keep Katrina front page

sorry for the long no posting period, and thanks for the comments on my last post. Iraq vis a vis Vietnam is a tough nut to crack. These last couple days we have been smelling gas from our vents, so we had the gas company out and they traced the leak to our heater on the roof. Since then, it has rained and snowed for several days. Our heat has been shut off and no repairmen will dare climb up and fix it. The home owner's insurance company at least gave us $75 for space heater, but we spent the last couple days at my parents house in the canyon. And as a result of the cold, the lack of food, lack of company, and old age, our pet fish died.

And while we morn our loss and lement our cold, I can't help but think of the hundreds of thousands of homeless people as a result of Katrina. How the federal government failed them by not building the levees past catagory 3, by not getting help and supplies out there for days. For leaving the poor, mostly black populace to die.

It was just Friday that former residents of the lower 9th ward got to visit their homes for a brief moment or two (called a "look and leave") Almost everything was destoryed by the salt water, the mold, and neglect. How come Bush could interrupt his vacation to sign the Terri Shaivo bill, but couldn't be bothered to stop his San Diego sing-a-long to help the victims of Katrina.

A whole city was destroyed. A bustling metropolis of over 1.2 million people now has population of 70,000. My buddy who went to Tulane law isn't going back, he is transfering to BYU law (because Utah Law won't let him transfer), and I imagine lots of people won't move back. There are lots of ideas of how to fix the city, by raising it up, making the levees catagory-5 proof, or Denny Hastert's idea, abandoning it.

Whatever we do, we can't ignore the problem or pretend its been solved by time. There is now a Katrina cough because of the excessive mold spores there. Whole neighborhoods are beyond repair. There is a profound sorrow that makes profiteers like Mike Brown even more disgusting than their incompetence.