ARE YOU FEELING SAFER YET?

This evening's cable news reports have not been kind to the administration. Repeatedly I've heard the question asked, "What does this disaster tell us about our preparedness to meet a terrorist attack?" I've also heard several iterations of the report that Bush reduced the amount the Corps of Engineers planned to spend on shoring up the New Orleans levees and determining ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane.

"I'm not saying it wouldn't still be flooded, but I do feel that if it had been totally funded, there would be less flooding than you have," said Michael Parker, a former Republican Mississippi congressman who headed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from October 2001 until March 2002, when he was ousted after publicly criticizing a Bush administration proposal to cut the corps' budget.

Tragic, horrible, unwanted, unneeded proof that in four years Dubya and company have done less than zero in making the U.S. safer. That was never his priority, it is evident. Instead, he decided to show his daddy he could do what daddy couldn't (topple Saddam) and pushed through tax cuts that enriched the already wealthy and added more than a million Americans to the ranks of the impoverished.