the only way to beat it is to bat it down I was watching Oprah yesterday and she did an episode called "The Katrina Stories Nobody is Telling". It's still a brutal disaster area down there in Louisiana and Mississippi - most places don't even have ongoing clean-up and it looks pretty much like a storm washed through just yesterday. People are living in tents, or being threatened with eviction from their FEMA-paid motel rooms, yet they have nowhere to go. They showed shots of hundreds of empty FEMA trailers that are not even being made available to those most desperate for housing. You really gotta wonder things get this bad - a federal government whose priorities are clearly not the well-being of its own citizens.

I haven't talked much about Shrub lately but I wanted to point out a certain other situation playing out down there in the good old US of A. Something about a plan to outsource U.S. port security (New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans and Miami) to a company based in the United Arab Emirates...There's a little matter of the UAE not recognizing the right of Israel to exist, and perhaps being a little friendlier toward terrorist-type groups than a nation would want its allies to be. I thought we were down on nations like that - the Palestinians don't get awarded any contracts for their denial of Israel. And now George's own Congress is leaning towards voting against this plan. George only found out about the deal after it was signed, but he's on board apparently. What has Georgie decided to do? He threatens to veto. As pointed out over at DailyKos, Bush has never resorted to using a veto, but this is important enough for him to contemplate it...?

"How NOT to run a country", by George W. Bush. We need an Extreme Makeover at the White House, including some new tenants.  | ¶ 11:59 a.m.