1 Uncle Samfester choked on a big fat pretzel, sat on a spiky cactus and then had his ta ta ta snapped in a mouse trap over Horrorcane Bushrina - Those who dont want to play the blame game - are to blame!!!

2 Klanrooster - I know you are out there in FEMAland, beggin' for the gub'mant cheese after Sammfester found you. Repent your racist sins and Jesus will accept you.. Repent!!

3 FWIW, this page (see under “Damage and Casualties") says the U.S. Geological survey has the final Tsunami death toll at “283,100 killed, 14,100 missing, and 1,126,900 people displaced.” My gut says to double that 283,000 figure.

4 Did a quick search and can't find anything to back up your Cokie Robert's thing. She may be a lib but I doubt she's stupid. Hold off awhile on the deathtoll. Suspect it will be an issue in a few days but too early to see how it will play out. Personnally belief it will be significantly lower than projected. The blame game and hype tends to distort everything coming out of NO. Sidebar interest - the two levee sections that failed were new and improved. 17th street a couple of years ago, the other with a project late 80's early 90's. There is a quiet lil' investigation starting up.

5 Those people who do not want to play the blame game...they're to blame! - Jon Stewart

6 sounds familar - thousands died - jenin???

7 Why don't they just call it Hurricane Bush and be done with it? Some of the gloating in the wake of Katrina has been as stomach-churning as it was entirely predictable. The glee with which a terrible natural disaster has been seized as yet another stick with which to bash Bush has been odious. No one would argue that the relief efforts in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane were not chaotic, slow and unimpressive. But the blame for that can be laid primarily with the corrupt, shambolic local government in Louisiana as much as with the federal authorities. There was a monumental screw-up when it came to evacuating the area, especially the failure to bus out the poor, black residents of the inner city ghettos. For three days, the powers-at-be seemed to freeze like rabbits in the headlights. The sheer scale of the devastation over-whelmed them. There has been comparisons with the tsunami in South East Asia. But there are vital differences. A tsunami is a giant flash flood. The waters rise and subside in minutes. A hurricane can hang around for days, dumping billions of gallons of water in one place. One of the storms which laid waste to the east coast of Florida last year took 36 hours to pass. I managed to get out of Florida on one of the last planes before they closed the airport because of Hurricane Frances. Friends who stayed on said it took up to 72 hours for relief efforts to kick in to full swing. One of the problems is that when a hurricane approaches the sensible thing to do is move all rescue vehicles, helicopters, heavy equipment, buses, planes and boats as far out of the path of the storm as possible. The downside is that while the vital plant and machinery is undamaged, it takes time to get them back to where they are needed. All those sneering at the tardy response to Katrina would have been the first to point an accusing finger if all the rescue planes, cranes and automobiles had been left in place in New Orleans and been turned into scrap metal by the devastating power of the storm. That would have been Bush's fault, too, no doubt. Inevitably, Bush-haters have managed to drag the war in Iraq into it. If only US troops hadn't been in Baghdad they could have been in New Orleans more quickly, they claim. Not true. The Iraq war had zero impact on the relief effort. The state of Louisiana had 7,000 National Guardsmen to deploy as soon as the roads became passable. What took them so long is a question the governor of Louisiana has to answer. None of this is intended to detract from the awfulness of the situation in New Orleans, nor the hell on earth endured by those trapped in the city as Katrina did her worst. Its merely an attempt to put into perspective the pig-ignorant jubilation of some British commentators who can see no further than their own perverse hatred of America, and Bush in particular - even at a time of harrowing human tragedy. They are certain they know what went wrong and who is to blame, even though they've never had to suffer anything more spectacular than Michael Fish's (UK weather man) 1987 hurricane, which blew down a few trees and crushed a couple of Citroen 2CVs in Hampstead (uk). Bush may not have covered himself in glory last week but this is a time for prayer, for support, for aid, for donations for the unfortunate people of New Orleans. It shouldn't be an excuse for a ghoulish exhibition of pathetic political point scoring. Thank's for letting me post.

8 The real shocking part of the revised death estimate is that SOMEHOW thousands of these poor people, without cars, managed to self-evacuate (and survive.) ...Despite the apparent attempt by Democrats to let them die and be tools for political gain.

9 You must have watched Charlie Rose. I saw the same interview and thought exactly the same thing. How can a Tsunami that did so much destruction be worse. While there may be similarities between the flooding in New Orleans and the Tsunami. Those stop quickly. However there may be a closer match to the destruction in Mississippi, where Bilioxi was devastated. Even with that it is hard to believe people would actually say the Gulf Coast is worse for any reason other than emotional.

10 Life is an illusion a day for the MSM. Facts have little relevance in their BSD infected world. Katrina is just today's, Cindy Sheehan, there will son be another, so stay tuned.

11 There will be no indepenent corroboration of the official body count. The military have taken over the search area and banished the press. Residends (witnesses) are being evicted. Offical body count numbers will be coming from high ranking military officers. The Pentagon has shown its eager willingness to supress information and generate disinformation that supports adminstration taking points. In light of these facts can anyone have confidence in official death numbers?

12 They are American lives. That makes them more valuable. That makes the disaster worse.

13 The Libs have wanted us to lose in Iraq so they can blame Bush, and now they are already starting to sound dissapointed that not as many people died in the hurricane as they were hoping for because how better to blame Bush than high casualties. So predictable, so despicable.

14 Geez, the Frenchies killed off 10,000 of their old people with one measly heatwave and we can't even kill 10,000 with a frickin' Cat 5 hurricane? What's wrong with us.

15 Apparently life is an illusion a day for Jack too.

16 Actually Jack, with loved ones waiting and willing on the fucking phone, the need to keep the body count accurate is tremendous. If there is ANY discrepancy, you can be sure it will be caught and then rectified. Keep your conspiracy theory nonsense to yourself please, thanks. To do otherwise is slander (and last time I checked, against the law).

17 Libs like Jack are positively drooling for a high body count. Being "outraged" is so addictive.

18 I knew that the loony left was sick, but not just how sick until I saw what they said about Judge Renquist on DU and what they are doing to tear this country assunder since the hurricane. Australia is beginning to look better and better each passing day.

19 Oh, it's real simple to call this a worse tragedy than the tsunami. Simply trot out the economic numbers. Since NO and the Gulf Coast property is worth hundreds of billions of dollars in real estate damaged/destroyed/affected, you can claim that the economic losses exceed those in the South Asian tsunami. And that's pure BS - because as others have already pointed out, the tsunami killed more than 270,000 people. Let that sink in. Just because their economic situation was not comparable to a US citizen killed or displaced doesn't mean that this disaster was somehow greater or lesser than the tsunami. They are American lives. That makes them more valuable. That makes the disaster worse.That sums up the media position. They are completely different events, and the comparisons are rediculous.

20 Dem, I hate to say this, but the reason someone like Cokie Roberts thinks NOLA is worse is because, like, you could see the beach right after the tsunami, and you can't in New Orleans. And it's, like, so easy to put those little grass huts back up, but the French Quarter will take a lot more time and money to fix. I wish I were kidding. And Jack, I'm sick of the "banished the press" meme. Those self-important blowhards have no useful purpose, though lefty "watchdogs" would like to think otherwise. The story here is: big, bad storm, crappy response by locals, left/MSM blames Bush, MSM kicks "disaster porn" coverage into high gear. You can write that from DC or New York. Going there means you see the looters - I mean "takers," and we can report the "racism" from back home, too. Brian Williams on The Daily Show the other night should tell you everything you need to know: "The cops made us move to the other side of the street." The Outrage! It's not like they're trying to get anything done other than muzzle the press, right? Dude, write a check, then pick up a hammer.

21 Well now, that would make Cokie a provincial racist, wouldn't it? It's worse for a smaller number of Americans to die than a vast number of brown Muslims? Tsk, tsk, bad Cokie. No appointment to the Hillary administration.

22 Kookie cokie roberts just balbbering again what next?

23 There are two ways to err in discovering truth: 1. Fail to accurately observe. 2. Fail to deduce logical conclusions from observations. The most common failing on the left is #2. They see clearly but employ faulty reasoning in reaching conclusions. On the right, logical linkage is strong but based on false premises. This is seen clearly in the analysis of gov't response to hurricane Katrina. By working backwards from desired conclusions, conservatives build arguments based on non-observations. As true today as when written by the Greek philosopher Demosthenes in 349 B.C.: "Nothing is so easy as to deceive one's self; for what we wish, we readily believe."

24 No Jack, it's the Left that works backwards. They want to believe the worst about their country so they manufacture the "facts" that will get them there. You WANT there to be a rightwing coverup of the truth so that it confirms everything you already believe about the Right, so you'll find that coverup, mark my words.

25 How in Christ's name do we succeed in making the issue of dead people and a destroyed part of the country into a Left vs Right debate? Every subject is Right versus Left. The sole purpose of this blog is to translate any topic into this polemic. The big picture is a tad more complicated, people. Crouching in our respective trenches, we watch the news and start forcing it into our "paradigm". There is God, there are Republicans and there are Democrats. Is it because we can't grasp anything more complex than good versus bad? Let's put some effort into this. Or am I being snotty nosed?

26 Bruce, just follow the blame trail and see who did what. You'll find that we evil conservatives started trying to raise money for relief, whereas the enlihgtened liberals whipped themselves into a frenzy of a race-baiting blame game. It's not Right v. Left, it's liberals against reality, sanity, and deceny. Thier actions prove once againt that they are vile, subhuman scum who should all be shot.

27 IM, hear hear. It is the Left that has politicized this, and when we respond we're accused of politicizing it by the very same scum we're responding to. They're insane scum every last one of them.

28 Hondo: Did a quick search and can't find anything to back up your Cokie Robert's thing. She may be a lib but I doubt she's stupid. Hold off awhile on the deathtoll. She just made a comment during an interview on Charlie Rose, so it's unlikely you'd be able to google it. I'm sure others heard it though. In fact a commenter named Dean Reese reports: You must have watched Charlie Rose. I saw the same interview and thought exactly the same thing. How can a Tsunami that did so much destruction be worse. So there yah go. Matt: Thanks for posting. I agree with most of what you said. The essence of the problem is jurisdictional disputes, and when you think about it that's also the essence of the problem regarding terrorism. If national sovereignty were not an issue Saddam Hussein would have simply been arrested and convicted of serial murder ages ago. The notion that there's any justification for allowing him to stay in office, which is basically the left's point, is just plain nonsense in any realistic assessment of the world-as-we-know-it. YOu're either for civilization or you're against it. Bluto: Well now, that would make Cokie a provincial racist, wouldn't it? It's worse for a smaller number of Americans to die than a vast number of brown Muslims? She's no guiltier than the rest of us probably, but the difference is that she's so partisan she doesn't even realize what she's saying. The further people are from us in terms of family and social connectedness the less concerned we are about them, but only the Left seems to take it's sainthood so seriously that they fail to recognize their own prejudice, both in terms of "brown devaluation" and anti-semitism. I'm getting pretty sick of their self-righteousness, actually. They're as bigotted a bunch of people as anyone I know. Jack: On the right, logical linkage is strong but based on false premises. This is seen clearly in the analysis of gov't response to hurricane Katrina. By working backwards from desired conclusions, conservatives build arguments based on non-observations. Well, isn't in just the opposite? The Right are empirical to a fault, so that they actually count bodies of the dead instead of making projections based on theoretical assumptions. But more to the point the Left actually came into being as a result of the "interpretive turn" in Western Philosophy, whereby empirical evidence was devalued in favor of subjective impressions. The Left is interpretive and non-empirical while the Right is objective and empirical. The latter can lead to mistakes if our knowledge of facts about a certain situtaion, or our theoretical analysis, is incomplete. But it's hard to argue that teh Left fills that gap very effectively. Bruce: As for the problem of partisanship, well all I can say is that Cokie did it, not me. Clearly N.O. is not worse than the 2004 Tsunami, so she was just being hyperbolic. How you interpret the "why" of that is up to you, but my interpretation is that the Left lost the argument over social and economic, and even foreign policy so now they're trying an emotional appeal related to natural disasters. Hey, this isn't hard to figure out.