My heart goes out to all the poor people down in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama who got caught up in the Hurricane Katrina disaster. And I do mean poor.

There are two thing that are astonishing to me as I watch this disaster unfold on CNN. One is that every time I think I've seen the worst possible image, I see something that blows my mind. Lines of school buses under water. Not just complete neighborhoods submerged, but everything from one horizon to the next. New Orleans inundated. People escaping from their homes by carving holes in their roofs. People wading neck deep through city streets. Refugees fleeing into and then out of the Super Dome. It's unbelievable. Two is that in almost all these pictures, the people involved are black and poor.

Now I know there's a large African-American population in that part of the country, but nothing that would belie their numbers in the news except that clearly the white folks with the means and the wherewithal to evacuate did and the blacks who had no place else to go tried to stick it out.

I know that the final death toll at this point is unknown, but when it's all said and down and all the bodies are located, I'm wouldn't be surprised if the black/white breakdown is the exact opposite of the national figures, if not worse. It's just an incredible tragedy.

The other thing that I want to briefly mention is that the level of looting and lawlessness is disturbing. This was a massive natural disaster, completely disrupting the normal order, so it's not too surprising. However, what I keep thinking about is that if we're see this level of chaos with this event, which seems that authorities were clearly under prepared for, what's going to happen if we have a major terrorist attack in a large city? After watching the Homeland Security Dept. in action, I don't hold out much faith that they are up to the task. If you look at Katrina as a window into our future, the future ain't pretty.