All together now....

Let's all join together and fearfully scream say:
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! (you can click on the *no*)

We didn't worry too much about Fay, but....Gustav's turning out to be another matter. I even picked up a 24-pack of water at Target today. I hated to do that, but....

On a lighter note, there's a football game to be played Saturday. LSU & Appalachian State. On ESPN. At 4:00 PM. Yep, you read that right. 4:00 PM. In the blazing heat that is south Louisiana at the end of August. Does ESPN have no sense at all?

So. After Saturday, Gustav will receive our undivided attention -- if needed.

I try not to get political on this blog but, having said that, I'd like to share the following editorial from our local paper. I know many will not agree with what's said, but it does express a viewpoint that needs to be heard (and one with which I agree).


Our Views: A whitewash on recovery


Advocate Opinion page staff
Published: Aug 23, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.


As President Bush views the scars of one of America’s great cities, destroyed on his watch, we can only wonder what he feels about the realities before him.

We hope the “hopeful signs of progress” the president sees are not a mirage, or just a willful obliviousness to the facts.

Perhaps a president, as several ordinary folks told reporters in Arabi, just doesn’t have the time, or is so blanketed by security that he cannot appreciate the consequences of this administration’s failure on the Gulf Coast.

But the president is supposed to have a federal government working for him.

Those officials appear to be spending their time blaming the victims of Katrina and Rita for the slow pace of the recovery almost three years after the hurricanes.

A retired Marine general, Doug O’Dell, is the second disaster recovery official for the White House. He appears to seek to improve upon the lamentable tenure of Texas banker Donald Powell by making more apologies for the U.S. government.

O’Dell says the Gulf Coast has federal resources, but it’s the responsibility of state and local governments to make use of those resources.

“When I look at the energy and the commitment that has gone into the federal response over the last three years, I find it really difficult to understand why anyone could … say that it has been inadequate,” the general said. “Because that’s just patently untrue.”

Gen. William Westmoreland never penned a happier fantasy of a progress report from Vietnam than this one from Bush’s generalissimo of recovery.

O’Dell is doubtless a bright man, but clearly he is out of touch with the immense difficulties that the state and local governments have had in dealing with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its ilk.

For every structure to be rebuilt, there is a mountain of federal paperwork. For every dime spent on recovery there appears a dollar spent on federal bureaucracy. For every time the White House has backed Louisiana on recovery issues — and there have been some, including some key decisions in our favor by Powell — there has been a long struggle to get the government to face up to the need.
Nothing, Gen. O’Dell, has come easy for us in this recovery.

Not from your office, nor from FEMA.

The least efficient local government in Louisiana — and that’s saying something — would have been better at using recovery money for the good of the people than the eminent bureaucrats O’Dell cites.