Katrina "proves" Bush failed New Orleans? yaright

Bob Brigham is busted, big-time. (When the alliteration is this easy, you HAVE to take it, right?)

Bob rants about how the damage from Hurricane Katrina is Bush's fault. The article he linked, where the pull quotes came from, contains a KEY sentence that he somehow neglected to quote:

"Congress is setting the Corps budget."

That's right. Congress, not the Administration. Further, the article makes it pretty clear that the reason the Democratic Representative was upset about the cuts was that they were pork-barrel cuts. Nary a word about public safety - her concern was for the poor contractors who wouldn't be able to line up at the public trough.

If he wants his argument to stick, he needs to demonstrate (not merely insinuate) that the unfunded projects would have made a lick of difference faced with 165mph winds and a 28-foot storm surge.

Here's a bit of unpleasant calculus for you. Libs seem to forget that W is a Harvard MBA. One of the things you learn in biz school is risk management. Sometimes it's a wiser course of action to maintain liquid funds that can be used to pick up the pieces if an unlikely event occurs (or be otherwise usefully employed if it does not occur), than sink those funds in risk-prevention that might not work.

The risk-prevention we have undertaken in Afghanistan and Iraq has been demonstrably effective. It's not at all clear that dumping a few billion bucks into New Orleans levees would save / would have saved the city from Katrina.