TWO FROM WORKING FOR CHANGE

Once again, my busy schedule is keeping me from doing much more than dropping a couple of excerpts and links. But it is good stuff. Check it out.

America learns the hard way that
Bush provides flash, not substance

Unfortunately, what the Bush White House is good at when it comes to national security is providing flash over substance, as Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana found out the hard way. After riding in a helicopter with the president and seeing machinery apparently working on the breached 17th Street levee, she was shocked the next day to find the work had mysteriously stopped.

"Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment," said the senator in a press release.

For far too long, this kind of shenanigan worked well for Bush, allowing him to narrowly win a second term. His administration was asleep at the switch on 9-11 even though "the system was blinking red," according to the then-CIA chief. Bush grabbed a bullhorn at ground zero and remade himself as a "war president" -- and suffered no real political damage from the failure to either capture Osama bin Laden or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Click here for more.

Katrina reconstruction would be easier,
had Bush not squandered Clinton's surplus

It is an unenviable position for any president to be in: having to accommodate some $200 billion or more in unanticipated expenditures for what is clearly a federal responsibility to help the families of the region get back on their feet.

But that doesn't mean Bush didn't have it coming.

This president, you'll recall, inherited a budget surplus from the previous administration -- a cushion that could have been used to soften the budgetary blow of exactly this sort of monetary emergency. He made his bed, by recklessly wasting that surplus on bloated government spending, reckless tax cuts for his wealthy pals, and an even more reckless war in Iraq.

Now that he finds himself here, he has proposed to pay for it all by a combination of favorite conservative devices -- tax credits, enterprise zones, privatization -- that are a big part of how the budget surplus became a budget deficit in the first place.

Click here for more.

More of my always witty and poignant commentary tomorrow. I hope. Actually, I mean that I hope my commentary is always witty and poignant. I also hope I'll be able to produce some of that tomorrow. Okay, I'm always witty, at least. Right? Don't answer that.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$