A belated Katrina post. I find myself posting little more than occasional snippets lately because I don't have anything good to say about anything...or maybe there's just nothing *left* to say. So mostly I just hang out in my middle-class, hurricane-free existence.

Over the years the people at the National Hurricane Center (and other involved meteorological types) have taken a lot of grief for alarmist forecasts or hurricane forecasting that didn't pan out. I suspect that Katrina will be looked back upon as their finest hour. My cable still not disconnected, I will say I was a bit mesmerized by Kat as she marched on. (I've been in smaller hurricanes before and some of them were almost -- dare I say? -- fun. They are vivid memories in any event.). Anyhow, Katrina followed the predicted track as if on rails.

I was optimistic. The mayor, Nagin, seemed to have a pretty sober, practical grasp of the situation. Maybe he still does.

It is almost bizarre -- not funny but almost absurdly, sadly amusing -- to recall some sighs and pronouncements of relief as Katrina veered a bit to the east. "Hah! Missed me!" And it is amazing to have the tornadic lion's fury fade away only to watch the city killed by the aqueous equivalent of a subdued snake in the grass.

When a few officials started making comparisons to Hiroshima and the Christmas Tsunami, that made me a little unhappy. Will 100,000 or 300,000 people die? Not hardly. That being said, watching what has unfolded -- and I have been pretty glued to my despised network news -- means more to me in sad terms than the tsunami. My country.

Early on, with Katrina bearing down, I thought "Looks like this is going to hurt bad, but think of the resources we have to bring to bear."

If anybody has ever participated in disaster exercises, maybe you've had the same sense that I have of play acting and a certain degree of optimistic thinking -- "Hey, they told us we had to black tag two people but other than that it's a nice day for an exercise!"

I get the feeling that either agencies had a long bout of optimistic thinking or just maybe didn't follow engineering studies through to their worst-case conclusion.

I heard on TV that -- what? -- 20 percent or 25 percent of New Orleans residents live below the poverty line. I need to back up and compare that to other large cities. I mean, I guess I knew that. New Orleans always had an association to me with southern poverty, and my sense was that it wasn't the safest place to roam around, either.

OK, those planners *really* didn't follow a Katrina model to its logical, below-sea-level, conclusion. Like how do maybe 100,000 people without means get out of town?

In fairness, I am not always sure what to expect of some elements of our federal government, diminished and underfunded or not. How big is FEMA? How many full time staff would it take to *really* take on Katrina's aftermath aggressively? Are we willing to pay for another 50,000 FEMA staffers who hang out between disasters? Hey, maybe we could cross-train them with the TSA!

That being said, it sure looks like the preparation and response -- given what was known or should have been known from the engineering, meteorological, and social/political perspective -- has been *really* pathetic. All that comes now -- promises of more money and more troops -- doesn't seem like it will erase a lot of dark, negative pages of history.

I'm listening to a guy named McHale on CNN say "Over the next three days..." how many more troops will arrive. I see the assault ship Bataan has arrived with a few helicopters. Did they bring the amphibious tracks that would have been a great help on day two, or are those all in Iraq?

I remember so may public service ads for the National Guard over the years. images of weekend warriors filling sandbags, rescuing people. OK, we see some of that, but relative to the freight train that could be seen on doppler radar, somebody either dialed the phone too late or the people on the other end were out of town.

This would have been very, very bad in any event -- think of the thousands of people who are now homeless. Good grief, what are the thousands of people who escaped doing? Where are they sleeping? But so much more disheartening -- complete inability of the bureaucracy to even begin to offer some solace to most prominent concentrations of tragedy. The convention center, for example. I didn't see people there beating up or shooting reporters. I saw a bunch of overheated, tired, poor people screaming "Help!"

So now we are behind this curve. There are bad people in New Orleans. This being the USA, plenty of guns, too. So when McHale's promised troops arrive, it won't be to assert control, it will be to regain it. If I were a young black male with innocent intentions, I would keep my head down.