The US had a faster response to the Christmas Tsunami halfway around the world than they're having to this, within its own borders. We have an organization explicitly dedicated to disaster management and they seem to not know what to do. We've been curtailing our civil liberties over the last four years so that the government might have a better response to disaster, and it seems that, at best, we are no more prepared to cope now than we were then. The time will come for people to point fingers at Nagin for not mobilizing those schoolbuses, at New Orleans and Louisiana for not having better levees, at those stupid enough not to leave who had the opportunity and means, but for now, we've got to complain that the people who have the power to fix these things, or at least help, are not doing enough.

Quote:
[Bush is] probably just away from the cameras

Nope. That's one of my problems. He felt the need to go down there to have a photo opportunity. But he didn't even bother to go to New Orleans. I'm sure that it's too devastated for his swagger to make it all feel good.

Now he's saying "The results are not acceptable," only to qualify that later with "I'm satisfied with the response, I'm not satisfied with all the results." And he says this like he's not the person in charge of getting this done. People in the US, and probably moreso in the rest of the world, don't seem to understand that it's not the President's job to make laws or pass a budget or declare war. It is explicitly his job to run the country, to deal with the actual events that make the country work. This is the most presidential duty there is, to protect and save his citizens, and he seems like he's busy not doing it. I suppose he did have to cut his vacation short.