Gas Profit Guzzlers

When the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline peaked at $3.07 recently, it was partly because the nation's refineries were getting an estimated 99 cents on each gallon sold. That was more than three times the amount they earned a year ago when regular unleaded was selling for $1.87.

The companies that pump oil from the ground swept in an additional 47 cents on each gallon, a 46 percent jump over the same period....

Feds are fools

Hundreds of truck drivers from Minnesota, Alabama, Georgia and even Massachusetts have been crisscrossing the country since the beginning of September, moving loads of ice from storage facility to storage facility and earning big bucks from the federal government to do little more than sit in their cabs and not unload their precious cargo.

why distribute donated food when a lucrative contract could be had?

EXCLUSIVE: UP IN FLAMES Tons of British aid donated to help Hurricane Katrina victims to be BURNED by Americans

Another no-bid contract

Halliburton Gets Contract To Pry Gold Fillings From New Orleans Corpses' Teeth

Message: I Care About the Black Folks

ONCE Toto parts the curtain, the Wizard of Oz can never be the wizard again. He is forever Professor Marvel, blowhard and snake-oil salesman. Hurricane Katrina, which is likely to endure in the American psyche as long as L. Frank Baum's mythic tornado, has similarly unmasked George W. Bush.

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.

Jailed Reporter Is Distanced From News, Not Elite Visitors

Locked in the Alexandria Detention Center for the past 11 weeks, New York Times reporter Judith Miller is cut off from the world. She has no Internet access and precious little opportunity to view CNN. Her phone calls are limited, friends say. Her daily newspaper arrives a day late.

But for 30 minutes nearly every day, the world comes to her: A parade of prominent government and media officials, 99 in all, visited Miller between early July, when she was jailed for refusing to be questioned by a federal prosecutor, and Labor Day, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post.

The future of liberalism in the US

The Death of Environmentalism: Global warming politics in a post-environmental world

Stupid Quotes

25 Mind-Numbingly Stupid Quotes About Hurricane Katrina And Its Aftermath

White House Briefing

"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."

Noblesse oblige? Not our president

...To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we went to New Orleans with the government we have — replete with its Chertoffs, Brownies, Cheneys and assorted other ideologues, cronies and schemers who gorge on patronage, revel in politics and brush off the mundane responsibilities of the offices they hold. They're Big Picture guys who have brought the same management skills to the Gulf states that they brought to that other gulf....

Simon Schama: Sorry Mr President, Katrina is not 9/11

Slipstreaming behind the annual rituals of sorrow and reverence for 9/11, George W Bush has decreed that, five days later, on the 16th, there is to be a further day of solemnities on which the nation will pray for the unnumbered victims of Hurricane Katrina. Prayers (like vacations) are the default mode for this president who knows how to chuckle and bow the head in the midst of disaster but not, when it counts, how to govern or to command. If you feel the prickly heat of politics, summon a hymn to make it go away; make accountability seem a blasphemy....

Feds Won't Ban Katrina Recovery Photos, Won't Help Either

Challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration agreed on Saturday not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.

The government won't, however, permit photographers to join them in boats or helicopters during the mission to recover bodies from flooded homes....

UnFreakingBelievable

[Republican House Majority Leader Tom] DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots.

The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, ``Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?''

They nodded yes, but looked perplexed.

Different rules for the rich and powerful

Chief Justice Rehnquist's Drug Habit - The man in full. By Jack Shafer

Senator Bears Witness And Bares Emotions

Landrieu was at once gracious and defiant, thanking the president and then -- in her floor speech -- ridiculing his statement last week that no one "anticipated the breach of the levees."

"Everybody anticipated the breach of the levee, Mr. President," Landrieu said. This included the clay figurine, Mr. Bill, from "Saturday Night Live." Landrieu is a friend of Walter Williams, a native of New Orleans and Mr. Bill's creator, and he had deployed the high-voiced and squishable icon in public service announcements about Louisiana's coastal erosion problems before the storm. "How can it be that Mr. Bill was better informed than Mr. Bush?" Landrieu asked in her one hint of a laugh line all day.

No one laughed.

White House Briefing

Late Night Humor: From the "Tonight Show With Jay Leno": "Actually, today, President Bush sent Vice President Dick Cheney to New Orleans. Is that what we need down there? Another person requiring emergency medical help?"

From Jon Stewart on the "Daily Show": "Little observation: When people don't want to play the blame game? They're to blame."

Newsflash: Katrina Wasn't a Hurricane

Leave it to insurance companies to waste no time finding a way to let themselves off the hook. At ConsumerWatchdog.org we are already hearing from Katrina survivors who are being told that their insurance won't cover them because "it was a flood not a hurricane" that caused the damage and they (along with about 60% of folks in New Orleans and the Gulf region) don't have flood insurance.

Nightly News with Brian Williams

While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of Guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

W's mom touts Astrodome

Former First Lady Barbara Bush was about the most chipper visitor yesterday to the Houston Astrodome, where thousands who fled the Hurricane Katrina disaster are sheltered.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them," the Bush family's matriarch chuckled as she spoke on National Public Radio's "Marketplace" program.

'Wash Post' Runs A Key Katrina Correction

The BushCo personal destruction machine swings into action:

In its Sunday edition, the Washington Post quoted a "senior Bush official" [Karl Rove, hard at work] who said that "as of Saturday [September 3rd, Louisiana Governor] Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency." This, of course, was meant to make the governor look foolish and spread the blame around for the disastrous response to the disaster, though it was hard to imagine on what grounds the newspaper would quote an unnamed source in this case. [...Given that a matter of the public record can be easily verified through a little simple research.]

Several hours of blogosphere howling ensued. Later in the day, the Post ran this correction, or rather, 180-degree turn:

"A Sept. 4 article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina incorrectly said that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) had not declared a state of emergency. She declared an emergency on Aug. 26. [Katrina made landfall on August 29.]