On the way home from work last night, I noticed that one of the Conoco stations at Sheridan and Dartmouth (yes, there are two of them there, right across from each other) listed regular unleaded at $2.84 per gallon.  That was a 25-cent jump from just the day before.

This morning, as I stopped to pick up smokes before heading into work, the price had risen to $3.05.

Expect prices of many other goods to rise as it becomes more expensive to ship them.

In other words, there isn't a person in this country who won't be affected by Katrina in some way.  Think about that before you say that what's happening in New Orleans and the northern Gulf coast isn't your problem.

Well, somebody had to say it:

House Speaker: Rebuilding N.O. doesn't make sense
Thursday, 2:55 p.m.

By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau

WASHINGTON - House Speaker Dennis Hastert dropped a bombshell on flood-ravaged New Orleans on Thursday by suggesting that it isn’t sensible to rebuild the city.

"It doesn't make sense to me," Hastert told the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago in editions published today. "And it's a question that certainly we should ask."

( Read more... )

OK, so he makes a very good point.  Rebuilding New Orleans, at an enormous cost to taxpayers, may not make sense if the same nightmarish scenario can happen in the future, even with improved flooding protection and wetlands management.  The Dutch may have pulled off the trick of living on below-sea-level lands, but they also don't deal with hurricanes.  And it shouldn't be the taxpayers' responsibility to deal with the consequences of the residents' choices.

But to choose this time to make such a cold analysis, when the bodies haven't even been counted or recovered, when a dying city writhes in agony with no food, water, power or sanitation, and when people are risking their lives to save others: to make such a statement now tells you a lot about the priorities of politicians and bureaucrats.  Human compassion doesn't seem to be among them.

Hey, Dennis: shut the fuck up and let people get to work.  You can whine about the cost during your appropriations hearings.  But for now you're simply cementing the reputation that liberals have accused Republicans of having all along: you don't really give a shit about the less fortunate, at least until the next election season.

From WWL-TV's Katrina blog:

4:15 P.M. - (AP): Police say storm victims are being raped and beaten inside the New Orleans Convention Center.

About 15,200 people who had taken shelter at the convention center to await buses grew increasingly hostile.

Police Chief Eddie Compass says he sent in 88 officers to quell the situation at the building, but they were quickly beaten back by an angry mob.

Compass says, "We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten."

He says tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon.

In hopes of defusing the unrest at the convention center, Mayor Ray Nagin gave the refugees permission to march across a bridge to the city's unflooded west bank for whatever relief they can find. But the bedlam appeared to make leaving difficult.

* weeps *