WILL THEY HAVE TO HOLD IT IN HOUSTON?
YOU CAN HELP!
Da Pagan Baby & I have never experienced the romance and decadence of "The Big Easy".
All we know is what we've seen in the movies. We always meant to travel to the New Orleans French Quarter to see the remaining intact and restored mansions, including rare historic Louisiana Antebellum Queen Anne-style homes and rehabbed architectural treasures dating from the 1890s and before - some with original stained-glass windows and ornate ceiling medallions. We would have strolled the in the heart of New Orleans' world famous Garden District and the fabled Mardi Gras Parade route through the French Quarter and just steps away to board the historic St. Charles streetcar that takes visitors into the heart of the French Quarter, Bourbon Street, and other New Orleans attractions where guests can enjoy the finest in restaurants and jazz.
What now?
Artist: Danziger
CITY OF NATURE
New Orleans' blessing; New Orleans' curse.
Ari Kelman, writing in Slate says:
Over time, New Orleans developed a divided relationship with the environment: Nature, as embodied by the Mississippi, promised a bright future. But it also brought water, wind, and pathogens, elements of a fickle environment that in the past as now turned cruelly chaotic.
Geographers refer to this as the difference between a city's "situation"—the advantages its location offers relative to other cities—and its "site"—the actual real estate it occupies. New Orleans has a near-perfect situation and an almost unimaginably bad site. It's because of the former that people have worked endlessly to overcome the hazards of the latter.
Cost of Iraq war per day = $186 million -- more than half a billion since Katrina struck. Would the resources be better placed in the Gulf Coast? And how does the post-event chaos in New Orleans reflect on our domestic readiness?
In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. Nevertheless, BUSHCO cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war!
GENERALISSIMO W BUNNYPANTS - THE HURRICANE PRESIDENT - showing the nation that not even a major city being entirely submerged can prevent him from getting on with his life. And yes, this photo was taken
Tuesday.
Lets see ... Nero fiddled while Rome burned (allegedly)... now Bush strums while New Orleans sinks ... [Bob Cesca]
Check it out! This cutaway acoustic of unknown brand has "The Presidential Seal"!
Artist: Huffaker
Editor & Publisher has an article that builds the case
against BUSHCO for NEGLECT!
... New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.
Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.
Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.
Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."
Artist: Walt Handelsman
Again _____________ DO THE MATH!
SNAPSHOTS AFTER KATRINA 
Water, water everywhere - and nary a drop to drink . . . (See the pretty rainbow swirls in the water? That's gas - $6. / gallon in Atlanta this AM!
GOVERNOR KATHLEEN BLANCO: Everyone Must Leave New Orleans!
Brett Martel - (AP)
We are looking at 12 to 16 weeks before people can come in," Mayor Ray Nagin said on ABC's "Good Morning America" ...
Once the levees are fixed, Maj. Gen. Don Riley of the Army Corps of Engineers said, it could take close to a month to get the water out of the city. If the water rises a few feet higher, it could also wipe out the water system for the whole city, said New Orleans' homeland security chief, Terry Ebbert.
"We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and other people dead in attics, Mayor Ray Nagin said. Asked how many, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."
Artist: Marlette
There's an unconfirmed report of a couple of deaths in the Super Dome where 25000 evacuees have been sheltered since Sunday - one, a suicide, a jumper. The Super Dome is being evacuated ASAP - with most of the thousands heading for the Houston Astrodome.
Some residents left behind are stuck in the City Convention Center - with NO water, NO food, NO answers, 2-dead bodies, one young girl raped, NO answers. The Super Dome is being evacuated, but these people are - LEFT BEHIND. Chertoff is in denial as the National Guard blames the Police who blame the State. And everybody is coming to the agreement that THIS IS A FEDERAL DISASTER - if only the FEDERAL gummint can get it together - in time . . .
Rationing of gasoline has begun ...
OMG - LOOTERS!
And Shemp Hannity & Neil Boortz, the reactionary blab jocks on FOX News and the vast wingnut air waste, wondered out loud if it might be lawful for ordinary citizens in New Orleans to start SHOOTING LOOTERS ...
Opinion Journal's Peggy Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag". Yes, she is. And she's the number one Jesus-lovin' BUSHCO apologist, a snarky, terminally insipid BEE-YOTCH! Ms. Priggy be gettin' jiggy, sayin' somebody need t' bust a cap in their (the LOOTERS)asses . . .
"As for the tragic piggism that is taking place on the streets of New Orleans, it is not unbelievable but it is unforgivable, and I hope the looters are shot."
"Piggism"? Not "piggishness"? Isn't it "priggishness" rather than priggism"?
LOOTERS, yeah.
A guy named NED posting @ BOING BOING opines:
The poorest 20% (you can argue with the number -- 10%? 18%? no one knows) of the city was left behind to drown. This was the plan. Forget the sanctimonious bullshit about the bullheaded people who wouldn't leave. The evacuation plan was strictly laissez-faire. It depended on privately owned vehicles, and on having ready cash to fund an evacuation. The planners knew full well that the poor, who in new orleans are overwhelmingly black, wouldn't be able to get out. The resources -- meaning, the political will -- weren't there to get them out.
White per capita income in Orleans parish, 2000 census: $31,971. Black per capita: $11,332. Median *household* income in B.W. Cooper (Calliope) Housing Projects, 2000: $13,263.
IS IT ***LOOTIN'*** OR IS IT ***SHOPPIN'***? Who decides this shit?
SPLOID News
YAHOO PHOTOS (AP) A YOUNG MAN WALKS THROUGH CHEST DEEP FLOOD WATERS AFTER *** LOOTING ***A GROCERY STORE
YAHOO PHOTOS (AFP GETTY): TWO RESIDENTS WALK THROUGH CHEST DEEP FLOOD WATERS AFTER *** FINDING *** BREAD & SODA FROM A LOCAL GROCERY STORE
IT'S BAD - REAL BAD, THEY SAY -
Unless you have a dead horse to flog - on the HUFFINGTON POST blog . . . where Bobby Kennedy, Jr. links the increasing prevalence of destructive hurricanes to human-induced global warming:
Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which (Republican Mississippi Governor Haley) Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and--now--Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children ...
OH, PLEASE! Just STFU, Bobby!
Sure, someday we may have the benefit of 20-20 hindsight to see clearly that BUSHCO's refusal to sign on to the KYOTO TREATY sic'd Katrina's horrific wrath on our Southern shores - but there's NO WAY to point fingers for a hurricane at this stage in our continuing study of the causes and effects of global warming. The empirical evidence is not sufficient and Bobby Kennedy - as with his illogical ranting about the issue of Thimerosol in vaccines for children - is raising his voice in that perpetually shaky rasp of his to proclaim, "THE F&*%^$!@# SKY IS FALLING!!"
GAWD HAS SMOTE THE WICKED CITY!
(Or is that HE hath "SMITTEN"?)
REPENT AMERICA director Michael Marcavage explains: "Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city. From 'Girls Gone Wild' to 'Southern Decadence,' New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. May it never be the same."
Creepy Bobby, shake tentacles with Creepy Mikey ...
THE USUAL GANG OF MISOGYNIST BULLIES - These clowns don't work & play well with others - even during a national disaster . . .
Katrina vanden Heuvel - Editor, The Nation blogs:
Like all Americans, I was horrified watching pictures of the destruction wrought by the hurricane. And like others who share the name Katrina, I found it eerie hearing and reading my name all over the news. But when Fox started calling the storm Killer Katrina, I prayed some right-wing idiot wouldn't stoop so low as to link me to this human suffering. But wouldn't you know, the biggest dittohead on the block, Rush Limbaugh, is calling the storm Hurricane Katrina vanden Heuvel. National Review's Jonah Goldberg, who has never seen a bad-joke bandwagon he could resist jumping on with both feet, blogged, "It would be pretty cool if Fox played to caricature and repeatedly referred to the hurricane as Katrina vanden Heuvel." He went on to imagine the lines, "The destruction from Katrina vanden Heuvel is expected to be massive. The poor and disabled are particularly likely to suffer from the effects of Katrina vanden Heuvel."
Da Rev respects Ms. vanden Heuvel as a smart, formidable pundit for the progressive view - and he'd like to see pictures of her naked . . .
