Here we go again....

FEMA--The saga of the ice:

Ninety-one thousand tons of ice cubes, that is, intended to cool food, medicine and sweltering victims of the storm. It would cost taxpayers more than $100 million, and most of it would never be delivered.

The complete screw up is in the article. FEMA's response? Classic Bush administration "wholly non-partisan (Only Democrats are Partisan!)" spin. First, deny the error by belittling expectations:

"I feebly attempted to get FEMA out of the business of ice," Mr. Brown told a House panel this week. "I don't think that's a federal government responsibility to provide ice to keep my hamburger meat in my freezer or refrigerator fresh."

Shorter Michael Brown: "Screw the small grocery store owner! Screw the working poor who lose all the food they've stored in the freezer!"

Then, acknowledge it's not as simple as that, and that the South is, indeed, hotter'n Maine in the summertime:

But ice, even Mr. Brown agreed, at times plays a critical role, like helping keep patients alive at places like Meadowcrest Hospital, in Gretna, La. After the hurricane hit, the air-conditioning went out and temperatures inside climbed into the 90's.

"Physicians and staff attempted to cool patients by placing ice in front of fans," Phillip Sowa, the hospital's chief executive, wrote in an online account of the ordeal.

Then obfuscate:

Asked about trips like Mr. Kostinec's, Nicol Andrews, a FEMA spokeswoman, said: "He was put on call for a need and the need was not realized, so he went home. Any reasonable person recognizes the fact that it makes sense to prepare for the worst, hope for the best and place your resources where they may be needed."

Unlike an ordinary hurricane, which may leave a large population in still-habitable housing but without power for days or weeks, Hurricane Katrina destroyed neighborhoods and led to unprecedented evacuation, Ms. Andrews said.

"The population we ordered the ice for had been dispersed," she said, "which is good, because they are out of harm's way."

Ten dollars to anyone who can makes sense out of that answer. I read French phenomenology for a hobby, and I can't figure out what this spokeswoman is saying.

And, if you write for the New York Times, find someone who profited from this boondoggle, and get them to give FEMA an excuse that still doesn't make sense:

Archie Harris, a Wilmington, N.C., ice merchant who serves as disaster preparedness chairman for the International Packaged Ice Association, said that while FEMA had been criticized mostly as being underprepared, on the ice question it was being criticized for being overprepared. "FEMA can't win right now," Mr. Harris said. "Can you imagine what people would say if they'd run out of ice?"

Because yeah, that's a legitimate issue: this time FEMA was overprepared! And the difference between "running out of ice" and "never getting it anywhere near the disaster area" is....?

But it's okay, the GOP is goind to regain its grip on the agenda, because, after all, Democrats are partisan (you can't make this stuff up):

After a brutal political month, Republicans are scrambling both to reassure their conservative base and to send a broader message to the American public - that they are, in fact, confronting the real-world issues of soaring gas prices, Hurricane Katrina relief, Iraq and immigration, while the Democrats are consumed with partisan warfare.

As a wholly partisan observer, I have to say this is interesting:

Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, argued that the Republican Party needed to acknowledge the governmental failures in responding to Hurricane Katrina and outline a broad agenda for change. As the party in charge, "We had better be the leader of changing it until it works or we will legitimately be fired as failures," he said.

Other Republicans argued that the political times demanded a little soul-searching. Representative Chris Shays, a Republican moderate from Connecticut, said that the Republican Congress "needed to do a better job of oversight" of the executive branch. "We are not a parliament," he said.

And John C. Danforth, a moderate and former Republican senator from Missouri, argued that the times "call for the Republican Party to recapture the middle of the political spectrum and to do a better job of emphasizing that."

But some Republicans argued that the party needed to recover more of its old aggressiveness. Mr. King said it was an "absolute disgrace" that the Republicans let Mr. Bush take so much criticism - undefended - after Hurricane Katrina. "You've got to fight back," he said. "I think a lot of Republicans have lost their nerve. Being in the majority ten years, we're used to things going our way."

Mr. King warns that the party's base becomes "very disillusioned" when they see Republicans not fighting back.

Would that the Democrats would observe that simple matter: Congress is NOT a Parliament. Do Democrats know this? They say they do.

"Republicans are blinded by their culture of cronyism and corruption," said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader. "They're crumbling, arrogantly protecting their power."

Even as they point to Republican failings, Democrats are keenly aware that they "have an obligation to say what we would do differently," as Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, put it. In the coming weeks they plan to push forward with legislation in both the House and the Senate. Democratic strategists say the party is also working toward a unified agenda that it can carry through the 2006 midterms.

But let me add my two cents to this discussion: I expect NOTHING from Beltway Democrats. If there is to be recovery and reform, it will come from the grassroots. Katrina was a disaster for the GOP because reporters saw, on the ground, not through TV screens in D.C. or New York, what was happening. We saw our country for what we had let it become. The Democrats or politicians of any stripe, who will change that, will come from and respond to the grassroots. I don't expect John Kerry or Al Gore or any other "establishment Democrat," including Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or Barack Obama, to change that, or to change their stripes.

They don't get it. We have to. We have to support and back and promote change from the ground up. Because the leopard is not going to change his spots.

We have to replace the leopard, with a tiger. Which is what democracy is all about, isn't it?