Some quotes seen/heard in the media over the last couple of weeks. I believe they are self-illuminating.

“Brown said President Bush authorized the aid under an emergency disaster declaration issued following a review of FEMA’s analysis of the state’s request for federal assistance. FEMA will mobilize equipment and resources necessary to protect public health and safety by assisting law enforcement with evacuations, establishing shelters, supporting emergency medical needs, meeting immediate lifesaving and life-sustaining human needs and protecting property, in addition to other emergency protective measures.”
–“Emergency Aid Authorized for Hurrican Katrina Emergency Response in Louisiana,” FEMA press release, Sat, Aug 27

“On Saturday, President Bush has declared an emergency for the states of Louisiana and Mississippi opening up FEMA’s ability to move into the state and assist the state and local governments with mobilizing resources and preparations to save lives and property from the impact of Hurricane Katrina.”
–“Homeland Security Prepping for Dangerous Hurricane Katrina,” FEMA press release, Sun, Aug 28

“A computer model run by the LSU Hurricane Center late Saturday confirmed [the potential for disaster]. It indicated the metropolitan area was poised to see a repeat of Betsy’s flooding, or worse, with storm surge of as much as 16 feet moving up the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet and topping levees in Chalmette and eastern New Orleans, and pushing water into the 9th Ward and parts of Mid-City. High water flowing from Lake Pontchartrain through St. Charles Parish also would flood over levees into Kenner, according to the model.”
–“Katrina Takes Aim,” The Times-Picayune, Sunday, Aug 28

“I don’t want to alarm everybody that, you know, New Orleans is filling up like a bowl. That’s just not happening.”
–FEMA official Bill Lokey on Tuesday, Aug 30, as New Orleans filled like a bowl from breaches in three levees

“Paula, the federal government did not even know about the convention center people until today.”
–Micheal Brown, who apparently does not own a television, in an interview with CNN’s Paula Zahn on Thursday, Sept 1

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”
–King George II on Thursday, Sept 1, in an interview with Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America

“The collapse of a significant portion of the levee leading to the very fast flooding of the city was not envisioned.”
–Department of Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff on Saturday, Sept 3, who apparently missed the New Orleans Time-Picayune’s 2002 5-part series outlining exactly what would happen if a hurricane hit the city

“It’s going to look like a massive shipwreck.”
–Walter Maestri, Jefferson Parish emergency management director, “The City in a Bowl”, Sept 20, 2002

“I’ve heard you say during the course of a number of interviews that you found out about the convention center today. Don’t you guys watch television? Don’t you guys listen to the radio?”
–Ted Koppel, confirming that Michael Brown does not own a television on “Nightline,” Friday, Sept 2

“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”
–King George II on Friday, Sept 2 to Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown

“So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (laughs) this is working out very well for them.”
–Former first lady Barbara Bush, touring the Astrodome on Monday, Sept 5, where conditions are said to be little better than in the Superdome.

“The world’s only remaining superpower that has taken upon itself the great responsibility of saving and reforming the rest of the world, couldn’t protect its own people in its own backyard.”
–“From Mumbai to New Orleans: Bungling with the Basics,” Dubai Khaleej Times, Wed, Sept 7

And Dennis Hastert, too, for skipping the emergency relief funding vote so he could attend a fundraiser. They should be forced to live alongside the bodies piled in the freezer, including those of the 5-year-old girl who was gang-raped and the 7-year-old whose throat was slashed.

Reminds me of the mantra from Stephen King’s Cujo: “Nope, nothing wrong here.”

From CNN:

The House majority leader late Tuesday tried to deflect criticism of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina by saying “the emergency response system was set up to work from the bottom up,” then announced a short time later that House hearings examining that response had been canceled.

It strikes me that the title of this blog is more appropriate than ever. It has its origins in a regular column I wrote for my college paper many moons ago. In that particular frame of the film, the economy was stagnant in a recession no one would acknowledge, we were in the midst of (at the time) the most controversial war since Vietnam, and the emerging science of DNA comparison was revealing a ghastly number of innocent people sentenced to Death Row. Every facet of what we had known to be good and just about the world seemed to be, piece by piece, falling down around us.

How little things change, eh?

Now we have witnessed the literal collapse of both a city and society within it. Now that adequate relief support has finally reached the survivors along the gulf coast, the real questions are beginning to be asked. Primarily: why the hell did it take four days for meaningful help to reach these poor people? Even President Clinton, reluctant ever to speak a harsh word of anyone, said, “Our government failed those people in the beginning, and I take it now there is no dispute about it. One hundred percent of the people recognize that–that it was a failure.”

At the end of Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press, even milder-mannered Bob Schieffer delivered what for him was a downright foaming-at-the-mouth diatribe against the officals responsible. It bears repeating. I hope he will not mind my reprinting it here in full for those who missed it:

A personal thought. We have come through what may have been one of the worst weeks in America’s history, a week in which government at every level failed the people it was created to serve. There is no purpose for government except to improve the lives of its citizens. Yet as scenes of horror that seemed to be coming from some Third World country flashed before us, official Washington was like a dog watching television. It saw the lights and images, but did not seem to comprehend their meaning or see any link to reality.

As the floodwaters rose, local officials in New Orleans ordered the city evacuated. They might as well have told their citizens to fly to the moon. How do you evacuate when you don’t have a car? No hint of intelligent design in any of this. This was just survival of the richest.

By midweek a parade of Washington officials rushed before the cameras to urge patience. What good is patience to a mother who can’t find food and water for a dehydrated child? Washington was coming out of an August vacation stupor and seemed unable to refocus on business or even think straight. Why else would Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert question aloud whether New Orleans should even be rebuilt? And when he was unable to get to Washington in time to vote on emergency aid funds, Hastert had an excuse only Washington could understand: He had to attend a fund-raiser back home.

Since 9/11, Washington has spent years and untold billions reorganizing the government to deal with crises brought on by possible terrorist attacks. If this is the result, we had better start over.

The raw stories coming out of New Orleans are un-fucking-believable. Civilization has collapsed. The police have become desperate animals right along with the rest of the people who have devolved into survival mode in the flooded ruins of The Big Uneasy. The streets are ruled by armed thugs. Gunmen have invaded at least one hospital, rescue operations have been suspended because helicopters and rescue boats are being fired upon. The situation at the Superdome is sickening and is about to implode.

“We tried to airlift supplies into Kenner Memorial Hospital late last evening and were confronted by an unruly crowd with guns, and the pilots refused to land.”

Quite honestly, I don’t think the situation is going to come under control until either there is a mass slaughter of survivors amongst one another, or the National Guard is reduced to machine-gunning people from the air.

It’s hard to believe that this is America. These are stories we only hear out of second- and third-world countries where survival was pretty much your own to begin with.

Ten-thousand National Guard on the way. Those with the least training and experience (all of those were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan). An estimated 100,000 survivors and survivalists are left in the city. Ten-to-one. Ten-to-one odds for the National Guard to attempt to quell the violence, bring relief supplies, and construct evacuation routes while attempting to hold the crumbling levees together and drain the standing water.

Can the Shrub smirk his way through this human and political catastrophe? These are the types of conditions which cause the citizens of other countries to march upon the palaces with rifles and baseball bats. Do you think once the survivors escape their situation–which most likely will mean little more than tent cities with minimal food supplies and sanitation–that they will be thankful? Or will they ask, “Why did it take so long to rescue us from that hell? How were conditions allowed to get so bad? Why wasn’t the city and government better prepared for what they had known could happen for years?”

A year and a half ago, New Orleans was awarded $7.1 million in homeland security funds. Apparently most of the money was earmarked for anti-terrorism measures in the city’s ports. Why, in what we learned from the aftermat of Sept 11, 2001, did the city’s police experience a total communcations failure? In a city in constant threat of flooding and hindered by isolating geography why were mass-rescue plans and facilities never created?

So where did the money go? One thing’s for certain: money is now meaningless in the lawless cesspool that used to be New Orleans.

The Hard Rock Cafe in Dubai — and the Daily Planet building from Superman.

Cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli has died at the age of 81. A master painter who happened to work with film, Delli Colli was the man responsible for the look of some of cinema’s most popular and noteworthy films, including The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, Once Upon a Time in America, The Name of the Rose, and–his last film–Life is Beautiful. His talent will be sorely missed.

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Quarry Hill – After the rain, originally uploaded by olivander.

3. Your favorite part of where you live

The interior of Quarry Hill park is my favorite place to go. There are so many little hidden places and things to explore, and miles of hiking. There is a huge variety of terrain within a relatively compact park, making it a great place to hike barefoot.

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Quarry Hill: oak savannah, originally uploaded by olivander.

2: One Mile Away

This is the view of Rochester from atop Quarry Hill, which is approximately 1 mile from my house.

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Caught standing still, originally uploaded by olivander.

1. Your Ride

This is my little pony, The Solar Express.

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Out of order., originally uploaded by olivander.

And we couldn’t be more pleased about it.

(Yes, I was forced to venture into a Wal-Mart late at night when nothing else was open. I am filled with shame.)