Caring for the widow and the orphan

Ladies and gentlemen, the Speaker of the House:

It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said of federal assistance for hurricane-devastated New Orleans.

"It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed," the Illinois Republican said in an interview Wednesday with the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Ooops. What he meant to say was:

"Hastert later issued a statement saying he was not "advocating that the city be abandoned or relocated."

"My comments about rebuilding the city were intended to reflect my sincere concern with how the city is rebuilt to ensure the future protection of its citizens and not to suggest that this great and historic city should not be rebuilt," the statement said.

And, by the way, so much for "compassionate conservatism":

The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday those New Orleans residents who chose not to heed warnings to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina bear some responsibility for their fates.

Michael Brown also agreed with other public officials that the death toll in the city could reach into the thousands.

"Unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings," Brown told CNN.

"I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans," he said.

"And to find people still there is just heart-wrenching to me because, you know, the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there.

"So, we've got to figure out some way to convince people that whenever warnings go out it's for their own good," Brown said. "Now, I don't want to second guess why they did that. My job now is to get relief to them."

And the BS continues:

Brown was upbeat in his assessment of the relief effort so far, ticking off a list of accomplishments: more than 30,000 National Guard troops will be in the city within three days, the hospitals are being evacuated and search and rescue missions are continuing.

The Mayor of New Orleans begs to differ:

Despair, privation and violent lawlessness grew so extreme in New Orleans on Thursday that the flooded city's mayor issued a "desperate S O S" and other local officials, describing the security situation as horrific, lambasted the federal government as responding too slowly to the disaster.

At the New Orleans Convention Center, crowds swelled to about 25,000.
[About 4:35 a.m. today, a series of massive explosions rocked the riverfront a few miles south of the French Quarter, The Associated Press reported. The cause of the blasts or the extent of any possible damage was not immediately known.]

That estimated 25,000 more than doubles the number of people now known to be trapped in downtown New Orleans without food, water, or adequate shelter. CNN was showing dead bodies at the Center as of yesterday. Michael Chertoff, however, said he wasn't aware of any problems there. So there must not be any, right?

Here's the response of the director for Homeland Security in New Orleans:

Col. Terry Ebbert, director of homeland security for New Orleans, concurred and he was particularly pungent in his criticism. Asserting that the whole recovery operation had been "carried on the backs of the little guys for four goddamn days," he said "the rest of the goddamn nation can't get us any resources for security."

"We are like little birds with our mouths open and you don't have to be very smart to know where to drop the worm," Colonel Ebbert said. "It's criminal within the confines of the United States that within one hour of the hurricane they weren't force-feeding us. It's like FEMA has never been to a hurricane." FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Conditions, not surprisingly, are only slightly improved in Houston:

On the receiving end in Houston, though, the Astrodome looked at times like a squatters' camp in a war-torn country. The refugees from Louisiana, many dirty and hungry, wandered about aimlessly, checking bulletin boards for information about their relatives, queuing up for supplies and pay phones, mobbing Red Cross volunteers to obtain free T-shirts. Many found some conditions similar to those that they left behind at the Superdome, like clogged toilets and foul restrooms.

And in fact, at 13,000 refugees, the Astrodome is full. And "Medical facilities in the dome are 'absolutely saturated.' "

Dallas has offered to take 25,000 refugees, though no word on where Dallas will house them. San Antonio will take an equal number, and house them at an abandoned military base. And the Red Cross announces their efforts may be the most expensive the organization has ever undertaken: $130 million. And the President keeps emphasizing the role of private charities in this. Congress, meanwhile, has authorized a first payment of $10 billion for relief.

Do the math.

And the mayor of New Orleans, now, is fed up:

"I keep hearing that this is coming, that is coming," he said in reference to federal aid. "And my answer to that today is b.s. - where is the beef?"

"Let's figure out the biggest crisis in the history of our country," he added. After Sept. 11, he said, the president was given "unprecedented powers" to send aid to New York. The same response should be applied in this case, too, he said.

But who you gonna believe? A beleagured mayor, or one of the President's close friends?

"Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans -- virtually a city that has been destroyed -- that things are going relatively well," Brown said.

Woe to him who says,
'I shall build a spacious palace
with airy roof-chambers and
windows set in it;
it will be paneled with cedar
and painted with vermilion.'
Though your cedar is so splendid,
does that prove you a king?
Think of your father: he ate and drank,
dealt justly and fairly; all went well with him.
He upheld the cause of the lowly and poor;
then all was well.--Jeremiah 22:14-16

It's quite simple, really. Any society is as good as its care for its poorest and weakest. This catastrophe was foreseen. This crisis was predicted. Let it now fall on the heads of all who claim power, and all who seek to rule. Not the time for blame? Ask the Hebrew prophets. When Jeremiah spoke, Babylon was knocking down the walls of Jerusalem. If the time of national crisis is not the time to decide what went wrong, when is that decision made?