Diverging views of a crumbling New Orleans emerged Thursday, with statements by some federal officials in contradiction with grittier, more desperate views from the streets.

Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment.

"The enormity of the task requires more resources," the president said. "In America we do not abandon our fellow citizens in their hour of need."

He called the disaster "breathtaking in its surprise."

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

The Post started it with an early morning Page Six item about Rice playing tennis with Monica Seles at a court near New York's Grand Central. Then Drudge revealed that she had attended a Broadway play -- "Spamalot," no less -- the night before.

Wonkette and Gawker got in on the action, with the latter revealing that she had just been spotted shopping for expensive shoes at a chic New York City boutique -- where she had to endure another female customer shouting at her about enjoying herself in such a way while thousands were perishing down South. All of this sparked criticism at many other sites.

No one knows how many were killed by Hurricane Katrina's floods and how many more succumbed waiting to be rescued. But the bodies are everywhere: hidden in attics, floating among the ruined city, crumpled on wheelchairs, abandoned on highways.

"Hurricane Katrina caused the same kind of damage that we anticipated," Brown said Wednesday. "So we planned for it two years ago. Last year, we exercised it. And unfortunately this year, we're implementing it."

...but to reiterate the point I made earlier, which is this is the anti-9/11.

Just in terms of public confidence. When 9/11 happened, Giuliani, was right there. And just as a public presence, he was forceful. No public presence like that now.

So you had a surge of strength; people felt good about the country even though we’d been hit on 9/11. Now we’ve been hit again in a different way (and) people feel lousy. People feel ashamed. And in part that it because of the public presentation. In part that is because of the failure of Bush to understand immediately the shame people felt.

The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows.

The {NeoCon} lie has been shown not to stand up; and when that has not only failed but has been shown to have failed, what can an ideology based on the global projection of national power do when confronted with a crisis which shows it to be nationally powerless?

In Syracuse, N.Y., former president Bill Clinton was discussing New Orleans's dilemma when someone described the speaker's comments. Had they been in the same place when the remarks were made, Clinton said, "I'm afraid I would have assaulted him."

It has been a profoundly shocking experience for many across this vast country who, for the large part, believe the home-spun myth about the invulnerability of the American Dream.

The comparison between the TLC showered on Florida last year and Bush's initial "What, me worry?" response to this year's disaster no doubt will go unnoticed by the amnesia patients in the corporate media. And since I'm lucky enough to live in a swing state that is also coveted by GOP political strategists, I probably don't have to worry about it either -- that is, as long as any future disasters around my neck of the woods happen in one of those years divisible by two.

Sir, they were told like me. Every single day. The cavalry is coming. On the federal level. The cavalry is coming. The cavalry is coming. The cavalry is coming. I have just begun to hear the hooves of the cavalry. The cavalry is still not here yet, but I have begun to hear the hooves and were almost a week out.

Three quick examples. We had Wal-mart deliver three trucks of water. Trailer trucks of water. Fema turned them back, said we didn't need them. This was a week go. We had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a coast guard vessel docked in my parish. The coast guard said come get the fuel right way. When we got there with our trucks, they got a word, FEMA says don't give you the fuel. Yesterday, yesterday, fema comes in and cuts all our emergency communications lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in. He reconnects the line. He posts armed guards said no one is getting near these lines.

I want to stay on this because this is very important. You said you were surprised by the levee being broken. In 2002, The Times-Picayune did story after story--and this is eerie; this is what they wrote and how they predicted what was going to happen. It said, and I'll read it very carefully: "...A major hurricane could decimate the region, but flooding from even a moderate storm could kill thousands. It's just a matter of time.... The scene's been played out for years in computer models or emergency operations simulations... New Orleans has hurricane levees that create a bowl with the bottom dipping lower than the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain....the levees would trap any water that gets inside-- by breach, overtopping or torrential downpour--catastrophic storm.... The estimated 200,000 or more people left behind in an evacuation will be struggling to survive. Some will be housed at the Superdome, the designated shelter for people too sick or inform to leave the city....But many will simply be on their own, in homes or looking for high ground. Thousands will drown while trapped in homes or cars by rising water. Other will be washed away or crushed by debris. Survivors will end up trapped on roofs, in buildings or on high ground surrounded by water, with no means of escape and little food or fresh water, perhaps for several days."

Finally, a personal thought. We have come through what may have been one of the worst weeks in America's history, a week in which government at every level failed the people it was created to serve. There is no purpose for government except to improve the lives of its citizens. Yet as scenes of horror that seemed to be coming from some Third World country flashed before us, official Washington was like a dog watching television. It saw the lights and images, but did not seem to comprehend their meaning or see any link to reality. As the floodwaters rose, local officials in New Orleans ordered the city evacuated. They might
as well have told their citizens to fly to the moon. How do you evacuate when you don't have a car? No hint of intelligent design in any of this. This was just survival of the richest.

The scrapbook of history accords but a few pages to each decade, and it is already clear that the pages devoted to this one will be grisly. There will be pictures of bodies falling from the twin towers, beheaded kidnapping victims in Iraq and corpses still floating in the waterways of New Orleans five days after the disaster that caused them.

"We have tried so hard to do the right thing. It took us 30 hours to get here," he said. That government officials can't straighten out the mess and get them assigned to a relief effort now that they're just a few miles away "is just mind-boggling," he said.

BANGKOK In Aceh, where a tsunami last December hit hardest in Asia, the first reaction to the disaster in New Orleans was sympathy, said Azwar Hasan, a social worker in the Indonesian province where at least 126,000 people died.

As noted, the Washington Post got burned today by a "senior Bush official" who told them that Gov. Blanco of Louisiana had never declared a state of emergency in the site -- a claim the Post printed as fact. Yet the claim was demonstrably false and by late afternoon the Post had been compelled to print a correction.

This week's Newsweek contains the same false claim -- and though their recital of the anecdote is unsourced, common sense suggests that someone or some operation fed them both the same line, which neither organization checked out before running.

Monday's Times, not surprisingly, confirms that the White House damage control operation is being run by Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett.

ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.

"Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater..."

On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.
Federal officials are unapologetic.
"I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," said FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak.

WASHINGTON - The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security workers to support rescuers in the region — and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.

But some view the response to those disasters more favorably than the lawless aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
"I am absolutely disgusted. After the tsunami our people, even the ones who lost everything, wanted to help the others who were suffering," said Sajeewa Chinthaka, 36, as he watched a cricket match in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
"Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. We can easily see where the civilized part of the world's population is."

We begin with Harry Truman who famously declared that the buck always stops at the president's desk. For those who now define the term conservative as unwavering support for George W. Bush, even this suggestion is maddening.

But the bottom line is that despite the fact the president was strapped with two governors who bungled this crisis badly, in the end it is the president who sends in the National Guard and FEMA relief.

The president's suggestion that the size of this storm caught all by surprise just doesn't get it. His administration was 48 hours late sending in the National Guard and poor Americans got raped and killed because of those mistakes.

When Joe Scarborough and ultraconservative Family Research Council head Tony Perkins are on television discussing the government's failed response to the Katrina disaster... When Tucker Carlson is wading through storm waters with a dazed expression but an odd, new fire in his eyes... When Michelle Malkin takes time out from thoroughly out-frothing has-been Ann Coulter in order to call for FEMA head Michael Brown to be fired... I'm sorry, but the administration spin is spun. It's over. I'm not saying well-funded hacks won't be back with another angle tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, but when even partisans like that are calling you out, your spin isn't so much "tough" as just pathetic and an embarrassment to your country. For once in Bush's sheltered, spoonfed existence, he needs to put Karl Rove and the political machine of his government in a corner for a few days, and get around to doing some actual governing.

The Canadians beat both the Army and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Disaster response department, to St. Bernard Parish east of New Orleans, where flood waters are still 8 feet deep in places, Sen. Walter Boasso said.
"Fabulous, fabulous guys," Boasso said. "They started rolling with us and got in boats to save people."
"We've got Canadian flags flying everywhere."

On the issue of whether the military could be deployed without the invitation of state officials, the Office of Legal Counsel, the unit within the Justice Department that provides legal advice to federal agencies, concluded that the federal government did possess authority to move in even over the objection of local officials.

... Bush isn't running in any more elections. Therefore, polls, etc, have as much relevance to him as the price of rice in China.

Levee board under federal investigation before Katrina hit
By David Hawkins & Judi McLeod
Tuesday, September 6, 2005

Rampant public corruption was doing big business in New Orleans long before Hurricane Katrina ever hit. What then Congressman, now Senator David Vitter calls "corrupt, good old boy" practices were apparent in the New Orleans Levee Board just one year before the collapse of regional levees, emergency communications and government services brought the Big Easy to the brink of anarchy. In fact, Senator David Vitter requested a federal investigation into improper practices of a number of public utilities, including the New Orleans Levee Board, and a new Task Force was to have been initiated in the Baton Rouge office, beginning in July 2004.

As Vice-Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee, which holds jurisdiction over the Justice Department, Vitter met with and actively encouraged Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller to establish an additional Public Corruption Task Force in their Louisiana offices.

With the focus on kickbacks and bogus contractors, who was heeding experts calling for a levee disaster from a major hurricane?

Could New Orleans’s descent into quasi-revolutionary chaos be an indirect result of racketeering, kickbacks and procurement fraud by Democrat insiders with ties to a fast-growing organization called `La Francophonie’?

Of all the coastal regions struck by Katrina, only the State of Louisiana is in the clutches of La Francophonie. La Francophonie’s detractors insist that the organization is a simple tool of France’s unsavory foreign policy toward Africa. Others describe it as a Montreal-based, racketeering influenced and corrupt organization (RICO) with outlandish claims to represent the interests of the French-speaking world, including such luminaries as the negotiator of America's abdication of its allies in South Vietnam, John Kerry, and the companion to Kofi Annan at the U.N's school for translators in Geneva, Teresa Heinz

In international relations, Louisiana’s foreign partners include the governments of France, the French community of Belgium, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Louisiana now participates in the sometimes-raucous Sommets de la Francophonie as an observer.

Purporting to "defend Louisiana’s unique linguistic heritage", it was the Conseil pour le developpement du francais en Louisiane (CODOFIL) that brought the state into the La Francophonie tent.

"CODOFIL represents Louisiana at the signing of accords with the foreign governments: these accords dictate the nature of the relationship between Louisiana and the foreign governments."

According to a CODOFIL Internet boast, "foreign visitors to Louisiana are often more aware of CODOFIL than even Louisiana residents!"

La Francophonie was funded and re-structured for its dictatorial, syndicalist, racketeering and possibly genocidal goals by insiders of CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) at a 1986 meeting in Paris.

This first CIDA-funded Francophonie meeting was hosted by Francois Mitterrand, the notoriously corrupt French President and the author of a `failed state’ policy in Africa which has led to Canada’s indulgent support of the continent’s most bloodthirsty dictators and paramilitary goon squads as they engage in massacres–including that of Anglophone Tutsis by francophonie Hutus in Rwanda. (http://bloodbankers.typepad.com/submergingmarkets/2003/11/firstworldcri.html).

Management of La Francophonie is Canadian, CIDA is the main source of funds granted by Canada to Francophonie cooperation programs and managed by La Francophonie Affairs Division. Canadian Heritage, Industry Canada (information technologies), Justice Canada (democracy, legal cooperation) and Environment Canada (particularly management of the Energy and Environment Institute of la Francophonie (institut de l’energie et de l’environnement de la Francophonie are also involved. (http://www.dfait-maeci.qc.ca/foreignpolicy/francophonie/cdnmanagement-en.asp).

CIDA was founded in 1968 by the ex-president of Power Corp. Of Montreal, Maurice Strong, a paranoid, billionaire depopulationist who claims "rich, industrialized countries (America and the Anglosphere) are the greatest threat to the survival of the planet and therefore he, Maurice Strong, has a duty to force them into line. In the 1990s, Strong went on to become the godfather of the $trillion Kyoto trading scandal, with the financial clout to execute his dreams for La Francophonie.

Strong’s plan appears to have played out as follows: Montreal insiders of Power Corp. And La Francophonie have controlling positions in global commodity markets through oil companies (TotalFinaElf) and water companies (Suez).

Former UN Secretary-General Bhoutros Bhoutros Ghalis serves as La Francophonie Secretary-General. Both Strong and Ghali are under investigation by American authorities for alleged ties to the UN oil-for-food scandal.

David Hawkins, Foundation Scholar-Cambridge University, and founder of the Citizen's Association of Forensic Economists at Hawks' CAFE.
Canada Free Press founding editor Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the media. A former Toronto Sun and Kingston Whig Standard columnist, she has also appeared on Newsmax.com, the Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, and World Net Daily. Judi can be reached at: letters@canadafreepress.com. You can read your Letters to the Editor here.

"Some public-spirited folks in Bozeman, Montana, have come up with a wonderful idea to help Uncle Sam offset some of the $62 billion federal cost of Hurricane Katrina relief. The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports that Montanans from both sides of the political aisle have petitioned the city council to give the feds back a $4 million earmark to pay for a parking garage in the just-passed $286 billion highway bill. As one of these citizens, Jane Shaw, told us: 'We figure New Orleans needs the money right now a lot more than we need extra downtown parking space.'

"Which got us thinking: Why not cancel all of the special-project pork in the highway bill and dedicate the $25 billion in savings to emergency relief on the Gulf Coast? Is it asking too much for Richmond, Indiana, to give up $3 million for its hiking trail, or Newark, New Jersey, to put a hold on its $2 million bike path? And in the face of the worst natural disaster in U.S. History, couldn't Alaskans put a hold on the infamous $454 million earmark for the two 'bridges to nowhere' that will serve a town of 50 people? That same half a billion dollars could rebuild thousands of homes for suffering New Orleans evacuees."

- Wall Street Journal editorial, 9/14/05

September 15, 2005
Ready? Cue the Sun...
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times

Arlen Specter: Welcome to Day 3 of the confirmation hearings of John Roberts. I'd like to take this opportunity to remind the nation of what a wonderful job I'm doing chairing this committee, and I'd like to let the ranking member tell me so.

Patrick Leahy: Absolutely, Mr. Chairman! And let me kick off this morning's platitudes about the grandeur of our Constitution by quoting its first three words, "We the People." That means that here in America the people rule - except on issues like abortion, where their opinions don't mean spit.

Specter: Very well put, Senator Leahy! And welcome Judge Roberts back before our committee.

John Roberts Jr: Aw, shucks. This has been a humbling experience, Mr. Chairman. To think that a boy from an exclusive prep school and Harvard Law could grow up and be nominated for the Supreme Court - it shows how in America it's possible to rise from privilege to power! That's the hallmark of our great nation.

So while, of course, I can't talk about specific cases, or any emotions, weather patterns or sandwich meats that may come before the Supreme Court at any time between now and my death in 2048, I do want to reiterate that I feel humbled by this experience. I feel humbled that my wife is dozing off behind me. I feel humbled by this committee's inability to lay a glove on me. And I feel modest. You see this suit? I skinny-dip in this suit. That's how modest I feel.

Tom Coburn: Well put, Judge Roberts. Yet when I think of the polarization that still divides this great nation... Waaaahhhh... Waaaahhhh. (Senator Coburn breaks down weeping.)

Jeff Sessions: This may be a good moment to remind my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that in this country unelected judges don't write the laws. We have unelected lobbyists to do that. Under our system, judges merely interpret the law and decide presidential elections.

Specter: Senator Sessions, let me interrupt you right there. We're not here to argue among ourselves and ignore the nominee. We're here to deliver 30-minute speeches disguised as questions and ignore the nominee. So let me turn to Senator Bid - -

Coburn: And when I think of the flaws in the reconciliation process! And the gerrymandering! Oh, the suffering! Oh, the humanity! Waaaahhhh... Waaaahhhh. (Senator Coburn collapses and is taken back to his office on a stretcher.)

Specter: As I was saying, Senator Biden, you have the floor.

Joseph Biden Jr: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thought this might be a good moment to give the committee a complete history of my heroic sponsorship of the Violence Against Women Act, but before I do that I'd like to interrupt myself by mentioning that I ride the train every day, often speaking with regular Americans, but before I do that I'd like to interrupt my interruption of myself by asking the chairman to restrain the nominee. During my first round of questioning, the nominee continually interrupted my questions by trying to give answers. I could barely keep up my train of thought on stare decisis.

Edward Kennedy: Starry De Cysis? Didn't she do a fan dance down at that old burlesque house in Providence?

Roberts: Mr. Chairman, I certainly don't mean to draw attention to myself, for, as I have said, judges are like umpires - not home plate umpires, but those umpires stuck way out by the right-field foul pole. Nobody ever went to a game to watch the umpires.

But as you know, Judge Ginsburg, during her confirmation hearing, had herself wrapped in duct tape for fear that any involuntary reflex gestures she might make would mar her impartiality in deciding cases later on. Following her example, I have decided to spend the rest of these hearings in a soundproof booth, sunk in a tank of ravenous sharks and accompanied only by the illusionist David Copperfield. But before I go into isolation, I would like to mention the intense modesty I feel at this moment, notwithstanding the fact that not a single one of you slobs could have charged $700 an hour the way I did in private practice.

Richard Durbin: Judge Roberts, before you go, one of the ways we in the Senate prove our superior souls is by emoting mawkish sentimentality on cue. Would you please emote sadness and pain on behalf of politically powerful but downtrodden groups?

Roberts: I am emoting, senator.

The phrase “judicial restraint” may mean many things to many people, but at its core is the notion that federal courts must scrupulously avoid engaging in policymaking, which is committed under our system of government to the popularly elected and accountable branches and to the states.

Judicial “activism,” Judge Roberts stated, “is neither conservative nor liberal.” He recognized that:
Throughout history and to this day both liberal and conservative interests have sough to enlist an activist judiciary in the achievement of goals which were not obtainable through normal political processes.... Today different groups urge judges to substitute their own policy choices for those of federal and state legislatures, but the evils of judicial activism remain the same regardless of the political ends the activism seeks to serve.

Indeed, he sagely recognized that the “greatest threat to judicial independence occurs when the courts flout the basis of their independence by exceeding their constitutionally limited role and engaging in policymaking.”

Of course, one may wonder how a Chief Justice Roberts might distinguish between judicial restraint and blind adherence to precedent. Here again, we have Judge Roberts’s own well-articulated views. In his response to the Senate’s questionnaire, Judge Roberts noted the “important role” that precedent plays in “promoting stability of the legal system.” But at the same time, Judge Roberts told this Committee during his 2003 confirmation hearings that judicial restraint does not preclude the rejection of a bad decision. He stated: “Obviously if the decision is wrong, it should be overruled. That’s not activism. That’s applying the law correctly.”

Which of the following answers would provide you the greatest turmoil?

Is George W. Bush a good leader? NO

Or

Should intelligent design be taught in school? NO

OJ is innocent.

Or

Scott Peterson DID NOT kill Laci.

GRAND OLD SPENDING PARTY

"When President Bush announced last Thursday that the feds would take a lead role in the reconstruction of New Orleans, he in effect established a new $200 billion federal line of credit. To put that $200 billion in perspective, we could give every one of the 500,000 families displaced by Katrina a check for $400,000, and they could each build a beach front home virtually anywhere in America.

"...Republicans were already being ridiculed as the Grand Old Spending Party by taxpayer groups. Their check-writing binge in response to the hurricane only confirmed, as conservative leader Paul Weyrich put it, that 'the GOP, once the party of small government, has lost its bearings and the Republican establishment doesn't seem to get the message that the grass roots of the party is enraged.'"

- Wall Street Journal columnist Stephen Moore

OPERATION OFFSET

"House Republicans are looking at delaying some federal spending, including money for a prescription drug benefit under Medicare and thousands of highway projects, to offset the cost of rebuilding the Gulf Coast, a leading GOP fiscal conservative said Sunday. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said there is a need for dramatic spending cuts in 'big-ticket items.'

"...Raising taxes or not making permanent the president's tax cuts is not the answer now, said Pence, head of the Republican Study (Committee), the spearhead group for the GOP's most conservative members. 'We simply cannot break the bank of the federal budget,' Pence told ABC's 'This Week.' 'We simply can't allow a catastrophe of nature to become a catastrophe of debt for our children and grandchildren,' he said.

"The drug benefit program, set to begin Jan. 1, is expected to cost $40 billion a year. Last month President Bush signed a $286.4 billion highway bill that has been criticized for including about 6,000 projects added by lawmakers to benefit their districts and states. Setting aside all of those additional highway projects and delaying the drug benefit by a year are expected to be among the proposals House Republicans are preparing for 'Operation Offset' this week, Pence said."

- Associated Press, 9/18/05

Have you ever seen anyone else on the left dress like that?

From Tuesday's Radio Blogger http://www.radioblogger.com/#001001
_________________________

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin held a press conference a little bit ago, and started losing control to a media pool assembled that was showing signs of panic, due to the previous incompetence in the region by the local and state government. Lt. Gen. Russel Honore stepped in and literally took over. Here's what he had to say:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Honore: And Mr. Mayor, let's go back, because I can see right now, we're setting this up as he said, he said, we said. All right? We are not going to go, by order of the mayor and the governor, and open the convention center for people to come in. There are buses there. Is that clear to you? Buses parked. There are 4,000 troops there. People come, they get on a bus, they get on a truck, they move on. Is that clear? Is that clear to the public?

Female reporter: Where do they move on...

Honore: That's not your business.

Male reporter: But General, that didn't work the first time...

Honore: Wait a minute. It didn't work the first time. This ain't the first time. Okay? If...we don't control Rita, you understand? So there are a lot of pieces of it that's going to be worked out. You got good public servants working through it. Let's get a little trust here, because you're starting to act like this is your problem. You are carrying the message, okay? What we're going to do is have the buses staged. The initial place is at the convention center. We're not going to announce other places at this time, until we get a plan set, and we'll let people know where those locations are, through the government, and through public announcements. Right now, to handle the number of people that want to leave, we've got the capacity. You will come to the convention center. There are soldiers there from the 82nd Airborne, and from the Louisiana National Guard. People will be told to get on the bus, and we will take care of them. And where they go will be dependent on the capacity in this state. We've got our communications up. And we'll tell them where to go. And when they get there, they'll be able to get a chance, an opportunity to get registered, and so they can let their families know where they are. But don't start panic here. Okay? We've got a location. It is in the front of the convention center, and that's where we will use to migrate people from it, into the system.

Male reporter: General Honore, we were told that Berman Stadium on the west bank would be another staging area...

Honore: Not to my knowledge. Again, the current place, I just told you one time, is the convention center. Once we complete the plan with the mayor, and is approved by the governor, then we'll start that in the next 12-24 hours. And we understand that there's a problem in getting communications out. That's where we need your help. But let's not confuse the questions with the answers. Buses at the convention center will move our citizens, for whom we have sworn that we will support and defend...and we'll move them on. Let's not get stuck on the last storm. You're asking last storm questions for people who are concerned about the future storm. Don't get stuck on stupid, reporters. We are moving forward. And don't confuse the people please. You are part of the public message. So help us get the message straight. And if you don't understand, maybe you'll confuse it to the people. That's why we like follow-up questions. But right now, it's the convention center, and move on.

Male reporter: General, a little bit more about why that's happening this time, though, and did not have that last time...

Honore: You are stuck on stupid. I'm not going to answer that question. We are going to deal with Rita. This is public information that people are depending on the government to put out. This is the way we've got to do it. So please. I apologize to you, but let's talk about the future. Rita is happening. And right now, we need to get good, clean information out to the people that they can use. And we can have a conversation on the side about the past, in a couple of months.

- - - - - - - - -

I think the General just started a movement, and he may not even realize it. Every time a reporter, in any situation, starts spinning, or completely misses the point, they need to be peppered with, "Don't get stuck on stupid."

I'd pay money to see David Gregory in the White House Press Corps foaming at the mouth over something trivial Scott McClellan said, and have McClellan say, "David, you're stuck on stupid. I'm not going to answer that."

I'd have fallen out of my chair if John Roberts would have listened to Joe Biden ramble on, and said, "Don't get stuck on stupid, Senator."

I can see the bumper stickers now. I can even see those stupid rubber wristbands with DGSOS etched in them.

I love General Honore.

# # #

In the summer of 2003, Representative Peter King (R., N.Y.) was interviewed by Alexandra Pelosi at a barbecue on the White House lawn for her HBO documentary Diary of a Political Tourist. “It’s already over. The election’s over. We won,” King exulted more than a year before the election. When asked by Pelosi—the daughter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi—how he knew that Bush would win, he answered, “It’s all over but the counting. And we’ll take care of the counting.”

There's a doctoral dissertation to be written about Bush appointees named during the administration's frequent fits of Petulant Pique. These PP appointments are made in the immortal childhood spirit of "nanny-nanny boo-boo, I'll show you." Susan Wood resigns in protest over the politicization of women's health care? Ha! We'll show her -- we'll put a vet in charge, instead.

The PP appointments are less for reasons of ideology or even rewarding the politically faithful than just in the old nyeh-nyeh spirit. You could, for example, put any number of people at the Department of Labor who are wholly unsympathetic to the labor movement -- Bush has installed shoals of them already. But there is a certain arch, flippant malice to making Edwin Foulke assistant secretary in charge of the health and safety of workers.

Republican appointees who oppose the agencies to which they are assigned are a dime a dozen, but Foulke is a partner from the most notorious union-busting law firm in the country. What he does for a living is destroy the only organizations that care about workers' health and safety.

Here's another PP pick: put a timber industry lobbyist in as head of the Forest Service. How about a mining industry lobbyist who believes public lands are unconstitutional in charge of the public lands? Nice shot. A utility lobbyist who represented the worst air polluters in the country as head of the clean air division at the EPA? A laff riot. As head of the Superfund, a woman whose last job was teaching corporate polluters how to evade Superfund regulations? Cute, cute, cute. A Monsanto lobbyist as No. 2 at the EPA. A lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute at the Council on Environmental Quality. And so on. And so forth.

The Federal Trade Commission was finally embarrassed enough by demands from Democratic governors to start an investigation into recent price gouging by oil companies. But the investigation will be headed by a former lawyer for ChevronTexaco. Is this fun or what? Nanny-nanny boo-boo.