(And on the Unjust Fella … But mostly raineth on the Just, for the Unjust steals the Justs’ umbrella!)

Yes, it’s been raining here in South Texas for all of about this week. Not that we’re here in any danger of being washed away as they are in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and environs, although there have been reported a couple of high-water rescues on the local news. It’s just one of those things; kind of embarrassing, actually – that there are certain stretches of road (to include some lengths of interstate highway) and intersections within the city boundaries which, given a certain amount of rain, falling in a limited space of time – are guaranteed absolutely to flood out. Just one of those things. All of us locals know where these places are, since many of them are helpfully marked with bright yellow indicators, marked off in feet by the side of the road in low places so that one may judge – and others are just uncomfortably close to certain watercourses which usually only have flowing water in them when it rains. So the rain has fallen, to the tune of about ten inches in nearly as many days, according to the gage in my back yard, with not much effect here save pleasantly surprising everyone expecting August in Texas to be interminably hot, dry, and medium-crispy. The lawns and highway verges are all turned a lush green; mark us all down as relatively happy with this local result of Global Climate Change … or what used to be called “weather.”

The residents of Louisiana have not been quite so fortunate, in receiving considerably more of a deluge in the same period, but have been overwhelmingly fortunate in being self-sufficient, self-organizing and down-right neighborly, especially as regards the “Cajun Navy”. That is – all those outdoors, hunting and fishing types in and around Baton Rouge coordinating with each other and local authorities to rescue those stranded by abnormally high flood-waters. There have only been a bare handful of casualties, in massive flooding which has reached far, far into places thought previously to have been well above flood stage. In the words of Instapundit – these owners of small boats have been their neighborhood’s own first response team in a crisis. And that is just how it should be; functional communities full of responsible individuals are basically self-organizing.

It’s all very heartening to read about, and to read about it mostly in the alternative media; blogs, Facebook, local Baton Rouge news reports being linked and repeated by others, and to reflect upon what a tremendous difference there has been since the last time Louisiana got massively flooded. What a difference a change in administration and a distance of sixty or eighty miles’ upstream from New Orleans makes! Competent civic authorities with well-thought-out disaster-prep plans just doesn’t make for shriekingly hysteric news coverage on the part of the mainstream media. (An incisive after-the-fact analysis of national media failure here, from Lou Dolinar.) Mind you, there wasn’t a massive hurricane involved … but then, Hurricane Katrina didn’t actually hit New Orleans full-on, but the Gulf Coast well to the east. It was the levees bursting afterwards which flooded the place, and left Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco basically running in circles, hysterically blaming everyone else.

It is rather ironic, though – considering how the national media gleefully unloaded on then-President Bush with regard to the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans … and now make every excuse for President Obama’s apparent disinterest.

Discuss.