Hurricane Hillary Jumps the Gun

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton sounded as if she was launching a presidential campaign over Hurricane Katrina yesterday, as she made the TV talk-show rounds to attack President Bush — and suggest she’d do better at handling disasters.

“I would never have appointed such a person,” Clinton said dismissively as she blasted the performance of FEMA chief Michael Brown on “The Early Show” on CBS.

It sure sounded as if Clinton was touting her presidential skills, since presidents are the ones who pick FEMA chiefs, and in case anyone missed the point, she unfavorably compared Bush with her husband.

“FEMA worked very well during the Clinton administration,” zinged Clinton, who did interviews in quick succession on ABC, NBC and CBS.

The “Hurricane Hillary” strategy looks like a bid to court left-wingers who are irked she voted for the Iraq war and doesn’t attack Bush as often as they’d like, some Democratic strategists say.

Hillary put on a nice political show yesterday. It’s too bad its going to come back and bite her on the a$$!

She may have had good political advice on Saturday and Sunday, but by Thursday afternoon, the advice is dated and this political move by Hillary sure is looking foolish!

With each new discovery, disclosure or poll, GW looks to be further and further away from the toxin-filled water of Louisiana.

This post from Instapundit and the Washington Times today divulges that it wasn’t the money that was going into the levee projects in Louisiana that was the problem:

In Katrina’s wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush’s administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.

Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state’s congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana’s representatives have kept bringing home the bacon. . . .

Pam Dashiell, president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, remembers holding a protest against the lock four years ago — right where the levee broke Aug. 30. Now she’s holed up with her family in a St. Louis hotel, and her neighborhood is underwater. “Our politicians never cared half as much about protecting us as they cared about pork,” Dashiell said.

Here is some really hard to understand news that came out last night from a FOX News interview about the SUPPLIES SITTING OUTSIDE OF NEW ORLEANS BEFORE THE HURRICANE HIT as seen at Hugh Hewitt and Instapundit:

The Fox News Channel’s Major Garrett was just on my show extending the story he had just reported on Brit Hume’s show: The Red Cross is confirming to Garrett that it had prepositioned water, food, blankets and hygiene products for delivery to the Superdome and the Convention Center in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, but were blocked from delivering those supplies by orders of the Louisiana state government, which did not want to attract people to the Superdome and/or Convention Center.

And the Red Cross responds (via Instapundit, again):

Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?

Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

The state Homeland Security Department had requested–and continues to request–that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

Did I mention Mississippi?

* Grocers’ stocks return to normal
* Mississippi River Export Grain Industry Recovering From Hurricane Katrina
* T-Mobile Gulf Coast Wireless Network Coverage At or Near Normal Levels
* Governor of Mississippi praises federal aid effort
* Barge Traffic Resumes on Mississippi

As Jayson at Polipundit said, “That Didn’t Take Long!”

And, Michelle Malkin and National Review Online have the skinny on the environmental groups:

…The national Sierra Club was one of several environmental groups who sued the Army Corps of Engineers to stop a 1996 plan to raise and fortify Mississippi River levees.
The Army Corps was planning to upgrade 303 miles of levees along the river in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. This was needed, a Corps spokesman told the Baton Rouge, La., newspaper The Advocate, because “a failure could wreak catastrophic consequences on Louisiana and Mississippi which the states would be decades in overcoming, if they overcame them at all.”

But a suit filed by environmental groups at the U.S. District Court in New Orleans claimed the Corps had not looked at “the impact on bottomland hardwood wetlands.” The lawsuit stated, “Bottomland hardwood forests must be protected and restored if the Louisiana black bear is to survive as a species, and if we are to ensure continued support for source population of all birds breeding in the lower Mississippi River valley.” In addition to the Sierra Club, other parties to the suit were the group American Rivers, the Mississippi River Basin Alliance, and the Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi Wildlife Federations.

…In 2000, American Rivers’ Mississippi River Regional Representative Jeffrey Stein complained in a congressional hearing that the river’s “levees that temporarily protect floodplain farms have reduced the frequency, extent and magnitude of high flows, robbing the river of its ability … to sustain itself.”

And, would the fact that Michael Chertoff sat on the Whitewater Investigation have anything to do with Hillary’s political move?

After all, Hillary was the only Senator to oppose Chertoff in his confirmation as a federal judge (the only one!) in the Senate! Would this have anything t
o do with Hillary’s decision to try to stick it to the Federal Government including Homeland Security? (Hat Tip Sean Hannity and Dick Morris)

Here is Chertoff in 2000 being interviewed about Whitewater:

MICHAEL CHERTOFF, Former Senate Republican Whitewater Counsel: I think Richard’s not be totally fair. Obviously this was a serious issue, serious questions were raised concerning the conduct of a lot of people back in Arkansas at the time of the events that were being looked at. Obviously a lot of convictions were produced. But I do have to agree that as of 1996, when our report was produced, and certainly shortly thereafter when Mr. McDougal started to cooperate with Mr. Starr, there was before the prosecutor essentially all the facts.

And while people may disagree about whether what was done in Arkansas was proper or not, I think in terms of the evidence, the prosecutor had what he needed to make a decision, and he had an obligation to make a decision fairly quickly. So I have to agree to some extent that I’m surprised that after four additional years, when I look at what was produced by Mr. Ray today, I don’t see very much more than we knew back in 1996 and 1997.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. Let me can ask you both, you first Mr. Chertoff, about the timing of this announcement with about six-and-a-half weeks before the election.

MICHAEL CHERTOFF: Well, it’s certainly got to be welcomed by Mrs. Clinton, and it’s certainly better before the election then after the election. I have to ask myself why we didn’t have it two years ago and why it was necessary to keep things open up until the year 2000. Now, perhaps there are matters in the grand jury that we don’t know about that will be revealed that will explain what additional time was necessary. But this has clearly been a process that has been too long and has resulted in an answer that frankly we probably could have heard a considerable period of time earlier.

So is this new “Katrina Commission” that Hillary is proposing really just a way to get back at Chertoff? That sounds as logical as “this natural disaster was all about racism!” We’ll see if the MSM runs with this rumor like the last one! The always political mind of Dick Morris thinks so and predicted this disaster to be a “Bush Win”. It looks like he is right, again.

Being the terrific politician that she is, Hillary should have seen this wave of toxic water splashing back at her! She did not, and with the good news mounting (except for the death totals, which I am predicting will not be near the 10,000 the mayor has predicted) this is going to come back and bite her. The public is already seeing that the MSM has been playing politics (via Powerline). They won’t be too pleased with Hillary, either.

Update: I agree with Gut Rumbles. This post by DC Thorton really nails it.

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Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016. In 2023, The Gateway Pundit received the Most Trusted Print Media Award at the American Liberty Awards.

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Thanks for sharing!