Comments on: What Did Katrina Destroy?

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 22:18:46 +0000

The thing that a lot of people miss is that you can’t not re-build New Orleans unless you can figure out how to move the Mississippi River and a major portion of the Gulf oil and gas pipelines.

The Republic of West Florida was, at its heart, an attempt to control all of the river ports into the Gulf of Mexico. The location of the cities wasn’t accidental and they all flood because they all were located at the mouths of rivers. They are located where they have to be, and if the Dutch can handle flooding in a country that’s mostly below sea level, we ought to damn sure be able to deal with a city.

New Orleans isn’t an isolated incident. Ernesto may not look like much, but it’s going to pass over Lake Okeechobee which features the Herbert Hoover Dike that is in worse shape than the New Orleans levees. Somebody is about to get a whole lot more water than they wanted, because if they don’t get the lake level down the dike may give way flooding a lot of people in South Florida.

Frankly, New Orleans isn’t at the top of my threat list. The Cajuns in nearby parishes aren’t even getting lip service, and those that weren’t nailed by Katrina, got nailed by Rita. They haven’t forgotten getting pushed out of Arcadia, so they are not likely to forget about this. Those boys hunt and fish as well as working on the oil platforms. They get pushed hard enough, they’ll push back.

If the United Arab Emirates can own the ports, I don’t know why Hezbollah couldn’t re-build New Orleans – they seem to know what they are doing.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 21:20:59 +0000

You mean that in a couple more years there will be car bombings, IED’s, and ethnic cleansings? Actually, I *have* heard talks of insurrection from Louisianians — as in, rumblings about how if the U.S. government won’t fix the levees, maybe they’ll just seize the pipelines and not let any oil through until the oil companies rebuild the levees. Or something like that. Vague rumors. But the word “insurrection” definitely has been bandied.

Maybe we ought to contract Jihad Construction to do the rebuilding. After all, they had dump trucks and bulldozers out clearing away the rubble in Lebanon before the rubble was even finished smoking. Of course, it might be embarrassing to have the construction arm of Hizbullah reconstructing the Gulf Coast, but hey, if they can do the job, and the Feds can’t (or won’t, rather)…

-BT

By: andante

andante — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 20:36:26 +0000

“a year and the money has all gone to the Shrubbery’s corporate buddies who have imported people to do the work.”

Give it a couple more years and there may be even more similarities to Iraq.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:07:24 +0000

The people on the Gulf Coast would rather see the money than the man. It’s been a year and the money has all gone to the Shrubbery’s corporate buddies who have imported people to do the work.

By: Karen

Karen — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:41:57 +0000

Digby has a good one about Bush’s and the Bronwynne Bassier Photo-Op redo! Blech!

Expect more Staged Opportunities for CIC to get muscle strain patting himself on the back for his “heck of job” done all year!

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:36:39 +0000

The thing that people need to remember about New Orleans is that the deaths should not be linked to the more than one million people that lived in and around New Orleans. The 1500+ deaths were from the approximately 22,000 people who couldn’t get out in time. Those deaths didn’t come from a huge urban population, but from the population of a town. Many of those deaths were the result of a lack of medical care that was sitting off shore in the 600 bed hospital that is part of the USS Bataan.

Just like 9/11, when faced with an emergency they freeze and do nothing.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:55:23 +0000

The storm was inevitable, but the preparation failed and the response failed because friends of Grover Norquist wanted to drown government in a bathtub. Instead, many Gulf Coast residents, including New Orleans dwellers, drowned in something rather larger. You can label the storm an “act of God” (God surely gets blamed for a lot of things, eh?), but the failures that got people killed were due to acts of men (and perhaps a few women). Shame on them!

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:38:42 +0000

They won’t cut services that people would notice; they don’t want people to notice that there’s cost that has to be paid. They keep talking about “fat” as they slice away muscle.

By: andante

andante — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:15:17 +0000

It’s a basic fact of life that Things Wear Out and then Things Break. Either you have to pay a lot of money to fix what broke or replace it with something more expensive. A good, regular maintenance program will save time, money, and heartbreak every time.

Unfortunately that concept takes a beating by politicians, especially around election time.