Did Katrina Never Happen? Ask Google.

In the old USSR, it was never a good thing to remember too much. History had a way of changing... Orwell's Memory Hole.

The USSR is gone, or is it? Now we discover, from an article in the Huffington Post, that Katrina never happened. At least it never happened on Google Maps, which the HuffPo writer notes have oddly and disconcertingly reverted to the satellite images used before Katrina. No floods, no levee breaches, no nothing. The old place never looked so good.

I just checked Google Earth, and Katrina never happened there either. I'm looking at all the places I got eyestrain going over after Google changed the pictures to post-Katrina. I'm remembering my long hours finding levee breaches, flood traces, damaged infrastructure, and entire earthen embankments which had moved 30 feet from where they had been before the storm.

No more. Google has changed all the pictures back, and Katrina never happened. Did I just imagine it? Was it all a bad dream caused by watching too many of those "It Could Happen Tomorrow" shows on the Weather Channel? Worse, was I the victim of liberal media propaganda?

It's positively dizzy. One Google Earth place mark says "Katrina Barge," where at one time a barge had gone through the breached levee and come to rest in a neighborhood. But now, there is no barge. There is no breached levee. Weirdest of all, there IS a Lower Ninth Ward. There are houses and trees and cars and people. Birds sing and dogs bark and children play in the street.

To the southwest, the chemical dump that blew up and burned for 3 days has storage tanks again. The river boat dock is back. Is the river boat back too? The aquarium looks as if Katrina had never happened at all. Oh wait, that's right. It didn't.

On the London Avenue Canal, a place mark mentions a levee breach. But there is no breach, there never was a breach, and we have always been at war with Oceania (or is it Eastasia, or does it really matter?).

Up by the lake, the Southern Yacht Club is still there. It never burned and fell into the water after all. The marina has boats in it, and the street doesn't, despite a place mark with a photo that would suggest just the opposite.

This is remarkable. Wait until Brownie finds out he has his old job back. Heck of a job, Google!