Katrina, ... "emboldens Democrats (WH aids swarm to the Gulf)

[rodeodance]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/katrina_politics

Democrats focus on GOP Katrina blunders

By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writer Fri Aug 25, 11:51 AM ET
...........

"The bad thing is that no matter what happens in Iraq, Katrina is done," Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said in an interview Thursday. "It happened. You can't undo it. It's a huge scar."

The Bush administration, acting quickly ahead of the Democratic campaign, plans to use the anniversary to make its case that the region is on the mend. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings was in New Orleans on Thursday to announce more than $60 million in international donations for Gulf Coast schools and universities.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez was in New Orleans Friday to portray the city as "open for business" and to attend the reopening of a Home Depot store damaged during the hurricane.

Bush scheduled a visit to the region next week to tour a storm-hit neighborhood in Mississippi on Monday and deliver a speech on the rebuilding effort. On Tuesday, the anniversary of Katrina's landfall, the president is to attend a prayer service in New Orleans.

The White House, sensitive to perceptions of foot dragging, issued a one-year anniversary fact sheet stressing that "rebuilding will take time."

"The one-year anniversary is not a finish line," the statement said.

[cornermouse]

1. Democrats should be hitting this with everything they have.

Not Katrina itself as much as the days after Katrina when we watched in horror as we saw people on rooftops begging for help which did not come, listened to tapes of people in attics begging for help before they died in a way you would never want anyone to die, hospitals full of sick people which were ignored, bodies in wheelchairs outside an overcrowded Convention Center and Superdome which had NO food and NO water even though reporters were able to get through.

It is the post-Katrina outrage which should not be forgotten.