I just had what is probably a very unoriginal thought reading this--a thought that I have neither read nor heard in the coverage.
He mentions much of the "stuff" washed 5 miles out to sea. If stuff was washed out, what about bodies? And if they did, will they wash back in again or start surfacing? Horrible thoughts.
Has anyone heard anything on this?
vaudine
Well, it starts out well, and then he starts to lash out at Bush and everyone else. Sadness at losing your home and your childhood memories is one thing; throwing political blame at people who don't deserve it is something else.
No doubt irrational anger is one of the stages in dealing with loss. But why was this Bush-bashing rant published in National Review?
anybody, anybody at all, who defends the response of FEMA and of President Bush in my presence or the presence of any New Orleanian is likely to get punched
Grow up. And if you think that Ray Nagin is a "good Mayor," you are mentally ill in the first place.
They need to know that pundits across the country who asked why New Orleans and Louisiana didn’t themselves prepare for such a storm have no idea what they’re talking about, for the city and state have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into coastal wetland restoration and water-pumping stations and complicated engineering — but the feds have repeatedly failed to deliver promised matching funds,
The Bush administration has given far more federal dollars to Louisiana than your hero Clinton did. Maybe if Louisiana didn't spend the money on casinos and bike paths, it might have had better levees.
and have consistently ignored problems (replacing levee funds, for example, which are a life-saving responsibility of the Corps of Engineers, with channel-dredging funds for pork projects for waterways with almost no barge traffic).
Very simply: Congress spends federal money. If it's such a priority, then Louisiana's Congressional representatives should have budgeted for it. Period.
They're saying that the Titanic sank because the Carpathia was too slow.
This is an excellent article. Thanks for sharing NO from a long-term resident's slant. I understand the historical growth of New Orleans much better after reading it. These were things that puzzled me.