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One of the bigger stories to be addressed after Katrina victims are out of harm's way is: what caused the meltdown of the New Orleans Police Department? The New York Times had this story:

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 3 - Reeling from the chaos of this overwhelmed city, at least 200 New Orleans police officers have walked away from their jobs and two have committed suicide, police officials said on Saturday.

Some officers told their superiors they were leaving, police officials said. Others worked for a while and then stopped showing up. Still others, for reasons not always clear, never made it in after the storm.
. . .
Some patrol officers said morale had been low on the force even before the hurricane. One patrolman said the complaints included understaffing and a lack of equipment.

"We have to use our own shotguns," said the patrolman, who did not want to be identified by name. "This isn't theirs; this is my personal gun."

Another patrol officer said that many of the officers who had quit were younger, inexperienced officers who were overwhelmed by the task.

Some officers have expressed anger at colleagues who have stopped working. "For all you cowards that are supposed to wear the badge," one officer said on Fox News, "are you truly - can you truly wear the badge, like our motto said?"

Those NOPD officers who stayed at their posts are among the greatest heroes of this entire dreadful tragedy. But, somewhere on the list of things to dig into as we review the runup to this disaster, has to be "why did the NOPD collapse?"

When I received this story via e-mail, I was not inclined to believe it. First, it was sent without attribution. Second, there are certain elements of the story which do not ring true for me--both factual statements and the selection of language:

"real heroes and sheroes"

"So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money."
"These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans."

"Someone stole a water delivery truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts. Now secure with the two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity flowered. We organized a clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles."

"The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned."

". . . our C-rations had been confiscated at the airport because the rations set off the metal detectors. "

The overall timeline of the story also has some problems in my opinion. All of this conspire to make me skeptical. Subsequently, I discovered via Free Republic that the article was written by two California EMT union shop stewards, who said that they were attending an Emergency Medical Services conference in New Orleans (ironically enough) which wrapped up just as Katrina bore down on the city. So it is plausable that the authors were in fact in New Orleans. My initial skepticism has moderated somewhat but I am not yet entirely convinced that this is a completely factual first-person account of EMTs caught in the disaster.

I don't need to be convinced that New Orleans was a cluster**ck of the highest order. I do not doubt that elements of this story, perhaps the majority of the story, is plausable. I hope the media (traditional and new) chase this story down. But for now, I'll let it stand on its own. You decide. Here's the article:

A Gallup poll shows that the American public is again more temperate and rational than media reporters or bloggers:

When asked to identify who was most responsible for the problems in New Orleans after the hurricane, 38% of Americans said no one was really to blame, while 13% cited Bush, 18% the federal agencies, and 25% state and local officials.

The 13% who blaming Bush are the Loony Bush-hating left and can be dismissed as irrational, knee-jerk partisans. If you think of the 38-18-25 division as being an approximate estimate of where the responsibility lies, I think that would be just about right.

New Orleans officials start reviewing the damage to the Superdome:

Damage to the structure could hit $400 million, and it's unlikely the facility could be used for at least a year.

Superdome Commission Chairman Tim Coulon said the Dome will hire engineers and other consultants to assess the structural stability of the stadium. That will be done in the next few weeks, Coulon said.

Besides flooding, the Dome lost part of its roof as more than 20,000 evacuees huddled there in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"We have to do a damage assessment first,'' Coulon said. "It is premature to write the Dome off. But there has been substantial damage.''

Although a precise figure will not be available for weeks, damage may total $400 million, Coulon said.

With all of the (premature) focus on the Katrina Blame Game, I thought I might highlight a couple of elements which have risen to the challenge instead of succombing to despair and panic.

First, The U.S. military, personified by Lt. General Russel Honore:

Merely to get them here is a job, given that roads and airports are jammed with incoming cargo, and the troops must be sustained with food, water, communications facilities and medical care.

And their work must be coordinated with National Guard units and the dozens of other local, state and federal agencies at work. These include U.S. Border Patrol agents and Air Force security police in combat gear and federal and state civilian disaster workers from around the country.

On the air side alone, Army, National Guard, Navy, Marine and Coast Guard helicopters are swarming into a makeshift logistics base at the Superdome delivering boots, water and communications gear and evacuating sick and elderly refugees.

Honore is the commanding general of 1st Army, a headquarters based in Atlanta that oversees the mobilization and training of National Guard and reserve troops for Iraq. He has come to know hundreds of National Guard officers and commanders.

First Army's secondary mission is to coordinate military support to civilian authorities in a crisis, and it is in that capacity that Honore plunged into work on Katrina days before the storm hit last week.

He has a personal interest as well: His grown daughter was among the tens of thousands evacuated from New Orleans, and his son is serving in Iraq with a brigade of the Louisiana National Guard.

"So we feel the pain," Honore said.

And a sense of urgency. Over the weekend — during a long and hurried span that aides wearily described as typical — Honore rose at 4 a.m. Saturday and got back to bed at 2 a.m. Sunday for his typical two hours of sleep. His main sustenance seemed to be his ever-present cigars.

Put that man in charge of FEMA, now! Since Honore hit the ground, things happened and happened quickly. The Superdome was evacuated, the levees were repaired and the pumps began running after the U.S. Armed Forces were unleashed on the problem.

The utter debacle and vast human tragedy that is New Orleans has overshadowed the citizens and government of the State of Mississippi, which lost nearly 200 lives to Katrina. Geography played a big role--as I've pointed out before, New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. Still, Mississippi took the direct hit of Katrina. Mississippi is picking itself up and getting on with things:

While some coastal cities are faced with the task of clearing wrecked buildings and piles of debris, much of Waveland from the coast to the railroad tracks about a half-mile inland simply is gone. Smooth concrete pads are the measure of homes that once stood there.

From the second floor of a building at the city's wastewater treatment plant, about a mile away, Mayor Tommy Longo shouts into a cell phone, "I can't tell the difference between public and private property in my town," he said. "I've got debris 12 feet high."

The rules and regulations of disaster assistance don't work in a catastrophe of this size, he said. But Longo said he had made his peace with Gov. Haley Barbour and President Bush about the recovery efforts. He just wants to move on.

Mississippi is, relative to Louisiana, a success story. This in itself illustrates the enormity of the New Orleans disaster.

Did you know that the word "refugee" was racist? I didn't, either.

News organizations are struggling for the right word.

Many, including the Associated Press, have used "refugee" to describe those displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

But the choice has stirred anger among some, particularly in the black community. They argue "refugee" implies the displaced storm victims, many of whom are black, are second-class citizens -- or not even Americans.

"It is racist to call American citizens refugees," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said, visiting the Houston Astrodome on Monday. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have expressed similar sentiments.

If Jesse Jackson wants to find racism, he should start by looking in the mirror. Personally, I prefer the terms"victims" or "evacuees," as "refugee" tends to have a political component which does not exist here. In fact, I could easily argue that race-baters and witch-hunters should prefer the more politically charged "refugee" label to the more accurate "victim/evacuee" terms

"Refugee" is inaccurate. It isn't racist.

Another day, another Royals loss:

Emil Brown and John Buck each had two-run homers for the Royals, who have dropped four of five. Kansas City starter Jose Lima (5-14) got tagged with the loss after allowing five runs and 10 hits in six innings.

Royals need to go 19-7 to avoid 100 losses. That ain't gonna happen.

The Kansas City Star reports that Kansas City offers Kemper Arena as a part-time home for the New Orleans Hornets of the NBA:

Kansas City is one of several non-NBA cities volunteering their facilities to the Hornets. Oklahoma City, San Diego and Nashville have made offers, though it’s more likely the club would prefer to remain closer to home and play at LSU’s Pete Maravich Assembly Center in Baton Rouge or the University of Southwestern Louisiana’s Cajundome in Lafayette.

“We’ve made clear that we certainly would be responsive to that opportunity,” Barnes said Tuesday. “On the other hand, I understand that the team might very well want to be as close to New Orleans as possible. I think we’ve done everything that is appropriate for us to do, which is express our willingness to have the Hornets be here for a period of time.”

SportzAssassin has an opinion about the Hornets' owner George Shinn:

Most people around the organization and the league do say that this is all just rumors. The team has a long lease with the city and received a lot of fabulous cash and prizes for arriving on the Bayou.

And like a plague of locusts, Shinn is trying to go around the country and kill the NBA dreams of various cities. Though Charlotte has the brand spanking new Bobcats [and the new arena Shinn wanted]….attendance is still under 15,000. Only New Orleans, the ho-hum Hawks, the aforementioned Magic and the soon-to-be moving-to-Brooklyn Nets have smaller numbers attending games. But Shinn broke a lot of hearts in Charlotte….and some that are slow to accept a new team.

I stil would rather see an NHL team in Kansas City than an NBA team--even a part-time temporary NBA team.

Three American airlines are teetering on the brink, and it's uncertain that any of them will survive in their current form.

Delta sells planes, cuts back its Cincinaati hub in their battle to avoid bankruptcy:

Delta said that beginning Dec. 1, it will reduce mainline and Delta Connection carrier capacity in Cincinnati by 26 percent, while boosting the percentage of local traffic from 36 to nearly 50 percent.
. . .
In addition, Delta said it will accelerate the removal from service of its Boeing 767-200 aircraft type, the least efficient wide-body aircraft in its fleet. These aircraft are scheduled to be removed from service by Dec. 1, 2005, with the majority to be sold to ABX Air Inc.

United struggles to emerge from bankruptcy:

"People who assume that this is a done deal are making a mistake," said bankruptcy expert Bill Brandt, president and CEO of Chicago-based restructuring firm Development Specialists Inc. "It's a starting point, a structure. ... In many ways, for many of the parties in this case, it's 'Game on."'

The bankruptcy overhaul, initially expected to last 18 months, is now ensured to take more than three years-- complicated by higher fuel prices, the difficulties in obtaining two rounds of labor cuts and the failure to secure federal loan guarantees.

Northwest machinists strike drags on:

Several dozen strikers, members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, hurl insults at the "scabs" in the buses and flash hand gestures their mothers might not approve of.
. . .
Judging from recent activity at the airport, travelers go about their business largely unaffected by the strike. The two sides have no plans to resume negotiations on a contract that would eliminate jobs and cut pay.

#10: "Buttock-vibrating technology"
#9: Drink on, Big Easy
#8: Eat them hot dogs, they're good for you
#7: Olive oil: anti-inflammatory?
#6: Oil for food
#5: European Katrina aid held up, Bush not blamed
#4: What about Mississippi?
#3: General Honore and the Half-Wit Press
#2: Najaf base transferred to Iraqis
#1: Levee progress in New Orleans