VansOpinion - IT'S NOW TIME TO DO A BIT OF FINGER POINTING

Folks, there are four more letter in the regular alphabet which can be used in naming hurricanes this year and the season is not yet half over. Next, the names of the storms will be given Greek letter names - we hope there will be no need for that to happen. Point being, there still could be a lot more bad weather and damage before the weather in the Gulf of Mexico calms down. During the lull, we can take a deep breath and do a bit of justifiable "finger pointing." Unless the southern Democrats are ready to admit that God is Republican, the blame must be shared between moronic mortals.

Regarding the National Guard troops and security, the Governor of the state of Louisiana always had the power to deploy the guard of her state in the fashion that other state troops are being deployed today. It was her failure to do so that has prompted the president to get the help from other states.

The Mayor of New Orleans, who ordered all those people into the Superdome (that was his big plan), had the power to bus them out of the city at the same time. The City of New Orleans moves many more children each day on school buses than were in the dome. Those buses were available and slated to be used for school the next day. He could easily have evacuated those people...but didn't.

When ordering a mandatory evacuation you use what resources you have to move the people, he didn't have sense enough to do that. When it was important and dangerous enough to order all citizens to leave, it was dangerous enough to help those people to leave. Yet, he didn't. After he failed to do so, the busses ended up under water and useless.

The loud mouth mayor of the "Big Easy", a city eight to ten feet below sea level, had absolutely no evacuation plan other than to tell the folks to "get out on of town on your own." The officials knew where every school in the state was located and that most of them have gyms. They could have bussed 100-200 people to each of those gyms 100 or more miles inland and left the city essentially empty.

The mayor failed. The governor does not appear to have put the National Guard on alert prior to the storm. Both of them sat on their butts and waited for the feds to do it all on American taxpayers dollars. In the end, it was FEMA, after the local and state government's failure, that had to get the job done, but by then, under much, much worse and dangerous circumstances.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there are very few factual assertions which can be made. Here are a few that can. New Orleans has a Democrat Mayor, a Democrat City Council, and a Democrat Chief of Police. Louisiana has a Democrat Governor, a Democrat Lt. Governor, a Democrat Attorney General; 24 of 39 Louisiana State Senators are Democrats, and 67 of 105 Louisiana State House members are Democrats. New Orleans has a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives and one of its two U.S. Senators is a Democrat. The Democrat Governor and the U.S. Senator from the Pelican State are rumored to have to have the air in their heads changed frequently.

Is it any wonder why all the media yappers from Cajun country were critical of president George W. Bush's handling of matters associated with Katrina?

Look for more on the realities of Rita. News coverage of hurricanes in the future should be done by local network affiliates rather than dumb ass reporters in rain suits with baseball hats on backwards who don't have sense enough to come in out of the rain. The Dan Rather wannabes could certainly do a better job after they have matured eight or ten more years and after they have developed an ability to distinguish between what really is news and what is media hype and political spin.