Bill Whittle of Eject! Eject! Eject! has written another barn-burner of an essay. I knew I was in for a good ride when I read Bill’s opinion of Sean Penn’s plugless and misguided four-foot voyage of rescue:

A church-going pharmacist in Des Moines would be ashamed of herself for giving only 10% of her modest salary. But Sean Penn can take himself, an entourage and a personal photographer – that’s three or four people in a four-person boat – and show us all how incredibly big and down-home he is by sailing off a few feet to rescue people, before the boat sinks from the incompetence of failing to put in the drainage plug. He wore a very nice white flak vest, instead of the passé orange life preserver, because getting shot at is a lot more macho looking, if a million or so times less likely, than drowning because you went out into the water with a lead vest rather than a life vest. It’s a scene in the trailer that runs incessantly in their heads: In a world run by evil corporations, a rebel who plays by his own rules starts a deadly game of cat and mouse with an all-powerful conspiracy in this searing portrait of extraordinary courage in a life under siege, starring…me!

I was actually ready to publicly commend the guy, until I heard about the personal photographer. If he wanted to help people – and that’s all – he could have paid for that boat, and a few hundred others, manned them with reasonably competent recreational boaters, and sent out a flotilla. But no. It’s not about having people saved. It’s about something else entirely. It’s about having people saved by Sean Penn. That’s when I realized that whether it’s the Murderous Regime in Iraq, or the Murderous Regime in Iran, or the Murderous Storm in Louisiana…ultimately, it’s all about Sean Penn. Peace Be Upon Him.

But thank God we have people like him, and the rest of that vain, useless, smug, self-centered, incompetent, insecure and thoroughly broken Tribe to point out the error of our ways.

Bill’s got something to say here, and he’s passionate about it (the post contains, by the way, some salty language).

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Saw this on Drudge:

Six-year-old hero of the evacuation

Hurricane rescuers found seven children wandering together at an evacuation point in central New Orleans.

The oldest, a six-year-old boy, appeared to be their leader. He carried a five-month-old in his arms, followed by five infants. All were holding hands.

The children’s desperate parents had handed them up to a rescue helicopter after four days spent trapped in their flooded home without food, light or air conditioning, and no milk for the baby.

The crew who took the terrified children promised to be back to collect the parents in 25 minutes. They did not return.

In the midst of all the terrible stories of human depravity swirling in the aftermath of Katrina, there are, thankfully, stories like this one.

Catrina Williams - at first rescuers refused to believe Deamonte when he told them his mother’s name - had seen her children’s pictures on missingkids.com, a website set up by the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. The next day, a private aircraft took the children to Texas for an emotional reunion. Mrs Williams, 26, told the newspaper that sheer desperation led her to hand over the children to rescuers first and agree to wait behind. “We did what we had to do for our kids, because we love them.”

The parents were eventually taken to Texas but with no news about the children’s whereabouts.

Reports from parents of missing children are flooding in, said Mike Kenner, of the centre, which has been asked by the United States Justice Department to co-ordinate a missing persons process. With crowds choking staging posts for evacuees, many have become separated from their sons and daughters.

In one case, a woman handed her baby up on to a bus only to turn back for her suitcase and find the bus already gone.

The International Committee of the Red Cross website for Katrina victims has almost 100,000 people trying to trace family members missing since the hurricane. Overnight, the number of entries on the family links site rose from 65,000 to 94,000, a spokesman said yesterday. On the missing kids.com, the faces of the seven children were yesterday still visible, some smiling, the younger ones bemused or on the verge of tears.

But theirs is one of the happy stories - over their pictures, unlike all the others surrounding them, is stamped the word “resolved”.

What a brave little guy. Well done Deamonte!

A few truths, for those who have ears and eyes and care to know the truth

Thus begins the inimitable Ben Stein in his latest column on the political and blame-fixing aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Below is a taste:

5.) George Bush had nothing to do with the hurricane contingency plans for New Orleans. Those are drawn up by New Orleans and Louisiana. In any event, the plans were perfectly good: mandatory evacuation. It is in no way at all George Bush’s fault that about 20 percent of New Orleans neglected to follow the plan. It is not his fault that many persons in New Orleans were too confused to realize how dangerous the hurricane would be. They were certainly warned. It’s not George Bush’s fault that there were sick people and old people and people without cars in New Orleans. His job description does not include making sure every adult in America has a car, is in good health, has good sense, and is mobile.

6.) George Bush did not cause gangsters to shoot at rescue helicopters taking people from rooftops, did not make gang bangers rape young girls in the Superdome, did not make looters steal hundreds of weapons, in short make New Orleans into a living hell.

7.) George Bush is the least racist President in mind and soul there has ever been and this is shown in his appointments over and over. To say otherwise is scandalously untrue.

8.) George Bush is rushing every bit of help he can to New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama as soon as he can. He is not a magician. It takes time to organize huge convoys of food and now they are starting to arrive. That they get in at all considering the lawlessness of the city is a miracle of bravery and organization.

9.) There is not the slightest evidence at all that the war in Iraq has diminished the response of the government to the emergency. To say otherwise is pure slander.

Mr. Stein ends with this:

Is there any problem in the world that is not Mr. Bush’s fault, or have we reverted to a belief in a sort of witchcraft where we credit a mortal man with the ability to create terrifying storms and every other kind of ill wind?

Where did the idea come from that salvation comes from hatred and criticism and mockery instead of love and co-operation?

Well said, Ben.

[Tip o' the hat to Jared at The Thinklings]

The mate was a mighty sailing man:

Bob Denver, who starred as the loveably nutty castaway Gilligan on the hit TV comedy "Gilligan’s Island," has died, his agent confirmed Tuesday. He was 70.

Denver died Friday at Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital in North Carolina of complications from treatment he was receiving for cancer, his agent, Mike Eisenstadt, told the Associated Press. Denver’s death was first reported by "Entertainment Tonight."

Denver had also undergone quadruple heart bypass surgery earlier this year.

Denver’s wife, Dreama, and his children Patrick, Megan, Emily and Colin were with him when he died.

[Hat-tip: Ashley]

The “Blame Bush” crowd will be thrilled with this bit of news. Halliburton subsidiary KBR has begun to repair port facilities for the Navy along the Gulf Coast after Katrina.

Some of the details from the KPRC-TV/Associated Press story:

The subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root Services Inc. of Arlington, Va., was awarded the competitive bid contract last July to provide debris removal and other emergency work associated with natural disasters.  (emphasis added)

This is also not the first time KBR has done post-storm cleanup:

The company has provided similar work after major disasters in the United States and abroad for more than 15 years, including in Florida after Hurricane Andrew.

The requisite Dick Cheney reference is also included:

Vice President Dick Cheney headed Halliburton from 1995 to 2000, and Democrats have questioned whether the company has gotten favorable treatment because of his connection.

It is only a matter of time now. President Bush has already been blamed for everything associated with Hurricane Katrina, including causing the storm, the flooding in New Orleans, and slow relief efforts because victims were black and poor. This Halliburton news finally ties it all together for the conspiracy theorists.

Just what is the “Bush World Weather Domination Theory?” Here is what we have so far:

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AP, courtesy Newsday:

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney derided the Bush administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina at a Labor Day rally Monday, saying the government’s slow response was a sign of hostility to workers.

This coming from an organization famous for grinding construction projects to a halt because only union-approved electricians should be allowed to change lightbulbs.

Feel free to add your union-bashing "If the AFL-CIO was in charge of hurricane evacuation or rebuilding…" joke in comments.

It is a sad but inevitable part of any crisis– grifters, publicity hounds and the mentally unstable generally will float towards the bright lights and cameras, seeking their 15 minutes of fame.

Which makes it no less shocking to see our very own Harris County Tax Assessor/Collector succumbing to the temptation, as this image captured by eagle-eyed CPA-to-the-Stars Bob Martin demonstrates:

Paul Bettencourt outside the Astrodome, impersonating a physician

Should this fraud be brazen enough to make his way towards the Astrodome again, LST hopes local law enforcement personnel will take him into immediate custody and hold him overnight for questioning.

NOTE: For the terminally dense, the "article" above is false– a good natured joke directed at the very fine, competent public servant Paul Bettencourt, who is a frequent contributor to KSEV, a leading advocate for statewide property tax relief, and a significant part of the team of city and county officials responding so well to the post-Katrina crisis. For a previous entry in the "tweak Paul Bettencourt" category, click here.

Longtime readers will no doubt notice that some changes have been made to LST over the weekend, the most significant of which have to do with our "comments" feature.

To wit– unlike before, comments now appear directly underneath the post to which they refer, and are not moderated or "approved" by an LST editor before appearing. To post a comment, you have to register. Naturally, we will protect your privacy completely, never sell your contact information, etc; the registration simply allows us to better manage the blog.

This is an experiment on our part. Our previous format– breaking comments up into more of a "letters to the editor" page, requiring moderator approval– was designed to discourage the sort of idiotic, unenlightening and unpleasant bashing that Internet "discourse" can all too often morph in to.

But we had to upgrade our content management software (for security reasons), and we think that the extraordinary post-Katrina situation in Houston might benefit from a more free-flowing exchange in our comments section, so for the time being we have decided to "let the good times roll" and see how this turns out.

The policy may very well change in coming weeks. If you have a thought on how to create the best sort of comments section for LST possible– maximizing freedom while maintaining intelligence and civility– please please PLEASE share your thoughts with us here.

After getting your input, I will articulate and implement a policy that goes into detail about how this will operate. For now, be advised that any comment I deem, in the course of a 2 second review, to be racist, libelous, pointless, hateful, cramned wth speilling arrors, detrimental to our advertisers, or just plain an annoyance to me will be zapped– and if I get sick of you, you will be banned.

Don’t like it? Good news– digital liberation is but a mouse click away.

Enjoy,

David Benzion, Managing Editor

UPDATED– Just because a post does appear, that doesn’t mean that I don’t consider it racist, pointless, hateful, etc… it just means I haven’t seen it yet or have been overwhelmed with other issues. Comments people leave should be assumed to reflect their personal opinions alone.

On the first night that the Astrodome accepted evacuees, our fearless leader and Managing Editor David Benzion acquired access to a bus before entering the parking lot. I caught up and recorded his interviews with the tired and hungry passengers…

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After exiting the bus, David and I parted ways. He went back to the command post while I recorded activity outside the Dome…

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Creative communication.

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Eventually I walked into the Dome at the East gate. There I captured images and heard stories that I will never forget. As far as I know, these are the only stills of inside the Dome that late into the evening…

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Filling up quickly.

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