Hurricane Katrina

This storm seems to be bringing out the best and worst of the human population. People are donating money, supplies, time, and even empty rooms in their homes to help out, yet snipers are trying to shoot patients being evacuated from hospitals and parts of New Orleans are off limits because people are getting raped. First off, this is a case where martial law is appropriate. If someone is looting, law enforcement should tell them to stop once, and if they don't, shoot them. I'm not talking about people stealing food and water, but someone taking a TV from WalMart has no sympathy from me.

Besides, I don't think the looters are thinking this through. TV's work better when there's electricity to run them and houses to put them in. I understand that people are frustrated, and I would be too, but help needs to be organized. If you drop supplies into an area with thousands of people in it, you'll have violence and rioting in seconds.

The thing that bothers me the most about this, is that state officials have apparantly been pushing for stronger levees around the city for the last few years. Apparantly their complaints fell on deaf ears.

As far as gas prices, Sara's blog put things into perspective, so I won't touch that one.

The other thing that's pissed me off is the politicking that has been going on today. I saw a leader from the black community on a stage saying "The government didn't respond fast enough. Aid agencies weren't organized. This was completely unacceptable...but this is no time to place blame." I've never heard so much hypocrisy crammed into ten seconds quickly enough. People are trying to push this as a race issue, and that's their perogative, but this isn't the time. We're going to be experiencing fallout from this for the next year, and there'll be plenty of time to place blame.

Right now, it's about helping people.