"Baby Dolls" and Budget Woes

Gerard Baker, writing in the Times, has some fun mocking the imprudent spending habits of people receiving relief funds and the Republican administration that is doling them out. He notes that a lot of FEMA debit cards are being used to buy booze and lap dances. He writes:

There were virtually no restrictions on the use of the cards and so the definition of “necessities” acquired some latitude. Louis Vuitton did a roaring trade in handbags in the Houston area and a good deal was dropped, as it were, at some of the city’s finest adult entertainment establishments.

Interviewed by a reporter for the local TV station, Abby over at Baby Dolls said she had seen many clients using their debit cards. She had nothing but praise for this exercise in government largesse. “A lot of customers have been coming in from Louisiana and they’ve been real happy about the $1.75 beers and they’re really nice.” It was only fair, she added that they should get a little publicly funded help. “You lost your whole house, then, why not?” she said. “You might want some beer in a strip club. There are a lot of guys out there that like to do that.”

He then compares this wasteful spending by the poor with that of the current administration.

One of the more puzzling myths about the US in the wake of the Katrina disaster is the notion that heartless, penny-pinching Republicans have bled the Government so dry that the very idea of public spending, even on disasters, has become impossible. In fact, the Fema sponsor-a-stripper exercise was entirely of a piece with an outburst of fiscal incontinence proudly presided over by government-hating Republicans in the last decade.

Read it here.

He's got a point. Conservative dissatisfaction with Bush has been mounting for some time and is reaching a boiling point. This administration has nothing to fear from the hapless left -- but a revolt in Republican ranks could undo almost everything Bush has accomplished.