In my lowly opinion, I believe the New Orleans ordeal was simply a matter of the federal goverment's ineptness towards responding to such acts of nature. I sincerely think Bush has some sort of neurological condition that accompanies aging, because as the days pass he seems ever more detached from reality.

I also believe that the media plays a large part in portraying the scene as if it actually had something to do with race, given their reputation as people who often sensationalize the news in order to get in more viewers - as we all know, race is a big contraversial thing in America. Even influential black leaders, musicians and movie stars perpetuated the fiasco more than it should of traveled, in my opinion. There is a time and place to identify societal inequities and institutional bias, but during the implementation of the recovery effort - especially when it wasso poorly developed - is simply not one of them. They overplayed the rape and gun fighting incidents entirely too much, as it was revealed to us that these were isolated incidents. I was watching Paula Zaun last night and she was talking about people who conned others out of their charity money, meant to go toward the relief effort. She said something along the lines of people who commit such abhorrent acts are the lowest of the low, profiting off people's misery, but I couldn't help think that that's exactly how CNN rakes in all it's money - by showcasing the world's misery twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. While it is true that the media played an integral part in raising people's awareness and unmasking the true situation as it was during the subsequent days of the hurricane, it also played a part in hindering the call to action by portrayingthe initial stages of the situation as out of control andunmanageable. Money is now pouring in from all over the country, as people wake up and realize the true magnitude of the catastrophe, as seen from the eyes of network reporters on the ground. The only question now, I guess, is how these affected people are going to manage in the comings months and years, when the cameras disappear and the money-throwing diminishes to a trickle.

Sorry but this will be merged with the exsisting thread on Katrina..