How does Obama own this one? Because he was president while it happened? You might as well say he owns a flood. What Bush fucked up on with Katrina was not the fact that he let it happen -- he had no choice about that. It's the fact that FEMA was utterly worthless at responding to it. People were going hungry, sleeping rough, holed up in evacuation centers with insufficient supplies, etc. The Salvation Army got there tout de suite and started helping out immediately. Where was FEMA? The response that the government should have made was days or weeks late, and absurdly misguided. And of course the head of FEMA at the time, appointed by Bush, was a man who had absolutely no experience in emergency management at all, except that time when his daughter got a splinter in her finger and he found the tweezers and pulled it out.

THAT is what Bush has on his record regarding Katrina.

So. How do you respond to an oil rig blowing up? What should Obama be doing that he isn't? Please be specific. Write small.