With apologies to John Fogerty and Credence Clearwater Revival: I see the bad Palestinian moon arising. I see trouble on the way. I see earthquakes and lightning. I see bad Gaza times today. Don't go around in Gaza tonight, Well, it's bound to take your life, There's a bad Palestinian moon on the rise.

With people dying from infected water in New Orleans, which won’t be drained for weeks, it is critically important to disinfect the flood water as quickly and efficiently as possible.The Army Corps of Engineers has many years of institutional experience at safely chlorinating sewer water. They can scale up that experience for the “Sewer City” that New Orleans has become.Chlorine is a standard treatment for disinfecting sewage. It would take a few railroad tank cars of liquid chlorine for the job.

It is settled wisdom among mainstream journalists that the federal response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was unconscionably slow. “Mr. Bush's performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever during a dire national emergency,” wrote New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in a somewhat more strident expression of the conventional wisdom. But the conventional wisdom is the opposite of the truth. Liberal journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out. So they libel as a “national disgrace” the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.

Chapter Seven: QUETZACOATLDon Alonso was unlike any of her previous masters. True she had never been abused or raped either by her Xicalanca captors or the rulers of Pontochan. But Don Alonso exhibited a courtesy to her, treated her with a dignity, that the others had not. Was it because he recognized her royal birth, or did he and the other Spaniards treat women differently in general?To her Pontochan masters, she didn’t really exist in a certain way. She had been invisible to them - an invisibility Malinali strove consciously to maintain. She did all she could to hide her beauty, for example. She didn’t walk straight, tall, and proudly - she compressed herself and slunk around the palace doing her chores.She decided to abandon this shrunken invisibility with the Spaniards. She no longer wore her cloak over her head. Her bountiful long black hair was now free to glisten in the sun. She carried herself as her father taught, tall and proud, head high. She was never insolent and obediently did as she was asked without resentment. She could do this because Don Alonso always made requests of her, not dismissive demands. He treated her as an individual person, not an invisible non-entity.Now being so clearly visible, Don Alonso could not help noticing Malinali’s beauty.

What’s the difference between a disaster and an election in New Orleans?The buses run during an election.Why isn’t New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin worried about all the dead people being found in Katrina’s aftermath?Because they’ll keep right on voting anyway.Tasteless? Here’s what really tasteless: Cleaning up New Orleans physically without cleaning it up politically. Not draining New Orleans’ political cesspool of organized crime and corruption. Not evacuating Mayor Ray Nagin and every city official and police officer on the take before they get their greasy hands on all those billions of taxpayer dollars to rebuild the place.

As we mourn New Orleans, let us also celebrate it, as New Orleanians famously celebrate their own dead. The city has long been admired for its literary creativity, its exceptional food, its wonderful music, and deplored because of its legendary corruption and degradation. The possibility of its destruction no doubt played a role in the character of its people, and it is no accident that an annual bacchanal took place there, in the riotous celebrations of Mardi Gras. Death has always been omnipresent in the consciousness of the city; dancing in defiance of death was the city's trademark, and the spirited music that defined New Orleans for much of the world was played at the happiest occasions, and at the most famous funerals.New Orleans is one of a handful of cities that are defined in large part by the recognition that it can all come to an end most any day. Joel Lockhart Dyer wrote that “New Orleans is North America's Venice; both cities are living on borrowed time.”