how many people will die 'rebuilding' nola?

* how many people will die 'rebuilding' nola?

* from the wsj: ""The desire to bring conservative, free-market ideas to the Gulf Coast is white hot," says Rep. Mike Pence, the Indiana Republican who leads the Republican Study Group, an influential caucus of conservative House members. "We want to turn the Gulf Coast into a magnet for free enterprise. The last thing we want is a federal city where New Orleans once was."" (link)
go read the rest.

* "Ronald Utt of the Heritage Foundation estimates that the (highway) bill's earmarks are worth $25 billion, and he has a suggestion: give it back and use it for Katrina reconstruction instead." (link)

* driftglass discusses the choice of rove to over see the rebuilding of nola. as always, read the lot - but heres a snippet: "Who knows of no better time to kick a man than when he’s down...unless it's when he’s dead?" (link)

* amy goodman interviewed one of the EMS workers who wrote the now-famous piece about getting forced back into nola by the gretna police (link)

* xymphora has a post on the murders on the bridge in NOLA - the story where the AP urgently pulled one version and replaced it with another. i cant work out what happened... xymphora ends with: "Discrepancies in the official story are starting to lead to theories that at least some levees and floodwalls were intentionally destroyed, theories that gain some credence in that even the experts are baffled at what happened to the floodwalls. Its a bit too convenient that storm surge gauges stopped functioning during a . . . storm surge, thus removing inconvenient questions about how a nine foot storm surge went over a wall designed to stop an 11.5 foot storm surge." - go figger

* here's something i had forgotten, ya know how Joe Albaugh was head of FEMA before he set up NewBridge to go make money in iraq (before coming back to make money out of katrina) - well, New Bridge was actually an outgrowth of Haley Barbour's lobbying firm. thats cute enough, but i'd forgotten that Neil Bush had a contract with NewBridge. (link)