The Life of a Hurricane Forecaster

Josh Marshall picked up on this, from August 30th:

On Saturday night, Mayfield was so worried about Hurricane Katrina that he called the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi and the mayor of New Orleans. On Sunday, he even talked about the force of Katrina during a video conference call to President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

"I just wanted to be able to go to sleep that night knowing that I did all I could do," Mayfield said.

CNN tonight (no link up yet) that Tom DeLay cancelled proposed hearings into the complete failure of FEMA and Homeland Security, but not before Mr. DeLay told the cameras that the problem was local: the city has to fail and ask the state, and the state has to fail and ask the Feds, is the system Mr. DeLay described.

Makes you wonder why Mr. Bush needed to know anything about this hurricane at all, since neither the city nor the state were worried about it. At least, not worried enough, according to Mr. DeLay.

We'll just see how long this story continues to whirl about it's own axis.