If anyone has been following the National Weather Service's Hurricane Center website discussion on Gustav (and not the hysterical mainstream media), it is clear Gustav is a weak category 3 storm that will probably weaken further before landfall, and rapidly drop in intensity upon landfall. This is not the monster Katrina that grew in strength as it crossed the Gulf.

By the way, Katrina was a category 4 storm upon landfall, according to the NWS.

How many hurricanes is it gonna take for everyone to learn it's time to move to higher ground...how many more people are going to be blamed for someone else's bad choices. They don't call it hurricane alley for nothing. It's not a mystery and it shouldn't be a surprise...New Orleans is a friggin sandy delta that Mother Nature wants back.

But that's not just because of the Katrina response. It's everything that followed as well.

But it might be generations before New Orleanians let go of the grudge they hold against the government -- city, state, and federal -- for its failure to protect against and respond to Katrina.

Absolutely. People claimed Nagin forgot those poor people because they were not the ones who voted for him. They were Morial's people. That's part of it. Bush's craziness was part of it. I will never forgive the Operation Rescue folks, Pat Robertson, etc for caring less about dying babies in the street than theoretical unborn babies in the womb. I will never forgive them for the comments after.

I will never forgive the ones who played games with the money, who refused electricity and sewer to the East, who tried corrupt games on the elderly. State Farm is one of the worst of them. My family has been personally hit by this.

That the levees are still not ready is immoral. No one I know has been able to get federal rebuilding help except for these contractors and rich, connected people. Corruption at it's finest. It's been three years and the levees are still not ready. There's no excuse for that. By my mother's house in the East, the levees probably will not take Cat 3, no matter what they claim. That criminal.

They will supposedly arrest anyone who stays. Rumor is that the booking desk at Parish Prison will stay open. They claim they will take looters "straight to Angola". I want to see that. I hope to see that. I have relatives who criminals have ripped off during rebuilding. I hope they will punish them. But somehow...I doubt it. I've heard it before.

I'm glad they evaculated the pets. But animals are not equal to people. and the fact that the animals were treated better is just painful...and typical.

Perhaps this will teach the poor to vote. Because if there was ever an event or treatment that should make them vote in droves, the Katrina experience is it. It took Duke to bring out poor elderly in the 1990s. I remember my mother, a registrar, being so mad at them. Where had they been before? Why had they not cared before? Maybe, for the poor, this will be another Duke moment.

People will move back soon and pick up where they left off, again, doing nothing and waiting for the next one. It really doesn't matter since nothing short of the complete and permanent destruction of everything there would motivate anyone to change, and even if they did, they'd change the wrong thing, for the wrong reasons. It's all pretty much hopeless.

Do people evacuate the west coast because of earthquakes? Do the people living in tornado alley, release the brakes of the their trailers and push them to safer areas? Hell no !! People love their homes. They've built their communities and are committed to them - they stay and face the music, and rebuild if necessary.

Stop being so goddamned hysterical, you bunch of nitwits....

New Orleans is best left to sea for it to reclaim.

Man has been fighting nature for a city which lies far beneath the water levels.

In Good ol' days of 1800s, the state allowed the floods to overflow mississipi delta areas thus enabling the natural flow instead of inhibiting it.

In 20th century we thought defying nature through science is achievement! Until katrina came roaring by and nature laughed at science telling all of us are fools.

Time to let go of New Orleans. Let the sea claim it. It always wanted it anyway.

to poster labeled as "tregibbs":

Not everyone in the "tornado alleys" lives in a mobile home; tornadoes will shred any kind of building, both mobile and immobile; in March 2006, a tornado cut a grim path of destruction through Springfield Illinois that has since been repaired

there was no need for you to become upset and disrespectful

...built on areas that nature wreaks destruction through frequently? You know, like Tornado Alley? Isn't one of the reasons we're told this country is so great is because its people managed to make unlivable land livable? So why, all of a sudden, is there all this whining--especially from right-wingers--that "Oh, noes, we can't keep New Orleans built--it should just be left to rot." Funny how that "can-do" American spirit doesn't extend to a predominately African-American city. Funny how no one ever recalls that Amsterdam is built on low land--but somehow for some four hundred years or more, they've been able to keep from getting flooded. But I forgot, American can-do and rebuilding and "staying the course" is only something some white people--and those they want to steal oil from--are worthy of. Everyone else gets excuses and whining--or blame for having the nerve to exist. :P

that when some white people refuse to evacuate in the face of bad-news weather, they are regarded as heroes for defending/not abandoning their property? (Check out the coverage said folks in Florida and Tornado Alley get when weather threatens them--it's like they are defending the frickin' Alamo.) Yet when black folks stay for much of the same reason, they are regarded as stupid, crazy, or lazy--anything but heroic? Oh, that's right--black folks don't have property or homes they care about and have invested time/money in. In fact, they aren't capable of feeling such things--they are all too busy being thugs and living like animals.