So it has been a while since I�ve updated- a hectic week at work being the root cause, the secondary cause being that I�m lazy and have spent a lot of my free time watching the news.

There are a lot of things to say about what has and is happening in New Orleans. There have been several times in the past week I�ve wanted to post on here expressing my utter disgust at the downward spiral that is unfolding in Louisiana, but I�ve seriously been too angry or too upset or too shocked to do so. Surely, there is a lot of blame to go around on this one- all the way up the food chain. To keep things somewhat brief, I'll just cut to the chase and go right into the top of that chain. The hurricane hit last Monday, and what was Bush�s first course of action? He went to a Pentagon-funded country music jamboree in California to drum up support for the war in Iraq and try and repair his sinking approval ratings. The pompous jackass actually had the gall to compare his war of choice in Iraq to Word War II and himself to Theodore Roosevelt. All of this while people were being flooded out of house and home in New Orleans. He then waits until WEDNESDAY to fly back to Washington. That would be 48 hours of people living without food, water and shelter before he deemed it necessary to cut short his vacation. Yet, he could somehow find time during his last vacation to fly back to DC and sign legislation to have a feeding tub re-inserted into a vegetable. At least we know where his priorities lie. He went on the Today show and said, �I don�t think anyone could have predicted the breech of the levees.� Right. Anyone except perhaps those who watched the news and knew this was going to happen days before the storm even hit. Much like when he said, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center." Anyone except those who read the Intelligence briefings warning of just such a scenario. Just how many times can this man feign ignorance about something before he is held accountable? I read something over the weekend that compared this travesty to the Titanic, which seems to me the most fitting of analogies. �New Orleans's first-class passengers made it safely into lifeboats; for those in steerage, it was a horrifying spectacle of every man, woman and child for himself.� People staying at the Hilton were ushered to the front of the line and boarded onto buses bound for Houston while the poor and hungry, who had been waiting for days, were pushed to the back. People have been asking how this could have happened in the United States. Well, the answer is quite simple- we don�t live in the country you think we do. The Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House was satisfied to throw about $40 million their way while President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island. The U.S.S. Bataan, equipped with six operating rooms, hundreds of hospital beds and the ability to produce 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, has been sitting off the Gulf Coast since last Monday. And why has FEMA failed so miserably in dealing with this disaster? Well, part of the problem could be that the person running the agency, hand picked by our President, has no experience what so ever. His previous job (from which he was fired) was overseeing horse shows. His only obvious qualification is that he�s buddies with Dubya. Republicans have been drumming into our heads over the years that the private sector is much more capable of dealing with things than big government- which explains why Halliburton is running the war in Iraq... that government is the problem, not the solution... when this is how they run the government, I can see why they think that way.

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