* It’ll be great to have a president that inspires as much visceral hatred as Bush does. [Michelle Malkin]
* Generals aren’t supposed to get blown up, and yet …. [Think Progress]
* Fred Thompson’s sweaters aren’t nearly as gay as a certain other doomed Republican we can think of. [Fresh Intelligence]
* It’s so obvious that Bush doesn’t actually care about Jews and Palestinians that even those people have to say so. [Red State]
* Saying that the media is faulted for campaign hype is like saying, you know, the sun is why it’s light out. [Capitol Hill Blue]
* FEMA fabulist loses his job, which is a bummer because that probably means no more good news from SoCal .[TPMmuckraker]

FEMA faker won’t be getting that fancy new spy-P.R. job after all. [AP/Guardian]

The job of a public-relations professional is to make the Client look good, and FEMA flack John “Pat” Philbin certainly pulled that off last week, when he created a “press conference” featuring some very friendly “reporters” who turned out to be his own staffers. Getting a bunch of friendly questions from the “press” is no easy task for a federal agency best known for drowning thousands of poor Americans, so it should come as no surprise that “Pat” Philbin is getting a big promotion! He’s the new director of public affairs at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — that’s the new-ish umbrella spy/torture agency that now owns the CIA and NSA and all the other intel shops quickly being outsourced to corrupt GOP-friendly contractors. Congratulation, “Pat”! We all look forward to your positive-message work on the promotion of torture and murder and White House-level intelligence cover-ups.

UPDATE: Not so fast, “Pat.” ODNI has revoked the cushy job offer.

FEMA Director of External Affairs Exits Amidst PR Scandal; Lands at ODNI [PR Newser]

During the Hurricane Katrina fiasco, FEMA found out the hard way that sometimes the press just isn’t feeling very charitable towards the incompetent agency. So when they had a press conference today, the Washington Post’s Al Kamen reveals, it’s way better to just make sure the reporters can’t get there, and then to assign various staffers with make-believe roles as pretend reporters. MORE »

People of Southern California who are on fire: Have no fear, for disaster relief (in the form of a human disaster) is on the way! Former FEMA Director Michael “Heckuva Job” “Brownie” “Abortion of a Human” Brown, the guy who hosted a Hurricane Party with fresh margs for himself during Katrina, is hopping on a jet plane to SoCal and will fix you AND your forests. Shit, he might even bring a hose! See, he’s not so incompetent when it’s white people asking for disaster relief.

Brownie, You’ve Got a Heckuva Job [WSJ via Political Machine] MORE »

You’d never guess our little Katrina is two years old today. Why? Because it looks like that hurricane and terrible flooding happened just days ago! Who would think a major American city would still be in ruins two fucking years after it was deluged and half-abandoned? MORE »

A widely hated cretin is the White House’s top choice for attorney general, experts said today. Michael Chertoff is known for his bizarre threats against America and his tenure at the biggest fucking joke agency in American history, the “department of homeland security.” Despised by Republicans, Democrats and actual humans, Chertoff is just the kind of loathsome creep the Bush Administration is likely to choose to be AG for a few weeks until the whole gang is rounded up and sent to Gitmo. MORE »

In a hilarious slapstick NASA version of that one time when Ozzy Osbourne’s jet crashed into Lynyrd Skynyrd’s tour bus or something, a train carrying those giant space shuttle rocket fuel tanks crashed in a forest in Alabama. MORE »

There are now two places on Earth where New Orleans isn’t a half-abandoned wasteland: Micheal “Brownie” Brown’s mind and Google Maps. MORE »

The Internets are buzzing with the bizarre story of BBC News reporting the 9/11 collapse of WTC7 before the building actually collapsed — all over a live shot of Ground Zero, with the 47-story highrise clearly in view and clearly standing.

What it “proves” is anyone’s guess, but it sure makes for hilarious viewing. But BBC reporters and anchors who maybe didn’t know the Manhattan skyline so well could possibly be forgiven for reporting an erroneous story and not knowing that great big highrise was World Trade Center 7 (otherwise known as the Salomon Brothers building). So why doesn’t the BBC simply say it got a story wrong and didn’t know any better? Stranger still, why did New York-based CNN anchor Aaron Brown do the same exact thing on September 11, 2001? We’ve got all the creepy video and much more to make your head asplode, after the jump.

MORE »

Joe Lieberman: the most bipartisan man in the history of bipartisanship! He’s so averse to more of this petty inter-party squabbling that he won’t investigate the White House response to Hurricane Katrina after all! Despite, you know, heading the committee that’s supposed to oversee FEMA and kind of promising that he would before that election thing. MORE »