The speech became more rousing toward the end, and, of course, there were promises of much largesse. I was watching ABC and the speech went over well with the evacuees and Louisiana officials interviewed afterward. Only Koppel and Stephanopoulos seem skeptical, wondering about the militarization of future disasters, and about how the hell we're going to pay for this.

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Oh, now Tom Kean's on, wondering why the hell the logistical problems we learned about on 9/11 still haven't been dealt with.

Dem congressman Tim Roemer, now on and responding to Bush's assertion in the speech that this wasn't a normal hurricane so the normal systems of response failed: "We shouldn't have a normal relief system after 9/11."

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Well, this will cost a lot, but Bush has never had the slightest interest in the spending-cut, limited-government aspect of conservatism. He was a drunk; when you're a drunk and you're so drunk you can't see straight, what do you do? You have another drink. That's how Bush deals with government debt: Screw it, let's have more! Only the tax-cuts-for-plutocrats part of Republican economic theory interests him.

And yes, buried in the speech's sugar was the Norquistian pill -- juicy tax breaks for businesspeople and so on. Well, the Bushies tried to turn Iraq into Norquistan, with a flat tax and other items from the right-wing wish list; now they'll take another shot at creating their Utopia.