Houston survives traffic jam, governor cites Bush leadership

Posted by R. Neal

Texas Governor Rick Perry and Houston Mayor Bill White held a press conference to praise each other and President Bush for the magnificent response to the massive traffic jams in Houston. President Bush, who directed I-45 traffic from a secure bunker deep inside a Colorado mountain, praised the governor, the mayor, and FEMA for their quick action. "It could have been a lot worse if there had been only Democrats in charge like over there in the state of New Orleans," said Bush. "I'll be working closely with Congress on that problem," he added.

As the media covered the Houston traffic jam and the horrific conditions at their luxury hotels in Galveston (room service was suspended and they ran out of half-and-half for the coffee), local officials in Beaumont and the former towns and parishes of Lake Charles, Cameron Parish, Sulphur, Vinton, and Lafitte Louisiana said from their new fishing boat and treetop headquarters that FEMA, the Red Cross, the National Guard, and the media shouldn't worry about them and should instead concentrate on Houston. "We saw the heartbreaking videos of those traffic jams and that shingle blown off the roof of that multi-million dollar beach home in Galveston, and just thought, hey, we can wait. There's not much left here to recover anyway," said one local official.

Researchers at LSU, meanwhile, are studying a strange phenomenon that steered Hurricane Rita northeastward towards Louisiana at the last minute, saving the Houston area from a potentially embarrassing revelation on national TV that there are poor minorities living there. While reluctant to draw any conclusions, scientists noted the hourly news conferences held by local, state, and FEMA officials to discuss their diligent preparations for Rita, and the possible correlation to a large mass of hot air that formed over Austin and spread all the way to Houston which may have been a factor.