Like a rock or pop act that makes its audience wait till the encore to hear the Big Hit, Obama has made New Orleans wait until mid- or late-October for the long-promised presidential visit to the Crescent City.

One day before the office was to expire, President Obama extended the life of the Gulf Coast Recovery "Czar" (don't tell Glenn Beck) for another six months.

Obama's New Orleans visit itinerary shows that he won't be addressing crucial disaster aversion issues. But he will be taking questions and meeting schoolchildren. Events, in short, that look good on TV.

The only project of any size in New Orleans that a new report praises for having been completed is, ironically, the closure of the MRGO canal that critics long predicted would funnel storm surges into the city.

President Obama spends four whole hours tomorrow in New Orleans, and then 16 hours in San Francisco. They must have experienced a hell of a federal disaster there.

In New Orleans, there have been notable steps forward in arts, education and entrepreneurship since Katrina. The bad news is that the "temporary" pumps installed for future floods do not, and cannot work.

For those of us looking for even the semblance of substance in President Obama's Town Hall meeting in New Orleans, frankly, he could have saved the jet fuel.

Never too late to start up. There is, in line with this spirit of urgency, a "new" White House working group on issues of coastal restoration in Mississippi and Louisiana. Warp speed, baby.

Those who focus solely on the closing of Gitmo merely invite the US government to move any detainees still in need of further 'care' to Bagram, which is in a similarly lawless situation, if not more so.

I'm preparing to make a documentary film on the causes of the flooding of New Orleans, and so I decided to attend one of the community outreach meetings the Corps of Engineers holds.