ABC’s The Note — which Charlie Rose is fond of saying he can’t head to the bathroom without (that’s not exactly what he said) — is chock full of political junkies’ morsels. Among them:

The politics of Katrina: Democratic strategy:
The Democrats appear to be putting forth a three-pronged approach to their messaging on Katrina:


1. The country needs to come together and move forward to rebuild.

2. Continue (“in the days and weeks to come”) to press for answers on what went wrong and why.

3. Fight for “our shared values, taking care of the weak and the poor.”


Here is one excerpt from the speech Howard Dean is prepared to deliver to the National Baptist Convention in Miami, FL this afternoon at 12:30 pm ET.


“As survivors are evacuated, order is restored, the water slowly begins to recede, and we sort through the rubble, we must also begin to come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a deadly role in who survived and who did not.”


“And the question that emerged: how can this happen in America?”


Note to Ken Mehlman: a good barometer of how things are going will come when you see if your normal delight when Dr. Dean takes front and center is justified.


The New York Times editorial board agrees with Sen. Clinton that any investigation should be independent, but is not yet ready to sign up for her plan to remove FEMA from DHS.


Rick Klein of the Boston Globe writes that Democrats will incorporate current issues from Katrina into the questioning of nominee John Roberts next week.


Blah, blah, blah … And: “ABC’s O’Keefe reports, “Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, announced this morning, at a meeting of Republican Senate Committee chairs, that the Katrina recovery effort is now costing $1 Billion per day.”


A billion a day. Where have I heard that figure before? Oh right… With a huge difference. Our shit-for-brains government (both Republicans and cowardly Democrats) forced upon us an unnecessary war, a now bottomless pit for good-money-following-bad.

In the instant case, Mother Nature … wait a second. Mother Nature. Yes, I suppose nature could be blamed, if rather illogically. But, again — because it was too busy blowing money with a hurricane’s uncontrollable havoc in Iraq, the government failed to heed the countless experts and ordinary citizens who knew that the Gulf needed better protection against Mother Nature, and that our globe needs better protections against the destructive effects of global warming.


At least Mother Nature is an equal-opportunity, sometimes abusive (but always with benign indifference) parent.

Some — who are not divorced from the earth and who are still connected to the magnificence of Mother Nature — might say she’s simply cleaning house.

A government’s indifference is never benign. Our government doesn’t clean up its own messes. And our government treats us all as castaway orphans, orphans it can beat with impunity and abandon at will.


Our government treats each of us like a motherless child.


BELOW, I suggest that we be careful — as Keith Olbermann suggested two nights ago — about supporting RAY NAGIN, a corporate bigwig Republican who dressed up as a populist Democrat to win an election …
As Larry Johnson has carefully pointed out — and researched (“BUSH vs. BLANCO: BUSH DROPPED THE BALL ” and other recent writings)– Gov. Blanco deserves our hearty defense. Better than that, she deserves our OFFENSE.


Since last week, even though I confess I knew little about him, I’ve had a sense of dis-ease about Mayor Ray Nagin.


Something Keith Olbermann said about Nagin — during Keith’s historic show two nights ago in which he took a two by four to the Bush administration and other politicians — bugged me. Keith said he was a Republican turned Democrat. I went looking for more. Here’s what I found at Wikipedia:

Biography


Before his election, Nagin was a member of the Republican Party and had little political experience; he was a vice president and general manager at Cox Communications, a cable communications company and subsidiary of Cox Enterprises. Nagin did give donations periodically to candidates, namely President George W. Bush and former Republican U.S. Representative Billy Tauzin in 1999 and 2000, as well as to Democratic U.S. Senators John Breaux and J. Bennett Johnston earlier in the decade.


Days before filing for the New Orleans Mayoral race in February 2002, Nagin switched his party registration to the Democratic Party, presumably in order to improve his chances of winning the race in heavily Democratic New Orleans. Shortly before the primary election, an endorsement praising Nagin as a reformer by Gambit Magazine gave him crucial momentum that would carry through for the primary election and runoff. In the first round of the crowded mayoral election in February 2002, Nagin received first place with 29% of the vote, against such opponents as Police Chief Richard Pennington, State Senator Paulette Irons, City Councilman Troy Carter and others. In the runoff with Pennington in May 2002, Nagin won with 59% of the vote. His campaign was largely self-financed.


Shortly after taking office, Nagin launched an anti-corruption campaign within city government, which included crackdowns on the city’s Taxicab Bureau and Utilities Department. Nagin made a controversial endorsement of current Republican U.S. Representative Bobby Jindal in the 2003 Louisiana Gubernatorial Runoff over current Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco and only reluctantly endorsed U.S. Senator John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential race.


Nagin received a B.S. degree in accounting from Tuskegee University in 1978 and an M.B.A. degree from Tulane University in 1994. He and his wife, Seletha Smith Nagin, have three children: Jeremy, Jarin, and Tianna.


[Go to Wikipedia to access the embedded links not repeated here.]

I am ONLY suggesting we not fall in a trap of defending him to the hilt — merely because he is black (which is in itself a kind of racism), and because he has labeled himself a Democrat.


Early on — before he got pissed and went on a rant — he was sounding very laid back about the whole thing. I remember that vividly.