My Pet Goat's Name is Katrina

"My Pet Goat" is a childrens' book of such monumental interest that our President couldn't put it down long enough to deal with September 11. This week the President couldn't cut short his FIVE WEEK VACATION to deal with the catastrophe that is Katrina, perhaps too engrossed in what is reported to be his current reading list "Salt: A History." (Personally, I think he's still sounding out some of the hard words in "My Pet Goat.")

For three days, people have been sitting on roofs waiting for help. Thousands of people haven't had a meal or a place to sleep. Dead bodies float in floodwaters. No electricity. No phones. No television. No radio. (Water, water, everywhere and none of it to drink.)

Then we are told that only the President can call out the National Guard, what little of it hasn't been "forward deployed" to Iraq but the Governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama can call out their state's National Guard. (See last paragraph re: no electricity, no phones, no television, no radio. How exactly do the Governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama put out the call for their National Guardsmen? Using telepathy?)

Then we are told that the National Guard will have to be called in to protect the city from looters. (God forbid someone walk out of an abandoned Wal-Mart with an ill-gotten water-logged television set that Wal-Mart's gonna file an insurance claim on anyway. And particulary egregious is the theft of diapers, baby formula, and food.)

Now we find 475 buses taking refugees from the Superdome to Houston's Astrodome. At what point did sports stadiums 300 miles away become the best option? (Here's our choices if a tornado wipes out Sioux City- first let's all meet at the Tyson Event Center. From there, let's go to Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City where without phones, food, water, flush toilets, and a change of undies we can set about using our recently acquired telepathy skills to contact our insurance agents.)

All the while, the President has time to make yet another speech about what a good job we're doing in Iraq. Time to make speeches about what a byotch Cindy Sheehan is. But only time to detour Air Force One for a half hour aerial view of the Katrina Aftermath. He certainly had time to immediately lift EPA regulatons from the Clean Air Act to facilitate faster gas refining capacity and "loan" oil from the national oil reserve to refineries. (Thousand bucks says we are drilling in ANWAR by Friday.)

I guarantee you that President Clinton would have been there personally handing out water and feeling their pain. But George? What's he focused on? Not our pain at the pump. His friends would like to sell us lots more $5 per gallon gas. Not the pain of the hurricane victims. He's focused on "Salt: A History." (Facts about salt: Never put salt on a wound. If you want to make barren the lands of conquered peoples you are well advised to throw salt on the ground to kill the crops. The Bible says we are to be "the salt of the earth" because salt wasn't a flavoring then, it was fuel. Funny how everything comes down to fuel, huh?)