There are no words...

via Newshounds:

Sean Hannity asked Franklin Graham tonight why "on the one hand" some people have risked their lives to help the hurricane victims while "on the other side, we have looting, shooting, rape and mayhem."

Graham answered, "Of course, Sean, this happens in a country when we have taken God out of our schools and God out of our society. We don't have a moral standard and we need to put God back into our schools."

Best comment response ever:

Sarcastro-
As a vertebrate, I'm embarrassed by remarks like that.


And still more:

From WorldNetDaily: There's looting in New Orleans because liberals took the Ten Commandments out of school.

Also from WND: the hurricane struck to prevent homos from having a party.

via Pandagon

Also worth checking out:
"Hurricanes, Divine Retribution and the Right."

(no subject)

via Rising Hegemon
Krugman's latest:

Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening...

...Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.

There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response.

Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into action. "On Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!"

...Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "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."

In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including flood-control spending.

Well, as long as they have their priorities straight

via No More Mr. Nice Blog:

With Congress preparing to reconvene in early September, Senate Majority Leader William H. Frist said a vote to fully repeal the estate tax will be tops on the to-do list.

Frist, a Tennessee Republican, has not wavered publicly from statements that the either the first or second bill of the September session would be a vote on a bill to repeal the estate tax beginning in 2005 -- meaning a vote is scheduled for the week of Sept. 6.

... According to the Joint Committee on Taxation the cost of a full repeal could be as much as $300 billion.

--WebCPA.com
I appreciate Harry Reid's response:

...Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic minority leader, suggested that Republicans should drop plans to repeal the estate tax and concentrate instead on hurricane relief.

"Given the tragic and devastating events along the Gulf Coast, members of the Senate would have great difficulty explaining why we were debating the estate tax during our first days back when we know hundreds of thousands of families are suffering," Mr. Reid said in a letter to Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican majority leader....

The latest NO updates

Find them here, directly from the DirectNIC data center in a high-rise in NO.

There are live feeds, photos, lots of updates and interviews with survivors.

After you've read that, may I direct you to Billmon's excellent list of charities in desperate need of donations to help the Hurricane victims.

And please read a transcript of Mayor Nagin's plea for aid for his citizens, his frustration and desperation are heart breaking:

Garland: Well you and I must be in the minority because apparently there�s a section of our citizenry out there that thinks, uh, because of the law that says that the federal government can�t come in unless requested by the proper people that everything that has been going on up until this point has been done as good as it can possibly be.



Nagin: Really?



Garland: I know you don�t feel that way



Nagin: Well, did the tsunami victims request? Did they go through a formal process to request? Uh, you know, did Iraq, did the Iraqi people request that we go in there? Did they ask us to go in there? What is more important? This is, you know, I'll tell you man, I, I'm probably gonna get in a whole bunch of trouble. I�m probably going to get into so much trouble it aint even funny. They probably won�t even want to deal with me after this interview is over �



Garland: You and I will be in the funny place together.



Nagin: - but we authorized 8 billions dollars to go to Iraq lickity quick. After 9-11 we gave the president unprecedented powers lickity quick to take care of New York and other places. Now you mean to tell me that a place where most of your oil is coming through, a place that is so unique - when you mention New Orleans everywhere around the world everybody�s eyes light up - you mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying everyday that we can�t figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need? Come on, man. You know, I'm not one of those drug addicts. I am thinking very clearly. And I don�t know whose problem it is. I don t know whether it�s the governor�s problem. I don�t know whether it�s the president�s problem. But somebody needs to get their ass on a plane and sit down, the two of them, and figure this out. Right now.



Garland: What can we do here?



Nagin: Keep talking about it.



Garland: Ok, we�ll do that. What else can we do?



Nagin: Organize people to write letters, make calls to -



Garland: Emails



Nagin: - to their congressmen, to the president, to the governor. Flood their doggone offices with requests to do something. This is ridiculous. And I don�t want to see anybody do anymore goddamned press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don�t do another press conference until the resources are in this city and then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can�t even count. Don�t tell me 40,000 people are coming here! They're not here! It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and let's do something! Let�s fix the biggest goddamned crisis in the history of this country.