[Daily Brief]

Just the Blogs, Ma'am

Although I like the WaPo's "who's blogging" feature (look here, for a porcine example), I nevertheless eschew the mainstream press this morning. Instead, an all-blog brief.

Let's start first with a duet from Body and Soul. (Which represent, incidentally, why blogs are a necessary, new medium and what their potential is.) First, Jeanne posted a rumination on race and class fallout from Katrina:

"Race and class are the fundamental issues here. Not only were they the primary factors determining who got left behind (or blocked from leaving, or forced at gunpoint to stay back), they continue to effect everything.... It's twenty-first century racism, not the historical legacy, that keeps us from responding humanely to the crisis we witnessed this month."

This morning, she posted an comment from a reader and continued the analysis:

But despite the fact that they consciously reject racist ideology, [most Americans] act as if they did believe it. The myth of savagery in New Orleans spread not because most white Americans are closeted David Dukes, but because you don't have to be David Duke to have internalized racist assumptions.

This is the kind of thoughtful commentary you're unlikely to find except from the most astute editorial writers--and you'll never see the back-and-forth with readers and other bloggers. Great stuff.

Elsewhere
David Neiwart has a nice comparison between Katrina and the 1976 failure of the Teton Dam in Idaho "Their similarities, as well as their differences, are instructive." Go see why.

The Carpetbagger reports that Dems are trying to prevent Bush from suspending the Davis-Bacon Act (which demands the feds to pay the prevailing wage on its contracts, when, say, there's a massive hurricane clean-up effort). Josh and Angry Bear comment on yesterday's story about Bill Frist dumping stock. (As a testament to blogger malaise, the WaPo identifies only 8 links to the story.)

Digby has argued on several ocassions that the Bush administration looks uncomfortably fascist. He continued mounting the evidence yesterday. John Cole says he hates America. Are conservatives allowed to do that? Liberals v. conservatives: Crooks and Liars have a couple of great clips. First, Bill Maher has a chat with Tucker Carlson and then Phil Donahue goes after Bill O'Reilly. It's fascinating to see talking points backfire--and they do in both these clips (though the O'Reilly one is, naturally, painful to watch). Finally, Matt Yglesias points to the kind of policy attack the Dems need to start launching. He discusses Medicare, but the possibilities are nearly endless.

And that's today's brief...