I like Bush's style, not his substance

You have to love President Bush's style. He is down-to-earth everyday-kind of guy. He wore no suit and appeared to the TV camera from the heart of Hurricane Katrina-ravaged area, the French quarter in New Orleans last night, to take personal responsibility for the failure in Katrina preparation and rescue, and promise to shower money on the private contractors who will help re-build the city. He spoke no non-sense. He cares not the poll. He takes action immediately. He follows his principles, unfortunately many of which are wrong or mis-guided.

But that is it. The style, not substance. His idea about goverment is simply wrong. He has such a cynical view about the ability of government to perform any function, that he outsourced many critical federal government functions to private contractors. He downgraded FEMA(Federal Emergency Management Agency) to a sub-division of the Department of Homeland Security. He did not believe FEMA has any real role that he put a friend of his, Michael Brown, who has no experience in emergency management, as the head of FEMA.

The failure in the response to Katrina was almost inevitable, because Bush did not have a belief in government 's roles. His cynism towards government has costed lives in New Orleans. But remember, more lives are lost, and being lost in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Can anything good come out of high gas price?

The gas price in my area went from $2.82 before Hurricane Katrina to $3.34 the day after (for the 87 grade). Now it is over $3.50. As I have said before, high gas price hurt low-income people the most. It is equivalent of a regressive tax on poor people.

But can anything good come out of the bad? I think so:
1) People will walk more
I have noticed more people are walking to get their groceries. Parents are now asking their teenager kids to bike rather than drive. If the gas price remains this high, we may be on the way to solve the nation's obesity problem.

2) More people will use public transportation
There are so much impedement for people to use public transportation. The whole system is not set up in a way to encourage ridership. But now, depsite the same impedement, people are using public transportation more. I hope this trend can continue, so we can reduce green house gas and help the environment. Maybe this is the nature's way of teaching us a lesson.

3) Alternative renewable energy sources?
If the $70/barrel oil price is not an incentive for us to seek renewable energy sources, I don't know what can be.