A BAD REVIEW for New Orleans’ Mayor Nagin:

During the last interview with the Mayor – I did not hear one word of ANY plan for the people who can not drive to get out of New Orleans. I assume there are some on the ground plans, but they certainly are not being adequately communicated to the press,

And just now a WDSU reporter is reporting seeing kids, as young as six and seven year old – on their own – with all their belongings in a plastic bag – begging drivers to take them out of the city. And when his news team left on the one bridge still open, there saw a line of the very old and the very young – people in wheel chairs – even more incredible – people being pushed on hospital gurneys – fleeing for their lives over the last bridge out of New Orleans.

The same reporter also gave an account of the gangs roaming and terrorizing the city.

We should all be asking – after all this time – why have buses and trucks not been commandeered to get the poor out of the city?

Why are the residents of New Orleans not being told HOW to get out of the city instead of just being told that they must get out of the city?

I’ve been wondering about this myself. The City’s response has seemed too-late and too-weak from the beginning.

UPDATE: FreeWillBlog: “I’m not ready to jump on Nagin just yet.”

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE offers a caution about donations to charity. And remember that you can — and should — check out any unknown charities at the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving site, Give.org.

MOXIE READS THE HUFFINGTON POST on Katrina, so you don’t have to! Thanks, Moxie!

UPDATE: Related post here. I want one of those flying cars. And they’d have been handy for people trying to escape the flooding, too . . . .

GAS PANIC IN ATLANTA: We’re seeing some of that here, too. Remember — even when supply isn’t under pressure, if everyone rushes to top off their tanks it’ll exhaust the supplies at stations.

UPDATE: Here’s a report that bogus rumors led to gas lines in Columbus, Georgia.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This, on the other hand, is not a rumor:

The price of regular-grade gasoline soared as much as 50 cents a gallon overnight as Hurricane Katrina forced suppliers to ration the fuel sent to filling stations and convenience stores. . . . “I would hope that all consumers recognize the really catastrophic event that occurred with Hurricane Katrina,” said Dan Gilligan, president of the Petroleum Marketers Association of America, in an interview yesterday. The Arlington, Virginia-based group represents about 8,000 marketers across the U.S.

“If consumers want to help, they need to find a way to conserve if they can,” he said. “Find a way to carpool for the next couple of weeks. If everyone would just decide to conserve a little bit, I think the industry can cope. If people are going way for Labor Day, maybe try to cut back the travel by 100 miles.”

Dartblog notes that high prices will encourage that. And reader Gerald Dearing reports from Atlanta:

Just returned from a short drive around the neighborhood (Norcross). EVERY gas station has lines out into the street, even the stations on the back roads. Except the Chevron (Peachtree Industrial & Medlock Bridge), which has shut it’s pumps down. Out, most likely. But I didn’t ask. Wasn’t anything like this at lunchtime when I stopped in for a fishwrapper.

WSB-am is devoting it’s programming to the crisis, mostly rumor control. Trying to calm the panic.

Governor Sunny has declared a “Gas Emergency”, whatever the hell that is. Radio said “State of Emergency”, radio reporters aren’t good at subtle distinctions.

Me? I think the panic is silly. But then I don’t need gas today. Or even diesel. I’m in for time off, and doing as little driving as possible.

Who knows what set off the rumors? But they spread quickly. Oh, well.

Things should settle down by next week, but gas will be expensive for a while. Glad I didn’t buy that SUV!

TERRY TEACHOUT HAS LOADS OF NEW KATRINA LINKS: Just keep scrolling.

JAMES JOYNER is publishing at his backup site because of the same sort of problems that InstaPundit has been having.

FROM SUPERDOME TO ASTRODOME? I guess that’s an improvement, but only a temporary one. People need to be spread out to real housing, not concentrated in temporary quarters.

BAD NEWS ON HURRICANE KATRINA RELIEF:

But mainstream Web sites that had jumped to pull in money for the tsunami victims showed no evidence of repeating it here in the U.S. for Katrina’s. Amazon.com, which raised more than $14 million for the American Red Cross in January via a donation link on its home page, didn’t have one as of mid-day Monday. Nor did Google, Yahoo, MSN, or eBay, all of which hustled earlier in the year to put up donation links on their portals. (Google slapped up an “Information about Hurricane Katrina” link on its Spartan home page, but that led to news sources and stories.)

An Amazon spokesperson said that the online retailer had no plans to post a donation link on its site. “Each case is different,” she said. “The Red Cross has essentially given over its entire site to donations. The tsunami came out of the blue, so it was an ‘all hands on deck’ situation, but the Red Cross has been getting ready for this and getting its message out there for several days.”

Maybe they’ll change their minds.

UPDATE: Yahoo now has an aid link on its page.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Some readers are emailing them. That’s fine, but be polite. This is a bad decision that they can make right easily. Encourage them to do so, but also give them the chance to do the right thing. Name-calling, in my experience, seldom encourages people to do the right thing.

MORE: From Hugh Hewitt: “At 2:45 Pacific, we heard from Amazon that the company has changed its mind. Some one must have gotten around to asking Jeff Bezos.”

Bravo.

JAMES GLASSMAN looks at people who are exploiting Katrina for political purposes.

They’re also scientific illiterates. More here.

UPDATE: Steven St. Onge isn’t so sure that Glassman has the numbers right, though (see the link above) experts do seem to share Glassman’s view. Mark Kleiman also sends a link to this letter in Nature, though it seems to be a bit speculative, and conflicts with the New York Times article quoted earlier. On the other hand, it’s not like a NYT article is the last word.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Nick Gillespie is siding with Glassman and offers more links in support.

USING THE MILITARY in cases of civil disturbance and looting. Donald Sensing has an interesting post.

I’VE BEEN THE VICTIM OF A MASS DE-LINKING because I said that “demonizing the ACLU is a bit silly.” So much for suggesting that the critics lack perspective. That’ll show me!

Here, by the way, is the brief I worked on with them last. Related background here.

UPDATE: As in New Orleans, it doesn’t take long for the vultures to appear! Is this “link-looting?” Heh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Heh. And this is funny, too.

BEYOND CHARITY: Wizbang has some suggestions for bloggers.

MICHELLE MALKIN HAS A ROUNDUP ON LOOTING: I agree with Jonah Goldberg that it’s one thing for desperate people to help themselves to bottled water, food, or diapers from abandoned stores, and another to just sack those places for valuables. People doing the latter should be shot.

IT’S LIKE A BIG RX-8: The Ford Iosis Concept Car. (Via Autoblog). Hey, Ford could do worse — and has!

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE has a massive roundup on the military response to Katrina, which is quite extensive.

THE DEMOCRATIC SURGE continues.

RON BAILEY ON BIOTECHNOLOGY: “How Europe starves the world’s poor.”

GAS RATIONING AT THE WHOLESALE LEVEL, due to Katrina-related shortages.

LEGAL AFFAIRS has a number of interesting items on national security law.

DISASTER KITS: Reader Brian Cook emails: “Prof. Reynolds, you mentioned that everyone should have a battery-operated radio in his emergency kit. I submit that one of these is an even better idea.”

Actually, I have one. So does reader Andrew Centofani, who writes: “For emergencies I like the Grundig FR200. I just bought one a couple of months ago and thankfully haven’t had to use it for anything emergency wise, but it works great — about an hour with two minutes of cranking — and has an emergency light built in. If I could add anything to it I would have some sort of DC out plug as so I could power/charge other small electronics and add Weather / Emergency frequencies.” I agree.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Brian King emails:

have that same Grundig dynamo-powered radio, and I love it.

My wife has this one in her car: it’s got a “mobile phone charger” outlet. Her phone cord doesn’t fit the jack, but it is a DC out.

The Grundig FR-300 has a similar mobile phone charging jack.

Cool.

LEGAL PROBLEMS WITH SPACE ELEVATORS: My TechCentralStation column is up.

UPDATE: In the comments to that piece, reader J.T. Wenting observes:

Message: Space elevators most likely will be built from space down towards earth rather than from the surface up.

Would they still be an extension of the country they’re anchored to or would they be space structures reaching the surface?

I’d say the latter, similar to a ship mooring in a harbour not being real estate of the country that harbour is located in, as technically the space elevator would be moored to the ground rather than being built on it.

Interesting argument.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Rand Simberg has more thoughts:

The problems associated with anchoring such a beast in an unstable and/or corrupt equatorial country has caused many of those planning such things to put them instead on floating ocean platforms, in international waters. This raises some new issues, because now, instead of (as Glenn notes) the structure simply being a very high tower, it would now be a tall ship that would put to shame all of the previous false claimants to that designation, with their puny little sticks for masts.

Indeed.

FEDERAL RELIEF EFFORTS, including a Naval flotilla and 125,000 National Guardsmen, are on the way to afflicted areas, reports CNN.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

What most of these poor folks need right now is information on where they can go to seek shelter. I’m in Tuscaloosa right now and you wouldn’t believe the overflow of people seeking hotel rooms. Maybe the blogosphere can help get the word out to the relief agencies they need to get the word out to the victims. The University recreation center is offering shelter for now, but what happens when that overflows? How are these people going to continue to pay for hotel rooms weeks after this disaster?

I don’t know how to handle this problem, but I hope that somebody does. Ideas?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Kathy Childre emails:

I was thinking that there should be a way to set up a fund just for that. An hotel fund. I know in Baton Rouge some apartment managers are offering month to month leases for displaced persons and trying to find free furnture for them. Donating used furniture for the apartments would be nice to. If there were some way to set up a fund to pay for those leases as well it would be great. I’m just not sure of the logistics of it.

It’s a thought.

KAYE TRAMMELL has an open comment thread for people looking for news and information about survivors.

Also, here’s the Hurricane Katrina help Wiki.

Craigslist is running a lost and found list for friends and relatives. It also includes posts from people who want to help.

I’m not sure why, exactly, but more than anything else, reading the entries brought tears to my eyes.

Read this, too.

UPDATE: Here’s another Katrina missing persons board.

THE SLIDELL HURRICANE BLOG is gathering information about conditions in and around Slidell.

MICHAEL SILENCE HAS A ROUNDUP on misconduct by the ATF.