The Left never gets it right

but sometimes the Right doesn't either. The very first people I heard politicizing the California wildfires were the conservative talkers on radio. Now, maybe that's because I don't watch the MSM, but I think they jumped in first on Monday, without naming names, designating parties, or blaming anyone. They simply pointed out the difference between the Katrina rescue efforts (local Democrats) and the California rescue efforts (local Republicans). By the time I heard the lefties, they were off-topic and screaming global warming (Bush's fault) even though 1936 was a much hotter year with worse fires and environmental regulations have made the state a tinderbox, and not enough resources (War in Iraq, also Bush's fault) even though Schwarzenegger all but called Barbara Boxer and her bag ladies liars and alarmists.

Then Nancy Pelosi looked like she had a heart of ice and a freshly botoxed face in explaining why she just had to ram through another SCHIP bill while the California people had gone home to check out the situation. Bush actually took longer to go out to look than he did in Louisiana (remember, until the levees broke after the hurricane, people thought they had escaped the BIG one) and Blanco didn't call for help from the feds until it was way too late. (Must be a woman thing.) Two years and billions of dollars later, Katrina's devastation has shown the total incompetency of Nagin and Blanco, not George Bush or FEMA, with the only bright spot being Bobby Jindal's election.

Then today a letter writer to USAToday smugly says: "Did the residents of Southern California benefit from their economic status and race?" Actually, she's on to something, because the Democrats in New Orleans had so demoralized and weakened its poor black population with government handouts and a soaring crime rate over the years, they couldn't even help themselves. Middle-class, educated NOLAns, black and white, didn't have a problem getting out and fleeing to Texas, Ohio or Calfornia. People who are accustomed to looking after themselves and their neighbors know how to take action. When it's too smokey to breathe, or someone drives through the neighborhood telling them to leave, I'm sure a certain amount of learned self-interest goes a long way. It's a shame that buses were swamped in New Orleans that should have transported the poor, but that doesn't make people driving SUVs down a burning hillside more fortunate because of their income or color.