and the winner is ...

it's only wednesday but i feel pretty safe in bestowing this week's "look who's oozed out from under its rock" award and "feces flinger of the week" trophy to disgraced former FEMA head michael "heckuvajob" brown for his transparently self-serving efforts to wipe the stink of katrina onto obama:

brown:	and i think the delay was this: it's pure politics. this president has never supported big oil. he's never supported offshore drilling. and now he has an excuse to shut it back down. you've already heard bill nelson, senator from florida, saying offshore drilling is DOA. they played politics with this crisis and left the coast guard out there doing what they're supposed to do.
cavuto:	so michael, you don't take him at face value when he says a temporary halt in offshore drilling is just that — a temporary halt.
brown:	no, no. look bill nelson — and you know, they don't say these things without it being coordinated — and so now you're looking at this oil slick approaching the louisiana shore, according to certain NOAA and other places, if the winds are right it'll go up the east coast. this is exactly what they want. because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, 'i'm going to shut it down because it's too dangerous.' while mexico and china and everybody else drills in the gulf, we're going to get shut down.

brown:	hey, hey, chris, i think there's two things. i think, one, we're seeing the rahm emanuel rule number one, ah, taking effect. and that is, "let no crisis go unused". so, this is an opportunity for a president who wants to bankrupt the coal industry and basically get rid of the oil and gas industry to shut down offshore drilling in the gulf of mexico.
	[snip]
matthews:	why would somebody sabotage something that would cause this kind of damage to our planet, really?
brown:	oh well, because i think there are terrorists in the world who would like to do that sort of thing. terrorists don't give a rat's butt about the ecology or anything else. all they care about is hurting america.
	[snip]
matthews:	... but he just came out for offshore oil drilling.
brown:	oh, chris, ah, i'm glad you asked that. he came out and said, look, i'm going to approve oil and gas drilling. and all you guys went, look what a great guy he is, trying to reach out to everybody else. chris, all he did was he approved two existing leases on the northeast coast, and shut down all the other proposed leases on the west coast and the southeast coast. there was nothing new in what he did.
matthews:	but don't you know what you're saying to a third party, not somebody like myself or somebody like yourself, listening to you, thinks that you're sounding insane. you're saying that the president of the united states went into slow-mo here, somehow — or for somehow seemed to be working faster than he really was, but was really quite slow to get there, because he saw an opportunity to exploit a disaster so that he could reap discredit on to the coal industry. and by the way, a couple of weeks ago —
brown:	no, no, no, not just the coal ...
matthews:	— he came down for offshore drilling so that he could discredit it when this thing occurred. are you suggesting he somehow knew this would happen and that's why he came out for offshore drilling?
brown:	no, no ...
matthews:	it sounds like that's what you're saying —
brown:	no, no, chris, hang on ...
matthews:	— and it sounds crazy. crazy!
brown:	well, and the way you just put it, chris, the way you just put it, it sounds crazy to me, too.

tweety comes on strong

with msnbc hardball host chris matthews, it's sometimes a crap shoot trying to figure out where he'll land on an issue.

this time he landed — with both feet — on a couple of necks: some poor insurance industry shill and 50+ years of republican inaction:

disappointment

bush: there have been disappointments. abu ghraib obviously was a huge disappointment during the presidency. not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment. i don't know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were — things didn't go according to plan, let's put it that way.

matthews: i found it interesting that the president, who admitted he was wrong about WMDs as a justification for war, called it a "disappointment." if a police officer in the line of duty in the middle of the night shoots a fellow because he thinks he's got a gun, it turns out he's got a wallet, your reaction if you're a police officer is not that you're disappointed he didn't have a gun, it's shame that even if it was a technical mistake that you've made, that you've killed a guy without reason. why does the president use the word "disappointment" when he says they didn't have the WMD to justify us going in? i think it's an odd use of the word.

walsh: and finally ... the point that you made earlier, about a cop who shoots an unarmed man, does not then regret that the guy did not have a gun. he regrets that he killed an innocent man. and he regrets that he didn't take the extra 30 seconds maybe to ascertain whether the guy was armed.

a moment of clarity

well yeah. i was just sitting here, eating my muffin, drinking my coffee, when i had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity. — hitman jules winnfield, pulp fiction (1994)

finally.

after spending the last six years crazy drunk on all fear all the time!^®, has the mainstream media sobered up?

matthews: well, i'll tell ya one thing — i agree with what fareed zakaria wrote in newsweek this week, which is: terrorism isn't explosions and death. terrorism is when you change your society because of those explosions. and you become fearful to the point where you shut out immigration. you shut out student exchanges. you shut people out of buildings. you begin to act in almost a fascist manner because you're afraid of what might happen to you. that's when terrorism becomes real and frighteningly successful. that's what i believe, and that why i question the way giuliani has raised this issue. he raises it as a spectre. in a weird way he helps the bad guys.

still waiting

david shuster, having caught his breath after his last big report on karl rove's pending indictment, decides to play it safe on tonight's msnbc hardball with chris matthews:

shuster: it's now been 26 days since rove testified to the grand jury for the fifth time. defense lawyers say prosecutors remain focused on rove's claim of a bad memory, regarding a conversation with time magazine reporter matt cooper. rove's legal team and former prosecutors tracking the investigation expect special patrick fitzgerald to announce a decision at any time.

yes, i expect he will, at that.

has it been six months yet?

not quite, according to new york times columnist tom friedman:

the next six months in iraq — which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there — are the most important six months in u.s. foreign policy in a long, long time. — new york times, "the chant not heard", november 30, 2003

what i absolutely don't understand is just at the moment when we finally have a un-approved iraqi-caretaker government made up of — i know a lot of these guys — reasonably decent people and more than reasonably decent people, everyone wants to declare it's over. i don't get it. it might be over in a week, it might be over in a month, it might be over in six months, but what's the rush? can we let this play out, please? — npr fresh air, june 3, 2004

what we're gonna find out, bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war. — cbs face the nation, october 3, 2004

improv time is over. this is crunch time. iraq will be won or lost in the next few months. but it won't be won with high rhetoric. it will be won on the ground in a war over the last mile. — new york times, "the last mile", november 28, 2004

i think we're in the end game now. ... i think we're in a six-month window here where it's going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt i think the next congressional election—that's my own feeling— let alone the presidential one. — nbc meet the press, september 25, 2005

maybe the cynical europeans were right. maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. that will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the sunnis in iraq intend to be. if they come around, a decent outcome in iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. if they won't, then we are wasting our time. — new york times, "the endgame in iraq", september 28, 2005

we've teed up this situation for iraqis, and i think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or more or whether it's going to come together. — cbs face the nation, december 18, 2005

we're at the beginning of, i think, the decisive, i would say, six months in iraq, ok, because i feel like this election — you know, i felt from the beginning iraq was going to be ultimately, charlie, what iraqis make of it. — pbs charlie rose show, december 20, 2005

the only thing i am certain of is that in the wake of this election, iraq will be what iraqis make of it — and the next six months will tell us a lot. i remain guardedly hopeful. — new york times, "the measure of success", december 21, 2005

i think that we're going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding. in which case, i think the american people as a whole will want to play it out or whether it really is a fool's errand. — oprah winfrey show, january 23, 2006

i think we're in the end game there, in the next three to six months, bob. we've got for the first time an iraqi government elected on the basis of an iraqi constitution. either they're going to produce the kind of inclusive consensual government that we aspire to in the near term, in which case america will stick with it, or they're not, in which case i think the bottom's going to fall out. — cbs, january 31, 2006

i think we are in the end game. the next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in iraq. — msnbc today show, march 2, 2006

can iraqis get this government together? if they do, i think the american public will continue to want to support the effort there to try to produce a decent, stable iraq. but if they don't, then i think the bottom is going to fall out of public support here for the whole iraq endeavor. so one way or another, i think we're in the end game in the sense it's going to be decided in the next weeks or months whether there's an iraq there worth investing in. and that is something only iraqis can tell us. — cnn late edition with wolf blitzer, april 23, 2006

well, i think that we're going to find out, chris, in the next year to six months — probably sooner — whether a decent outcome is possible there, and i think we're going to have to just let this play out. — msnbc hardball with chris matthews, may 11, 2006

yes, folks, you've heard tom's song before. it's sung to the tune of "turn, turn, turn".

(hat tip to the media researchniks at f.a.i.r.)