Great plans, Reed. This is what the military does. This is what business does. It's even what some parts of the executive branch do. (I've done this sort of planning at a smaller scale for environmental cleanups.)

But it doesn't seem to be what Bush and his people do. We can hope, I guess...

You say we haven't been attacked by a foreign power or terrorist group.  Don't let that disguise the fact we have been attacked.  We've been attacked by a domestic enemy, insidious and well-coordinated.  A group of Americans has infiltrated the centers of power in government and media and attacked us systemmically.  They have broken up and fed upon the fruits produced by the liberal governments of the post WWII era. 

Now, we are rotting from within, depleted.  Our national resources have been diverted to the benefit of the corporate oligarchy and the whims of that child in the White House playing "army."

As I said earlier, elections have consequences.  The people who hate government have gotten control of goverment and have been starving it (while pocketing the good bits for themselves). 

Wake up, America.  The enemy is here.

"Now should not be the time, as Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly has noted, for the politics of blame. In the wake of Katrina's devastation along the Gulf Coast, Americans should be united in providing relief, resources and support to all in need."

But as the original poster pointed out, now is a great time for the Bush administration to reveal their plan.

There is no enemy that requires us to hide the plan.

If the plan is inadequate, then we need to replace it with an adequate plan as quickly as possible, and to replace the bunglers who left us in this mess. That last isn't really the politics of blame, it's the politics of relief. Never mind about *blaming* the ones who have failed us. Just replace them as quickly as possible with somebody who can get the job done. Blame is irrelevant so long as they are no longer endangering us.

What about the old, the young, and the poor?

They'll be "evacuated."

It is so upsetting to watch greedy White Republican men talk calmly on t.v. about how everything is going to be fine, while on the split screen you see poor black children going without food and water for days--being left like animals in horrible conditions.

It is hard not to think that the prioritization going on in the Bush White House doesn't involve some form of subtle racism.  I can't imagine that many wealthy white people would have been left without food and water for so long.

These people working for Bush see a few angry black people on t.v., and shut the rescue operations down until they can bring in the National Guard.  Rather than send in water and food--which would end most of the looting and calm everyone down--they are doing almost nothing until they send in a lot of troops with guns.  If I were there and saw transport after transport coming in, and almost none of them bothering to bring food and water while I starved to death, it would make me furious.

Why does it seem that white people are getting more help than blacks, and rich people more help than poor?

I am not black, and it is impossible to watch the news coverage without thinking about the racism of those in the Bush administration making decisions.

Why did the only naval ship operating in the area--providing helicopter rescue service, leave New Orleans to go to Missippi?  They left helping lots and lots of poor African Americans, and went to Missippi to help the White Republican Governor rescue a smaller and harder to find number of what I can only guess would be wealthy white beach home-owning landowners.  

Why were no buses provided to evacuate the poor, who could not afford to leave, before the storm began?  Instead you have Bush reps on t.v. saying things like "I will not pass judgment on those who did not heed the call to leave"--which is basically saying these people deserve what they are getting.

Why were funds cut by the Bush Administration to protect the parts of the city where so many poor black people lived?

This evening, an NBC correspondent burst into tears while describing what he saw on a bench outside the convention center:
two babies dying of dehydration!

To provide for the safety of its citizens ought to be not the second or third or fourth priority of the federal government: It ought to be the FIRST!

There should be hundreds of AF choppers airlifting food, water, and medicine as we speak. There should be thousands of army trucks taking people out. There should be tens of thousands of shelters built by now.

And who came up with this idea of busing the stadium folks to the astrodome?  What kind of sadist is that? A friend who knows about such things told me it would cost 2 million bucks a day to house these people in motels and feed them.

Do the math:  2 million a day for an entire year would cost less than... 5 days of Iraq!

It's not being done because they're poor and black and, let's face it, none of the Bush cronies give a damn about those people.

Well, mark my words: These two black babies dead on a bench will come back to haunt America for many many years to come.

...I have no experience at all actually implementing a government strategy for dealing with a crisis, or even a situation or even an issue.  Reed Hundt does.  Sure, his experience is in other areas, but he really did deal with the situation, as it is, and offer advice for dealing with things now.  Most of my complaints about what's happened have to do with past decisions like not funding the levy rebuilding and not mobilizing the guard when we knew, for three or four days that a category five hurricane might strike New Orleans.  But Reed Hundt's advice, if taken now, could at least alleviate the situation, if implemented, as I type this.  Since Mr. Hundt's specialty is communications, I have to gather that people who specialize in disaster relief have made similar suggestions.  It's 9:44 pm eastern time on Thursday night, Sept 1st... why has nobody tried what Mr. Hundt suggests?

Re: This evening, an NBC correspondent burst into tears while describing what he saw on a bench outside the convention center: two babies dying of dehydration!

OK, I have to ask here: why didn't the reporters help those children? They could have given them fluids or taken them to safety when they left. If their bosses forbid them to render any assistance then heads need to roll in the upper echelons of the media.

Not really. It's not good to be simplistic about it. They already have vans and camera and reporters. It's not like news organizations stockpile rations to compete with FEMA nor should they have to.

Actually I bet many reporters bring in as much as they can to distribute just on the basic human level. I reporters off camera are pretty shocked by the suffering. Thier job is to provide another vital service which is to inform the public.

Having said that, yes the MSM is bloated, but it's far more bloated at the top than on the investigative, on-the-scene journalist level.

CKR,

Great plans, Reed. This is what the military does. This is what business does. It's even what some parts of the executive branch do. (I've done this sort of planning at a smaller scale for environmental cleanups.)

But it doesn't seem to be what Bush and his people do. We can hope, I guess... 

Actually, this is precisely what Bush's people do to get Republicans elected.  Let me explain.

When American voting districts are redistricted these days, very elaborate computer-aided demographic modeling tools are applied to ensure that Republicans will remain the winning party for decades to come.  It is in this feasibility and planning stage that census data, population modeling, and computer aided demographics create risk averse voting projections that can then be used to cookie cut Congress and the House into exclusive lobbiest casinos where the jackpots are the spoils of the American taxpayer.

Similarly, most large consumer chains also run computer-aided modeling programs that analyze the number of households needing shoes (for example) in a given community. Add the dynamics of that population's buying habits.  If the model spits out a 'bingo' reply a new show store is opened with a risk-averse chance of failing.

Like the Tycoon software games, all the vital metrics are kept up to date to be accurate. 

Over the years I have argued that international charities should establish similar supply-chain dependency initiatives so that the modeling reflected likely needs, likely disease and starvation expectations, sources of relief, and so on.   This might result in rapid response, global charity action centers that, from an interactive model of likely known scenarios, could respond more quickly, more appropriately, and less wastefully to predictable events.

As America devolves under Bush to knee-jerk military responses, I ask myself again today, why (in a country that has a huge unemployed software population like ours) aren't interactive, computer-aided softawre programs managing the responses to these well known likely disaster scenarios. The precision is available, the logistics would be right on, and so forth.

The answer is the poison mentality of conservatism that distrusts government, techmology, science, humanism (and human compassion), and the common good.

We are victimized by the inability to throw the rascals out.   My advice for years has been and continues to be, THROW THE CONSERVATIVE RASCALS OUT before we're all helpless victims.

And, YES, NOW IS THE TIME TO SAY IT. 

Packing the poor into a stadium with no follow-up clue is analogous to the American government issuing blankets infected with smallpox to Indians facing a cold winter during the 1800s.

   As of yesterday there was every indication that the descent into utter chaos could be accelerated into outright anarchy by the emergence of armed civilians, now shooting at medical personnel, National Guard troops, and police officers, hijacking busses, boats, and aid vehicles at gunpoint,  disrupting evacuations, and adding terror to the anguish and despair. The implications of this, as the desperate efforts to literally empty  the city are just that - desperate - seem inconceivably horrifying to me. Troops "locked and loaded"entering an American city gripped by desperation and violence.

And here is the President, speaking from no crafted message, no honed list of talking points, but responding to a humanitarian, economic and civil crisis of terrifying proportion in his own words:

"I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this -- whether it be looting, or price gouging at the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud," Bush said. "And I've made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought to be working together."

Well, thank God he's providing a beacon of resolve to Mr Gonzales.