Let’s play a game called “supposin’.”

Supposin’ there was a natural disaster where thousands of your fellow citizens were killed and many hundreds of thousands more in dire need of assistance.

Supposin’ you were a blogger who just recently helped raise more than $400,000 in less than 3 weeks for a political candidate who called his former Commander in Chief a chickenhawk.

Supposin’ you had a choice between writing about ways to help the victims of this horrendous natural disaster or writing about how much you hate the President.

Supposin’ you had a choice between getting behind an heroic internet wide campaign to raise money in a completely bi-partisan manner for the people of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi or being a complete twit and nincompoop by trying to blame the President for An Act of God.

Of course, all of this is completely hypothetical, right? I mean, liberal bloggers are FAMOUS for their compassion, yes? They are RENOWNED for the oceans of tears they’ve shed for the poor, the oppressed, society’s “little people.”

Well…looks like compassion has taken a vacation on the left side of the sphere this week.

The mobilization of righty blogs to aid in disaster relief has been breathtaking in its speed and generosity. In fact, visiting sites like Instapundit and Michelle Malkin, one is in danger of being overloaded with information about various charities, websites for specific needs, and links, links links that connect to news about the disaster.

On the left, it’s bash Bush and let the devil take the people of the Gulf coast.

Let’s examine the top several blogs of both the left and right and see what people are talking about today, shall we?

CALLOUS CONSERVATIVE SITES (By Rank)

1. Instapundit has links to dozens of charities, information on corporate sponsorship, what other bloggers are doing as well as being the originator of the idea for the Hurricane Blog Burst set for tomorrow.

2. Michelle Malkin has worked tirelessly, posting hourly updates with valuable links to agencies and individuals to help find missing relatives, ways to help now, ways to help in the future, as well as posting some extraordinarily dramatic news reports that got everybody off their butt in the first place.

4. Powerline offers a link to Instapundit (why duplicate what’s been done already?) as well as giving some immediate historical perspective to the damaging storm by referencing the story of the 1927 Mississippi River flood – an event that some think was the greatest natural disaster in American history prior to Katrina.

5. The Captain also links to Instapundit was well as urging his 25,000 daily readers (many of them bloggers) to participate in the Blog Burst tomorrow.

6. Little Green Footballs reprints Instapundit’s links and has had several open threads where commenters have supplied untold number of helpful links.

10. Hugh Hewitt has been a traffic cop, directing readers and other bloggers to sites like NZ Bear who has set up a “Community of Katrina Relief Bloggers” with the blog name and the name of the charity they’ll be blogging for tomorrow.

Pretty impressive for less than 48 hours, eh? Let’s saunter over to the compassionate left and see what they’ve been up to, OK?

COMPASSIONATE LIBERAL SITES (By Rank)

3. Daily Kos. Bush bashing, Bush bashing, war bashing, an open thread for Bush bashing on the Hurricane, Roberts, and Bush bashing. While its true that Kos is bashing Bush in the context of the Hurricane, I wonder if, you know, it would have been better to wait until after the bodies cooled off a bit and people stranded in totally dark attics with water up to their necks were like, you know, rescued.

But hey! That’s just me…

13. Eschaton. Gleeful reporting of gas lines in Atlanta. Bash conservatives. Bash really stupid conservatives. Bash Jonah Goldberg. Bash Bush. Bash Andrew Sullivan (well…you got me there.) Bash Bush. Bash Bush.

Atrios didn’t even bother with Hurricane relief. I mean, why let a silly natural disaster that’s taken the lives of thousands of your fellow citizens stand in the way of a good opportunity to score political points at the expense of dead bodies floating in raw sewage?

16. Kevin Drum. Bash the American people (for good reason). Bash Bush. Bash Bush. Bash Bush. I-Pod. Bash Bush. Drum didn’t even bother to bash the President using the Hurricane as context.

Just business as usual. Drum yawns and scratches his scrotum while people in Biloxi, Mississippi sit on the ground and weep about losing everything.

17. Huffington Post. The first five posters in order: An actual link to the Red Cross! Bash Bush. Bash Bush. Bash Bush. Bash Republicans.

You’d think Ariana would plaster her dog-ugly blog with links to relief organizations and the like. I guess it’s just easier to sit on the sidelines and kibbutz while people in Slidell, Louisiana walk through waist deep water choked with debris and dead bodies.

18. Talking Points Memo. The inevitable “didn’t want to but can’t resist” Bush bashing. Iraqi dead. Bush Bash. Bush Bash. Plug for his other blog.

Marshall should go back to sleep. Either that or at least express some emotion other than hate and disgust for the President. Come to think of it, I’m sure ole Josh doesn’t lose a minute of shut eye over the fact that tens of thousands of his fellow citizens (even if they are goober chewing yahoos from Red America) are without jobs and now live in areas where the likelihood of finding gainful employment so that they can feed their families over the next several months is just about zero.

The bile that’s been rising in my throat all day long has spilled out onto this post. I’ve watched over the last few years as the left has given aid and comfort to our enemies in Iraq, at times openly cheering for an American defeat on the field of battle just so that the President’s standing with the American people would be lowered and they could gain political advantage.

I can’t even speak to their rationalizing the looting going on in New Orleans. The kind of twisted logic it takes to encourage people to steal another’s property – not food mind you, but other people’s possessions – is I believe the most egregious example of cynicism and outright evil thinking that I have seen on the political landscape in 30 years.

And now the treasonous louts have been exposed for the hypocrites they truly are. When Bush bashing trumps the absolute vital necessity of pulling together as Americans so that we can save lives as well as property not to mention saving one of the most beautiful cities on the planet, then it’s time for those on the rational left to make a decision. Will you continue to support Kos and his midget-brained minions in their blindly striking out at anything Bush, or will you put your foot down and say “no more.?” I’m not saying join the Republican party. Hell, given some of the crap they’ve pulled recently I wouldn’t recommend anyone join them. But if you’re not willing to try and make a difference in your own party to cure this nauseating sickness of mind and soul, then you are just as guilty as any of the paranoid, dirty necked galoots who are running the Democratic party.

UPDATE

More on the compassionate left from Newsweek’s Howard Fineman who writes an entire article on how Katrina coming so close to 9/11 will be Bush’s “tipping point.” The Academic Elephants have a clue:

It had not occurred to me to cast the Katrina-9/11 pairing in political, rather than historical, terms until Fineman bravely blazed the trail. I can understand why he sees a link, but I think his conclusion is dead wrong. Fineman suggests that Bush needs to take a page from his brother’s playbook, and imitate Jeb’s response to the hurricanes that buffeted Florida last year. I maintain that Jeb was himself imitating his older brother—that same older brother who almost four years ago stood in the rubble of the World Trade Center and gave the famous “I Can Hear You…” speech. That is the Bush we will see over the next weeks—that we are already seeing, for that matter.

Absolutely spot on. You want to get political Howard? You should know by now that in times of national crisis people will rally to the President if he asks them to.

That’s Bush’s next speech. And you Howard, will look like you are engaging in wishful thinking instead of hardnosed political analysis which is what we assume Newsweek pays you for.

UPDATE

The Commissar has gone me more than one better as he compares side by side many of the same lefty blogs with righty blogs on hurricane relief coverage. This proves not only that great minds think alike but that they are also attached to extraordinarily good looking and successful people – at least from my end.

This concentration on Bush bashing instead of raising money for your fellow human beings who are in dire need has shown up in the starkest possible way.

Here are the total amount raised as of 6:30 PM central time today by the liberal blogad site and the NZ Bear mostly conservative sites:

Liberal: $124,700
Conservative: $488,000

Gee…do ya think that if Kos and Atrios had paused for a few hours to raise some money for desparate people rather than trying to score political points they wouldn’t leave themselves wide open to this kind of criticism?

Nuf said…

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

Hour by torturous hour, the news grows ever grimmer. An event unlike any other in modern industrialized history is taking place right before our eyes. The stories of individual heroism and mob cowardice are obscuring the real story – a story that simply cannot be told because the modern human mind is incapable of processing the images, the words, and the stories they’re telling and make any kind of a coherent narrative or sense out of it.

It is quite simply beyond belief, beyond understanding, and beyond anything in our experience. No modern industrialized city has ever experienced anything like New Orleans is going through in the aftermath of Katrina.

Don’t talk to me about London, Berlin, or Tokyo and the trials that those cities endured during World War II. There is nothing remotely to compare with what’s happening to New Orleans. Those cities were destroyed relatively slowly over a period of years (Berlin and London) or months (Tokyo). But the Noahic flood that now engulfs more than 80% the Crescent City has subsumed not just buildings and people, it has washed away the thin veneer of civilization and brought to the surface behaviors and emotions more suited to the African savannas where modern Homo Sapiens first began to dominate the planet rather than the city streets where until just a few days ago, people were laughing, walking, singing, playing music – living.

What, after all, is civilization? At it’s core, human civilization represents an agreement between people not to kill each other. The only way millions of strangers can live together in relative peace in big cities is by recognizing the unspoken agreement that when walking down the street and approaching someone you don’t know, one refrains from the natural human impulse of fighting for your life. Usually, both parties are in agreement on this singular principal and the hundreds of encounters with strangers we have every day pass unnoticed amid the hustle and bustle of city life.

This is the compact of civilization. I won’t kill you if you won’t kill me. It’s maintained by something even more tenuous; faith. Faith in the strictures an organized society places on people who break the compact as well as faith in the people and institutions who are charged with the task of enforcing those strictures. This shared community of faith works pretty well for all except the social misfits and anti-social galoots who prey upon the weak like predators in a jungle. For the rest of us, we form little islands of support in this larger community – neighbors, our church, our sports teams – which allows us the luxury of feeling less vulnerable to the predators, less alone amidst the millions of strangers.

But something has happened in New Orleans that is unprecedented. We’ve seen it happen on a smaller scale during other natural disasters. The looting, the anger, the despair was evident in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in Florida. However, while the area damaged by Andrew may have been just as large as the swath of total destruction left by Katrina, Andrew never quite destroyed the spirit of community and shared faith which allowed Floridians to maintain a patina of civilization that kept them from lunging at each other’s throats and descending to the level of animals whose only thought was of obeying the primal instinct present in all of us for self preservation.

Make no mistake. Unless something truly dramatic happens in the next 48 hours, the situation in New Orleans will degenerate into something heretofore seen only in refugee camps and places like Somalia. People will start forming themselves into mobs for protection. And those mobs will start fighting both the authorities and each other for scarce resources as people get hungrier and thirstier by the hour. We already have seen property owners setting up their own security patrols in sections of downtown. This is from a New Orleans blogger:

Since it’s war out there, I figure it’s time to go back to my military ways.

Camp Crystal is locked down for the night. Team SOTI (that’s the crew up here) has broken up into 3 squads. Squad 1 is on diesel detail. Squad 2 is on patrol. Squad 3 is on service and support.

The Final Protective Line is Poydras Avenue. All avenues of approach are secure. Stand to is at 0600.

The cops were out in force on Poydras until just a few moments ago. Not sure what they were upto.

The blogger has a fairly clear picture as to what’s happening on the ground:

I guess what I’m saying is there’s no need to focus on us here, because we’re gonna make do. We need to worry about preventing the city from consuming itself, because the looting is getting nuts, the waters are rising in many heretofor unflooded sections, and there’s no timeline available for power, food, water, medicine and the like for the masses.

If you have any survival tips, feel free to toss in your input. I’ve got a lot of survival training, but we’ve never trained for the total collapse of civilization (or I should say, my only training in that regard was from a military perspective).

The “total collapse of civilization” is right around the corner and there’s nothing really to stop it. The authorities first priority is to save the living. Since so many are stranded, trapped, injured, or lost – numbers that may be in the tens of thousands – this is a process that will take days. In the meantime, the flood waters keep rising, the dead go unattended, the looting is getting out of control, people in shelters are getting close to open revolt, and the chances for complete and utter chaos that would cost the lives of thousands of people grows hourly.

Something or someone must intervene to restore the one commodity that could head the chaos off at the pass and put the evil genie of anarchy back in the bottle. That one commodity is hope. Unless people have hope that things are eventually going to get better and get better quickly, they will succumb to the siren song of mobocracy and tear New Orleans to shreds. As it stands now, we’re a hairsbreadth from open warfare in the streets. And if no one can step forward – the Mayor, the Governor, or even President Bush – and give the residents of New Orleans confidence in the future, people will look to their present circumstances and act accordingly.

That way lies madness.

UPDATE: STREAMING COVERAGE

I’ve been glued to this feed from WDSU in New Orleans. It’s getting worse people. Water is still rising due to some confusion yesterday involving the Army Corps of Engineers and some Blackhawk helicopters that were supposed to drop huge, 3000 pound sandbags into the levee breach at 17th street in New Orleans. In fact, all day yesterday CNN and Fox were reporting that this was being done.

In fact, it was never done. Mayor Nagin reports that the copters were diverted to rescue up to 1000 people who were trapped by flood waters and had taken refuge in a church. They’re going to try again today, but the Mayor is obviously frustrated. He has complained that “there are too many cooks” in the kitchen, obviously alluding to FEMA and other federal and state entities who are involved.

Two major situations need to be taken care of in the next 48 hours if New Orleans is to avoid the fate I write about above; the Superdome must be evacuated and the 17th Street levee must be plugged. The mayor reports that if that levee keeps emptying water into the city the entire city will be under at least 9 feet of water.

That’s the entire city.

The problem with the Superdome is unbelievable. Evidently, guns and knives have been smuggled in and there have been 3 shootings in the last 12 hours. Unless those people are dispersed, the situation could get completely out of control and we’d have a war on our hands. That’s why the Governor has ordered the evacuation. The problem is how do you get 20,000 people out of a flooded city?

We’ll know more in the next 12 hours. As always, keep checking with Michelle Malkin for round-ups and breaking news.

UPDATE II: RUMOR ALERT

The report from WDSU of shootings in the Superdome have not been confirmed by any other news organ. In fact, the station’s own site doesn’t mention any shooting incidents at the Dome either. The report came from an on-air interview with a reporter. He was obviously repeating a rumor he had heard.

I apologize for helping to spread that rumor and it points up the need for all of us to be careful about what is published.

The torrent of invective pouring from the mouths of the left directed toward President Bush in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is startling in its ferocity. The speed and eagerness that they have jumped down the President’s throat makes one question whether any spark of human decency exists among people who see political gain to be had from a disaster where thousands of dead bodies lie floating amidst the flotsam and jetsam of Katrina’s wake.

They are cheering on the looters. They are pushing pet leftist agenda items like global warming. They are railing against the war by blaming the President for taking National Guard units away from states affected by the disaster. Any and all political openings they either sense or imagine are being shamelessly exploited.

It’s enough to make decent people vomit.

I frankly don’t have the words to describe the utter contempt I hold for these leftist lickspittles. There is nothing they can say or do at this point that will convince me that their criticisms directed toward Republicans, the right, and the President is in the best interests of the people affected or of the United States. It is nothing more than pure, unadulterated politics. They seek to gain a political advantage on the the backs of the dead bodies of their fellow citizens. They are using the suffering of the living to tear down the President in time of crisis.

There are times – this is one of them – where I almost wish we could accommodate the left’s fantasy by tearing up the constitution and putting them in concentration camps. They’ve been screaming so long that the day is coming when Bush will become a dictator and stifle their dissent that it becomes more and more tempting to make their ridiculous paranoia a reality. Along with the “imminent military draft,” stolen elections, and other idiotic fancies, there has never been a group so divorced from reality, so mired in hubris and contempt for the intelligence of their fellow citizens, in the history of the United States.

Their descent into hell is complete. Let’s all throw another log on the fire and participate in their total damnation.

The vote is in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner going away in the Council category is Gates of Vienna for “An Open Letter to Cindy Sheehan.” Finishing second was Dr. Sanity’s “Shame, the Arab Psyche, and Islam.”

Finishing first in the non-Council category was Alpha Patriot’s “Israeli Pride, Israeli Angst.”

If you’d like to participate in this week’s Watcher’s Vote, go here and follow instructions.

WTOP is reporting that the Pentagon now says “there’s no reason to doubt the specific recollections” of Able Danger team members that the top-secret data mining operation had unearthed specific information about at least one of the 9/11 hijackers more than a year before the attack.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon appears to have reversed its position on Able Danger, the Army intelligence collection team.

A Pentagon spokesman now says “there’s no reason to doubt the specific recollections” of the growing number of team members. The team members say the project had pre-Sept. 11 intelligence on al Qaida, which Defense Department lawyers prohibited them from sharing with the FBI.

Well now, that’s a horse of a different color, wouldn’t you say?

We’ve gone from categorical denials on the part of the 9/11 Commission that no such information was given to the Commission, to admitting that the information was not considered “historically relevant, to to a belief by the Pentagon that the information about Able Danger is indeed somewhere…or at least it was.

And the Captain’s speculation about the civil liberties ramifications being the reason why the Pentagon has been so reluctant in coming forward on this appear to be spot on.

Smith says data was gathered from a variety of sources, including about 30 or 40 individuals, but one day it all came to a grinding halt. So why did that happen?

“The I.G. (inspector general) came in and shut down the operation because of a claim that we were collecting information on U.S citizens,” says Smith.

It turned out to be more than just a claim.

“On some of my charts I had links to U.S citizens,” he says.

Smith notes that it’s illegal for the military to collect intelligence on U.S. citizens.

Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., has alleged a Pentagon coverup regarding Able Danger and is seeking congressional hearings on the matter. Weldon has said coverup will “shake the country to its roots.”

Before we get out the rope to hang the boys at the Pentagon, let’s try and put this into a little context, shall we?

In pre-9/11 America (and to a large extent now) the Pentagon’s sensitivity toward violating civil liberties was a given. It must be said that this attitude was not due to any squeamishness on the part of Pentagon brass about snooping into the lives of private citizens but rather a culture terrified of scandal and blowback. Craig Henry pointed to the Tailhook scandal as a traumatic example of the culture at the Pentagon that wishes to avoid scandal at almost all costs. Couple this with the outright hostility from the executive branch during the Clinton years toward the military and intelligence communities – commented on by dozens of military aides who worked in both places – and you begin to see why Able Danger would have been seen as a lose-lose situation for the Pentagon. Not only were they spying on American citizens but any data gleaned from the operation would be useless in a court of law, the mindset of the time being to put terrorists in jail instead of the ground.

As I’ve asked before, could there have been a shredding party at the Pentagon in the days following 9/11? The fact that any documentation relating specifically to Able Danger and Mohamed Atta has failed to turn up would bolster such a case. And given the nature of the operation, it’s possible that they didn’t even wait for 9/11 to get rid of the incriminating evidence.

And someone put a sock in “Crazy Curt” Weldon’s yap and tell him to sit down and shut up. The revelations about Able Danger are revealing but will hardly “shake the country” when we get to the bottom of the mystery. That kind of hyperbole is why the Pentagon has been able to stonewall for so long. Any man who says that al Qaeda has 20 suitcase nukes already positioned throughout the United States waiting for the right moment to blow us all to kingdom come cannot be taken seriously. Better to let the grown ups on the Senate Judiciary Committee get the ball rolling with hearings. The sooner the better.

Thanks to AJ at Strata-Sphere for all the hard work and for the heads up. Also glad to see he’s given up on the Roman numerals for his updates – they were getting hard to read!

It appears that Hosting Matters, the hosting company for most of the big bloggers including Instapundit, Powerline, Captains Quarters, Wizbang, and NZ Bear is down.

Haven’t been able to connect to any of the big boys since about 7:30 this morning.

UPDATE

They appear to be back up for the moment. Matt in the comments to this post says that AT&T is having problems in the south with connectivity due to Katrina.

Reporters are for the most part a hard bitten lot. Inured as they seem at times to human suffering, journalists have been criticized more than once for intruding on a family’s grief or reporting from disasters as if it were a ballgame of sorts.

An exception was on display last night. Veteran CNN reporter Jeanne Meserve was reporting first hand from neighborhoods that were underwater in New Orleans last night and showed genuine feeling and emotion as she reported to Aaron Brown via satellite phone. Her voice, shaking with emotion Meserve gave the most mesmerizing first person account of a disaster I’ve ever heard:

It’s been horrible. As I left tonight, darkness, of course, had fallen. And you can hear people yelling for help. You can hear the dogs yelping, all of them stranded, all of them hoping someone will come.

But for tonight, they’ve had to suspend the rescue efforts. It’s just too hazardous for them to be out on the boats. There are electrical lines that are still alive. There are gas lines that are still spewing gas. There are cars that are submerged. There are other large objects. The boats can’t operate. So they had to suspend operations and leave those people in the homes.

As we were driving back, we passed scores of boats, Fish and Wildlife boats that they brought in. They’re flat bottomed. They’ve obviously going to put them in the water just as soon as they possibly can and go out and reach the people who are out there who desperately need help.

We watched them, some of them, come in. They were in horrible shape, some of them. We watched one woman whose leg had been severed. Mark Biello, one of our cameramen, went out in one of the boats to help shoot. He ended up being out for hours and told horrific tales. He saw bodies. He saw where—he saw other, just unfathomable things. Dogs wrapped in electrical—electrical lines who were still alive that were being electrocuted.

Brown asks her if rescue workers can communicate at all with those who are trapped:

They aren’t tonight. When the boats were in the water, as the boats went around through the neighborhood, they yelled. And people yelled back. But Mark, when he came back, told me that—that some of the people, they just couldn’t get to. They just couldn’t get to them. They couldn’t maneuver the boats in there.

Because this had happened before in Hurricane Betsy, there were many people who kept axes in their homes and had them in the attic in preparation for this. Some people were able to use those axes and make holes in their roof and stick their head out or their body out or climb up completely. But many others clearly didn’t have that. Most of the rescuers appeared to be carrying axes, and they were trying to hack them out as best they could to provide access and haul them out.

BROWN: I’m sorry. What…

MESERVE: There were also Coast Guard helicopters involved in it, Aaron, with the seat up (ph), flying overhead. It appears that when they saw someone on a rooftop, they were dropping flares, to try to signal the boats to get there.

BROWN: Is there any sense of—that there’s triage, that they’re looking to see who needs help the worst? Or they’re just—they were just getting to whomever they could get to and get them out of there?

MESERVE: I had the distinct impression they were just getting to whoever they could get to. I talked to one fire captain who’d been out in his personal boat. He said he worked an area probably 10 square blocks. He’d rescued 75 people. He said in one instance there were something like 18 people in one house, some of them young. One, he said, appeared to be a newborn.

Brown asks how high the water is:

MESERVE: Well, I can tell you that in the vicinity where I was, the water came up to the eaves of the house. And I was told by several rescue workers that we were not seeing the worst of it, that we were at one end of the Ward 9 part of the city and that there’s another part, inaccessible by road at this point, where the road—where the houses were covered to their rooftops. And they were having a great deal of problem gaining access down there. The rescue workers also told me that they saw bodies in that part.

BROWN: Any—you mentioned earlier that the water seemed to get progressively deeper. The walkway from this, if you don’t know, is just a question of tide moving in and tide moving out?

MESERVE: Well, I can tell you that the people who were rescued with whom I had a chance to speak told me that the water came up very suddenly on them. They said most of the storm had passed and what apparently was the storm surge came.

Some of them talked about seeing a little water on their floor, going to the front door, seeing a lot of water, going to the back door, seeing more bodies of water, and then barely having time to get up the stairs. One man I talked to was barefoot. He hadn’t had time to put on shoes. Another woman was in her housedress and flip-flops.

As for the water tonight and how fast it may be going up and down, and you know, I may not have the most current information about the tides, but I can tell you that downtown here the water seemed to be, I’d say, six inches or so deeper than it was when I left earlier this afternoon. It may be a totally situation—different situation…

Brown asks if Meserve has any idea how many people may be stranded. Here Meserve actually starts to cry:

MESERVE: Yes. Nobody has a sense of that. And may I say that the crew was extraordinary. We’ve had very difficult situations. Our cameraman is working with a broken foot since 9 a.m. this morning to try and get this story to you. Big words of praise for them and for Mark Biello, who went out and ended up in that water, trying to get the rescue boats over partially submerged railroad tracks. It was a heroic piece of work by CNN employees.

BROWN: Our thanks to you for your efforts. It—you don’t need to hear this from me, but you know, people sometimes think that we’re a bunch of kind of wacky thrill seekers doing this work, sometimes, and no one who has listened to the words you’ve spoken or the tone of your voice could possibly think that now. We appreciate your work.

MESERVE: Aaron, thank you. We are sometimes wacky thrill seekers. But when you stand in the dark, and you hear people yelling for help and no one can get to them, it’s a totally different experience.

BROWN: Jeanne, thank you. We’ll talk later tonight. Thank you.

Jeanne Meserve, been on the team for almost 15 years, I think. She is a very tough, capable, strong reporter, and she met her match on a story tonight.

Superior reporting told with a reporters eye and a human soul.

UPDATE

To keep abreast of events, for links to bloggers covering the disaster on scene, for links to agencies that need help, and for links to anything and everything to do with this disaster, visit Michelle Malkin at least once an hour for updates.

Talk about a journalist giving us the first draft of history, Michelle is doing it for the blogosphere.

Congress is still in recess. The President is still on vacation. Howard Dean has been tied up, gagged, and put into cold storage for a couple of weeks. Hurricane Katrina has knocked the Cindy Sheehan Show off the nets. Teddy Kennedy is waddling around Hyannis Port.

Where have all the cluebats gone?

We are, cluelessly speaking, in the doldrums. Now the doldrums is an actual place. I bet you didn’t know that. They’re located about halfway between Africa and South America. The trade winds coming from the south and the north meet near the equator. These converging trade winds produce general upward winds as they are heated, so there are no steady surface winds. Sailing vessels are routinely becalmed in the doldrums. And that’s pretty much where we find ourselves with this edition of the Carnival.

But fret not. The Senate Judiciary Committee will begin hearings next week on the Roberts nomination. I predict an avalanche of cluelessness coming from both Democrats and Republicans as the former sees Roberts as the devil incarnate and the latter as the resurrected spirit of Oliver Wendell Holmes. And Mr. Roberts will play along and try to answer questions from Senator Biden that will inevitably begin with “Now I don’t want to know your position on abortion, but…” which then turns into a grilling on the good judge’s position on abortion. If nothing else, it will be more entertaining than watching Congress trying to do something important like reforming Social Security or getting serious about illegal immigration.

So without further eloquence, here’s this week’s collection of clueless clodhoppers brought to you by some of the best writers on the web.

If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?
(Will Rogers)

Ah Will! Howard Dean and the Democrats asks themselves that question every day of the week!
(Me)

Cao of Cao’s Blog (pronounced “key”) features a Code Pink cluebat protesting against wounded soldiers in front of Walter Reed army hospital who’s cluelessness extends to a problem the young man has with sexual identification. And doesn’t he realize that one never accessorizes knits with cotton?

The Maryhunter of TMH Bacon Bits shows the error of Lewis M.Simons reasoning in his expert takedown of the ex-marine turned cluebat whose piece against the war appeared in last Sunday’s Washington Post Outlook section. Funny how logic and reason defeat hysteria and hyperbole every time.

The partying pachyderms at Academic Elephants have a good time goring Cluebat Hall of Famer Charlie Rangel who questioned Vice President Cheney’s fitness for office in aq radio interview. Says Rangel: “He’s got heart disease, but the disease is not restricted to that part of his body. He grunts a lot, so you never really know what he’s thinking. Quoth the Elephants: “[T]here is a sickness eating away at the left, which is allowing its hysterical and impotent rage lead it into increasingly paranoid fantasies about its opponents.”

Bob at Stop the ACLU brings us more complete stupidity from a group whose activities have less and less to do with “civil liberties” and more to do with enabling licentiousness. This time, the ACLU is trying to block the sale of optional internet filters to keep porn away from kids. Are the filters perfect? No in that they do occasionally filter out things like pictures of Michaelangelo’s David. But it’s hardly an issue for a group purporting to be upholding civil liberties.

Two Dogs at Mean ole Meany has become quite the pen pal of John Kerry. Despite unsubscribing twice from the Senator’s email list, (and being addressed in the salutation as “Dear Two”) they continue to allow Two Dogs to make them look like the idiots they really are.

Speaking of John Kerry, Pat over at Brainsters takes us down memory lane to relive some of Kerry’s pathetic attempts to look like a regular guy. Please note when trying to catch the football he has his eyes closed. Sort of symptomatic of not only his campaign for the presidency but his entire approach to public policy.

Fred Frey’s headline says it all: “UN Blames US for African Condom Shortage!” This comes as a surprise to US policy makers who eagerly support the use of condoms – along with abstinence and faithfulness to one’s partner – as the best way to stop the AIDS pandemic in Africa. That doesn’t stop UN bureaucrats from bashing the US whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Gullyborg at Resistence is Futile tackles the Governor of Oregon for raising emission standards for autos to the point that fewer new cars will be bought thus increasing pollution because older cars not subject to the same standards will still be on the road. Too much sense for a moonbat politician to digest.

Mark Rayner at The Skwib wrote a hilarious bit about Jon Carroll at the San Francisco Chronicle. The article in which Mr. Carroll tries to debunk ID, contains this eye opening bit of cluelessness: “Scientists have been studying the origin and nature of life on earth for at least 4,000 years.” Mark says, Uh-Huh: “Look at this ancient Egyptian centrifuge. Originally, we thought it was used to removed the liquefied brains out of skulls.” Hee.

Mark Coffey tears Frank Rich a new one for his column “The Vietnamization of Bush’s Vacation.” What is it about the left and Viet Nam? I mean, were the 60’s really all that great?

AJ at the Strata-Sphere has a frightening piece about some absent minded scientists in a couple of unamed Southeast Asian countries who just can’t seem to remember where they put some of that radioactive stuff like Cobalt and such. The Australian scientists who discovered that the stuff was unsecured refused to name the culprit countries until the material was under lock and key. Well, duh!

How about a little Mr Satire with your milk and cookies? Just make sure you put down the milk before you dig into “Venezuelan President Offers Free Gasoline and 10% Discount On Brain Smog Check To Americans” or “High Pregnancy Rate In High School Spurrs Debate About Intelligent Design And Evolution.” (Not safe for work)

Buckley F. Williams has found something that should have been as plain as The Nose on your Face. In fact, this revelation will rock the anti-war movement to its foundations. Cindy Sheehan is actually an out of work actor. And Buckley has the pictures to prove it!

From our “What else do you expect from a bunch of Euro-Twits” Department, Van Helsing brings us a stranger than fiction tale of a library in Denmark in which you can check out not only books, magazines, and movies but human beings as well. No, that’s not a misprint. Says the library Director: “The customers can rent a veiled Muslim woman and finally ask her all the questions they would never dare to ask if they met her on the street.” Isn’t that swell? The possibilities are endless. Maybe they can add a terrorist to their inventory. Or a serial killer.

Drew at Conservative Outpost rants against Mother Sheehan for her despicable comments about mothers who have lost a son in Iraq who support the President. Calling them “continue the murder and mayhem” moms” it seems that the less people pay attention to her, Mother Sheehan’s rhetorical excesses reach new heights of moonbattery, something Drew points out nicely.

Wonder Woman harangues Hugo Chavez for crying crocodile tears over Pat Robertson’s idiotic statements about assassinating him last week and asks Jesse Jackson a rather direct and pertinent question about criticizing people who advocate killing President Bush. I smell a double standard.

Not to be outdone, Tom Bowler finds out that some of the same people criticizing Robertson today said something eerily similar about Saddam just a few years ago. I think the left should have a meeting and decide which leaders we should be assassinating and which ones we shouldn’t. Just to clear up any misunderstandings.

Miriam from Miriam’s Ideas has an oldy but goody that questions the Jerusalem Post’s editorial policies. And I’m very happy to hear that she’s “pro-tango.” So am I.

Giacomo from Joust the Facts features the not-so-deep thoughts of Hollywood bad boy Sean Penn on his “peace” mission to Iran. What kind of hubris do you think it takes to actually believe that people are interested in anything you might have to say about Iran, Sean? We don’t even care what you have to say about Madonna anymore!

Kid Various from The Idiom Blog has a short, funny bit about stupid criminals. Cluelessness is indeed a policeman’s best friend.

Dave at Short Final, Cleared to Land takes on Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi regarding what had to be the most clueless editorial written last week. If generalities and formless bromides could win the War on Terror, Reid and Pelosi would go down in history as the architects of the winning strategy.

Mr. Right has a liberal’s interpretation of the Constitution. Hey! Why are there so many things crossed out? And some of that language looks a little unfamiliar.

Ken at Am I a Pundit Now Blog directs some well deserved scorn at Huffington Post as he praises the only poster at the site who makes any sense, Greg Gutfeld.

As Neddy at Kerfluffles points out, the liberals who run the Associated Press are a piece of work. The article criticizing the President’s gasoline expenditures as President got a lot of play this week, as well it should have. Such idiocy deserves to be highlighted.

Elisa at Boxer Watch has some interesting statistics about Cindy Sheehan, Iraq, and Jerry Springer as well as some real stupidity on the part of the American people. Example: 27% of Americans believe there is a cure for cancer but its being withheld by the healthcare industry. They can’t all be members of the Democratic Underground!

Finally, I take Cindy Sheehan on a Magical Mystery Tour.

Calling all bloggers!

You have until Monday night at 10:00 PM to get your entries in for this week’s Carnival of the Clueless.

Last week was the best yet with 35 entries from both the right and left side of the political spectrum hammering those individuals and groups among us who are truly clueless.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

Each week, I’ll be calling for posts that highlight the total stupidity of a public figure or organization – either left or right – that demonstrates that special kind of cluelessness that only someone’s mother could defend…and maybe not even their mothers!

Everyone knows what I’m talking about. Whether it’s the latest from Bill Maher or the Reverend Dobson, it doesn’t matter. I will post ALL ENTRIES REGARDLESS OF WHETHER I AGREE WITH THE SENTIMENTS EXPRESSED OR NOT..

You can enter by emailing me, leaving a link in the comments section, or by using the handy, easy to use form at Conservative Cat.

As Hurricane Katrina bears down on New Orleans and the people there brace themselves for what may turn out to be the most horrendous natural disaster in my lifetime, I’m struck by the shared nature of the emerging catastrophe. Most of us are glued to the TV watching the coverage of the news nets who for the most part have been sober and restrained in their commentary while at the same time giving frequent and informative weather updates from the National Hurricane Center for the millions of people whose homes and loved ones are in the path of this “hammer of God” as our ancestors may have put it.

It makes one feel pitifully small indeed to realize the enormous forces at work that in a very short time will knock our silly pretensions of being omnipotent for a loop. This storm will destroy in a few hours what it has taken man centuries to achieve. Things we take for granted – electrical power, sanitation, all the accoutrements of modern living – will be taken away with just a few breaths of the earth’s cardiovascular system. Scientists tell us that hurricanes are necessary to maintain balance in the atmosphere and the oceans. And as we’ve learned the hard way, the only thing you can do is get out of the way.

The focus of the entire nation is now on those cities and towns in the path of the monster. And as the disaster develops, we will be united as a community in our outpouring of support and sympathy for the victims. This is possible because our country is wired wall to wall with communciations technologies that our ancestors would have found almost magical. Not only will television and radio be covering this disaster, but bloggers also will be giving us frequent updates on the storm’s track and the local efforts to deal with the tragedy.

All of this got me thinking of how our ancestors dealt with events like this. The answer to that can be found in American folk music traditions and how songs about disasters became like tabloid news reports that informed the country of what it was like for the victims to live and die during events like hurricanes, ship wrecks, floods, and mining disasters.

Examples of such disaster songs can be found throughout the American songbook. Revell Carr who writes for the New York Journal of Folklore, found that songs of disasters have six basic elements:

1. The song describes actual historical events
2. The event features significant loss of life
3. Themes and motifs include unheeded warnings, human culpability, and divine retribution.
4. Stock formulae—most commonly the date of the tragedy, which usually appears at the beginning—are used both as mnemonic devices and as keys signifying the performance frame.
5. Voyeuristic and sensationalistic details give the song a tabloid quality:
6. The song conveys empathy for the victims and the survivors

The hurricane that struck Galveston, Texas in 1900 offers an example of folk music at its best; telling a story with narrative power while evoking an emotional response to the victim’s suffering. The song “A Mighty Day” was recorded by the Chad Mitchell Trio:

The trains they all were loaded
With people leavin’ town,
The tracks gave way to the ocean, Lord,
And the trains they went on down.

Now death your hands are icy.
You’ve got them on my knee.
You took away my mother now.
You’re comin’ after me.

That last verse is evocative of a more famous disaster song, Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald:

When supper time came the old cook came on deck
Saying fellows it’s too rough to feed ya
At 7PM a main hatchway caved in
He said fellas it’s been good to know ya.

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
If they’d put fifteen more miles behind her.

These songs were used in lieu of the nationalizing of grief that we take for granted today. Professor Carr:

Disaster songs like “The Lexington” serve as catalysts for communitas and help heal psychic wounds in the disaster’s aftermath, and they capitalize upon the common human urge to bear witness—all part of the same process of coping with the chaos and confusion of traumatic social dramas….

Disaster songs function as redressive action, communicating shared sentiments and emotions, through which a social bond with others can be solidified in the days and weeks following a disaster. The power of the ritualistic performance of the disaster song is linked to the profound experience of communitas inherent in the social drama of disaster….

Does the power of song still hold sway today? Following 9/11, a huge outpouring of emotion rocked American letters and the performing arts. The event was so transcendent that it could be said that only the Civil War brought more emotion to the surface through artistic expression.

The Civil War lasted 4 years and colored a generation of American artists for decades afterwards. But the effect of 9/11 has sadly been more transitory. In a very large way, the American artistic community has let the country down. Even though 9/11 colors our politics and affects the very definition of what America is and what it will become, it does not affect much of our cultural life. Execpt perhaps in the visual art of photography, there have been precious few artistic endeavors that have sought to explain 9/11 and make it part of our national narrative. Are we too close historically for that to happen? I don’t believe so. And what little has been written or displayed about that horrible day has largely taken the form of petty political shots at the President – not very elevating but typical of an artistic culture that seeks acceptance at Upper West Side cocktail parties rather than dealing with that event as the cultural earthquake it proved to be.

As I write this there’s a chance that the worst of the hurricane’s destructive power will miss New Orleans – good news for the city but bad news for someone else. And if the past is a guide, I’m certain that someone will be putting words to music in order to give voice to the powerful emotions engendered as we all witness the titanic forces of nature once again reminding us how small and insignificant we truly are in the scheme of the Almighty.