Chris Hitchens tears Bush a new one

And that's something coming from the "liberal" who's most famous these days for continuing to defend the Iraq war (kind of like Jonathan Chait, but he's got an irrelevant-before-it's-been-written book to sell). Get a load of this:

It's one of the two or three best-known risks to the United States, is that the levees protecting New Orleans could break. I know that and I live in Washington. It's also, I'm afraid to say, the only thing the President has said about this that anyone can remember. I mean, he didn't get there - it isn't that they didn't fly to the city beforehand, which he could easily have done on that kind of warning, and say, "Look, I'm the President of the United States, we can't lose or even risk losing one of our great historic cities. I have come to make sure that all the state and city officials have got everything they could possibly want in advance." For example, a few piles of bottled water wouldn't have come amiss if there's going to be suddenly too much water but none of it drinkable. Elementary things like that. He didn't do that. Then he did a fly-by from his holiday retreat, and then he got there too late and then he said something completely idiotic. So I really can't see there is any forgiveness for that. And remember also, that he did interrupt his holiday not very long ago to pay attention to something that was none of his business at all as President. Namely, the alleged living condition of an actually dead woman named Terri Schiavo.

That's kind of the thing, isn't it? The GOP mobilized in no time flat to try to cash in on the Schiavo case. They still can't get their act together in the face of this unprecedented (but long predicted) disaster.