Tragic hero recounts the tragedy of his heroism

That tragedy, of course, being that he realized too late what the rest of us knew from the beginning.

"I should have left a little earlier, for two reasons: One, my health wasn't good. Secondly, I had other things I wanted to do, and administering a recovery is not one of them."

Adding: We really are in trouble around here when we've got the head of the Corps and the (ex) (titular) head of the "recovery" sharing the same nihilistic view of our future.

Blakely also played climatologist, saying New Orleans "isn't likely" to be around 100 years from now. He said the Mississippi River and another storm would probably conspire to "wipe New Orleans off the map."

Look, I'm not very big on the concept of "leadership" myself but you'd at least think the bare minimum requirement would be that the leader thinks the damn job is worth doing. Unless this whole business of "recovery" really has been one big rush to steal whatever rubble left over after the disaster had any decent resale value. In that case, these are exactly the kind of leaders you might want.

Previously I had called this sort of thing the very definition of "carbetbagging" but the sensitive types have found this term lacking in decorum as of late. I guess I'll never share in Dr. Blakely's enlightened approach to sensitive racial discourse but I can dream.