sovay: (Default)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2005-08-30 01:37 pm

And I'll drink a health to my Creole girl and the lakes of Pontchartrain

This reminds me why I do not watch the news. (I do not own a television.) The levee has broken; Lake Pontchartrain is draining into New Orleans; someone just committed suicide in the Superdome; and it should no longer surprise me that any time Bush opens his mouth, I cannot wait for the next election, but what he says about this disaster is exactly as reassuring and useful as soggy Kleenex. You had to come back early from vacation? At least you have a home to come back to. See how blandly you can discuss devastation when your ranch has been scraped off the earth by a hurricane, mister. I cannot imagine what it is like to live in New Orleans or anywhere else along the Gulf Coast right now. And there's nothing pretty to say.

[identity profile] strange-selkie.livejournal.com 2005-08-30 05:49 pm (UTC)(link)
And according to Mainstream News Outlet CNN, they won't have power for 4-6 weeks. Nowhere to live. No possessions, nothing to eat.
I think the Shrub should open up his ranch and the kitchens in his personal possession...

[identity profile] strange-selkie.livejournal.com 2005-08-30 06:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, on the... bright side? My mother is all right. And my sister's dorm has power. A lot of Alabama will not for some weeks, however, because some brilliant Alabamian administrator put a large part of the power grid... in Mobile.

[identity profile] schreibergasse.livejournal.com 2005-08-30 06:55 pm (UTC)(link)
Also: is this a case of global-warming-induced extreme weather? Or did New Orleans's luck just finally run out?

"...won't have power for six weeks..."
This assuming New Orleans gets resettled...

You can tell I never read the news either, can't you? Though in this case it's pure laziness...

[identity profile] rachelmanija.livejournal.com 2005-08-30 07:10 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't think scientists are agreed on whether or not global warming had anything to do with this. Warmer waters do increase the intensity of hurricanes, apparently, but don't cause them. There's also natural cycles of hurricane activity. Magic eight-ball cloudy; try again later.

[identity profile] madwriter.livejournal.com 2005-08-30 07:22 pm (UTC)(link)
What triggered the global warming speculation was that the hurricane was fed, according to various weather sources I read, by an anomalous warm stream of water in the Gulf that appeared fairly suddenly not long before Katrina. A number of scientists are now trying to pin down what caused this stream to occur.

[identity profile] fleurdelis28.livejournal.com 2005-08-31 04:20 am (UTC)(link)
The sense I got from my brother is that this was pretty much inevitable, though that doesn't directly answer the question of what caused this storm to do what it did. But it sounds like sooner or later, another storm would have.

And I'm not a fan of our President, but it sounds like this is something everyone can agree was just an Act of God (I'm not talking theology; it's an official legal term - though I think not the one of choice in Europe). However Bush ought to have reacted, his ability to have a real effect on the situation, for good or ill, has been pretty limited.

[identity profile] clarionj.livejournal.com 2005-08-31 05:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you for everything you've said (hope you don't mind the eavesdropping but I was glad to hear this side of the ongoing tension expressed--damn, now I'll be spending the day trying to figure out how to connect eaves to internet, an unworthy distraction I'm sure). I'm old enough to have seen a number of presidents, not all I was fond of, in situations of disaster and wars, and I don't remember any taking pleasure vacations, and all of them appeared worried and worn and sadly aged. I wonder if we'll ever see genuine compassion from this man.

[identity profile] clarionj.livejournal.com 2005-09-02 12:56 pm (UTC)(link)
Thanks for the links, though now that anger that had been working underneath is at surface. Seems like energies have to be split in two--empathy and aid toward the victims; anger and further petitions against Bush and friends.

By the way I ordered your story collection through Project Pulp and look forward to reading it. Glad to see you've a novel coming out too. Best to you.

[identity profile] nancylebov.livejournal.com 2005-08-30 06:30 pm (UTC)(link)
There are some National Guard in N.O., but I don't have a feeling for how many more there would have been if it weren't for the war.

[identity profile] madwriter.livejournal.com 2005-08-30 07:21 pm (UTC)(link)
The number I heard was that 2000 of them are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, but I didn't see a source for the number.

[identity profile] lesser-celery.livejournal.com 2005-08-30 11:49 pm (UTC)(link)
About one-fourth of National Guard members from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida are deployed in or around Iraq and Afghanistan. That's pretty uniform across the four states. In actual numbers, there are 31,000 National Guard troops available in the four affected states, whereas there would have been about 41,000. Just estimating by state population, I think that means Louisiana has stateside about 7,300 of their usual 9,500. A fair number of the people available for duty at home have been deployed in Iraq recently, and the added stress of having to keep things under control in Louisiana is going to make life unpleasant. I appreciate the National Guard, especially at times like this, and I wish them and their families well.

[identity profile] madwriter.livejournal.com 2005-09-14 08:54 pm (UTC)(link)
A lady I know, whose husband is in the Guard in Iraq right now, pointed out that the numbers for totals we see are inflated, after a fashion. She said they include those who aren't on active duty, as well as those who are on medical leave or can't go on active duty for one reason or another but are still on the rolls.

[identity profile] madwriter.livejournal.com 2005-08-30 07:24 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm afraid I've gotten so cynical about Bush that I've wondered if he welcomed the hurricane as a no-face-lost excuse to get out of Crawford while Cindy Sheehan is there.