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Heard in today's news

Various news reports have been running in the background today, and a few bits stood out for me, such as Mike Brown of FEMA telling Paula Zahn on CNN that FEMA had no idea the New Orleans Convention Center was housing thousands of refugees who'd been without food or drink for 100 hours - they'd just found out this afternoon. Said Brown, "Those people have suddenly appeared." When asked why help is so slow in coming, he he said that the American people just has to understand how bad it is in New Orleans. Especially when you haven't planned and your flood control budget's been cut by 44% to fund a certain war (I said that, not Brown). A National Guardsman who'd been in Iraq said he'd rather be there than New Orleans, where there's "mass chaos." No one seems to be in control.

You might expect George W. Bush to provide some leadership. He was quoted today saying that nobody would've expected the levees to break. I know he doesn't like to read newspapers or dry factual stuff, but he could've asked my wife, who knew enough about it to've been talking for several years now about the danger of just this occurrence.

I halfway expect to see an aircraft carrier parked somewhere in the middle of New Orleans so that Bush can fly in and declare the disaster over.

Okay, that was a cheap shot, but I can't help but think that, under someone else's watch, we'd see more organization than chaos and an orderly evacuation already under way.

jon posted this at 8:17 PM
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