New Orleans officials start reviewing the damage to the Superdome:

Damage to the structure could hit $400 million, and it's unlikely the facility could be used for at least a year.

Superdome Commission Chairman Tim Coulon said the Dome will hire engineers and other consultants to assess the structural stability of the stadium. That will be done in the next few weeks, Coulon said.

Besides flooding, the Dome lost part of its roof as more than 20,000 evacuees huddled there in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"We have to do a damage assessment first,'' Coulon said. "It is premature to write the Dome off. But there has been substantial damage.''

Although a precise figure will not be available for weeks, damage may total $400 million, Coulon said.

With all of the (premature) focus on the Katrina Blame Game, I thought I might highlight a couple of elements which have risen to the challenge instead of succombing to despair and panic.

First, The U.S. military, personified by Lt. General Russel Honore:

Merely to get them here is a job, given that roads and airports are jammed with incoming cargo, and the troops must be sustained with food, water, communications facilities and medical care.

And their work must be coordinated with National Guard units and the dozens of other local, state and federal agencies at work. These include U.S. Border Patrol agents and Air Force security police in combat gear and federal and state civilian disaster workers from around the country.

On the air side alone, Army, National Guard, Navy, Marine and Coast Guard helicopters are swarming into a makeshift logistics base at the Superdome delivering boots, water and communications gear and evacuating sick and elderly refugees.

Honore is the commanding general of 1st Army, a headquarters based in Atlanta that oversees the mobilization and training of National Guard and reserve troops for Iraq. He has come to know hundreds of National Guard officers and commanders.

First Army's secondary mission is to coordinate military support to civilian authorities in a crisis, and it is in that capacity that Honore plunged into work on Katrina days before the storm hit last week.

He has a personal interest as well: His grown daughter was among the tens of thousands evacuated from New Orleans, and his son is serving in Iraq with a brigade of the Louisiana National Guard.

"So we feel the pain," Honore said.

And a sense of urgency. Over the weekend — during a long and hurried span that aides wearily described as typical — Honore rose at 4 a.m. Saturday and got back to bed at 2 a.m. Sunday for his typical two hours of sleep. His main sustenance seemed to be his ever-present cigars.

Put that man in charge of FEMA, now! Since Honore hit the ground, things happened and happened quickly. The Superdome was evacuated, the levees were repaired and the pumps began running after the U.S. Armed Forces were unleashed on the problem.

The utter debacle and vast human tragedy that is New Orleans has overshadowed the citizens and government of the State of Mississippi, which lost nearly 200 lives to Katrina. Geography played a big role--as I've pointed out before, New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. Still, Mississippi took the direct hit of Katrina. Mississippi is picking itself up and getting on with things:

While some coastal cities are faced with the task of clearing wrecked buildings and piles of debris, much of Waveland from the coast to the railroad tracks about a half-mile inland simply is gone. Smooth concrete pads are the measure of homes that once stood there.

From the second floor of a building at the city's wastewater treatment plant, about a mile away, Mayor Tommy Longo shouts into a cell phone, "I can't tell the difference between public and private property in my town," he said. "I've got debris 12 feet high."

The rules and regulations of disaster assistance don't work in a catastrophe of this size, he said. But Longo said he had made his peace with Gov. Haley Barbour and President Bush about the recovery efforts. He just wants to move on.

Mississippi is, relative to Louisiana, a success story. This in itself illustrates the enormity of the New Orleans disaster.

Did you know that the word "refugee" was racist? I didn't, either.

News organizations are struggling for the right word.

Many, including the Associated Press, have used "refugee" to describe those displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

But the choice has stirred anger among some, particularly in the black community. They argue "refugee" implies the displaced storm victims, many of whom are black, are second-class citizens -- or not even Americans.

"It is racist to call American citizens refugees," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said, visiting the Houston Astrodome on Monday. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have expressed similar sentiments.

If Jesse Jackson wants to find racism, he should start by looking in the mirror. Personally, I prefer the terms"victims" or "evacuees," as "refugee" tends to have a political component which does not exist here. In fact, I could easily argue that race-baters and witch-hunters should prefer the more politically charged "refugee" label to the more accurate "victim/evacuee" terms

"Refugee" is inaccurate. It isn't racist.

Three American airlines are teetering on the brink, and it's uncertain that any of them will survive in their current form.

Delta sells planes, cuts back its Cincinaati hub in their battle to avoid bankruptcy:

Delta said that beginning Dec. 1, it will reduce mainline and Delta Connection carrier capacity in Cincinnati by 26 percent, while boosting the percentage of local traffic from 36 to nearly 50 percent.
. . .
In addition, Delta said it will accelerate the removal from service of its Boeing 767-200 aircraft type, the least efficient wide-body aircraft in its fleet. These aircraft are scheduled to be removed from service by Dec. 1, 2005, with the majority to be sold to ABX Air Inc.

United struggles to emerge from bankruptcy:

"People who assume that this is a done deal are making a mistake," said bankruptcy expert Bill Brandt, president and CEO of Chicago-based restructuring firm Development Specialists Inc. "It's a starting point, a structure. ... In many ways, for many of the parties in this case, it's 'Game on."'

The bankruptcy overhaul, initially expected to last 18 months, is now ensured to take more than three years-- complicated by higher fuel prices, the difficulties in obtaining two rounds of labor cuts and the failure to secure federal loan guarantees.

Northwest machinists strike drags on:

Several dozen strikers, members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, hurl insults at the "scabs" in the buses and flash hand gestures their mothers might not approve of.
. . .
Judging from recent activity at the airport, travelers go about their business largely unaffected by the strike. The two sides have no plans to resume negotiations on a contract that would eliminate jobs and cut pay.

Via Reason Hit and Run, this CNN.com story:

Except for wind damage, the Quarter stayed high and dry and so did Molly's and Johnny White's. And both were back in business Monday, August 29, with little apparent damage despite a lack of electricity and running water.

"That's our job. That's just what we do," Molly's owner Jim Monaghan, 47, said.

Molly's somehow managed to serve iced drinks Sunday to a mixed crowd of die-hard locals, visiting authorities and the media gaggle. Monaghan wouldn't say where he got the ice, and any inquisitors didn't much care.

Sodium nitrite, common preservative added to processed meats, appears to have some healthful benefits:

The scientists are so convinced of nitrite's promise that lead researcher Dr. Mark T. Gladwin says the government will pursue drug development on its own if necessary.

"We are turning organs into hot dogs," Gladwin jokes. Then he turns serious: "We think we stumbled into an innate protection mechanism."

If it works, "this drug would be pennies to dollars per day," says Dr. Christian Hunter of California's Loma Linda University. By January, Hunter hopes to begin studies of nitrite treatment for babies with an often fatal disease called pulmonary hypertension. "It's so easy to use."

Gladwin and an NIH cardiologist, Dr. Richard Cannon III, discovered nitrite's effect by accident while studying a related compound, nitric oxide, long known to improve blood flow by dilating blood vessels, but difficult to use as a drug.

Gladwin and Cannon injected sodium nitrite into healthy volunteers. Tiny doses almost tripled blood flow. Moreover, when people exercised, nitrite levels plummeted in the muscles being worked — the body was using it.

Researchers find anti-inflammatory chemical in extra-virgin olive oil:

A tasting experience at a molecular gastronomy meeting in Sicily led University of Pennsylvania biologist Gary Beauchamp to analyze freshly pressed extra-virgin olive oil, in which he found a chemical that acted like ibuprofen.

He and his team named their discovery oleocanthal and found that, although it has a different chemistry, its effect is similar to that of the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory compound in the commercial pain-killer, they wrote in the science journal Nature.

How long before the FDA requires warning labels?

We now return to our previously scheduled scandal:

A draft forward of the report, obtained by The Associated Press, said the largest, most ambitious humanitarian operation ever run by the United Nations was used by Saddam Hussein to his advantage. Neither the U.N. Secretariat nor the U.N. Security Council was clearly in command, which led to "an evasion of personal responsibility at all levels," it said.

Hm. "Personal responsibility." What a concept. Do you suppose it will ever catch on?

President Bush is apparently standing on the runway, personally preventing European aid to Katrina victims from being airlifted in:

"There appear to be some transportation problems," Barbara Helfferich, a spokeswoman for the European Union's executive Commission, told a news briefing.

She said a Swedish plane laden with aid was waiting to take off but had not got U.S. approval to enter the United States.

Well, maybe it's not Bush personally. I thought I'd try my hand at wacko Blame-Bushism and see how it works. Golly, it's easy to do. Maybe too easy.

Plain-talking general becomes a media star:

The fiery general, in charge of the military component of the mission, lost his rag during a press conference after President George W. Bush's visit to rescue coordinators here.

"That's B.S. It's B.S.," Honore raged.

"I can tell you that is B.S. We have got 300 helicopters and some of the finest EMS workers in the world down there.

"There is no red tape ... there are isolated incidents that people take to paint a broad brush."

Honore also lashed out at questions from journalists at the Baton Rouge emergency operations center concerning the security situation in New Orleans.

"You need to get on the streets of New Orleans, you can't sit back here and say what you hear from someone else.

"It is secure, we walk around without any issues. Why the hell are you trying to make that the issue, if you can help, get there and help," he said, saying that people were being scared away by reports of violence.

When one reporter argued that there still reports of bureaucracy and unrest stalling relief efforts in some outlying parishes of New Orleans, Honore fumed: "I don't care if it is Han*censored* County, Mississippi -- we are not going to have that kind of issue."

More Honore, less Shepard Smith/Aaron Brown/(fill-in-the-blank hand-wringing sky-is-falling media type), please.