[Boardwalk]

This is so much worse than Katrina!

[neutrality]

So you are saying the government and thus taxpayers should clean up, despite the fact a private business is saying they’ll handle it

[hosepipe]

O'Biden is bleeding this oil crisis like a hungry Vampire..
i.e. leech, bat, tape worm, quack doctor, shaman, goldigger, con man, PimP, etc..

[cartoonistx]

[SuziQ]

WRONG! President Bush was planning for Katrina BEFORE she ever made landfall. It was Ma Blanco and Ray "Chocolate City" Nagin who dropped the ball on preparations for the hurricane. Even afterwards, it was the responsibility of the State's Governor to ask the President for assistance, though she was in charge of her own National Guard, so she could have sent them to NO at any time.

In Katrina, the Bush Administration had the Coast Guard in the air within 24 hours, plucking people off their rooftops. FEMA was waiting outside the city, not being allowed to go in because the media was putting out reports (erroneous it turns out) that rescue workers were being fired on by who knows who! FEMA wasn't going to place its folks in harms way, so they held off til there was protection for them. The blame for so many people living in squalid conditions until FEMA could get there should be laid squarely at the feet of the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana.

On the other hand, as soon as this BP accident occurred, whatever Federal agency in charge of responding to this sort of thing should have been on the horn IMMEDIATELY to the President, who could have called on the Navy and Coast Guard who could have begun action to contain the spill closer to the site. Apparently the person who was supposed to be in charge of those things either didn't KNOW they were in charge, or they simply didn't bother to do what they're supposed to do. OR it's possible that Obama WAS informed, but his 'get out the minority vote' tour was too important to be interrupted.