NEW ORLEANS - Mayor Ray Nagin announced Thursday that large sections of the city will reopen next week, and the historic French Quarter the week after that. "The city of New Orleans ... will start to breathe again," he said.The announcement came amid progress in restoring electricity and water service and the day after the release of government tests showing that the floodwaters contain dangerous bacteria and industrial chemicals but that the air is safe to breathe.
The first section to reopen to residents will be Algiers, across the Mississippi River from the French Quarter, on Monday, the mayor said. The city's Uptown area — which includes Tulane University and the Garden District, a leafy neighborhood of antebellum mansions — will be reopened in stages next Wednesday and Friday, he said.
The French Quarter — an exuberant and often bawdy neighborhood of Napoleonic-era buildings that serves as the capital of Mardi Gras and is the very heart and soul of the city's rollicking tourism industry — will follow on Sept. 26.
Read it here.
This is another reason why Katrina is unlikely to have much long-term political fallout. Early coverage in the MSM made the disaster look much greater than it was and focused attention too narrowly on the Federal Government and the person of the President. Subsequent news has countered those initial assessments and will continue to do so, and as the good news continues to flow out of New Orleans it will benefit the President and cast further doubt on the reliability of his critics. By overreaching in the early stages, Bush bashers both in the media and in the political community have set themselves up for long-term criticism.
RELATED: I thought I'd never cite him, but Pat Buchanan on "Hardball" just made a similar point. He argues that from here on there's going to be a continuous stream of good news coming out of New Orleans, and Bush is wise to associate himself with it.
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