Tube City Almanac

August 31, 2005

Your Attention Please

Category: default || By jt3y

Due to jobs from paying clients that I'm way behind on, Almanac updates are going to be spotty for at least the next few weeks. Your indulgence is appreciated.

I'm also well behind on working on the book. I wanted the manuscript to be complete in time for the Murphy centennial, but at this rate, it's going to take me until the bicentennial. I'm thinking that the hour or so per day that it takes me to maintain the Almanac might be better invested in that project. The crowds of G.C. Murphy retirees outside my house with pitchforks and torches has absolutely nothing to do with my decision.

In the meantime, I'm trying to find someone to write the Almanac a few days a week. I've asked Officer Jim, but he's reluctant. I guess his job oppressing the masses and reinforcing the capitalistic-militaristic cabal that keeps the fascists in control takes a lot of his free time. And when he comes home after a long day of holding his jackbooted foot on the neck of the proletariat, I'm sure he just wants to kick back.

(Oops! Sorry. Some of the propaganda from those protests in Oakland got posted here by accident.)

Anyway, the Almanac may drop down to twice or three times per week in the near future.

In the meantime, who says that the Mon Valley is always behind the trends? A spot check at the Mon-Yough Gas Gauge reveals that $3 per gallon gasoline has arrived.

Elsewhere in the news, the stories from New Orleans get worse and worse. The latest reports indicate that the entire city may be abandoned for up to four months, and some areas east of New Orleans, like parts of Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss., are virtually gone.

Personally, I didn't realize just how bad it was until President Dubya canceled the rest of his vacation. When Fumblefingers decides to stop clearing brush and goes into the office, then I think we all realize that a major crisis has happened.

Would you be surprised, by the way, to learn that millions of dollars in flood prevention projects in New Orleans were cancelled because of the administration's tax cuts, and to pay for the war in Iraq? Or that $800 million was diverted from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay for Homeland Security boondogles?

On the other hand, I'll bet folks in southern Louisiana and Mississippi are really enjoying their tax cuts right now.

There are a lot of ex-McKeesporters living down along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, so chances are, someone you know or used to know has been affected. If you have a couple of extra bucks, consider clicking that banner at the top of the page to donate to the Red Cross.






Your Comments are Welcome!

God hates George Bush, and She has shown us her wrath.

This is nature’s 911. What are all those people going to DO?
heather - August 31, 2005



You mean there were consequences to those massive tax cuts and spending $200 billion on the Iraq invasion? Shocking!
Wade - August 31, 2005



Oh, come on. It has nothing to do with President Bush – except that I agree he should have cut his vacation a bit shorter and a bit earlier.

It’s a natural disaster. More could surely have been done, but when 100+ mph winds come crashing ashore, even the best precautions can fly apart.

I feel for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, but if you build a city below sea level, sooner or later the gol’darned sea is going to pay you a visit. Same for San Francisco or Los Angeles, where eventually, inevitably, The Big One will come to call. It’s the risk you take there.

“We never should have built those 40-story monstrosities. Not here.” – Charlton Heston, in “Earthquake”
Hurricane Kabong - August 31, 2005



Man, how do you recover from something like that? I can’t even imagine what it would be like to see my house wash away.
Steven Swain (URL) - September 01, 2005



Don’t go away too long. We depend on your information and entertainment up here in the northwestern tier of the Greater McKeesport Area.
Mark (URL) - September 01, 2005



Hey Bong, I don’t blame him for the hurricane. I do blame him for diverting national resources into useless tax cuts and a needless war in Iraq, and I blame him for running up giant budget deficits that necessitated cutting the budgets of FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers.

I also think that his remarks today —- that citizens ought to be helping one another —- are disingenuous. It’s hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you’re neck-deep in filthy water.

Also, I tend to agree with you about the wisdom of building a city below sea level next to the Gulf of Mexico, though I don’t know if this is the time to bring that up.
Webmaster (URL) - September 01, 2005



New Orleans is two hundred seventy-eight years old. That’s older than the constitution. It was built because of its strategic location in relation to the Gulf and its implications for waterway shipping. One which we are going to feel the impact of as gas prices go up and up, since the oil from the Gulf refineries can’t get to us.

Notably, some of the really, really old houses in the area actually withstood the most devastating effects of the storm because they were built for these environs. Also, hurricanes and monsoons annually destroy entire pockets of the south, causing people to rebuild year after year. If everyone from a high-risk area abandoned their digs, we’d be giving most of the Southern U.S. back to nature.

Bong’s starting to sound like an environmentalist (oh the peril!). The devastation of the wetlands surrounding the city by developments for wealthy Florida retirees and commuters has affected how hard the city was hit. The natural grasslands surrounding the city act as a buffer from huge the influx of water that hurricanes bring into the area, reducing the potential for major flooding of the New Orleans ‘bowl’. The elimination of these wetlands areas is near completion.

Yes, having a city below sea level is inherently unnatural. Holland is built entirely below sea level. They have hydraulic levees that are more efficient than the broken-down stuff bunkering New Orleans. Political leaders from the area decried the city’s woefully inadequate infrastructure a year ago, lobbying for federal funds to update the levees before something devastating like this would be visited upon the city.

Gonna be pretty expensive now, isn’t it?
heather - September 01, 2005



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