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Is that article written by the same Xavier Jenks who wrote this press release about Big Foot?

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/blogofneworleans/archives/2011/06/28/big-foot-real-or-imagined

Also, this press release is nowhere to be found on the NASA site.

Also the NASAUPDATECENTER.US domain was registered a week ago and does not seem to have any connection to NASA.

I am going to call it a hoax.

Registrant Name Xavier Jenks
Registrant Organization NASA
Registrant Address1 PO Box 791633
Registrant City Cape Carnival
Registrant State/Province FL
Registrant Postal Code 666666

Quite aside from the festive town, there's the postal code, but my favorite bit is Googling for "Xavier Jenks" The third result (the first two are Facebook) is: http://www.bestofneworleans.com/blogofneworleans/archives/2011/06/28/big-foot-real-or-imagined

Which includes this little nugget:

Dr. Xavier Jenks, PhD
Research Team Leader
New Orleans Bigfoot Society (N.O.B.S.)

I agree 100%. In fact, post-Katrina, many of the political shenanigans that flew in the past, have not been put up with. There have been a number of politicians go to prison for bribery and the like. Jim Letten has done a world of good to help clean up dirty LA public service people. Sure, we still have problems, but we have come a LONG way since Katrina.

Heck, these days, people are calling Chicago politicians more corrupt and crooked than NOLA ones. Katrina, in many ways was a blessing and a curse. Yes, it was devastating to many who lost everything. But it also helped flush the city of a lot of what was wrong with it...the dead weight, the crime (still bad, but doesn't seem as bad as before), and the corruption. New Orleans is a MUCH nicer place to live now, than before Katrina. New blood is flowing in (many in the 30-35 educated ranks moving here), new businesses are coming in, many of the projects are being replaced with mixed housing..and pretty soon, we hope to have a major bio-medical corridor come in to replace some horribly blighted areas at the end of the Mid-City area which will help revitalize that area, and the areas closer to the French Quarter.

Additionally it appears that Louisiana should have been "high on the list of FEMA's biggest disaster mitigation grant program" but received nothing. Here's the article that states this: http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2004-09-2 8/cover_story2.html

The article states that the reason Jefferson Parish' potentially high ranking was because it has a disproportionate number of "repetitive loss structures." Those are structures that have suffered flood damage two or more times over a 10-year period and the cost to repair the structure equals or exceeds 25 percent of its market value. This means that the issue being discussed in the article was general flooding due to rain and rising rivers, not levee breaks. Specifically they are talking about areas that have been flooded 2 or more times... which indicates a flood prone area (no surprise considering it's on the delta and below sea level in some places). My point is this article has nothing to do with the levee disaster.

At the end of the article we find this statement:

One possible reason for the non-selection, Rodrigue hypothesizes, was that early in 2004, FEMA auditors discovered that a private consultant hired by the state to administer FEMA money had misallocated funds in Slidell, Mandeville and other places in St. Tammany Parish. "I think it was connected to the fact that there was an ongoing investigation," Rodrigue says, although he noted that other parishes, including Jefferson, were audited by both FEMA and the state during the investigation and came out clean.

So the alleged city government corruption that we've heard about seems to have caused some problems w/ New Orleans getting money. Which it should have... if the local government was improperly allocating the funds we should not continue to give them money until the issue can be properly investigated and we can ensure they are using the funds correctly. Point is, the local government seemed to contribute to their own inability to get the funds... again this is irrelevent because the agument for them to get the money in first place had to do w/ basic flooding, not levee breaks.

The first article... is troubling. I read it and I'm left wondering if money would have solved the problem or not. What would the impact of the proposed projects truly have been? Do we know (considering they wanted to do a 4 year study to even determine how to protect New Orleans)? When would the projects have been completed? Does raising levees really solve the problem. I'm not a structural engineer but I would expect that the point of raising levees is to withstand higher water levels... not keep the levees from breaking Why did we know about this since the 1960s, and then only start acting when 6 people died in a flood in 1995? It is troubling though.

It makes me wonder about why we even let the federal government pay for this kind of stuff? I mean... why shouldn't we reduce federal taxes in order to allow states to raise their taxes as needed to fund the projects that are important to the states? People would have far more control over how the money was spent b/c it would be their local politicians they were dealing with and corruption may be held in check better than it is now because people would care if every dollar wasted was a dollar they paid out in taxes (as opposed to the current system where taxes are paid by all 50 states and dispersed out in projects to the various states).

Anyways, the articles are interesting, the picture is a lame argument (too easily forged, show me real dated proof, and a presidential schedule... and at best all it is says is the President is disengenous... doesn't mean he's doing a bad job).

http://americablog.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/gu itar-710427.jpg

Pictures of bodies floating by are currently on the front page of the New York Times.

I posted the following quote on the previous article, with no conclusions, but it was modded down by people who dislike facts they disagree with. Additionally there's more information now and I am posting a link to the original article from editor and publisher:

"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us." June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, in the Times-Picayune

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/artic le_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313 The above article also details what cuts were done by Bush to the SELA grants (for levees in New Orleans), which, by the way, were started and funded in 1995.

Additionally it appears that Louisiana should have been "high on the list of FEMA's biggest disaster mitigation grant program" but received nothing. Here's the article that states this: http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2004-09-2 8/cover_story2.html Now, as before, mod this post into oblivion so that you don't have to see Bush smiling and playing the guitar yesterday while bodies float around. I'm not sure what disgusts me more -- him doing that, or people closing their eyes to truth.

Andrei Codrescu wrote a really cute essay about this phenomenon in 2002; it was picked up for US National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" program.

Ask and ye shall receive: Yoshi's Sushi, on 3205 Edenborn Ave. in New Orleans. They have a sushi buffet, too.

People seem to think that sniper attacks are a new and American phenomenon. That just ain't so. It's just another kind of murder, and murder's been around for a while, now.

It seemed to me that some executive stood on some moral high ground and decided to 'protect' everyone from emotions that might well up when listening to John Lennon's 'Imagine' or S & G's "Bridge Over Troubled Water. Dumb. Another example of how out of touch with *people* corporations are.

The only reason I think of this is because I happened to be listening to Ben Kweller's "Falling". (great tune) Hmm.