Speaking of blogs:

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut/348209

"The conventional wisdom is that with a new cold war looming and global conflicts upon us, Barack Obama needed a Vice-President with foreign policy experience. Most establishment pundits buy the view that Joe Biden provides it.

But on one of the key issues relating to US-Russian relations, Biden has been wrong. He has been a fervent champion of NATO expansion, a bipartisan policy whose disastrous consequences we witnessed in the recent and ongoing Russia-Georgia conflict. It is a policy that has done more to damage US-Russian relations than almost any other policy between the two countries.

When Biden traveled to Tbilisi during the conflict in August--presumably to flex and highlight his foreign policy credentials for the Obama campaign--he presumably told Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili of his support for that country's early admission to NATO. (The New York Times reports that the conflict did in fact boost Biden's veep prospects.) What does this say about Biden's foreign policy judgment that he would immediately reward Saakashvili's reckless behavior with a promise of early admission to NATO? "

WTF? Is Nagin turning NO into a free fire zone?

Nagin said Sunday that New Orleans will impose a "dusk-to-dawn" curfew and will cease efforts to help people leave the city Sunday afternoon.

The city-wide curfew will continue until the threat of the storm passes, Nagin said, warning that looters would be dealt with harshly.

"Anybody who's caught looting in the city of New Orleans will go directly to Angola [Louisiana State Penitentiary]. You will not have a temporary stay in the city. You go directly to the big house, in general population," he said.

Prepared my ass.....

My other half got sent down there to help run evacuation trains. When he got there, he was told that FEMA was in charge, and he was just there to get the train from New Orleans to Memphis.

So they loaded up a bunch of people who had been waiting all night and hadn't been fed, into old commuter cars, and then had them wait for four hours before they got the OK to leave. FEMA's idea of feeding the evacuees was to give them MRE's, which require self-heating, and that doesn't work well on a rolling train - especially a rolling train with a bunch of old people. So the Amtrak folks went to a Walgreens and bought a bunch of trail mix, bottled water, juice, etc. But they had two thousand or so people on the train, and absolutely no help from FEMA (the FEMA folks took over the only sleeping car on the train and wouldn't come out)

Granted, it's a vast improvement from Katrina, when they wouldn't let Amtrak come in with evacuation trains (they wanted to use the station for a jail) but it's still a huge cluster.

All in all, they are running three trains, and expect to evacuate about 7000 people.

@2 - Relax.

The good people of New Orleans are reluctant to leave their homes without Nagin's promise to stop theft and looting.

Imagine if Nickels ordered Seattle to evacuate because of an earthquake warning in Tumwater.

In my opinion, looters should be shot. Good thing I don't run New Orleans.

I'm in Louisiana. They will continue to help people get out of New Orleans until everyone who wants help is out, or until it becomes unsafe to do so.

The National Guard troops (over 1500) who are in New Orleans are mostly MP's. The main reason they are there at this point is to protect against looting.

I have to say, I have been very impressed with the state and federal government this time around. I happen to know that they have been planning for this since the immediate aftermath of Katrina (I know people who have been working on the plans). Jindal is going to get a lot of the credit, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of the work (including contracting for buses, perfecting contraflow, accounting for pets, etc.) was done under Blanco's administration.

@4: anyone else you'd like to have shot at the discretion of a police officer without having to present evidence (or even explain) to a jury? i mean, we all know what looters look like, right? so why stop there?

@6 they are the ones throwning bricks through store windows and running down the street with TV's. shoot em in the knees.

Phun Photo Phact: Bush is playing a G chord a fret out of position in that picture, which when strummed would sound exactly like ass.

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Also, looters resemble #9&10 shoot them as well.