White House's Response

NYT reported A political furor intensified on Thursday over President Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina as Democrats, local officials and members of an increasingly bewildered public accused the president of a slow response to the flood that has plunged New Orleans into chaos.

Why listen to these idiots. They are just taking another opportunity to take a shot at Bush.

Mr. Bush, in a rare morning television interview, fought back. "I hope people don't play politics during this period of time," Mr. Bush told Diane Sawyer of ABC's "Good Morning America" in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. "This is a natural disaster, the likes of which our country may have never seen before." But the politics of natural disaster were close to the surface as Democrats said that the crisis had become a political catastrophe as daylong images on television showed refugees desperate for food and water in the richest nation on earth.

80% of the residents responded to the order for a mandatory evacuation. Some who did not evacuate did not have transportation, but some were thugs with guns that wanted the chance to loot as much as they could, and I am not talking about food and water. And their presence delayed the arrival of a lot of the aid, since drivers and helicopter pilots did not want to get shot.

Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., Democrat of Tennessee, said in a statement that he was struck by Mr. Bush's "cavalier attitude toward the plight of poor people across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama" and added that "now is not the time in the face of pain, anguish and death to be weak and uncertain."

Representative Ford should shut up, and if wants to help, he should go to New Orleans and help distribute food and water.

Terry Ebbert, the head of homeland security in New Orleans, bitterly complained on Thursday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was not offering enough help. "This is a national emergency," Mr. Ebbert told The Associated Press. "This is a national disgrace. FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."

I dont think a bucket brigade would be able to bail out the city, especially as long as there are still holes in the levee.

Other Democrats cast Mr. Bush's first survey of the damage, from his window on Air Force One two days after the hurricane hit, as an imperial act removed from the suffering of the people below. "It was not enough for the president to bank his plane and look at the window and say, 'Oh, what a devastating site,' " Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, said in a statement on Thursday. "Instead of looking out the window of an airplane, he should have been on the ground giving the people devastated by this hurricane hope."

He is going there now; had he gone earlier his presence would just have disrupted the people trying to save human lives.