Hurricane Katrina

As with many others, I've been glued to the t.v. watching the coverage of the hurricane and it's aftermath. Have also been keeping up with the increasingly ugly finger pointing. My take on this? Okay, I'm a die-hard Republican and voted for Bush twice. But the bottom line is, the response to this crisis was absolutely pathetic. There is no excuse for the delay in getting help to those in New Orleans. That isn't supposed to happen in America, but it did. There is plenty of blame to go around. The mayor of New Orleans and Governor of Louisiana did plenty wrong. But at the federal level, it was a disaster of epic proportions. Bush blew it, plain and simple. He can say whatever he wants, but as President, people look to him. He should have been home from the ranch and been seen taking charge (and not talking about how sad it was that poor Trent Lott's house was destroyed). But he didn't. We should not have these images of people crowded into the Superdome with no food or water. Or dropped along a highway with nowhere to go. It wasn't racist. Bush didn't purposely ignore black people. But there was a seeming indifference to what was going on and a complete misreading of the situation. This will haunt the remainder of the Bush presidency.

What is really frustrating is seeing what all we accomplished in a very short time frame once help did finally arrive. In about 1 or 2 days, thousands were evacuated, fed, and given shelter. The levees were being repaired, water was being pumped out. In other words, we had the capability. But for some inexplicable reason, we didn't use it.