Ever feel like all the good people are in relationships and you are just trying to find the best of the broken? "this is my girlfriend. I found her at a garage sale, but you would never know it." But then again they are probably thinking the same thing about me. 
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The scale of such funding is almost laughable now, considering the scope of the devastation in southern Louisiana and Mississippi. Politicians and lobbyists are just beginning to turn their attention to the massive cleanup and reconstruction bill, which will likely take years and cost tens of billions of dollars. But observers like Tolbert hope that the nation's leaders learn some lessons from the experience.
The blame, he says, lies not with the local and federal officials who warned for decades of the coming disaster. It lies with those elected officials who refused to sign the checks. "The country deserves better than that," he says."
June 2004: The Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee construction
in New Orleans is slashed. Jefferson Parish emergency management
chiefs Walter Maestri comments: "It appears that the money has been
moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the
war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay."
June 2005: Funding for the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers is cut by a record $71.2 million. One of the
hardest-hit areas is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control
Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve
drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.
August 2005: While New Orleans is undergoing a slow motion
catastrophe, Bush mugs for the cameras, cuts a cake for John McCain,
plays the guitar for Mark Wills, delivers an address about V-J day,
and continues with his vacation. When he finally gets around to
acknowledging the scope of the unfolding disaster, he delivers only
a photo op on Air Force One and a flat, defensive, laundry list
speech in the Rose Garden.
Are you gonna go bowling this weekend?