Hurricane Gustav Comes in Slow and to the Left

Posted by dday, Hullabaloo at 9:39 AM on September 1, 2008.

As I hoped, Hurricane Gustav changed course slightly, moving to the West and away from New Orleans, and the storm downgraded to a Category 2 storm upon landfall. The eye of the storm is 40 miles west of the city, toward Houma. Now, the Industrial Canal is being overtopped, and some runaway barges and tugboats are flying around in the area, and there are at least six hours to go here. But the absolute worst option has not materialized... yet. And I'm hopeful that the storm is far away enough that we won't see catastrophic flooding.

But you never know. The Port of New Orleans is underwater. If this was a Category 4 storm we'd be in a tremendous amount of trouble. The Army Corps of Engineers simply never built anything to stop water from Lake Pontchartrain to stream in through the Industrial Canal. If there's real breaching, the Lower Ninth is going to fill up. Again. (UPDATE: CNN reports "spurts of water" are coming into the Lower Ninth Ward already. This isn't that big a storm and the levees are already starting to fail.)

Good thing that evacuation efforts were so successful.

I think the Republicans are jumping the gun here. It sounds like Laura Bush and Cindy McCain are going to offer some kind of nonpartisan messages, but the split-screen potential is not good. Essentially, the RNC cancelled their prime-time schedule today because they had to. Not only did Bush and Cheney cancel, but Arnold Schwarzenegger said he couldn't make it because of the California budget crisis. That leaves Joe Lieberman. For the full hour. Not even Larry King would book that.

Meanwhile, you won't get this from the major media, but the GOP delegates are doing plenty of partying. It's not like they're TOTALLY refraining from fiddling while Rome may burn. I mean, come on, the booze has already been shipped! And also, there's one 10,000-member event going on as scheduled today, from the real PUMAs, the Ron Paul libertarians. Since the airtime is all booked, you'd think that the media would head on over and see what the fuss is about, right? Right?

I know the answer to that question.

Tagged as: new orleans, gustav