by the Times-Picayune; the paper reported about the consequences of budget cuts on the levees in June 2004: There are people dying in the streets of New Orleans -- people without food, without water, without shelter, without medical attention; thousands of people suffering, in the richest nation in the history of the world; people suffering, in part, because funding for levees that could have lessened the devastation, people suffering, in part,because days after the hurricane struck New Orleans, neither food, nor water, nor medical supplies, nor evacuation vehicles have arrived. People are suffering and dying because a nation that can send a man to the moon can't send doctors and food and water to New Orleans -- but the people in New Orleans don't need news conferences. They need food, they need water, and they need medical treatment. White House press secretary Scott McClellan pretends everything is OK, claiming, despite all available evidence, that "[t]here are ways for them to get that [food and water] help." That doesn't seem to be the case, no matter how much McClellan and the Post want us to think things are going smoothly. Rich Lowry and his colleagues at National Review Online's group The Corner, seem to get it: Right now, the entire country is watching a great American city collapsing into hopeless devastation, and if there IS a Federal response going on it is barely visible. Government has got to move here. http://mediamatters.org/items/200509020001/