Talking Points Memo notes that former SecState Condi Rice and former NSA Stephen Hadley are joining forces to create a" strategic consulting" firm. May I suggest that this is probably an even bigger farce than former FEMA Director Michael Brown's decision to start a consulting firm on disaster preparedness following his stellar performance during Katrina?

I really want to know what clients these two take on, so that I can relentlessly mock their stupidity for hiring the dynamic duo who brought us into the adventures of invading Iraq and Afghanistan without any idea of the resources required or any form of an exit strategy.

UPDATE: In the comments, jenne corrects me:

I think the Cheney "Keep America Safe" Institute is a bigger farce than both Brown and Condi's thingies put together.

OUCH. And touche'

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I hadn't seen Eric Burns, the president of Media Matters, on TV previously, but he appeared on Countdown with David Shuster yesterday, and finally said what has needed saying for some time:

Fox News is not a news source. It's a political propaganda operation. And it needs to be treated that way.

Shuster and Burns were launching off Fox's most ludicrous recent endeavor to smear the Obama administration, by using videos of schoolchildren to charge that Obama wants to "indoctrinate" them. As they discuss, this is so hypocritical and absurd that it's hard to believe anyone actually is buying it:

SHUSTER: So explain to me, why is it indoctrination when kids sing about President Obama, but it's patriotism when kids sing about President Bush and FEMA?

BURNS: Well, David, it's not indoctrination to anybody except Karl Rove, Josh Bolten, Roger Ailes -- the rest of the Bush administration in exile over at Fox News, because they are trying to push a political agenda. And they're trying to destroy this administration, and they'll use any means necessary to do it.

And just to give you a little example of this, James O'Keefe, who is the author of one of the suspect ACORN videos that there have been a lot of questions surrounding, told Chris Wallace recently on Fox News that he was employing tactics that would, quote, "destroy his political enemies." So that's what this is about.

There's nothing abnormal about folks talking and children learning about their president and learning to be -- learning about their democracy through talking about the president. I did it when I was a kid.

Then they got to what this is really all about:

SHUSTER: And is that the general theme here with the right-wing media, I mean, undermining the president by manufacturing controversies, because many of the actual Obama policies are favored by the majority of Americans?

BURNS: Absolutely. We've seen it day after day. You know, Glenn Beck is the smearer in chief over at Fox News. And we see new charts, you know, documenting some new vast conspiracy theory every day, new attacks, and it's a constant barrage.

And I'll tell you, this right-wing noise machine has been ginned up. It's never been more ferocious, and their goal is simple -- as Rush Limbaugh stated at the beginning of the year -- they want Obama to fail. Roger Ailes said that this is the Alamo for conservatives and that Fox is the voice of the opposition.

So, this is no longer a news organization. This is a political organization, and their aim is to destroy a progressive policy agenda. They'd rather win in the ballot box than see any sort of real debate on health care. It's a real shame.

Every liberal who even considers going on Fox to act as props for their propaganda machine should stop and think again.

Moreover, every consumer of the news -- conservative, centrist, or liberal -- needs to understand that Fox is not a reliable source of information.

Mainstream media in general have become less reliable, but most of them strive to be factually accurate, even if they skew ideologically somewhat. But this skew has more to do with framing and news selection than the actual reporting.

This is not the case at Fox. It deliberately broadcasts falsehoods and fake information to serve its ideological agenda.

No doubt this makes the Kool-Aid drinkers of the right happy. But for anyone else -- particularly anyone who relies on accurate information for their business or occupation or the livelihoods -- Fox News is a wasteland or outright disinformation that anyone with smidgen of intelligence will avoid.

We need more people like Eric Burns making this point.

As we live through another anniversary of the man-made disaster on the Gulf Coast and the shocking lack of a federal response that caused thousands to die needlessly, thoughts turn again to whether anybody remembers New Orleans and its environs, and whether the proper resources are being deployed to rehabilitate the region. If you listen to the President, of course, his Administration is doing a heckuva job down there. Lots of cabinet members have visited the region, to be followed by the President later this year. The White House has untangled some bureaucracy to allow for more federal assistance to reach the Gulf Coast, and the stimulus has enhanced recovery efforts. And even some local Republicans have praised his approach, particularly the renewed sense of confidence in FEMA.

But that's the White House's spin. And not everyone agrees with it. The Institute for Southern Studies has reported on coalition groups blasting the Army Corps of Engineers for their slow response to restoring the natural barriers - wetlands, marshes, and barrier islands - that could help prevent future hurricanes. New Orleans resident Harry Shearer has more on that. To their credit, the White House has created a federal task force to speed up coastal restoration projects. But on other issues, the ISS has given the Administration low marks.

The Institute of Southern Studies recently released a report that assesses how Washington has handled the storm's aftermath. The ISS asked 50 community leaders to grade the Obama administration's Katrina recovery efforts: Obama got a D+, and Bush was given a D-. If graded on an E for effort curve, Bush probably would have gotten the edge given his authorization of millions in Gulf Opportunity tax credits and bonds, and an extension of time under which developers could use them.

Meanwhile, Obama has done little in seven months beyond distributing $50 million in housing vouchers. Unfortunately, families either won't be able to use them because there aren't enough houses built yet, or the vouchers will be of little use because they only cover a fraction of rents, which have risen substantially since Katrina. He's also instituted a plan to sell FEMA mobile units to families for $1 or $5, but many of those trailers are toxic from formaldehyde leaks.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) did little for recovery and reinvestment in the Gulf Coast area that needed it the most. Since calculations were made based off current population numbers -- many displaced people throughout the country are still waiting to return -- fewer ARRA dollars reached these congressional districts. ARRA's tax credit exchange program, which cashes in states' low income housing tax credits, also excluded the Go Zone tax credits, leaving over 17,000 housing units hanging in the balance.

The Lower Ninth Ward, already struggling prior to the flood, has been particularly slow to return to stability. Only 20% of its residents have returned full-time, and the area has lagged far behind the tourist spots and the Garden District.

The neglect of the Gulf both during and after the storm will not get turned around quickly or easily. I'm tempted to cut the White House a little slack on this one. But on the current trajectory, New Orleans is looking more and more in the post-Katrina period like a restored home for the rich and connected, and a nightmare for the voiceless. And given the moral outrage that the response to the storm correctly engendered, that is unacceptable. We have an obligation to those who were left to rot in the fetid waters, not just to give them a return to the same inequality, but a chance at a better life. Should Obama visit the city before the year ends, he shouldn't go to Bourbon Street, but the Lower Ninth, and he should not just tell them what he will do, but back it up.

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It appears to be dawning on Glenn Beck -- what with yet another of his heavily armed fans now under arrest for casing out an Air National Guard base because she feared it was a FEMA concentration camp -- that some of the outrage he's so busily manufacturing on the air nightly might just boil over into violence again.

Yesterday on his Fox News show, he reviewed the tape coming in from the hooligans taking over the town-hall forums meant to discuss health care, disrupting them with tactics specifically intended to destroy any meaningful discussion, and was obviously pleased at the handiwork of his fellow tea-baggers. Indeed, it's unmistakable to everyone (even Beck, evidently) that there's an increasingly ugly undertone that forebodes violence. And if that happens, well, some of the blame might fall in his direction if it does.

So he took out a little insurance yesterday, imploring his increasingly angry audience not to resort to violence if they don't get their way politically:

Beck: The best thing that you can do right now is to let Congress know that you are watching them like a hawk. You show up. You let them feel your burning gaze on them at all times.

But here's the thing that I -- I'm concerned about: Your interaction with them needs to be respectful, polite, forceful, and peaceful.

I've been warning Congress now for a couple of years, and the time has come and passed for them to be able to learn from this. I've been telling them, you have to listen to the people, or they'll be in real big trouble.

Well now, let me give the warning to you: If anyone thinks that it would be a good idea to turn violent, think again. It would destroy the Republic. I feel it with everything in me. There is a great reason for hope right now. Because, I am telling you, for the first time -- since I started saying this in the last couple of years -- for the first time I know it, I feel it, the American people are starting to wake up.

These people in Washington have no idea what they have done. They have wakened a sleeping giant. But just one lunatic like Timothy McVeigh could ruin everything that everyone has worked so hard for, because these people in Washington won't pass up the use of an emergency.

Look how the media ran with the abortion-doctor killing. They tried to pin that despicable act on Fox in general and specifically, Bill O'Reilly and me! The only thing either of us have ever said is there's no reason for that, ever.

Sorry, Glenn, but that isn't the only thing either of you have ever said. O'Reilly also happened to refer to Dr. Tiller as a "baby killer" nearly thirty times, and accused him of mass murder as well as running "an abortion mill" where he had "aborted 60,000 fetuses." He even mused aloud about someone taking him out.

Sure, you can add a disclaimer at the end telling people never to commit violence. But coming at the tail end of an endless litany of incendiary demonization, that's pretty weak tea as lame excuses go.

Likewise, there are the many incendiary things you've said just in recent weeks: calling President Obama a racist, a fascist, and a socialist; repeatedly telling your audience for three weeks running that you "couldn't debunk" the FEMA concentration-camp theories (followed by a single episode in which you did in fact debunk them); agreeing with your guest that the only hope for America is another major terrorist attack; and helping promote secession.

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Well, at least this time -- unlike the last -- no one got hurt:

A woman who police said had an XM-15 assault rifle, a shotgun, and 500 rounds of ammunition in her car was arrested and charged with trespassing after officials at the Air National Guard Base at Gabreski Airport called the Suffolk County Sheriff’s office to report that she was taking photographs on base property in Westhampton Thursday night.

Nancy Genovese, 49, of Lakewood Avenue in Quogue was charged with criminal trespass in the third degree, arraigned in Southampton Town Justice Court on Friday and is being held at the Suffolk County Correctional Facility in Riverhead on $50,000 bail.

This wasn’t the first time Ms. Genovese was observed taking pictures of the base, according to the sheriff’s department. When Deputy Sheriff Robert Carlock arrived at the scene Thursday night, he was told by members of the Air National Guard that she had been warned for several weeks to stay off of the airport property. She had reportedly been seen several times taking pictures along the perimeter of the base. An off-duty Southampton Town Police officer recognized Ms. Genovese when she returned to the base Thursday night.

If you go to Genovese's MySpace page, you'll see that it features the nice woman at right and the declaration "Μολών Λaβέ" -- or "Molon labe" which is Greek for "Come and get them." This, as I've described previously, is a favorite theme or code word among the new militias organizing out there; they are declaring that Obama will take their guns away only by deadly force. As Wikipedia notes, it's the sentimental equivalent of "Over my dead body."

Genovese's MySpace blog declares, among other things, her utter admiration for Glenn Beck:

...we the people. I just saw GlennBeck tell it like it is!
Yes, he was firm and he is talking to congress, for all of us.
...we the people. I just saw Glenn Becks show, now on the 2 am show, missed it at 5 PM today.

United we stand, divided we fall.

Please do re post this video.

He is mad as hell and so are we. He is right and so are we.
He says a copy of the letter he is speaking of, from a grandmother, is on his site

GlennBeck.com, if you want to add a comment or sign it.

God Bless all of you my friends.

She is also obsessed with FEMA and ardently believes that concentration camps are being built:

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Glenn Beck and his fellow wingnuts -- the ones who have been whipping up hysteria among their right-wing populist followers since Obama's election and before -- essentially announced they have no intention of reflecting on their roles in today's horrifying shooting at the Holocaust Museum in D.C.

They did this by doing what they always do whenever these situations arise: First call it all an "isolated incident" committed by a "lone nutcase" who just happens to be acting out beliefs emanating from their own quadrant. Then, when that fails, blame it on the Left.

Beck offered the following rationale on his Fox News show tonight:

Beck: What they're missing is: The pot in America is boiling. And this is just yet another warning to all Americans of things to come.

Actually, Beck has this exactly right. But frankly, it's boiling because of people like Glenn Beck, ranting hysterically every night about impending apocalypses of various forms -- looming "liberal fascism," the "economic meltdown," the "New World Order," violence spilling over the Mexican border, even FEMA concentration camps.

As I tried to explain in the case of the shooting of Dr. George Tiller, when you spread far-right conspiracy theories through mainstream channels the way Beck does with such abandon, it not only validates their beliefs, it rather hyper-validates them: It tells these people -- who see the Becks and O'Reillys as part of the "liberal media" -- that things are even worse than they thought, and it often spurs them into action.

But Beck, naturally, has no intention of observing this reality. He's running as hard in the other direction as he possibly can:

Beck: This guy is a lone gunman nutjob. ... You're going to see a lot of nutjobs coming out of the woodwork now. There are two very important things that are happening here. First one: It's what I talked about two years ago, um, when I talked about the "Perfect Storm" -- I said that there is a storm formulating. And it is the economy, it is political correctness, it's corruption in Washington, it's militant Islam. It's all of these things.

I said when it comes onshore, there's going to be a "go go go" mentality. And that's what this is. There is a mentality in our enemies. Our country is now vulnerable. Those people who would like to destroy us -- our enemies like, uh, Al Qaeda. There are also enemies like white supremacists or 9/11 Truthers who would also like to destroy the country. They'll work with anybody they can.

... We are under attack in almost every shape and form in America. We need to look out for enemies foreign and domestic.

Second: There is gonna be a witchhunt, I believe, in this country, and quite possibly all around the world. For two groups. First group: Jews. It happens every time.

Second group: I think, Conservatives.

... Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security reports about right-wing extremists. You remember that came out a few weeks ago? Left-wing bloggers and some in the media have blamed conservative hosts like me or Bill O'Reilly for just stirring the pot! I'm not stirring the pot. I'm pointing out the pot is boiling and there is trouble in America. Since when -- have you ever heard of 'don't blame the messenger'?

Only when the messenger isn't also one of the people causing the phenomenon they're describing. Then it becomes celebration. And it's obvious that Beck has positively relished seeing the "boiling point" go higher and higher. Indeed, he's been doing his best to apply a white-hot flame to the pot.

Beck: This is not the work of right-wing conservatives. This is the work of someone today who is racist, crazy, or most likely, both. Common sense tells you that there are very hateful people on the Right and the Left.

Yes, but it seems that only one the Right do they do things like shoot up police officers who come to arrest them, or walk into Jewish centers of various kinds and start shooting (remember Buford Furrow?).

And there is little doubt that James W. Von Brunn was a right-winger -- a far right-winger:

Von Brunn has a long history of associations with prominent neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. In the 1980s or early 1990s, von Brunn was employed by Noontide Press, a part of the Holocaust denying Institute of Historical Review, which was then run by Willis Carto, one of America’s most prominent anti-Semites.

Von Brunn is the author of the 1999 book, “Kill the Best Gentiles,” a racist and anti-Semitic tome that argues that whites are seeing “today on the world stage a tragedy of enormous proportions: the calculated destruction of the White Race and the incomparable culture it represents. Europe, former fortress of the West, is now over-run by hordes of non-Whites and mongrels.” A raging anti-Semite, von Brunn blames “The Jews” for the destruction of the West. The book is dedicated to prominent neo-Nazis and racists including Revilo Oliver and Wilmot Robertson.

In 2003, AP reported that von Brunn had painted a portrait of Rear Adm. John Crommelin, a raging anti-Semite who was a close associate of neo-Nazi William Pierce, whose book The Turner Diaries inspired Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

He's also a "birther." But the truly telltale aspect of his record: In 1981, he was arrested for attempting a "citizen's arrest" of Alan Greenspan at the Federal Reserve Building in D.C. and was sentenced to a prison term for it. Von Brunn claimed "sovereign citizenship" at the time, which almost certainly means he was an adherent of the white-supremacist/far-right movement called Posse Comitatus, and was acting on those beliefs.

More to the point, this is precisely the same belief system that today fuels the cottage industry in conspiracy theories -- promulgated by the likes of Ron Paul and Alex Jones -- that the Fed is part of a massive conspiracy of "international [read: Jewish] bankers" to enslave Americans and destroy the country. It's been around quite awhile, but lately it's been gaining the patina of being regurgitated for mainstream consumption on right-wing media. And in particular, on Glenn Beck's programs.

Here, for example, is the time Beck devoted an entire segment to promoting this conspiratorial view of the Fed.

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One of the main takeaways from the phony controversy over the DHS' bulletin on right-wing extremism was the self-revealing way that mainstream conservatives attempted to obliterate from public view the very real existence of the ongoing threat to their well-being from right-wing extremists.

Why the frantic effort to obscure this reality? Because they know the ideological and associative distance between far-right extremists and mainstream conservatives has shrunk dramatically over the past 10 years. They dread the consequences of what will happen when the real ugliness starts to break out.

The Ugly Storm has been gathering for awhile. We've been reporting regularly on the increasing activities of far-right extremists, particularly the anti-Obama racism rampant throughout much of this contingent. Of course, it doesn't help when mainstream conservative media are fanning those flames, either. And it seems like it's getting close to an outright explosion.

My friend Max Blumenthal went to a gun show in California and emerged with the above video and the following report:

Fueled by the screeds of radio hosts Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, and the lesser-known but increasingly influential online conspiracist Alex Jones, many gun-show attendees I spoke to were convinced Obama planned to usher in a Marxist dictatorship. They warned that the president’s power grab would only begin with mass gun seizures. “If Obama takes away our guns,” a young, .45 pistol-toting man from Reno told me, “it’s just a step into trying to take away everything else.”

Indeed, in their minds, average Americans opposed to the Obama agenda would be herded into FEMA-run concentration camps by a volunteer army of glassy-eyed liberal college graduates. “When they start imprisoning Americans, and people start seeing that we’re the enemy, then that’ll make it hot,” predicted one Antioch-based young man sporting a button for former Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul. “People talk about a revolution,” the young man continued, “an armed revolution. I think police crackdowns on individuals will tip the scales.”

More than a few gun dealers and attendees echoed the young man’s seeming enthusiasm for armed revolt. One Contra Costa, California-based gun dealer named Rich predicted during an otherwise casual off-camera conversation that “some nut” would assassinate Obama within one year of any Democratic attempt at gun-control legislation. While the prospect of organized right-wing violence against the federal government seems far-fetched at this point, the paranoid rhetoric I documented suggests the militia movement that organized against President Bill Clinton’s policies during the 1990s could experience a dramatic resurgence by mobilizing resentment against Obama.

The gun-show crowd is more the "Patriot" contingent of far-right extremism: obsessed with guns and conspiracy theories, yet capable of paranoid bursts of extreme violence by "lone wolf" actors.

Yet we're also seeing a similar upsurge in outright white-supremacist organizations. Newsweek also has a report on this trend from Eve Conant:

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For four years, Katrina survivors have been living in these toxic boxes. But there's more to this story than mere indifference or even incompetence - there was a concerted effort to push poor people out of the area after Katrina:

JACKSON, Miss. - Thanh Nguyen will soon give up the cramped travel trailer that's been her home for more than four years, pack her belongings into an old Toyota Corolla and rely on the kindness of others for a place to live.

She has no choice: The government is taking back the trailer.

"I'm going to pack everything I have in a car and go to my friends' houses and move on and on until I find something I can afford," the Vietnamese immigrant said through a translator. "It's for however long they allow me to stay."

Nguyen is one of nearly 6,000 residents in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama who face a May 1 deadline to leave the government trailers and cottages where they have lived since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita raked the Gulf Coast.

[...] The main barrier is affordability. Following Katrina, rent more than doubled along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Much of the affordable housing stock was destroyed and insurance rates increased. Hundreds of housing units have been replaced within the last year, but "developers can't put it on line at pre-Katrina rates," Carr said.

The state also plans to transform 1,800 so-called Katrina Cottages — billed as a sturdier alternative to trailers — into permanent structures.

Nguyen, 69, lives on a $646 Social Security check, said Danny Le, who works for Boat People SOS, an organization that helps Asian immigrants.

Le said the minimum cost for a one-bedroom apartment in Biloxi is $500. He said Nguyen has applied for public housing, but hasn't received a response.

Perhaps things like this have something to do with it:

Peter Werwath [Enterprise Foundation] laid out a "Marshall Plan" to estimate how a relatively small amount of FEMA's budget could temporarily fix 150,000 roofs, install 50,000 trailers, and repair 100,000 homes. He noted the night and day difference between the progress being made in cleaning up Mississippi and the lack of activity in New Orleans, as well as the fact that FEMA had tarped tens of thousands of home roofs in Gulfport and Biloxi, while they had done very little in New Orleans.

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When he wasn't complaining about us mean liberal bloggers yesterday, Glenn Beck actually did a very good thing on his Fox News show: He completely eviscerated the conspiracy theories about supposed "FEMA concentration camps" that have been a favorite of the right-wing lunatic fringe for some time now.

It is in fact an impressive and thorough debunking of the rumors, led by Jim Meigs of Popular Mechanics, who's very good at this kind of work. Meigs, as it happens, concludes that these theories originated in the 1990s with the Patriot/militia movement. (Go to Beck's site to read more.)

As it happens, that's exactly what we reported at C&L three weeks ago. And in fact, much of this information has been available for some time, though you would never know it from listening to the right-wing conspiracists.

Still, Beck deserves credit for his forthright reportage of the matter. Indeed, it seemed an apology for having unfairly accused him of promoting these theories seemed like it might be in order.

But then there's the small matter of what he actually said:

Beck: We don't even understand freedom anymore. We are a country that is headed toward socialism, totalitarianism, beyond your wildest imagination.

I have to tell you, I am doing a story tonight, that I wanted to debunk these FEMA camps. I'm tired of hearing about them -- you know about them? I'm tired of hearing about them. I wanted to debunk them.

We'll we've now for several days been doing research on them -- I can't debunk them! And we're going to carry the story tonight.

...It is our government -- if you trust our government, it's fine. If you have any kind of fear that we might be headed toward a totalitarian state, there is something going on in our country that it's -- it ain't good.

Hmmm. This is a completely different Glenn Beck from the one who was on Fox tonight. Does he have an evil twin or something?

Beck tried to portray himself yesterday as fundamentally skeptical of the claims -- but he sure had a funny way of showing it a few weeks ago. As you can see in the clip, he actually went on to report the "FEMA camp" claims credulously back then.

Well, better late than never. I'm actually looking forward to Part 2 of the debunking tonight, because the first part was excellent, and while Beck may be slow coming around, it's always better late than never.

Mind you, we won't be holding our breaths to see if the lesson sticks. You never know which Glenn Beck is going to show up on any given day.

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Keith's Still Bushed featuring FEMA-Gate:

FEMA's been under fire from critics who claim the Gulf Coast recovery is moving too slowly. Now FEMA officials said they're investigating allegations of serious misconduct at the New Orleans office. CBS News has learned workers there accuse their bosses of intentionally holding up Katrina aid.

Under Cover of Darkness-Gate:

The Pentagon has decided to rescind a long-standing prohibition against press coverage of returning war dead, allowing families to say whether news organizations may photograph the arrivals, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday.

The remains of all U.S. service members killed overseas are flown to Delaware's Dover Air Force Base. But photographic images have been prohibited since 1991. The Bush administration rigorously enforced the ban, preventing pictures of troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan from appearing in news coverage.

The new policy will leave it up to the families of slain service members to decide whether to allow the media to photograph the arrival of the remains in Dover.

"My conclusion was, we should not presume to make the decision for the families. We should actually let them make it," Gates said.

And Anthrax-Gate:

Poisonous anthrax that killed five Americans in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks doesn't match bacteria from a flask linked to Bruce Ivins, the researcher who committed suicide after being implicated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a scientist said.

Spores used in the deadly mailings "share a chemical 'fingerprint' that is not found in the flask linked to Bruce Ivins," Roberta Kwok wrote in Nature News, citing Joseph Michael, a scientist at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Michael analyzed letters sent to the New York Post and offices of Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, and found a distinct "chemical signature" not present in the flask known as RMR-1029, which Ivins could access in his laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Good thing we'll never have another hurricane again, huh? Just one more bright spot in the Bush legacy:

WASHINGTON — The economic crisis is jeopardizing the nation's ability to handle public-health emergencies and possible bioterrorist attacks, according to government leaders and a new report.

Federal and state governments are cutting programs that help communities respond to disease outbreaks, natural disasters and bioterrorism incidents, and that "could lead to a disaster for the nation's disaster preparedness," a report released Tuesday warns.

"The economic crisis could result in a serious rollback of the progress we've made since Sept. 11," 2001, said Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the Trust for America's Health, a non-partisan research group. Federal funds are down, 11 states have already cut public-health budgets, and more could follow as the economic crisis worsens.

If emergency medical supplies are not maintained or if hospitals can't handle a huge influx of patients, the result will be more deaths and illnesses, Levi said.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff underscored the concerns in an interview Tuesday with USA TODAY editors and reporters. His top concern, Chertoff said, is a "mass event: a big outbreak of plague or some other kind of biological weapon or a nuclear explosion."

NY Times (reg. req'd): 

Even as many found cheer that floodwaters along the Mississippi River here would fall well short of what had been predicted, residents and the authorities in this town discovered a stark reminder of what might lie ahead: a sand boil on the aged levee that protects the town, a telltale sign that the swollen river had begun eroding the structure from beneath.[..]

As the river at nearby St. Louis leveled out at around 12 feet below the record set during the 1993 flood and about two feet below what had been predicted for the weekend, investigators had identified and contained several more boils on the levee, and the marshland that sits just behind it had crept to within 100 yards of the village hall.

Last year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, after consulting with the Army Corps of Engineers, found that the five-levee system that protects the metropolitan area of East St. Louis, Ill., did not meet its standards for flood protection.[..]

(A)s cities, towns and farms north of here have yielded in the past few weeks to the Mississippi's tremendous flooding, scientists have again emphasized a sharp increase in flooding in recent history. They say established communities like East St. Louis and neighboring Cahokia would be well advised to repair their levee systems.

"We have had two almost 100-year floods and two almost 500-year floods in a 35-year period," said Nicholas Pinter, a professor who specializes in flood hydrology at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. "Flood levels all along this stretch of the Mississippi have climbed upward, not just by inches but by 8, 10, 12 feet - up to 18 feet over historical 100-year flood conditions. So the simple answer is that floods are higher and more frequent.

"But the underlying theme to everything that's going on," Dr. Pinter added, "is that the current estimates for flood frequency and intensity appear to be grossly underestimated."

Dr. Pinter maintains that while climate change and levee construction have contributed to increased flooding in the St. Louis area, the real culprits are river modifications made to ease navigation, which put further stress on the levee systems.

WaPo:

Reporters were given only 15 minutes' notice of the briefing, making it unlikely many could show up at FEMA's Southwest D.C. offices. They were given an 800 number to call in, though it was a "listen only" line, the notice said -- no questions. Parts of the briefing were carried live on Fox News, MSNBC and other outlets.

"And so I think what you're really seeing here is the benefit of experience, the benefit of good leadership and the benefit of good partnership," Johnson said, "none of which were present in Katrina." (Wasn't Michael Chertoff DHS chief then?) Very smooth, very professional. But something didn't seem right. The reporters were lobbing too many softballs. No one asked about trailers with formaldehyde for those made homeless by the fires. And the media seemed to be giving Johnson all day to wax on and on about FEMA's greatness.

Of course, that could be because the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters. We're told the questions were asked by Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of external affairs, and by "Mike" Widomski, the deputy director of public affairs. Director of External Affairs John "Pat" Philbin asked a question, and another came, we understand, from someone who sounds like press aide Ali Kirin...read on

The manipulation of our media is a major reason why we're in the Iraq war to begin with so this outrageous propaganda presser by FEMA, while shocking---is not surprising. It's a sad state of affairs. Only in this administration could this possibly have happened. After all, it's how they work. Somebody should be fired over this blatant attempt to distort reality.