Katrina: Yes, you can blame Bush

I'm not going to post the piece I started to write.

My original reaction to the Katrina catastrophe was going to be: "NOT ONE DIME."

For an hour or so, I contemplated the idea of turning it into a crusade: No-one in the blue states (where the money is) should give one dime of aid to the victims of this hurricane, which devastated Bush-friendly regions.

Why did I flirt with such a callous attitude? Because it should be obvious to all that this tragedy was not just an act of God. Dubya and his diety conspired to transform mere disaster into an unprecedented mega-catastrophe.

Scientists warn us to expect more Katrinas. Global warming -- the existence of which W would prefer to rationalize away -- caused the temperature of the sea's surface to rise in the Gulf of Mexico, thereby transforming what should have been a manageable hurricane into a monster.

The National Guard was off in Iraq stealing oil -- and everything else in that nation -- all to benefit Haliburton and the oil companies. They could have been in N.O. earlier, building levies, overseeing evacuation.

Bush financially eviscerated the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The money went to his Iraq debacle.

Bush cut funding for hurricane relief and the prevention of disaster in New Orleans:

When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. 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.

The federal governmen has, in short, demonstrated an utter lack of foresight. Bush was giving specious pro-war speeches and dodging Cindy Sheehan when he should have been helping local governments prepare.

The governors of Louisiana and other affected states were reduced to begging the federal government for aid. Under Clinton, they wouldn't have had to ask: Such aid would have been understood as inevitable.

So why was I thinking of starting a movement against giving aid to the stricken areas?

Because these are red states. They voted for Bush. These ninnies obviously wanted these policies, and they deserve to live with the consequences of their votes.

A large part of me still believes that many of these W-worshipping numbskulls deserve to suffer and to die. They brought it on themselves. Let them look to Jayzuss for aid: It's time they stopped leeching off the more productive blue staters. (Californians stupidly give much more to the federal government than we receive from it; the money flows in a very different direction in the red states.)

So, at least, I started to write. But then (to paraphrase the old song) I thought I'd better think it out again.

Many of the victims, the ones who have suffered the most, are poor. The hardest hit were the blue state folk living among the red state maniacs.

And that's why we must help.

Although it was very tempting to say otherwise.