Posted on 08/31/2005 9:03:25 PM PDT by InvisibleChurch
There is nothing too tragic for these ghouls to try to twist for sordid political gain. Nothing.
The real maggot-infested nitwit in this whole DemocRAT fiasco is Bobby Kennedy's retarded kid. He's saying that the hurricane was caused because President Bush wouldn't sign his Commie Comrades' Coyote Protocol. Somebody needs to tell the Kennedys that their day has come and gone. America is tired of their big mouths.
Clinton did? Do we have a link, this would be GOLDEN!!
Another study was not needed to know that if the big one hit, NO was history, and most remaining would die. This was not the big one. All we lost was NO, rather than a horrific body count. As it is the body count will be in the thousands.
No it wouldn't. Nothing about this tragedy is golden. I don't care if it's Bush's fault or Clinton's fault or Ted Kennedy's fault; there is no cause for rejoicing here. And I think politicizing this disaster -- by either side -- is both grossly premature and in extremely bad taste.
$70 million flushed down the rathole of the NO public education system would have paid for a lot of levee protection:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2002245573_schools19.html
NEW ORLEANS — Dozens of employees indicted or convicted on corruption charges. Tens of millions of dollars unaccounted for. Eight superintendents in seven years. Rock-bottom test scores. Shootings, sirens and police uniforms, often. The threat of bankruptcy and bounced checks, constantly.
In the dismal gallery of failing urban school systems, New Orleans' may be the biggest horror of them all.
In February, the U.S. Education Department said nearly $70 million in federal money for low-income children was either not properly accounted for or misspent.
I'm not trying to politicize it, I think it's absolutely disgusting anyone is doing that. But I'm equally disgusted that the left is putting this blame on someone and I'd like to know the facts, that is why I am asking.
It is my understanding that what the Dems are blaming on Bush, the cuts, would not have taken the levees to a Cat 4 or Cat 5 level anyway. If, in fact, Hillary's own husband (let's not forget she is one of the ones blasting Bush on this) had that opportunity, well let's just say I think it would stop the political crap once and for all on this. Otherwise, it's going to continue.
2001
New Orleans faces doomsday scenario
Houston Chronicle ^ | December 1, 2001 | ERIC BERGER
Posted on 12/01/2001 11:17:03 AM EST by Dog Gone
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/581820/posts
KEEPING ITS HEAD ABOVE WATER
New Orleans faces doomsday scenario
New Orleans is sinking.
And its main buffer from a hurricane, the protective Mississippi River delta, is quickly eroding away, leaving the historic city perilously close to disaster.
So vulnerable, in fact, that earlier this year the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most castastrophic disasters facing this country.
The other two? A massive earthquake in San Francisco, and, almost prophetically, a terrorist attack on New York City.
The New Orleans hurricane scenario may be the deadliest of all.
In the face of an approaching storm, scientists say, the city's less-than-adequate evacuation routes would strand 250,000 people or more, and probably kill one of 10 left behind as the city drowned under 20 feet of water. Thousands of refugees could land in Houston.
Economically, the toll would be shattering.
Southern Louisiana produces one-third of the country's seafood, one-fifth of its oil and one-quarter of its natural gas. The city's tourism, lifeblood of the French Quarter, would cease to exist. The Big Easy might never recover.
And, given New Orleans' precarious perch, some academics wonder if it should be rebuilt at all.
It's been 36 years since Hurricane Betsy buried New Orleans 8 feet deep. Since then a deteriorating ecosystem and increased development have left the city in an ever more precarious position.
Yet the problem went unaddressed for decades by a laissez-faire government, experts said.
"To some extent, I think we've been lulled to sleep," said Marc Levitan, director of Louisiana State University's hurricane center.
Hurricane season ended Friday, and for the second straight year no hurricanes hit the United States. But the season nonetheless continued a long-term trend of more active seasons, forecasters said. Tropical Storm Allison became this country's most destructive tropical storm ever.
Yet despite the damage Allison wrought upon Houston, dropping more than 3 feet of water in some areas, a few days later much of the city returned to normal as bloated bayous drained into the Gulf of Mexico.
The same storm dumped a mere 5 inches on New Orleans, nearly overwhelming the city's pump system. If an Allison-type storm were to strike New Orleans, or a Category 3 storm or greater with at least 111 mph winds, the results would be cataclysmic, New Orleans planners said.
"Any significant water that comes into this city is a dangerous threat," Walter Maestri, Jefferson Parish emergency management director, told Scientific American for an October article.
"Even though I have to plan for it, I don't even want to think about the loss of life a huge hurricane would cause."
New Orleans is essentially a bowl ringed by levees that protect the city from the Mississippi River to its south and Lake Pontchartrain to the north. The bottom of the bowl is 14 feet below sea level, and efforts to keep it dry are only digging a deeper hole.
During routine rainfalls the city's dozens of pumps push water uphill into the lake. This, in turn, draws water from the ground, further drying the ground and sinking it deeper, a problem known as subsidence.
This problem also faces Houston as water wells have sucked the ground dry. Houston's solution is a plan to convert to surface drinking water. For New Orleans, eliminating pumping during a rainfall is not an option, so the city continues to sink.
A big storm, scientists said, would likely block four of five evacuation routes long before it hit. Those left behind would have no power or transportation, and little food or medicine, and no prospects for a return to normal any time soon.
"The bowl would be full," Levitan said. "There's simply no place for the water to drain."
Estimates for pumping the city dry after a huge storm vary from six to 16 weeks. Hundreds of thousands would be homeless, their residences destroyed.
The only solution, scientists, politicians and other Louisiana officials agree, is to take large-scale steps to minimize the risks, such as rebuilding the protective delta.
Every two miles of marsh between New Orleans and the Gulf reduces a storm surge -- which in some cases is 20 feet or higher -- by half a foot.
In 1990, the Breaux Act, named for its author, Sen. John Breaux, D-La., created a task force of several federal agencies to address the severe wetlands loss in coastal Louisiana. The act has brought about $40 million a year for wetland restoration projects, but it hasn't been enough.
"It's kind of been like trying to give aspirin to a cancer patient," said Len Bahr, director of Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster's coastal activities office.
The state loses about 25 square miles of land a year, the equivalent of about one football field every 15 minutes. The fishing industry, without marshes, swamps and fertile wetlands, could lose a projected $37 billion by the year 2050.
University of New Orleans researchers studied the impact of Breaux Act projects on the vanishing wetlands and estimated that only 2 percent of the loss has been averted. Clearly, Bahr said, there is a need for something much bigger. There is some evidence this finally may be happening.
A consortium of local, state and federal agencies is studying a $2 billion to $3 billion plan to divert sediment from the Mississippi River back into the delta. Because the river is leveed all the way to the Gulf, where sediment is dumped into deep water, nothing is left to replenish the receding delta.
Other possible projects include restoration of barrier reefs and perhaps a large gate to prevent Lake Pontchartrain from overflowing and drowning the city.
All are multibillion-dollar projects. A plan to restore the Florida Everglades attracted $4 billion in federal funding, but the state had to match it dollar for dollar.
In Louisiana, so far, there's only been a willingness to match 15 or 25 cents.
"Our state still looks for a 100 percent federal bailout, but that's just not going to happen," said University of New Orleans geologist Shea Penland, a delta expert.
"We have an image and credibility problem. We have to convince our country that they need to take us seriously, that they can trust us to do a science-based restoration program."
Hey Frank, you old coot...yeah it would have been a really good idea to put all of their national gaurd troops in the middle of a hurrican just so there could be there to watch the damage first hand...oh, and hopefully survive without there equipment being destroyed.
You're an ass Frankie Lats, the next time a tornado rips through the midwest, why don't you make sure you're on the ground to coordinate your trip to Oz...they've got a wizard there about on your level. Piker!
Tax cuts had nothing to do with it, of course.
But when the nation puts priority on military (i.e., war) spending, there have to be budget cuts elsewhere . . or you get exactly the same condition that resulted when LBJ proclaimed that we could have "guns and butter" in the late '60s.
That gave us Nixon, dollar devaluation, wage and price controls, scandals, inflation and then Jimmuh Carter and a national malaise.
Although it's not really the fedguv's responsibility to make Losiana habitable -- it took that on, I suspect, as a job-creation project during the Depression -- look for the Bush administration to promise billions to rebuilding the levees, reclaiming flooded farmland, and making N'olins whole again. There will be no serious discussion, in Congress at least, of whether this is a wise path to follow. It's the path of least resistance, so it must be right.
We are in for a rough ride.
Unfortunately, the MSM NEVER tires of anything the Kennedys have to say.
"All Spending Bills shall originate in the House" US Constitution.
Sids not only a liar, he's a bad liar.
L
You got that right. The problem with the Kennedys is that they are all so last millennium. We've moved beyond them.
Smoking Gun!!! A year ago the Corps of Engineers PROPOSED a study to be done.
So what would have happened/changed had a STUDY been done a year ago?
This proves, yet again for anyone who still thinks they have the best interests of the country at heart, that there is NOTHING, of the most heinous sort, beneath the democrats. They fabricate and spew the most fantastic lies and distortions glibly, in the exact manner of the Nazis. They offer nothing but fear and hysteria, used as levers to push their totalitarian agenda.
New Orleans - let us pray for God's help to its people - has LONG been a disaster of this magnitude waiting to happen. To imperiously blame Bush "tax cuts," even while the huge horror of death and catastrophe is yet going on, for the failure of levees that never could work against a storm like this, and even for the Category 5 hurricane itself (!), these people reveal themselves as the lowest scum infesting our nation.
If we wouldn't have had the tax cuts the economy would have been worse and any money gained by the tax cuts would have been eaten up in unemployment payments. These people are so predictable with what they will say.
I'm from TN and work with some of the same kind of people.
Good ol' Sid The Shill.
The Clinton's can always count on that fruity lapdog to carry their water.
I wonder if they use a dog whistle to call him to duty.
So we're still waiting for Senile Frank to wake up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.