So Fox News decided to re-air an old video of Obama making an accusation that the aid in the wake of Katrina may have been tainted by racism. I think he has a valid point. Areas of public housing that were untouched by floods got condemned… and they just so happened to be on prime property between the commercial sector and Bourbon Street. Watch all of Greg Palast’s “From Big Easy to Big Empty” for all kinds of details in that regard. Palast does his homework right, and the story he uncovers is shocking and disgusting. Full video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkpv6rpJEI8&feature=relmfu

The refineries got saved, all right – and Greg Palast got fined for filming the refinery for his documentary under the PATRIOT Act – and so did the downtown areas. The aid for the poor blacks of New Orleans, though, did not rebuild their homes. It did not rebuild their lives. They got stuck in concentration camps with daily trips to a nearby Wal-Mart, and little else.

And why was Katrina such a disaster? Let me steal a bit of the thunder from that Palast report to say that the person that tossed the LSU evacuation plan aside and put in her own total lack of a plan was a major Bush campaign donor. She had zero experience in emergency response planning, but she wrote a big check to Bush and that was good enough. In return, she got a $500,000 contract to sit on her thumbs and hope no hurricane happened. That’s a real good return on investment, by the way… And after her gross criminal negligence that resulted in people having to watch the water go past their noses… that resulted in preventable deaths of fellow Americans… she faced zero criminal charges. In fact, she wrote another check and got another $500,000 government contract: to investigate her own negligence.

Bush had a history of helping his cronies duck responsibility. This is one of those stories. If those poor blacks voted Republican, they wouldn’t have drowned in a Bush administration, I can guarantee you that much.