Two years ago tomorrow, I was driving east on Interstate 10 through Baton Rouge in a pounding thunderstorm to file an onscene piece from New Orleans for Newsweek.com. Hurricane Katrina had already cut a murderous swath across the bayou country of Louisiana before it trashed the Mississippi Gulf Coast in what would turn out to be the worst natural disaster in United States history. While tens of thousands of residents in the stricken area sought refuge from the killer storm and relief workers did their best to attend to the sick, the hungry and the just plain traumatized, the man masquerading as the leader of the free world was kicking back on his ranch in Texas, wrapping up another summertime break from life inside the Beltway. None of us who covered the horrific aftermath of Katrina will soon forget the White House-issued photos of George W. Bush peering out of a passenger window on Air Force One at the devastated coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama fully two days after the storm made landfall.

Last week I was back on hurricane duty in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, wading boots and raincoat at the ready as we awaited the arrival of another Category 5 monster called Dean. Initial reports that no one died on account of Dean did not deter Mexico's President Felipe Calderon from cutting short his participation in a North American summit meeting in Canada last week. As Lyndon B. Johnson did in 1965 when he hopped aboard Air Force One to visit New Orleans on the same day that Hurricane Betsy slammed the Crescent City, Calderon flew directly from the Canadian province of Quebec to the Mexican state capital of Chetumal within hours of Dean's arrival on the morning of August 21 to inspect the physical damage first-hand. The international news media barely took notice.

As we approach the second anniversary of the Katrina calamity this week, it is an appropriate juncture to revisit Spike Lee's HBO documentary When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. The filmmaker's meticulous reconstruction of the catastrophe and the Bush Administration's bungling response seem all the more compelling amid news reports that New Orleans today is in no better shape to withstand another natural disaster of similar magnitude. When the 256-minute-long film first aired in 2006, a number of critics highlighted Lee's use of rap singer Kanye West's blunt, unscripted remark that "George Bush doesn't care about black people" during a live NBC telethon program to raise funds for Katrina victims. My own favorite line came from the (white) emergency room physician who accosted Dick Cheney during a photo-op tour of the shattered Mississippi Gulf Coast and, taking a page from the vice president's own playbook of profanity, said in perfectly audible English, "Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney." And then repeated the statement, just in case the camera crews on hand that day had their microphones turned off the first time.