Money, Votes, and Disaster

By Bob Huffaker

Louisiana's 9 electoral votes, Mississippi's 6, and Alabama's 9 total
three less than Florida's 27. Follow the money, which follows the
electoral votes. And note that Louisiana's Kathleen Blanco, the only
Democratic governor in these states, is the only one being blamed by
advance spin. (See "Bush tries to regain lost ground as political blame game begins.")

The White House approved only $40 million of the $105 million the Corps
of Engineers requested last year for New Orleans flood and hurricane
programs. But President Bush approved Congress's $286.4 BILLION pork
pie that funds 6,000 pet projects--including a $231 million bridge to a
little Alaskan island where nobody lives.

Bush's FEMA head Michael Brown, who first said that he did not know
until Thursday that 15,000 desperate refugees were without food or
water in the New Orleans Convention Center, falsely claimed the next
day that his hapless bureaucracy had been feeding them every day.
Brown, whose main job qualification was having been fired for inability to supervise horse shows, met Bush in Mobile, Alabama,
while those abandoned refugees were still suffering and dying without
aid, and he must have felt great when the president assured him,
"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

As the storm was killing Americans by the thousands, the vacationing
Bush was delivering speeches and posing with a guitar on the West
Coast. Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming. Condi Rice was shopping
for shoes on Fifth Avenue and attending "Spamalot." Chief of Staff Andy
Card was away in Maine.

When evacuation finally began in New Orleans, after five days of
inaction by the White House, the poor and mostly black victims stood in
misery while busses took away 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt
Hotel first.  (Check out this absurd Flickr foto, originally from the AP, of the National Guard delivering supplies to the New Orleans Convention Center AFTER all the hurricane victims had been evacuated on Sat, Sept. 3.)

But not to worry. The Navy has hired Halliburton to reactivate three
Mississippi naval facilities and assess damage at New Orleans Navy
installations, once it is safe there. Halliburton is not helping the
Army Corps of Engineers' belated efforts to repair New Orleans'
breached levees.