Respectful boo for the post title.
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Solo cup is presumably only for one hurricane…we’re gonna need a bigger cup.
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I’m really surprised most Gulf coast states are still voting in climate change deniers and people concerned with saving oil extraction jobs vs. investing in new technology (i.e. 'publicans).
I would think that they (and the rest of the southeast coast) would be the first ones on the HOLY SHIAT we need to do something wagon. Lets see Texas go blue and FL solid blue. If you’re voting for derp again, I’m getting tired of my tax dollars going towards bailing you out.
I do hope you all stay safe down there, though. I have tons of family and friends down there in FL but even if I didn’t I’d still wish you the best of luck. I’m all out of thoughts and prayers.
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Perhaps the unprecedented level of hot air bloviating from Trump’s lying mouth
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i see your shock meme reference and raise you a full on double hurricane all the way across the sky
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It’s weird, but I haven’t had a chance to ask something of a New Orleanian since Katrina that’s bothered me. Hopefully you won’t mind this.
Katrina f****d things up beyond belief. War zone level destruction. What’s bothered me is that New Orleans seems to have missed the opportunity so many destroyed cities have used to build something better. So my question is why? Yes, money is a major part of the answer. But there didn’t even seem to be a plan beyond build it back the way it was. That always seems doomed to apathy and under-funding. So were there any real proposals to build something new and better and what happened?
The engineer in me always wants to correct the subsidence problem. The only way to do that is to pile a lot of dirt in the low areas (something the river used to do). It always seemed like any rebuilding before doing that is doomed to repeated flooding. And if you are putting 3m of dirt down (and planning to maybe add more some day), that’s an opportunity for some innovative city planning (while still keeping the original residents).
Sorry, just waiting out rush hour typing nonsense rather than sitting in traffic. But I am curious if you have some insight.
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It’s far too early to say where they’re going to hit, but I see that the cones-of-uncertainty overlap in southern Louisiana. Is there a double-hurricane-whammy on the horizon?
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The main thing you’re missing is that the city has little say in this. The river levee system is entirely federal (under the Corps of Engineers) and all decisions go through Congress. There have been engineers pointing out flaws and improvements for over a century and a half and Congress has consistently chosen short-sighted cheap now but expensive later approaches. Until the past decade, New Orleans didn’t even have much say in levee upkeep and repair (that was a state agency).
The fixes of floodgates, stronger levees, better upkeep, and coastal restoration all have plenty of advocates in New Orleans, some of whom have been screaming about the problems for decades. Ultimately there is very little overlap between those that actually give a shit and those with the power to change things and build something better
ETA: The city predates the levee system. The levees increase the river and bayou levels (known problem since before the first levees were even built) which increases the danger and damage of floods. Katrina on almost every level was a disaster of U.S. federal incompetence
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Things would be better if the local state governors raked the Gulf more often, like they do the fjords in Norway.
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Since I got thinking about it, it is hard to stop. Next point, Congress sent a ton of money to the city after Katrina, but it was mostly corporate welfare and not investment. For instance, residents were housed on docked Carnival cruise ships for weeks at a cost of $150,000 per person, but giving the same people any of that to invest into rebuilding their homes would be socialism and we can’t have that.
Louisiana has been consistently screwed out of off-shore oil revenues as well. One of the reasons Texas has so much more money, is that the’ve always received more revenue from off-shore drilling than Louisiana due to federal law. One of the many ignored proposals after Katrina was that the feds cut us a check for that revenue and we could afford to pay for the levee improvements ourselves. Instead Congress implemented a revenue-sharing plan that capped funds LA could recieve at $176 million a year (a small fraction of what the feds get from wells off the LA coast and less than what was spent each day on the middle east wars).
Every time anyone sees a story about a hurricane in the gulf, please remind your congress-people that prevention is ultimately cheaper, and every year that actual improvements are kicked down the road yet again raises the cost that we’ll end up paying
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We all want to get off Mr Trump’s Wild Ride.
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Just shows how fscking stupid people can be.
No different than people repeatedly voting for candidates who consistently act against their interests.
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It’s just God showing her displeasure at the Gulf states voting for the shitgibbon, and preparing to do it again.
I wonder, if countless Southerners are left dead or homeless after the hurricanes make landfall will Trump offer words of support or will he pull the same victim-blaming bullshit he did in response to the California wildfires? Or will he just try to make this disaster all about himself after his planned golf weekend to Mar-a-Lago has to be postponed due to rain?
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Option #3 will be first & foremost, as always.
Options 1 & 2 will vary, depending on the victims involved.
Remember, those are red states with large metros that tend blue. So, city-folk can expect victim-blaming (“Why is Houston still flooding after all the BILLIONS we gave them?”), while those in the hinterlands will get words of support: (“Thoughts & Prayers”) which will be all they get.
His EO re: FEMA funds for unemployment supplementation have probably raised Hob with their budget, doncha know?
In any case, here’s hoping those storms don’t dawdle once they make landfall. Allison was bad, Harvey was worse, and I don’t care to see history repeated again.
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I play that game too! Rob’s I can usually pick out, and Cory’s used to be reliable because they made me think, “What? That can’t be true” and then they were never true when you drilled into the details. Rob keeps me coming back to BB (and the commentariat, of course).
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Two hurricanes, one gulf
We see what you did there …
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Another opportunity for the current administration to do nothing, then blame someone else
Those were quality paper towels.
2 at once though… I don’t think he could lift the paper product those states will need.
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Thanks, that all makes sense, especially from the financial and control end of things. But was there ever a grand plan for New Orleans on the level of Napolean III rebuilding Paris? I don’t recall any and Google is no help.
I don’t think such a plan would ever be followed. It would entail making neighborhoods unrecognizable, which is scary for residents. But I’ve seen it work in China (admittedly, not always for the better). One example was a friend’s family had an old, crappy apartment in Hangzhou. Developers made a deal that they would put the family up elsewhere for a year, then they could move back into the new and expanded complex. I got to visit well after this happened, but the complex looked like a high end apartment in California or Florida (semitropical landscaping). They were happy and the developers made a crap ton of money selling the other units.
Other places I’ve seen it resulted in far better living conditions, but losing a lot of community and culture.
I dunno. Maybe not good examples. Just seems like New Orleans missed a chance to more than just rebuild. Heck, they could have even breached the levees and created a Venice of the South with waterways instead of roads. That might have been cool. Or a disaster. But all I ever heard was just rebuild as it was.
Noone’s pointed out that when these two are chasing one another around in a large body of water, that the first of them should have been named “Polo” ???
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