Katrina deprived the Bush team of the energy source that propelled it forward for the past four years: Sept. 11 and the halo over the presidency that came with it. The events of Sept. 11 created a deference in the U.S. public, and media, for the administration, which exploited it to the hilt to push an uncompassionate conservative agenda on tax cuts and runaway spending, on which it never could have gotten elected. That deference is over.

Jim Jones's the Peoples Temple was formed in Indianapolis, Indiana during the late 1950s. Jones and his 140 followers then moved to Redwood Valley in Mendocino County, California, as they believed that they would be safe from nuclear fallout in case of a nuclear attack on the United States. In the late 1960s, members of Jones's congregation had dwindled to less than a hundred and were on the verge of collapse but Jones managed to secure an affiliation with the Disciples of Christ and in turn kept the survival of the Temple. Jones's affiliation with the church boosted the Temple's reputation and spread his influence in the West Coast area. Jones then moved his congregation again to his main church in San Francisco in 1971 and opened another one in Los Angeles.