"It's not like this was a surprise."

My contempt for this administration is complete. If they were merely incompetent, I could overlook it if I thought that they were above reproach. If they were merely corrupt, I could stand it so long as things got done right. Unfortunately, the Bush White House is both the most incompetent and corrupt gang of thugs to rule this, the greatest nation in history, since Teapot Dome.

FACT: The President declared a Federal disaster two full days before Katrina made landfall. This officially put the Feds in charge, and authorized FEMA to move "resources and equipment" (meaning anything from food and water, to manpower, to helicopters) to New Orleans. It also officially put state and local people in a subordinate position.

So when the shit hit the fan, where were the Feds? Not there. Nor would they be there for several more days. As the city descended into chaos, as the waters swelled over the earthen berms which even CNN knew couldn't last, as a once great and unique city became little more than an open air morgue, a fetid, stinking cesspool, they did nothing.

It's not like they didn't have fair warning. "We were briefing them way before landfall," [National Hurricane Center Director Dr. Max] Mayfield said. "It’s not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped."

"It's not like this was a surprise."

Of course, they really couldn't do anything. Heading up the Federal response was a man with a trumped up, if not altogether fabricated resume, who has never held a position of greater responsibility than director of judges for the International Arabian Horse Association. "Brownie" got this job the old fashioned way- cronyism. He was good buddies with his predecessor, Joe Allbaugh, who was himself Bush's campaign manager for Governor of Texas.

Brown did nothing until after the storm had already hit.

Mr. President- don't appoint your buddies (or your buddies' buddies) to an office which requires experienced and professional leadership. The dead and the homeless deserved better.

UPDATE- Turns out I might have been right. Not being a scientist, my earlier post linking Katrina to global warming was little more than one (comparatively well informed) man's analysis of climatological trends. Turns out that a climatologist from MIT has come to the same conclusion and will publish a paper in the journal Nature making that argument.

Nature is a peer reviewed, widely respected scientific journal. Watch it get dismissed as junk science.