I won’t comment on the rest of your partisan rant, but I do have to mention this:

Sorry, but I did not know that “the administration” was elected as governor of the state of Louisianna and the mayor of New Orleans. Oh wait, no… they weren’t. It seems odd how they “mismanaged” this relief effort but did just fine and dandy during the most recent Wilma that hit Florida.

Sorry bub, but I happen to live in New Orleans. The governor and mayor did everything possible with the resources at their disposal, including the first ever truly successful contraflow evacuation of such a large American city. Afterward, with their resources scattered and the city under water, they begged the federal government for help. While the storm was still raging governor Blanco was on the phone with FEMA telling them what we would need — helicopters, water, food, and tents, in more or less that order. Contrary to what you may have read in some quarters all of the paperwork was filled out properly and submitted ahead of time. The state of emergency was declared.

The Katrina disaster was much too large for the locals to handle it themselves; things like this are why we have a Federal government at all.

So what did the Feds do? Day 1: Nothing. Day 2: Nothing. Day 3: Nothing. Oh wait, not quite nothing. Blanco complained that they were very interested in “negotiating an organizational chart,” e.g. figuring out who would be in charge. And by Tuesday they did get around to trying to strong-arm her into abdicating her position as our elected leader and federalizing the state resources that remained viable.

Oh, and they did manage to turn back anyone who “self-responded” like the convoy of rescuers with boats who assembled from the Lafayette area the day after the storm. They managed to turn back the trucks of water offered by Wal-Mart. Yeah, the Feds weren’t entirely idle in those first few days; they managed to fucking TURN AWAY what little aid our local people managed to assemble when the government failed them. They managed to order doctors at the airport NOT to save lives because they hadn’t been “federalized.”

And what turned FEMA from the heroes of hurricane Charley to the rat fuckers who probably killed hundreds of my neighbors as they waited in their attics? After 9/11 they were wrapped into the department of Homeland Security and their focus shifted from disaster relief (first priority: save lives) to anti-terrorism police (first priority: establish control of the situation).

You can’t blame that on Clinton or the Democrats. That reorganization was this Republican Administration’s idea, passed by this Republican congress. And while the newly cop-oriented FEMA was polishing their guns and turning away help that didn’t arrive with the right paperwork, my neighbors died. For that reason alone they all deserve to be tossed out of office and charged with malfeasance.

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166295&cid=13871993

And lets amend your historical corrections. Anyone with any degree of intellectual honesty credits the Clinton Administration with balancing the budget. Since I’m not going to make that assertion without facts to back it up…

Business Week, 5/19/97: “Clinton’s 1993 budget cuts, which reduced projected red ink by more than $400 billion over five years, sparked a major drop in interest rates that helped boost investment in all the equipment and systems that brought forth the New Age economy of technological innovation and rising productivity.”

Goldman Sachs, March 1998: “on the policy side, trade, fiscal, and monetary policies have been excellent, working in ways that have facilitated growth without inflation. The Clinton Administration has worked to liberalize trade and has used any revenue windfalls to reduce the federal budget deficit.”

U.S. News & World Report, 6/17/96: “President Clinton’s budget deficit program begun in 1993… [led] to lower interest rates, which begat greater investment growth (by double digits since 1993, the highest rate since the Kennedy administration), which begat three-plus years of solid economic growth averaging 2.6 percent annually, 50 percent higher than during the Bush presidency.”

Paul Volcker, former Federal Reserve Chairman, Audacity, Fall 1994: “The deficit has come down, and I give the Clinton Administration and President Clinton himself a lot of credit for that… and I think we’re seeing some benefits.”

While we’re on the topic, the government shutdown was as much the fault of the Republican Majority in Congress and Clinton’s. Alexis de Tocqueville once said that it is the nature of American Democracy to “view as virtuous an incomplete conquest.” The willingness of BOTH the Republican Congress and the Democratic Whitehouse to ignore this sage wisdom was the cause of the shutdown. It takes two to tango.

While you’re quite right that some of the actions taken by the Clinton administration militarily didn’t turn out for the best, those actions were not unilateral invasions of a sovereign country with neither the backing nor support of the UN or NATO. Moreover, our involvement did not turn into the most costly and deadly American overseas deployment since Vietnam. As to Rwanda — it was a tragic failure, and one for which I’ll never forgive the Clinton Administration. It’s good to see that Bush learned from that failure and is responding in the Sudan…. oh… wait….

Your depiction of the Plame case goes from evasive to outright lies, so we’ll clear that up.

1 – You’re right, no crime has technically been committed if no one was aware that Plame was undercover at the time since you can’t expose someone who you don’t know to be undercover.
2 – Plame WAS undercover at the time, according to ABC News [go.com].
3 – Even presidents are innocent until proven guilty in this country. Clinton was never convicted of perjury. That said, what he did smacks of dishonesty and was unquestionably wrong. Speaking of perjury — it’s interesting that the testimonies of Rove, Cheney, and Bush, and the various reporters being questioned are not only divergent, but don’t even line up from session to session. You might see some GOP perjury indictments before this is all over.

Final Correction — Your mischaracterization of Katrina is fairly misleading as well. A hurricane breaching New Orleans levees was on the FEMA list of nightmare scenarios. Bush’s budget priorities transferred funds away from the Corps of Engineers levee projects, contributing to the collapse.

Also, don’t forget that you can heap blame upon the state of Louisiana as much as you want – but the failure to Federalize the National Guard rests with one man alone. Bush had the authority to act and failed to. Did the state government screw up? Yes. But Bush -=LET=- them screw up. That matters.
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Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.

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Hi Sam! Photos i send on e-mail.
Green