Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

"I was putting forward a hypothetical proposition. Put that forward. Examined it. And then said about it that it's morally reprehensible. To recommend abortion of an entire group of people in order to lower your crime rate is morally reprehensible. But this is what happens when you argue that the ends can justify the means," he told CNN.

"I'm not racist, and I'll put my record up against theirs," referring to Pelosi and other critics. "I've been a champion of the real civil rights issue of our times -- equal educational opportunities for kids."

"We've got to have candor and talk about these things while we reject wild hypotheses," Bennett said.

"I don't think people have the right to be angry, if they look at the whole thing. But if they get a selective part of my comment, I can see why they would be angry. If somebody thought I was advocating that, they ought to be angry. I would be angry."

"But that's not what I advocate."

Asked if he owed people an apology, Bennett replied, "I don't think I do. I think people who misrepresented my view owe me an apology."

• From the mind of Bill Bennett
  
  Tags: bill bennett, racism , abortion

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION of 2008 is a long way off, but Republicans better start worrying about it now. The 2006 midterm election? Republicans are likely to hold onto the Senate and House. But 2008 is another story. In the midst of a Republican era, Democrats stand a good chance of taking the White House then. Even Senator Hillary Clinton of New York--or perhaps I should say especially Hillary Clinton--has realistic prospects of winning.

What's the problem for Republicans? There are at least five of them. The field of Republican candidates is weak. Democrats will have an easier time than Republicans in duplicating their strong 2004 voter registration and turnout drive in 2008. Democrats, despite their drift to the left and persistent shrillness, barely trail Republicans at all in voter appeal. Besides, they may sober up ideologically in 2008. And the media, unless John McCain is the Republican nominee, will be more pro-Democratic than ever.

Let's look at each of these reasons briefly. The strongest potential Republican candidates are Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. None of them is running and Cheney and Rice are downright adamant about it. I've asked Cheney about 2008 on three separate occasions. He gives absolutely no indication of changing his decision not to run. And he says his health isn't the reason. He just doesn't want to be a candidate and won't do it, he insists, even if President Bush asks him to.

Rice is just as negative on the idea of seeking the presidency. And aides to Jeb Bush say he has no desire to run in 2008, but might consider it in 2012. Besides, he looks worn out after so many crises (hurricanes, Terri Schiavo, the 2000 recount) during his two terms.

That leaves the Republican party with a lesser field of candidates: McCain, Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Virginia Senator George Allen, and a few others. All of them have distinct handicaps. McCain's is that many Republican loathe him. Giuliani is a social liberal. Allen and Romney are inexperienced at the national level. Frist has a soft and blurred image.

The second reason for Republican anxiety about 2008 is organization. Democrats, with millions of dollars from limousine liberals such as George Soros, paid for thousands of campaign workers to sign up voters and get them to the polls. They produced a much larger Democratic turnout in 2004 than in 2000. Republicans used an army of 1.5 million volunteers to increase the Republican vote by even more. It was an enormous political feat.

But in 2008, there's a reasonably good chance Democrats will able to produce another great field operation. All they'll need is another infusion of money from rich liberals. But Republicans will have a harder time. The 2004 volunteers showed up because of their strong personal commitment to President Bush. Will so many volunteers work so hard for McCain or Allen or Giuliani or whoever wins the Republican presidential nomination in 2008? I doubt it.

Katherine Harris (FL-13)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $20,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 95% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-5015

Clay Shaw (FL-22)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $30,020.00
Voted with DeLay: 95% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
Contributions to DeLay's Legal Defense Fund: $5,000.00
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-3026

Ric Keller (FL-08)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $20,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 95% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-2176

Ginny Brown-Waite (FL-05)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $20,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 93% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
Contributions to DeLay's Legal Defense Fund: $1,000.00
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-1002

Tom Feeney (FL-24)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $10,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 94% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
Contributions to DeLay's Legal Defense Fund: $5,000.00
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-2706

Connie Mack (FL-14)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $10,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 96% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-2536

Adam Putnam (FL-12)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $15,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 97% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 3 times
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-1252

David Weldon (FL-15)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $13,569.00
Voted with DeLay: 95% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 4 times
Contributions to DeLay's Legal Defense Fund: $6,000.00
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-3671

Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $10,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 93% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
Contributions to DeLay's Legal Defense Fund: $5,000.00
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-2778

Mark Foley (FL-16)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $8,531.00
Voted with DeLay: 94% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-5792

John Mica (FL-07)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $5,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 94% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 3 times
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-4035

Jeff Miller (FL-01)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $10,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 91% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
Contributions to DeLay's Legal Defense Fund: $5,000.00
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-4136

CALLER: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I've read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn't -- never touches this at all. ... (Q&A in between...)

BENNETT: ... Well, I don’t think it is either, I don’t think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don’t know. But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.

Bennett's remark was apparently inspired by the claim that legalized abortion has reduced crime rates, which was posited in the book Freakonomics (William Morrow, May 2005) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. But Levitt and Dubner argued that aborted fetuses would have been more likely to grow up poor and in single-parent or teenage-parent households and therefore more likely to commit crimes; they did not put forth Bennett's race-based argument.

Depressed and demoralized White House staffers say working at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is “life in a hellhole” as they try to deal with a sullen, moody President whose temper tantrums drive staffers crying from the room and bring the business of running the country to a halt.

“It’s like working in an insane asylum,” says one White House aide. “People walk around like they’re in a trance. We’re the dance band on the Titanic, playing out our last songs to people who know the ship is sinking and none of us are going to make it.”

• The Martha Stewart precedent

An Army spokesman, Col. Joseph Curtin, said the Criminal Investigation Division recently began investigating the matter on behalf of Lt. Gen. John Vines, commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq.

The East Bay Express, a New Times weekly in Emeryville, Ca. last week published a lengthy story about the porn site, and interviewed its owner, who said he gave soldiers free access in exchange for photos of dead or mutilated Iraqis. The soldiers apparently had been having trouble subscribing to the site because of credit card problems. The Online Journalism Review also ran a prominent piece. AmericaBlog, a leading blog, then covered it widely this week, and included links to some of the photos.

• "I don't know how you can sleep at night..."
• Wait, wait, there's more
• Brownie, you're one heck of a putz
• Now hear this!

Officer Criticizes Detainee Abuse Inquiry
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 - An Army captain who reported new allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq said Tuesday that Army investigators seemed more concerned about tracking down young soldiers who reported misconduct than in following up the accusations and investigating whether higher-ranking officers knew of the abuses.

• Wait, wait, there's more
• Brownie, you're one heck of a putz
• Now hear this!

Tags: FEMA, Katrina, New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, Politics, Rita, News, Bush, New Orleans

Rushing thinks part of his mission is to educate the American public on the reality of war. "War in America has its own branding—it's the American flag, it's that Lee Greenwood song, it's a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square. But Americans need to be aware of the consequences."

Like it or not, "Al Jazeera is the most influential Arab voice outside of mosques. It is the largest shaper of ideology," says Rushing. And if American voices are not heard in that venue, then they have no chance of having virtually any influence. "I've dedicated my adult life to the health and security of the United States and to representing the best of American ideas. I will maintain my credibility by continuing to do that." Rushing may discover that being a Marine might have been the easy part.

As far back as the Florida recount, soon-to-be Vice President Dick Cheney was poring over organizational charts of the government with an eye toward stocking it with people sympathetic to the incoming Administration. Clay Johnson III, Bush's former Yale roommate and the Administration's chief architect of personnel, recalls preparing for the inner circle's first trip from Austin, Texas, to Washington: "We were standing there getting ready to get on a plane, looking at each other like: Can you believe what we're getting ready to do?"

The Office of Personnel Management's Plum Book, published at the start of each presidential Administration, shows that there are more than 3,000 positions a President can fill without consideration for civil service rules. And Bush has gone further than most Presidents to put political stalwarts in some of the most important government jobs you've never heard of, and to give them genuine power over the bureaucracy. "These folks are really good at using the instruments of government to promote the President's political agenda," says Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University and a well-known expert on the machinery of government. "And I think that takes you well into the gray zone where few Presidents have dared to go in the past. It's the coordination and centralization that's important here." ...

...Some of the appointments are raising serious concerns in the agencies themselves and on Capitol Hill about the competence and independence of agencies that the country relies on to keep us safe, healthy and secure. Internal e-mail messages obtained by TIME show that scientists' drug-safety decisions at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are being second-guessed by a 33-year-old doctor turned stock picker. At the Office of Management and Budget, an ex-lobbyist with minimal purchasing experience oversaw $300 billion in spending, until his arrest last week. At the Department of Homeland Security, an agency the Administration initially resisted, a well-connected White House aide with minimal experience is poised to take over what many consider the single most crucial post in ensuring that terrorists do not enter the country again. And who is acting as watchdog at every federal agency? A corps of inspectors general who may be increasingly chosen more for their political credentials than their investigative ones.

Nowhere in the federal bureaucracy is it more important to insulate government experts from the influences of politics and special interests than at the Food and Drug Administration, the agency charged with assuring the safety of everything from new vaccines and dietary supplements to animal feed and hair dye. That is why many within the department, as well as in the broader scientific community, were startled when, in July, Scott Gottlieb was named deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs, one of three deputies in the agency's second-ranked post at FDA.

His official FDA biography notes that Gottlieb, 33, who got his medical degree at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, did a previous stint providing policy advice at the agency, as well as at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. What the bio omits is that his most recent job was as editor of a popular Wall Street newsletter, the Forbes/Gottlieb Medical Technology Investor, in which he offered such tips as "Three Biotech Stocks to Buy Now." In declaring Gottlieb a "noted authority" who had written more than 300 policy and medical articles, the biography neglects the fact that many of those articles criticized the FDA for being too slow to approve new drugs and too quick to issue warning letters when it suspects ones already on the market might be unsafe. FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford, who resigned suddenly and without explanation last Friday, wrote in response to e-mailed questions that Gottlieb is "talented and smart, and I am delighted to have been able to recruit him back to the agency to help me fulfill our public-health goals." But others, including Jimmy Carter--era FDA Commissioner Donald Kennedy, a former Stanford University president and now executive editor-in-chief of the journal Science, say Gottlieb breaks the mold of appointees at that level who are generally career FDA scientists or experts well known in their field. "The appointment comes out of nowhere. I've never seen anything like that," says Kennedy.

Gottlieb's financial ties to the drug industry were at one time quite extensive. Upon taking his new job, he recused himself for up to a year from any deliberations involving nine companies that are regulated by the FDA and "where a reasonable person would question my impartiality in the matter." Among them are Eli Lilly, Roche and Proctor & Gamble, according to his Aug. 5 "Disqualification Statement Regarding Former Clients," a copy of which was obtained by TIME. Gottlieb, though, insists that his role at the agency is limited to shaping broad policies, such as improving communication between the FDA, doctors and patients, and developing a strategy for dealing with pandemics of such diseases as flu, West Nile virus and SARS. ...

SHAYS: "Well that's why I'm happy you left. Because that kind of look into the lights like a deer makes me realize you weren't capable of handling the job..."

BROWN: "...I guess what you wanted me to do was to be this superhero and take everybody out of New Orleans."

SHAYS: "No, what I wanted you to do was to do your job of coordinating. ... I think its breathtaking for you to say that you didn't have the resouces to do your job and then to describe the job of coordinating in such a feeble way. ..." adding that Brown is doing more complaining about state and local officials than explaining what he perceived his job to be and what went wrong...

"I find it stunning that this hearing would start out with you Mr. Brown laying the blame for FEMA's failings at the feet of the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans. ... As you know, Governor Blanco requested emergency declaration three days before the storm made landfall and president bush made an emergency declaration two days before. But even if they had made no request at all -- even if they had been plainly dysfunctional (and I'm not here to defend them but I don't think that is an adequate characterization at all), FEMA had already made designations that made it clear that this was an emergency that the state and federal governments could not have handled at all. Your own documentation states that a catastrophic storm of this size would quickly overwhelm the state's responses.
If FEMA was overwhelmed, how much more overwhelmed would the state and local governments be?"

"What I meant to say was that we were just learning about it 36 hours earlier..."

1. Federalism...
2. We have no fire trucks...
3. We're small, we have no money...

And can you cite any personal failures, Mr. Brown?

1. Failed to set up regular press briefings to let the media know what a great job FEMA was doing ...
2. Was unable to persuade Blanco and Nagin to work together... (see FEMA response number 1 -- Federalism...)

And were you really an intern?

1. Hell yes, and a damned good one!

Hospital defends baby cooing ban
11.49AM, Tue Sep 27 2005

A hospital has defended a ban on visitors cooing at other people's new-born babies for fear of trampling over the tots' human rights.

Some new mothers at Calderdale Royal Hospital, in Halifax, have been astonished by the new rules.

The hospital states that visitors must not ask questions about other patients' babies or look at them in maternity wards.

But managers at the hospital said the drive was a necessary measure to prevent visitors gawping at new-borns or quizzing the mother.

Staff in one of the wards have set up a display featuring a doll in a cot. A sign next to it says: "What makes you think I want to be looked at?"

Cards were handed out to visitors stating: "Respect my baby" and underneath, as if written by a baby, are the words: "My parents ask you to treat my personal space with consideration."

President Bush urged Americans on Monday to cut back on unnecessary travel to make up for fuel shortages caused by Hurricane Rita as he prepared to take his seventh trip to the Gulf Coast. ...

... Bush made a short trip Monday night to attend a dinner for Gen. Richard Myers, the retiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's home, not far from the White House. The president's motorcade included more than a dozen vehicles...

With fears mounting that high energy costs will crimp economic growth, President Bush called on Americans yesterday to conserve gasoline by driving less. He also issued a directive for all federal agencies to cut their own energy use and to encourage employees to use public transportation.

"We can all pitch in," Mr. Bush said. "People just need to recognize that the storms have caused disruption," he added, and that if Americans are able to avoid going "on a trip that's not essential, that would be helpful."

...Bush's comments yesterday -- encouraging the country to skip non-essential trips -- raised questions about his own recent travel habits. Today, Bush embarks on his seventh trip to the Gulf Coast this month. (According to the Air Force, "fuel costs for Air Force One have risen to $6,029 per hour, up from $3,974 an hour in the last budget year.") White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said the president took the trips because he needed "to provide support or encouragement to lift the spirits of all those who have been working around the clock to help people in need."

Colleagues said the demotion of Mr. Black, the acting United States attorney in Guam, and a subsequent order barring him from pursuing public corruption cases brought an end to his inquiry into Mr. Abramoff's lobbying work for some Guam judges.

Colleagues of Mr. Black, who had run the federal prosecutor's office in Guam for 12 years, spoke on condition of anonymity because of Justice Department rules that bar employees from talking to reporters. They said F.B.I. agents questioned several people in Guam and Washington this summer about whether Mr. Abramoff or his friends in the Bush administration had pushed for Mr. Black's removal. Mr. Abramoff's internal e-mail messages show that he boasted to clients about what he described as his close ties to John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, and others at the department.

• Cheers vs. Fresh Prince of Bel Air
• All in the Family vs. Diff'rent Strokes
• The Jeffersons vs. Welcome Back, Kotter; and
• Good Times vs. the Brady Bunch

Couldn't tell you how Gilligan's Island got bumped, but that's showbiz ... If you want to play along yourself, here's the link.

An Internet video newscast called the Voice of the Caliphate was broadcast for the first time on Monday, purporting to be a production of al Qaeda and featuring an anchorman who wore a black ski mask and an ammunition belt.

The anchorman, who said the report would appear once a week, presented news about the Gaza Strip and Iraq and expressed happiness about recent hurricanes in the United States. A copy of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, was placed by his right hand and a rifle affixed to a tripod was pointed at the camera.

The origins of the broadcast could not be immediately verified. If the program was indeed an al Qaeda production, it would mark a change by the group's use of the Internet to spread its messages and propaganda. Direct dissemination would avoid editing or censorship by television networks, many of which usually air only excerpts of the group's statements and avoid showing gruesome images of killings.

The site, which is hosted on a free server, encourages visitors to download the first program via the free file sharing host YouSendIt.com. ...

..."The program contains heavy coverage of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, including excerpts of his speeches, and video clips of terrorist activity in Iraq. In addition, the music that is played at the end of the program is a popular chant among Zarqawi's AQ wing. The song, in fact, was often broadcast on Radio al-Tajdeed - the London-based satellite program that caused caused a stir last month when its support for terrorism was revealed.

A short "advertisement" for the film "Total Jihad" is played towards the end of the "newscast."

Clinton's gains come as she is seen moving closer to the political center. Forty-two percent (42%) now say that Clinton is politically liberal. That matches the lowest liberal rating ever recorded by the Hillary Meter (review trends). In January, 51% viewed Clinton as politically liberal.

Thirty-three percent (33%) now view her as politically moderate while 9% say she is a conservative.

Collectively, today’s Hillary Meter places Senator Clinton a net 50 points to the left of the nation's political center. Two weeks ago, she was 57 points to the left of center.

When the history of the Katrina disaster is written, an entire chapter will be devoted to the mythology of mayhem in the Superdome and convention center -- the two places most of the poor and the infirm went to wait for federal help after evacuating their homes. Already, the Times Picayune is correcting some of the most egregious lies from that horrible few days: the tales of murder, bodies stacked in stairwells and strewn around the floors, anarchy and child rape that kept federal officials and others from entering the city ("too dangerous" FEMA said), that caused even the Louisiana governor to go wild and woolly, and that may have contributed to the outrageous acts of other parishes who refused to allow N.O. evacuees in. The stories defamed the Black residents of New Orleans, reducing them to animals not so worthy of saving. And for the most part, they weren't true.

There was horror inside those designated evacuation centers: the horror of waiting without food, water or hope for nearly four long days; the horrors of no sanitation, filthy conditions, people who died because they didn't have their medication, or from the heat. There was violence, too -- the good and the bad were thrown together by circumstance, and the bad surely preyed upon the weak. There were real looters wandering the streets -- not the people who went into empty stores to find food and milk -- the other kind, who eluded authorities in order to raid whatever homes were still standing. But the initial reports of what was happening in New Orleans were a collective smear on that city's residents. Thankfully, the accounts are being corrected.

Tags: katrina, New Orleans, Politics, Hurricane Katrina, Bush, News, fema.

Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions
By ERIC LIPTON and RON NIXON

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 - Topping the federal government's list of costs related to Hurricane Katrina is the $568 million in contracts for debris removal landed by a Florida company with ties to Mississippi's Republican governor. Near the bottom is an $89.95 bill for a pair of brown steel-toe shoes bought by an Environmental Protection Agency worker in Baton Rouge, La.

The first detailed tally of commitments from federal agencies since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast four weeks ago shows that more than 15 contracts exceed $100 million, including 5 of $500 million or more. Most of those were for clearing away the trees, homes and cars strewn across the region; purchasing trailers and mobile homes; or providing trucks, ships, buses and planes.

More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show, provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse.

Already, questions have been raised about the political connections of two major contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - that have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former leader of FEMA.

"When you do something like this, you do increase the vulnerability for fraud, plain waste, abuse and mismanagement," said Richard L. Skinner, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, who said 60 members of his staff were examining Hurricane Katrina contracts. "We are very apprehensive about what we are seeing."

Bills have come in for deals that apparently were clinched with a handshake, with no documentation to back them up, said Mr. Skinner, who declined to provide details.

"Most, if not all, of these people down there were trying to do the right thing," he said. "They were under a lot of pressure and they took a lot of shortcuts that may have resulted in a lot of waste."

When Gov. Jeb Bush announced in October 2003 he had lured The Scripps Research Institute to Palm Beach County with more than $300 million in public money, he touted it as an economic boon to Floridians.

But before taxpayers see a return on the investment, among those who could benefit most from the Scripps Florida windfall are those who have donated thousands to the Republican Party and GOP candidates and have ties to the Bushes.

Several of the developers and landowners with interests in the leading sites for the biotech community are generous donors to President Bush's re-election campaign or to the Republican National Committee. There are Democratic contributors involved in the project, but those who give to the GOP stand out for their number and the size of their donations.

Protesting the war in Iraq, the poet Sharon Olds, winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award and professor of writing at New York University, has rebuffed an invitation from Laura Bush, the first lady, to attend the fifth National Book Festival on the National Mall in Washington on Saturday. Noting that the event, sponsored by the Library of Congress, includes a dinner at the library and a breakfast at the White House, Ms. Olds, in a letter on the Web site of The Nation, said she found the invitation appealing. "But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you," she wrote in a letter to Mrs. Bush. "I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush administration. . . . So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it."

Another blogster noticed something quite interesting---that the parishes declared under FEMA watch before Hurricane Katrina hit Lousiana were all in north and west Louisiana...so I did some more checking:

In the official President's letter of Aug. 28, 2005 declaring "an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and (the President has) ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing," the actual Louisiana parishes that are then officially listed as parishes on which FEMA will concentrate "to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe" are all Louisiana parishes north and west of the Mississippi Delta region (north and west of Baton Rouge), not those Louisiana parishes in southeast Louisiana that were hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina.

Then, when one reads the official request from Gov. Blanco to the White House for FEMA assistance before Katrina hit, her letter states: "Parishes expected to receive MAJOR DAMAGE (my emphasis) based on the anticipated track of Hurricane Katrina are: Ascension, Assumption, Jefferson, Lafourche, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. James, St. John, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Terrebonne, and Washington."

Strange. None of these Louisiana parishes were listed in the official White House declaration issued in response to Gov. Blanco's request.

Louisiana Gov. Blanco's request divided the state's parishes into three categories: 1) major damage (14 parishes), 2) significant damage (17 parishes) and 3) parishes for evacuation purposes (33 parishes).

All 33 parishes in no. 3 appeared in the President's declaration. 6 parishes from no. 2 appeared in the President's declaration while 11 didn't. None of the parishes in the no. 1 (major damage) category appeared in the President's declaration authorizing FEMA action.

Very,very strange.

Then look at the President's declarations for Mississippi and Alabama. All the counties listed were directly in the path of Hurricane Katrina and probably suffered "major damage." They are also all located in southern Mississippi and Alabama, not like most of the Louisiana parishes listed in the President's official declaration which are located in northern Louisiana.

In other words, what if, per official Presidential order, FEMA efforts in Louisiana were directed toward the least endangered parishes, while the most vulnerable parishes apparently were forgotten, or overlooked, by whoever composed the official White House response to Gov. Blanco's request for federal assistance prior to Hurricane Katrina reaching land? But a Presidential order is a Presidential order, so FEMA was ordered to go help the least endangered parishes in Louisiana.

This might explain why federal relief efforts were visible in southern Alabama and southern Mississippi, while they appeared largely invisible in southern and eastern Louisiana, and especially in New Orleans. [emphasis added]

Just wondering...how many Republicans it takes to screw in a lightbulb?

The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in the parishes of Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, Catahoula, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee, Ouachita, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Helena, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, West Feliciana, and Winn.

Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. Debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent Federal funding.

President Bush in photo op at Colorado hurricane command center

President Struggles to Regain His Pre-Hurricane Swagger

By Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, September 24, 2005; A01

COLORADO SPRINGS, Sept. 23 -- President Bush flew here ahead of Hurricane Rita on Friday to show command of a federal disaster response effort that even supporters acknowledge he fumbled three weeks ago.

The president said he wanted to see the emergency response system from the ground floor at U.S. Northern Command headquarters. "I need to understand how it works better," he told reporters before leaving Washington. But Bush was also embarking on a broader, and possibly more important, mission: restoring strength and confidence in his presidency.

A president who roamed across the national and world stages with an unshakable self-assurance that comforted Republicans and confounded critics since 2001 suddenly finds himself struggling to reclaim his swagger. Bush's standing with the public -- and within the Republican Party -- has been battered by a failed Social Security campaign, violence in Iraq, and most recently Hurricane Katrina. His approval ratings, 42 percent in the most recent Washington Post-ABC poll, have never been lower.

A president who normally thrives on tough talk and self-assurance finds himself at what aides privately describe as a low point in office, one that is changing the psychic and political aura of the White House, as well as its distinctive political approach.

In small, sometimes subtle but unmistakable ways, the president and top aides sound less certain, more conciliatory and willing to do something they avoided in the first term: admit mistakes. After bulling through crisis after crisis with a "bring 'em on" brashness, a more solemn Bush now has twice taken responsibility for the much-criticized response to Hurricane Katrina.

Aides who never betrayed self-doubt now talk in private of failures selling the American people on the Iraq war, the president's Social Security plan and his response to Hurricane Katrina. The president who once told the United Nations it would drift into irrelevancy if it did not back the invasion of Iraq last week praised the world body and said the world works better "when we act together." A White House team that operated on its terms since 2000 is reaching to outside experts for answers like never before.

... The president has cleared much of his schedule to focus on rebuilding the states devastated by Katrina and prepare for the wrath of Rita. Despite grumbling among conservatives, Bush said he will spend whatever it takes to put Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama back together, and he has told aides he will do the same for Rita's victims. There are private talks of tearing up Bush's agenda to change the second-term focus to the poor and preventing future disasters.

Most of all, White House aides want to reestablish Bush's swagger -- the projection of competence and confidence in the White House that has carried the administration through tough times since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

A top Republican close to the White House since the earliest days said the absence of a "reelection target" and pressure from first lady Laura Bush and others to soften his second-term tone conspired to temper Bush's swagger well before Katrina hit. "A reelection campaign was always the driving principle to force them to get things together," said the GOP operative, who would speak candidly about Bush only if his name was not used. He said the "brilliance of this team" was always overstated. "Part of the reason they looked so good is Democrats were so discombobulated." Since the election, this official said, White House aides reported that Laura Bush was among those counseling Bush to change his cowboy image during the final four years.

William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, said the psychological turnabout started with the failed Social Security campaign, billed as the number one domestic priority six months ago. "The negative effect of the Social Security [campaign] is underestimated," Kristol said. "Once you make that kind of mistake, people tend to be less deferential to your decisions." This coincided with a growing number of Republicans losing faith in Bush's war plan, as Republicans such as Sens. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) openly questioned the president's strategy.

In a series of private conversations over the past few months, aides began second-guessing how they handled the Social Security debate, managed the public perception of the Iraq war and, most recently, the response to Katrina. The federal CIA leak investigation, which has forced Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove and others to testify before a grand jury, seemed to distract officials and left a general feeling of unease, two aides said. Aides were calling reporters to find out what was happening with Rove and the investigation. "Nobody knows what's going to happen with the probe," one senior aide said.

The result, say some Republicans, has been a president and White House team that has not been as effective, efficient and sure-footed running government as it was running for reelection. "The shift from campaigning to governing has perhaps not been as quick as everybody hoped," Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said. ...

I have to say that I think Kristol blaming the president's problems on Social Security reform is about as disengenuous as it gets -- he might as well blame the malaise on the tax cuts. Bush's problems hit much closer to home for Kristol and the other neoconservatives, because the sum of them -- from oil prices to the sluggish Katrina response to dissatisfaction with the deficit -- all stem in the public's mind from a single bleeding, festering source: Iraq.

Iraq -- the war fed to him as a pre-cooked meal by Kristol and the other neoconservative think tankers, as Pat Buchanan put it -- has been George W. Bush's undoing.

Part one: The man who fell to earth

Tags: politics, News, Bush, hurricane katrina, iraq, Middle East, War, Terrorism, Foreign Policy, Media

"…the neocons, who are a small cabal, actually, not very many people, insinuated themselves into Bush’s camp, they had allies in Cheney and Rumsfeld, who are not neocons, and then they set this pre-cooked meal in front of the President of the United States, who was an untutored individual in foreign policy… They captured the President, and in so doing they captured the foreign policy, but my own belief is their time is passing. ..."

"...The Republican Party in Washington DC today are the sort of people we went into politics to run out of town. … We have become what we opposed. When I came in I knew young men in their 20s who went work for Richard Milhouse Nixon who are are now as great a part of the problem as multimillionaire lobbyists. They are on both sides of every question. They are big government men, pork barrelers, interventionists, globalists, they go into the tank on social and cultural issues. They are now the adversary. ..."

• In like Flynn (except Flynn is a Fascist...)

Christian school expels girl for having gay parents

"I do not believe that the Judge has presented his views with enough clarity and specificity for me to in good conscience cast a vote on his behalf. "

Even though Senator Hillary Clinton has gone to great lengths to portray herself as a moderate Democrat, there are certain litmus tests one must pass to remain a front-runner for the party's nomination in 2008. Voting against John Roberts appears to be on of those items.

• Hillary on the march: it's all love...
• Hillary on the march 1
• Hillary on the march 2
  
  Tags: Politics, Hillary, Democrats, Clinton, Supreme Court, John Roberts, Politics, SCOTUS, Law, News

THE PRESIDENT: Joseph.

Q Why is it taking so long to secure the border at Syria? And do you really think that the Iraqis can secure it if the U.S. troops have been unsuccessful to do it so far?

THE PRESIDENT: It takes a while to secure the border with Syria because it is a long border that has had smuggling routes in existence for decades. In order to secure a border, it requires cooperation on both sides of the border, and we're getting limited cooperation from Syria. We've made it clear to Syria we expect them to help us secure their border and to stop the transit of suiciders coming from other countries through Syria into Iraq. Their response hasn't been very satisfactory to date. I continue to remind them of their obligation.

And so it's a long border. One of the things is that we need to continue to train the Iraqis to be better controllers of the border, and that's one of the missions that General Casey briefed us on today.

Bianca. Nobody named Bianca? Well, sorry Bianca's not here. I'll be glad to answer her question.

Q I'll follow up.

THE PRESIDENT: No, that's fine. (Laughter.) Thank you though, appreciate it. Just trying to spread around the joy of asking a question.

Q Mr. President, could we talk more about --

THE PRESIDENT: Are you Bianca?

Q No, I'm not. Anita -- Fox News.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay.

Q Just a quick question --

THE PRESIDENT: Okay. I was looking for Bianca. I'm sorry.

Q -- more about the funding for -- with the devastation of Katrina, and so forth, and just more on -- I know you're going to meet with Congress, to talk about maybe offsets in spending.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. ...

BUSH'S BOOZE CRISIS

By JENNIFER LUCE and DON GENTILE

Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life, President Bush has hit the bottle again, The National Enquirer can reveal.

Bush, who said he quit drinking the morning after his 40th birthday, has started boozing amid the Katrina catastrophe.

Family sources have told how the 59-year-old president was caught by First Lady Laura downing a shot of booze at their family ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he learned of the hurricane disaster.

His worried wife yelled at him: "Stop, George."

Following the shocking incident, disclosed here for the first time, Laura privately warned her husband against "falling off the wagon" and vowed to travel with him more often so that she can keep an eye on Dubya, the sources add.

"When the levees broke in New Orleans, it apparently made him reach for a shot," said one insider. "He poured himself a Texas-sized shot of straight whiskey and tossed it back. The First Lady was shocked and shouted: "Stop George!"

"Laura gave him an ultimatum before, 'It's Jim Beam or me.' She doesn't want to replay that nightmare — especially now when it's such tough going for her husband."

Bush is under the worst pressure of his two terms in office and his popularity is near an all-time low. The handling of the Katrina crisis and troop losses in Iraq have fueled public discontent and pushed Bush back to drink.

A Washington source said: "The sad fact is that he has been sneaking drinks for weeks now. Laura may have only just caught him — but the word is his drinking has been going on for a while in the capital. He's been in a pressure cooker for months.

"The war in Iraq, the loss of American lives, has deeply affected him. He takes every soldier's life personally. It has left him emotionally drained.

The result is he's taking drinks here and there, likely in private, to cope. "And now with the worst domestic crisis in his administration over Katrina, you pray his drinking doesn't go out of control."

Another source said: "I'm only surprised to hear that he hadn't taken a shot sooner. Before Katrina, he was at his wit's end. I've known him for years. He's been a good ol' Texas boy forever. George had a drinking problem for years that most professionals would say needed therapy. He doesn't believe in it [therapy], he never got it. He drank his way through his youth, through college and well into his thirties. Everyone's drinking around him."

Another source said: "A family member told me they fear George is 'falling apart.' The First Lady has been assigned the job of gatekeeper." Bush's history of drinking dates back to his youth. Speaking of his time as a young man in the National Guard, he has said: "One thing I remember, and I'm most proud of, is my drinking and partying. Those were the days my friends. Those were the good old days!"

Bush Taking Anti-Depressants to Control Mood Swings

Feingold Ignores Fascism and Kisses Presidential Hopes Goodbye

Senator Russ Feingold made headlines in August when he became the first 2008 hopeful to call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2006. This won raves from progressive pundits like my friend John Nichols and even a highly-coveted appearance on Meet the Press. And it generated enough buzz in the progressive blogosphere to move Feingold into 2nd place in the dKos Straw Poll (behind Wes Clark and ahead of John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and No Freakin' Clue).

But today, Feingold threw it all away.

Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold On the Nomination of Judge John G. Roberts To be Chief Justice of the United States

September 22, 2005

Mr. Chairman, I will vote in favor of the nomination of Judge John Roberts to be the Chief Justice of the United States. This has not been an easy decision, but I believe it is the correct one. Judge Roberts's impeccable legal credentials, his reputation and record as a fair-minded
person, and his commitment to modesty and respect for precedent have persuaded me that he will not bring an ideological agenda to the position of Chief Justice of the United States and that he should be confirmed.

Impeccable legal credentials - like being a leader of the Federalist Society - and lying about it?

Reputation and record as a fair-minded person - like helping George Bush steal the 2000 election in Florida?

In early 2001, Russ Feingold provided the deciding vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee to confirm John Ashcroft as Attorney General, despite massive opposition from netroots Democrats. Why did Feingold support Ashcroft? Because Ashcroft gave him a ride home from the Capitol one day, and because he promised to nominate Ronnie White for the next Federal judgeship - a promise Ashcroft broke immediately.

I blasted Feingold relentlessly at the time for his vote. Five years later, I was prepared to give him a second look. But not now.

When he cast his deciding vote for Ashcroft, Feingold said "maybe I'm naive." Five years later, nothing has changed. Feingold's vote for Roberts proves his naivete is his fatal incurable character flaw - just like Bush's greed, cowardice, and stupidity.

Senator Feingold, you worse than naive - you are a suicidal idiot. Right in front of your eyes the Federalist Society - led by John Aschroft, John Roberts, and their "modest" cronies - is turning the American judicial system into an instrument of Republican Fascism. Have you read Bush v. Gore, which legalized the theft of the Presidency? Have you read the 4th Circuit's latest ruling in Padilla v. Rumsfeld, which gave the President the unlimited powers of a dictator? When the Busheviks fire up the concentration camp ovens, the Niemoller of our time will write: "First they came for the enemy combatants, but I was not an enemy combatant." And when they come for the Jews - because Fascists always come for the Jews - there will be no one left to speak up for you.

• Roberts for the Court
• The Roberts Agonistes
• The axis of futility
• The sure thing
• Why is this man smiling?
• I'm with Leahy
• Crafty old John Roberts
• The adventures of Happy Jack
• The Roberts file
• Top ten reasons to be glad it's Roberts
  
  Tags: John Roberts, Supreme Court, Politics, SCOTUS, Judge John Roberts, Judiciary

More than two years into the war, U.S. intelligence sources concede that they still don't know enough about the nearly impenetrable web of what Iraqis call ahl al-thiqa (trust networks), which are at the heart of the insurgency. It's an inchoate movement without a single inspirational leader like Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh--a movement whose primary goal is perhaps even more improbable than the U.S. dream of creating an Iraqi democracy: restoring Sunni control in a country where Sunnis represent just 20% of the population. Intelligence experts can't credibly estimate the rebels' numbers but say most are Iraqis. Foreigners account for perhaps 2% of the suspected guerrillas who have been captured or killed, although they represent the vast majority of suicide bombers. ("They are ordnance," a U.S. intelligence official says.) The level of violence has been growing steadily. There have been roughly 80 attacks a day in recent weeks. Suicide bombs killed more than 200 people, mostly in Baghdad, during four days of carnage last week, among the deadliest since Saddam's fall.

More than a dozen current and former intelligence officers knowledgeable about Iraq spoke with TIME in recent weeks to share details about the conflict. They voiced their growing frustration with a war that they feel was not properly anticipated by the Bush Administration, a war fought with insufficient resources, a war that almost all of them now believe is not winnable militarily. "We're good at fighting armies, but we don't know how to do this," says a recently retired four-star general with Middle East experience. "We don't have enough intelligence analysts working on this problem. The Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA] puts most of its emphasis and its assets on Iran, North Korea and China. The Iraqi insurgency is simply not top priority, and that's a damn shame."

The intelligence officers stressed these points:

* They believe that Saddam's inner circle--especially those from the Military Bureau--initially organized the insurgency's support structure and that networks led by former Saddam associates like al-Ahmed and al-Duri still provide money and logistical help.

* The Bush Administration's fixation on finding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in 2003 diverted precious intelligence resources that could have helped thwart the fledgling insurgency.

* From the beginning of the insurgency, U.S. military officers have tried to contact and negotiate with rebel leaders, including, as a senior Iraq expert puts it, "some of the people with blood on their hands."

* The frequent replacement of U.S. military and administrative teams in Baghdad has made it difficult to develop a counterinsurgency strategy.

The accumulation of blunders has led a Pentagon guerrilla-warfare expert to conclude, "We are repeating every mistake we made in Vietnam."

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....

Iraq: Is there a way out of this mess?

With politics, the Bush administration has shown remarkable discipline -- squelching leaks and keeping Cabinet members on message, reaching down into the bureaucracy to bend analyses in directions that supports what it wants to do, imposing its will on congressional leaders and even making a political imprint on state legislatures. No recent president has got re-elected with controlling majorities in both houses of Congress, or been as successful in repositioning the national debate around his ideological view of the world.

With governing, it's been almost criminally incompetent -- failing to act on clear predictions of a terrorist attack like 9/11 or a natural disaster like Katrina, botching intelligence over Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction, failing to secure order after invading Iraq, allowing prisoners of war to be tortured, losing complete control over the federal budget, creating a bizarre Medicare drug benefit from which the elderly are now fleeing, barely responding to the wave of corporate lootings and running the Federal Emergency Management Agency into the ground. Not since the hapless administration of Warren G. Harding has there been one as stunningly inept as this one...

It's hard to say what's worse: The incompetence of the administration's initial hurricane response or the cowardice of its follow-up. Faced with a small hit to his ratings, the president who once boasted of ignoring polls is rushing to spend billions of other people's dollars on saving his political skin. His philosophy is, "It's going to cost whatever it costs." That phrase should be the title of some future history of the Bush era.

The worst part is, President Bush doesn't even think his splurge will be effective. If he really believed that government could overcome racial inequality by targeting subsidies at minority businesses, he should have rolled out a national program long ago. But he doesn't believe anything of the kind. His promises of racial healing are entirely cynical.

What Bush really believes is that government is ineffective. Or at least that's what he says he believes: Late last week he declared that his (self-) reconstruction program should be financed by cuts in other government spending rather than by tax increases, so as to "maintain economic growth and vitality." In other words, government spending is bad because it's inefficient and wasteful. Leaving money in private hands is intrinsically superior. If Bush believes that, why does he think that government should build whole shantytowns of provisional housing? Why doesn't he believe in the private rental market of the South, which is offering 1.1 million units of vacant property?

Early on after the catastrophe, Small Government Bush suspended a law that props up construction wages paid by federal contractors, with the result that workers in the disaster zone will have less disposable income but government will save money.

One week later, after the panic had set in, Reconstruction Bush was yammering about $5,000 worker recovery accounts, which would come on top of the free government homes and sundry other benefits that the administration is also promising.

If Bush used this moment as he used the aftermath of Sept. 11, some of this spending could be forgiven. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon exposed the nation's complacency about terrorism; Bush stepped forward and changed that. In a similar way, Hurricane Katrina exposed the complacency of our business-as-usual attitude toward domestic government. Bush has barely noticed.

The worst storm in our history proved perfect for exposing this president because in one big blast it illuminated all his failings: the rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of "compassionate conservatism," the lack of concern for the "underprivileged" his mother condescended to at the Astrodome, the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts, the use of spin and photo-ops to camouflage failure and to substitute for action.

As Elisabeth Bumiller, the White House reporter for The Times, noted in a pool report, the image wizards had put up a large swath of military camouflage netting, held in place by bags of rocks and strung on poles, to hide the president from the deserted and desolate streets of the French Quarter ghost town.

One serving brigadier, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the danger of Britain becoming bogged down in its own "Vietnam war" was getting stronger every day. "The return of the 7th Armoured Brigade to Iraq is a significant benchmark," he said.

"There is a real head-in-the-sand mentality as to how we're going to extricate ourselves from this mess. There is no endgame to the problems in Iraq."

Richard Holbrooke, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during Clinton's administration, said the hectic, informal style of the conference contributed to its success.

"The controlled chaos is one way to get creativity. The intensity of it, the physical rush, the intimacy created the kind of dialogue that leads to synergy,'' Holbrooke said. "The U.N. by contrast is sterile, overly concerned with protocol, overly formal, filled with set-piece speeches. This is what the U.N. in theory is supposed to be but can't."

Any college student displaced from Hurricane Katrina wishing to continue their education may attend Georgia State University for a maximum of $100.00. This price includes all mandatory fees, late fees and Tuition! This is only the second week of school, so you haven't missed much. This offer is for fall semester only. If you want to get into school right away call:

DeAnna Hines
Assistant Vice President for University Relations
Georgia State University
404-651-3025

or Report to: The Office of Admissions Sparks Hall 200 Located at the corner of Gilmer and Courtland Streets.

Katrina allows the president to cut away from all the other miserable news and do one of the things he does best: spend money.

Halliburton's Man in Iran

As the United States and Iran clash over the nuclear issue at the United Nations summit, the Islamic republic is pursuing a corruption investigation against a former top official on its nuclear negotiating team for his ties to Halliburton, the oil services giant once run by Vice President Cheney.

Cyrus Nasseri, senior Iranian representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is refusing to return home from Vienna because of his alleged involvement in an oil corruption case, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

The complex story of Halliburton in the "Axis of Evil," which I reported in February, just keeps getting more interesting.

Nasseri, according to reports in the British and Iranian online media, wore two hats. Besides advocating Iran’s right to pursue a peaceful nuclear program, he also served as a board member of a company called Oriental Kish. In January, the firm won a big contract to develop a huge Iranian natural gas field. Oriental Kish, in turn, subcontracted parts of the project to Halliburton Products and Services, a subsidiary registered in the Cayman Islands with offices in Dubai.

The term was "simply legal language and not a refection of Kenny's character," Zellweger said in a statement Friday.

"I would personally be very grateful for your support in refraining from drawing derogatory, hurtful, sensationalized or untrue conclusions," she said. "We hope to experience this transition as privately as possible."

Rumors Are Circulating

Rumors are circulating throughout Hollywood about the Eddie divorce battle, I was talking to a industry friend last nite, she said, Nicole got sick of putting up with him and Johnny Gill. People had warned her yrs ago about the down low rumors, she chose not to believe it until she witnessed it, Eddie had got to the point where he didn’t care, he often told her, he was the breadwinner and at least he wasn’t cheating with women.

He became so brazen, Johnny came over to their house every holiday, sitting at the table with Nicole and the kids.

Tevin Campbell and Sugar Ray are also heavily involved in this scenario, they tried to recruit Mike Tyson (when he had money) but it wasn’t his scene.

Johnny is pathetic, he is with all these men and doesn’t benefit. Before he reunited with New Edition, he was so broke, he lived in Sugar Ray's guest house and I heard his wife wasn’t too happy about it.

They also stated that the following gentlemen are involved in their circle of DL brothers: Arsenio Hall, football player johnnie morton, Benny Medina, Will Smith, Duane Martin, they tried to get mike tyson involved but he didn't want to get involved (I don't know why) they said that the reason his wife stayed knocked up is so she wouldn't be suspicious of his extra activities.

NEW YORK -- President Bush yesterday implored the United Nations to rid itself of corruption and scolded the global body for squandering the world's respect and making a mockery of human rights.

REPORTER: Mr. President, given what happened with Katrina, shouldn't Americans be concerned if their government isn't prepared to respond to another disaster or even a terrorist attack?"

BUSH: Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government. And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong. I want to know how to better cooperate with state and local government, to be able to answer that very question that you asked: Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack or another severe storm? And that's a very important question. And it's in our national interest that we find out exactly what went on and -- so that we can better respond.

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government. And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility."

Katrina's racial dimension, discussed earlier today, isn't the only theme in the global reaction to America's natural disaster. There's also a muted sense of satisfaction.

For some, Katrina provides occasion to boast. In impoverished, monsoon-prone Bangladesh, Asma Akhter brags that, when it comes to flood recovery, "We have a better record than the Americans."

For others, it is time to remind Americans they are not invincible. In El Salvador’s La Prensa Grafica, a conservative and pro-American newspaper, TV newsman Jorge Ramos Ávalos, observes (in Spanish) that since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 Americans have believed that they can do anything they put their minds to. “With Katrina,” he concludes, “came the day when America couldn’t.”

And still others admit that Katrina has generated some schadenfreude, a German word for taking pleasure in the suffering of others. Liberal Britons, quick to give to tsunami victims or starving Africans, balk at Katrina contributions, writes Julian Baggini in a piece published both in South Africa and Britain. “We don’t want to plug the gaping hole created by inegalitarian American social policy because we want to expose it for what it is, and shatter the US’s self-image as the most fair and free country in the world,” he says.

For a world that often hears about “the only superpower,” there seems to be a measure of pleasure in noting that its powers are not always so super.

Officials with Louisiana’s community and technical colleges have announced an aggressive program to get job training to individuals displaced and unemployed due to Hurricane Katrina so that they can take advantage of upcoming rebuilding efforts in the New Orleans area.

Within the next week, individuals located in shelters across the state will be able to take advantage of free, on-site job training in fields such as carpentry, plumbing and hazardous waste removal. Those trades, and a host of others, are expected to see employment booms once the rebuilding of the New Orleans area begins, said Jim Henderson, the senior vice-president of workforce development and training for the Louisiana Community and Technical College System.

Henderson said the officials with the state’s technical and community colleges have already been assessing the job training and educational levels of individuals located in state shelters in preparation for the new educational program. The state is now attempting to either enroll those individuals in existing facilities in their areas, or create new facilities at or near shelters, Henderson said. Training facilities may be established at the Avondale shipyard, mobile computer labs and adult education centers, he said.

THE PRESIDENT: No, what I was referring to is this. When that storm came by, a lot of people said we dodged a bullet. When that storm came through at first, people said, whew. There was a sense of relaxation, and that's what I was referring to. And I, myself, thought we had dodged a bullet. You know why? Because I was listening to people, probably over the airways, say, the bullet has been dodged. And that was what I was referring to.

Of course, there were plans in case the levee had been breached. There was a sense of relaxation in the moment, a critical moment. And thank you for giving me a chance to clarify that.

Q Mr. President, where were you when you realized the severity of the storm?

THE PRESIDENT: I was -- I knew that a big storm was coming on Monday, so I spoke to the country on Monday* morning about it. I said, there's a big storm coming. I had pre-signed emergency declarations in anticipation of a big storm coming.

Q Mr. President --

THE PRESIDENT: -- which is, by the way, extraordinary. Most emergencies the President signs after the storm has hit. It's a rare occasion for the President to anticipate the severity of a storm and sign the documentation prior to the storm hitting. So, in other words, we anticipated a serious storm coming. But as the man's question said, basically implied, wasn't there a moment where everybody said, well, gosh, we dodged the bullet, and yet the bullet hadn't been dodged.

Q Mr. President --

THE PRESIDENT: Last question.

...add another bridge to the South's sad legecy of racism: the Crescent City Connection Bridge -- which is supposed to connect New Orleans to the West Bank suburbs of Jefferson Parish, but which apparently divides it. Today, the New York Times confirmed a story that's been making the rounds in the blogosphere, that armed police and sheriff deputies blocked and threatened to shoot people seeking to escape the hellish deathtrap of the New Orleans Convention Center.

The paramedics and two other witnesses said officers sometimes shot guns over the heads of fleeing people, who, instead of complying immediately with orders to leave the bridge, pleaded to be let through, the paramedics and two other witnesses said. The witnesses said they had been told by the New Orleans police to cross that same bridge because buses were waiting for them there.

Instead, a suburban police officer angrily ordered about 200 people to abandon an encampment between the highways near the bridge. The officer then confiscated their food and water, the four witnesses said. The incidents took place in the first days after the storm last week, they said.

"The police kept saying, 'We don't want another Superdome,' and 'This isn't New Orleans,' " said Larry Bradshaw, a San Francisco paramedic who was among those fleeing.

Arthur Lawson, chief of the Gretna, La., Police Department, confirmed that his officers, along with those from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office and the Crescent City Connection Police, sealed the bridge.

How Bush Blew It

Sept. 19, 2005 issue - It's a standing joke among the president's top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm and hearty in public, Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the United States, or, as he is known in West Wing jargon, POTUS. The bad news on this early morning, Tuesday, Aug. 30, some 24 hours after Hurricane Katrina had ripped through New Orleans, was that the president would have to cut short his five-week vacation by a couple of days and return to Washington. The president's chief of staff, Andrew Card; his deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin; his counselor, Dan Bartlett, and his spokesman, Scott McClellan, held a conference call to discuss the question of the president's early return and the delicate task of telling him. Hagin, it was decided, as senior aide on the ground, would do the deed.

The president did not growl this time. He had already decided to return to Washington and hold a meeting of his top advisers on the following day, Wednesday. This would give them a day to get back from their vacations and their staffs to work up some ideas about what to do in the aftermath of the storm. President Bush knew the storm and its consequences had been bad; but he didn't quite realize how bad.

The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.

How this could be—how the president of the United States could have even less "situational awareness," as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace.

President George W. Bush has always trusted his gut. He prides himself in ignoring the distracting chatter, the caterwauling of the media elites, the Washington political buzz machine. He has boasted that he doesn't read the papers. His doggedness is often admirable. It is easy for presidents to overreact to the noise around them.

But it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. Bush can ask tough questions, but it's mostly a one-way street. Most presidents keep a devil's advocate around. Lyndon Johnson had George Ball on Vietnam; President Ronald Reagan and Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, grudgingly listened to the arguments of Budget Director Richard Darman, who told them what they didn't wish to hear: that they would have to raise taxes. When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn't act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority. Continued...

"... If we took a vote tomorrow, New Orleans might still be America's favorite city, but George W. Bush probably would not be our favorite president."
-- 60 Minutes commentary, September 11, 2005

Still, you've got to wonder if these poor guys are gonna catch the same flak as the flip-flop girls from a few months ago (the bare knees thing is just so "he ain't nobody... I pay his g---damn salary...!")

Myers: The landscape of the city has changed dramatically, tragically and perhaps irreversibly. There is now over 25 feet of water where there was once city streets and thriving neighborhoods.

(Myers throws to West, who looked extremely nervous in his super-preppy designer rugby shirt and white pants, which is not like the arrogant West and which, in retrospect, should have been a tip-off.)

West: I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, "They're looting." You see a white family, it says, "They're looking for food." And, you know, it's been five days [waiting for federal help] because most of the people are black. And even for me to complain about it, I would be a hypocrite because I've tried to turn away from the TV because it's too hard to watch. I've even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I'm calling my business manager right now to see what is the biggest amount I can give, and just to imagine if I was down there, and those are my people down there. So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help -- with the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. I mean, the Red Cross is doing everything they can. We already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way -- and they've given them permission to go down and shoot us!

(West throws back to Myers, who is looking like a guy who stopped on the tarmac to tie his shoe and got hit in the back with the 8:30 to La Guardia.)

Myers: And subtle, but in many ways even more profoundly devastating, is the lasting damage to the survivors' will to rebuild and remain in the area. The destruction of the spirit of the people of southern Louisiana and Mississippi may end up being the most tragic loss of all.

(And, because Myers is apparently as dumb as his Alfalfa hair, he throws it back to West.)

West: George Bush doesn't care about black people!

(Back to Myers, now looking like the 8:30 to La Guardia turned around and caught him square between the eyes.)

Myers: Please call . . .

At which point someone at NBC News finally regained control of the joystick and cut over to Chris Tucker, who started right in with more scripted blah, blah, blah.

"Mike Chertoff made those decisions and I certainly support him," Cheney told reporters at the Austin convention center, which is housing about 1,500 evacuees. Some have called for Brown to be fired, but Cheney deferred to Chertoff.

• Media doubletake
• The media panic defense
• Journalists and sources
• Requiem for a (disgraced) heavyweight
• Death of a local pol, part two
• Death of a local pol ... media overkill?

Tags: media, miami herald, DeFede, journalism

How Reliable Is Brown's Resume?

A TIME investigation reveals discrepancies in the FEMA chief's official biographies
By DAREN FONDA AND RITA HEALY

When President Bush nominated Michael Brown to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 2003, Brown's boss at the time, Joe Allbaugh, declared, "the President couldn't have chosen a better man to help...prepare and protect the nation." But how well was he prepared for the job? Since Hurricane Katrina, the FEMA director has come under heavy criticism for his performance and scrutiny of his background. Now, an investigation by TIME has found discrepancies in his online legal profile and official bio, including a description of Brown released by the White House at the time of his nomination in 2001 to the job as deputy chief of FEMA. (Brown became Director of FEMA, succeeding Allbaugh, in 2003.)

Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA's website, was "serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 "overseeing the emergency services division." In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an "assistant to the city manager" from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. "The assistant is more like an intern," she told TIME. "Department heads did not report to him." Brown did do a good job at his humble position, however, according to his boss. "Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University," recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. "Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt."

In response, Nicol Andrews, deputy strategic director in FEMA's office of public affairs, insists that while Brown began as an intern, he became an "assistant city manager" with a distinguished record of service. "According to Mike Brown," she says, "a large portion [of the points raised by TIME] is very inaccurate."

Brown's lack of experience in emergency management isn't the only apparent bit of padding on his resume, which raises questions about how rigorously the White House vetted him before putting him in charge of FEMA. Under the "honors and awards" section of his profile at FindLaw.com — which is information on the legal website provided by lawyers or their offices—he lists "Outstanding Political Science Professor, Central State University". However, Brown "wasn't a professor here, he was only a student here," says Charles Johnson, News Bureau Director in the University Relations office at the University of Central Oklahoma (formerly named Cen