Here’s the thought that kept me up last night: You know all those bussess that are being bused from the Superdome to the Astrodome? The newstories are saying that FEMA chartered about 500 of them to shuttle people to the Astrodome.

Where were those busses on Saturday? Bush declared New Orleans a disaster area before Katrina hit. That gave FEMA the power to act. I know time was short, but why couldn’t some sort of bus (or military) convoy have been used to get the poor, the desperate, and the just plain stuck, out of harm’s way before the worst happened? Why was the evacuation — a public emergency of epic proportions — handled by purely private means?