Robert P.

Pulled from the comments and front-paged by Anglico. This overview of tax policy pretty much speaks for itself.

Katrina has hastened the inevitable - New Orleans will wither on the vine faster than it was doing before due to Katrina.

"The new doubts, surprisingly, are largely not based on the widespread damage caused by the flood. Rather, crippling problems that existed long before Hurricane Katrina are mostly being blamed for the city’s failure to thrive.

In this view, the storm was merely a grim exclamation point to conditions decades in the making. Before the storm, some economists say, New Orleans may have had more people than its economy could support, and the stalled repopulation is merely reflecting that."

The scapegoats will certainly not be NO itself - this will be laid at the feet of the federal government and whites in general.

I give the Maliki "government" about 2-3 months...at the outside. Yesterday's mass killings in the Sadr urslum and today's reprisals, which include burning six Sunni worshippers alive while ISF forces stood by, are simply the symptoms of the underlying hatred and dysfunctional nature of this "nation". Our illustrious leader is planning to meet with Maliki next week in Jordan, not Iraq. We have 140,000 US troops in country and yet the threat is too great to meet in Baghdad. No word yet from Maliki's minions on the threat from the al-Sadr bloc's threat to leave the government if the meeting takes place. True, they hold only 30 of 275 parlimentary seats, but Maliki relies on al-Sadr's approval to remain in power as Sadr holds great sway, though not control, over the Mahdi army.