Waiting On Ophelia And Karma

If projections hold and Ophelia comes on shore as a hurricane in the Carolinas, you can bet that those folks are going to get immediate attention from the Bush administration after the disaster in New Orleans (and I'm not referring to the natural disaster at this point).

But the administration is damned if they do respond quickly and damned if they don't respond quickly. A quick response underscores contrast, and it reinforces the idea that they care less about mostly African American, remarkably impoverished, and thoroughly urban New Orleans than they do about other places. Failure to mobilize quickly reinforces that either they are incapable of protecting Americans in harm's way or they only care about immediate disaster response during election years (like Florida in 2004).

The federal government has got no one else to blame but itself on this one. Their failure in New Orleans was huge. There was bound to be blow-back from Hurricane Katrina.