The response by FEMA to the damage in Houston has been, while perhaps not as downright hostile to the victims as in New Orleans, still quite inept. The Houston police, not being in as bad shape as the New Orleans police, however, have decided that they aren't going to let FEMA stand in the way of rescues in their own city.

I suspect he used a rather stronger word than "nonsense".

Several sites are now assembling timelines of the Katrina disaster in great detail:

1. DKosopedia
2. Think Progress
3. Wikipedia

These are still works in progress, so those with more information are encouraged to submit it.

Hat tip to The Randi Rhodes show via a comment left by Witch1.

I have been warned that one of the charity organizations, "Operation Blessing", being promoted by CNN and even FEMA as a place to send donations, is a "charity" owned by infamous televangelist Pat Robertson (the chairman is of Operation blessing is M.G. Robertson, short for Marion Gordon Robertson, which is Pat Robertson's real name, and the board is dominated by his family members), and is used for his personal commercial gain. Google has quite a collection of articles on how he used Operation Blessing to fund his commercial interests in a diamond mine in Zaire.

Stick to sending donations to the Red Cross, or another group that you know well.

I had an interesting encounter today, returning from CompUSA where I was returning a few video cards from work. I encountered a hitchhiker with a heavy backpack, and since I had plenty of room, I offered him a ride. He was a refugee from New Orleans, who had been on the road since early morning. Along with a small group of others, he had taken a canoe from his neighbor, who had told him it was his if he could use it. Together, they managed to make it to a dry section of highway and hitched a ride out of the city, leaving the canoe to some others who were staying.

The social situation is deteriorating in New Orleans, with the looters now including police officers. Officials are saying that the city may be uninhabitable for a month.

If you have funds to spare for the relief effort, the Red Cross is taking donations.

It appears that contrary to what I heard earlier, New Orleans did not escape after all. One or more levees have failed, and the city is flooded.

No death toll is available yet, but rescue operations aren't going very well, as the bulk of the National Guard and their equipment, that normally would be deployed to help deal with things like this, is off in Iraq.

Independence day has just ended, and in the spirit of a holidy, I have something positive to report: some parts of the U.S. are making significant progress in improving their environment, meeting the Kyoto standard even though the White House failed to support it — and rather than going bankrupt doing it, they're actually coming out ahead economically. The trick appears to be to take a large number of little steps, all couched in terms of solving other problems that citizens want dealt with (such as traffic congestion or energy costs), redirecting saved money from energy into public transit, and nudging businesses to support public transit. Portland, Oregon's carbon dioxide emissions are at pre-1990 levels now.