The Heretik mourns.

NOT JUST NEW ORLEANS But I am underwater today. I swim to the surface to find a President who is only surface. We are in the flood as New Orleans washes away, New Orleans of the South, the New Orleans of America, New Orleans the most South American of cities, the Carribean delight in life, voodoo victory and vengeance over a tight white collar.

NOT JUST NEW ORLEANS But we are awash in a coming sea of conformity. New Orleans is home to the wild heart that will not have a cage. I take inspiration from that most holy and profane place and pray that city of wonder and we the people will not just endure but thrive again under a more kind sun. Laissez les bons temps roulez.

Other responses to what's happening....

Jenn at reappropriate:

In New Orleans, there's no electricity, no food, no sewage, and no way out. There're dead bodies floating in the water and dysentery is spreading. This morning, there were at least two instances of anonymous snipers firing aimlessly at medical convoys. Anyone who claims that Americans are above the basic brutality of the human condition need only look how quickly desperate men lose all pretense at civility. And, in many cases, rightly so -- these are men who have been abandoned by their government. Bush's incredible empathy for the victims of 9/11 has evaporated in the face of this tragedy; his first response to the disaster was to fly over head and survey the damage, and he still has yet to reach out to the hurricane survivors. Metropolitan New Yorkers seem to ping on Bush's empathy radar, but poor Americans, most of them people of colour, seem to be under heavy cloak.

Jill at Feministe:

What Really Caused Katrina?
Water vapor, warm air, condensation and wind, you say? Oh you sad, sad blue-stater, you just don’t get it, do you? Courtesty of that science-loving radical right, we now know that hurricanes are caused by evil feminists aborting their babies for fun. Except, well, sometimes they’re caused by the sodomites. And occassionally, it’s boobies and Girls Gone Wild. Many of these same sinners also caused 9/11.

Diane at DED Space:

If you have any friends in New Orleans' gay community, you'll be proud to know that they have been accused of causing the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The storm hit the city right before the annual Southern Decadence Festival, which brings out a strong anti-gay contingent every year. Repent America, the main opposition group to the festival, has declared that "this act of God has destroyed a wicked city."

...and on MoJoBlog:

Here is a sampling of what some conservatives are saying about the situation in New Orleans:

On reading about New Orleans' well-known multiculturism:
"I was going to donate a few buck but after hearing that I think I'll go buy a pizza instead."

On the city's poor:
"These people have no room to complain. They have not lost anything! For the most part they have been living off the government for years already."

Some religious wisdom:
"Sometimes God helps those who help themselves."

On the chaos:
"Enjoy it, liberals. Hope you're proud."

On a homeless man viewing his dead loved one on the street:
"[He] belongs to that cohort of useless able-bodied males who couldn't think their way out of a paper bag if left on their own."

On being trapped in 20 feet of water:
"You were told...everyone must evacuate. So take your bitching somewhere else."

Jesse on Pandagon:

Let's address this now: if you don't have a car, or if you have a poorly functioning car, or if you simply have relatives living elsewhere in the city or the state that you want to make sure are safe before you leave them behind, you had a reason to stay. I understand that many people think that in a disaster, they'd be the clear, cool-headed savants who engineer the mass exodus of everyone they care about to a safe spot, and head back to swoop up the left-behind babies and puppies before having hot cot sex with the drenched co-ed they pulled from an overturned Geo Metro. In real life, however, you're in a mass panic trying to figure out where your sister is, if your parents heard the news, if you're going to have enough of your son's medication to keep him healthy. For all the concern for the victims, it seems as if we're back to the "root causes" debate that's made the War on Terror so beautifully hateful - if you ever bring up why someone might stay in an area about to hit by disaster, you're simply excusing a pathology of victimhood...or somesuch nonsense.

Jeff at culturekitchen:

I'm watching CNN right now, something I generally don't do. They're mainly discussing Katrina. They just interviewed a man who has lost his wife. Their house split and he was trying to hold onto her. She told him, "You can't hold me. Take care of the kids." Now she's gone. I sat down and started crying. I wish I could understand him so I could put her name up here. This is devastating. People need help.

Jessica at feministing has links for many donation efforts.

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