Out of touch? Ya think?

"The good news," said the president, "is that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubble of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's gong to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."

A quote from our President today. This after last night's 20 minute speech in which 15 minutes was devoted to restoring the flow of oil and merely 5 devoted to aid to the people starving and dying in New Orleans.

As my wife put it, he just doesn't get that most Americans right now aren't worried about the price-gouging at the gas pump. That's a concern for next week. Right now, most Americans want as many people as can be saved OUT of New Orleans, and not stuffed into a lawless sports stadium where the women are subject to rape and the men to beatings and murder, but to places where they can find actual relief and food and water.

Most Americans don't care that a rich man with plenty of insurance may have to do without his mansion on the beach for a few months, or that he will eventually get it back. They're more concerned about the tens of thousands of poorer New Orleans residents who may not have had adequate insurance (in some areas, it wasn't even possible to GET flood insurance, according to my Louisiana native wife). They're concerned with the dead and dying, the raped and beaten, and those who have lost what meager possessions they had, and are now faced with the prospect of starting over with nothing.

Most Americans are wondering why this afternoon, four days after the end of the storm (heck, two full days after the remnants of that storm had completely passed us here in New England), only NOW is military relief beginning to arrive.

Most Americans (and to judge based on the Canadian radio station we pick up overnight here, Canadians and Brits (they play the BBC news) as well) are starting to wonder why what little work has been done to reinforce the levees had the budget so severely slashed that the work was done with substandard materials which were not as strong as what they replaced. Guess what, latest reports indicate that it was these sections of the levees which failed.

Most Americans want to know why, almost four years after 9/11 shocked our nation and made us (supposedly) reprioritize disaster readiness, the relief effort in New Orleans has been so badly (and so slowly) handled. Does it make you feel any safer about a terrorist attack? Does it not occur to anyone that had this been a nuclear, chemical or biological attack on one of our cities, we really can't afford four days of hemming and hawing before the first real federal relief arrives?

Most Americans want to know why the local people of Louisiana (such as my in-laws) are having to do so much with so little support from our federal government. The people of Louisiana, outside of the lawless, feral areas, have been by and large behaving heroically. Their efforts have not been supported. Most Americans, when they learn this, want to know why.

I'm embarrassed to be an American today. I'm embarrassed to be a white, relatively wealthy American today.

Liam.