New Orleans is a mess:
But many of New Orleans' neighborhoods still are abandoned wastelands of uninhabitable homes and sidewalks piled with moldy garbage. Barely a quarter of the city's former population of nearly half a million has returned yet and it's not clear how many more will.
But our President still doesn't seem to get it:
Some of the president's language in New Orleans recalled the more pilloried statements from his first stop in the region four days after Katrina struck.
On that visit, he laughingly lauded the increasingly desperate city as great because it was where he used to "enjoy myself - occasionally too much." On Thursday, he said the New Orleans of today "is reminding me of the city I used to come to visit."
Bush also called the city "a heckuva place to bring your family" - a reminder of his endorsement of Michael Brown, then chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job," Bush said then to the man who was seen by many as the face of the clumsy and who eventually gave up his post amid the criticism.
