It was Mississippi, not Louisiana, which took the direct hit from Katrina. Why aren't we hearing much about the hurricane recovery efforts in Mississippi? I humbly suggest two reasons:

1: New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen.
if you build a city below sea level in a hurricane zone, you should expect to have it catastrophically flooded every once in a while. Building levees to Category-3 hurricane levels in a world where Category 5 hurricanes exist was foolish in the extreme. We now reap the bitter harvest of that decision.

2: Mississippi's leadership is more competent than Louisiana's.
I don't know how else to say this. Do you even know the name of the Biloxi mayor? How about Gulfport's? Has Mississippi governor Haley Barbour entered full-bore CYA mode like Louisiana Governor Blanco and New Orleans mayor Nagin?

Put point 1 and point 2 together, and you have a "perfect storm" of governmental failure.

Progress in Iraq (remember Iraq?):

Lt. Col. James Oliver, the U.S. commander of Forward Operating Base Hotel, handed the ceremonial keys to the installation to the new Iraqi commander, Col. Saadi Salih al-Maliky. About 1,500 Iraqi soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 1st Brigade, 8th Division marched by.

Before the ceremony, the Iraqi soldiers, all Shiites, chanted "long live Sistani," referring to top cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and "Saddam is a coward."

U.S. forces have relocated to another base farther outside the city so they would be available to assist in a major security crisis.

The Corps plugs a hole, fires up the pumps:

(U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spoksman John) Hall said the biggest pump in the system, which can push out 10,000 cubic feet (280 cu m) of water per second, had been turned on on Monday, but was pumping out just 100 cubic feet (2.8 cu m) per second and would be turned up slowly to full capacity.

"We are proceeding very gently," he said. Engineers want to make sure that the pumped out water does not further damage the levee system and create a new breach.

John Roberts gets a promotion before he even gets the job:

McClellan said Bush called O'Connor from Air Force One en route to Louisiana Monday to talk with her about his decision. "He indicated that he was going to move quickly to find her replacement as well," the president's spokesman added. Talking to reporters who accompanied the president on a hurricane-damage inspection trip to the South, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino was unable to say whether O'Connor reiterated her earlier promise about temporarily staying on the court.

Getting a new chief justice of Bush's choosing in place quickly also avoids the scenario of having liberal Justice John Paul Stevens making the decisions about whom to assign cases to and making other decisions that could influence court deliberations. As the court's senior justice, Stevens would take over Rehnquist's administrative duties until a new chief is confirmed.

So, who's next up for Supreme Court Justice? No matter who it is you can be sure he or she will be utterly unacceptable to the Loony Left.

Salt Lake Tribune story:

Speaking to board members, 10 scientists and researchers representing disciplines including biology, chemistry, geology, paleontology and engineering tried to dismantle the contention that intelligent design is based on sound science.

Instead, many called it pseudoscience and agreed with Duane Jeffery, a Brigham Young University biology professor, who put it in the same category as astrology and pyramid power.

"By definition, science does not attempt to explain the world by invoking the supernatural," University of Utah bioengineering professor Gregory Clark told the board.

"Intelligent design fails as science because it does exactly that - it posits that life is too complex to have arisen from natural causes, and instead requires the intervention of an intelligent designer who is beyond natural explanation. Invoking the supernatural can explain anything, and hence explains nothing."

Who'd have thunk it? Utah more rational than Kansas? (Google "flying spaghetti monsterism" to get up to speed.)

Well, this will probably just piss off everyone. So be it:

Let's start with obvious facts. It was (or should have been) common knowledge that the New Orleans levee system could not withstand a strike by anything greater than a Category 3 hurricane. The nearly hysterical National Weather Service warning issued on Sunday before Katrina hit should have been sufficient warning to everybody concerned--citizens, City, State, and Federal government--to get off their asses and take whatever steps were necessary to get everyone out of New Orleans. But this didn't happen. Years of near-misses, lucky breaks, and false alarms lulled everyone into a mindset where "it wouldn't be that bad." It is this mindset that the infamous NWS warning was trying to break. Unfortunately for the thousands of dead and displaced, too many people continued to believe that "it can't happen here."

With that preview, let's look at all of the parties to this disaster and Monday-Morning-Quarterback their responses:

1. The People of New Orleans.
The people of New Orleans failed in their responsibility as citizens of the United States: to take individual and personal responsibility for their own safety. The stories of individual citizens taking independent action to improve their condition and/or escape the disaster are few and far between. We know one person commandeered a school bus and took some others out of the area. While I don't want to endorse stealing school buses, more stories like this where individuals took appropriate action to get themselves and others out of danger would be of some comfort. Instead, we're treated to hour after hour of the TV news channels showing passive victims complaining about the horrible conditions there.

It's not as if the people of New Orleans did not have plenty of warning. On July 24th, they were basically told "you're on your own."

Each time you hear a federal, state or city official explain what he or she is doing to help New Orleans, consider the opening paragraphs of a July 24 story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

"City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own."

The story continues:

"In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation."

The victims huddling on the I-10 or in and around the Superdome have some questions to answer. Why are you here? What did you do to get out, or even to prepare for this day? The level of my sympathy for the victims is in direct proportion to the quality of the victims' answers to those critical questions. They are not completely innocent here. They were warned.

2. The New Orleans city government. As discussed above, the New Orleans city government had no plan to evacuate the city in the predictable case of levee breaks and major flooding. This is criminally irresponsible in my opinion. The City government failed in its primary responsibility--to ensure the security of its citizenry. No amount of Mayoral tantrum-throwing will change that fact.

The pictures of a huge school bus farm completely under water says volumes about the failure of the city government to plan for and react to this level of disaster.

3. The Louisiana state government.
State government knew, or should have known, that New Orleans was unprepared for major flooding. As the hurricane approached, The Governor as well as the mayor had to be prodded by President Bush to order an evacuation for which we now know that they had no plan or capability to carry out. The City of New Orleans essentially ceased to function in the aftermath of Katrina. The thousands of storm victims huddling on I-10 testify to that. Louisiana should have stepped in and aggressively took control after it became obvious that the City could not manage the situation and provide order. It did not. Like the Mayor and New Orleans city government, the Louisiana Governor and Louisiana State Government have much to answer for.

4. The Federal government.
The Federal government knew that something extremely bad was about to happen. The Corps of Engineers knew that the levees could not withstand any hurricane above Category 3. The National Weather Service was well aware of the imminent danger. President Bush pleaded with the Mayor and the Governor to order an evacuation. But it wasn't enough. The President should have canceled his regular schedule (including a seemingly oblivious San Diego speech/photo op and some wrongheaded appearance where Bush strummed a guitar) and gone to Houston or Washington, and immediately ordered the Homeland Security and Defense departments to full disaster response readiness status.

5. The disaster reaction system.
The disaster response system in the U.S. is tiered, matching our political structure. That is, local governments have primary responsibility to manage incidents. This responsibility flows "upward" to the State and to the Federal government as the scale of emergency incidents grow. A key assumption is that disaster response will be escalated appropriately from level to level. So, Federal authorities wait for State requests, and State authorities wait for requests for local governments. It's obvious that this system is no longer adequate. The Federal government can't assume that the State will be able to communicate its disaster response requirements, and the State can't assume that local governments will be able to ask for what they need.

6. God.
If you're inclined to think that way, the hurricane was a Lesson. What should we learn?

Have I blamed everyone yet? No? Read on . . .

Modest proposals
1. Individual citizens must take real responsibility for their own lives. Victims have complained that they were "treated like cattle." Well that's probably because you were acting like cattle. Stop acting like cattle. You've got a human brain, hands, legs, and arms. You've got ears and a mouth. If the "authorities" aren't handling the situation, get together with those around you, and figure out something yourself. I think my stand here is pretty clear.

2. Take warnings seriously. Humans want to sugar-coat things and tend to believe that dangerous situations are not really that bad and/or will turn out well in the end. Over and over, we see how dangerous this tendency is. The higher you are in government, the more essential it is to take warnings seriously, because the consequences of blowing off a threat get larger and larger as you move from local to State to Federal government.

3. Always be prepared--individually and at all levels of government. Having worked for a while in private industry on disaster recovery plans, I am well aware that your response plan depends primarily on your initial assumptions. Figure out what the worst-case scenario is, and then figure out how it could be worse. That's what you plan for.

Nobody wants to think about disasters and disaster response/recovery. It goes back to the fundamental human attitude of "it can't happen here." If you make that assumption, you're dead. We all, at every level, need to take time and spend money up front to ensure that our personal and our governmental disaster plans are both reasonable and are up-to-date. Maybe we need to have an annual Federal Disaster Preparedness Day, where normal activities are suspended and the entire country reviews and updates our personal, corporate, and governmental disaster plans.

The larger the disaster, the longer the list of -missed opportunities, mistakes, and failures to take appropriate actions at the appropriate time. Katrina is one of the biggest. No one, not the victims huddled on I-10, not the President, nobody escapes without some responsibility.

Looting and violence in New Orleans has made a horrible, terrible situation even worse--preventing and impeding rescue operations. OpinionJournal on lawlessness in New Orleans:

One reason for the New Orleans breakdown is the size of the calamity, whose growing severity caught nearly everyone by surprise. Louisiana National Guard troops that were deployed initially for rescue and relief efforts weren't available for the more basic duties of public security. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is also geared to providing relief, not order, and only yesterday did the federal government begin to focus on the potential anarchy. Among our political leaders, only Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour seemed to appreciate the genuine risk of disorder, with his early warnings that looters would not be given the benefit of the doubt.

I'll say it once: looters should be shot on sight. No arguments, no second-guessing. You loot, you die. Ted Frank at Point of Law said it eloquently:

I fully acknowledge that shooting looters is an inappropriately disproportionate response if one views looting as mere larceny. But one doesn't shoot looters to protect property, one does so to protect order. Somebody is going to suffer unjustly when society breaks down. I don't understand why Muller thinks it preferable for the law-abiding citizens to be the cost-bearers. History has shown repeatedly that the way to stop an anarchic riot is an early display of substantial force.

Blogger R.G. Combs makes the Second Amendment argument:

I wonder how many of the honest, decent residents had firearms -- and how many of those had been persuaded to keep their weapons unloaded, locked up, and inaccessible.

One of the grave weaknesses of our culture is that most people have come to believe that it's not merely acceptable, but necessary and proper for them to completely surrender responsibility for their own safety and well-being to others. In the best of times, I believe this is foolish -- do you know what the average police response time is for a 911 call in your community? Assuming you can and do make that call when the need arises...

In the worst of times -- and this is the worst of times in New Orleans -- such helplessness and dependency can be deadly. It's not just that having a gun helps the honest, decent people stave off the predators. There's a more subtle psychological factor: Someone who owns a gun (I'm talking about the honest, decent people, not the sociopaths) accepts responsibility for her own safety and for her own responsible behavior; gun ownership both empowers and disciplines you.

It's been said before: The Second Amendment is not about duck hunting. It is about the ability to protect yourself when there is no other protection available. The bottom line is that advocating gun control is essentially saying that that something like New Orleans can't happen here because the police will always be there. Well, New Orleans proves beyond all doubt that the police won't always be there. What 'cha gonna do when they come for you?

Saying what maybe needs to be said, Individ blows a gasket:

Hey, it's a free country folks. If people want to live in a sediment-starved, subsiding basin, surrounded by a lake, a river and an ocean,they can go right ahead. Just don't force my government to pay for it when the damn dam breaks. That's your corner, dudes. Your local government takes care of your corner, and our local govvamint will take care of ours.

I have already contributed to your relief out of my own pocket, by my own volition. My wife and I are currently talking about how we can do more. That's not the issue. But hey, Loonie Lefties: calling pentulantly and rapaciously for the Nanny State as the only solution to every problem is not what America is about. Look it up. Charity, the religious virtue, BEGINS AT HOME. Not at the damn IRS. We are about helping our neighbor as individuals, but not about having Big Brother wipe our nether regions everytime we are in trouble.

The blame game for Hurricane Katrina in general and New Orleans in particular is now in full swing. All involved in witch-hunting right now should be deeply ashamed of themselves. It is apparently too much to expect that we can come together as a nation to bring aid to the stricken Gulf Coast. We're obviously still in the Third Turning, not the Fourth.

Here's the short list of the disgraceful finger-pointing still going on while the waters are still high in New Orleans:

Global warming.
Bush.
Allah's will.
Bush.
God's vengeance for not passing the Kyoto agreement.
Bush.
Corporate America.
Bush.
Red states that voted for Bush.

That's the short version of the survey of blame comments assembled by Chrenkoff (Click and read, highly recommended).

Let's add sin, drunkenness, revelry, and abortion to the list. The folks at Reason Hit and Run have a live one in something called "Repent America"

"Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city," stated Repent America director Michael Savagers. "From 'Girls Gone Wild' to 'Southern Decadence,' New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. From the devastation may a city full of righteousness emerge," he continued.

New Orleans is also known for its Mardi Grass parties where thousands of drunken men revel in the streets to exchange plastic jewelry for drunken women to expose their breasts. This annual event sparked the creation of the "Girls Gone Wild" video series. In addition, Louisiana had a total of ten abortion clinics with half of them making their home in New Orleans. At these five abortion clinics in the city, countless numbers of children were murdered at the hands of abortionists.

That man Bush "akes a lot of joy about losing people" according to Air America's Randi Rhodes, as reported by Little Green Footballs via Radio Equalizer:

"This President is never gonna do the right thing. I think somewhere deep down inside him he takes a lot of joy about losing people, if he thinks they vote Democrat or if he thinks they're poor, or if he thinks they're in a blue state, whatever his reasons are not to rescue those people who are (planning?) for their safety."

Thank you, Randi, for your contribution to civil public discourse.

Daniel Kenning, in Wall Street Journal's opinion journal wants to blame bureaucrats in general:

Big public bureaucracies are going to get us killed. They already have. One may argue that this is an inevitable result of living in an advanced and complex democracy. Yes, up to a point. An open political system indeed breeds inefficiencies (though possibly the Deb Bush administration that dealt with Hurricane Andrew is more competent than Gov. Blanc's team in Louisiana). And perhaps low-lying, self-indulgent New Orleans understood its losing bargain with a devil's fate.

You may or may not agree, but at least he didn't blame global warming.

Not everyone is succumbing to panicked finger-pointing. Roy Spencer at Tech Central Station tries to take a higher road:

Given the recent work, how should we view the role of global warming? First, we know that category 4, and even category 5, storms have always occurred, and will continue to occur, with or without the help of humans, as the above examples demonstrate. Therefore, if we are prepared for what nature can throw at us, we will be prepared for the possible small increase in hurricane activity that some studies have suggested could occur with man-made global warming. To suggest that Katrina was caused by mankind is not only grossly misleading, it also obscures the real issues that need to be addressed, even in the absence of global warming. From a practical point of view, there is little that we can do in the near term to avert much if any future warming anyway, no matter what you believe that warming will be, including participating in the Kyoto Protocol. So why even bring it up (other than through political, philosophical, or financial motivation)?

Bill Clinton sounds a note of moderation, via Captain's Quarters blog:

CLINTON: Yes, I think that's important to point out. Because when you say that they should have done this, that or the other thing first, you can look at that problem in isolation, and you can say that.

But look at all the other things they had to deal with. I'm telling you, nobody thought this was going to happen like this. But what happened here is they escaped -- New Orleans escaped Katrina. But it brought all the water up the Mississippi River and all in the Pontchartrain, and then when it started running and that levee broke, they had problems they never could have foreseen.

And so I just think that we need to recognize right now there's a confident effort under way. People are doing the best they can. And I just don't think it's the time to worry about that. We need to keep people alive and get them back to life -- normal life.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Part-Time Pundit notes (and links) that the US Corps of Engineers was 25 years away from providing New Orleans with the kind of protection we now know it needed. (Via QandO Blog):

. . . In 1977, plans for hurricane protection structures at the Rigolets and Chef Menteur Pass were sunk when environmental groups sued the district. They believed that the environmental impact statement did not adequately address several potential problems, including impacts on Lake Pontchartrain's ecosystem and damage to wetlands. Ultimately, an agreement between the parties resulted in a consent decree to forgo the structures at the Rigolets and Chef Menteur Pass. Instead, a "high-level plan" resulted, amounting to construction of a levee system around St. Bernard, Orleans, East Jefferson and St. Charles parishes. . . . (Al Naomi, Corps of Engineers senior project manager said) "A category 5 hurricane hitting the city may be a once-in-500-year event...A Category 3 like Hurricane Betsy in 1965, or less, is more likely, and the existing levee system should be able to handle a storm like that.

"But there are no guarantees. One failure of overtopping of a levee could be catastrophic.

"The point is to eliminate that storm surge threat with one of these plans. Then we can build stronger buildings and stay in local shelters with the red cross, instead of spending eight hours in traffic trying to leave. "the philosophy of what we do during a hurricane would change. We could spend more time protecting our homes and less time trying to get out of the city in these desperate evacuations."

The cost estimate for the study will be discussed with the State Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD), the local sponsor, before being submitted to headquarters for funding. Right now, there is no money for the study in FY05, even though it is one of the most vital for a city threatened more every hurricane season by a potential Category 5 storm.

With federal funding, a cost sharing agreement could be arranged with DOTD, and the feasibility study could proceed, taking about five years to complete, with another 10 to 20 years for construction.

One obvious conclusion is that we need to start listening more to engineers and less to lawyers.

Even so, New Orleans still would have been flooded by Katrina, a high-Category-4 hurricane.

The levees were built to protect against a Category 3 storm. Against Katrina, they were useless. New Orleans, in a word, was doomed.