I saw a commercial where a girl used a tampon to plug a leak in a boat. Sean could take a lesson.
It is also perhaps inconvenient to point out that major flood control projects that could have been completed by now were in fact cut—by the Clinton administration. From the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1995 (isn’t the Internet fun?): “The Clinton administration is holding back a Corps of Engineers report recommending that the $120 million project proceed. …Without the improvements - a flood gate in the Harvey Canal and raised levees along the Intracoastal Waterway - a tidal surge produced by a hurricane ‘could result in the catastrophic loss of life and property damage,’ corps officials reported.” Not that the Bush administration stepped in to do more since, but given the time these projects take – one item of ACOE funding that the Bush Administration cut was for a study about upgrading the levees, and the study wouldn’t have been completed until, I believe, 2008. (As a side note, the Internet also lets us discover that the New York Times, now on its Olympian high horse condemning the irresponsibility of the Bush administration’s funding cuts for the ACOE, in fact, last April bitterly condemned the very same legislation as an expensive boondoggle. The paper thundered that “the bill would shovel $17 billion at the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control and other water-related projects — this at a time when President Bush is asking for major cuts in Medicaid and other important domestic programs.” Ah well, no one ever expects to hold them accountable for anything.)
The city of New Orleans over the years has managed to find hundreds of millions of dollars for other projects, from building the convention center and a variety of other typical municipal pork projects, millions of which seem to have disappeared into the maw of perhaps the most corrupt local government in the country, but they found nothing to fund their own flood control. Couldn’t pass a bond measure to upgrade their decrepit sewers and pumping system, though.
"I saw a commercial where a girl used a tampon to plug a leak in a boat"
Too bad no one thought of using some on the levees.
I had to take a break... To go to a garage sale to buy another tv set so I could smash it for CNN's coverage!