A watch on the gulf!

As we write this piece the television set is tuned to CNN’s almost unrelenting coverage of what is occurring in and around the city of New Orleans in the state of Louisiana. It is really almost unbelievable some of the scenes that are coming into our living room from what is occurring there.

Hurricane Isaac was supposed to be the hurricane that wasn’t. Isaac was to be the hurricane that validated all of the money that has been spent on the gulf coast over the last six years since hurricane Katrina came and devastated that area, becoming what has been described as the worst natural disaster in American history. Isaac meandered up through the Caribbean across already earthquake battered Haiti and across Cuba where it became slightly more disorganized before it roared through the Florida Keys. When it left the Keys, they began to drink in the bars and life quickly returned to normal for an area where being laid back is the normal. It took Isaac a while in the warm waters of the gulf to become a category one hurricane just before it struck the northern gulf shores just west of News Orleans. Katrina had struck just east of New Orleans so, in effect, Isaac has the potential to do more damage than Katrina ever thought about doing. With the rotation of the winds, the eastern side of a hurricane is ground zero for flooding brought on by the storm surge that had been sitting under the slow moving Isaac for days and days before its eye struck the largely unpopulated shores and semi solid land mass west of the city.

Combating all of this energy and destruction lies the enormous amount of work and monies spent on levies and huge pumping systems that are designed to protect those inside of the city from what Katrina did to them back in 2005 on this very date. Although we will not know for sure until the aftermath of this almost stationary storm arrives, the general consensus is that New Orleans proper will escape the storm and the massive amount of flooding that is accompanying it. The entire New Orleans pumping system which had not been revised since the 1930’s to its present day form until after Katrina appears to be handling the massive amount of sustained rainfall that is coming from a storm that will be remembered mainly as a tremendous rainmaker. To see a photograph from space of Isaac is to see a storm of scope and size that we have not seen in the gulf of Mexico since perhaps Hurricane Gilbert back in 1988. That storm filled the entire lower half of the gulf and, among other things, did what Ronald Reagan could never do. It drove the Nicaraguan Sandinistas from power with the sheer size of its presence there.

Isaac does not have the force of Katrina and the protections against it are in place and working as planned, where they have been put in place. However, Isaac is hanging around New Orleans far. far. longer than Katrina did and every hour that it stays in place brings more and more destruction. It is perhaps the fact that Isaac was only a category one storm that has led to its remaining almost stationary. The higher the category of the hurricane, the faster it moves along its course, and, Isaac has just now been downgraded back to a tropical storm. So, this is a very slow moving and massive sized event.

Where New Orleans is apparently weathering the storm, areas that have not seen government sponsored and paid for improvements are not fairing very well at all. Plaquemines Parrish, just to the south of the very famous Ninth ward that is protected by the new levy system, is not fairly well at all. So many remember the Ninth ward where so many low to no income people suffered so much in the aftermath of Katrina. While it was first thought that the city had escaped the wrath of Katrina, it took about a day for the real truth to come out as it was almost like blowing a dam where nothings seems to happen until everything breaks loose all at once. Plaquemines Parrish is already under water from breaches and overspills to a levy system it has still not been improved. Situated between a Mississippi river levy system and a system to the east designed to keep out the gulf of Mexico, parts of the parish have turned into a giant swimming pool as water gathers there with no way or where to escape. Plans are being drawn up to deliberately breech of Mississippi levy to give this water somewhere to go and to once again expose homes that are now almost completely under water from the storm. One fortunate things from Katrina as a lesson learned is the fact that many from this parish evacuated so only their homes will be lost, not the approximately 1800 people who died in the aftermath of Katrina.

As Isaac moves to the north, it will strike Baton Rouge very soon and no one knows the extent of the damage that may result there. Across the southern edge of the state of Mississippi, major highways are under water. Perhaps the greatest potential for damage to the entire area not protected by a pumping system such as New Orleans has is the potential for extreme flooding from 18-24 inches of sustained rain which is going to have to go somewhere and it is anyone’s guess where that will be. One good result from Isaac is the probability that it will go north into the drought ravaged Midwest and should be a drought buster for much of this in need area.

It is interesting to look at what is happening in and around New Orleans from a political and philosophical perspective. There can be no argument that the money and efforts of the United States federal government has made all the difference for those fortunate enough to be protected by the ten billion or so that has been spent. However, when one looks out a places like Plaquemine Parrish, one can see the massive differences very starkly in what can happen when no government help is available to those in need. If ever there was an argument for government, this situation is it. But just a few hundred miles to the southeast, in the City of Tampa, Florida, a group of politicians have gathered that call themselves Republicans whose entire argument is that government is too large and intrusive in the average Americans life. There was a tornado in southern Illinois early this year and, when all was said and done, the government refused to provide any aid because, in effect, it really wasn’t needed. As we sat in an area restaurant eating a meal, a group of the citizens from this area sat at a table next to us and griped and complained about this situation. We looked at them and asked them if they believed in low taxes and small government which they, of course did to a man. We then simply pointed out to them that if you believed in such things, you didn’t need to expect help in crises like these. They were dead silent until we got up to leave. We have no idea of what they said after that.

Tonight, in Tampa, Florida, we will have a forty two year old man get up before a national audience and pronounce his ideas for small government, less taxes on the rich, and the lack of regulation that also sometimes causes bad results from things like hurricanes and tornadoes. And, in contrast to that, we will see pictures of plain and so very ordinary people down south of New Orleans, Louisiana who are suffering and in some cases dying do to the lack of much government help. A man Steve King, of Wisconsin, was interviewed on CNN this afternoon about why he placed forty two year old Paul Ryan’s name in nomination for the Republican post of Vice President of these United States. When asked what he loved about his old friend Ryan, he said that he was a proponent of opportunity in this nation, instead of a proponent of a nation that chooses to provide services.

And so it goes! In Tampa they will gather after eating their steaks and brie and potatoes filled with cream cheese as they sip their champagne and look earnestly at the future of their party perform. And, in Louisiana, they will face the night as they await what the morning light reveals!

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe

To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.