Mercredi

AP Photo/Bill Haber
~In this area, water seeps under the levee of the 17th Street Canal levee, May 20, in New Orleans.
Outside engineering experts studying the project told AP that the type of seepage spotted at this levee afflicts the city's other levees too, and could cause some of them to collapse during a storm.

Sandy Rosenthal of levees.org at "little wet spot"-Sun. June 22
~Your arrant Editilla rode da'bike out to this 17th Street Leak May 26th, 4-7pm, Nolatime.
The largest Leak (pictured left) was approximately 15 yards long by 5 yards wide then. This same "wet spot" has expanded into the leak in the picture of June 22nd above. It is now at least 50 yards long by 30 yards wide and growing. It has spread more than thrice its previous size in just under 30 days. Furthermore, there is now a channel of water nearly 4 inches deep flowing down the middle, which along with the leaks new growth suggests that the Corps has done nothing with this Leak since decreeing that they would contract a third party to sort out levee seepage. But there it is...










Looking for all the world just like the River, the flooding one, the one headed for New Orleans right now, right into the front yards of anyone living near ExQuixotic Corps levees, it has also even become a wetland hit with migrating waterflowl! HA! What Editilla been tolin'yaz?
The Duck Stops Here!
Stilla'Editilla points and axs...
America, who ya'gonna believe?
The Corps of Engineers who built these failing levees?
Faux'journalists clothed in sheep's bleating,
who continue to give the Corps the Last Word?
~~OR YOUR OWN LYIN'EYES???
Can we the people survive this team media onslaught?

Cyber'Ops Engineers~to the left of us.
Ed'Ops Privateers ~to the right.
~Here we am...
~~STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WIT'YOU!
Yeah we...
~~STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WIT'YOU!

US Corps of Engineers says
Levees Acutally Have Not Failed!
~Midwest Levees Reportedly Working as Planned

3 Ways to Re-Engineer the Gulf and Stop Katrina 2.0: Expert Op-Ed~Robert Bea

13 Ass'Buff Questions for the Army Corps of Engineers' Flood Reconstruction Chief from Popular Mechanics
~Thus continues the Team Media spin on our nation's Failing Engineering Infrastructure.

But our own Levees beg to differ:

~~I, national spokesperson for Levees.Org, which arose after Katrina, do challenge the answer to this question:
So this isn't about levee failure,
like in New Orleans?

In New Orleans, those 46 levee breaches due to overtopping happened because the the Corps of Engineers built the levees two feet two low and didn't armor them, so water quickly eroded them. To say they were not failures is baloney.

Second, the four "true" failures he alludes to were catastrophic and caused two thirds of the flooding in New Orleans.

The Corps of Engineers work in New Orleans was substandard and grossly negligent.

Sandy Rosenthal
Founder and Executive Director,
Levees.Org

Corps of Engineers says midwest flooding overwhelmed federal levees
The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things
and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.
In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In business, be competent.
In action, watch the timing.
No fight: No blame.
Lao Tzu

Dam Inspection Data Withheld From Press Under Patriot Act

Beware Section 702c
~The obscure clause protects the government from suits by flood victims.

DHS files suit against cooperating landowners in "Friendly Land Condemnation"?
~The lawsuit, one of more than 100 land condem- nation cases pending in Cameron County,
--is likely an attempt to clear the title on his land.
Our good friends at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, calls the type of case a "friendly land condemnation."
~Editilla Stigmalatas~
What next, Friendly Hell Fire? 2+2=5?

Governor Jindal:
IT'S ABOUT RECOVERY
~Krewe of Truth

Senate passes spending bill without money for N.O. aid

New Orleans inspector general: up and running

Reinsurers could absorb another Katrina -Amlin

Louisiana Citizens Raises Rates and Gives Complimentary Tube of Vaseline With Policy Renewals ~slabbed

2008 is the first time Mississippi school integrates prom
~Affrodite's Adventures in Nappy Hair

Katrina death list in works

Waterlogged Missouri levee latest under pressure from Mississippi

New Orleans church official lends Iowans her expertise on disasters

Midwest Governors ask Bush for more flooding money

Indiana city considers purchase of flood-damaged homes

Scuffles break out among flood victims seeking food vouchers
~Hat T'n'T-World News Bulletin (Don't ask:)

A Beautiful Development In A Disaster Area
~Walking the Fault

Special thanks to Amy Denio for the photo.
Blow Winds! Rage, Blow!
~Citizen K

Deluge for a Deluge~Brick

Liprap's Lament - The Line

Jabberwalk: What Lord David Really Thinks of New Orleans
~Hat T'n'T-Thanks Katrina

Port? Jobs? Housing? The Chicken, the Egg, and Scarcity Mentality . . . Again
~A.M. in the Morning

Over 1,300 Students Mobilize to Rebuild New Orleans on July 4th
~Student volunteers from 152 campuses across the U.S. will dedicate their July 4th holiday to rebuilding New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward community for residents and their children. HOPE worldwide, with the help of these young volunteers, plans to clear 50 to 100 building lots making way for future homes, develop a memorial garden for those who lost their lives during the storm and complete other beautification projects.

Atheists to the Rescue in New Orleans~When the going gets weird...

Calling During Disasters

Amtrak hints service to Memphis may be sinking

What to do about New Orleans' trailers?

Elizabeth Brown; New Orleans Muralist

Spooky, wonderful music CD in Neal Stephenson's new novel ~boingboing

Resurgence of music in Big Easy helps residents heal

Mardi

Flood Maps Available in the Ball State University Libraries
~In the wake of recent historic flooding throughout the Midwest, home owners are reevaluating their decisions regarding the purchase of flood insurance. The Geospatial Resources & Map Collection in Bracken Library offers a large collection of floodway and flood boundary maps for research.
Click to enlarge

Double standard exists between Katrina, Midwest flooding

New Orleans is not a libertarian experiment, part II
~John McQuaid~Part one here.

Levees UpDate:

Dear all.

I am pleased to inform you that we will add two more entities to our growing list of supporters calling for the 8/29 Investigation Senate Bill 2826 filed by Senator Mary Landrieu D-LA.

On Tuesday June 17, I received word from Woody Martin, Chair of the Sierra Club Delta Chapter that it "strongly supports Levees,org's campaign to get Congress to appoint an 8/29 commission to investigate the failures of the levees and to do a third party review of the Corps of Engineers actions before and after Katrina."

Two days later, I received word that the Southeast Flood Protection Authority East had unanimously passed a resolution calling for the 8/29 Commission and also calling for looking at how public works all along the Mississippi River contribute to southeast Louisiana's vulnerability to hurricanes.

The resolution was proposed by authority secretary John Barry, the author of "Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America."

Barry added in an interview with the Associated Press that an investigation beginning three years after the hurricane would have the benefit of fresh looks at the evidence collected for similar studies in the immediate aftermath of the flooding.

Stories about the levee authority's support have also been featured on WWL Eyewitness News Channel 4, the Times Picayune and The Advocate.

The Board of Levees.Org is proud and pleased to add these two organizations to our list of supporters!

Sincerely,
Sandy Rosenthal / Director-levees.org

Corps of Engineers says midwest flooding overwhelmed federal levees

Floods: Army Corps Says PR Turns Babblers into Spokes- persons~Georgianne Nienaber
Editilla behooves and bemoans our brave and inquisitive NOLA'RILLAS to go, follow my copious directions (linked above), to this Leak and perhaps bring a shovel. By all means stick your finger into the water to see if it tastes brackish. I smelled canal water upon sticking my own arm into the leak up to the elbow.
It didn't occur to me to taste the water for lake salt. D'OH!
Y'all need to do this before the Corps just covers the Leak with fresh dirt. Despite having already rolled this issue of Corps' Public Relations Machinery (see decree link above), any vindication I could have felt here by this article today carries the weight of a heart soaked in crocodile tears.
The journalist allowed them to slide in the UpDate of the article by allowing them to do their public safety spiel (emphasis all Editilla):

"The Corps places public safety above all we do and is concerned for the well-being of our local citizens. The Corps has continually monitored potential seepage in the 17th Street Canal area. Seepage is a common occurrence when building in any coastal area. The Corps considers seepage assessment as part of any geotechnical evaluation for any feature of the system. We are currently coordinating with the Southeast Levee Protection Authority-East, which is assembling an external engineering review team to further examine the seepage along the 17th Street Canal."

~without calling them on this
glaring contradiction:

Question: When was the last time it was tested?
Answer: Water across the street was tested approximately three weeks ago. Wet spots closer to the canal and floodwall were tested approximately six weeks ago and were determined to be brackish.

Question: What is causing the flowing water and algae behind the gate?
Answer: We have not observed that, but will visit the site and investigate this afternoon.

~~I thought that they said that they have continually monitored this "seepage"? If so then why the fuck have they not noticed this this nearly 1200 sq foot
LEAK of FLOWING WATER?
~~Also: "wet spot(s)" closer to the canal??? Now the Corps contradicts earlier statements, and cops to this journalist that in fact that there might be, as Editilla already reported, more that one LEAK...
and gets away with it? No follow-up question?
Perhaps these were merely written questions, but sorry the Corps is not allowed a take-home exam. If these questions were live with the Corps, then...WTF?
Either way the Corps got the last word on a very well distributed article on their obvious real time engineering failures. Hmmm.
We all should learn such magic with which the Corps dusted this seasoned progressive journalist--so that we the people can see it coming after the next time that LEAKING 17th Street Canal sinks and falls apart...and they blame it on Mother Nature, Iowa Farmers, Katrina the Clown...my gullible ass.

The Corps has not touched this leak. They lied right there in the last words of that article--and bet on it that they will not let this slide so easily now that they have been given such a pass and warning.
They have too much riding on this Rising River to give us a chance, So Get On It New Orleans.
The Quixotic Corps of Engineers may not be only our city's problem, but that is for damn sure our city's future LEAKING beneath the "Repaired" 17th Street Canal Levee. More than ever now we remain Sinn Féin --but we will remain!

~Dr. Raymond Seed, a world famous civil engineer who heads a team of investigators for the University of California at Berkeley, wrote that the corps' work at the 17th Street Canal breach "did not appear to have improved the situation, indeed," he said, "it had likely made it more dangerous."

Corps' levee report isn't final
~Although the Army Corps of Engineers has proposed beefing up East Jefferson's storm surge defenses by building levees a little wider and higher, and adding more rock along the shoreline, it's too soon to know whether such relatively modest changes will be enough for all 9.5 miles of earthen levees.
Geotechnical analyses -- the calculations that spell out what it takes to provide a particular level of safety in a particular place -- haven't been finished for four of East Jefferson's five lakefront levee reaches. It will be at least two more months before that work is complete. Until it is, corps representatives said the recommendations included in last week's release of a report on the East Jeff lakefront levees are only tentative.
~Editilla spaculatas~That 2 month delay in releasing a less tentative levee plan should put the Corps finally getting around doing their job at AUGUST...say, AUGUST 29th??? Aaaand they said they will get around to contracting a think tank study of the Water flowing underneath the 17th Street Canal Levee LEAK...when? They'll get back to us, eh, around the end of Hurricane season. Apparently the Corps thinks they are really great at flood control--until it floods!
Then...they'll get back to us...drop us a line.

~More Exquixotic Corps~
Titan meeting with Army Corps to go on as scheduled~Yes, the very same company referenced in the OpEd News piece above.
~Florida's 60-day Notice of Intent to Sue U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
~Apalachicola Wants Less Talk and More Action for Apalachicola River
~White House denies Army's pitch for more brass

Thanks Again,
Mr. Reagan
~Midwest flooding is nothing new.
Mark Twain wrote about it in Life on the Mississippi; just over 80 years ago, the great flood of 1927 inundated 16.6 million acres of land and caused $40 million in damage and claimed 426 lives. This flood, which cost a huge amount in its day, spurred good flood-control practices. Levees built in its wake are still in service today. In fact, the levees built in the years after 1927 around New Orleans withstood Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

Mississippi Breaches Levee, Cities Battle Floodwaters (Update1)

Recovery Perspective
~Laureen Lentz

What Rob Couhig really thinks about New Orleans
~Matt McBride

Landrieu touts flood control work

N.O. lawyers head to Iowa to help with flood recovery

Midwesterners work to rise above flood damage

Recovery from floods will take 'long time,' billions of dollars

Flood victims say FEMA is doing a heckuva job

Insurer Ace sees "negligible" flood earnings impact

Flood needs delay rollout of welfare changes

Midwest flood water is a West Nile concern

WAVICS~Wave, Current, Surge Information System for Coastal Louisiana
Note~ Gentle'rillas can use these interactive sites together to study the flooding in any state: zoom WAVICS sat'view out and "curser" the Map up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Indiana and Illinois and then zoom'click back down to follow the smaller rivers like the Mossouri, Ohio and the Iowa.

Wikimapia~Monster
Mash'up~Cairo, Il.
~Congroovience
of MS and OH Rivers
Please click to enlarge-->
USGS~Flood Stage Levels current 'real-time' guage readings. I use the USGS maps to get oriented to the states and their flood gauges. This is active data. Due to the lack of boundaries of WAVICS, I also look up State Maps.

Disaster Recovery: Re-Thinking Your Strategy~Virtualization

Rocket Matter Helps Provide Disaster Recovery for Law Firms

About the Gift of Being Slabbed

Mapping It All Out: FEMA's GIS Program Has Positive Impact On Moss Point Recovery

Entergy New Orleans Pitches Renewable Energy Credits, Not Sources

Guest Post: Kit Reed on Twitter, Google, Facebook et al
~Critical Mass

Thank you New Orleans Daily Photo

The best of New Orleans
~Celeste's Scramblings

Contrary to rumor, Jolie and Pitt have not sold French Quarter mansion

I'm Voting Republican
~Militant Moderate

The End Of A Perfect Day
~Citizen K

Welcome to New Orleans!
Your new neighbor already doesn't like you
~The Head Pelican

Cha Lectures 71
- New Orleans Reflections

New Orleans:
The Flood Last Time -- and Still
~RickHorowitz

Gris Gris to Co-Produce Theatrical Show about Hurricane Katrina Survivors

Molly’s At 50. Molly’s At 50?
~The Chicory

Lundi

Floods: Army Corps Says PR Turns Babblers into Spokes- persons~Georgianne Nienaber

AP Photo/Bill Haber
~In this area, water seeps under the levee of the 17th Street Canal levee, background, Tuesday, May 20, 2008, in New Orleans. Outside engineering experts who have studied the project told The Associated Press that the type of seepage spotted at the 17th Street Canal in the Lakeview neighborhood afflicts other New Orleans levees, too, and could cause some of them to collapse during a storm.
~I rode the bike out to this 17th Street Leak
May 26th, 4-7pm. This largest Leak (pictured left) was approximately 15 yards long by 5 yards wide then. This same "wet spot" has expanded into the leak in the picture of June 22nd above. It is now at least 30 yards long by 30 yards wide and growing. It has spread more than thrice its previous size in just under 30 days. Furthermore, there is now a channel of water nearly 4 inches deep flowing down the middle, which along with the leaks new growth suggests that the Corps has done nothing with this Leak since saying they would contract a third party to sort out levee seepage. But there it is looking for all the world just like the River, the flooding one, headed for New Orleans right now, heading right into the front yards of everyone living near a Corps of Engineers levee.

Editilla behooves and bemoans our brave and inquisitive NOLA'RILLAS to go, follow my copious directions (linked above), to this Leak and perhaps bring a shovel. By all means stick your finger into the water to see if it tastes brackish. I smelled canal water upon sticking my own arm into the leak up to the elbow.
It didn't occur to me to taste the water for lake salt. D'OH!
Y'all need to do this before the Corps just covers the Leak with fresh dirt. Despite having already rolled this issue of Corps' Public Relations Machinery (see decree link above), any vindication I could have felt here by this article today carries the weight of a heart soaked in crocodile tears.
The journalist allowed them to slide in the UpDate of the article by allowing them to do their public safety spiel (emphasis all Editilla):

"The Corps places public safety above all we do and is concerned for the well-being of our local citizens. The Corps has continually monitored potential seepage in the 17th Street Canal area. Seepage is a common occurrence when building in any coastal area. The Corps considers seepage assessment as part of any geotechnical evaluation for any feature of the system. We are currently coordinating with the Southeast Levee Protection Authority-East, which is assembling an external engineering review team to further examine the seepage along the 17th Street Canal."

~without calling them on this
glaring contradiction:

Question: When was the last time it was tested?
Answer: Water across the street was tested approximately three weeks ago. Wet spots closer to the canal and floodwall were tested approximately six weeks ago and were determined to be brackish.

Question: What is causing the flowing water and algae behind the gate?
Answer: We have not observed that, but will visit the site and investigate this afternoon.

~~I thought that they said that they have continually monitored this "seepage"? If so then why the fuck have they not noticed this this nearly 1200 sq foot
LEAK of FLOWING WATER?
~~Also: "wet spot(s)" closer to the canal??? Now the Corps contradicts earlier statements, and cops to this journalist that in fact that there might be, as Editilla already reported, more that one LEAK...
and gets away with it? No follow-up question?
Perhaps these were merely written questions, but sorry the Corps is not allowed a take-home exam. If these questions were live with the Corps, then...WTF?
Either way the Corps got the last word on a very well distributed article on their obvious real time engineering failures. Hmmm.
We all should learn such magic with which the Corps dusted this seasoned progressive journalist--so that we the people can see it coming after the next time that LEAKING 17th Street Canal sinks and falls apart...and they blame it on Mother Nature, Iowa Farmers, Katrina the Clown...my gullible ass.

The Corps has not touched this leak. They lied right there in the last words of that article--and bet on it that they will not let this slide so easily now that they have been given such a pass and warning.
They have too much riding on this Rising River to give us a chance, So Get On It New Orleans.
The Quixotic Corps of Engineers may not be only our city's problem, but that is for damn sure our city's future LEAKING beneath the "Repaired" 17th Street Canal Levee. More than ever now we remain Sinn Féin --but we will remain!

~Dr. Raymond Seed, a world famous civil engineer who heads a team of investigators for the University of California at Berkeley, wrote that the corps' work at the 17th Street Canal breach "did not appear to have improved the situation, indeed," he said, "it had likely made it more dangerous."

As Sand Bubbles Up Along an Illinois Levee, So Do New Questions~Even as many found cheer that floodwaters along the Mississippi River here would fall well short of what had been predicted, residents and the authorities in this town discovered a stark reminder of what might lie ahead: a sand boil on the aged levee that protects the town, a telltale sign that the swollen river had begun eroding the structure from beneath.

A portion of the Mississippi River, showing its many present and past meanderings, oxbows and channels, from the work of Harold Fisk, Geographical Investigations of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi, 1944. Courtesy of The Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University.

Food stamp assistance expanded to more flood victims

Donations Needed for Flood Victims
~Coordinator Michael Warner says they were headed to New Orleans but the recent flooding in the Midwest changed all that.

Flooding takes its toll
~Carl Kologie, Indiana Gazette

Scientists fear flooding will swell gulf dead zone

Conservative Government Destroys Atlanta Like Gen. Sherman Never Could
~Rick Perlstein

The Ugly Side of Disaster
~Tim Wise~Hat T'n'T-Voices of New Orleans

Hallelujah We’ve Finally Finished the Insurance Page ~slabbed

Disaster tourism ~Disaster landscape attractions after Hurricane Katrina:
An auto-ethnographic journey

The Land Of Misguided Soldiers
~Cliff's Crib~Hat T'n'T~WBG

Curiouser and curiouser
~BADGERFEMS

WIA Predicts Rise in Blogger Arrests

Films I saw in the first two days of the 3rd Annual Tokyo Refugee Film Festival~Great Swifty

Spike Lee considers Hurricane Katrina follow-up

Warren Haynes cuts new album with New Orleans musicians
~John Swenson

Dimanche

155 dead in Philippines from Typhoon Fengshen
Residents wade through a flooded street in Manila following heavy rains from typhoon Fengshen on Sunday June 22nd in Manila.
AP Photo/Bullit Marquez
Typhoon Fengshen lashed across the Philippines Sunday, submerged entire towns and capsized a ferry carrying more than 800 passengers and crew.
The Philippine archipelago comprises 7,107 islands with a population approaching 90 million people.
NOAA Satellite Imagery

The Rescues Continue
~"The disaster response team is working very well together. It takes about an hour to get to the town of Oakville, and then we make several trips in the boat, depending on how many animals we find to bring back. It’s definitely reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina, with the exception of the scope."
Photo of Ethan Gurney, taking a kitten to safety from Oakville, by Molly Wald

Online help for flood victims
~A website called Aidmatrix is helping match volunteers and products to areas where the need is great. You can make a donation of money or supplies on the website.

Louisiana sends aid to victims of Midwest flooding

N.C. crews leave to help flood victims

12 Mid-Michigan residents head to flood, fire-damaged areas

Help or high water: The effort to save the Cedar Falls levee was never a sure thing

Experts consider changes to flood terminology~Consider calculating 100 and 500 year floods in Dog Years, or maybe Soap Opera Time.

LEVEES~NPR~ Host Liane Hansen speaks with John M. Barry, a New Orleans levee commissioner and author of "Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America," about the current crisis of failing levees in the Midwest and along the Mississippi.

Flooding forces sewage into Wisconsin rivers

Aging levee poses threat to impoverished city

Midwest floods' economic fallout uncertain~Frayed optimism is the best that flood-weary Midwest residents can cling to after a harrowing month of battering rainstorms and swollen rivers that overtopped sodden levees in Iowa and then in Illinois and Missouri.

Get clearer flood info to public, businesses~What would one more inch of rain in the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers' saturated watersheds have done to the downtown Des Moines area?

WAVICS~Wave, Current, Surge Information System for Coastal Louisiana
Note~ Gentle'rillas can use these interactive sites together to study the flooding in any state: zoom WAVICS sat'view out and "curser" the Map up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Indiana and Illinois and then zoom'click back down to follow the smaller rivers like the Mossouri, Ohio and the Iowa. This is active data.
USGS~Flood Stage Levels current 'real-time' guage readings. I use the USGS maps to get oriented to the states and their flood gauges due to the lack of boundries of the sat'view. I also look up State Maps.
Wikimapia

Old River Control Structure~click to enlarge~
~History and design

The end of Morganza as we know it?~Keith Magill

How President Bush's Policies Leveled New Orleans
~Jason Leopold

What to do about New Orleans' trailers?

There she goes again~NO Bull


“Katrina Days” Book by New Orleans Photographer Now Available
~NO Internet Marketing

The City of New Orleans: On the track to Chicago~Millie Ball
Editilla commuta~Oh yeah, I have logged over 1000 miles on this train since Lundi Gras '06, and began riding around 1980. Over the decades I have seen full'course jazz bands perform in the disappeared smoking car, while talking to a non'smoker from Des Moines who just could not believe their ears.
From the now disappeared observation car, one could lean back and face outward to the passing of America's back yards, our laundry lines, main streets, and ghetto basketball courts,
our fields of dreams and forests of destruction,
our towers of babel and grain,
honest Americana on a heart'string.
Lately, however, something is rotten in Des Moines.
Losing the smoking car was bad enough but doable, then they shrink the dinning car into this snack'bar thingy cluster'fork...but getting rid of the Observation Car is down right offensive. We must stop this denial of basic slack and demand America regain its legroom!
What is it worth to you, America, to have freedom of movement --Public Movement?
Coast to Coast Mass Transit?
National High Speed Rail?
Amtrak sucks because we don't own any of the track.
The train has to pull over every right of way to let freight trains pass, every time, and some time spent just waiting...hours. Amtrak owns a smidgen up in the NE but, freight companies own all the track. That is fine. Nothing against the Bid'Dogs.
We, da'lil'doggin tax'payers, should build our own National Rail System with its own dedicated track, so that we can haul our assess all over America like smart
21st Century Citizens.
We could do it for a fraction of the cost of that War that seems to be nameless. It would cost less than half of what we have already flushed down the Corps of Engineers' failed flood control systems.

Drowning victim joyful before his leap
~Barbara Mercer had not been to New Orleans in 26 years, but she returned a few weeks ago to find out why her nephew jumped from the Algiers ferry into the swirling currents of the Mississippi River.

Louisiana Couples want legal matrimony

Community band to put on free show today~“Most people don’t know there were organized brass bands in Thibodaux as far back as 1850,” said Ted Hoffman, president of the Bayou Community Band regarding its upcoming concert at 3 p.m. June 22 at the Harang Auditorium (formerly known as the Thibodaux Civic Center).

Toulouse Street Lyrical

ReBuild Your Own New Orleans Garage Band~NOMRF

ActiveMusic Auction of Celebrity-Autographed Baldwin ~Green Baby Grand Piano Goes Live Today.
Proceeds to Benefit Global Green USA’s Rebuilding New Orleans Green Project

Samedi

Click photo to enlarge. A view of from space of the flooding and results of levee breaches along the Mississippi River in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri. The large blue "lakes" in the "after" image are areas behind levees that were over topped or breached. The water was then trapped behind the levee and could not reenter the river. NASA image from Earth Observatory. Geology.com

Corps issues false/positive levee map complete with Fairy Tale of Levee Builders and Farmers
<--Click to enlarge
Rebuttal from Levees.org
The New York Times has re-produced a map of the Midwest Flooding supplied to them by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Since the Corps is responsible for the performance of most of the important levees in the country, one should not rely on maps and statements by the Corps. This is a clear conflict of interest. An independent agency should make and distribute such a map. That said, I wish to point out that the color coding, certainly on the internet makes it difficult to differentiate between flooding caused by federal vs. non-federal levees. And third, I take issue with this statement: "Many of the breaches occurred on levees that were privately built." That is a vague statement! Exactly how many and out of how many total were private? And I note that the map does not say, ""Many of the breaches occurred on levees that were designed and built by the federal government" which is also perfectly true. Sandy Rosenthal Founder and Executive Director, Levees.Org www.levees.org

Editilla would also like to note that the levees on this map that the Corps designates as locally built are listed as Federal on the Corps other levee map: "Flood Fighting Potential Levee Breach" map, release earlier in the week, before these Big River Levees began failing. It must be noted also that the levee failures in Lincoln County, MO that the Corps says were 90% locally built were flooded after the 10% of Big River Levees (stuck small in-between the "alleged" locally built structures) breached. It is the Big River Levees which have failed and they were built by the Corps of Engineers. Of course smaller structures will breach after the Big River Levees fail flooding everything behind them.
This notion, this allusion that the flooding was cause by the failure of smaller locally built levees is a Red Herring at best, Criminal Obfuscation at worst. The Big River Levees are what counts and they were built by the Corps and they are the ones that have caused the major flooding. Surely everyone can now see the story that the Corps is trying to spin: "We didn't build these little levees. It was farmers. Yeah! That's the ticket! Farmers...and local "contractors". Yeah, we will just confuse the American Public with a yarn about "Patchwork Levees"...Yeah"
{Kudos, Kevin. We'll make a journalist outta'ya yet!:}

Corps spokes'ho, retired Brig Gen. and former Corps of Engineers employee Gerald E. Galloway Jr., sited in this shameful NYT article/folklore, is the very same one I mentioned below as speaking on NPR yesterday. They get around to all the best restaurants, eh? He's probably already on Fox. With each public relations presentation, NPR and NYT, there was no opposing view presented. None. There is opposing view on these failing levees. It just wasn't offered by these news outlets. They only offered the Corps of Engineers spokes'hos spin on who built these levees. We call this: "NOTMEMOMMA". The Corps is issuing slang press releases to distract us from hanging their asses out to dry whenever this water finally goes down after another of their catastrophic engineering failures. They built every Levee on that Mississippi River. NOT some farmer in Iowa. So is the Corps of Engineers basically telling us that they did not do what we told them to do way back in 1928? Or are they telling us they have not been doing what we told them to do back in 1993? What they are trying to do is deny that their overall flood control system is wrong. You don't sink a garden spade in a Mississippi River Levee without the Corps knowing about it--in triplicate. It is not done. Those have been Federal since the year they were built. Furthermore, this Times article does indeed leave one with the impression that these failed levees were on the scale of, say, irrigation levees in a rice field. No. Bullshit. Hooey. Lies. PR Spin. The people saying these things should be arrested for endangering public safety, not given venue in the NYT.
The Corps may actually not know where all their levees are, or which ones are at risk, but Levees.org has a list of them here.

River rises again, renewing worries in Mo. towns

Government tries to determine condition of U.S. levees

Photo courtesy of CA Dept. of Water Resources A levee along the Middle River in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta breaks in June 2004.

Editilla gozintas~100 Year Flood Protection?
500 Year Flood Protection?
Why doesn't the Quixotic Corps of Engineers start calculation at 15 year (1993) or even 4 Year Flood Protection (photo above) ?
I mean are they cypherin' with Dog Years?
Or worse, is the Corps thinkin in Soap Opera Time:
like, they way children on those television shows
age so quickly and the matriarchs age in reverse
and the men just seem to stay the same?
Sort of a Kafka Quantum Dios?
Are we on Soap Opera Time with the US Army Corps of Engineers? If you look at the reality of their engineering failures, then appx 33 years of our lives is equal to only 3 on a Corps Watch of 100 year flood planning?
And given that yesterday a Corps Spokesperson told NPR that they still do not even know where all the levees are located, who ya'gonna believe? Them? Or your own Lyin'Eyes? Jeez Louie! Mother Nature My Ass!
The Corps of Engineers uses these former employees and public relations firms to try to convince us that it is only natural that our levees are failing. They try to spin the idea that we are in error for continuing to trust in their engineering. They would have us get used to the idea that Engineering, as a building profession, operates with failure in mind rather than the other way around.
So, you will see more of these spokes'hos on major media like NPR, rarely the same one twice, so that the public will have the impression that a lot of technical types agree with the Corps view of inherent failure or global warming or congressional indifference or Katrina the Clown or whateva their "not-me" dujour.
Nothing could be farther from the truth, as many engineers across the country beg to differ whilst they watch aghast as the Corps and ASCE ruin America's trust in their fine profession. American Engineers used to build things that worked, not things that failed.
Americans should ask the Corps how much money they spend on Public Relations.

So after the administration used this latest National Disaster to push through their War Funding, and today would use the Saudi Oil Embargo of our country to open up our coasts to off shore drilling, I feel it incumbent upon Editeurilla everywhere to remind folks that we do not have to take this Doctrine of Disaster Capitalism.


Iowa Gov Culver asked McCain to stay away during floods
~Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain disregarded a request from Iowa Gov. Chet Culver to suspend campaigning in the state until Iowans can get a better handle on the flooding crisis.

I-10 Twin Spans are closed due to a hydrocloric acid spill.
An 18 wheeler is reportedly overturned just off the northshore end of the Span, spilling part of its load.
-All lanes of traffic in both directions are closed.
-Westbound I-10 is closed at Old Spanish Trail,
-and eastbound I-10 is closed at Irish Bayou.
-The alternate route is Highway 11.
-Troop L Spokesman Louis Calato says there are no evacuations at this time, and says that so far, none of the acid has gotten into the lake.

Fake FEMA officials reported in flood-ravaged Vernon County

Flood fallout still rippling across state~Wisconsin’s interstate system is back. But even as the Department of Transportation opened the southbound lanes of I-39 near Portage on Friday — the last of the closed interstates — people are still dealing with the fallout from this month’s floods.

Work begins at Wis. lake drained by flood

Wisconsin Produce farmers scurry to replant

Flood situation improves in West Bengal, India, 27 dead till now

Survivors Try to Come to Terms with Their Loss

Illinois guard members, insurers help out during flood

Donations being sought for Midwest flood relief

Local volunteers help with Iowa flood relief

Logistics woes persist as Midwest flood waters recede

Allergy expert has advice for flood victims

St. Charles, MO-Flood announcements, road closures, flood safety tips and more

Blagojevich halts insurance cancellations for flood victims

Missouri family struggles to stay above water

MS River
MO River today at
St. Louis (lower right)
Please click to enlarge.
WAVICS
Wave, Current, Surge Information System
for Coastal Louisiana
Note~ Gentle'rillas can use these interactive sites together to study the flooding in any state: zoom WAVICS sat'view out and "curser" the Map up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Indiana and Illinois and then zoom'click back down to follow the smaller rivers like the Mossouri, Ohio and the Iowa. This is active data.
USGS~Flood Stage Levels current 'real-time' guage readings. I use the USGS maps to get oriented to the states and their flood gauges due to the lack of boundries of the sat'view. I also look up State Maps.

Subsidy offered to get residents out of trailers
~But those residents, at meetings in Slidell and Folsom, were also told that they may have to move out of the area due to a local shortage of rental housing units. "You have to make some real hard decisions," said Carl Jurison, a senior adviser for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
~Editilla gotta'wonda~
What if one of those Hard Decisions might be to find out where this HUD senior adviser lives and deny him the right to make a home on his own property? Apparently HUD's plans for tax-payer financed relocation-in-favor-of-commercial-development do not stop at New Orleans public housing, but extend even into middle class America's neighborhoods too.

Lafayette appeals flood maps
~The city-parish government has submitted an extensive appeal of proposed flood maps that identify large areas of parish as flood-ways, a designation that could frustrate future development.

Good Job Brownie! KBR Katrina Work Blasted by the Pentagon. Millions Squandered~slabbed

U.S. lawmakers try to stop Katrina funds from going to port

Taylor, Thompson at odds over port

New Orleans port braces for storm season

Education Reform in Post- Katrina New Orleans
~The Bill Reader

House honors fleur de lis

St. Charles streetcars will go the distance

David Vitter Has a New Fetish ~Chris Kelly

ICE Found on Mars!
SB 51, The Guns to Work Bill, Passes La. House Vote
~Central La. POLITICS
Noooowwww, Editilla ain't sayin' these two events are connected or any'ting. But...ya'never know?

Brad and Angelina sell New Orleans house
~Your Right Hand Thief

Larry Sinclair Arrested
~CenLamar

New Orleans Rising

ANTIGRAVITY’s 4-Year anniversary party TONIGHT!

Black Gospel Music Blog
~Legislation Pending to Make September 2008 "Gospel Music Heritage Month"
~Liz McComb - The Spirit of New Orleans (review)

Local Berklee professor travels to New Orleans to help Katrina victims, build curriculum

Music Rising's Icons of Music Auction II
~Reach Out For New Orleans

NOLA Diary Xll:
A Staunch Jazz Traditionalist
~The Independent Ear

Music Of My Mind:
Les Poissons Rouges
~noah bonaparte pais~blogofneworleans.com

Voodoo Announces Full Festival Lineup~Festival Website