is infamous?
Radio host urges poor to loot. In a broadcast yesterday [9/2/2005], Air America radio talk radio host Randi Rhodes repeatedly urged listeners in the hurricane-devastated Gulf Coast to go out and loot, insisting the poor should be allowed to steal goods at will.
Editor's Note: If the FCC deserves its continued existence, the radio stations carrying that message should have their licenses challenged at renewal time. Radio stations exist, according to the Communications Act of 1934 as amended, to serve the "public interest, convenience and necessity," and statements of this sort, inciting an already lawless crowd to further violent felonies, are well outside the envelope of protected free speech.
The Battle of New Orleans. Of all the bad news from New Orleans, the most disturbing has been the reports of spreading disorder, with looting, marauding gangs and even sniper fire at helicopters and rescue workers. Americans sometimes expect their government to do far too much — such as ensure low gasoline prices — but they do have a right to expect that it will at least provide for the safety of its citizens, even or perhaps especially in a crisis.
Evacuee Charged With Raping Mentally Challenged Girl. Glenn Dorsett is accused of raping a 13-year-old mentally challenged girl from New Orleans at the Assembly of God church campground on Hwy. 7 that has been set up for hurricane evacuees. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.
57 evacuees to Colorado have felony convictions. Aurora police have found that 57 of 873 Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Colorado have felony criminal records, according to 9News.
Shoot looters. The looters are helping themselves to DVD and MP3 players, beer, flat screen TVs, clothing, booze, guns, candy and sporting goods. Some simply loaded up [stolen] shopping carts with all they could hold and boldly pushed them out the doors and down the sodden streets. "With no police officers in sight," reported The New York Times, "people carried empty bags, shopping carts and backpacks through the door of the Rite Aid on Wednesday [8/31/2005] and left with them full. As they came and went, the looters nodded companionably to one another."
Observations on the decent, the dire and the despicable. Apparently Sid [Blumenthal] has forgotten the Senate's diversion of domestic infrastructure funding to cover the 700-percent cost overrun for Ted Kennedy's Big Dig boondoggle. Perhaps that $16 billion American tax payers spent on 7.5 miles of Boston highway could have been better spent on levee improvements in New Orleans — but we digress.
New Orleans Saints and Sphincters. While starving souls are helping themselves (with the legitimate consent of the National Guard and local cops) to some [food], the looters are stocking up on CDs, Tag Heuers, 47 pairs of Nike's, Swarovski crystal and massive amounts of Heineken. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time I checked, Bose Wave radios and tennis bracelets weren't part of the major four food groups.
Rebuilding New Orleans — and America. The physical devastation caused by hurricane Katrina has painfully revealed the moral devastation of our times that has led to mass looting in New Orleans, assaults on people in shelters, the raping of girls, and shots being fired at helicopters that are trying to rescue people.
Blame belongs on New Orleans criminals — and cops. The best place to start a search for an accountability breakdown should be at the local level, preferably among criminals and cops – in that order. It is little secret that New Orleans has a large and nasty criminal class. The city's murder rate is about ten times the U.S. average. Only one in four murders results in a conviction, in large measure because witnesses fear retaliation or don't think their testimony is worth the effort.
City of the Dead. I haven't the [words] to express just how thoroughly revolted I am by these [people] when I hear them squawking on-camera about how "ain't nobody did nuthin' fa us" — when they were told to leave! What else, in a forty-eight-hour window, could government do?
Troops find grisly scenes in New Orleans. Troops scouring New Orleans for survivors and victims reported finding at least 40 mutilated bodies in the Convention Center refugee center. Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the New Orleans Times Picayune many of the dead were elderly, or showed signs of trauma. "There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut," he said.
New Orleans murder rate on the rise again. Last year, university researchers conducted an experiment in which police fired 700 blank rounds in a New Orleans neighborhood in a single afternoon. No one called to report the gunfire. … The city's murder rate is still far lower than a decade ago, when New Orleans was the country's murder capital. But in recent years, the city's homicide rate has climbed again to nearly 10 times the national average.
Update:
Correction to the New Orleans Murders Story. About 900 rounds of live ammunition were fired by officers over a two-day period in December 2003 during a demonstration of a gunshot detection system. … [and only] one public call came in about the gunfire.
New Orleans, Criminals, Looters, and Second Amendment Rights. Predators are always in a society's midst waiting for their release from the restrictions of law and order to pillage, loot, rape, and murder. When a natural or man made disaster occurs, these individuals are like predatory wild animals preying on those unable to defend themselves. Women are often targets for rape, and the elderly are robbed. A well armed and trained citizenry is less likely to be subjected to thugs who take advantage of disasters while government initially wrings its hands in helplessness and confusion. If your guns are taken by the despots in government, you can easily become a victim of those with criminal intent.
Cindy Sheehan Delivers Katrina Aid To Moslem Radical. As discussed elsewhere, Cindy Sheehan's compadres, the august Veterans For Peace, have been helping themselves to Red Cross food and other supplies. So the supplies they brag about having delivered to former Black Panther and now Moslem radical, Malik Rahim, were almost certainly pilfered from the Red Cross.
Police Find Relief Supplies in City Official's Home. Police found cases of food, clothing and tools intended for hurricane victims at the home of the chief administrative officer for a New Orleans suburb, authorities said Wednesday [9/21/2005].
Mississippi governor says crime is up since the storms. Crime has increased dramatically in Gulf Coast counties hard hit by Hurricane Katrina, in part due to outsiders looking to prey on the weak, Gov. Haley Barbour said Tuesday [3/14/2006]. Construction scams, assaults, and drug and alcohol crimes are among offenses occurring more frequently, law officers in the region said.
New Orleans Officers Cleared of Looting. Four New Orleans police officers have been cleared of allegations that they looted a Wal-Mart store after Hurricane Katrina, but each was suspended 10 days for not stopping civilians from ransacking the store, the Police Department said.
5 Killed in Latest New Orleans Shootings. The shootings were the latest round of killings as the city struggles to rein in drug- and gang-related violence that has accompanied the recovery from Hurricane Katrina.
Shootings tarnishing New Orleans' image. City leaders and people who make a living in the tourism industry fear that New Orleans is building a national reputation that could harm its fragile recovery.
[No, the latest developments merely confirm the reputation New Orleans already had.]
Years later...
Ex-cop says he helped cover up Katrina shootings. A former police detective testified Monday [7/11/2011] that he participated in a plot to fabricate witnesses, falsify reports and plant a gun to make it seem police were justified in shooting unarmed residents on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina.
Section 2:
Other accounts of widespread misery
Inside the Superdome: "And Now We Are in Hell". There are four levels of hell inside the refugee city of the Superdome, home to about 15,000 people since Sunday [8/28/2005].
The Great Society Crashes and Burns. At the Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center, we saw the failure of 40 years of the Great Society. No sooner had Katrina passed by and the 17th Street levee broke than hundreds of young men who should have taken charge in helping the aged, the sick and the women with babies to safety took to the streets to shoot, loot and rape.
Nursing Home Staff Leaves 30 People to Die. State Rep. Nita Hutter said 30 people died at a flooded-out nursing home in Chalmette, just outside New Orleans. She said the staff left the elderly residents behind in their beds.
St. Rita's Crime: Wrong People. It's time for the blame game and the losers are two owners of St. Rita's Nursing Home. Yes, the Mangano's. They have not been all over the tube as so many of our elected officials so you might not know the name. Mable Mangano, 62, and her husband Salvador Mangano Sr., 56, co-owners of St. Rita's Nursing Home, face 34 counts of negligent homicide, said Attorney General Charles Foti.
More bodies are found daily, weeks after search called off. Nearly two months after Hurricane Katrina struck and more than two weeks after the official quest for bodies was abandoned, corpses of 9th Ward residents are being found every day.
Despite Mardi Gras, New Orleans is Struggling. Hurricane Katrina created an estimated 60.3 million cubic yards of debris in Louisiana, 25 times as much as the ruins of the World Trade Center and enough to fill the Superdome more than 13 times. Of that, only 32 million cubic yards — a bit more than half — has been removed. Meanwhile, there are just under 2,000 people listed as missing.
Updated 8/30/2009:
Strained by Katrina, a Hospital Faced Deadly Choices. Investigators were surprised at the number of bodies in the makeshift morgue and were stunned when health care workers charged that a well-regarded doctor and two respected nurses had hastened the deaths of some patients by injecting them with lethal doses of drugs. Mortuary workers eventually carried 45 corpses from Memorial, more than from any comparable-size hospital in the drowned city.
The Editor says...
"Hastened the deaths" is a delicate way to describe homicide.
Black's Law Dictionary, 1991, page 734.
Section 3:
News media pessimism, misinformation, bias and opportunism
The Media Succumb to Raging Case of Katrina Virus in Hopes of Infecting Trump. Democrats in the news media say that President George W. Bush botched the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. To the extent that Bush could convince the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana to declare an emergency and order mandatory evacuations, then, sure, it was all his fault. Sigh. Bush was mocked for using the FEMA trailers for emergency housing after the storm, even though they're often used for that purpose all over the country. He was blamed for failing to put all of the first responders in the direct path of the storm, instead of where they were stationed, just outside of the area to keep them safe until the storm passed but close enough to swarm the area. He was blamed for the levee failures. He was blamed for people staying in the 9th Ward when the storm surge flooded them out. Brian Williams pretended to see "bodies floating" in the French Quarter (a lie). Wolf Blitzer incited a racist narrative, calling the victims "so poor, so black." Kanye West declared that "George Bush doesn't care about black people." Babies were being "raped" in the Superdome. On and on it went.
Lessons in disaster for the next Katrina. [#1] Though the press patted itself on the back afterwards, in fact, as American University Journalism Professor W. Joseph Campbell writes, "it's instructive to recall how extreme and over the top the reporting was from New Orleans in Katrina's aftermath." Reports of wandering bands of rapists, a 10-year-old girl raped in the New Orleans Convention Center, claims that people were shooting at rescue helicopters, sharks haunting the floodwaters, bodies stacked like cordwood — all were false. Though the extremism generated ratings, and satisfied the anti-American urges of the foreign press, it did real harm. New Orleans, a city battered by disaster, was portrayed as, in Maureen Dowd's words, "a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning." Dowd used this portrayal to take shots at then-President George W. Bush, and I suspect a lot of the media pile-on was similarly motivated, but it had the effect of stigmatizing victims and, by playing up anarchy and danger, may even have delayed the arrival of aid, as rescuers feared to go in without armed escort. Overall, a horrible media performance.
Our Biggest Problem Is A Lying, Stinking Media. The Pulitzer Prize was awarded to the Times-Picayune newspaper for totally fraudulent reporting of the Katrina disaster. Even though the salacious reports of gang-rapes and overflowing bodies was quickly debunked by eyewitnesses, there has been no retraction by the paper or review by Pulitzer committee.
Multiple Witnesses Contradict Williams' Katrina Stories. Now that everything he has ever said about anything will be under scrutiny for a very long time, there is a lot out there. As of now, though, it is Brian Williams' Tales from Katrina that are receiving an extra level of scrutiny. And they are not holding up very well. Witnesses are calling Williams' Katrina stories of close calls at the five-star Ritz-Carlton Hotel "crazy."
Did Brian Williams also exaggerate his Hurricane Katrina reports? On Wednesday [2/45/2015] [NBC News anchor Brian] Williams blamed his mistake on the 'fog of memory over 12 years', but evidence has emerged since that Williams has repeatedly mis-told the story including to late night host David Letterman in 2013. The anchor's previous credibility as a highly regarded journalist is based partly on his reporting from inside the New Orleans Superdome in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in September 2005.
Second anniversary recap...
The media's Katrina malpractice: Few of us can forget the reports from two years ago. CNN warned that there were "bands of rapists, going block to block." Snipers were reportedly shooting at medical personnel. Bodies at the Superdome, we were told, were stacked like cordwood. The Washington Post proclaimed in a banner headline that New Orleans was a "A City of Despair and Lawlessness," insisting in an editorial that "looters and carjackers, some of them armed, have run rampant."
Katrina: The aftermath of 2005's Hurricane Katrina was horrific, with a staggering loss of life and property. Some of the early reports from New Orleans however, particularly those immediately following the storm, were later found to be inaccurate or completely untrue. Some of the news reports of rape and murder in the Superdome and the Convention Center were later found to be based on unsubstantiated rumors and civil rights leader Randall Robinson's claim that "black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive" was later retracted. In addition to those inaccurate stories, some of the reporting of the racial makeup of the victims of the hurricane were misrepresented.
Media Dishonesty in New Orleans. The hard truth is that New Orleans has always been crime-infested. There is no connection between Hurricane Katrina and crime. That's just part of a touchy-feely narrative that is supposed to make us think that anything wrong with New Orleans has to be as a result of Hurricane Katrina. It's an extension of the bald-faced lie that the Bush Administration purposefully ignored the plight of the city after the floodwaters hit. If anything, many of the criminals who called New Orleans home have invaded other parts of the country after evacuating and are now perpetrating felonies on unsuspecting victims in Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, and all over the United States.
Debunking Some Katrina Myths: A prediction: Some of the stories being circulated about rape, murder, and havoc in New Orleans are not going to hold up under scrutiny. This is not to minimize the countless horrors that have occurred in Katrina's aftermath. But the truth of what happened is awful enough without having to embellish it.
Katrina: Forget everything you thought you knew. If you've only gotten your news about Hurricane Katrina from the mainstream media, everything you think you know about Katrina flooding New Orleans is probably wrong. On this first anniversary of the tragedy, while the networks congratulate themselves on their often wildly inaccurate reporting in the days following Katrina, there's a far more important story not being told.
How reporters create Grinches. Crying and yelling made for better ratings than calm assessments of damage. Network stars wanted to display what passed as compassion. … Politics also played a role, with liberals framing the story as one of rich people not caring about poor people and whites not caring about blacks.
Media blindside in hindsight. What do you "know" about the recent hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast and how did you come by the information? If your knowledge was acquired from watching the broadcast and cable networks, as it was for most people, you "know" only what their reporters and anchors told you. … Weeks after these "facts" have been deeply implanted in the public consciousness, we are now learning that much of what we "know" is incorrect.
Hurricane of media mendacity. The facts they put in front of us were wrong, and they didn't talk truth to power. They talked to goofs in power, like New Orleans' Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Chief Eddie Compass, and uncritically fell for every nutso yarn they were peddled. The media swallowed more bilge than if they'd been lying down with their mouths open as the levee collapsed. Ten thousand dead. Widespread rape and murder. A 7-year-old gang-raped and then throat-slashed. It was great stuff — and none of it happened. No gang-raped 7-year-olds. None.
All the rumors fit to print. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita packed a wallop — not just with weather that ravaged a region, but also in lessons of hysteria and the power of fear. Now that winds have calmed and the hot air of punditry has found new objects of bloviation, we learn that much of what we thought we knew was wrong. That sentence has a familiar, and unwelcome, ring to it.
Media, blushing, takes a second look at Katrina. The general in charge of Louisiana's hurricane relief has admonished reporters not to confuse questions with answers, and urged them to give the public facts — not exaggerations and rumors that several media organizations now say corrupted coverage of Hurricane Katrina.
Gale-force exaggeration, Katrina's other consequence. In the last month or so, we've heard a lot of self-congratulation from the press about what a great job they've been doing. … We now know, thanks to valuable post-mortems by the Los Angeles Times and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, that a great deal of the "great reporting" was in fact great rumor mongering.
Swept away with the wind. Everything is blown out of proportion, every ambiguity resolved in President Bush's disfavor, and every possible malevolent motive is attributed to him. The most innocuous events are treated as scandals. Hyperbole rules. Panic prevails. Conspiracy fantasies abound. Sober, balanced analysis is absent.
Aid didn't come too late for New Orleans. Personal accounts from two local men shed a different light on the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort.
Katrina – What Went Right: Largely invisible to the media's radar, a broad-based rescue effort by federal, state and local first responders pulled 25,000 to 50,000 people from harm's way in floodwaters in the city. Ironically, FEMA's role, for good or ill, was essentially non-existent, as was the Governor's and the Mayor's. An ad-hoc distributed network responded on its own. Big Government didn't work. Odds and ends of little government did.
All in the Family. It took the media a while to acknowledge that most of Katrina's victims were black. Apparently, it will take longer to mention that most of the victims were women and children.
Media misleads with Katrina message. This delicious moment, which came after the other broadcast networks had quickly returned to regularly scheduled programs, speaks volumes about the media coverage of Katrina and the edited messages they have tried to shove down the public's throat. Those messages are: White Republicans hate blacks; big business and big Republican government are evil and won't help blacks; Democrats are good and are the only ones who care for black people.
AP Corrected Mistake on Bush Responsibility Claim, CBS Didn't. Following President Bush's Tuesday [9/13/2005] news conference in which he took responsibility for federal mistakes following the Hurricane Katrina disaster, some news organizations left out the word federal in their reportage, creating the possible impression that Bush had shouldered blame for state and local failures.
You Can't Talk About That. All of us were still haunted by what we'd been watching on our TV screens through Katrina Week: the spectacle of several thousand black Americans openly, nakedly displaying their helpless, hopeless, clueless, angry dependency. It was there, it was real, though we're stuffing it down the memory hole now as fast as we can work our fingers.
Hurricane economics: When it comes to evaluating the economic impact of hurricane Katrina, two errors are constantly repeated. The first is the free-lunch fallacy — believing that federally financed reconstruction and relief can be a net "stimulus" to the national economy. The second is the price-index blunder — confusing a one-time spike in the relative price of energy with a broad and lasting change in the rate of inflation.
Media Windbags Follow Hurricane. There has been a spate of stories about how our media have used Hurricane Katrina to suddenly return to their watchdog role toward government. This is being depicted as an extremely positive development. But many media performances, especially on cable news, constituted shameless grandstanding or Bush-bashing.
Blaming Bush. About the connection between hurricanes and global warming, [Stanley] Goldenberg [meteorologist at the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA] concludes, "I speak for many hurricane climate researchers in saying such claims are nonsense."
Katrina spawned plague of misinformation. One thing can be said for certain about what it was like in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina roared through: Much of what was reported as fact by government officials and the media during the chaotic first week afterward turned out to be fiction. Myths and misinformation multiplied, from how many people died to what conditions were really like inside the Louisiana Superdome.
When Will the Mainstream Media Apologize for Katrina Goofs? Remember all those politicians and reporters warning folks to avoid at all costs the deadly mixture of chemicals, gasoline, human and animal waste and decaying bodies floating through New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? Guess what? Katrina left town Aug. 30, but it was not until Oct. 13 that The Washington Post got around to reporting that the "toxic soup" never showed up.
Katrina and the Price of Panic: In the wake of Hurricane Katrina two sports were all the rage in New Orleans. One was the blame game, attributing all local and state incompetence to the feds. The other was inventing and spreading stories of murder and mayhem — killings, rapes, firing at rescuers, bodies stacked like cordwood. But the accounts turned out to be grim fairy tales.
Worst coverage of the year: Reviewing the falsehoods, myths and misrepresentations spun by the press, politicians and pundits following Hurricane Katrina, one is reminded of Nora Ephron's bon mot: "No matter how cynical I get, I can't seem to keep up."
Bob Schieffer Plays Patty-Cake With Ray Nagin on "Face the Nation". There was nothing, first and foremost on the journalist's plate, about Nagin's wild exaggerations about a death toll of 10,000 and the rampant rape and murder he and his top cops gave to the national media. There was no question asking Nagin about his utter failure to order a mandatory evacuation until the last minute. There was no question asking Nagin about his failure to evacuate citizens by city bus or Amtrak train. There was no question asking Nagin about race-baiting and finger-pointing at FEMA and Team Bush.
To ABC's Surprise, Katrina Victims Praise Bush and Blame Nagin. ABC News producers probably didn't hear what they expected when they sent Dean Reynolds to the Houston Astrodome's parking lot to get reaction to President Bush's speech from black evacuees from New Orleans. Instead of denouncing Bush and blaming him for their plight, they praised Bush and blamed local officials.
Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy. Rumors supplanted accurate information and media magnified the problem. Rapes, violence and estimates of the dead were wrong.
Media Use Katrina to Lobby for Higher Taxes. As quickly as the water started rising in New Orleans, America's media began blaming Hurricane Katrina-related damages on the president's 2001 and 2003 economic stimulus packages. The overriding theme the first week after Katrina hit was that the levees of Louisiana failed due to a lack of federal funding stemming from "tax cuts for the rich."
Most media got Katrina wrong. Did New Orleans blacks die at a higher rate than whites in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? On the evidence so far, the answer is no. Of the 1,100 bodies recovered in Louisiana after Katrina, 836 were found in New Orleans, and the state has released data on 568 of those that were judged to be storm-related.
The Environmental Disaster That Wasn't. Of all the energy-related bad news brought on by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, one piece of good news has gone largely unnoticed. The two powerful storms did not cause any major offshore oil spills despite dealing a knockout punch to America's biggest oil producing region.
Media Contradicts Media Contradicting Media. I was working on a project today when I inadvertently heard a portion of a "supposed" news report. It was a bash Bush for the Katrina event. Excuse me? Since when did the President gain authority and control over mother nature? And since when has it been his responsibility to govern the State of Louisiana and New Orleans in particular?
Katrina: What the Media Missed. Do you remember the dramatic TV footage of National Guard helicopters landing at the Superdome as soon as Katrina passed, dropping off tens of thousands saved from certain death? The corpsmen running with stretchers, in an echo of M*A*S*H, carrying the survivors to ambulances and the medical center? About how the operation, which also included the Coast Guard, regular military units, and local first responders, continued for more than a week? Me neither. Except that it did happen, and got at best an occasional, parenthetical mention in the national media.
Media Myths of Katrina: It turns out that much of what we know to be true isn't exactly true. Popular Mechanics magazine has published a much overlooked story, The Lessons of Katrina, in its March issue. It got some attention at the time in the blogs and on certain online publications. But very little, if any, attention has been devoted to it in the mainstream media.
Police Chief Says He Exaggerated Post-Katrina Crime. The New Orleans police chief during Hurricane Katrina, Eddie Compass, says he unnecessarily "heightened people's fears" by repeating unconfirmed reports of out-of-control crime in the city during the aftermath of the storm, adding to the confusion caused by the disaster and potentially hampering rescue efforts.
Forget everything you thought you knew about Katrina. If you've only gotten your news about Hurricane Katrina from the mainstream media, everything you think you know about Katrina flooding New Orleans is probably wrong. On this first anniversary of the tragedy, while the networks congratulate themselves on their often wildly inaccurate reporting in the days following Katrina, there's a far more important story not being told.
Toss out the New Orleans "toxic soup" myth. "Alarmists ... announced we were killing Lake Pontchartrain by pumping the floodwaters back into the lake. Extensive testing shows no adverse effect on the lake's ecosystem. Water quality is good and bacteria levels are below the most stringent water quality standards established for swimming."
New Orleans cleared of 'toxic soup' scenario. New Orleans' waters and soils seem to have survived the ravages of Hurricane Katrina without being contaminated by any toxic sludge. The massive hurricane flooded the city in August last year with waters that were expected to be contaminated by sewage, petrol, and various household and industrial pollutants, from asbestos to pesticides. But just how toxic those floodwaters were, and what mess they might leave behind, wasn't known.
There are many other examples of Environmental False Alarms.
From sword fight to shoeshine. The fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina recalls a horror show on two levels. There's the actual disaster, which killed hundreds of people, and then there's the media smear job on the Bush administration and first responders.
Meanwhile, President Obama is in Hawaii. In Katrina 2005 the media worked non-stop to pin this disaster on Bush. Local officials were given initial cover while Bush was blamed for not handing out water to people at the Superdome. Thanks to Katrina the activist old media perpetuated one of its favorite mantras, "Federal government can solve all of our problems." Of course, pointing out that Bush did not respond quickly enough in their minds killed two snow banks with one plow. It bashed their Most Hated President Ever and it let Americans know that the Federal government's job is to save you from local disasters. In the long run, the later is the most damaging. Mission accomplished!
Section 3a:
Opportunism on the part of celebrities and politicians
Political, Media Liberals Are Either Lying or Ignorant. It's no wonder that Democratic leaders Howard Dean, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi can't win national elections. They can't even tell the difference between the words "topped" and "breached."
Hollywood to the rescue. The downpour of Hurricane Katrina brought with it a scourge of sickness, homelessness, injury and death. But the aftermath of Katrina has wrought its own special plague — a celebrity hurricane of opportunism and bad taste.
Katrina: Gratifying and disturbing reactions. In the immediate aftermath of Katrina's wrath, two almost contradictory reactions have emerged. One is the reaction of most American people and is overwhelmingly positive and constructive. The other — that of the media and certain politicians — is negative and destructive.
Hurricanes, hatred and hypocrisy: Extremists in today's Democrat Party are so full of anger that even the horrific devastation and human suffering brought on by Hurricane Katrina have failed to produce any discernible detente in their torrent of viscera.
The Over-Responders: Rep. Bob Wexler set the stage just minutes after the first levee burst by accusing President Bush of gross incompetence. Rep. Harold Ford followed shortly after with an artless race-card play, wondering aloud why so many people of color had been stranded.
Mary Landrieu Found Buses When She Needed Them. Mary Landrieu was trailing badly in her race with Woody Jenkins for the Senate, and they found out that the inner city of New Orleans had not voted something to the tune of 186,000 people. They pulled out all the stops. ...and they found busses. They found countless buses to get people to the polls. Now, the only reason I bring this up is to, once again, confirm that when they really want to move people, they can do it in New Orleans.
Scorn on the Bayou — The Political Economics of Katrina. Newsweek uses gross misinformation to paint a grim, untrue picture of New Orleans and U.S. poverty.
Why Hollywood Loves Katrina: Hollywood's usual attitude toward mass human suffering is exploitative, rather than compassionate. This trend will only be magnified in 2006 when a series of studio films about the 9-11 attacks finally hit the big screen. And this, really, is why Hollywood's recent bellyaching over President Bush's hurricane relief effort rings so false.
Hurricanes Aren't Caused by Global Warming but Political Hot Air Is. The deadly winds from Katrina had barely died down when the ill winds from the political left began to blow with Gale force. In a disgusting display of political opportunism, political hacks from Robert Kennedy, Jr., … to failed Presidential Candidate John Kerry, have all piped up in recent days, linking the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina to the Bush administration's global warming policies.
Flashback: Florida Billboards Blame Bush for Hurricanes. Because President George W. Bush has "ignored the threat of global warming," Floridians can expect to be hit by increasingly destructive hurricanes, a new billboard campaign says. The billboards, going up along Interstate 4 between Tampa and Orlando — a week before the presidential election — read, "Global warming equals worse hurricanes. George Bush just doesn't get it."
Post-Katrina Liberalism: The idea that Katrina would change the only thing that matters — thinking — perished even more quickly, at about the time Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a suitable symbol of congressional narcissism, dramatized the severity of the tragedy by taking a television interviewer on a helicopter flight over ... her destroyed beach house.
Assigning blame: Perhaps [the US Congress] might ask itself who created the Department of Homeland Security in the first place. The congressional response to all crises is the same — rearrange the bureaucratic boxes, but be sure to add one extra layer. The last four years of DHS have been spent principally on bureaucratic reorganization (and real estate) instead of, say, a workable plan for as predictable a disaster as a Gulf Coast hurricane.
Hillary's hurricane rule. Sen. Hillary Clinton sometimes talks as if she wants oil and gas to be cheap and abundant, but she never stops working to make them expensive and scarce.
Bastardizing the Courts. What on earth does [Hurricane] Katrina have to do with the role of the courts in general, with the Supreme Court in particular, or with Judge Roberts' judicial philosophy and fitness to serve on the Court? Absolutely nothing, of course, but that's not how Leahy and Kennedy see it.
Eye of the press storm. Remember all of this about Hurricane Katrina? The destruction was due to global warming. And it was made worse by too many troops off in Iraq. Endemic racism and neglected environmental legislation were as toxic as flood. Military assets were unused due to incompetence or heartlessness. Neglect of the victims was an indictment of a crass and uncaring society. … The media coverage turned out almost as disturbing as natural calamity and initial bureaucratic ineptness — in both the falsehood it spread and the truth it ignored.
Louisiana's Electoral Disaster. New Orleans is suffering a new disaster: democracy. Gov. Kathleen Blanco has postponed city elections indefinitely, thereby extending the term of the city's mayor by executive decree, and flawed voting mechanics threaten to bar tens of thousands of people from future elections, say Rob Richie and Ryan O'Donnell (Washington Post).
Judge rules against out-of-state polling. A federal judge refused Friday to order Louisiana officials to provide out-of-state satellite polling places for displaced voters or to take other steps that could have forced a delay of the New Orleans primary election scheduled for April 22.
Congress's Trickle of Effort to Slow Spending before the Post-Katrina Budget Deluge. Are there a few drops of hope left for reducing the federal deficit in the 109th Congress, or have the floodgates of spending been thrown open for good?
Hurricane relief ... in Nevada?
Pork Alert: Katrina Anniversary Edition. Time and time again members of Congress have ignored the budget requests of the Army Corps of Engineers and siphoned money away from high priority projects. One year after the hurricanes, members are once again using the Army Corps as their own personal pork-barrel. … As usual, powerful appropriators were able to grab the lion's share of the pork, including $33.2 million for eight projects in [Nevada], including: $25 million for rural Nevada; $1.5 million for Truckee Meadows; and $725,000 for Tahoe Regional Planning.
Waste in the Eye of the Storm. While Hurricanes Katrina and Rita proved to be the worst and costliest natural disasters in our nation's history, the waste and fraud uncovered after last year's storms has been a disaster all in itself. The list of government waste in the response and recovery after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, at all levels, reads like a rap sheet — $200 champagne, months at a Hawaiian resort, five season tickets to the New Orleans Saints, hundred of trailers sitting unoccupied. And the list goes on — all at taxpayer expense.
Brown: Politics Played a Role in Katrina. Political storm clouds gathered again over the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina as former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown said party politics influenced decisions on whether to take federal control of Louisiana and other areas affected by the hurricane.
Katrina 'Ethnic Cleansing' Remarks Causes Stir. A Democrat's allegation that the Bush administration engaged in a calculated policy of ethnic cleansing after Hurricane Katrina to make Louisiana "whiter" has sparked outrage. Addressing a group of bloggers at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., last week, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) renewed his criticism of the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina, particularly the housing crisis that ensued after the hurricane hit.
Section 3b:
Drummed-up racial strife
White Privilege. The average parent has no idea of the devious indoctrination going on in classrooms in many public schools. [...] John A. Powell, a University of California, Berkeley law professor, told his audience, "And right now, I'm going to suggest to you that race is driving almost everything that's happening in the country." He explained the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans by saying, "They took money away from protecting the levees because the levees were protecting black people."
Obama slandered America as racist using dishonest claims about the response to Hurricane Katrina. The Daily Caller has obtained and posted video of a 2007 speech by Barack Obama in Hampton, Virginia. Speaking to an audience of black ministers, and using a black dialect only marginally more authentic than Joe Biden's, Obama claims that the U.S. government shortchanged Hurricane Katrina victims because of racism. [...] But as the Daily Caller points out, by January 2007, six months before Obama's Hampton speech, the federal government had sent at least $110 billion to areas damaged by Katrina. This was more than five times the money that the Bush administration pledged to New York City after 9/11.
The '07 Obama Video. So here's Obama proudly advertising his relationship with Reverend Wright, and even imitating Wright's divisive rhetoric on Katrina. Is anyone surprised? Essentially, every excuse Obama used to explain away his relationship with Reverend Wright during campaign 2008 was a lie. But we already knew that. We also see here that Obama doesn't want to build more highways out in the suburbs. That's news to most, and there's a lot more going on in that line than racial code.
Did someone mention Jeremiah Wright?
Tucker Carlson on 2007 Obama race speech: 'This isn't a dog whistle — this is a dog siren'. [Scroll down] "This is not the way Obama talks — at least it's not the way he's talked in the dozens, the scores of speeches I've watched him give, or public appearances I've seen him make. This is a put-on. This is phony. That's issue one. The second issue is he is telling a predominantly black audience something very clear: The federal government doesn't like you because you are black." He said that Obama's use of racial overtones to describe the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina had negative implications on several levels.
Video surfaces of Obama in 2007 suggesting racism slowed aid to post-Katrina New Orleans. It's the Obama speech on race you probably haven't heard. In June 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama told a mostly black audience of ministers that the country's leaders "don't care about" New Orleans residents, suggesting the city was neglected in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina because of institutional racism, according to an unedited video uncovered by The Daily Caller.
In heated '07 speech, Obama lavishes praise on Wright, says feds 'don't care' about New Orleans. In a video obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama tells an audience of black ministers, including the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that the U.S. government shortchanged Hurricane Katrina victims because of racism. "The people down in New Orleans they don't care about as much!" Obama shouts in the video, which was shot in June of 2007 at Hampton University in Virginia. [...] The effect is closer to an Al Sharpton rally than a conventional campaign event.
Media Freakout: Left, Right Spar over 2007 Obama Video. News aggregator Matt Drudge of The Drudge Report set political social media circles on fire with the announcement of a video purporting to show troubling racial statements from President Barack Obama. [...] Since then, the popular news website has leaked further details. The tape is in the possession of the Daily Caller, features the then-Senator giving a warm adulation to controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright, and features divisive statements about inner cities vs. suburbs and the needs of the poor.
Coulter on Obama's urban accent. "Obama is such a fraud," Coulter said. "He grew up in a 'Beverly Hills, 90210' existence, but he's just desperate to have this angry, black persona. It's rather like reading about you know, Hitler's musings on his Germanic identity. You know, he graduated from this fancy, fancy school in Hawaii, voted recently the greenest school in America. And yet, when he wants to, he just turns it on and suddenly we've got Malcolm X speaking to us."
Barack Obama Is An Anti-White Racist. It actually shouldn't be a secret that Barack Obama is not overly fond of white people. The first clue was that he spent 20 years in Jeremiah Wright's anti-American, anti-white, anti-Semitic church. You don't go to a church for twenty years unless you're in general accordance with the pastor. Furthermore, Barack Obama has made a number of racist comments over the years. [...] Barack Obama says racist things about white people, his Department of Justice discriminates against white Americans, and he lies to black audiences to convince them that white people hate them. A white man voting for a man like that is like a black man voting for David Duke. Why in the world would you vote for someone who doesn't like you because of your skin color?
Obama's race speech echoed Wright's ravings. In the months before Barack Obama made his now-famous statement that the U.S. government cares less about majority-black New Orleans than other American cities, his longtime spiritual advisor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, made similar claims in public. The Daily Caller has obtained weekly bulletins from Chicago's Trinity United Church of Church of Christ in which Wright condemns the federal government's Katrina policy as racist. Until now, those remarks have never been reprinted.
So Obama Is a Lying, Race-Baiting Demagogue: Does Anyone Care? Over the last four years we have seen a petty, vindictive, frequently dishonest, and often shameless politician in the White House. The video shows that Obama will lie, race-bait and adopt a fake accent for votes. Really? All of that, on top of being a lousy president? So, no: in political terms, I think the video is a non-event. But what, you might ask, about Obama's alleged likability? Surely people who watch the video will no longer consider him likable.
Obama's Other Race Speech. In a video obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama tells an audience of black ministers, including the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that the U.S. government shortchanged Hurricane Katrina victims because of racism.
Top Ten Reasons the 2007 Obama Video Matters in 2012. [#1] The video released by the Daily Caller last night does include footage the media never broadcast or reported on. Furthermore, we're supposed to believe it's just a coincidence that the footage the media ignored just happens to be the most controversial part, where Barack Obama (who at the time was running to be the Democratic nominee for president) goes off-script and tells a majority black audience that the federal government doesn't care about Hurricane Katrina victims because they're black.
Barack Obama's "Other Race Speech" Vindicates Glenn Beck. There's a very fine line between racist and racialist. Both are ugly, and when used as a political weapon, dangerously so. Obama's belligerent racialism, on full display before a black audience exposes his animosity toward "the white power structure" and could fairly be called racist.
No, Obama's Divisive 2007 Speech is Not 'Old News'. As a senator, Barack Obama was in a position to know both where New Orleans' money was and that the Stafford Act had been waived several times for the people of New Orleans. He was also in a position to know that the Bush administration had offered assistance to Louisiana and to New Orleans before the hurricane struck, but the local governor and mayor — both Democrats, and one of them black — had turned the administration's offer down. [...] The city of New Orleans, it turned out, had dozens of ghost police officers on the rolls to pad their federal grant money, and did not even have a comprehensive list of its city school bus drivers, so they could be contacted to help evacuate stranded citizens. Sen. Obama was in a position to know all of this, yet he chose to channel Kanye West and suggest that the disaster in New Orleans was a result of racism.
Obama Also Discussed Katrina Racism in 2005 Speech. Coming on the heels of the revelation of a 2007 speech by Barack Obama sewing racial division by discussing Hurricane Katrina, Breitbart news has uncovered another video where Sen. Barack Obama discusses Katrina as an example of white racism. The speech was given on Sept. 17, 2005 at Harvard Law School Association Award Luncheon, as part of the "Celebration of Black Alumni" weekend. Senator Obama was the keynote speaker.
Jeremiah Wright introduces candidate 18 days after Hampton University speech.
Another Obama Tape Surfaces. It's June 23, 2007 — a mere 18 days after the now infamous Obama speech at Hampton University that the Daily Caller and the Drudge Report titled as "Obama's Other Race Speech." An angry, racially divisive speech in which Obama effortlessly slides into a Southern accent, shouting "The people down in New Orleans they [the Bush administration and the federal government] don't care about as much!" The event: The United Church of Christ's 26th General Synod, the bi-annual gathering of UCC pastors and lay leaders from across the country, meeting that year in Hartford, Connecticut.
Racist liberal media. Instead of tamping down hysteria, network talkers regularly stirred up racial anger.
Perceptions of race and the face of poverty. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, we are reminded that black America and white America see things differently. We saw this vividly during O.J. Simpson's criminal trial. When his not-guilty verdict was delivered, black Americans cheered while whites — dumbfounded and nearly unanimous in their belief that Simpson was guilty — scratched their heads. How could we see things so differently? Now we see this racial schism again in the aftermath of Katrina.
Hurricane exposes issues of class, race. Although TV correspondents covering Hurricane Katrina avoid commenting on the obvious, their cameras hold back nothing. The people who couldn't or wouldn't leave New Orleans are overwhelmingly poor and black. As are the looters. The images may surprise people whose visual pictures of the city are of tipsy partiers on Bourbon Street or plump chefs in French Quarter restaurants. But the vicious winds of Katrina exposed a far different reality.
Stop claiming racism in the Gulf response. A letter to the editor of the Oregonian, in Portland, said of Katrina: "I am deeply disturbed and angered by the number of reports claiming racism has something to do with the delay in the relief effort. These claims are unsubstantiated and a complete lie. To even suggest that our government would allow people to die simply because of the color of their skin is despicable…. In a time of national crisis, another media-driven race war is the last thing this country needs."
Cheering On Racial Division: Stirring up racial anger was a common theme by week's end. On NBC, anchor Brian Williams lectured that the hurricane would "necessitate a national discussion on race, on oil, politics, class, infrastructure, the environment, and more." On ABC, Ted Koppel began by orating that New Orleans is 67 percent black, and "The slow response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina has led to questions about race, poverty, and a seemingly indifferent government." On CNN, Wolf Blitzer, who raised eyebrows by calling the hurricane victims "so poor and so black," prodded Rep. Elijah Cummings not once, but twice, to find racism in the slow response.
Hurricane coverage veers off course. You'd think the media would have learned their lesson. After Katrina, the press corps waited a full two days after the storm hit before it was able to report that one of America's poorest and blackest cities was full of poor and black people.
Katrina, the race card, and the welfare state. Maybe someday one of the news anchors will ask one of the so-called civil rights leaders the following question: Doesn't the demand for race-based preferences, set-asides, private sector anti-discrimination laws, social welfare programs, and social "safety net" programs all conspire to say one thing — "You are not responsible"?
In Katrina I Didn't See Racism, I Saw Brotherhood. In New Orleans, beginning Tuesday morning, August 30, I saw men in helicopters risking their lives to save stranded flood victims from rooftops. The rescuers were White, the stranded Black. I saw Caucasians navigating their small, private boats in violent, swirling, toxic floodwaters to find fellow citizens trapped in their houses. Those they saved were Black. I saw Brotherhood. New York Congressman Charlie Rangel saw Racism.
Farrakhan on New Orleans: The white man did it. For many people, past discrimination means present and future discrimination. End of discussion. Never mind the growing black economy, an all-time high percentage of black homeownership, and a "black GDP" that would make black America the 16th wealthiest country in the world. … Instead of spending energy buying into Farrakhan's latest lunatic theory, why not re-examine present policies that — either through intent or effect — hurt blacks?
Do blacks believe levee was blown? Was the levee break that precipitated the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina the result of some government conspiracy against blacks? … Last week, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan sparked controversy by spreading racist conspiracy theories. "I heard from a very reliable source who saw a 25-foot deep crater under the levee breach," Farrakhan said. "It may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry."
Editor's Note: This may be the first time since 9/11/2001 that Louis Farrakhan has been quoted in the news media. He has kept an extremely low profile since people of his "religion of peace" unloaded on America four years ago.
Bush Team Conspired Against Blacks, Activists Charge. Several black civil rights leaders are accusing the federal government of conspiring against poor African Americans in the aftermath of the flooding in New Orleans. But one of those hurling the charges, comedian and political activist Dick Gregory, on Friday [9/9/2005] refused to say what, if anything, he has personally contributed to the relief effort.
Fighting the Man and Black Dogma. Lost … on these folks are a few little, insignificant facts. For one thing, four of the five parishes hardest hit in New Orleans were predominantly white. For another, most of the rescuers were white and, lastly, the lion's share of the millions of dollars that are pouring in from all points has been doled out by white hands.
New Orleans Nagin Showing Crumbs On Racism. The Mayor who has been color blind for three years is doing terrible post-Katrina damage. As he said on Larry King on Wednesday [9/14/2005] referring to the Superdome during Katrina, things ratcheted to a living hell. Guess what? What the good honorable mayor is doing is creating a living hell for those who want him to take specific responsibility for what he is now doing to the City of New Orleans — blaming race and not class — especially at a time when he should be blaming himself for certain pre and post Katrina events over the past few weeks of this hurricane nuclear horror.
Shameless race-baiters take advantage of New Orleans' tragedy. This notion that race was a factor in the relief effort is not only dishonest, it is reprehensible. The reason why most of those stranded in the Superdome were black is because two-thirds of the city's residents are black. In fact, much of the city's local representatives are black. New Orleans has a black city Council. They have black elected representatives. They have black judges. All of whom failed to send any buses to evacuate New Orleans' residents before the hurricane hit.
Shame, Shame, Know Your Name — Black Racists in New Orleans. Only a fool or a liar fears the truth — those who are justifying and excusing the behavior of the blacks are both of these, with a little hypocrisy and cowardice thrown in the mix for good measure. The truth of this situation, no matter how many fits you throw, is that the rape, looting, murder, and mayhem is being committed overwhelmingly by blacks. By blacks. By blacks. Get it? By blacks who are often deliberately targeting whites. Do you think they'll be charged under Hate Crime Statutes? I don't think so.
The recurring politics of race exploitation. Virtually the entire liberal establishment embraced the perverse notion that inadequacies in the federal response to Hurricane Katrina were attributable to an underlying racism infecting the Bush administration. The allegedly disproportionate impact of the disaster on blacks, they argued, could be chalked up to Republican racism.
Nagin: N.O. to be "chocolate" again. Mayor Ray Nagin told a crowd gathered at City Hall for a Martin Luther King Day march that New Orleans will be "chocolate" again. "We ask black people … It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild New Orleans — the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans," Nagin said Monday [1/16/2006].
[Imagine the furor if a Republican had said that, substituting "white" for "black".]
God and New Orleans. Why is it that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin … can get away with such blatantly racist claptrap? Most major newspapers buried the mayor's comments, if they reported them at all, and those national news programs that played them did so largely without commentary. I can't imagine a white mayor praising the racial purity of a white community getting similar treatment.
The Madness of C. Ray. It's impossible to gauge the extent of the damage that Mayor Ray Nagin's "chocolate city" and "God's punishing America for invading Iraq" remarks inflicted on New Orleans last week. Suffice it to say that we survived Katrina, but I'm not sure if we can survive Nagin.
Nagin apologizes for 'chocolate' city comments. Mayor Ray Nagin on Tuesday [1/17/2006] apologized for urging residents to rebuild a "chocolate New Orleans" and saying, "You can't have New Orleans no other way."
Race and Accountability: Unfortunately, the ideologies of the American left are still alive among many groups of blacks today. How else can you explain the recent happenings in New Orleans? Nearly a year ago, America witnessed one of the largest and longest "race card" situations in history, played alongside a national disaster in New Orleans. Overnight, Hurricane Katrina became a national household word describing death, poverty, displacement of people, and destruction of property.
Nagin blames delays on racism, red tape. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Friday [8/18/2006] blamed racism and government bureaucracy for hamstringing his city's ability to weather Hurricane Katrina and recover from the disaster that struck the Gulf Coast nearly a year ago.
The Importance Of Being Ernesto: After Hurricane Katrina, Democrats exploited a natural disaster that devastated predominantly white and black areas in both Louisiana and Mississippi as an example of Bush administration racism. National Committee Chairman Howard Dean marked the disaster's anniversary by charging that "Katrina ended any effective ability by Republicans to appeal to African-Americans."
Katrina, lies and videotape. Spike Lee took his cameras and crew to New Orleans to film a documentary about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. The four-hour production, which aired on HBO, is, unfortunately, about as destructive as was the disaster it depicts. At a time when we need light and understanding, Lee has delivered darkness, anger and hatred. Those who will be hurt the most by the distorted and untruthful picture that Lee has concocted are the poor blacks he purports to want to help.
Black Activist Criticizes Nagin's Convoluted Comments to Senate Committee. Calling his testimony a "smokescreen" to cover up his own failings at the outset of the Hurricane Katrina crisis, members of the black leadership network Project 21 are criticizing the racially-charged rhetoric of New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin before the Senate Homeland and Government Affairs Committee yesterday [1/30/2007].
Hurricane Katrina and the Race Card: Five Years Later. This weekend, on the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, civil rights activists and hip-hop stars will hold what they call a "healing ceremony" to commemorate the disaster. President Obama will speak at a separate event in New Orleans on Sunday. But don't expect any of these reconciliation-seeking leaders to confront the indelible stain of racial demagoguery left by the left in Katrina's aftermath. Hating George W. Bush means never having to say you're sorry.
Years later...
Ray Nagin Blames Racism for Slow Katrina Response. Promoting his new book, 'Katrina's Secrets,' on Monday's [6/20/2011] NBC Today, former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin stood by his assertion that racism played a role in the Bush administration's response to the storm: "I'm not telling you that President Bush was a racist or what have you. But I think race and class and politics played in just about every aspect of this disaster."
Ray Nagin describes post-Hurricane Katrina paranoia in his new book. Since Hurricane Katrina's winds died down, Ray Nagin has cast his role as mayor of New Orleans as a me-against-the-world struggle to save his hometown against inept government officials and racist forces, sometimes even laying out vague conspiracy theories to bolster his worldview.
Nagin thought CIA agents were trying to poison him. The former mayor of New Orleans has revealed how he became so paranoid after Hurricane Katrina he was convinced the government was trying to poison him. Ray Nagin also tells the bizarre story of how heavily-armed men in combat suits allegedly stormed his command centre and attempted to plant bugs, as he led the response to the 2005 disaster.
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Updated November 19, 2024.
©2024 by Andrew K. Dart
