This clown is gonna get re-elected!

To this day I'm amazed that people have blamed the Federal Government for the debacle that New Orleans became in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. You remember how it went...

The President and Michael Brown fiddled while the city drowned, specifically instructing FEMA to wait an extra day or two before mounting rescue efforts because of the racial prejudices they hold against members of the African-American community...blah blah blah blah blah. I don't know if anyone has tried to quantify the number of ridiculous claims we heard about the Fed's response, but it would be an interesting read.

While there were indeed many things that didn't go the way they needed to at the Federal level, it's become more and more clear with the passage of time just how much Governor Blanco and the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin dropped the ball. Today, in the finest tradition of coming up a day late and a dollar short, Mayor Nagin unveiled the city's new evacuation plan.

What's in it? Everything that should have been in place last August that would have prevented much of what we saw:

Mayor Ray Nagin unveiled a new evacuation strategy for New Orleans on Tuesday that relies more on buses and trains and eliminates the Superdome and Convention Center as shelters.

"There will be no shelter of last resort in the event of a major hurricane coming our way," Nagin declared.

Of course, who can forget these shots of all the buses that went unused by local authorities in the hours before the storm hit. Hours when they could have made a substantive difference.

The Superdome and Morial Convention Center became a scene of misery for days after the Aug. 29 hurricane as thousands of evacuees, many of them ill or elderly, languished with shortages of food and water.

In the future, Nagin said, the Convention Center will be a staging point for evacuations, not a shelter.

"There will be a mandatory evacuation and I would be shocked if people did not abide by it," Nagin said. "We're dealing with adults, so if you decide to disobey a mandatory evacuation, you are confining yourself to your home in an emergency."

Nagin also said federal Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had cleared the way for the use of Amtrak passenger trains in the event of an evacuation.

The new plan will take effect for any storms stronger than a Category 2, which have sustained winds of 111 miles per hour or higher. An alternate plan for smaller storms, relying on temporary shelters set up inside the city, is being devised for those now living in FEMA trailers. Most trailers become unstable once wind speeds surpass 45 miles per hour, which would be a weak tropical storm.

The plan also addresses specific problems that arose during Katrina, such as tourists being stranded in hotels and looters raiding stores and damaging property.

Again, more things that would have come in handy before Katrina made landfall.

My reading of this report makes it seem a fairly comprehensive plan, one that specifically addresses needs that went unmet previously. As such, it seems to be a good one. Too bad something like it wasn't in place 6 months ago.

That this clown even has a chance at being re-elected mayor is beyond disturbing.