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Reuters: At least 1,400 believed lost in Afghanistan earthquake . Scheerpost: AIPAC still has a stranglehold on the Democratic Party . CT Mirror: Reduced services and higher costs are on the horizon for CT hospitals in the wake of "The Big Beautiful Bill." Prism Reports: The US State Department halted visas connected to Gaza . Black Agenda Report: The relevance of what happened with Hurricane Katrina .  Associated Press: Is McDonald's starting a price war ?

People from his own party and ideology are saying he sucked last night , and it wasn't all because he had to follow Obama. It's because he's the same neocon nonsense in a different package. C'mon: this guy, the current Republican Governor, blamed the government for the poor response to Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina happened on George W. Bush's watch. He's saying that a Republican-led government failed, and the only solution to that is a new Republican-led government...that doesn't rely on government. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! : TPM catches David Brook's response . He equates "conservative" with "weird." Heh.

The news can't be all about hypocrites, the greedy and the foolish, can it? Of course not : BATON ROUGE, La. - A construction company owner who lost two homes in Hurricane Katrina claimed a $97 million Powerball prize, a jackpot won off a ticket he bought at a convenience store where he stopped to buy his wife a gallon of milk. When he turned in the winning ticket, Carl Hunter became the largest Powerball winner in Louisiana's history. He won the jackpot in January, but the 73-year-old small businessman waited nearly four months to claim the prize. Nice. I kinda wish more victims of Katrina could have this chance.

It's no secret that the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina has yet to be fully repaired, or that all of its citizens have returned to something resembling home. But when in doubt (I guess) the best thing to do is... rely on the gambling industry ? While Gov. Haley Barbour (R) has hailed the casino openings as a harbinger of Mississippi's resurgence and developers have proposed more than $1 billion in beachfront condos and hotels for tourists, fewer than one in 10 of the thousands of single-family houses destroyed in Biloxi are being rebuilt, according to city permit records. More than 10,000 displaced families still live in trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Now, long-standing resentment over the way the state has treated displaced residents has deepened over a proposal by the Barbour administration to divert $600 million in federal housing aid to fund an expansion plan at the Port of Gulfport. The port's recently approved master plan calls for in...

Hillary Clinton on rebuilding New Orleans : "What you do need is action, action supported by our federal government but driven right here in New Orleans and in the surrounding parishes by people who understand the reality on the ground, action that leads to real, measurable improvements, not six months from now, not a year from now, but right now." To bad for us the country is being run by timetable-phobic posers who'd rather look and sound good than actually doing something to clean up a natural disaster that's almost two years old .

Now that his insurance claim has been rejected, Republican Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott has decided to fight back .

From the WashPost : As the winds and water of Hurricane Katrina were receding, presidential confidante Karen Hughes sent a cable from her State Department office to U.S. ambassadors worldwide. Titled "Echo-Chamber Message" -- a public relations term for talking points designed to be repeated again and again -- the Sept. 7, 2005, directive was unmistakable: Assure the scores of countries that had pledged or donated aid at the height of the disaster that their largesse had provided Americans "practical help and moral support" and "highlight the concrete benefits hurricane victims are receiving." Many of the U.S. diplomats who received the message, however, were beginning to witness a more embarrassing reality. They knew the U.S. government was turning down many allies' offers of manpower, supplies and expertise worth untold millions of dollars. Eventually the United States also would fail to collect most of the unprecedented outpouring of international c...

From The WashPost: To the residents of the Yorkshire Mobile Home Park, all of them families displaced by Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency crews offered answers that were uncertain and sometimes contradictory. As residents spilled out of their homes to meet their similarly bewildered neighbors, the adults wondered where they would be sent next, and how far they might wind up from their jobs. Some began sobbing. Then the children, seeing their parents' tears, began crying, too. A woman fainted, and an ambulance came... ...Park tenants are keenly aware that they are not particularly welcome where they have ended up. Fearing blight, many local communities have tried to block FEMA trailer parks, and several are trying to enact deadlines for the removal of trailers. FEMA itself seems torn between closing the parks and serving the poor evacuees squeezed out by the scarcity of housing since the hurricane. Several times since Katrina, the agency has threatened to c...

My apologies to Nat and Natalie Cole. Anyway, from Eugene Robinson : Bush said there was "no way to imagine America without New Orleans." No imagination is needed -- the New Orleans that we knew before the flood no longer exists. The remnant of a city that survives between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain has less than half the population of the New Orleans we used to know. Vast neighborhoods are full of houses abandoned to mold and decay. Hundreds of thousands of residents still have no way to come home -- or no homes to return to. Vicious hoodlums have returned, however, and are preying on the diehards who never left and the pioneers who are doing their best to help the city rebuild. Yes, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have just bought a house in New Orleans and say they will make the city their home . But they're likely to have better security than their neighbors. Assuming the area doesn't become occupied by the classic WASP crowd, I can't see how an...

"Seven policemen charged in a deadly shooting in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina turned themselves in Tuesday at the city jail , where more than 200 supporters greeted them in a show of solidarity."

AP : A federal appeals court told the Bush administration Friday that it does not need to immediately restart a housing program for thousands (4,200 to be exact) of Hurricane Katrina victims.

From CNN : New Orleans police lined up "like at a firing range" and fatally shot an unarmed man in the back as he fled from them in the days after Hurricane Katrina swept ashore, a witness to the shooting told CNN. It marks the first time a witness has come forward publicly with information about the shooting of Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally retarded man whose death has sparked a police investigation and a grand jury probe into what happened in and around the Danziger Bridge that day. "He just fell like he was collapsing," Kasimir Gaston told CNN. "Like something just wiped him out." Gaston was one of many flood refugees living on the second floor of the Friendly Inn, a low-income motel on the city's east side. On Sunday, September 4 of last year, he says he woke up and stepped onto the balcony of the motel and saw a man running, hands outstretched and being fired upon. Initial police accounts said that Madison reached for his waistband and tu...

What's one of the hardest things for George W. Bush to do as POTUS, according to the man himself? Insure that working families are living above the poverty line? No. Creating security policies that keep our homeland safe without sacrificing our liberties? Nah. Repairing the locations and lives disrupted by Hurricane Katrina? Nope. Howza bout: trying to "connect Iraq to the war on terror?" Bingo ! Normally, such comments don't astonish me. Bush has made a hobby of flip-flopping on the Iraq/GWOT thing, convincing us that the conflict in Iraq was not a result of 9/11 one day, then the next quoting Osama bin Laden (the man responsible for 9/11) as a justification for being in Iraq. No, my astonishment comes from this (which isn't really a shock when you think about it): "Saddam Hussein regarded al-Qaida as a threat rather than a possible ally, a Senate report says , contradicting assertions President Bush has used to build support for the war in Iraq ." And...

When Rockey Vaccarella showed up to praise President Bush for handling Katrina , I was skeptical to comment until I knew more. Let me introduce you to more . So what are the odds that a person who ran as a Republican and is also a Bush supporter would end up being the Face of Katrina Recovery? I'd say very high if you're trying to muddle the memory of the American public.

Apparently, President Bush's mid-term message to the American people is: "Remember 9/11, Forget Katrina '05." Why do I say this? Well, first of all, his stance on the 9/11 attacks hasn't really changed since he said " The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of Sept. 11 " last year. His stance on Katrina? " I also want people to remember that a one-year anniversary is just that, because it's going to require a long time to help these people rebuild ." I see a contrast where there shouldn't be one. You can argue that actions taken after the results of 9/11 (specifically, the occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq) will take as much time, if not more, to resolve than the devastation brought on by Katrina. Both events witness an amazing level of footdragging (with 9/11 getting the Commission formed; with Katrina, getting supplies to the right locations and people out of danger). Both have been used as political football...

From Joe Atkins of Golf Coast Reconstruction Watch: The still-unknown story of this Katrina aftermath is the political fallout . [Ray] Nagin, a Democrat and former corporate executive who got 80 percent of the white vote in his first election, alienated those voters earlier this year when he lamely tried to appeal to blacks by promising New Orleans would be a "chocolate city." Now Nagin has turned to xenophobia in his re-election bid. "How do I insure that New Orleans is not overrun by Mexican workers?" he recently asked a group of contractors and business owners...

President Bush's desire to bring democracy to the Middle East has hit a snag. An Afghan man who converted from Islam to Christianity is on trial for making that change and is facing death . Although there might be a legal technicality in the case , it's clear that (once again) Bush was asleep at the wheel . When you add this to ignoring the warnings about 9/11, Iraq's real nuclear capabilities and the impact of Hurricane Katrina, you really have to wonder what is exactly involved in this man's decision making process. Obviously, gathering facts, stats and data isn't part of it. It's hard to argue what political advantages this brings Bush; how does the execution of a Christian in a Muslim-dominated country rally the religious, conservative base of his party when he was a key player in the formation of that country's government? If he could actually back up his claim that his administration can do more than one thing at a time, things like this wouldn't h...

Today is the day FEMA kicks out Katrina victims from their various hotels. Well, they won't actually kick them out (that's too cruel)... they just won't pay the bill anymore . I couldn't find anything too close to Louisianna, but those in Texas (and elswhere) may have a problem. Just staying in a Dallas Ramada for the rest of the month for a family of four (two adults and two children) is at least $3108.00 . UPDATE : Maybe Canada can help .

After getting pretty much a failing grade in post-9/11 preparation , the Bush Administration also gets scolded for their horrid response to Hurricane Katrina . So how exactly are things like the Patriot Act and the warrantless wiretapping keeping us safe when all evidence says we are no safer then before the terrorist attacks? Who benefits from programs that revolves around gathering personal information from a multitude of American citizens?

Well, I just saw the President's State of the Union speech . Some quick points: Next speech, he may want to do some research on some of his topics. Either that, or forget about mentioning things like poverty , disaster recovery , education and energy . His form of Social Security "reform" will not happen. At all. The government beancounters didn't factor in permanent tax cuts when they made their calculations and projections. Ipso-facto: a permanent tax cuts could actually do more harm than good. Maybe you shouldn't have let your most aggressive non-elected proponent get arrested on the night of your big speech. Lastly, when did the creation of animal-human hybrids become an issue? Did he use his comic books as a reference for this speech? I think you can some up the President's speech this way: " Give me the limittless power I need to protect you ."