INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY says that FEMA has never been fast:

Hillary Clinton says FEMA was more effective when her husband was president. The victims of Hurricane Floyd might venture a different opinion, and it wasn’t FEMA that kept supplies from the Superdome.

During a post-Katrina conference call with reporters, Sen. Clinton said, “Helping localities do what they needed to do to mitigate damage — that philosophy governed FEMA during the Clinton administration. It obviously was rejected by this administration.”

Does that mean Clinton’s FEMA was the model of government efficiency and effectiveness? Or was it closer to the DMV and post office? Just ask the tens of thousands of people left stranded up and down the Eastern Seaboard by Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

Read the whole thing, which suggests that today’s problems aren’t an aberration, but part of a pattern.

UPDATE: Reader Bill Furr offers perspective:

Regarding remarks by Sen Clinton and others both left and right: It’s called a disaster because it overwhelms our ability to respond and to mitigate the disruption in communications, supplies, medical services, and everything else in daily life. If we could respond completely and immediately, the it would just be a minor inconvenience.

Good point.

ANOTHER UPDATE: FEMA — a history of failure?