Katrina

A nation built with African slaves inaugurates an African-American President.

A nation driven by culture wars born out of the Vietnam era moves into hope for more pragmatic, if still partisan, politics.

A nation fallen into the darkness of torture, of "collateral damage" of hundreds of thousands of lives, of ends justifying any means returns to an age of striving for the highest of American ideals.

A nation seduced by the fantasies popularized by Ronald Reagan, that markets are God, that government is evil, that global warming is a myth, that liberalism is out to destroy America, a nation almost paralyzed with the shock of the revealed lie of those fantasies -- a long nightmare, really -- returns to a reality-based vision of the world.

A nation coming off of one of the more ugly racist federal elections puts a black man into office.

Barack Obama is a pragmatic progressive whose intellect brings us hope that his leadership can guide the cumbersome bureaucracy and conflicting interests and influences into actions that make sense, based on reason.

It was truly audacious two years ago to believe this could happen. It took a lot of hope and the hard work of millions, and the faith of many more. But here it has happened.

Barack Obama is about to become President.

How unlikely.

How amazing.

The world is astonished. Today America returns to the light.

How ironic that a hurricane may postpone the Republican National Convention, especially right after New Orleans put 85 more bodies to rest, making the Katrina toll over 1800 Americans.

Heckuva job! Let's elect more of the same! (Am I angry? Me? No, of course I'm not angry!)

Are you ready for 1,000 years of rising oceans?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will publish its report, the most complete overview of climate change science, in Paris on February 2 after a final review. It will guide policy makers combating global warming.

The draft projects more droughts, rains, shrinking Arctic ice and glaciers and rising sea levels to 2100 and cautions that the effects of a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will last far longer.

"Twenty-first century anthropogenic (human) carbon dioxide emissions will contribute to warming and sea level rise for more than a millennium, due to the timescales required for removal of this gas," the sources quoted the report as saying.

The good news? This century we should see oceans rise only a couple of feet. American coastal cities can get by like the Netherlands, with dikes and levees. Of course, neglectful Bushian attitudes about their maintenance, as evidenced in New Orleans, would have to go.

The draft projects temperatures will rise by 2 to 4.5 Celsius (3.6 to 8.1 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels with a "best estimate" of a 3C (5.4 F) rise, assuming carbon dioxide levels are stabilized at about 45 percent above current levels.

This could make el Niño seem like a little boy indeed.

There's so much to say about Katrina, King George's posing, DHS & FEMA, politically-flavored pork-barrel post-Katrina contracts, the incompetent government run by a bunch of folks who don't believe in government (unless it controls us peasants, you know)....

...but I think that during this week of remembrance, this quote of Barbara Bush seems to capture the essence of the cold heart of the right-wing. (Less Christian, more Roman in sentiment, wouldn't you say? I find it rather easy to imagine Barbara's words coming from Pontius Pilate. Traditional values indeed.)

Who's "elite"? The Hollywood actor who gets in a rowboat and tries to help people when FEMA, the New Orleans police, and the rest of the "homeland security" crowd are nowhere to be found? Or the silver-spoon crowd who claim privilege to dismiss the suffering of others?

The Bush Administration has announced that New Orleans is open for the new season of hurricane business.

Federal emergency officials claim the New Orleans levee system is ready for another major hurricane, despite the less-optimistic views of other political leaders and engineers.

"I think we're in good shape," Don Powell, the Bush administration's coordinator of Gulf Coast rebuilding, said Sunday. "There's no question in my mind, we're ready."

Yeah, they're as ready as they were last year, which is not all that comforting.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said the levee repairs alone aren't enough. "They're back up to Category 3," she said. "We need to get them up to Category 5, and we are working to do that."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said the city was ready — but only to evacuate.

"You will never see a replay of last year, as long as I'm the mayor of the city," he said Sunday. "It's the storm surge that's really the major concern. ... We don't expect the catastrophic failures."

Contradicting other Bush administration officials, Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the U.S. Army Corps' chief, conceded it isn't clear whether the levees could withstand a big hurricane this year.

Also undercutting a lot of the spin is the largely discredited Michael Brown, former head of FEMA, who says that the real problem is all the extra layers of bureaucracy Bush and the Republican Congress put into place when they formed, at great expense and with much disruption of federal agencies responsible for our national security, the dysfunctional amorphous blob called the Department for Homeland Security.

Bush government, you're doing a heckuva job!