You're hearing the award hoopla, no doubt.  But have you ever heard of another event covered, filmed, or reported on a news show, to tell you the time Gore flew out to New Orleans to evacuate hospital patients in New Orleans the week the hurricane hit the city?

If you didn't -- and chances are you haven't -- I call it a sizable lie of omission by your news suppliers.



Former vice-Prez Al Gore chartered a plane in Sept. 2005 and flew aboard for 2 roundtrips to New Orleans to medEvac 100s of patients from Charity Hospital and bring them to Tennessee.  The VP declined interviews while he was shuttling the evacuees that Saturday September 3 and for a 2nd return flight he made the next day, but the doctors who flew with him talked about the experience.

Gore had to work around a sequential blockade by FEMA, which naturally denied his team permissions, repeatedly.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP)- Al Gore helped airlift some 270 Katrina evacuees on two private charters from New Orleans, acting at the urging of a doctor who saved the life of the former vice president's son.

...  [Gore] refused to be interviewed about the mercy missions he financed and flew last Saturday and Sunday. . . .

More below and a pix

Speculation is swirling about who will replace Attorney General Alberto Gonzales -- everyone from Utah's Senator Orrin Hatch to former Solicitor General and Clinton stalker Theodore Olsen. Until last week, the name most bandied about was Secretary of Homeland Security and USAPATRIOT Act co-author Michael Chertoff. You'd think selecting Chertoff in light of the New Orleans debacle would be a stupid thing to do since Chertoff's continued ideological mishandling of the Katrina disaster borders on the criminally insane.

Been doing the Progressive Democrat since shortly after the 2004 election. It originally grew out of my attempt to keep people's grassroots spirits up after the 2004 election and originally it was just a handful of readers. When I spend time on it, nowadays I get around 80 hits a day. Though when I am away on vacation and not keeping it up, that drops to more like 25 hits a day. Still, since I originally had less than 100 readers period, that's growth.

It was the day after President Bush had stood in the center of Jackson Square in New Orleans to promise that the Federal Government was going to help all the victims of the hurricane, and that he was counting on "Armies of Compassion" to help do the work. The next morning, I got on the phone to call the Office of Faith Based Initiatives to let them know that I was reporting for duty, along with an organized group of churches, but we needed a little funding.

White House: Good morning this is the White House, how many I assist you?

Craig: Could you connect me to the Office of Faith Based Initiatives please.

White House: Hold on please.

Ring....ring....ring

OFBI: Office of Faith Based Initiatives, How can I help you?

Craig: I heard President Bush's speech last night and I've got a bunch of churches here in the Bay Area of California already lining up to help about 50 families that have evacuated to here.

OFBI: That's great.

Craig: Thank you. But here's the thing, we need some money.

Bush comforts Katrina survivor


Washington, DC Washington, DC (APE) - President Bush today welcomed Louisiana resident and Katrina hurricane victim Rockey Vacarella to the White House on the one-year anniversary of the catastrophic hurricane Katrina.

"I want to congratulate Rockey and all the folks along the Gulf Coast on their one-year anniversary," said Bush. "This first year has been filled with lots of ups and downs and real challenges, but that's what makes folks strong... that's what makes a marriage strong. I look forward to wishing them many more anniversaries to come."

A year after the hurricane, the Bush administration remains mired in criticism. House and Senate Democratic leaders recently released a combined report entitled "Broken Guitar Strap" which outlines the failed responses of the administration.

Note: Check the comments for a photoessay comparison, and a commentary on Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind".

"The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune." -- Plutarch

What is the measure of a man, a political party, an ideology or an Administration? Is the collective whole of one's lifetime achievements enough, or would a subset of the timeline through which a lifetime passes provide an adequate sampling so as to derive a concept of what one might expect in the future?  If our answer to this question is the latter, then the second term of George W. Bush, along with the GOP-controlled Congress and Justice Department, has presented us with the opportunity to see up close and personal several key examples embodied in the form of two cities located nearly half a world from each other: New Orleans & Fallujah.

What we behold isn't pretty.

Via BooMan and our own Georgia10, I see Bill Kristol is attempting to separate the failure of George W. Bush from conservative ideology.

BILL KRISTOL: I think it's become in people's minds an emblem of the administration that just isn't as serious about the competent execution of the functions of government as it should be. And even -- I'm struck talking to conservatives and Republicans -- they agree with the president on basic political philosophy, the they agree with his basic policy agenda, but they are worried that they just don't seem to be able to execute as well as they should be.

Kristol's just the latest in a line of conservatives to claim that Republican policies didn't fail Bush; Bush failed the Republican policies.

They cannot separate Bush from their movement, however. They can't escape the monster they created.

As a rule, I don't usually do commentary. I more prefer trying to tell funny stories or create phony pictures to get a point across satirically. That being said, every once in awhile you run across a picture that, like the old cliché, paints a thousand words. No Photoshopping needs to be done. It's like the spirited stallion that can't be broken.

This picture, released yesterday, is one of those rare moments in my humble opinion. The sheer power and depth of the unconscious and subconscious metaphor that was unleashed upon an apparently unaware American public is mind-boggling. I refer to a still capture of the just uncovered, and, dare I say "leaked" video depicting the briefings of President Bush, Chertoff, Brown and the rest of the apostles prior to Hurricane Katrina's landfall.

The Bush administration is in a state of collapse. Around the country, people are starting to talk about the need to impeach and remove Bush from office. Many of these people, like the one-time Republicans described here are, like William Buckley, totally lost and devoid of answers. Especially in Red or Purple areas, everybody will know who the resident liberal is - even if you have never said a word about it.

If the 2006 elections were held in March or April instead of November, just about all any Democrat would have to do to win would be to buy 15 seconds of TV time and mutter three words--Iraq, Dubai, Katrina--then go home and plan the victory party.

Well, not really, but you get the idea. Unfortunately the election isn't till November, and the issue with the greatest staying power and most potential isn't either of the obvious ones: it's Katrina.

Dubai may fade, Iraq may change, but Katrina is firmly fixed in the public mind, as two recent if largely overlooked polls indicate. Katrina is the Democrats' political equivalent of 9-11.

The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin is always worth reading, but today's online chat is especially good.

For example:

Shingletown, Calif.: If Hume doesn't ask Cheney the alcohol question, what do you think the chances are that he will ever have to deny the accusation on the record? Would you care to speculate on any other reason that Cheney would have deliberately delayed reporting this incident for so long?

Dan Froomkin: There are lots of possibilities. It could have been an immature, petulant refusal to acknowledge what happened. It could have been a way to cover up -- or consider covering up -- for some other kind of negligence. It could have been just to spite the media. It could have been an intense aversion to being held accountable. Or I guess he could have just forgotten.

This from Harold Meyerson at the WaPo.

Incompetence is not one of the seven deadly sins, and it's hardly the worst attribute that can be ascribed to George W. Bush. But it is this president's defining attribute. Historians, looking back at the hash that his administration has made of his war in Iraq, his response to Hurricane Katrina and his Medicare drug plan, will have to grapple with how one president could so cosmically botch so many big things -- particularly when most of them were the president's own initiatives.

Pretty much says it all.

This is a little essay that has been brewing in my mind since hurricane Katrina, and which I put together in honor of Martin Luther King, jr.'s birthday, though it applies to all of us, not just blacks.

GOP Deals In Congress Prompt Call For Change
Big Decisions Made Without Democrats

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 24, 2006; A01

House and Senate GOP negotiators, meeting behind closed doors last month to complete a major budget-cutting bill, agreed on a change to Senate-passed Medicare legislation that would have saved the health insurance industry $22 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The Senate version would have targeted private HMOs participating in Medicare by changing the formula that governs their reimbursement, lowering payments $26 billion over the next decade. But after lobbying by the health insurance industry, the final version made a critical change that had the effect of eliminating all but $4 billion of the projected savings, according to CBO and other health policy experts.

I want this bloated, back-room-hatched piece of godawful legislation hung around every GOP incumbent's neck between now and November 2006. Every campaign stop, every radio show, every "meet and greet" by a GOP incumbent, I want some citizen to stand up and say: You actually supported that heap of useless, life-threatening, budget-busting, insurance-company-pandering obscenity of a program? Even I - news junkie that I am - can't keep up with every new nightmare revelation coming up about it. One day, the states say they have to step in during the transition period and pay for prescriptions, the next day the feds are telling the insurance companies should eat the costs, tomorrow ... who knows? The UN will be told to step in and eat it, is my guess.

Must be kismet. Both the Brookings Institution, and the Project on Government Oversight released reports on Katrina today:

Brookings Katrina Index: Tracking Variables of Post-Katrina Reconstruction [pdf]
http://www.brookings.edu/me tro/pubs/200512_katrinainde x.htm

The Brookings Institution has released a number of reports on the efforts to rebuild the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina over the past few months, and a number of them have garnered significant attention by policymakers and other interested parties. This 47-page report authored by Bruce Katz, Matt Fellowes, and Mia Mabanta, gives a detailed data-oriented summary of the recent progress that has occurred.

POGO: Investigations into Katrina Waste and Fraud Detailed.
http://www.pogo.org/p/x/200 5katrina.html

Katrina Contracting
The federal government's response to the Katrina Hurricane could cost up to $200 billion. . . no-bid contracts, outrageously high charges, questionable expenses. The result is that people who need help do not get it.  Please send us your suggestions and ideas for how we can improve it.

(With a tip to the Internet Scout project for the referral to Brookings).