Hurricane Dubya

A curious detail was noted by a couple reporters and casual observers recently regarding the devastation caused by hurricane Katrina: the flooding got a helluva lot worse after the storm was long gone.

Obviously, the levees completely failed, and as Zeppelin once warned us, that's not a good thing.

In fact, during times of natural disasters such as this one of the two most important forms of relief is federal funding (hence governors declaring states of emergencies) to aid in flood damage, structural damage from other elements such as wind, and planning/development of emergency shelters and other procedures. The other is actually getting boots on the ground to help with the relief effort in the form of the national guard.

So where are both the money and the National Guard support for the lower Southeast?

They're both in Iraq.

Before you conservatives get your diapers wet with anger thinking liberals are blaming the hurricane damage on Bush, consider this, circulating in articles in some of todays newspapers:

• In 1995 Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA, meant to aid in disasters exactly like what New Orleans is facing right now.
• The Army Corps of Engineers is tasked with creating actual flood and hurricane damage protection from that funding.
• The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts --
  was the reason for the strain.
• At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.
• In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.
• In June 2005, Bush cut budget funds that would have helped New Orleans prepare for a Hurricane like this. The New Orleans branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers suffered a "record $71.2 million" reduction in federal funding, a 44.2 percent reduction from its 2001 levels.
• A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken.
• Reports at the time said that thanks to the cuts, "major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. …a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now."
• By comparison, in the aftermath of Hurricane Frances -- and the run-up to the 2004 election -- the Bush administration awarded $31 million in disaster relief to Florida residents who didn't even experience hurricane damage.

Considering all of this, you would think Bush was just a little panicked as predictions from the National Hurricane Center suggested that this may be one of the most powerful storms in recent history, hitting one of the most vulnerable areas in recently history. So what did Bush do as the hurricane was battering the Louisiana coast?

He played guitar.

To Bush's credit however, he did cut his month long, record setting vacation by two days to get back to Washington and pray for some of the victims of which his federal funding cuts screwed in the first place.

But I must say, Dubya seems to be a bit slow on the draw when it comes to major catastrophes, and I'm not talking about entering a Florida school to read a story to grade school kids after the first WTC tower was attacked, and staying there several minutes after the second one was hit.

I'm speaking of the month-long 2004 vacation from which he refused to budge when the Asian Tsunami swept the lives of hundreds of thousands away earlier this year. Bush was criticized after spending the entire month of December away from the White House, while many other world leaders, such as German Chancellor Schroeder, ended their holiday vacations immediately.

Further, Bush didn't speak publicly about the issue until several days later, after the death toll had climbed well over 50,000. He ended up with an initial offer of $15 million to the devastated region - less than the price of a fighter jet - continuing the American trend of giving the smallest percentage of it's GNP to aid poorer nations around the world.

In fact, there was really only one way to get Bush to cut this latest vacation short, and get down to Louisiana as quickly as possible - we should have told him a woman in Baton Rouge was about to get her feeding tube removed.

Ahh yes, the culture of life continues.

Read more about Bush's preparedness here, and here, and see Bush's special message to the victims of the hurricane here.