----You think that every one of the evacuees should leave and never come back?----
"Get out of Louisiana" was one of the top-recommended formulas for success in life long before Katrina.
----Who's going to operate the (very important) port? (And where are we going to get such good jazz and shrimp? ;)----
The port is N.O.'s best chance for coming back in any significant way, agreed. And the jazz and shrimp will certainly have a place in the theme park I foresee the remnants of the city becoming.
----I agree that NO should not be rebuilt as it was. It should be rebuilt better than it was.----
GOD knows, it would be hard to do worse, and I've been right behind Bush on every massive proposal from revitalizing NASA and going to Mars to reforming Social Security, but listening to him outline a vision tonight for bringing back New Orleans, I could not help but think "Bless you, Mr. President, but I don't buy it." And I don't. It isn't realistic to expect that we can bring back a bigger, stronger New Orleans by turning it into the biggest public works project in American history.
----And knowing the great American spirit and how we rise to any challenge set before us, I'm betting it will all happen before any of us expect it.----
You may well be right. Right now I'd give almost anything for life to be "normal" again. But what the world learned these past few weeks is that in the worst of times, Louisiana tears itself apart.
I don't believe in this state. I don't believe we'd have witnessed the horror we did had Katrina happened anywhere else in the country, and I don't believe we're going to learn the necessary lessons from it. We're going to re-elect Blanco in '07. We're going to keep electing the same socialists who've failed us time and time again. And I don't believe that making a life here will be in anyone's best interests for a long time to come.
Hate to be so pessimistic, but that's the Louisiana I know. We have long been content in our little third-world rut.
-Dan