Do you fear Flipper?

From the "don't we have enough s*** to worry about?" file: Deadly dolphins in the Gulf?

Rising waters.

As my cousin awaits evacuation from New Orleans, I read Sidney Blumenthal's breakdown in Salon of how the current administration gutted flood protection budgets for New Orleans to pay for the Iraq War.

Blumenthal writes:
A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent.

The administration should consider a new motto, perhaps "We spring to close the door as soon as the horse leaves the barn."

My cousin, meanwhile, sits and waits (along with a bunch of other doctors who volunteered to stay and try to care for patients who couldn't be evacuated). They tried to evacuate him yesterday, but gangs of thugs seized the boats, dumped the crew, EMTs, and patients, and made off with the boats. Today they will try again, with a military escort.

Follow-up: My cousin was finally evacuated after seven days in Charity without water or power, where he tried his best to provide medical care to the patients there with them. Thank you to everyone who commented or emailed with support.