An editorial on Investor's Daily

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=321237362312361&kw=barney,frank

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who ripped off $50B from people in a ponzi scheme? Even, so they say, the employees didn't realize what was going on and they are now out of a job. He was a well respected investor, too, but some analyzers noticed that his accounts were paying above and beyond what they should have been paying and an investigation was started.

I think George Maddouf was his name. The owner of the Mets baseball team was one of the people he ripped off, plus a lot of other high income people.

Shockingly unprepared

The countless questions about the unfolding catastrophe in the Gulf states are all variations on a simple theme: This disaster was all but scripted; why wasn't the response?

News reports from the region have shown the situation getting worse, not better.

This inability to regain control, or at least to rally against the disaster, has shocked the country's sense of itself. Predictably, recriminations mounted Thursday, even as federal officials delivered more aid. State and local officials in Louisiana were particularly critical of the response from Washington, complaining that the feds were slow to provide the help needed to feed and evacuate survivors and halt criminals.

Defenders of the Bush administration said it was doing everything it could. They're facing problems that nobody could foresee: breaking of the levees and the whole dome thing over in New Orleans coming apart, former President George H.W. Bush said Thursday on CNN. People couldn't foresee that.

In fact, emergency planners have been thinking about a catastrophic levee breach for years. Many saw it as an inevitable consequence of a high-powered hurricane such as Katrina hitting the city. And in early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said that one of the three most likely disasters to strike the U.S. was a catastrophic flood triggered by a hurricane hitting New Orleans. (The other two: a terrorist attack on New York and a major earthquake in San Francisco.)

It's certainly true that by the time forecasters knew that Katrina was a threat, it was too late to shore up the levees. And by the time they knew Katrina was going to come ashore near New Orleans, there was not enough time to evacuate the city completely.

Still, much of what happened this week in New Orleans had been foreseen by federal and state emergency planners, as the city's newspaper, the Times-Picayune, laid out extensively three years ago. Survivors will end up trapped on roofs, in buildings or on high ground surrounded by water, with no means of escape and little food or fresh water, perhaps for several days, one story predicted with eerie accuracy.

That's why the complaints from Louisiana about the official response are so troubling. Why did it take so long to evacuate the poor, the elderly and the tourists unlucky enough to be caught with no way out of town? Where was the food and water? Why were the police left to choose between rescuing people from the floods and saving them from predators?

Critics of the administration, including former FEMA officials, say Washington's focus since late 2001 on potential terrorist targets has come at the expense of its ability to respond to natural disasters in other parts of the country. FEMA no longer helps prepare communities for disasters � it just responds to them. Other critics have pointed out that the administration diverted money from a levee project in New Orleans to fund priorities within the Department of Homeland Security.

One lesson of Hurricane Katrina, though, is that preparedness and response go hand in hand, whether the disaster is natural or man-made. Washington's response to Katrina is likely to gear up notably in the days to come, but the question of why it took so long will linger longer than the floodwaters

Congratulations to all of you who have hoped Obama would win. I am very happy to have a black man in office, because of all that represents to so many people. I think that part is a huge historical step in the right direction. I am also disappointed because of the areas where I disagree with Obama. But we can't have it all, and truly neither candidate offered everything I would hope for.

With that said, McCain basically asked us all to unify in his speech last night. And I believe he did so because he knows that if we are to survive as a country, that is what we must do. Whether you believe he wrote the speech or not, he spoke the words in front of everyone....basically the world was watching...and I don't believe he would have said things he did not mean.

On a sad note, a dear friend of mine, who is black, stopped at a gas station early this morning and overhead a white man talking saying, "that n***** is going to run this country into the ground." I was heartbroken to hear that. I know racism goes both ways but we have to encourage everyone we know to not have that sort of attitude!!!!

Later this morning, I myself went into a convenient store. There was an Indian man working the register and a black man buying a lottery ticket, and me, a white woman. I smiled and said good morning. The black man looked at me and said, "I can't let Obama outdo me! I need to win the lottery now!" He was obviously happy that Obama won so I said, "oh, you're looking for a double win!" He said, "yes!" and I wished him good luck but told him my dad would be trying to win too and if he wins I get some money :-) He smiled and the guy at the register smiled...I told them all to have a nice day.