Magic Statistics

This notice appeared on the website of WWL-TV earlier this evening:

****ALL RESIDENTS ON THE EAST BANK OF ORLEANS AND JEFFERSON REMAINING IN THE METRO AREA ARE BEING TOLD TO EVACUATE AS EFFORTS TO SANDBAG THE LEVEE BREAK HAVE ENDED. THE PUMPS IN THAT AREA ARE EXPECTED TO FAIL SOON AND 9 FEET OF WATER IS EXPECTED IN THE ENTIRE EAST BANK. WITHIN THE NEXT 12-15 HOURS****

The "entire East bank" includes all of the city of New Orleans.

From the Washington Post: "The worst-case scenario, or something close to it, has befallen southern Louisiana and its Gulf Coast neighbors, Alabama and Mississippi."

The death toll is climbing, about 80% of New Orleans is under water and the water level is still rising, electricity has gone out, there is no drinkable water. It will be months, if not years, before the city returns to anything resembling normalcy.

Public order is presently breaking down in New Orleans: looting is widespread, one police station has come under gunfire. Prison inmates are rioting.

The Governor of Louisiana has declared tomorrow a day of prayer in the state of Louisiana. Here's a prayer I found online:

Father in heaven, as events unfold, it seems that the City of New Orleans is unlikely to survive in anything like its current form. Many there and in the surrounding regions have already either died or lost everything they have. Although, in your inscrutable designs, you have chosen not to stay this catastrophe, I beg you to extend your merciful hand now over all affected so that anarchy does not victimize the innocent further. Send your Holy Spirit to inspire the authorities and all decent folk to act as your Son’s hands and thus embody your mercy as well as your justice.

We ask you this through that same Jesus Christ Our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit as one God, now and for ages of ages. Amen.

More information from Christian bloggers here and here.

Here's a list of recommended relief organisations from a US Government agency.

via Dawn Eden.

Is Pope Benedict XVI about to announce a policy banning homosexually inclined men from admission to Catholic seminaries? If so, expect a firestorm of outrage. More here.

My view, FWIW not being a Catholic, is this is overdue. In fact, it turns out that this policy was instituted by Pope John XXIII in 1961 but never observed. The Roman Catholic Church could have avoided a lot of pain and suffering if it had been enforced.

via Pontifications.

The family of Che Guevara says it's tired of seeing the famed photo of Fidel Castro's revolutionary comrade used without their permission. According to the news reports, the family doesn't actually come out and say they want control of the revenues generated by the sale of t-shirts, baseball caps, cigarette lighters, hoodies, posters, and Swatch watches with the pop-culture icon's picture, but one doesn't have to read too deeply between the lines to see that's the underlying issue here. The family's legal action was inspired by a successful lawsuit brought by Korda, the photographer who took the famous photo, against a Smirnoff Vodka ad that used the picture without authorisation.

I'm not a lawyer, so I venture no authoritative opinion on the outcome of the family's quest, but I would not be surprised if the family succeeds in gaining authority over the photo. In that case, they will almost certainly shut down this online store as too disrespectful to the beloved Che's sacred memory. So, if you haven't yet purchased your "Murdering Communist Bastard" t-shirts, better get 'em now.

By the by, in a previous e-mail discussion of Che's blessed legacy, I was consternated to discover that some leftists maintain that Che was in fact NOT a Communist. This view seems to be based on a definition of Communist so narrow and overly scrupulous that it is doubtful whether anyone other than Karl Marx qualifies. The authors of this exhaustive and indispensable history of Communism, by contrast, include Che in the chapter "Communism In Latin America". The Che they describe, based in part on his own words, was a terrorist and mass murderer utterly lacking in human compassion—the diametric opposite of his fashionably romantic image.

via Let It Bleed.