Playing Politics with Hurricanes

In a time in which politics shouldn't need to exist to the extent it has for the past three or so years, it has to the complete detrement of the survivors.
Polls such as the ABCNews poll (here: http://abcnews.go.com/US/HurricaneKatrina/story?id=1094262&page=1), even though they may have a larger then average margine of error (see: http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2005/09/obviously_we_ha.html), it may be due to that partisanship will rise again, bringing along the with red state-blue state mentality we are all too familiar with.

Repeativly, I have heard of Bush's quote that the nobody could have predicted that the levees would break, despite many examples to the contrary (for the best, see last night's The Daily Show). Both The Daily Show (last night) and Countdown (today) showed just how slow and how slow it was for federal aid to arive.
On Countdown, someone from Salon.com (I forget who) told just how responsive Bush was for the multiple hurricanes in 2004 (a election year), and then how slow he was for this hurricane. It was the same thing for FEMA.
The problems for Bush doesn't stop with his lazyness, as I'll call it. As this article shows (here: http://mediamatters.org/items/200509060010), Bush isn't helping even when he is trying to at least appear to.
And then of course, there's this: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_04.php#006430. This got someone on Countdown's Worst Person in the World award for the day.

Now while this is mostly bashing Bush, I do think the entire line, from local government to the federal government, screwed up (cue up video of 200 school buses in flooded parking lot). However Bush had more power and resources to do something. Far too many mistakes were made before the storm by too many people (including some evacuees and airlines who left people stranded), but it was the federal government who had to do something after the storm. And Bush wasn't the only one who dropped the ball.