Anger Gumbo

I'm just angry that New Orleans, which did not bring about its own disaster, is watching a second consecutive president trash his glib promises to "rebuild it better".

[snip]

Obama's remarks about New Orleans during the campaign were anodyne boilerplate, and what he's giving us now is more of the same. He won't even do the obligatory photo-op in the city on 8/29; he told the Times-Picayune he'll come down "before the end of the year". He didn't say which year.

Apparently, it isn't only the War Crimes of the Bush Grindhouse that President Obama is putting in the rear view mirror.

It seems that the City of New Orleans, also, is not in the forward-looking view.



So writes, in a great post, Harry Shearer today, telling his tale of lobbying on behalf of the still-devastated city, how he, reluctantly, used his connections to reach inside the Obama White House, only to get nothing.

Playing the Inside Game -- A Cautionary Tale

Any regular reader of my stuff here knows I've been relentless in calling for first the Bush administration and lately the current group to get serious about addressing the problems of what nearly destroyed New Orleans -- namely, the twin challenges of (a) reversing the man-caused destruction of the coastal wetlands which reduce the severity of oncoming hurricanes and (b) rebuilding the tattered federally-built "hurricane protection system" which failed so disastrously four years ago this Saturday. After I started noticing the absence of any public words (let alone actions) on this subject from the new administration, several commenters here criticized me for, in essence, just running my mouth. "You're a celebrity," they mis-advised me, "go talk directly to the White House about it, like Brad Pitt." I thought I should start my Pitt emulation slowly at first, maybe by wooing Angelina Jolie, but after a couple of weeks, I took the challenge to play the inside game. I haven't written about it until now, because I wanted to see how it would play out before drawing conclusions.

I don't want to provide any additional snips, as it is well-worth reading the entire post.

We're coming up on the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina all but wiping out New Orleans, and it looks like we may have to pin to the new President, the not-flattering moniker of "Heck of a job there, Obama ..."

He's leaving the residents of New Orleans to having to cling a little longer to the "Hope" and "Change" thing.

Go read Harry Shearer's "Playing the Inside Game -- A Cautionary Tale"


Bonus Link

More Than A Few Cloves ... The Garlic Special - Hurricane Katrina Redux