•  1. New Orleans police force owned just three boats, and two were out of commission?
   2. Mayor Ray Nagin (no Mayor Giuliani , he) started blaming the federal gummint for mismanagement right out of the box.


• Why do I feel a dread that Bush will nominate someone like Gonzalez to fill the  SCOTUS second vacancy?
  


• Eighty years of communist rule left Russia with a population that can generally be described as without moral firmament.  While not communist, New Orleanians have spent at least the same number of years under equally corrupt government, and it showed last week.
  


• Navy's football team is pretty damned good, or Maryland's is not.  In any event, what a great game yesterday. A reader who signed in as "Michael Moore" had this explanation for Navy's loss: " I blame W for sending the best the Navy has to die in Iraq in his war for oil." Bwahahahaha!
  


• Scalia ought to be the next Chief Justice, but will Bush want to go through the extra confirmation hearing?  The newest Justice in any event ought to named Edith.
  


• How is it that Randi Rhodes (Air America) could take to the airwaves last week and urge New Orleans looters to leave Wal-mart alone, and focus on ransacking upscale stores?  I mean, without being arrested ?  Or horsewhipped?
  


• Just now I'm watching home owners in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans, tell officials trying to get them to evacuate that they will not leave.  Would you as a homeowner, after watching what went on just down the road, want to leave your home open to a certain ransacking?  Me either. Not as long as I had my own urine to drink and a loaded shotgun.
  


• Mississippi was harder hit by Katrina than Louisiana.  The difference?  I guess you have to, at some point, recognize that Gov. Haley Barbour did a good job, and his Louisiana counterpart, whatsherface, not.
  


• Wherever media liberals gather I'm hearing pious and condescending tut-tutting about the New Orleans levee that failed on Tuesday (the  city was in good shape until then).  As they tell it, the levee was being reupholstered when the Corps of Engineers ran out of money ...  because Bush took it all for Iraq.  Earlier in the week the New York Times published an editorial breathtaking in the scope of  its anti-Bush vitriol, and blame casting, i.e. :

"While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level."

 

There are lots of reasons every week for good Americans to haul the New Yorks Times editorial board  into the streets and administer a mighty flogging, and that will be this week's.  Consider:

"The billions of Federal dollars spent to construct dams and levees have doubtless prevented billions of dollars of damage to the areas they serve. But a dam or a levee in one place creates problems somewhere else. Also, by offering protection, they encourage people to live and work and develop farming in flood plains that are inherently risky. "Budget constraints and environmental concerns have slowed new flood control projects in recent years. Congress should resist pressure to spend more now because of this year's floods; these projects need closer evaluation than they've gotten in the past."  [New York Times editorial 14 July 1993]

 
What's that?  You'd like something a bit more current?

"Anyone who cares about responsible budgeting and the health of America's rivers and wetlands should pay attention to a bill now before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. The bill would shovel $17 billion at the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control and other water-related projects — this at a time when President Bush is asking for major cuts in Medicaid and other important domestic programs. Among these projects is a $2.7 billion boondoggle on the Mississippi River that has twice flunked inspection by the National Academy of Sciences... [snip] "This is a bad piece of legislation." [NY Times editorial  April of 2005]

What's for breakfast?