Is That Legal?

Eric,

You raise a good question. Were we too focused on terrorist attack vs natural disaster? To suggest we should have ignored this ("preparing for a terrorist attack... rather than a flood") I think you're in error. If a terror attack had occured then you'd be saying the reverse.

From the look of it, the incompetence was far more due to the Mayor and Governor than Bush. But...

How rapidly should we federalize? Should the President override local authorities? Do we want Constitutional Amendments to create that power?

All rational evidence seems to suggest the NO leadership was grossly incompetent.
(http://billhobbs.com/hobbsonline/007188.html). I'd love to be proved wrong.

WAKE UP!

This isn't a Bush thing.

Or a Democrat thing.
Or a Republican thing.

It is a COMPETENCE THING.

If you look at Federal response rates, they are responding as fast as ever, given Governor's time in calling in National Guard. (indeed Bush pressed her to call a mandatory evacuation.)

More than that, for too long, there's been a tendency of "middle class flight" to leave an impoverished inner city core of the poor (mostly black) run by a local party machine to elect certain candidates. That's disgusting. Any way you shape it.

How do you solve it?

There's the rub.

But raising "I hate Bush he is evil"
or "The Mayor is a Democrat he is incompetent AND EVIL"
just doesn't cut it.

New Orleans needs to look seriously at the candidates it's electing. Ditto LA.

And for president? We may need a domestic detail oriented person like Hillary Clinton or Rudy Guiliani.

Holmwood.

Interesting,

yes Bush holds some responsibility in this, but I also think that this lies at the feet of the mayor, and the govenor (who waited until Sunday to even ask for federal help) and the Homeland Security Chief as well.

A president's job is not to micro-manage, but to put people in the job who can handle the situation. He didn't do that with FEMA, and for that he should be taken to task.

But in all honesty, Kerry would have done no better (nor any other president). What happened down there was the equivalent of dropping a 100 megaton nuclear weapon on the area. 900 square miles to be exact are affected. I don't think we've ever had a disaster like this. A 150 billion dollar recovery effort, all I can say is wow.

Steven Huntley