What will Rita reveal about Katrina?

Granted, Rita is not a great a storm as Katrina.

However, it will be very interesting to watch what Texas does in the face of the storm. How it evacuates, how it moves its people, how it advises and informs its people, how it uses in-place precedents and protocols to move things up a chain of command…from the most local of leadership, through the cities and towns and up to the Governor’s office and beyond.

If the MSM had wished to do so, they could have looked at the chaos of New Orleans and Louisiana (both before and after Katrina) and compared it to the orderly and well-rehearsed hurricane responses of Florida, a state that got hit 4 times in 2004 and never descended into ineffectiveness or anarchy.

True, Florida did not have levees flooding…but Florida evacuated people early. Had they a tidal wave, or a flood, there would have been few people around to endure such a thing in fear and terror. The press, had it done its job and reported Katrina without trying to keep one lip raised in praise of the Nagin/Blanco teams and the other lip curled at the White House, might have done an informative and revealing comparison that could tell much of the story of Katrina’s failures.

Ah, but, sadly, the Governor of Florida is a man named Bush and to compare him well against Kathleen Blanco would offend many – mostly the folks in the press – and so that informative and revealing comparison went by the boards.

Hopefully, some smart and enterprising news agency, interested in recapturing some of the press’ lost credibility, will watch Texas work, and will report on the vast difference which can be made when the people in charge at the local and state levels put decisive leadership over dithering and grandstanding.

I’m not holding my breath. I suspect instead we’ll see more race-baiting – “look, the white people in Texas were evacuated, and the black people in New Orleans were not!” The press and the Democrats need it to solidify a despicable and poisonous narrative which they have come to love.

Hmmm…I wonder who they’ll blame?