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.

While no one was looking, in the middle of the disaster in New Orleans, Bush found time Wednesday to bypass the Senate and appoint Alice Fisher as Chief of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice in a recess appointment.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., had blocked the nomination because he wants to talk to an agent who named Fisher in an e-mail about allegedly abusive interrogations at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo. Fisher can serve until January 2007.

There isn't any mention of the appointment on the Department of Justice's website or the White House site.

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.