About three weeks ago, I had the unpleasant luck of being at an event in Biloxi, MS, and encountering "Big Daddy" Barbour. I asked him what he planned on doing about the HUGE increase in insurance costs since the storm. I told him that my monthly mortgage payment had DOUBLED since the storm to cover my insurance, and that no other company would write me a policy! His response, "Billy, I don't have anything to do with that or know anything about it. Talk to the state insurance commissioner". This guy is a big fake fraud, who has these low-ed white folk MORONS down here thinking he is a hero after the storm! I bet a lot of the unaccounted for Federal money that came down here is in he and his rich-guy friends pockets!

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" Ronald Reagan.

"One thing you continually hear from officials from FEMA to the state level is that -- and they love this phrase -- they've 'never seen a city go under because of a natural disaster,'" Longo says.

If anyone's interested, take a look at the history of Newfoundland, Canada's outport fishing vilages. Due to overfishing of the Northern Atlantic, Canada's fisheries industry collapsed, and entire communities were basically evacuated by the Canadian federal government; schools, churches, homes more than a century old left to rot on the Newfoundland coast due to a man-made natural disaster.

See, you guys aren't the only ones who have had to put up with corrupt governments destroying communities and traditions. Solidarity, brothers.

There's an unstoppable genius in the GOP's strategy of portraying themselves as 'just plain folks' to their rube constituency so that no matter how outrageously wealthy they actually are they still win a pass with their voters. In that way they can get people that have lost everything to still think of them as benevolent and them inter-lec-shuls as commie, America-haten-scum...

I went to a campaign rally for Haley Barbour back in 2003 in Pascagoula, MS City Park where they were giving away pulled pork with a side of tater salad IIRC. As a Democrat I was slumming it, mingling with the faithful, Jesus loving bigots listening to the rabid red Republicans talk about how "we" had "kicked towel-head ass" in Iraq, the royal "we" being the GOP faithful. I guess the soldiers on the ground helped some too, but you know, thank baby Jesus they had Bush in the White House to get some payback for 9/11.

The other star attraction besides Haley and the pulled pork was Rudy Giuliani himself, looking amusingly out of place surrounded by Confederate flags being waved in support of a ballot initiative that year for keeping it part of the official Mississippi state flag. I only wish I could have recorded Giuliani's speech for my future amusement, the insincerity of him sharing the podium with yokum Barbour was rich.

Lately in a feeble effort to get fat-ass trailer denizens off their couches there's a new PSA campaign where we see Mrs. Barbour looking resplendently Stepford-wife like and woodenly intones “Haley, let's go walkin'!” and Haley, looking more like the Michelin Man than ever feigns enthusiasm to reply in a staccato that even William Shatner would cringe over and agrees, “Yeah,” turning to the camera, “Let's go walkin' Mississippi!”

Every time I see the lard-ass that is Barbour in this commercial I can't help but think that the ONLY legacy he will leave our state is that more people will be so poor that walking will be their only mode of transportation that we won't lead the nation in obesity anymore.

So, if you in the rest of the country are feeling down just remember -

Always look on the bright side of life.

Worse things happen in Mississippi you know.

I live in Bay St Louis, and I'm a liberal Democrat, but Barbour's been very good. Life here is still very difficult. Just about everything promised us from FEMA--local govt debt relief, school rebuilding assistance, infrastructure rebuilding assistance--has not come through. The Federal level is the roadblock. We are hostage to FEMA's capricious and ever changing requirements.

I have to ask. Compared to what? Southern states have an uncanny ability to scream about THE GULDURN COMMIE GUBMINT as they suck the Federal tit. If nothing else, we're masters of graft, greed and corruption. AND WE'RE NOT EVEN SHY ABOUT TELLING YOU THAT.

If you want to see where all that disaster relief money went I suggest you look into recent suburban developments, golf courses, casinos, leisure land use like recreational waterways and the like. I mean there's a REASON that Ole Miss is at or near the bottom of every economic benchmark since oh I dunno, Reconstruction?

... he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."

-- President Bush, September 2, 2005

Just wondering how the re-building of Mr. Lott's house is going?

As a former resident of Louisiana and a current resident of Mississippi, I must agree with the authors that Barbour's performance is overrated, and also that Mississippi has gotten a better deal from Washington than Louisiana has.

There has been rebuilding on the Gulf Coast, but most of the activity is casino reconstruction. I do not have anything against casinos, but the long-term effect of Katrina on the MS Gulf Coast looks like it will be a conversion from a mixed economy of fishing, recreation, and small businesses with casinos into a 100% casino community. Barbour's first act after the storm was to push regulation through allowing casinos to build on land. Prior to the storm, all casinos had to be on boats or barges. This change resulted in a flurry of gaming investment, but it obliterated the intent of the boat-casino law, which was to protect the towns from becoming nothing but casino towns. I hardly consider this an achievement.

It is not true that Mississippi got more money than Louisiana. Louisiana got $59 billion of the original $110 billion relief package, which is more than any single state. However it is quite true that on a per capita basis, Mississippi got much more.

The biggest problem with the "relief" package is that there was very little relief in it. Most of the money Congress "generously" gave was money it had to pay out anyway. The federal government had billions in property losses from Katrina. There was an Air Force base in Biloxi and an Army base in New Orleans. There was a $2 billion stretch of I-10 near New Orleans that is federal property and had to be fixed. The Feds lost Post Offices, military hospitals, national park properties, and many other federal assets. The repair costs for all these loses are included in the $59 billion.

The Federal government is also the financer of the Federal Flood Insurance Program. This program paid out $20 billion in Louisiana after the storm and this money was considered "relief" by the Bushies. The people in that program paid premiums for years and had up to date policies. They were due that money by contract, and it is ridiculous that these billions have been repeatedly called "aid" by GW Bush.

Mississippi got about $3 billion in bloc grants for housing reconstruction. Louisiana got $7 billion, even though it had at least four times as many affected residences.

The article is absolutely right in its assertion that the government requirement that states pay 10% of the cost has been a huge problem. In the place I lived in before the storm, St. Bernard Parish, 20,000 homes were destroyed. Only 6 buildings in the entire parish (county) were not flooded. St Bernard has had enormous problems coming up with its 10%. How do you come up with millions of dollars when 99.998% of your housing stock has been destroyed?

Bush gleefully waived the 10% requirement for New York, one of the richest cities in the world, after 9/11. How will Pearlington Mississippi manage what the Big Apple could not? Gov. Barbour is resistent to pushing to have this requirement waived because he has been puckering up to the Bushies for too long. If anyone gets this gravely needed concession, it will be the Louisiana delegation to Congress, and Kathleen Blanco.

Funny how the much maligned Blanco may be providing more help to the folks in Pearlington and Waveland than their hypocrite of a governor.