Bush and Katrina Admissions

Here's a surprise from President Bush on this benighted anniversary.

When Mr Bush visited Betsy's Pancake House on a tour of New Orleans, one of the waitresses asked him: "Mr President, are you going to turn your back on me?"

"No ma'am, not again," the president promised. People in the restaurant laughed but many of the city's residents, particularly black people, believe they were abandoned when Katrina struck.

"Not again." Wow. I mean, sure, he was playing the guitar and eating birthday cake on vacation while people drowned in their attics and fell dead in their lawnchairs at the superdome, but I never expected him to cop to it. Bizarre.

Incidentally, this episode reminds me of what is required to get Bush to cut short one of his legendary vacations. He'll rush home to sign a bill to "save" a brain-dead woman with no chance of recovery to please the rabidly pro-life segment of his base, but he sees no reason to inconvenience himself when the National Weather Service issues a hurricane warning that reads like a chapter from the end times, directed at a city that is more than a dozen feet below sea-level. I believe that, to this day, the religious right is the only force that has been able to compete against the urge to vacation. Imminent terrorist attacks and destruction of American cities don't hold a candle to the draw of the Ranch and brush clearing.