An e-mail I received last night (I’m a slow reader):

I am in Houston and spent all weekend at the Astrodome helping out with relief efforts. I come home and turn on the TV and I am appalled at what I see. Everyone blaming Bush and his administration for this disaster is mindboggling. I believe when the dust settles and a full account is taken, we will find that the local and state government is to blame for the magnitude of the problem. They had a disaster relief plan, why didn’t they implement it? Why did the President of the US have to call the Governor and plead with her to declare an emergency evacuation? I personally belief the federal government has done a tremendous job. The Coast Guard evacuated over 7,000 people the first three days. That probably would have been sufficient if THEY HAD FOLLOWED THE EVACUATION PLAN.
I also caught most of the talk shows this morning and found Chertoff to be very restraint in the beating he was taking. I think he knows when a full accounting is taken, DHS will be vindicated. I am sure they made some mistakes but the enormous tragedy of this situation could have been avoided if the local government had done their job. The shear incompetence is astounding.
The other thing that disgust me is the racial politics being played out. All weekend, I saw whites taking in black families, blacks taking in white families. People giving to other people regardless of race. I was watching a program on ABC this evening recapping the flood and they were doing a story on people helping other people. They showed this black woman who was talking about a car of white people who stopped to help her. They gave her money and a stroller for her grandchild. The reporter asked her what she has learned from this situation and she said she now has respect for white people – she used to not like them and blamed them for a lot of things. I couldn’t help but chuckle. If one thing this tragedy has shown it is people help others in time of need and the race issue is overblown. Jesse Jackson and Mayor Nagin need to get the h*ll off my TV.
Sorry – just had to let off some steam.