The Dish

It begins to make a little more sense. The NYT is in financial trouble. It still seems dumb to me to charge for online content. Isn’t online ad revenue booming for them?

Okay, you sitting down? FEMA is now sending ice to … Maine:

The trucks started arriving this weekend, and they’re expected to keep coming through Sunday.
City officials say they have no idea why the trucks are here, only that the city has been asked to help out with traffic problems. But the truck drivers NEWSCENTER spoke to said they went all the way down to the gulf coast with the ice — stayed for a few days — and then were told by FEMA they needed to drive to Maine to store it.
The truck drivers, who are from all over the country, tell us they were subcontracted by FEMA.

No, this isn’t the Onion. It’s the Bush administration.

The notion that the president’s passive response to Katrina has led to a big drop in support isn’t borne out by the polls, Mark Blumenthal argues. Good news for Bush? Nuh-huh. The worse news is that Bush had slumped before Katrina and his Katrina handling rating is actually better than that for any other policy, including Iraq. The big shift that Katrina has prompted is the response to the question of whether Bush is a “strong and decisive” leader. He has cratered on that question, which was always his strong point. Check this graph out. Ouch.

That’s how much it will soon cost just to pay the annual interest on the Bush-Republican deficit. And still they pile on the debt. Remember: you’re paying for this president’s recklessness. It’s your money he’s giving away. Get mad.

Yep, Kim Jong Il could be feeling sadry arone again soon. Dan Drezner has the details on how NoKo is already breaking its tentative agreement with six other countries.

“I haven’t written before, but I happened to land on your blog and want to make two points:
(1) I went to law school with Julie Myers, and she is an extremely capable, ethical person who would do credit to any agency or organization. I have not seen her in years, but hers is a face from my past that comes to mind when I — a classic gay liberal type — am tempted to stereotype Christian conservatives unfairly. It’s a true Washington coming-of-age experience to see a peer – and a damn good person – caught up in the tough politics of our day. I can’t speak to her experience since law school, but she’s never struck me as the type to court nepotism. I think the suggestion would mortify her – not that she would ever let us see it.
(2) I’m from Biloxi, MS, and my family is in Biloxi and Ocean Springs. They stayed for the hurricane, as they always do because they live on higher ground. They did not see a single state or federal relief worker, or national guard soldier, for four days after Katrina. They didn’t need relief help, but they were by far in the minority in that regard, and they sure would have appreciated some protection from possible looting. Haley Barbour was as much asleep at the switch as the New Orleans mayor and the President.”

The Onion has a suggestion for the next nominee for SCOTUS.

“For the crime of noting that the president’s speech didn’t help his poll numbers, I’m getting battered by e-mailers who suggest, among other things, that I am somehow unmanly because I’m not “supporting” the president enough. I never thought a day would come when I — the author of a book entitled ‘Bush Country: How Dubya Became the First Great Leader of the 21st Century While Driving Liberals Insane’ — would be accused of being a fair-weather supporter of GWB. Let me just try to explain something to my e-mailers. The president gave his speech Thursday night in an effort to reverse the decline in his political fortunes… It appears his effort was unsuccessful, in part (I think) because he sounded like a Big Spender and alienated more Republicans without winning over more Democrats… Bush supporters don’t help him or themselves any by pretending his troubles are all due to the MSM. He has, for the moment, lost the country’s confidence.” – John Podhoretz, National Review Online.

She’s the only NYT columnist not yet available in a humiliating video introducing herself to NYT “TimesSelect” readers. Can’t blame her. Lose half your readers and make yourself look like a complete dork? I hope they upped their salaries. (Hat tip: Mickey.)

It just keeps getting better.

THANKS, WAPO: Welcome, Washington Post readers. Hang out and read as much as you feel like. If you find enough interesting stuff, why not bookmark the page and come back often? And thanks, WaPo, for this experiment. Ironic, isn’t it, that the day the NYT shuts its opinion pages off from free access, the WP actually opens its doors to independent bloggers? By the way, I subscribe to the NYT on deadwood. So I went to TimesSelect to be able to read the sequestered stuff online for free. But I don’t know my “Home Delivery User ID” and I have no idea what my password is. Can I be bothered to call the toll-free number for internet access to Paul Krugman? Nah. Screw ’em.