National Review Editorial:

President Bush is in a perilous political state. His slipping poll numbers are partly a result of softening support from his Republican base. If Bush doesn’t take decisive steps to try to offset the billions of new Katrina spending, the forecast will be: Danger, more softening ahead. Never in the Bush years has conservative discontent been so high, nor so justified. With a few false moves in the crucial weeks ahead, Bush could see even more of the life-blood squeezed from his presidency.

Ouch. One would think that by now the folks at the NR would figure out that Bush doesn’t how much the federal government spends. I guess they have a slow learning curve.

BREAKING NEWS–President Bush informs us they’ve now got a plan for victory in Iraq:

General Casey briefed us about a comprehensive strategy to achieve victory in Iraq. We’re going to deny the terrorists a safe haven to plot their attacks. We’ll continue to train more Iraqi forces to assume increasing responsibility for basic security operations. Our forces will focus on hunting down high-value targets like the terrorist, Zarqawi. We’ll continue working with Iraqis to bring all communities into the political process. Together we’ll help Iraq become a strong democracy that protects the rights of its people and is a key ally in the war on terror.

One wonders why they didn’t come up with this, say, two and a half years ago, but now’s not the time for the “blame game.”
Indeed, they better hurry up with the plan:

Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said Thursday that he had been warning the Bush administration in recent days that Iraq was hurtling toward disintegration, a development that he said could drag the region into war.
“There is no dynamic now pulling the nation together,” he said in a meeting with reporters at the Saudi Embassy here. “All the dynamics are pulling the country apart.” He said he was so concerned that he was carrying this message “to everyone who will listen” in the Bush administration.
Prince Saud’s statements, some of the most pessimistic public comments on Iraq by a Middle Eastern leader in recent months, were in stark contrast to the generally upbeat assessments that the White House and the Pentagon have been offering.

I’m not an expert on Saudi Arabia, but from what I’ve observed the past few years, their government officials aren’t inclined to make public statements critical of U.S. policy just for the heck of it. There’s big money in the U.S./Saudi relationship. I don’t think the prince would be making these kind of statements lightly.

Well, not really. He only biked part of the way. From the looks of it, that bike wouldn’t have held up that far, anyway.
On the news today they’ve been reporting on the massive traffic jam caused by people trying to get away from the Texas coast; it’s reportedly taken people hours to drive a few miles. If I were in that situation, and it was simply a matter of getting out of the area (I didn’t need to haul possessions with me), I think I would hop aboard my bike and ride out rather than sit on that parking lot highway for hours. One could get out of there a heck of a lot faster by bicycle than by vehicle.

This work would make for a good RNC talking points memo–perhaps that’s what it really is. Funny how O’Reilly apparently is still able to fool some viewers into thinking that he’s not a partisan.

I was watching CNN on Tuesday night when they pop in with the “Breaking News” (complete with red alert graphics) that New Orleans is essentially dry. This struck me as odd on several levels:
(1) In what sense was this a “breaking news”? Did the water suddenly vanish?
There are still a bunch of reporters around New Orleans who I presume are not holed up in some sort of green zone. Could they not see the water slowly disappearing?
(2) How often were we told by our trusted names in journalism that it would take months to dry the city out? Enough to believe it was gospel truth. Aaron Brown asked about this:

BROWN: How did we get from, it’s going to take 60 days to dry out the city to, it’s going to take two-and-a-half weeks to dry out the city?
[COL. DUANE] GAPINSKI [ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS]: Well, Aaron, you know, that 60-day prediction, actually, I think it was six months initially. That’s based on no information, no assessment of the status of the pumps and the canals and the levees.
So, as we refine those assessments, that — those predictions become better. But the one thing you can’t measure is the will and determination of the people on the ground fixing those pumps and moving that water out of the city.

So basically reporters picked up an early estimate from someone, and kept repeating it as fact even when independent follow up on the question should have quickly revealed that the initial estimates were way off. But why go to all that work of independent confirmation when you can simply repeat what government authorities tell you? This is modern journalism, after all.
(3) Whoever made the initial estimate didn’t really know how long it would take to drain the city and apparently just picked a time frame that sounded good. Couple this with the heavily-inflated death toll predictions, and it calls into question many of the estimates we’ve been hearing.
For instance, as Bill Maher noted last night, where is the government coming up with its cost figures for Katrina relief? Very quickly, Congress cranks out a $60 billion+ bill. Do you think there’s one member of Congress who really knows what that money is going toward? I doubt it.