Simply Chilling.

"They killed a man here last night," Steve Banka, 28, told Reuters. "A young lady was being raped and stabbed. And the sounds of her screaming got to this man and so he ran out into the street to get help from troops, to try to flag down a passing truck of them, and he jumped up on the truck's windscreen and they shot him dead."

There's more:

We found a young girl raped and killed in the bathroom," one National Guard soldier told Reuters. "Then the crowd got the man and they beat him to death."

It's official. Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco has appointed former FEMA director James Lee Witt to oversee the recovery of New Orleans. The Vice-Chairman and Senior Advisor's to Witt's firm is Gen. Wesley Clark.

Last Night in Little Rock wrote about Mr. Witt two days ago at TalkLeft, asking, Where Is James Witt When We Need Him?

FEMA is now just another bureaucratic level within the Department of Homeland Security. It has become a dinosaur stuck in the tar pits, and it is dying before our eyes.

James Lee Witt, an Arkansan, was FEMA Director under President Clinton, and he had the cojones to immediately go to the scene and take control. Clinton gave him power, and he used it for the national good. We were served well by him. In any natural disaster, he was there, he was on TV telling us what was going on, and he got things done. He did not sit on his hands in a Washington office getting information from CNN or FoxNews. James Lee Witt works in Little Rock, and I'll bet my house he's working on this disaster somehow. If he ran FEMA, the response would be markedly different, instead of the "what do I do now?" look of Michael Chertoff we see today.

I just found this in the TalkLeft archives, from September, 2004, when it looked like Hurricane Ivan was headed to New Orleans. ABC News reported that New Orleans might sink if it got hit hard:

The worst-case scenario for New Orleans a direct strike by a full-strength Hurricane Ivan could submerge much of this historic city treetop-deep in a stew of sewage, industrial chemicals and fire ants, and the inundation could last for weeks, experts say. If the storm were strong enough, Ivan could drive water over the tops of the levees that protect the city from the Mississippi River and vast Lake Pontchartrain. And with the city sitting in a saucer-shaped depression that dips as much as 9 feet below sea level, there would be nowhere for all that water to drain.

Those folks who remain, should the city flood, would be exposed to all kinds of nightmares from buildings falling apart to floating in the water having nowhere to go," Ivor van Heerden, director of Louisiana State University's Hurricane Public Health Center, said Tuesday.

I mentioned in this post that my favorite Gallery in New Orleans is the A Gallery. Primarily a photography gallery, it is just about the best one I've been to anywhere. I never leave without buying something. Things I've bought there 20 years ago remain on display in my living room, my bedroom and in the TL kid's apartment. I spend hours there every trip. The place is owned by Joshua Mann Paillet, whom I've never met. But I just found this e-mail he sent after Katrina hit, on a blog called Lookah,which he said he'd like to see shared:

THANKS - Too much to say right now. I got a few things out and have them in Baton Rouge. Just got out last night. I could have stayed, my supplies would have lasted for seven more days. But, the fires have started.

The reports of looting downtown are exaggerated. Yes, they broke into the grocery stores, drugstores, gas stations, for food, etc. Canal Street had a few hours of thugs doing sports shops, but all other shops and the ENTIRE French Quarter is safe and untouched. The storm did glass and roof damage and trees UPTOWN. Just needs to be swept. Looks LESS dirty than a typical Mardi Gras day.

Here's a transcript of conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant and Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page on the Jim Leher News Hour talking about Katrina and the political ramifications. Brooks' comments, considering how conservative he is, are particularly interesting. Some snippets:

This is not the response from the National Guard I was hoping for. From the Army Times:

Combat operations are underway on the streets “to take this city back” in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. “We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”

Mayor Daley is right to be shocked by the feds' response to his offers of help:

Frustration about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina has reached Chicago City Hall, as Mayor Richard Daley today noted a tepid response by federal officials to the city's offers of disaster aid. The city is willing to send hundreds of personnel, including firefighters and police, and dozens of vehicles to assist on the storm-battered Gulf Coast, but so far the Federal Emergency Management Agency has requested only a single tank truck, Daley said.

"I was shocked," he said.

[Hat tip Patriot Daily.]

This is one of the best announcements I've heard, just now, on CNN. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao says that unemployment money and money for 10,000 temporary jobs- $20.7 million- is now available. The Labor Department is sending hundreds of people into New Orleans with laptops to walk parish by parish and through the shelters, hospitals and streets to help victims instantly file unemployment claims and get money into their pockets.

If you know a victim, tell them to call

1-866-4USA-DOL

For those that can work, 10,000 temporary jobs are now available. The total emergency grant is $62.1 million.

Secretary Chao was very impressive. She is the first Administration official I've heard who had real passion in her voice. She said over and over we must get cash into these people's pockets and since they have no phone, no radio and no internet, Labor employees and volunteers will go to the streets to find them. The phone line is open 24/7.

I'm not sure what to make of this: The Red Cross reports:

• Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

• The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

• The Red Cross has been meeting the needs of thousands of New Orleans residents in some 90 shelters throughout the state of Louisiana and elsewhere since before landfall. All told, the Red Cross is today operating 149 shelters for almost 93,000 residents.

What is happening with the sick and dying in New Orleans? The airport has been converted into a triage center. The New York Times has some of the dispiriting details. CNN has this video from Ed Lavandera. He reported:

A nurse [said] Thursday that medical teams may, at some point, have to "black tag" patients -- decide which ones have a better chance of survival so the medical team's limited resources aren't consumed on lost causes.

The Times reports:

The head of a Louisiana ambulance service said he had been told of one home in lower St. Bernard's Parish where 80 patients had been found dead and of an apartment home for the blind where the staff had abandoned the residents. The reports could not immediately be confirmed.

I've never seen anything as harrowing as Fox News' Geraldo Rivera and Shepard Smith on Hannity and Colmes. While Aaron Brown on CNN said we have "turned the corner", it's clearly not the truth. There are thousands of people trapped in what Geraldo called "this Hell on earth" at the convention center. No one has been bused out. Shepard was on I-10 and just devastating in his description of the "hundreds and hundreds and hundreds" of people being denied exit and still without food, water, medicine or water.

Crooks and Liars has the video, don't miss this one.

When a network like Fox can't prevent its reporters from speaking the truth, you have to know the situation is so much worse than we've been told. Geraldo was crying, Shep Smith looked like he wanted to drive a knife thorough Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes. How frustrating for them to watch reality get trumped by spinned photos of supply-laden ships arriving. The reality is that 12 hours after those ships arrived, nothing has changed for those in lock-down at the convention center or exiled on a highway.

Geraldo, Shep Smith and CNN's Anderson Cooper are heroes. Tell their networks. We need unfiltered news. We need the truth. And they are telling it.

Police in New Orleans told a group of refugees in New Orleans to take a school bus and head to the Astrodome in Houston:

The first busload of New Orleans refugees to reach the Reliant Astrodome overnight was a group of people who commandeered a school bus in the city ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and drove to Houston looking for shelter.

Jabbar Gibson, 20, said police in New Orleans told him and others to take the school bus and try to get out of the flooded city. Gibson drove the bus from the flooded Crescent City, picking up stranded people, some of them infants, along the way. Some of those on board had been in the Superdome, among those who were supposed to be evacuated to Houston on more than 400 buses Wednesday and today. They couldn't wait.