NBC hosted and aired a hurricane relief concert tonight. Kanye West went off-script. Crooks and Liars has the video:

Appearing two-thirds through the program, he claimed “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” and said America is set up “to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible.”

Comedian Mike Myers was paired with West for a 90-second segment that began with Myers speaking of Katrina’s devastation. Then, to Myers’ evident surprise, West began a rant by saying, “I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they’re looting. See a white family, it says they’re looking for food.”

This is pretty incredible: The National Guard today stopped evacuating those trapped in the Superdome in order to move 700 Hyatt Hotel guests and employees who had just arrived to the front of bus lines, letting them board the buses first:

At midday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses rolled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line - much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the stinking Superdome since Sunday.

``How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?'' exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage.

...National Guard Capt. John Pollard called the decision to move the Hyatt people to the head of the line ``very poor.''

The busdriver of one of the buses headed from the Superdome to Dallas lost control of the bus en route and overturned. One person died and ten were taken to hospitals.

How much more can these people endure?

There is an e-mail discussion going on among liberal bloggers as to what to call those displaced by Katrina. On CNN earlier today, a representative from the Congressional Black Caucus chastised the media for using the term "refugees." He found it offensive that journalists were referring to American citizens as if they were foreigners. He opined that if we think about them as refugees then we'll begin (or rather continue) to treat them like refugees. Refugees seems to imbue a second class status upon them.

"Evacuees" and "survivors" are emerging as preferred terms. Others think that "refugees" is preferable because it will make people so uncomfortable - and because it reinforces the idea this is something that should not be happening in America.

From Terry Kindlon in the comments section of an earlier post:

I hereby propose that we start using the name "Bushville" for each and every refugee encampment. The bumbling of the Bush Administration and its utter inability to cope with a predictable and much anticipated natural disaster should provide the spark for a new populist movement in our beloved country that will reverse and vanquish the elitism, selfishness and insanity that has infected our government during the past 5 years.

Crooks and Liars reports that Rep. Robert Wexler called for FEMA Director Mike Brown to be fired in January.

Check out his background at War and Piece - he was an estate lawyer in Colorado until Bush tapped him for FEMA after 2001.

My lord, the guy heading FEMA has no qualifications. What was he doing before getting pulled into FEMA by the Bush administration in 2003? He was an estate planning lawyer in Colorado and of counsel for the International Arabian Horse Association Legal Department. And yes, it is the same Michael D. Brown.

Does anyone else think the confirmation hearings on Judge John Roberts, scheduled for Tuesday, should be continued so that Congress can focus on how to help those in need from Katrina - particularly the displaced persons from New Orleans?

As I remember, Justice O'Connor told President Bush she would stay on until Roberts was confirmed, so why not ask her to stay on one more term?

Armando at Daily Kos has more thoughts on this.

posted by Last Night in Little Rock

"We will take the fight to the enemy." George W. Bush, speech, USAF Academy, June 2, 2004.

"We have met the enemy... and he is us." Walt Kelly, Foreward, The Pogo Papers, 1952-53.

Here's the audio of yesterday's radio interview with an extremely angry New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.

The transcript of the interview, in which Nagin tells the feds to get off their as*ses is here.

Update: Please read Stranded by Clive Stafford Smith in today's Guardian. Mr. Smith founded The Justice Center, which needs help as outlined below:

************
Original Post 9/1/05

The Justice Center, located in New Orleans is home to four cutting edge, non-profit criminal defense offices. It houses:

• The Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center, a capital trial office providing indigent defense in Louisiana for over ten years.
• A Fighting Chance, a specialist capital defense investigative team.
• The Capital Appeals Project, the statewide office for capital appeals in Louisiana.
• The Innocence Project of New Orleans, part of the national network of innocence projects working to free those wrongly convicted.

They need help. From their bulletin:

If George Bush was the CEO of a large U.S. Corporation and mismanaged a project as big as the Katrina rescue effort, he'd be fired. What we have experienced, as Van Jones writes over at Huffington Post, is a monumental failure of leadership.

Michael Moore writes President Bush:

Dear Mr. President:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?

The rest is just as good. Including the "p.s." about Cindy Sheehan.