After the administration let the economy and various wars veer out of control, the administration is wading into Wall Street to rescue bankers and thinking about rescuing homeowners. Now it's even considering negotiating to rescue our troops from Afghanistan.

What's next? A withdrawal from Iraq?

The Afghanistan situation is so serious that as the Wall Street Journal reports ("U.S. Mulls Talks With Taliban in Bid to Quell Afghan Unrest"):

But until late summer 2001, the Bush regime was muddling along in a generally uncontroversial way when the unthinkable (not to the regime) happened on 9/11. That tragedy unleashed the Bush regime on the world. So far, his administration has wrecked Iraq, made a bad situation in Afghanistan worse, and presided over a historic Wall Street crash that threatens the entire world economy.

That's three exhibits right there for the new George W. Bush Presidential Libary being erected in Dallas. It would be nice if the libary put those three exhibits in the same hall, next to the Pet Goat Reading Room, which would display the August 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing with the same kind of reverence that real libraries afford the U.S. Constitution.

Bush's job as president is almost finished; there are no more worlds to conquer us. Unless, as Mike Bloomberg has done in New York City, Bush's handlers try to undemocratically erase term limits so he can serve a third term.

Is there a groundswell for abolishing presidential term limits? While you're being pinned to the ground by current events, listen for one. . . .

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

Salem-News.com: 'Hell Freezes Over: White House Drug Czar Backs Decriminalization'

Wall Street Journal: 'Rescue Plan Faces Delays In Hiring Asset Managers'

BBC: 'NATO's Afghan forces "hit limit" '

CNN: 'Global stocks rebound'

Wall Street Journal: 'Crisis Deals New Blow to Japan: Country's Top Bank in Capital Shortfall; Stocks at '82 Levels'

New York: 'Stimulus in Pinstripes: Why the Yankees will renounce their smart, sustainable team-building strategy and start spending like drunken lunatics again.'

Wall Street Journal: 'Post-Enron Crackdown Comes Up Woefully Short'
". . . Today's financial crisis has shown what a real debacle looks like. And it has made clear that executives' duties to public companies have, if anything, been loosened, not reinforced. What is worse, the post-Enron crackdown appears not only to have failed to stop flagrant corporate risk-taking, but to have lulled Washington to sleep."

Reuters: 'Skinheads held over plot to kill Obama'

Slate: 'Countdown to the Obama Rapture: Watch as the press corps battles its performance anxiety!' (Jack Shafer)
". . . if Obama wins, these scribes know that they'll be facing the toughest assignment of their careers. They've all oversubscribed to the notion that Obama's candidacy is momentous, without parallel, and earth-shattering, so they can't file garden-variety pieces about the 'winds of change' blowing through Washington."

N.Y. Post: 'PATERSON WOULD BEAT RUDY: POLL'

N.Y. Jewish Week: 'New Tactics By Settlers Worrying Authorities'

Slate: 'How Bad Are Electronic Voting Machines?'

McClatchy: 'McCain pushed regulators for land swap, despite pledge'

N.Y. Times: 'The Drug Czar’s Report Card: F'

Slate: 'Middle-Aged Feminists Longing for Their Father's Money'

N.Y. Times: 'Rice Visits Mexico for a Meeting About Its Drug War'

Slate: 'Registering Doubt: If we can nationalize banks, why not our election process?'

Dawn (Pakistan): 'Barbaric killing of teenager unfolds'
". . . was first thrown before hungry dogs and when she was mauled by them and in the jaws of death, she was riddled with bullets."

N.Y. Daily News: 'Ma charged in vicious mop-handle slay of 11-year-old daughter'

L.A. Times: 'McCain was frank, garrulous and accessible -- and then he wasn't'

Guardian (U.K.): 'The cost of the crash: $2,800,000,000,000'

N.Y. Post: 'DA EYES COPS IN SODOMY'

Human Rights Watch: 'Confessions of a former Guantanamo prosecutor'

McClatchy: 'As clock ticks, U.S. letting thousands of Iraqi prisoners go'

N.Y. Times: 'Can I Get an Arrgh?'

BuzzFlash: 'Memo to Palin: Fruit Fly Researchers Receive Nobel Prize for Medicine for Advancing the Understanding of Birth Defects in Humans'

Slate: 'Texts You Can Believe In: Forget robo-calls -- Obama's text messages are this campaign's secret weapon'

McClatchy: 'Slowing British economy could send immigrants home'

Guardian (U.K.): 'BP smashes forecasts as profits soar 148 percent'
"Oil giant BP has reaped the benefits of this summer's record oil prices, smashing all forecasts with a 148 percent rise in third-quarter profits. The figures are likely to spark fresh protests from motorists and businesses that have been hit hard by higher petrol prices."

RadioAustralia: 'China tries to kick start housing sector'

BBC: 'Arctic ice thickness "plummets" '

Wall Street Journal: 'Some Newspapers Shed Unprofitable Readers'

Wall Street Journal: 'Another Favorite Trade Bites the Dust'

N.Y. Times: 'Fractures in Iraq City as Kurds and Baghdad Vie'

Scotsman: 'Transcript of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross's phone calls to Andrew Sachs'

N.Y. Post: 'EASY TICKET TO RIDE THE GRAVY TRAIN'

Bloomberg: 'Volkswagen Overtakes Exxon as Most Valuable Company'

N.Y. Post: 'FUNDS' OCTOBER SURPRISE: HEDGES FACING WORST MONTHLY LOSSES IN DECADE'

Desperately needed funds for new levees in U.S. Midwest have been diverted to flood control in Iraq.

How many more floods of Biblical proportions will it take for Americans to realize what the government is not doing?

The Bush regime and Congress have refused to spend money on upgrading levees in the U.S. while spending hundreds of millions of dollars on levees and dams in Iraq.

The first disaster was Hurricane Katrina. Now we have the Iowa floods, which will have even more impact worldwide because of their impact on food prices.

I thought Bush was a big Bible reader. So why is he ignoring prophecy about floods? The AP's Jim Salter reported on May 12 that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers didn't even know how many levees there were in the country, let alone the sad shape of them. Salter wrote:

Asked and answered when it comes to Iraq. The Bush regime diverted flood-control money from New Orleans to try to win the propaganda war in Iraq. (Go to this 2007 Bush Beat item for facts and links.)

Same situation in the Midwest. While the waters were still ominously rising last month, the AP's Salter wrote:

$200 million would pay off your mortgage, but it's really not that much money in the big picture. As I wrote in September 2005:

While the corpses of elderly people were floating and bloating in New Orleans in September '05, the Defense Department was also bragging on its "Defend America" website about spending money on Mosul Dam, the largest in Iraq, to keep floodwaters from potentially — potentially — flooding Baghdad:

Not that the Mosul Dam project worked out well, mind you. Two years after the DOD crowed about its work on the dam, Stuart Bowen, the courageous special inspector general in the Iraq Debacle, pointed to the facts, as NPR noted in October 2007:

For more, read this Washington Post story, which says in part:

Rather that a corrupt flood-control project be undertaken in this country instead of Iraq. At least it would have partially helped defend America.
.

Not just for kids: a parody of the self-parody administration

Fight off your recession and read this requiem for a lightweight: Goodnight Bush, a parody to end all self-parody presidencies.

It's almost time to say "good night" to George W. Bush, and Erich Origen and Gan Golan pronounce the laugh rites over the administration.

Bush's favorite kiddie book in times of crisis may be The Pet Goat, but mine is now Origen and Golan's Goodnight Bush, which sends the regime up to the moon in the same way that Ralph Kramden was always threatening to do to wife Alice.

This is a very funny book, even if it may induce nightmares instead of sweet dreams. Cute illustrations abound: a refinery plume, piggy war profiteers, a spilt glass of water with Katrina victims floating in it.

The text is warm and fuzzy — not as fuzzy as Bush's brain but warmer than Cheney's heart:

See Dick run. See Dick run away. See Dick run away finally.

And see the book's website here.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Bush isn't checking his e-mails. Or maybe he is.

While George W. Bush has spent a record amount of time vacationing at his ranch, he hasn't been checking his e-mail. Or maybe his stooges did check it — in the sense of a hockey player checking an opponent by slamming him into the boards and destroying him — and thus prevented that flood of messages from ever seeing the light of day.

The numbers game for America's numbest president are eerie: A report released by watchdog congressman Henry Waxman — judging by his performance, Waxman works 24/7 — reveals that 473 days of White House e-mail are missing. At the same time, Bush is on pace to have spent 499 days on vacation during his two terms. Most of it has been spent hunkering down in his Crawford, Texas, bunker.

The Washington Post's Dan Eggen and Elizabeth Williamson report this morning:

Now go back to Julie Mason's story in the August 9, 2007, Houston Post:

Mason's smart story notes Bush's record-breaking non-performance:

Do the math: Bush had taken 418 days of vacation in his first 6.7 years in office. That works out to 62.4 vacation days a year — a little more than 12 work weeks, which is probably slightly more vacation time than you get. On the other hand, think how much more damage Bush could have done if he hadn't taken so much vacation.

Anyway, multiply 62.4 days a year by eight and you get 499 total days of vacation.

Compare that with the 473 days of e-mail missing. All Bush's handlers have to do to keep pace is destroy 26 more days of e-mails. They can probably handle that.

Former SecDef goes to Capitol Hill to finally answer for Tillman coverup — or at least face some unfriendly fire. Watch it live.

Three years after the Pentagon covered up the circumstances of soldier Pat Tillman's actual death by fratricide in Afghanistan so it could falsely portray it as a death by hostile fire, thus taking the country's mind off Abu Ghraib, Don Rumsfeld finally has to answer questions about it.

The hearing's going on right now, thanks to dogged California congressman Henry Waxman — and only because of the 2006 midterm elections that wrestled control of the House from the GOP.

Why C-SPAN isn't televising it on its main channel is beyond me, but you can catch it right now on Waxman's excellent site, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, of which he is now chairman. For background, read Waxman's opening statement and Waxman's hearing this past April on the Tillman coverup.

As the ranking minority member during the first six years of the Bush-Cheney regime, Waxman lobbed shell after shell at the disgraceful conduct before and during the war on Terra — and on many other issues as well. Now Waxman has the power to put Rumsfeld in his sights.

Just a few minutes ago, Rumsfeld began his opening statement by saying, "I want to extend my deepest sympathies to the Tillman family."

Well, he said the same thing to them in the spring of 2004. But what he forgot to tell them at that time — although he knew it — was that Tillman was actually killed by his fellow soldiers in a terrible screwup. The Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal covered up the real circumstances, even from Tillman's family, so that it could score p.r. points. The cabal trotted out Bush to make the point that the dastardly enemy killed Tillman and that his was a noble sacrifice.

Steve Coll of the Washington Post (now at the New Yorker) first uncovered this sordid public-relations maneuver, which has enraged Tillman's family. Check out Coll's brilliant work from December 2004.

The current Pentagon, under Bob Gates, has continued to cover up the actions of top officials. Only a few days ago, Richard Sisk of the New York Daily News wrote:

Oh, now former Joint Chiefs chair Richard "Quag" Myers is talking about the "heartbreak" suffered by the Tillman family. But Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney is saying to Myers, "Why didn't you tell the Tillman family the truth?" All they're doing right now is trying to get them to apologize. Maybe it'll get better. Check it out.

How about the entire city of New Orleans? Look at the Corps of the matter.

So Senator Dave Vitter screwed one person in New Orleans and won a million headlines. No one noticed when he, his fellow war supporters in Congress, and the White House repeatedly screwed the city's entire (former) population before and after Hurricane Katrina hit.

In early September 2005, Vitter entered the official White House photo album by pointing out flood damage in Louisiana to President George W. Bush. But as I pointed out at the time, Vitter was gesturing in the direction of Iraq, which was soaking up funds diverted before Katrina:

In June 2005, the Corps budget for New Orleans was slashed by $71.2 million, the heaviest cut the flood-prone city had ever experienced.

Two months later, Katrina hit, and water flooded into New Orleans. The Bush regime, with the support of Vitter, who was on the House Appropriations Committee before he became a senator in 2005 and was more ardent about big missiles than big levees, had been blowing its load of money on flood protection in Iraq. The Corps even established a "Gulf Region," but it was the Persian Gulf, not the Gulf of Mexico, and the Bush regime poured billions into building hospitals and health clinics in Iraq while letting New Orleans hospitals die.

What a drag. And that's what Rudy Giuliani's aides are thinking. As Time pointed out July 10, Vitter is the Southern campaign director for Giuliani's presidential bid. An outspoken social conservative closely tied to the Family Research Council, Bible-thumper James Dobson's D.C. arm, Vitter combined with Giuliani to make "strange bedfellows," as Gambit Weekly's Jeremy Alford noted this past April.

Until Vitter was exposed as a brothel client, he had been obsessed — except when it came to New Orleans — with preventing the release of precious bodily fluids.

Pushing hard for abstinence education, Vitter has been quite the missionary. In a letter to the Senate Finance Committee leaders just three weeks ago, Vitter pleaded for the re-authorization of $50 million to spread abstinence education to the nation's youth. Vitter wrote:

No doubt a person will pay a higher price for sexual conduct without such negotiations.

Vitter's letter added:

Or at least the rest of his term as a senator.

He co-wrote the letter with Kentucky senator Jim Bunning, the former Detroit Tigers pitcher. Quite a battery of pitcher and catcher.

Speaking of which, the moralists should say an extra prayer of thanks that Vitter was involved with the D.C. Madam instead of being just another AC/DC mister like so many other rigid right-wingers. Unlike evangelist Ted Haggard, Vitter is being criticized for screwing a woman.

To top it all, Vitter was escorted into Congress by someone else's peckerdillo, and Hustler's Larry Flynt was the key figure in that episode as well as in outing Vitter's hypocrisy. As Think Progress noted July 10:

Vitter wants to clean up such messes? Pass the Kleenex.

Poor New Orleans, poor Iraq vets. Trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina, the city is trying to build a medical complex downtown that includes the fabled Charity Hospital and a VA hospital, but Congress took a step backwards yesterday on the plan.

And wouldn't you know — the only House member standing up for the city during a hearing yesterday in D.C. was a guy with no cred, William Jefferson, the Louisiana Democrat indicted on corruption charges.

The city wants a rebuilt hospital complex to help revitalize its downtown. Care of New Orleans' people is also a consideration. But others want the hospital complex, which would include a VA hospital that was destroyed during Katrina, moved to the suburbs.

This is more than the continuous whitening strikes raining down on New Orleans. Some in Congress want the VA hospital put in Pensacola, Florida. Congressman Bill Miller from that area argues that New Orleans is too prone to flooding. He doesn't mention that Pensacola was ravaged by two hurricanes in 2004.

Some representatives of veterans have mixed feelings about putting a new VA hospital in downtown New Orleans. But one is desperately needed somewhere. As Kate Moran reports this morning on the excellent Times-Picayune site, nola.com:

We can't afford much else than the war in Iraq, thanks to our unjustified invasion four long years ago.

A far more serious case of corruption than the William Jefferson case is that the U.S. Corps of Engineers was busy building dams, levees, hospitals, and health clinics in Iraq when Katrina ravaged New Orleans in the summer of 2005.

The city became a charity case, and its Charity Hospital, founded 250 years ago, was the exemplar, a huge hospital already crumbling when Katrina hit. Read Clayton James Cubitt's elegy from October 2005:

And a horror house during Katrina: Hundreds of patients, along with doctors and staff, were trapped by Katrina's floodwaters for nearly a week with no food, power, or water. Patients who died were moved into stairwells. Other hospitals were evacuated before rescuers focused on Charity.

Bush Beat reader Jeffrey Schwartz up at MIT, who tipped me off to this latest indignity to New Orleans, neatly sums up the political realities of the current situation:

Blow up the candles. Blow them up all over the world. George W. Bush's 61st birthday is tomorrow, July 6. Things are so bad that even the Presidential Prayer Team, focusing on "Today's Immediate Concerns," is praying as we speak that our troops come home:

Naturally, the prayer team's birthday wishes for Bush take precedence over a bunch of Okies and Kansans, not to mention people from his adopted home state. But for Bush — remember his slow reaction to the tsunami and his performance before and after Hurricane Katrina — natural disasters aren't his focus.

Manmade disasters are his thing. So buy at least 3,583 candles.

Yes, Bush's birth date, among other things, makes him a Cancer with a capital "C." As for our de facto president, Dick Cheney, you'll have to wait six months to celebrate his next birthday: He turns 67 on January 30, 2008.

It should have already dawned on you that we really are living in the age of Aquarius.

Guess where the U.S. is frantically building health clinics and flood-control structures.

As a dozen Americans were killed in the past two days in Baghdad, the U.S. military "surge" south and north — in Diyala (the province between Baghdad and Iran) — gets more intense. The Washington Post reports this morning:

What about the other surge, the one that swamped New Orleans in 2005 and left an already struggling city with poor health care and even feebler flood protection?

Before Hurricane Katrina hit, in case you've forgotten, the Bush regime diverted Corps of Engineers work to Iraq, instead of finishing levees in New Orleans.

Now the Corps is reporting that current levees won't protect the city from another big flood. But the Corps is busy building new health clinics and flood-control structures in Iraq.

Some of the new health clinics are, wouldn't you know, in Diyala province, where we're fighting rebels and causing even more destruction.

The Corps has been spreading the word. In a breathless April 20 press release, complete with color photography and titled "Electricity, Medical, Water Projects Enrich Diyala Province," flack LuAnne Fantasia (you can't make it up) wrote about the 170 infrastructure projects in Diyala. I'd say the Corps doesn't have 170 infrastructure projects in New Orleans.

Just as well that we're building new health clinics in Iraq, because we've already bombed hospitals.

At least in New Orleans, our government didn't bomb hospitals but — like massive old Charity — allowed them to die a slow death from neglect.

A new report concludes that Hurricane Katrina hit blacks harder than whites.

Thanks to the Kaiser Family Foundation for pointing out the obvious. That's usually my job.

I'm not faulting the foundation or its report, Giving Voice to the People of New Orleans: The Kaiser Post-Katrina Baseline Survey. The Washington Post, which has helped sponsor other Kaiser surveys, ran a story about the report on May 10.

But many people have been saying this from the git-go. In October 2005, I noted in "Whitening Strikes New Orleans" that the storm's devastation was creating a black diaspora that was being undercovered by most of the nation's press. And at the same time as Katrina, the U.S. was pouring money into Iraq's infrastructure while ignoring Louisiana's.

Commentators like Anthony Asadullah Samad were talking about the storm back then in context of the racial history of Louisiana and the mindset of right-wing ideologues past and present. Samad excoriated "the far right" for "calling the poor and disenfranchised responsible for their own fates."

The Kaiser report confirms the disproportionate damage suffered by Louisiana black people. Here's an excerpt from the new report's executive summary:

The new Louisiana is destined to be whiter. And the black people who do remain will be even poorer than they were before. I guess that means more blues sung by fewer people.