Our Republican administration [see update]

Today HUD Secretary Alfonso Jackson announced that the federal government would spend ALMOST TWO BILLION DOLLARS to -- wait for it -- rebuild housing projects in New Orleans.

That's right, the taxpayers are going to spend NEARLY TWO BILLION DOLLARS to recreate what New Orleans had before, which was such a success story before. And get this statement by HUD's Jackson:

[W]e're first going to stop the flow of money out of these communities. You know something's wrong when local earnings of poor folks end up in pockets of Wal-Mart shareholders in Manhattan. After extensive discussions, Wal-Mart and three other chains have agreed to withdraw from areas near low-income New Orleans neighborhoods and to help nurture local businesses to replace them. Legislation under study at state and federal levels will make sure this sticks.

Holy Andrew Young, the Bush administration has strongarmed Wal-Mart and other chain stores to abandon the poor and make their neighborhoods safer for Andy Young's Least Favorite People to come in and charge higher prices for everyday goods.

What sense does any of this make? I wish I could blame Brownie, but he's long gone. I blame Bush throwing federal dollars down a rathole in a desperate attempt to shore up the GOP this fall.

UPDATE: It was all a ruse! NOT TRUE! HUD's calling it a "cruel joke" -- some impostor showed up at the housing summit in New Orleans and made this announcement. The mayor and the Louisiana governor shook his hand. He pretended to be from HUD, and everybody bought it. The fake organization he set up sent out an official-sounding press release to the news media, which is how we learned about it at the Dallas Morning News. According to CNN's reporting, nobody knows who these scammers are, but they managed to fool a lot of people. Me included. Apologies to all.