Gone with the Water

From an article in the October 2004 issue of National Geographic magazine:

It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV “storm teams” warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.

But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

Sound familiar? Read on:

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

Fortunately the casualty rate doesn’t seem to be this high for NOLA, but the rest sounds spot on.

When did this calamity happen? It hasn’t—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.

Pretty good for a year in advance. Imagine what would have happened if the Louisiana state government, and the City of New Orleans had made some realistic emergency plans based on this sort of projection.

Like it should have been their priority, since they’re the ones directly on the scene – right? As it turned out, wrong!

Bush Administration Wins Appeal on Padilla

In a victory for the Bush administration, a federal appeals court ruled Friday that the government can continue to hold indefinitely an American accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb.”

This decision is fully in line with long-standing precedent where US citizens who had been engaged as enemy combatants in WW-I and WW-II were held as POW’s without any access or recourse to the civilian judicial system. Any other outcome would also be insane from the viewpoint of national security.

“The exceedingly important question before us is whether the President of the United States possesses the authority to detain militarily a citizen of this country who is closely associated with al-Qaida, an entity with which the United States is at war,” Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote. “We conclude that the President does possess such authority.”

This decision also happens to highlight a judge who may go to SCOTUS. This would be a welcome addition to them:

Luttig, who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court, was joined in his opinion by Judges M. Blane Michael and William B. Traxler Jr.

FEMA Dumps Brown As Katrina Relief Chief

Call a spade a spade: Pres. Bush appointing this guy as head of FEMA was NOT a positive move. Pulling him out of the Katrina situation into a role of “overall supervision” is effectively kicking him upstairs to get him out of the way.

This is a necessary move, and frankly, the Chief hopes that he is gracefully moved out altogether after some period of time, to complete the process of error correction.

His replacement, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen has HIS ducks in a row, and will be a major improvement.

YIKES! Blogposts Vanish into Ether!

Something horrible happened this afternoon resulting in the deletion of all of the Chief’s postings from June through the current date/time.

Even more unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be retrievable – AND – this occurred with no backup for the time in question. (I know, always do regular backups – and I DO, at least for my working files – but I didn’t think to do so for my blog. Oh well.

What’s the old moonbat-ish cliche? Oh yeah, this is almost like the first day of the rest of the blog – and I’ll have new posts up (generally) daily.