On the grim third anniversary of the date that Katrina came ashore in Louisiana, tropical meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters shares a sobering thought:

It’s time to get familiar with the names Hanna, Josephine, Ike, and Kyle, because the tropical Atlantic is about to put on a rare burst of very high activity in the coming weeks.

Masters writes a tropical weather blog at the site he founded, the Weather Underground. He identifies four so-called “tropical waves” that each have a serious potential of developing into major hurricanes that threaten the U. S. mainland in the next few weeks:

As we look at these potential monster storms, it’s important to recall that what actually killed thousands of New Orleans residents in 2005 wasn’t a natural disaster; it was an engineering disaster:

“The failure of the New Orleans regional flood protection systems,” wrote Raymond Seed, a professor civil engineering at the University of California Berkeley in an October 30, 2007 letter to the American Society of Civil Engineers, “was one of the two most costly failures of engineered systems in history, rivaled only by the Chernobyl meltdown.”

The worst part of it is, this engineering disaster is ready to happen again next week:

East of the Mississippi River, for example, the system’s Achilles heel remains the Industrial Canal area, where $695 million worth of structures are planned at the confluence of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet. But that work, still being designed, won’t start to provide any storm surge protection until this time next year.

Three years after Katrina, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers is planning some work on the MR-GO canal, one of the biggest risks to New Orleans. That’s absolutely outrageous. And the lack of manpower, resources, and effort can—must—be laid at the feet of the Bush Administration and its allies and supporters:

Indeed, there’s John McCain receiving his birthday cake from President Bush… on August 29, 2005… the same day that the levees failed and thousands died.

So if you were a politician from the opposing party, wouldn’t you think that you might choose to mention this disaster at your quadrennial convention…? which might be taking place on the anniversary of the disaster? which might implicate not only the incumbent president, but your opposing party’s candidate?

Ah, but we forget; these politicans from the opposing party are Democrats:

…in Denver tonight, exactly three words were spoken that served as a shout-out from the powerful and the would-be powerful to a city on its knees: “Katrina and cronyism.” That’s the sum total of the verbiage from the podium of the DNC about the “greatest man-made engineering disaster in American history.”*

So, to review: hurricane hits vulnerable area; decades of incompetent federal engineering lead to unmitigated disaster; current administration is slow to respond; president and his Republican cronies are out to lunch; thousands die due to negligence; new hurricane threatens same region three years later, to the day, during the Democratic convention… but the Democrats feel that it wouldn’t be polite to mention any of this.

Good luck, New Orleans; Good luck, America!

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*(That commentary comes from Harry Shearer, an outspoken critic of the Corps and a part-time New Orleans resident. He’s also part of a worthy activist group trying to save New Orleans called Levess.org.)