Six in one hand and half a dozen in the other...

That's how I've descibed to my friends and family how I feel about the situation in New Orleans. On one hand, you have an entitlement society built around the poor in inner-city New Orleans, a sub-section of people who believe the government owes them something and claim that they cannot do anything for themselves, including get out of the city in advance of a major hurricane. On the other hand, you have a government that was very slow to react after the hurrican hit. Who's wrong?

Both.

The city goverment of New Orleans is wrong for not planning for such an occurence in advance. Levies were not prepared properly and there was no contigency plan in case of a worse-case scenario. In the wake of September 11th, how could such a thing happen?

The federal goverment was also at fault. Again, in the wake of September 11th, shouldn't the government have a better contingency plan for such an occurrence? It took four days for the "cavalry" to arrive, for the President to even tour the area, for really anthing to be done. Now, as most of you know, I am a staunch conservative. I voted for Bush, but in this situation, I have no choice but to criticize his lack of speed in the wake of Katrina.

So what do we have now?

Hopefully, a valuable, but very hard lesson learned.