You Know What It MeansTo Miss New Orleans

Friend TK sent me this article on the strategic importance of New Orleans. There's a similar, less technical article, in Slate. Both of these make the same point: despite the fact that the place should be under water, having a Port of New Orleans is frakkin' useful. There's been a lot of talk about oil not coming in to the country, but think of all the stuff that goes out of the country via the Mississippi and so New Orleans: grain, coal, timber, automobiles, etc. In short, a lot of the stuff that we sell to other people to pay for all that oil.

So the Port of New Orleans will be rebuilt. It's not going to become another Galveston, there's no Houston to replace it. Once the Port starts operating, people will move back -- surprisingly, people tend to move to where the jobs are.

Will the New New Orleans be the same as the old one? Probably not. Certainly no one's going to go to a convention there between August and October. And we don't know if Mardi Gras will survive as we know it. But there will be a city at the bottom of the Mississippi.

So we'd better figure out how to protect it.