*scroll down for updates*
"Today, I went to work. The roads were still intact, and my place of employment wasn't under 6 feet of water. Tonight, I will go home to a warm house, a home cooked meal, and sleep on a dry bed. I will watch a little TV, surf some blogs and post an article or two. The lights will be on and the water will flow. My toilet will flush. In otherwords, life will be normal for me and my family."Millions of my fellow Americans will not have that luxury."
UPDATE: More Relief
Feed the Children 1-888-58-CHILD
WalMart, Home Depot, Office Depot, Lowe's and Anheuser-Busch are doing their part.
(Thanks to Hugh Hewitt)
New Orleans must be totally evacuated.
BATON ROUGE, La. — With conditions in the hurricane-ravaged city of New Orleans rapidly deteriorating, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco (search ) announced late Tuesday that people now huddled in the Superdome and other rescue centers need to be evacuated."The situation is untenable," Blanco said during a news conference. "It's just heartbreaking." [SNIP]
In New Orleans, water began rising in the streets Tuesday morning, swamping an estimated 80 percent of the city and prompting the evacuation of hotels and hospitals. The water was also rising perilously inside New Orleans' Superdome, and Blanco said the tens of thousands of people now huddled there and other shelters would have to be evacuated as well.
In related news, President Bush will return to Washington three days ahead of schedule. Time to send out the federal troops.
Go Coast Guard and be safe!

UPDATE: Sigh. This was inevitable.
NEW ORLEANS -- With much of the city flooded by Hurricane Katrina, looters floated garbage cans filled with clothing and jewelry down the street in a dash to grab what they could. In some cases, looting on Tuesday took place in full view of police and National Guard troops.Good luck getting that booty, together with their personal booties out of NO.
UPDATE: 7:45 PM PDT. You want politicization of a national tragedy, you got it. From Robert Kennedy, Jr.:
As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.That’s correct; Kennedy is blaming President Bush, as well as Mississippi’s Governor Barbour, for the death and destruction on the Gulf Coast.In March of 2001, just two days after EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman’s strong statement affirming Bush’s CO2 promise former RNC Chief Barbour responded with an urgent memo to the White House.
Barbour, who had served as RNC Chair and Bush campaign strategist, was now representing the president’s major donors from the fossil fuel industry who had enlisted him to map a Bush energy policy that would be friendly to their interests. His credentials ensured the new administration’s attention. [SNIP]
Well, the science is clear. This month, a study published in the journal Nature by a renowned MIT climatologist linked the increasing prevalence of destructive hurricanes to human-induced global warming.
Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged.
So what was going on here, leftists? A little preemptive mendacity to go along with the dead bodies and destroyed lives?
(Thanks to LGF)

