I would like to call your attention to a new link over to the right, to my friend Scott Calamar's blog, "Cynically Sound", in the "Other Blogs" section.

Scott is a musician, writer and former journalist, which perhaps accounts for his sensitive, well-informed, yet jaded outlook on life. He started his blog before I did (and posts more often), but for technical reasons I've been unable to link to it before now. At any rate, check it out. You may find it as entertaining as I do.

Yesterday at a press conference President Bush said, “Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government. And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility.”

Well, to the extent that the president understands what it means to take responsibility, I applaud his statement. Perhaps he has turned over a new leaf and is considering taking responsibility for some of the other things that have happened during his administration.

As Bill Maher put it “we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two Trade Centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans.”

I think I would have added something about failing to find Osama bin Ladin, leading the US into attacking Iraq under false pretenses, making a bad situation there not just worse, but a greater threat to the US and the world than it was before, and tolerating torture and abuse of prisoners by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison.

There is little doubt that the “federal government didn’t fully do its job right” following Hurricane Katrina. We’ll just have to wait and see what the President’s idea of taking responsibility is.

I've been at a loss to know what to write about the current disaster in Mississippi and Louisiana, particularly New Orleans. My emotions continue to run the gamut from sorrow and pity to anger and outrage. The response of the Federal government has been, shall we say, inadequate. Bush league even. (Remember Bush's "ownership society?" This is what it looks like during a national crisis. Maybe we should just call it what it is: the "You're-on-your-own society.")

The following is an open letter to President Bush published in the Sept. 4 New Orleans Times-Picayune.

I reprint it here, in full, because it expresses well what so many are thinking right now. Needless to say, it is written by someone who is there, in a position to know...

Dear Mr. President:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we're going to make it right."

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It's accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city's multiple points of entry, our nation's bureaucrats spent days after last week's hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city's stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.

We're angry, Mr. President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That's to the government's shame.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don't know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city's death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren't they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn't suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn't have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn't known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We've provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they've gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don't get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You're doing a heck of a job."

That's unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We're no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn't be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.

Something tells me the only applause President Bush will be hearing will be from the sycophants he surrounds himself with.