Replies to post #124722 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[harrypothead]

It's Your Failure, Too, Mr. Bush

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/05/AR2005090501035.html

First, an administration that since Sept. 11, 2001, has told us a major terrorist strike is inevitable should have had in place a well-elaborated plan for evacuating a major American city. Even if there wasn't a specific plan for New Orleans -- although it was clear that a breach of the city's levees was one of the likeliest natural catastrophes -- there should have been a generic plan. George W. Bush told us time and again that our cities were threatened. Shouldn't he have ordered up a plan to get people out?

Second, someone should have thought about what to do with hundreds of thousands of evacuees,

[Chris McConnel]

Congress May Modify Bankruptcy "Reform" that Penalizes Katrina Victims

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/katrina_bankruptcy.html

[harrypothead]

Vanished, Under Force of Time and an Inconstant Earth

Just ask Ozymandias, or Nate Fisher.

Only the wind inhabits the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in Colorado, birds and vines the pyramids of the Maya. Sand and silence have swallowed the clamors of frankincense traders and camels in the old desert center of Ubar. Troy was buried for centuries before it was uncovered. Parts of the Great Library of Alexandria, center of learning in the ancient world, might be sleeping with the fishes, off Egypt's coast in the Mediterranean.

"Cities rise and fall depending on what made them go in the first place," said Peirce Lewis, an expert on the history of New Orleans and an emeritus professor of geography at Pennsylvania State University.

Changes in climate can make a friendly place less welcoming. Catastrophes like volcanoes or giant earthquakes can kill a city quickly. Political or economic shifts can strand what was once a thriving metropolis in a slow death of irrelevance. After the Mississippi River flood of 1993, the residents of Valmeyer, Ill., voted to move their entire town two miles east to higher ground.

What will happen to New Orleans now, in the wake of floods and death and violence, is hard to know.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/06/science/06lost.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1125990255-MKNjdjb/UqRKZB....