So, why were those levees so crappy anyway?

Double the fun here today at the Phantom Soapbox, we get to poke the Greenies and we get to slag Algore.  Can't go wrong with something like that!

Question: why weren't the levees around New Orleans made bigger and stronger ages ago?  Its in a frickin' hurricane zone and the city is 8 feet below sea level, one would think that math would be easy to do.

Thus spake Algore:

On Sept. 9 he spoke in San Francisco, where he said: "The warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis. It is deepening. We are entering a period of consequences." And he urged that "the leaders of our country be held accountable" for the flooding of New Orleans.

On the face of it, he's not wrong.  Somebody's ass needs kicking here.  Question is, whose?  Of whom did Algore speak?

Answer: Well, its interesting.  Algore's speech was given before the Sierra Club, of SUV hatred fame. 

One of the minor reasons I drive a huge pickup truck is to piss those people off.  I pay for my gas and I smile, knowing that somewhere a Greenie Weenie is pulling his/her/its hair out from frustration.  "A dollar thirty six a quart and still he smiles!  DAMN YOU, PHANTOM!!!!!!!"  Heh heh heh.  ~:)

But I digress.

The very day he [Algore] spoke a congressional task force reported the levees that failed in New Orleans would have been raised higher and strengthened in 1996 by the Army Corps of Engineers were it not for a lawsuit filed by environmentalists, led by who else but the Sierra Club.

Was this the first time the Econazis tied up levees for New Orleans?  Nyet comrads!

According to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times, a 1977 lawsuit filed by Save the Wetlands stopped a congressionally funded plan to protect New Orleans with a "massive hurricane barrier." A judge found New Orleans' hurricane barrier would have to wait until the Army Corps of Engineers filed a better environmental-impact statement.

So here's Algore standing in front of the very crowd that did the evil deed, gassing off about global warming and holding people accountable.  As the author says, "How the gods do play upon the poor soul known to us all as Al Gore."  First Android vice-President of the USA.  Watta dork.

Lest we jump too quickly upon the Greenies for the whole offence, it must be said that the governments in question let them tie this thing up in court for 30 years, during which time New Orleans dropped another foot or two from subsidence.  There were places downtown where you could practically stick a trowel in your back garden and hit water, so it wasn't something mysterious or unknown.  The inaction of the government was still inexcuseable.  If some nut group blocks action that will save hundreds of  lives, said nut group must be sorted out with legislation.  If nothing else, judges should sort them out.  Republicans, take heed.

However, this does not absolve the Greenies in any way.  They knew the levee was weak and didn't care.  They put "wetland health" ahead of the 36 dead in that nursing home and all the other casualties of the levee break, ahead of the billions of dollars worth of absolutely uneccessary damage, ruined lives and the rest.  They did it deliberately, knowingly, and consistently every day since they launched that suit back in 1977.  Absent their machinations that levee would have been fixed in the 1980's.

Truly, they sowed the wind all that time.  Verilly, they are now reaping the whirlwind.  And there's Algore the Oblivious, flying a kite right in the eye of the storm while the lightning crashes all around.  Good thing wood is a poor conductor, eh?

The Algore Mocking Phantom