Our friend at Bare Knuckle Politics has found a fabulous video for us.

Pop singer Celine Dion, on with Larry King this Saturday, went on a rather impassioned tirade about conditions in New Orleans. In her rant, she suggested that Americans should turn a blind eye to looters, while implying that there is a certain hypocrisy between the war in Iraq and those not evacuated prior to Katrina making landfall.

On NPR's Morning Edition on Tuesday, ABC reporter Judy Muller unleashed another of her occasional commentaries for public radio. (Listen here.) Some of them are light, but Tuesday's was tough. Muller was angry at the inattention poor black people get outside of natural disasters, saying "Hurricanes don't discriminate, but society does discriminate." Here's the transcript of what she said, beginning with mockery of the president:

"When President Bush first landed in the hurricane zone Friday, he offered this upbeat assessment: `The good news is, and it's hard for some to see it now, that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubble of Trent Lott's house--he's lost his entire house--there's going to be a fantastic house. And,' he added, `I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch.'

"What a relief. All those Americans who might have been agonizing over this issue, wondering, `How about Trent Lott? Will he ever rebuild?'--well, they can rest easy now. As for all those Americans who have been agonizing over the images of poor people, mostly poor black people, who never had their own homes to begin with and who couldn't even afford the bus fare to get their families out of town before disaster struck, well, the news isn't quite so rosy.

"In fact, the one question people keep asking, over and over, is: `I can't believe this is the United States of America! How can this be happening here?' And the answer isn't actually that complicated. It's happening here because the nation's poor are so often ignored--by the government, by the media, by wealthier Americans--until a disaster of major proportions washes those horrific images up on our collective doorstep.

"Conventional wisdom says natural disasters like hurricanes don't discriminate, but society does discriminate. And so when natural disasters do hit, if you live in the poor part of town, the infrastructure will be shaky; the cost of transportation, good housing and medical care prohibitive. The result is what we've all been watching: images that have forced us to wonder what we would do, faced with no food or water for our children. Would we steal from stores to survive?...

Geraldo Rivera appeared on The O'Reilly Factor this evening to discuss what he said was a false story printed by The New York Times. Television journalist, Alesssandra Stanley wrote the following snippet that is hidden at the bottom her the article:

Some reporters helped stranded victims because no police officers or rescue workers were around. (Fox's Geraldo Rivera did his rivals one better: yesterday, he nudged an Air Force rescue worker out of the way so his camera crew could tape him as he helped lift an older woman in a wheelchair to safety.)

News reports alerted the world, and, it seems, an inattentive federal government, to the neglected victims in New Orleans. And television networks even acted as benefactors, holding star-studded telethons to raise money for the storm's victims.

On Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, reporter Martin Savidge in New Orleans highlighted a complaint from environmentalists about the impact of the contaminated water being pumped out of the city, but reporter Lisa Myers, in a story on “missed opportunities,” also gave broadcast network air time to showing an aerial view of some of the hundreds of flooded school buses the city government abandoned: “Some two hundred New Orleans school buses sit underwater, unused, enough to have evacuated 13,000 people. Why weren't those buses sent street by street to pick up people before the storm?” The rest of Myers' take on the buses follows.

Savidge wrapped up a piece on the flooding and all the E. Coli in the water: “There are some ecological concerns, especially as they begin pumping that filthy water out of New Orleans into either Lake Pontchartrain or the Gulf of Mexico. Environmentalists wonder, well what happens after that? City leaders simply say, one problem at a time.”

You believe that the U. S. Constitution prohibits the open recognition
of God by our federal (or any state) government, and the exhibition of
religious symbols on public grounds.

Or you believe that Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election.

Or you believe that most television and print news outlets in this country are politically neutral.

Or you believe that outlawing private gun ownership will reduce crime.

Or you believe that the U. S. Constitution is a "living,
breathing" document, and that Supreme Court Justices have the right to
redefine its text in order to make it compatible with what they
interpret to be the current moral standards of society.

Or you believe that Charles Darwin's macro-evolution theory is a proven fact.

In an otherwise good interview in the final half hour with Rick Warren, the Southern Baptist pastor and bestselling author of The Purpose-Driven Life, The Early Show's Harry Smith worried that some Hurricane Katrina victims taken into the homes of church parishioners might be forced to attend church in order to get a decent meal:

"Let me ask you this, though: is this an opportunity for a church to witness? Or if I'm a family, am, do I need to be concerned that I'm going to go live with a church family, are they going to proselytize me, are they going to say, 'you better come to church with me or else, I'm, you know, you're not going to get your breakfast this morning'?"

     Misinformation continues to flow about supposed “record high” gas prices. Over the holiday weekend, the national average for gas rose to a little more than $3, still below the inflation-adjusted record of $3.11 set nearly 20 years ago.

     That didn’t stop “The Early Show” on CBS from claiming a record-high $3.20 national average for regular unleaded gasoline. On the September 6 broadcast, both Julie Chen and Hannah Storm made the same incorrect claim.

     According to Chen, “The huge hit Hurricane Katrina put on the area helped send gas prices shooting up 75 cents to an average of $3.20 a gallon.” Storm went even further claiming that the numbers she was citing came from AAA. “Since the storm hit, almost 70 percent of normal oil production has been shut down. And that, of course, has had a dramatic effect on gas prices. According to AAA, gas has gone up 75 cents. That puts the average cost of regular unleaded at $3.20 a gallon,” explained Storm.

     America’s media are, once again, predicting economic doom and gloom as a result of a natural disaster. Such predictions have been wrong before and, in the case of Hurricane Katrina, will likely turn out wrong again.

     These predictions fly in the face of strong economic data reported by the Labor Department on Friday – including an August unemployment rate of 4.9 percent that is now the lowest in four years. America’s press decided to play down the positives by focusing on the threat to jobs and the economy as a result of Katrina.

     Edmund L. Andrews of The New York Times took a negative outlook with this:

What follows below are the interview questions with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin from today's Early Show. You will notice Nagin was not asked about any area where his leadership may have failed his constituents, particularly his controversial decision last week to put tourists who had been holed up in a Hyatt priority on evacuation over New Orleans residents who had waited out the storm and the flooding in horrendous living conditions in the Superdome.

@ 0711 EDT

Harry Smith from Canal Street, New Orleans: Just moments ago we had the opportunity to talk with the mayor here, Mayor Ray Nagin, and I asked him what does he need most now?

[Ray Nagin]

Smith: "You've said that you are concerned that there may be as many as how many dead here in New Orleans?"

Smith: "In the end, as we look back, the people have been evacuated from the Superdome, from the convention center, by and large the evacuation is complete. Who bears the shame for what happened here last week?"

Smith: "Here's uh, the question I'm curious to hear about, your people are now dispersed all over the United States, you have a quarter ofa million in Texas alone. Do they come back, does this city come back? Does this city, I was sitting here this morning saying, you know, I'd really would like to go down and get a cafe au lait and a beignet and I want to hear the sounds, and I want to smell the food, I want to experience what it used to be like here. Will that happen again?"

Smith: "I want to go back to something we were talking about just a second ago, because I heard you on the radio crying last week, I heard you swearing, uh, maybe it's not time for the blame game, but something broke down."

Smith: "Off the top of your head, streets clear of water, when the electricity is on, what's your best estimate?"

Smith: "Alright, Mayor, thank you so much for your time this morning."

### @ 0714 EDT ###

CBS’s Early Show today featured a taped tirade by Aaron Broussard, the Democratic president of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, who, on Sunday's Meet the Press essentially accused FEMA and the Bush administration of "murdering" New Orleanians. Broussard did try to sound some conciliatory notes, talking about shaking hands with FEMA officials and worrying about blame later, but then launched into an extended baseball analogy lampooning the Bush administration's reaction to the hurricane disaster which made Smith crack up laughing. Smith didn't challenge any of Broussards bombastic claims and his colleague Hannah Storm, co-hosting from New York, praised Broussard as embodying "the spirit of Louisiana":

There was loads of competition, but perhaps the most cynical anti-Bush story to appear in the Times from the tragedy-filled holiday weekend came Monday from Adam Nagourney and Anne Kornblut, "White House Enacts a Plan To Ease Political Damage" which worked the cliches of a sinister Karl Rove trying to shift hurricane blame to New Orleans' Democrats.

They begin: "Under the command of President Bush's two senior political advisers, the White House rolled out a plan this weekend to contain the political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina. It orchestrated visits by cabinet members to the region, leading up to an extraordinary return visit by Mr. Bush planned for Monday, directed administration officials not to respond to attacks from Democrats on the relief efforts, and sought to move the blame for the slow response to Louisiana state officials, according to Republicans familiar with the White House plan."

The Times warns away anyone who would suggest state and local officials had anything to do with the tragedy of errors that engulfed New Orleans: "In a reflection of what has long been a hallmark of Mr. Rove's tough political style, the administration is also working to shift the blame away from the White House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana who, as it happens, are Democrats. 'The way that emergency operations act under the law is the responsibility and the power, the authority, to order an evacuation rests with state and local officials," Mr. Chertoff said in his television interview. 'The federal government comes in and supports those officials.' That line of argument was echoed throughout the day, in harsher language, by Republicans reflecting the White House line."

For the second time the Times faults the Secretary of State for not being in D.C. while the water was in New Orleans: "[Condoleezza] Rice did not return to Washington until Thursday, after she was spotted at a Broadway show and shopping for shoes, an image that Republicans said buttressed the notion of a White House unconcerned with tragedy."

One wonders how often the Times criticized Warren Christopher or Madeleine Albright, (secretaries of state under Clinton) for not heading off to the scene of natural disasters.