Color me stunned. An Op-Ed in the NYTimes today explores all the hypocrisy by the democrats in ranting about the federal response before and after Katrina. It is a laundry list of decisions made for political gain and not for strategic, preventive planning.

Congress has finally sprung into action. It has bravely promised to investigate the situation.

…Democrats want it to be done by outsiders. They say the Republicans will turn it into a cover-up. But why does that bother the Democrats so much? Shouldn’t members of both parties want to cover this up?

Suppose, for instance, investigators try to find out who had the brilliant idea of putting the Federal Emergency Management Agency inside a new department with an organizational chart modeled on the Soviet Ministry of Agriculture and Food Economy. One Democrat, Hillary Clinton, did question whether FEMA would suffer, but the idea was originally championed by her colleagues, particularly Joe Lieberman.

…as the Democratic National Committee pointed out during the presidential campaign last year. Its radio advertisement declared: “John Kerry fought to establish the Department of Homeland Security. George Bush opposed it for almost a year after 9/11.”

What is going on here? Is the media-formally-known-as-mainstream trying to be objective and find out what really happened???

Democrats have blamed the Iraq war for diverting money and attention from domestic needs. But that hasn’t meant less money for the Corps during the past five years.
…
The problem is that the bulk of the Corps’s budget goes for projects far less important than preventing floods in New Orleans.
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In Massachusetts, the Corps offers BMX-style bike jumps at a lake near Worcester and runs a theater next to the Cape Cod Canal showing a video of “Canal Critters.”

You know, for the life of me I am struggling to remember who the two Senators for Massachusetts are….

This week Mary Landrieu, the Louisiana Democrat, lambasted Mr. Bush on the Senate floor. “Everybody anticipated the breach of the levees, Mr. President,” she said. But she and others from the Louisiana delegation have been shortchanging the levees themselves. As Michael Grunwald reported in The Washington Post, they’ve diverted large sums to dubious Corps projects aimed at increasing barge traffic, not preventing floods. Ms. Landrieu forced the Corps to redo its calculations when a project to deepen a port flunked its cost-benefit analysis.

This guy better be careful, Landrieu may punch him for writing such things – like the truth. And where will this lead?

My daring prediction is they would make two discoveries. First, that mistakes were made by many people outside Congress. Second, that more money must be spent on flood protection throughout America.

When you’re right, you’re right. And he is right.