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Kaus has it about right: Sure, the Bushies are using the federalism issue, and Louisiana's potentially bruised feelings, as an excuse--especially when they talk about how "it would have been perceived" if Bush had seized control of the relief effort...

Bob Denver, aka Gilligan, has died. He's finally off the island. Happy trails little buddy....

Looks like a new blog by someone connected to South Dakota....

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!

This is from The Hill: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove is planning to travel to North Dakota later this month to rally GOP activists and, Republicans hope, persuade Gov. John Hoeven (R) to challenge Sen. Kent Conrad...

Methinks that Instapundit is right on the money: THE PRESS WANTS TO SHOW BODIES from Katrina. It didn't want to show bodies, or jumpers, on 9/11, for fear that doing so would inflame the public. I can only conclude that...

Today's FARK headline: Today's "I'll never drink again" story brought to you by Denver, where man on painkillers, who hadn't slept for two days because of tooth abscess, decides to have a few beers and go four-wheeling at night in...

Base-closure panel finds overestimation of savings

The final Base Re-alignment and Closing Commission report has been sent to the President. The final version notably maintains Ellsworth AFB of South Dakota as a going concern. Hopefully, the report is accepted.

The Pentagon overestimated savings from base closings by $30 billion and some of its plans for streamlining the Army, Navy and Air Force might have made the services less efficient, a federal commission that reviewed the process said yesterday.

With its five months of work complete, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission voiced its concerns even as it approved roughly 86 percent of what Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recommended as he sought to save money by getting rid of extra space in the domestic military network. That's on par with previous years, when commissions changed only about 15 percent of what the Pentagon proposed.

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