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Okay, I might not be the first to think of this, but why isn't there any MSM comparison (except on Fox News Channel tonight) of the behavior of San Diegans as compared to the citizens of New Orleans? The scope of the respective fire and Katrina disasters is not that different. Each displaced populations of large metropolitan areas. Each resulted in large urban and suburban areas rendered uninhabitable. Each resulted in loss of homes and disruption of life for huge numbers of their population. Each reflected the helplesness of the first responders to act until nature relented. But most importantly,...

I've been hearing rumors for a couple of weeks now that New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin is considering running for Governor. I finally found a news outlet that confirms this rumor, thanks to freelance journalist Jason Berry, who appeared on Informed Sources last night to predict that Nagin will run for Governor. Hat tip to Library Chronicles. As an aside, is this Jason Berry the author of Amazing Grace, an account of Charles Evers' run for Governor in Mississippi back in 1972? But back to the issue at hand - Ray Nagin running for Governor of Louisiana. This makes...

Since the media has planned an orgy of finger pointed for the anniversary of Katrina, let's make sure they get a finger in the eye they so richly deserve for their performance. Here's a few I recall, and I'm sure there are more: The media told us of a little girl who had been rapoed and then her throat slit in the Superdome. Photo captions had white survivors foraging for supplies, while black people were captioned as looting. Helicopters were being fired at, which led to a stand down till it became clear that it was untrue. All those...

DO you remember the dramatic TV footage of National Guard helicopter landings at the Superdome, as soon as Katrina passed, to drop off tens of thousands saved from certain death? Of the corpsmen running with stretchers to carry the survivors to ambulances and the medical center? Or the reports on how the operation - with Coast Guard helicopters, regular military units and local first responders, too - went on for more than a week, saving more than 50,000 lives? No? That's because the national media imposed a near-total blackout on the nerve center of what may have been the largest,...

"And it was in a CNN story where we first saw it. Miles O'Brien was standing in front of the Beau Rivage doing a stand up," said City of Biloxi spokesman, Vincent Creel. The CNN reporter told his audience that 30 people died in the St. Charles apartment complex on the beach in Biloxi. Concrete columns and an elevated slab are all that's left of the St. Charles condominiums on Highway 90 in Biloxi. But there were certainly not 30 deaths there. "We never recovered a single body from that location," said Harrison County Coroner Gary Hargrove. Hargrove also heard...

Yep, the "newspaper" which gave us so many drama queen stories about Katrina that turned out to be woefully inaccurate wins the top prize in US journalism. Kind of tells you something, doesn't it?From Saudi-owned Reuters [excerpted]: Jim Amoss (L), Editor of the Times-Picayune newspaper, congratulates publisher Ashton Phelps, Jr. after learning the paper won two Pulitzer Prizes in New Orleans April 17, 2006. The Times-Picayune of New Orleans and The Sun Herald of Biloxi, Mississippi, shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for excellent coverage of Hurricane Katrina. The Times-Picayune also won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting...

Killers boasted of rape: police By Sebastien Berger in Lamai, Thailand January 11, 2006 THE killers of the British backpacker Katherine Horton allegedly boasted about their actions within minutes of her being beaten and raped. "Delicious, very delicious," shouted Bualoi Posit, 23, and Wichai Somkhaoyai, 24, as they climbed back aboard their fishing boat, until told to be quiet by the vessel's mate. The men then bragged to other crewmen that "they had just raped a foreigner", said Lieutenant-General Ajiravid Subarnbhesaj, the national police spokesman. The men, who were taken to Bangkok for forensic tests, matched DNA samples recovered from...

On the heels of Hurricane Katrina, more than 100,000 evacuees landed in Houston. Now officials there say the city has found itself under the gun, with an escalating murder rate and population bursting at the seams. The murder rate is up 25 percent since last year and up 70 percent in December alone, with 14 more murders this month compared with the same time period last year. Although the connection between evacuees and the surge in violence is statistically tenuous, with only nine of the city's 122 post-Katrina homicides involving someone, either as suspect or victim, who evacuated there, city...

Reviewing the falsehoods, myths and misrepresentations spun by the press, politicians and pundits after Hurricane Katrina, one is reminded of Nora Ephron's bon mot: "No matter how cynical I get, I can't seem to keep up." Most recently, we have word from the National Hurricane Center that Katrina was not a category 4 storm at all, but rather, a category 3 when it slammed into the Gulf Coast Aug. 29. So much for the notion the levees were built to withstand anything less than a category 4. This is only the latest in a string of stories correcting, amending and...

Last week, I wrote about the racism of the liberal media's Katrina coverage -- but that's only half the story. As I've been assessing press accounts of what was clearly the story of the year for 2005, it's become clear that press hysteria delayed rescues, prodded some politicians into making mega-billion dollar promises and may have created a long-term backlash. How bad was the reporting? You probably saw and heard stories of mayhem at the Superdome and the Convention Center, and on the streets of New Orleans. You may have missed the admissions weeks later by NBC, the New Orleans...

The colonel in charge of the National Guard at the Louisiana Superdome in the days after Katrina said the shelter of last resort was a miserable place to be but that the behavior of the residents was misrepresented. Colonel Thomas Beron said there were no murders and that the people were receiving food and water. "There were no homicides,” he stressed. “There were six fatalities. I'll tell you, I helped load every single body onto the FEMA trucks after the superdome was cleared." Beron told members of the New Orleans City Council that he wants to set the record straight....

Saints owner Tom Benson declared this week that nothing will be decided on the franchise's future until after the season. But ESPN's Chris Mortensen reports that, based on information from key league sources, the team has probably played its last game in New Orleans. According to Mortensen, San Antonio is a likely home for 2006 and Los Angeles is the preferred destination beyond that. The NFL could still include New Orleans as a Super Bowl site when the city is reconstructed, and expansion might even be a possibility, but that's 10 to 15 years away. If the Saints relocate to...

BATON ROUGE -- Fast-tracking repairs to the Superdome is inappropriate while thousands of people remain displaced and entire sections of New Orleans lay in ruins after Hurricane Katrina, a New Orleans lawmaker said Tuesday. "It sends a bad message when it's an emergency to repair the Superdome for events uncertain when we have people still living in shelters," Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, told staff with Gov. Kathleen Blanco's administration at a legislative committee meeting.

Thanks to a long report in the new Orleans Times-Picayune, we now know that most of the incredible tales of savagery in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina were simply made up by panicky residents and passed along by the media. On September 2, a CNN report cited an unidentified police officer who said he saw bodies riddled with bullet holes and one man with the top of his head completely shot off. Another unnamed officer, a sergeant, said he had to pass by the bodies of other police officers who had drowned doing their job. So far as we know,...

A state official says that if the Superdome is to be used again as a shelter, the federal government needs to help make it hurricane-proof. Tim Coulon, chairman of the Louisiana Stadium & Expedition District, said he hopes state officials can persuade the Federal Emergency Management Agency and insurance adjusters to pay for things such as enlarged concourses and new restrooms to make the Dome more suitable for evacuations, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported. The building suffered millions of dollars in damage from Hurricane Katrina and the 25,000 evacuees who sought shelter there for days after the storm passed. It...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Officials are taking the first steps toward restoring the Louisiana Superdome and the New Orleans Arena, which sheltered thousands of evacuees when Hurricane Katrina hit the city. Workers began using pumps and hot air to dry out the arena this week and were decontaminating it while a team of engineers, architects and others began evaluating the damage done to the Superdome and the steps needed to repair it. "The more time goes by, the more certain we are that both buildings can be repaired," Superdome general manager Glenn Menard said Friday. "We just don't know how...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- On Sept. 1, with desperate Hurricane Katrina evacuees crammed into the convention center, Police Chief Eddie Compass reported: "We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten." Five days later, he told Oprah Winfrey that babies were being raped. On the same show, Mayor Ray Nagin warned: "They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people." The ugliest reports - children with slit throats, women dragged off and raped, corpses piling up in the basement...

NEW ORLEANS — After five days managing near riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Following days of internationally reported murders, rapes and gang violence inside the stadium, the doctor from FEMA — Beron doesn't remember his name — came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies. "I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalled the doctor saying. The real total? Six, Beron said....

After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies. "I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying. The real total was six, Beron said. Of those, four...

They would have preferred to get married under a steeple, but instead they traded vows under the Dome. Rebecca Warren and Joseph Smothers planned to marry in New Orleans on Sept. 9, Joseph's birthday. Unfortunately, Hurricane Katrina intervened.

Trapped in New Orleans by the flood--and martial law The real heroes and sheroes of New Orleans September 9, 2005 | Pages 4 and 5 LARRY BRADSHAW and LORRIE BETH SLONSKY are emergency medical services (EMS) workers from San Francisco and contributors to Socialist Worker. They were attending an EMS conference in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck. They spent most of the next week trapped by the flooding--and the martial law cordon around the city. Here, they tell their story. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - TWO DAYS after...

JANICE MARIE Fields is still missing. Her family last heard from her in the early morning hours of Monday, Aug. 29, just before Hurricane Katrina unleashed her fury on New Orleans and Mississippi's shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico. Barbara Fields May, 63, spoke to her youngest sister about 2:30 a.m. Janice Fields told May she was coming to join the family for one of their traditional "hurricane parties." That's what the Fields family, longtime New Orleans residents, did when hurricanes approached the Big Easy. Eat a little. Drink a little. Pray a lot. "In my city," May said, "hurricanes...

Ivan exposes flaws in N.O.'s disaster plans 05:09 PM CDT on Sunday, September 19, 2004 By KEVIN McGILL Those who had the money to flee Hurricane Ivan ran into hours-long traffic jams. Those too poor to leave the city had to find their own shelter - a policy that was eventually reversed, but only a few hours before the deadly storm struck land. New Orleans dodged the knockout punch many feared from the hurricane, but the storm exposed what some say are significant flaws in the Big Easy's civil disaster plans. Much of New Orleans is below sea level, kept...

The concrete and steel titan on Poydras Street still dominates the New Orleans skyline. But the Superdome, like everything else in the brutalized city, looks much different now. Hurricane Katrina’s 100 mph-plus winds relentlessly strafed the world-renowned stadium’s roof, peeled back its white weather-protective shell like a coconut husk. The force was so powerful it stripped off sheets of 2-inch foam and thick rubber and blew them all over the Central Business District.

What's the opposite of heroism? Maybe it's the spectacle of the Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana trying to shift blame for the destruction of a 287-year-old city away from themselves onto the President of the United States, and finally onto each other. Instead, I think they should consider blaming Kofi Annan. After all, the UN was in charge of the world when the levee on Lake Ponchartrain broke and submerged New Orleans. That would be the same levee Louisiana politicians have resisted shoring up for the past decade. They took half the money Congress gave them...

DOCTORS working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leave them to die in agony as they evacuated. With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive. One New Orleans doctor told how she "prayed for God to have mercy on her soul" after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save. Her heart-rending account has been corroborated by a...

Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive. In an extraordinary interview with The Mail on Sunday, one New Orleans doctor told how she 'prayed for God to have mercy on her soul' after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives...

Paramedic's N.M. team stays behind to treat storm victims ... a self-contained, federally funded team from New Mexico -- arrived in New Orleans at 3 a.m. Aug. 30 with 20 tons of supplies. ... Hesch has a few insights he'd like to share: "I would tell people to be patient with their government and understanding because this is the nation's biggest disaster, bar none."

The message on the Louisiana Superdome website is ominous: Until further notice, all events scheduled for the Superdome are canceled. Unfortunately, that message might never change. The carnage of Hurricane Katrina — the devastating loss of life — makes sports seem inconsequential, as it should. But in the months and years to come the people of New Orleans will regroup and rebuild, and suddenly the passing thought of athletic competition will move closer to the forefront. When it does, I wonder if folks in the Big Easy will still have an NFL football team to call their own. And if...

According to Hugh Hewitt, Major Garrett of Fox News is reporting that the Red Cross "had prepositioned water, food, blankets and hygiene products for delivery to the Superdome and the Convention Center in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, but were blocked from delivering those supplies by orders of the Louisiana state government, which did not want to attract people to the Superdome and/or Convention Center." Explosive, obviously, if true. Hugh has interviewed Garrett, who says the report comes from "sources at the highest levels of the Red Cross." UPDATE: Several readers report seeing this statement made by Red Cross...

Folks, I'm sorry for the semi-vanity post, but THIS NEEDS TO GET OUT THERE. Tell your friends. Tell your family. Tell perfect strangers. Tell everyone. Frankly, I'm absolutely stunned that this isn't the top article on every single news site. I'm stunned that the blogosphere isn't buzzing about nothing else. Why hasn't this gotten the attention it deserved?In short: the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security BLOCKED THE RED CROSS from bringing desperately needed food, water, and supplies to the Superdome and the Convention Center. This was done to deliberately make conditions worse. Why? Because they wanted people to evacuate, and...

The Superdome just turned 30 years old. It may not see 31. Over the next few months, Gov. Kathleen Blanco will have to decide whether to invest at least $100 million for repairs or just bulldoze it. Long a New Orleans landmark, the Louisiana Superdome during the days that followed Hurricane Katrina became the symbol of government's failure to provide adequate relief to storm victims. After stories of extreme deprivation, tens of thousands of storm victims were evacuated from the Superdome, the last climbing aboard buses Saturday. The damage left by the storm and the evacuees is extensive but will...

MIDI - WE DON'T NEED ANOTHER HERO We have it all planned...the fires we'll fan Press pals will blame it all on Bush It is all laid out...just watch how it plays out From all directions we will push Bobby will launch a blow...sit back and watch the show...now We'll stab George in the back and claim that he hates blacks We will scream that he's a zero...we will stop Salvation Army trucks They will not get their supplies to the Superdome Partisan warfare...do you think we care Without our power we feel dead This is a battle...and his...

BATON ROUGE, La. - In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Superdome became a symbol of relief efforts gone wrong, a scene of heartbreaking misery for thousands. But no decision has been made about the future of the iconic city structure, and the manager of the domed stadium expects it will take more than two months to get a damage assessment and determine whether the Superdome should be repaired or razed. The last storm victims stuck at the Superdome climbed aboard evacuation buses Saturday, leaving millions of dollars of damage behind — a flooded field, overflowing bathrooms, a sea of...

The Red Cross Blocked The Fox News Channel's Major Garrett was just on my show extending the story he had just reported on Brit Hume's show: The Red Cross is confirming to Garrett that it had prepositioned water, food, blankets and hygiene products for delivery to the Superdome and the Convention Center in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, but were blocked from delivering those supplies by orders of the Louisiana state government, which did not want to attract people to the Superdome and/or Convention Center. Garrett has no paper trail yet, but will follow up on his verbal confirmation...

Just heard on FOX that Blanco refused to allow supplies to be brought to the stadium, "Because they wanted all those people to leave, and they didn't want to create a magnet to bring others there, by bringing in food and water!"""

Murder and rape - fact or fiction? Gary Younge in Baton Rouge Tuesday September 6, 2005 Guardian There were two babies who had their throats slit. The seven-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in the Superdome. And the corpses laid out amid the excrement in the convention centre. In a week filled with dreadful scenes of desperation and anger from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina some stories stood out. But as time goes on many remain unsubstantiated and may yet prove to be apocryphal. New Orleans police have been unable to confirm the tale of the raped child, or...

Back when NPR and other news outlets were reporting that New Orleans had “dodged the bullet” on hurricane Katrina I made an ill-conceived joke in The Corner about how the Superdome was going to hell-in-a-hand basket. I wrote: ATTN: SUPERDOME RESIDENTS [Jonah Goldberg] I think it's time to face facts. That place is going to be a Mad Max/thunderdome Waterworld/Lord of the Flies horror show within the next few hours. My advice is to prepare yourself now. Hoard weapons, grow gills and learn to communicate with serpents. While you're working on that, find the biggest guy you can and when...

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Many residents are refusing to leave New Orleans despite a mandatory evacuation and warnings from government officials that staying in the flooded city represents a health risk. The Louisiana Superdome was so heavily damaged during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath that it likely will have to be torn down, according to a spokesperson for Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. Katrina sheared away much of the roof's covering, and rainwater began leaking into the stadium when it was being used as a shelter of last resort for thousands of residents stranded by the storm. The Superdome is...

Freuters—The Rev. Jesse Jackson, seemingly on a roll with an endless array of slave-era euphemisms to describe the plight of African Americans in the wake of hurricane Katrina, has called for authorities to rename the New Orleans Superdome. . “When I see the those walls, I see the hull of a slave ship,” said Jackson. “When I see those advertising banners and championship pennants surrounding the perimeter, I see a circumspect black man sitting in the crow’s nest. When I see the putrid, scurvy, urine-soaked squalor inside that stadium

CNN reporting the superdome to be torn down due to internal and external damage due to Katrina.

There were two babies who had their throats slit. The seven-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in the Superdome. And the corpses laid out amid the excrement in the convention centre. In a week filled with dreadful scenes of desperation and anger from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina some stories stood out. But as time goes on many remain unsubstantiated and may yet prove to be apocryphal. New Orleans police have been unable to confirm the tale of the raped child, or indeed any of the reports of rapes, in the Superdome and convention centre. New Orleans police...

Just heard this on a promo for Nightline during the FSU vs. Miami game at about 10:12 EDT. Ted Koppel: "The mayor of New Orleans, and it may be a wild exageration, but he said there could be 10,000 dead. And the Superdome, where you broadcast so many of your Monday Night Football games, that, I'm told, is coming down."

Dear Powers that be (specifically in New Orleans and Louisiana State Government). I'm no engineer by any means, but at the risk of being forward, may I suggest the following items be drawn into plans for the re-building of the existing Superdome, or into plans for the new stadium that will be built to replace it: (NOTE: The space required for these items may require a fewer number of luxury boxes, but they're worth it). 1) Stockpile a minimum of 250,000 MRE's. You don't have to go through beauricratic BS to get them either. Find them online and order them...

By Audrey Hudson THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published September 5, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- State and local officials did not inform top federal officials early on of the deaths and lack of food among hurricane victims in the Superdome or convention center, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday. Mr. Chertoff said neither he nor Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown was told of the deteriorating situation in New Orleans until Thursday night. "This is clearly something that was disturbing. It was disturbing to me when I learned about it, which came as a surprise. You know, the very day that this...

News'We feared for our lives in the hell of the Superdome' by ROBIN YAPP, Daily Mail 09:28am 5th September 2005 Survivor: Jane Wheeldon Britons returning from the horrors of New Orleans have told how they feared for their lives as violent gangs ran out of control. Tourists and backpackers arriving back in the UK said the city's Superdome, initially sought out as a safe haven from Hurricane Katrina, had quickly turned into a place of fear. They witnessed scenes of murder and looting, women were threatened with rape and racial tensions grew daily. Have your say » Survivors praised the...

State and local officials did not inform top federal officials early on of the deaths and lack of food among hurricane victims in the Superdome or convention center, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday. Mr. Chertoff said neither he nor Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown was told of the deteriorating situation in New Orleans until Thursday night.

My apology to FReepers for my thread titled "Freepers Are Freaking Me Out. It was just the high emotions and intensity of the scenes unfolding before us during the last week. Now, I have a second-hand account of life in the Superdome that has given me pause. To stop and reflect. I still have sympathy and compassion for the people of NO but realize things are not always what they seem on the surface.

AUSTRALIAN survivors of Hurricane Katrina told last night of their dramatic escape from New Orleans and the unfolding civil disaster in city. The group, joyful at fleeing the nightmare of the Louisiana city, lauded one of its members as a hero. Bud Hopes, of Brisbane, was praised for saving dozens of tourists as the supposed safe haven of the city's Superdome became a hellhole. "I would have to say that Bud is solely responsible for our evacuation," Vanessa Cullington, 22, of Sydney, told the Sunday Herald Sun by mobile phone from a bus carrying 10 Australians to safety in Dallas,...

BRISBANE man Bud Hopes was lauded as a hero for helping save dozens of tourists as the supposed safe haven of the city's Superdome deteriorated into a hell-hole. "I would have to say that Bud is solely responsible for our evacuation," Sydney woman Vanessa Cullington, 22, told The Sunday Mail from a bus carrying 10 Aussies to safety in Dallas. "I dread to think what would have happened if we hadn't got out. It's so great to be free." Food and water were almost non-existent for the 25,000 people inside the stiflingly hot building which was filled with the stench...