When David Brooks first joined the NY Times in September 2003, it initially seemed that he was going to be able to keep his conservative leanings, and would be a fine replacement for William Safire once the latter had retired.  However, lately it seems that Mr. Brooks is being co-opted by others on the Times editorial staff.

In fact, his latest op-ed sounds like it could have been written by either Paul Krugman or Maureen Dowd:

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

And:

Katrina means that the political culture, already sour and bloody-minded in many quarters, will shift. There will be a reaction. There will be more impatience for something new. There is going to be some sort of big bang as people respond to the cumulative blows of bad events and try to fundamentally change the way things are.

Over at That Liberal Media, Jim Miller notes that the September issue of the American Enterprise magazine has three numbers from a Nexis search that tell a tale about the news media's priorities in covering the war in Iraq. Paul Smith, a 33-year-old married man with two children, won the Medal of Honor for giving his life for his country. Lynndie England won infamy for grinning through pictures of prisoner humiliation at Abu Ghraib. "Koran abuse" was all the rage as a news story soon after. The magazine's count of Nexis mentions:

Paul Smith: 90

Lynndie England: 5,159

Koran abuse: 4,677

        There's been a lot of doozies from liberal voices this past week in the wake of hurricane Katrina, but as Brian Maloney at The Radio Equalizer noted, a recognition must be made to Air America's Randi Rhodes. The anti-Bush vitriol from the left continues to reach new lows. From her show this past Wednesday (August 31, 2005):

RHODES: "This President is never gonna do the right thing. I think somewhere deep down inside him he takes a lot of joy about losing people, if he thinks that they vote Democrat or if he thinks they're poor, or if he thinks they're in a blue state, whatever his reasons are not to rescue those people who are (planning?) for their safety."

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Here is the lede paragraph from a Washington Post Editorial today (3 September), entitled “Left Behind”:

“THE LACK OF National Guard troops because of the war in Iraq; the Bush administration's failure to protect coastal wetlands; the reorganization of the Federal Emergency Management Agency: All have been blamed, somewhat arbitrarily, for the stunning scenes of chaos at the New Orleans Superdome and convention center, for the unprecedented floodwaters in the city, and for the huge numbers of people without food or water. But if blame is to be laid and lessons are to be drawn, one point stands out as irrefutable: Emergency planners must focus much more on the fate of that part of the population that -- for reasons of poverty, infirmity, distrust of officialdom, lack of transportation or lack of information -- cannot be counted on to leave their homes after an evacuation order.”

The AP's Ron Fournier has got another news analysis piece up (Newsview: Rhetoric Not Matching Reality) that is filled with negative spin on President Bush. But he's gone a little bit further this time, as he's using several "facts" that are not, in fact, facts.

• "On Iraq alone, the rhetoric has repeatedly fallen far short of reality. Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. " While it is certainly true that we never found the stockpiles that we - and everyone else - expected to be there, the WMD argument for going into Iraq was by no means invalidated. The final report of the Iraq Survey Group concluded that "Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability...after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized...Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability...but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities."
• "The mission wasn't accomplished in May 2003." The President didn't say that it was. That banner was the work of the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln, whose mission was over as they were headed home. The President said that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended," which was true as there was no army left to fight against. The fact that there's been a terrorist campaign inside the country since then doesn't make the statement false.
• "Most allies avoided the hard work of his 'coalition of the willing.'" The fact that France and Germany and Russia didn't help doesn't mean that there wasn't a coalition, or that they weren't willing. Ron Fournier may not approve of the coalition, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't there.
• "Bush's spokesman said anybody involved in leaking the identity of a CIA agent would be fired, but no action has been taken against officials accused of doing so." Where to start on this one? OK, in the first place, Bush said that anyone found to have "violated law" in releasing the name would be "taken care of." Secondly, no one in the administration has yet been found to have "leaked" the name anyway.

He threw these things out as examples of the "shady art" of "spin" that "the Bush White House has perfected." The context was the President's comments on the Hurricane.

This is what the president had to say about the relief effort earlier in the week: _"There's a lot of food on its way, a lot of water on the way, and there's a lot of boats and choppers headed that way." _"Thousands have been rescued. There's thousands more to be rescued. And there's a lot of people focusing their efforts on that." _"As we speak, people are moving into New Orleans area to maintain law and order."

Nothing is soon enough for the people suffering, but does anyone think that there's anything false, in any way, about any one of those comments? Of course not. The first few days for a catastrophe like just happened are inevitably going to have people that don't get as much help as they need as soon as they need it. It takes time to mass force in the right place, to open roads that are blocked, to route around flooded areas. I don't know that the third statement was strictly true, because I'm not sure when he said it or what was happening at the time, but the first two are indisputable. They aren't "spin," they're facts. Which Fournier seems to have some trouble recognizing...

Lyflines - Lyford's other blog…

Wonder how those for the abolition of the Ten Commandments think society is fairing now without these fundamental principles.

According to one story, a nursing home has been raided --- respect for the elderly being thrown out the window and all. In other incidents, vagabonds are now taking shots at rescue copters assisting in the evacuation.

This is now longer about "survival". These scumbags are attempting to establish their own rule as warlords.

In one interesting paragraph, readers will note police ran off looters from an Office Depot while law enforcement officials were themselves helping themselves to "five finger discounts" because in times of emergency officials have the power to "commandeer" buildings and supplies.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Friday afternoon repeatedly prodded reluctant Congressional Black Caucus member Elijah Cummings to blame racism for delays in rescuing hurricane victims in New Orleans. Blitzer asked Cummings on The Situation Room: “Do you believe, if it was, in fact, a slow response, as many now believe it was, was it in part the result of racism?” When Cummings demurred from such a blanket accusation, Blitzer wouldn’t give up: “There are some critics who are saying, and I don't know if you're among those, but people have said to me, had this happened in a predominantly white community, the federal government would have responded much more quickly. Do you believe that?"

Later, on CNN’s NewsNight, Aaron Brown took up the same agenda with Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones: “What I'm wondering is, do you think black America's sitting there thinking, if these were middle class white people, there would be cruise ships in New Orleans?” When she wouldn’t take the bait, Brown lectured: “Now, look, here's the question, okay? And then we'll end this. Do you think the reason that they're not there or the food is not there or the cruise ships aren't there or all this stuff that you believe should be there, isn't there, is a matter of race and/or class?”

Opening the NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams predicted that the "catastrophic hurricane strike, and the U.S. government response to it, will in the years or decades to come, perhaps necessitate a national discussion on race, on oil, politics, class, infrastructure, the environment and more.” ABC’s Ted Koppel charged on Nightline that “the slow response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina has led to questions about race, poverty and a seemingly indifferent government.”

Transcripts follow.

Well, we all knew this was coming.  A New York Times editorial quite strongly suggests that income tax rates in our nation should now be raised as a result of Hurricane Katrina:

Congress and the president had better get the message: an extraordinary time is upon the nation. The annihilation in New Orleans is an irrefutable sign that the national tax-cut party is over. So is the idea that American voters cannot be required to accept sacrifice or inconvenience, no matter how great the crisis. This country is better than that.

Yep.  With higher fuel prices, along with what are sure to be higher heating and electricity bills this winter, what all those suffering from hurricane damages definitively need is higher federal income taxes.

With little fanfare, the Houston Chronicle reported that Vice President Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, had been awarded a contract to assist in post-Katrina cleanup efforts:

The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.

Given the media’s fascination with this company, along with the ongoing insinuations that the war in Iraq has been a financial boon for Halliburton, one has to wonder how this announcement will be disseminated by a currently scandal-hungry press.