« Now You Too Can Tell a Stranger to 'Sacre... | Main | On Top of Everything Else, Now I Subject You to SHAMELESS »

January 08, 2007

"Even Covered in Mustard, Bingley Wouldn't Tempt the Most Desperate of New Orleans Cannibals"

...is one of my favorite commenting 'handles'. "But ths", you ask,"Tres true and hilarious as that is, why you bring it up, cher?"
Well, truth is stranger than fiction, these days. Like, given to hyperventing hyperbole that he is, I'm still sure no one would think Barney Frank would accuse a president of 'genocide' concerning a natural disaster. His ignorance of all things 'emergency' might lead him to say 'ineptitude', 'indifference' or 'racist', but genocide? Good grief. Once and for all, neither George Bush nor Karl Rove control the very waves in the sea or the wind in the air. Only this guy does. And it's pretty arbitrary where the bad stuff winds up, depending on His mood.

Granted, we're sort of responsible for preparing just in case He's ornery and sends sh*t our way for whatever reason ~ gays, strip clubs, Mardi Gras, ad nauseum ~ regardless, it's still HIM/Nature/Thor the Thunder God doing it, not the White House. A couple bottles of water, box o' crackers, cans o' tuna ~ all covered by food stamps ~ will go a long way to making your situation palatable. And just to let you know that rising water isn't exclusively a Rovian plot to wipe the Democratic voting poor black man from the face of the earth, take a listen to some of these 911 calls during Ivan ~ those are white people climbing on their washers and kitchen counters, trying to break into the ceilings as the water comes up. "Can someone come get us?" (No dumba$$, they can't. The winds are steady at 140mph.) And. Some of them drowned. Now, I know that doesn't count as 'genocide', because it's white 'rednecks' from the Panhandle,
but we've got feelings, too.

MY question to Rep. Frank? So if THIS round was presidential 'genocide', who catches the blame for Round Two? YOU'RE 'in charge' now and those are OUR tax dollars, so...?

New Orleans Repeats Mistakes as It Rebuilds
Many Houses Built in Areas Katrina Flooded Are Not on Raised Foundations

By ones and twos, homeowners here are reinhabiting neighborhoods, even the most devastated ones, and many view their return as a triumph over adversity.

But experts involved in the rebuilding believe that the helter-skelter return of residents to this low-lying metropolis may represent another potential disaster.

...Moreover, while new federal guidelines call for raising houses to reduce the damage of future floods, most returning homeowners do not have to comply or are finding ways around the costly requirement, according to city officials.

"It's terrifying: We're doing the same things we have in the past but expecting different results," said Robert G. Bea, a professor of civil engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and a former New Orleans resident who served as a member of the National Science Foundation panel that studied the city's levees.

"There are areas where it doesn't make any sense to rebuild -- they got 20 feet of water in Katrina," said Tom Murphy, a former Pittsburgh mayor who served on an Urban Land Institute panel for post-Katrina planning. "In those places, nature is talking to us, and we ought to be listening. I don't think we are."


Who has the cajones (the technical term) to be the adult in the room here, Congressman? Have you said ONE WORD about what's ACTUALLY going on in the city at this moment, instead of your pitiful, recycled urban legends? Do you even know? (Note to Barney: see Popular Mechanics for FACTS. Don't be intimidated ~ they have pictures and pie charts.) New Orleans had a DEMOCRATIC government before Katrina and, to the voters' utter, eternal SHAME, all the same good time boys are there again...
...New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin (D) so far has favored allowing evacuees to inhabit their old neighborhoods as they wish.

Mike Centineo, the city's building chief, said, "Legally and morally, we're doing the right thing," but he acknowledged that most returning homeowners are not raising their houses to meet the new flood guidelines. "You wouldn't want to put people through more than they can endure. It's a catastrophe that happened. No one wants it to happen again. But they're just rebuilding as best they can."

...doing the politically expedient thing again. My best guess would be that New Orleans laissez faire will win out. And when they're all backstroking again ~ as they someday inevitably will be ~ it won't fall on the black Democratic administration's head for not acting like grown-ups who gave a damn about preventing another catastrophe. Who gave a damn about their people's safety. (I'm sure Randy Ray Noggin has kept that choice piece of property in Texas just in case...) Nah. It will be that the uncaring white folk in the White House LET the Ray Naginites LET them stream back into the bowl, build their houses free of pilings or stilts or concrete blocks where there was once 20 feet of water, knowing they could call up another storm and clear them all out...again.

Ain't nuffin' like havin' yo'sef de plan, cher.


Posted by tree hugging sister at January 8, 2007 10:39 AM

Comments

This is pretty much the (unofficial) policy across the United States. As long as Uncle Sugar keeps on riding to the rescue after disasters, this sort of behavior will continue. Rational disaster mitigation and response planning tends to be the exception, not the rule.

Posted by: The_Real_JeffS at January 8, 2007 11:45 AM

Not for nothing... but if you really don't want to put people through more than they can endure, why wouldn't you enforce the code? Surely it's less onerous than having everyone lose everything all over again. So, no, neither legal nor moral, if you're keeping track at home.

And that picture reminds me of the insult Aladdin tosses at the snooty prince in the Disney version: "I've never seen a horse with two rear ends before!"

Posted by: Nightfly at January 8, 2007 04:53 PM

Didja see "Dirty Jobs" last night about the wrecking crew working in NOLA? "Katrina Punch" and tons of vermin that the host called "the petting zoo from hell".

Posted by: John at January 8, 2007 05:02 PM