Dick Cheney and Officer Barbrady

Dick Cheney, who has been MIA for most of the Hurricane Katrina debacle, finally surfaced the other day to let us know everything was going A-OK! "No problems here!" Cheney insisted.

He was really reminding me of Officer Barbrady from "South Park." He's the cop that always shows up immediately after a tragedy and tells people there's nothing to see there, and to go home.



Yeah, there you go...

So that's basically what Dick Cheney's been doing, according to the Washington Post.

Speaking to reporters while touring a devastated neighborhood in Gulfport, Miss., Cheney struck an upbeat note about the response he has seen so far to Hurricane Katrina. The hurricane slammed into the Gulf Coast last week, leaving New Orleans inundated with polluted floodwaters and causing extensive damage along the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama.

Hey, nice to hear he's upbeat...I was worried this disaster might ruin the veep's mood. He can be so cranky when several hundred thousand of his countrymen die due to a slow, inefficient reaction from local, state and the federal government. Thankfully, these countrymen were black, so he's been able to get over it pretty quickly and move on.

In the brief speech in Washington with Cabinet members looking on, Bush said the government is working to provide $2,000 in emergency relief to each household displaced by the hurricane. He told affected families that by registering for the $2,000 grant, "you will begin the process" of acquiring longer-term assistance for eligible households.

I mean, yeah, we left you to die...But now you'll get a check for 2 grand. Just think of what you can do with that money...You can buy some new clothes, maybe one of them new XBoxes. The possibilities are endless...

A Pew Research Center survey found that 67 percent of Americans think Bush could have done more to respond to the storm. The survey placed his overall job approval rating at 40 percent, down 10 points since January and an all-time low in that poll. A poll by Zogby America also recorded its lowest-ever approval rating for Bush.

Nice. No further comment here...it just felt good to cut and paste that paragraph.

Cheney personally encountered some of the hostility directed at the administration. As he spoke with reporters on a street in Gulfport, Miss., a young man shouted at him. "Go [expletive] yourself, Mr. Cheney," the man yelled twice. Cheney smiled slightly but did not respond.

Young man, you get an A for effort. But you should know, your anger and hostility only makes Dick Cheney stronger. He feeds on hate like you and I feed on double cheeseburgers.



Okay, he probably feeds on those too.

In his first tour of the damage, Cheney offered an upbeat assessment of what he called the "very impressive" current response efforts. "I think the progress we're making is significant," he said. Cheney also endorsed the Republican inquiry plan instead of the independent commission proposed by Democrats.

When I was growing up, when I was first getting into journalism in high school, the Washington Post was the ultimate example of the craft. The pinnacle. Plucky journalists whose investigations into the heart of power and privilege regularly rescued our democracy from greed and corruption.

Now, they have become the ultimate example of an American newspaper utterly failing at the task of informing the citizenry. Well, The Post and the New York Times. Can you believe they are letting him get away with this obvious misdireciton.

He called the current response efforts "very impressive." Well, what about the intial response efforts, Your Cheneytude? What about the fact that it took you assholes 5 days to get into New Orleans and start rescueing people? Or the fact that 6,000 trained experts who could have helped their own communities were off on your little Iraqi pet project? Anything to comment?

Oh, I forgot, you're just here to distract us from those real issues, to let us know everything is looking very very good from where you stand! Thanks, Dick!

The paper also lets the GOP slide on its ridiculous "bipartisan" committee to investigation the governmental response to Katrina. See, I put bipartisan in quotes because...so far, the committee doesn't include any Democrats! So, how can it be bipartisan, you may ask. Yeah, it can't. But that doesn't stop the Post from referring to it as a "joint investigation."

But even as Congress moved to meet the funding needs, Republicans and Democrats bickered over a GOP-proposed joint investigation of the government's preparation for and initial response to the catastrophe.

Democrats charged that the investigating committee would not be truly bipartisan and was intended instead to whitewash the Bush administration's handling of the disaster.

See how the Post characterizes the exchange? Here's what really happened: Republican Senators, including Dennis Hastert and Bill "Nuclear Option" Frist, came out and said they were going to have a bipartisan investigation into Katrina. Then Democrats came out and said that none of them had been contacted about any investigation - they first heard about it from Hastert and Frist on Television. (Read all about this nightmare here.)

According to the Post, annoying Democrats are "bickering" with Republicans about the committee. They're making "charges" that it would not be truly bipartisan. Charges? That's clearly the truth! Bipartisan means "including both parties," and right now it only includes one party. Washington Post scribe William Branigin, stop lying for the President. Please. Why would you do that? What's wrong with you?

Don't believe me? Think I'm mischaracterizing the article? Check out the VERY NEXT SENTENCE:

While the politicians wrangled, the National Weather Service upgraded another storm, Ophelia, to hurricane status in the Atlantic off Florida.

This is not some case of politicians "wrangling," you jackass! One group has been totally left out of the investigating committee. They are trying to do what journalists used to do - let the public know what's really happening!

Branigin, through this really obvious rhetorical trick, thus pins the beurocratic nightmare that led to the Katrina aftermath disaster on all "politicians," indeed on the political process itself, rather than the people who are really to blame - FEMA and Department of Homeland Security, who had committed themselves to leading the relief and recovery efforts on August 30th, when Katrina was declared a "state of emergency." Also, we should probably take a look at the guy who installed such a useless guy as the head of FEMA and created the Department of Homeland Security...

Hmmm...now who could that be?