Pickles has managed to make it to Lafayette LA Red Cross-136 miles from NO

[flpoljunkie]

It is the next closest Red Cross shelter to New Orleans, the closest being Baton Rouge -81 miles from New Orleans.

[stevedeshazer]

1. I'm watching her right now

Streaming on http://wwltv.com

When they haul out Pickles, you KNOW it's bad.

She's being PEPPERED with questions about inadequate response.

People are pissed.

[flpoljunkie]

2. Salon reports on her visit: The first lady: "That's just the way it is."

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/02/mehlman/index.htmlhttp://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/02/mehlman/index.html

The first lady: That's just the way it is

Laura Bush just wrapped up a press conference at a sparkling clean and orderly refugee center in Lafayette, La. In a remarkable bit of understatement, she observed: "This doesn't really look like what we're seeing on television."

The First Lady acknowledged that relief efforts have "not been adequate" and are "not the kind of response the federal government wants." Still, she said that the people she'd met in her visit -- a mother who had lost a child, a child who had lost a mother -- were "glad" to have found refuge inside Lafayette's Cajundome.

What about the people still stuck in New Orleans? Bush was asked about the fact that most of them are poor and black. That's just the way it is, she said. "This is what happens when there's a natural disaster of this scope," Bush said. "The poorer people are usually in the neighborhoods that are the lowest or the most exposed or the most vulnerable. Their housing is the most vulnerable to natural disaster. And that is just always what happens."