Unlike many people, I have not been glued to the TV in the last 48 hours watching the destruction being wrought in southern Louisiana and New Orleans. However, I have seen enough pictures and read enough accounts to know that this is going to be very bad for a lot of people. My heart goes out to those affected, some of whom, sadly, have lost their lives.
The underlying question is why did we have a disaster of this magnitude? It is clear, that, despite what some instapundits would have you believe, that there are several contributory factors:

1. Global Warming
This studyfrom earlier this year showed that the mean intensity of tropical cyclones has increased significantly in the last 30 years. There are two fuel items for tropical cyclones; water and heat. Sea temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean have risen in the last few years, and it is difficult to find any other explanation that makes sense other than the general upward trend in sea surface temperatures that is part of the phenomenon known as global warming

2. Cities sinking below sea level
New Orleans is an artificial city, in that a large percentage of the urban land area is at or below mean sea level. In order to prevent flood inundation, areas like this need good drainage and a network of water barriers to prevent transient water level rises from flooding residential and commercial areas.
There is a lot of accumulated evidence from elsewhere and locally that the land on which the city was built has sunk over time. This is due to a number of events such as groundwater abstraction from underwater aquifers beneath the city, the extraction of oil and gas from deep strata (which creates voids in the strata that are filled by settlement) and the removal of the deposit effects of river silting (which tends to build up soil on top of the existing land) by the extensive dredging required to maintain navigable waterways. These issues are not unique to New Orleans - other low-lying cities (notably Venice) have many of the same issues. The causes are complex, and the cures will be expensive and potentially unpalatable (i.e. stop making dangerous cities bigger).

3. Under-funding of sea and river defences
We know that the sea and water defences in and around New Orleans have been under-funded for some time. This is not a sudden revelation - one can find articles on the Internet from various times in the last 2 years where local district representatives were warning of safety issues due to the diversion of budget monies to other purposes, including expenditures related to the war in Iraq. The Army Corps of Engineers had a backlog of water defense improvements, not able to be properly funded.

This is an expensive, tragic mess, which could have been mitigated by smarter execution of urban planning for a large marginally safe coastal area, more attention to macro issues such as global warming, and proper funding of coastal and waterway defences.
Currently the wingnut fringe on the left is blaming the entire mess on Bushco, while the right-wing fringe is disavowing any attempt to blame the Iraq war for the mess, and suggesting instead that the US axes its foreign aid budget to pay for clean-up and reconstruction. Neither of these two fringes is anywhere near the mark. Here are some of my thoughts:

1. As long as the US administration continues to down-play the issue of climate change (and we should remember that the climate on Earth has changed considerably over time, going back to well before the emergence of homo sapiens) by gerrymandering scientific data and study results, I have zero confidence in their ability to come to grips with any global ecological or meteorological trends. Put bluntly, BushCo are behaving in a negligent fashion born of a laissez-faire worldview that sees addressing climatic and environmental challenges by regulation of societal behaviour as anti-American.
Regulation is not something that only "socialist countries" do. It is part of growing up as a nation, that when you start to stress your natural resources, you have to maximize the return from using them. This administration has the least visionary, most negligent approach that I have ever seen from an industrialized country towards the management of natural resources and environmental quality.

2. It is clear that diversion of funding from water defences to war-related purposes contributed to the magnitude of the disaster that is now unfolding.

3. Axing the US foreign aid budget is a red herring. It would not be necessary to axe any budget if the US was not already running a budget deficit of ridiculous proportions.
The real fiscal issue is that the administration is currently spending money (note: our money, borrowed from outside the US, requiring payback in the future) that it does not have, much of it on occupying a country which was invaded for reasons that turned out to be largely specious, where there is no clear strategy for re-building the country or exitting having met clear objectives that contribute to US or global security.
(Note to TV talking heads: "Stay the Course" is not a strategy - it's an empty political slogan, and you need to start calling people on it instead of behaving like a bunch of nodding dogs).
Yet more of the money has been handed back to a small proportion of the country in the form of tax cuts benefitting only a small percentage of the population. Somehow I doubt that many of the victims of this disaster are net beneficiaries of the tax cuts.

4. The President and other senior political leaders should stay away from the whole area. If they try to fly political entourages (Secret Service, armor-plated boats, the whole nine yards) into the area, that ties up resources that should be used for rescuing people and helping to maintain order and calm.

5. George Bush is not personally responsible for Katrina. However, his administration bears a heavy share of the responsibility for failing to maintain adequate spending on coastal and river defences due to conflicting overseas military priorities, and for failing to take seriously any scientific evidence that might require the implementation of strategic regulation on natural resource exploitation and maintenance of the viablity of the environment of the USA.

Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9077164/

...for having the temerity to inform one of his patients that she was obese. Dr. Terry Bennett has been cnesured by a New Hampshire medical board and effectively ordered him to admit that he erred. He has declined to do so. The episode is explored in an interview that Keith Olbermann of MSNBC carried out with Dr. Bennett a couple of days ago.
This is pretty ridiculous. Nobody forces anybody to stay with a primary care physician. If you don't like your PCP, you can effectively fire them by switching to a different doctor. If Dr. Bennett's patient was so offended by what appears to have been a factual statement, then she had the perogative to switch doctors. Instead, she chose to try and make this into some mega-issue. My question: why? In a situation like this, you start to wonder what some people's motives really are.

Link: http://www.ewg.org/reports/withknowledge/

MTBE is a gasoline additive used in the USA for the last 10 years in order to make gasoline burn more cleanly. It was used extensively by petroleum companies until evidence emerged that it is environmentally toxic. Many states have enacted bans on the use of MTBE in recent years.
Currently, legislation is being formulated to try and limit oil industry liability for the use of MTBE, on the grounds that the use of MTBE was not the industry's choice; it was mandated by environmental legislation in the 1990s. Unfortunately, this is a defective on 3 counts:

- There is a lot of evidence that the oil industry decision to use MTBE was the industry's decision, and was not mandated or required by anybody but themselves
- There is a lot of evidence that the oil corporations knew of the environmental toxicity of MTBE, but ignored it, because its usage as a gasoline oxygenator allowed them to shift from having to dispose of it as an unwanted by-product of refining, to actually being able to sell it as a profitable part of their product mix
- The legislation attempts to retrospectively toss lawsuits filed since 2003 over the use of (and environmental damage caused by) MTBE

The above link provides some insight into attempted congressional gerrymandering to limit oil industry liabilities. To my dismay, this legislation is being supported by representatives from my state of Texas, which happens to be the headquarters for some of the key corporations that used (and continue to use) MTBE. Once again, Texas legislators appear to be trying to "fix" the legislative landscape to let their clients off the hook...

Link: http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/lakoff/gwot_rip

Recently, the US Administration has modified the whole frame on which it based US actions after 9/11. The phrase "War On Terror" has been retired, and replaced by "Global struggle against violent extremism".
In this article, George Lakoff explores the background behind this change, explains why the change has occurred, and reminds us that if the administration is acknowledging that war is not the answer to terrorism, we ought to be continuing to ask why the US is still bogged down in Iraq, fighting what looks remarkably like a war.

Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8514671/#050822a

Of course, you knew that Rush would feel obliged to weigh in with his usual barely-coherent pile of invective on the subject of Cindy Sheehan. However, what is more interesting is that, having uttered the usual sort of Rushian falsehoods about Cindy, he clearly thought better of it and removed the utterances from his web site. Unfortunately, thanks to the diligence of various bloggers, who saved the web pages off, we can see what Rush originally said, and have it elaborated on by Keith Olbermann in the above article...

Link: http://www.democracycorps.com/focus/Democracy_Corps_August_2005_Focus_Group_Report.pdf

This report, just issued, shows the challenge that the Democratic Party faces in appealing to current Republican voters. Clearly, the Republicans have been extremely successful in causing a large number of voters to self-identify with the Republican Party at voting time, even when this is demonstrably against their self-interest.
For me, the most depressing feature of the report is how it shows that lower levels of educational attainment make people more vulnerable to appeals for support based on the idea that somehow Republicans are on the side of "God" and "morality" and Democrats are on the side of "Godlessness" and "immorality". The big challenge for the Democrats will be to break out of that frame and focus instead on the big ideas of social justice and personal freedom that have always been there, but which have been downplayed and marginalized as the party moved to the center in the 1990's.

Link: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/6/18/161016/461

...When a certain William Jefferson Clinton was the President of the United States, circa 1999, the US launched military action in Kosovo to try and assist a very tricky and messy situation. The above link shows what the Republican leadership, spokespeople and their media supporters had to say about that use of American military capability...
I leave it to you, dear readers, to form your own judgement as to the consistency of the people being quoted, and also whether they may be suffering from gross hypocrisy crossed with expedient amnesia whenever they accuse critics of the Iraq War of being "Anti-American"...

Normally I don't cross-link between my various blogs, mainly because they cover very separate (and different) areas of interest, and somebody interested in (say) Information Technology may not wish to read my latest rants about politics.
However, today's blog entry from Eric Alterman, taking the Boston Globe to task for what can only be described as sloppy journalism, reminded me of the incident in 2002, when a pilot flying a plane not dissimilar to mine (i.e. a Long-EZ) crashed into the sea in the plane off Martha's Vineyard. The story of how the Boston Globe (and the Boston Herald) managed to get just about everything wrong, including ignoring the facts, is here.
The latest example of what can only be described as journalistic sleepwalking on the part of the Boston Globe is explained here.

Link: http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/07/17/study_cites_seeds_of_terror_in_iraq?mode=PF

The article above demonstrates that the Bush Administration assertion that the US is fighting Al Quaeda in Iraq is simplistic at best, and probably downright inaccurate. The Iraqi insurgents were radicalized into going to Iraq to fight by what happened during the Iraq war. In other words, the Bush Administration sowed the seeds and the US forces are now reaping the whirlwind.

Link: http://www.toyotaatlantic.com/News/Article.asp?ID=1810

When Katherine Legge won in her first start in the Toyota Atlantic series at Long Beach earlier this year, there were plenty of people ready to downplay that win. After all, she inherited the victory when Rocky Moran Jr. stopped with a wheel bearing failure. She had also punted out at least one other driver to get up to second in the race prior to Moran dropping out.
However, it now seems that the Long Beach win was no fluke. This last weekend in Edmonton, Legge qualified well, and raced to the front to win her second Atlantic race. This is two more victories than the victory total amassed by a certain Ms. Danica Patrick when she raced in Atlantics in 2003 and 2004.
What is more interesting is that this season is the first season that Legge has had a full-time ride. She has previously only competed in selected races or part-seasons due to lack of funding. As a result she has only driven in 20+ competitive auto races in her career - a fraction of the number of races that many of her competing drivers (including Danica) have competed in. The lack of experience shows, in that she has tended to run off course in qualifying trying to find the limit. However, everybody watching her has come away with the impression that, despite the lack of experience, she is a real bare-knuckle racer, willing to do what it takes to find a way past opponents. She has already been warned for blocking in Atlantics (note - a certain Mr. A. Senna also received more than a couple of warnings from race stewards while he was competing in lesser formulae). She clearly also has the speed - she has pole positions in other formulae.
Being 25 years of age, and having to beg and scrape for every chance, also appears to have given her a fairly wise head. She has worked out how to duck the inevitable comparisons with Danica, and is adamant that she wants to succeed by winning, not by being a woman. She also thinks that she is not yet ready to step up to Champ Cars, which may be true - she currently lacks consistency on a race-to-race basis.
So far, she is on the right track, and I suspect that Kevin Kalkhoven, having agreed to fund her for the season to run in Atlantics, has already more than justified his original investment. Expect to see her in a Champ Car test before the end of the season.