Free Republic

"The whole nation is involved now"

Sure, it's a big national drama show.

Only the locals get to vote the weakest link out. The rest of the nation will have to wait til next week's episode to see what the locals choose to do with their politicians.

"Many Officials in Louisiana are in some Deep Big Time Trouble."

Nah, the locals will stand behind them. Just check out the stories in the Times Picayune and WWL to get an idea of how the locals view this. I can see how someone would think that if the local politicians are abusing the constituents that those poor folks would be happy for the "cops" to show up and haul off the politicians, but this is really more like a domestic dispute and when the "cops" show up those squabbling will all stand by each other. Just watch. It's been this way for 300 years in this part of the country.

"Improve the dykes and breakwater systems ala Amsterdam and it will probably be way cheaper than rebuilding an entire city somewhere else."

That just means that much more volume of water WHEN the levee breaks again. The bigger the levee, the bigger the flood when it does break.

"But should we rebuild New Orleans, 10 feet below sea level, just so it can be wiped out again?"

"We" didn't build New Orleans to begin with. The public works are paid for by municipal taxes and state funding. The individual homes are paid for by the individual. However all this came to be the first time is how it will come to be again.

Real Estate is extremely cheap in Louisiana compared to any other area in the nation. And a house is a fraction of the cost that you'd find on the West Coast or in New England. People who need affordable housing will be attracted to the area again. As long as that land remains in the hands of private landowners it will be developed. All they have to do is say, "We fixed the problems with the levees, the houses are built 1 ft higher, it won't happen again." and people will come.

A couple of my relatives...ahem...have already rented trailers and gotten jobs. Seriously.

Another man here in Houston said that he had 40 people at his house. Some of them had already gotten jobs.

My prediction: Many of the skilled workers will stay at their new locations. Those will job skills in demand will be snapped up by new employers in their new states. When the refugee shelters are closed by the Red Cross the homeless and jobless that remain will be shipped back to New Orleans. The middle class of NO will drastically shrink, the gap between rich and poor will increase.

"on our local news tonight here in houston, they said something about the refugees/evacuees in the astrodome leaving and going partying, getting drunk and coming back to the dome all hours of the night stirring up trouble."

LOL, Care to wager that the next reports will be of women on the upper levels flashing their chests to those chanting below?

Jesse Jackson: "There is a surplus of water and diapers, what we need are mobile homes."

A shortage of trailers in the South? Surely not!

Maybe he's planning on starting a new city of his own out of these mobile homes. I'm not too sure that all the potential residents would be considering them "temporary shelter". If Mayor Nagin has to threaten to cut off free water in order to get people sleeping on soggy mattresses on their porches to leave, what would it take to get them out of trailers with all utilities paid?

There is no vaccination against antibiotic resistent bacteria, flesh eating or otherwise.

"Be sure to read his explaination about the phrase "good ole white boys""

I thought you might have been joking about that, but sure enough, it's in there. Thanks for the link.
I've been trying to find links about levee funding. So far it looks like the feds only supply a fraction of the levee boards income. So much for blaming it all on the feds. Other funding comes from gambling revenues as well as funding from the state.

"I don't want to be here any more than two, three months."

Wow. I would have set my limit at two or three days.

In this case why would Blanco retaining control over the Louisiana National Guard impede the feds from helping? I guess I'm trying to figure out what Bush's side of the story in all this might be.

What does it mean to federalize the National Guard?
What are both sides of that story?

"when you here the word, refugee, what is the first thing that comes to mind?"

Someone who leaves a geographical region due to some catastrophe, is homeless, and probably won't be returning. Refugee sounds so "permanent" to me. "Evacuees" are more like the folks on the North Shore who will be coming back in the next week or so. I never thought of refugee as having a political denotation until I looked it up recently.

"Los Angeles County is refusing to take evacuees."

I bet they couldn't get any sort of guarantee for reimbursement. I'd be willing to bet that all these cities offering to take in "Our Gulf Coast Neighbors" have recieved only verbal (read: political promises) of reimbursement. We'll be hearing for years how some of those promises were never fulfilled and how smaller cities got stuck with very big bills. Los Angeles has to look out for its own citizens.

"Surely they didn't have a gay parade today, in the French Quarter????"

Well, I think it was more like a group of 20 people went dancing down the street.

Insurance does not cover "civil unrest"
Arson, theft, looting etc during a declared state of emergency are not covered by insurance.

Remember the businesses in LA during the Rodney King riots? They were SOL.

There are insurance companies that will personalize P&C coverage for you but your run of the mill insurance company offers generic coverage. Read the fine print before you sign.

The sense of entitlement is overwhelming. I get the idea these spokesmen howling (supposedly on behalf of the otherwise grateful refugees) would be have been satisfied with nothing less than Disney employees showing up and whisking residents away simultaneously in overhead gondolas to resorts or cruise ships.

The next time someone says, "If they were white..." Well, the folks that I know that escaped and are white didn't have a single person helping them, aren't receiving a dime from the Red Cross and had to find their own way out, their own place to sleep and their own new jobs. They are getting nothing from anyone except their families.

Katrina: Equal Opportunity Destroyer

"The barge was in the industrial canal,,pics were there very early. It banged all the way thru the levee and was on the opposite side after the storm."

That certainly makes sense. However, levees are designed to withstand those kinds of collisions. Combine a soggy levee that's already been stressed to the max with that sort of collision and it's a recipe for disaster.

"Rumors have it the primary discussion between Nagin and Bush yesterday centered on federalizing the entire region. "

From the whining coming from certain political sectors it sounds like this is already happened de facto. I vote we call the recovery period "The Reconstruction" part II

There aren't any ports that handle cargo on Lake Ponchartrain. There is no reason for a barge to be out there. The cargo goes through the Mississippi River.