The perfect storm

Take nature's customary bad habits. Add overdevelopment of the buffering wetlands, and the war in Iraq, and throw in a little global warming.

It still adds up to a work of nature made worse by benignly misguided human beings. But to the President, "It's as if the entire Gulf Coast were obliterated by the worst kind of weapon you can imagine." He's a man of few metaphors. We knew that.