During the press conference of former presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush to announce their Katrina fundraising efforts, Clinton got an interesting question from a reporter:

"President Clinton, what do you think about the fact that some of the folks think that the levee was broken on purpose?"

Clinton was taken aback and had no response.

Watch the video at C-SPAN.

Monday’s Access Hollywood teased with a clip of rapper Kanye West’s blast on Friday’s Concert for Hurricane Relief broadcast on several NBC channels, "George Bush doesn't care about black people," followed by a clip of actor Matt Damon: “I let out a cheer.” The syndicated NBC Productions program also featured a clip of this ludicrous claim from West on the fund-raising show: “We already realize a lot of the people that could help are at war right now fighting another way and they’ve given them permission to go down and shoot us.” (For more about West's allegations, check this Friday night NewsBusters posting by Tim Graham.)

A few minutes later on Access Hollywood, co-host Nancy O’Dell touted how “it was Kanye West’s anti-Bush remarks that caught the attention of Matt Damon and Susan Sarandon in Italy” at the Venice Film Festival. Viewers then saw this from actress Susan Sarandon as she stood at some sort of an event: “I don’t think that’s an original thought, but it’s probably true.” (With Access Hollywood’s quick cut editing, it’s hard to know what people are specifically referring to.)

Immediately after Sarandon, Access Hollywood played a longer soundbite from Damon who claimed the White House press corps is too nice to Bush and thus “not one of them’s an honest journalist.” Full quote follows, as well as Colin Farrell’s charge that white people would have been rescued faster.

According to Davids Medienkritik, a blog that monitors the German media, columnist Philipp Mausshardt wrote in the Tageszeitung that that because of Hurricane Katrina, "joy and sympathy beat simultaneously in my chest. I am, for example, joyful at the moment that the latest hurricane catastrophe hasn't again hit some poor land, but instead the richest country in the world.

"Yes, I even see in that a form of balancing justice for that which the inhabitants of that country have done to others through their war in Iraq.

"I would, however, be even more happy, if I knew that only the houses of Bush voters and members of the Army had been destroyed.

In a harried, fast-moving interview with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien this morning, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had many words of praise for President Bush, while pointing much blame at Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco:

Nagin>> I got promises too.  I can't stand any more promises. I don't want to hear any more promises. I want to see stuff done. That's why I'm so happy the president came down here because I think they were feeding him a line of bull also. They were telling him things weren’t as bad as it was, he came down and saw it and he put a general on the field. His name is general Honore. When he hit the field, we started to see action. What the state was doing, I don't friggin' know but I tell you, I am pissed. It wasn't adequate. The president and the governor sat down. Air force one, I said, Mr. President, Madam governor, you two have to get in sync. If you don't get in sync, more people are going to die.

An interesting thing happened this weekend.  After 5 days of blaming President
Bush for Hurricane Katrina, the mainstream media found it increasingly difficult
to continue their negativity and finger pointing.   There was actually good
news!  And the mainstream media didn’t know how to deal with it.

They were still trying though.  We were treated to a CNN news “babe” leading us
through the nearly empty New Orleans convention center, always a snide comment
at the ready.  When she arrived at the line of National Guard troops who had
been working night and day to evacuate the victims from the civic center, the
most positive comment she could muster was “Yes, they are ‘FINALLY’ getting the
people out, but the National Guard won’t even tell the people where they’re

I have been keeping track of CNN reporter Soldad Obrien in New Orleans, and she is OUT OF CONTROL!  Soldedad apparently felt the need to take off her makeup and designer suits, and bless the people of New Orleans with her presence. 

She led her cameraman through the convention center yesterday, and could do nothing but make snide remarks and denigrate the rescue/recovery effort.  When she got to the line of National Guard soldiers who had been working night and day to evacuate the people, she snidely remarked "These people are FINALLY being evacuated, but the National Guard won't even tell them where they're going!  The inference being that the National Guard was "heartless" and "cruel" becuase they couldn't tell the people where they would end up.  I guess it didn't occurr to her that the front-line National Guard soldiers had NO IDEA where each person would end up, as that decision would be made by higher-level authorities after the people were evacuated from the convention center.  I guess news "babes" are like that:  They never let the FACTS get in the way of a snide comment.

In a poll most likely to be played down by both the Washington Post and ABC News (sponsors of the poll), it shows that "far fewer take George W. Bush personally to task" for the hurricane, and "public anger about the response is less widespread than some critics would suggest."

This is not what you would assume by the media's coverage.

"Two-thirds in this ABC News/Washington Post poll say the federal government should have been better prepared to deal with a storm this size, and three-quarters say state and local governments in the affected areas likewise were insufficiently prepared."

According to the media, the federal government, and Bush and particular, deserves the bulk of the criticism.

        Pardon my naiveté, but I was unaware that the venom, nastiness, and malice spewed so rampantly and callously on Air America.

        On Air America's Mike Malloy show on Friday night, September 2, 2005 (link to entire show audio (3 hrs.)), Malloy said this about our First Lady, Laura Bush (audiotape on file) (emphasis mine):

"A murderer herself. Somebody getting killed, one of her former boyfriends, in a drunken stupor, being behind the wheel of a car ... So here's Laura Bush, another killer. This Bush family. In order to get in the Bush family, it's like the way it used to be in order to get into certain gangs in Chicago. You had to kill somebody. And once you killed somebody, you're part of the gang. Well, Laura, Laura Bush is apparently that way. She murdered somebody in a car wreck, so she's in the gang. She's part of the gang."

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Aaron Broussard, a Democrat who is the President of Jefferson Parish, Lousiana, was just interviewed on CNN.

The essence of his rant was that the federal government in general and FEMA in particular are "covering their butts" by concealing the number of dead.At one point Broussard said, verbatim, that FEMA was trying to hide the fact that they had "murdered" thousands of people through their bureaucratic incompetence.

The CNN interviewer did not call Broussard on his outrageous accusation that the Bush administration had "murdered" thousands of its citizens. Not one peep, not one reference to his slander. The interviewer simply bade Broussard a fond farewell, with thanks for his appearance.