Worth Mentioning: Razor questions my comment, below, that New Orleans "cheated fate" again. Cheated fate? Yep, I'll stand by the phrase. No mass death, relatively orderly evacuation, minor looting, much of the French Quarter spared serious flooding.

Let's be honest here: With no changes to the levee/drainage system, a Cat 5 storm aimed the right way is going to absolutely wipe the city off the map one day. Rebuilding will be an effort on the scale of London, post-blitz. Only a matter of time.

But not this time. For a few moments it looked like this was the one, and it was curtains for the old city. But a lucky break spared them the full brunt of the storm. Sure, there's lots of damage, and I don't mean to minimize the actual suffering, but the city ducked "the big one" once again. I call that cheating fate.