Hurricane relief, political relief

Even though Bush and the federal government are now bringing all sorts of resources to bear in the Katrina disaster area, the way things are going is still making me sort of queasy. Aside from continued operational bumbling on the part of FEMA, the Bush response seems overwhelmed by politics. I know that there are plenty of politics involved in any huge thing like this, but it really does seem like it's first and foremost an effort to stop a political crisis, with the helping people secondary. This is an awfully cynical view to have, but there seem to be signals pointing this way. Perhaps most worryingly, Karl Rove has been put in charge of the reconstruction effort. Karl Rove!?

Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo is has been covering this angle for a little while, and he's a good one to turn to because he's less prone to sensationalism and mindless partisanship than other blogs. This post boils it down.

And then there's the stark financial reality of all this. I have no hesistation about ponying up tax money to help people in need, but when this is combined with all the other deficit spending this administration is doing, we're in deep trouble budget-wise. And it's going to come back to bite our generation in the ass bigtime. But don't worry, Bush says, we won't raise taxes to pay for it -- I guess the dose of unpopular reality is going to fall to his Democratic successor to break to the public.