Everybody is doing fine down in the Louisiana parishes now that Obama is president.

The economic stimulus signed by President Barack Obama will spread billions of dollars across the country to spruce up aging roads and bridges. But there's not a dime specifically dedicated to fixing leftover damage from Hurricane Katrina.

And there's no outrage about it.

Democrats who routinely criticized President George W. Bush for not sending more money to the Gulf Coast appear to be giving Obama the benefit of the doubt in his first major spending initiative. Even the Gulf's fiercest advocates say they're happy with the stimulus package, and their states have enough money for now to address their needs.

"I'm not saying there won't be a need in the future, but right now the focus is not on more money, it's on using what we have," said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who has criticized Democrats and Republicans alike over Katrina funding.

It's a significant change in tone from the Bush years, when any perceived slight of Katrina victims was met with charges that the Republican president who bungled the initial response to the disaster continued to callously ignore the Gulf's needs years later.

This trick works every twenty years or so as a new generation forgets how the last one was fooled with the same nonsense. All the weeping and wailing over the victims of Katrina suddenly stopped like the crying at a New Orleans funeral when the casket hits the dirt.

During the Reagan and H.W. Bush years, it was the homeless. Every night weeping and wailing over the plight of the homeless on the national news broadcasts. Clinton gets elected--poof! No more homeless.