My advice on your response to the ongoing tragedy in the South:

Be angry. Be very angry.

Don't let yourself be conned by the Right, who says that now is not the time to point fingers. They're pointing their own fingers at the hard-working and underfunded local New Orleans authority. The central blame for the severity of the aftermath (remember, be very careful to indicate that you're not blaming anyone for the hurricane itself--that's another Straw Man from the Right) lies on the heads of the Republicans in power in Washington, both now and during the Reagan era.

Don't let yourself be conned by the Right, who says that they didn't know this was coming. Bush says that no one expected the levees would be breached. That, folks, is just a big fat lie. I strongly encourage you to take a look at the extensive reporting done by Daily Kos member Federalist, who is right on the money even if he isn't a meteorologist. Be sure to look at the "Hurricane 'Pam'" simulation run by FEMA in 2004. The link is in the Federalist post, near the top.

It is not "playing politics" when we hold this wretched administration responsible for the dereliction of duty displayed during this last week. There is no "play" about it. The Republicans' deliberate indifference to certain American lives is deadly serious.

The disaster in the South continues to boggle the mind. Eloquence fails when faced with this kind of devastation. The President urged his critics not to "play politics" with a natural disaster. He, of course, is obscuring the fact that only the hurricane was a natural disaster. The aftermath is on W's watch, and could have been substantially less crippling. Here are some questions to ponder:

1) Why was the President not on a plane or helicopter on Tuesday, rather than waiting long enough to have lunch with Senator McCain in Arizona, play guitar with country music singer Mark Wills (anyone ever heard of Emperor Nero?), and compare Iraq to World War II and himself to FDR?

2) Why is the White House distributing pictures of the President "surveying the destruction" from Air Force One that are strangely reminiscent of the same scenario after 9/11?

3) Why was there no funding to repair and improve the levees that gave way after Katrina, and caused the destruction the South is currently facing?

4) Why do Mississippi and Louisiana have to ask for additional National Guard and active duty-status military assistance?

5) Why has the President deflected questions about the price of gasoline, and, even when right wing lunatics like Bill O'Reilly are advocating for it, refused to force oil companies and OPEC to cut profit margins to protect the American public?

It should be apparent that we are not only witnessing perhaps the worst disaster in American history, but the worst President in American history.