I’m sorry. I know one of the fruits of political victory is that you get to reward your cronies with well-paid, do-very-little jobs, and that everyone does this. But you’re supposed to do it with the ambassadorship to Luxembourg…not with running a department of emergency preparedness. It’s especially appalling that they didn’t bring in someone with expertise after 9/11 when everyone in America, as one, agreed we needed to beef up that area.

David Remnick:

Obviously, a hurricane is beyond human blame, and the political miscalculations that have come to light—the negligent planning, the delayed rescue and aid efforts, the thoroughly confused and uninspired political leadership—cannot all be laid at the feet of President Bush. But you could sense, watching him being interviewed by Diane Sawyer on ABC’s “Good Morning America”—defensive, confused, overwhelmed—that he knew that he had delivered a series of feeble, vague, almost flippant speeches in the early days of the crisis, and that the only way to prevent further political damage was to inoculate himself with the inevitable call for non-partisanship: “I hope people don’t play politics during this period of time.”

Patrick Nielsen Hayden:

The observation that the United States is best understood as a third world country that happens to have a lot of money has never seemed more correct.

Plus two links, offered with no little comment:

FEMA head fired from last job (as the goddamn commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association, of all things)

Haliburton hired for storm cleanup

Both links via Boing Boing. There is some good news coming out of New Orleans, but sometimes it seems like the bad just keeps on coming.