Why is it so hard to get news on NOLa??

[dreamshark]

A friend called me late last night, distraught, because she'd heard that the levees were breaking and New Orleans was almost entirely under water. I turned on the tv and skimmed through all the broadcast stations (I don't have cable) and there was no indication that ANYTHING was happening anywhere. Sitcom reruns on the commercial channels, something intensely boring and vaguely nature-related on public television. No news crawl, nothing. I went to the CNN website and they had pretty much the same news and pictures they'd been showing all day - outlying areas flooded, long shots of the Superdome with the outer skin flaking off by no water nearby, etc. Nothing about levees breaking. So I talked my friend into believing that nothing had changed and went to bed.

The morning paper confirmed that she was essentially right. 80% of the city was now submerged. Canal Street was, well, a canal. Severe damage in the French Quarter, giant trees torn out by the roots in Jackson Square. Oh my God!! I turned on the radio on my way to work, and again, NOTHING. The only station that even acknowledged that one of our great cities was being devastated was MPR, and they just had an interview with some jackass who was intoning about disaster relief and risk management in the abstract with barely an acknowledgement of the fact that a disaster was currently unfolding.

What is going on here? I realize that we're all suffering from hurricane numbness after what happened to Florida last year, but the magnitude of this is beyond any of those storms. Katrina was 200 miles wide. Hundreds of thousands of American citizens are homeless, hundreds dead (at the least). And the levees are crumbling around one of our most beloved historic cities, with 10,000 refugees huddled in an unreachable and leaky shelter in the middle of rising waters. And the same tv stations that will run a 2-hour continuous-loop screen inset about a thunderstorm in Mower County don't even turn on a news crawl?

Is it because these people are... Southernors?

Comments

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I'd hate to think it was because it's happening down south. It might be that the conditions themselves are making it hard to get news through in a timely way. There's a lot of buzz online, though.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I have been reading the nola.com web site, which links to the local paper down there. 'course I don't have tv or radio options so I'm limited to the net for news.

K. [thinks it is now 20,000 in the Superdome, with more sleeping on the freeway which is the high ground]

[magicwoman.livejournal.com]

You know we get that crazy weather crawl everytime there's a storm even 200 miles away here in the Cities. . . why not get information about the BIGGEST storm to hit in years and from the looks of it, practically destroying a city?? I'm with you - why not?? I hope it's not because it's happening down South.

Susan

[laurel]

I posted a little about this same thing just a little while ago to www.tvpicks.net.

I'm finding it utterly ridiculous how "normal" life is going on with what seems like little awareness of the worst disaster in contemporary American history. I've been glued to CNN for days, hardly wanting to move lest I miss anything.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

For years we've been accustom to seeing the National Guard brought out during emergencies. Now, they're deployed elsewhere. NOLA is yet another casualty of the Iraq War, as was Florida last year. Also, despite promises to the contrary, Bush cut FEMA funding for disaster relief (See this article saying money for NOLA is way down, with further cuts planned. (Note also that the headline is incredibly misleading if not outright wrong.)

And, finally, back in 2001 this report said the three most catastrophic disasters facing this country are a terrorist attack on NYC, a hurricane hitting New Orleans and a San Fransisco earthquake. FEMA is now two out of three, but the Bush administration and the conservative news media just don't want to talk about how they were asleep at the wheel. Twice. (Watch out SF!)

Now that a red state has gotten the shaft from the chickenhawks, will their politics change? Nah...

(Yes, I'm mad.)

Not even a nice try.

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

You're completely wrong about the National Guard. Not all of it is deployed to Iraq, not even from Louisiana where the 256th Brigade is currently overseas...which leaves over eight thousand Guardsmen (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/army/arng-la.htm) for disaster relief, to say nothing of the Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas NG. As for FEMA, every time they do major disaster relief the audits turn up millions of dollars wasted or lost to fraud. It's not too surprising they cut the budget.

As for the chickenhawk crack, are you seriously suggesting that only veterans and active duty military should have anything to say about war and military affairs? That sounds pretty bizarre coming from you. I would have thought you'd be the last person advocating that kind of government. If that's not what you mean, would you care to explain exactly what you do mean by it?

Wow, are you wrong.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

From the Washington Post:

Strain of Iraq War Means the Relief Burden Will Have to Be Shared

Third paragraph: "National Guard officials in the states acknowledged that the scale of the destruction is stretching the limits of available manpower while placing another extraordinary demand on their troops -- most of whom have already served tours in Iraq or Afghanistan or in homeland defense missions since 2001."

You have a) misquoted me (I never said "all") and b) are trying to hand wave away the fact that National Guard troops, traditionally under the command of the Governor of the state, are now being used as soldiers far more than they were in wars past.

are you seriously suggesting that only veterans and active duty military should have anything to say about war and military affairs

I said no such thing and you know it. This is why conservatives have no credibility anymore: People are dying and you're just dangling a straw man. I'm not going to play your PC games.

The reality is that Bush and the other chickenhawks have consistently ignored warnings of terrorist attacks and the potential for natural disasters on the homefront. Why you defend them is beyond me; I had thought better of you.

Re: Wow, are you wrong.

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I misunderstood your intent - you certainly seemed to be implying that with the Guard overseas there was little or nothing left for disaster relief. That's a secondary role for the Guard, by the way - their primary responsibility is to serve as a backup for the Regulars in time of war. And we are at war, as much as W seems to be trying to insulate the home front from that reality. The Guard was not (much) used in Vietnam, although some units went; it was heavily used in Korea, and support units were called up for Grenada, Panama, and Gulf War I, which covers all the wars in my lifetime and then some.

I was trying to clarify what you meant by "chickenhawk". The term gets thrown around a lot by people who don't seem to think through the implications of what they're saying, and I meant it when I said I wanted to know what you meant by it.

Re: Wow, are you wrong.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

That's a secondary role for the Guard, by the way - their primary responsibility is to serve as a backup for the Regulars in time of war.

"Primary"? Dual, perhaps. The governors fought tooth and nail for the right to keep the National Guard under their command, not the Federal government's. They took it all the way to the Supreme Court and lost... in the 80s. (So much for States Rights.) I'll take your word for it about some of the wars -- certainly in Vietnam, they weren't used as much (as you point out) -- but "support units called up" doesn't seem to describe the situation today. Traditiaonally, the National Guard is literally that: a national guard. They serve the homefront, which only occasionally means being called up for active military duty in a foreign country.

(Aside: While the National Guard was roughly half the troops in Korea, that's because "The principal strength of both organized reserves and National Guard lay in the fact that much of their personnel had seen combat service during World War II." so that was a special case that doesn't apply to Iraq. Similarly, the role of the US military changed during and after WWI and the war (for us) was shorter than the Iraq war so far, so I don't think that example applies either.)

I was trying to clarify what you meant by "chickenhawk".

Why?

I make the point, twice, that the Guard have not been around to help US citizens in times of disaster because they're off at Bush's war, and you haven't responded to that point. Your knee jerk reaction to one word seems like an attempt to change the subject more than to discuss the situation in NOLA.

I tell you what: You respond to the main issue (possibly not here; let's let dreamshark's thread take a break), then explain to me why you are curious about "implications" of a fairly straightforward description, and I'll point you to some websites that should change your non-chickenhawk mind.

Re: Wow, are you wrong.

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

I was trying to clarify what you meant by "chickenhawk".

Why?

Because I am legitimately curious what you mean by it. Not everything is political, even (especially?) for a Falangist Libertarian like me.

I make the point, twice, that the Guard have not been around to help US citizens in times of disaster because they're off at Bush's war, and you haven't responded to that point. Your knee jerk reaction to one word seems like an attempt to change the subject more than to discuss the situation in NOLA.

Actually, I did respond to it, in my first reply. Most of the Louisiana Guard is still home in Louisiana, and the Guard units in other states are being mobilized to assist. This article (http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050831/NEWS01/50831019) from the Indianapolis Star mentions that 10,000 Guard troops are being mobilized in addition to the Guardsmen already activated in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and this news release from the National Guard Bureau (http://www.ngb.army.mil/news/story.asp?id=1738) mentions over 120,000 troops in the affected states. So I think it's not accurate at all to say that the Guard isn't available since they're off fighting in Iraq.

I tell you what: You respond to the main issue (possibly not here; let's let dreamshark's thread take a break), then explain to me why you are curious about "implications" of a fairly straightforward description, and I'll point you to some websites that should change your non-chickenhawk mind.

Done.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I don't like Bush any better than you do, but I honestly don't think there is any way that his administration could have stopped a hurricane, or done anything substantive about the fact that most of New Orleans is built below sea level (worse, below the level of the immense lake that forms its northern boundary).

I have no doubt that mistakes are being made and inefficiences are happening in the disaster relief, but I'm actually in awe over how effective it has been. A city of 500,000 is 80% underwater right now, due to an unstoppable natural disaster, and the death toll looks like it will be in the hundreds (horrible), not the 100,000s (unthinkable). Thank God NOLa built their stadium out of something sturdier than the oversized weather balloon we have in Minneapolis, and I only hope the rest of the roof holds up!

Deepest sympathies to your brother and his family. I'm relieved to hear they are okay, but it's hard to imagine how they will cope with such a loss.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I don't blame Bush for Katrina, I blame him for cutting the budget for NOLA disaster preperations because of politics (see overview of local articles here: "Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain."). Bush always makes things worse.

Re: No news? Good news?

[433.livejournal.com]

There was a "disaster expert" (I don't remember his actual title) on the news the other day saying that, in an event of this magnitude, 1/3 of the people remaining in the affected area will die, due to the initial impact (the storm), second impacts (the flooding), disease, starvation, and violence.

They thought about 2/3 of the 900,000 in the NO metro area got out, so that means 100,000 may still be the total.

I mean, we'll never know for sure. Yipes.

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I got distracted by barondave's post...I meant to say that there's a rich collection of Katrina-related links at Instapundit (http://instapundit.com/), starting with a link collection for flood relief donations and continuing on to a lot of worthwhile news posts at various blogs, some of them in the Gulf Coast area. I realize a lot of folks don't care for Reynolds on account of him being a hard (pro-war) libertarian, but he's posting a lot of links to stuff people probably ought to be seeing.

No news? Good news?

[mmagidow.livejournal.com]

Gee, could it be that all the news companies are owned by the govmint and they only want us to see part of the devestation? Just a thought. Kind of like the lack of body bags coming back from Iraq.

Re: No news? Good news?

[433.livejournal.com]

I don't know, on the NBC news last night we saw plenty of bodies without body bags.

[magicwoman.livejournal.com]

Hope you have a grand birthday!!

Susan