The horns are plaintive and insistent and sonorous.

Whistles have been gone for over 50 years.

Once again, the rails are being involved in a fight. And yet, if you weren’t here, you wouldn’t realize it as being so.

These, right now, are the Good Old Days.

A new edited video (this should be your first clue, folks) was somehow released to the media yesterday, and the Associated Press characterized it this way:

The footage — along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by The Associated Press — show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.

This, too, is a DEM clue.

Former FEMA chief Michael Brown said yesterday:

“President told everyone to shut up, that he wanted to hear from me and he said, ‘Brown, quick. Give us an update.’ And my first words to him were, ‘Mr. President, it is my estimation . . . at least 90 percent of the population of New Orleans has been displaced. He was truly taken aback by that.”

Brown described the president throughout the crisis this way: “I think he was engaged, but I think there was an overconfidence that FEMA had handled Sept. 11, we had handled the California wildfires, we had handled the 2004 hurricanes right in the middle of the presidential elections. Hey, we could do this, too.”

Homeland Security officials have said the “fog of war” blinded them early on to the magnitude of the disaster. But Brown said the transcripts and footage of the daily briefings conflict with that. “I don’t buy the fog-of-war defense,” Brown said. “It was a fog of bureaucracy.”

The video in question is available here.

As we all know, this will result in a media blowout; the first results are in with Mayor Ray Nagin saying that he is “shocked.” The CYA Mode is already beginning.

For those not aware, it is not FEMA’s responsibility to be a first responder. The FR would have been the local authorities first affected; in Nagin’s case, his city administration was the First Responder. Second response authority rested with the state. Further assistance can then be provided by FEMA.

The DEM will attempt to portray Bush as the absolute Anti-Christ, and Nagin and Lousiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco will do their best to obfuscate and Teflon out of their roles of responsibility.

Given, the federal response was mediocre; the City of New Orleans and Lousiana responses were infinitely worse — and it was their responsibility to have plans in place, and executed properly, before Katrina even got close.

Everyone involved knew of the nature of the City of New Orleans and the nature of its levees and water systems. All knew this was inevitable.

(Thanks, Mark!)

An Australian sheep farmer was puzzled at the disappearance of sheep on his farm. After a few weeks of sheep disappearing, the farmer decided to put up an electric fence. This is what he found.

As is the standard BZ tradition, when adding a blog to my list of Usual Suspects, I like to make an “introduction” of sorts and, such as it is, I wish to introduce someone you’ve likely already read and hold in high esteem — as I do.

I would like to welcome aboard A Jacksonian and his blog, “Dumb Looks Still Free.”

A Jacksonian writes in the header of his blog:

This will be a site to record my thoughts and musings as they occur. A ‘vanity’ blog or website. Postings will be sporadic as the nature of this site is not a conversation with others, but a monolog to help me in troubled times.

He also writes in his profile:

Trying to save what thoughts I have in case my time for having them comes to an end. I keep many ways of looking at the world and from many perspectives, but they are each a part of a larger whole and reflect my thoughts and feelings. Diabetic, cataleptic, naracoleptic, hyperlipidemia, cerebral atrophy, allergies and *still* glad to be alive.

A Jacksonian brings, in my opinion, a clearly learned, thoughtful and scholarly slant to the topics he addresses in his blog — as well as the comments he makes on the sites of others in the Blogosphere.

I have had the honor of his comments on my own blog, hence my referral to you all.

You should know one thing about A Jacksonian: there are no comments activated on his blog. Any correspondence made with him will be via comments he initiates within your own blog, or by his e-mail. He simply prefers it this way and we should respect his wishes.

For erudite analyses and thoughts of the day, please visit Dumb Looks Still Free. A person listing Aliens, Being There (a hugely-overlooked — and the last film of — Peter Sellers!) and Monty Python And The Holy Grail in their favorite film list, and then David Drake, Fred Saberhagen, Poul Anderson and Alan Dean Foster in their booklist deserves attention!