Once again The Onion pushing the boundries and getting the first laugh.

If FEMA head Michael Brown makes it through the month, it will be a miracle. (But on the other hand, this is the administration that gives out Medals of Freedom for lethal levels of incompetence). More examples of FEMA's deadly ineffectiveness.

Sulli taking Bush to task for Katrina.

The message is short. So short it would fit on a postcard. It lingers in cyberspace waiting for a response.

"Family of 4 willing, wanting to help. Can drive to get you. Stay as long as you need to here in Albuquerque. God bless you. We care. Howard and Lisa Neil."

More than 2,000 messages on Craigslist offering housing to hurrican survivors. Sometimes the goodness of people is nothing short of amazing.

Anne Rice, writing in the New York Times, asks us if we really "Know what it means to lose New Orleans"?

Nature has done what the Civil War couldn't do. Nature has done what the labor riots of the 1920's couldn't do. Nature had done what "modern life" with its relentless pursuit of efficiency couldn't do. It has done what racism couldn't do, and what segregation couldn't do either. Nature has laid the city waste - with a scope that brings to mind the end of Pompeii.

Kudos to Rice for taking on the issue of race, adding another perspective, and writing from the heart.

But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist has died tonight.

The music offers further evidence of how far outside rap's usual strictures West operates. OutKast aside, mainstream hip-hop doesn't really do ambiguity or irony, but just as West's arrogance occasionally appears to be a protracted joke, Late Registration finds him in thrillingly subversive form, working in the production booth to undercut tracks' messages and shifting their meanings.-The Guardian

Kanye West’s new album Late Registration has hit the shelves and it’s clear that the producer/rapper/mini-mogul is leaving an indelible mark on music. West’s beats have either showed everything that’s right (or wrong) with rap by fusing Buppie sensibilities, a thoughtfulness that’s unusual for rap, and the hooks that are a pre-requisite for a mega-platinum career.

Kanye is willing to take on issues that extend beyond the usual rap fare. On the new album he takes on Reagan for pumping crack into black neighborhoods on the track “Crack Music”, condemns the blood diamond trade on “Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix)”, and takes on racial profiling in “Heard ‘em Say”. Off the wax he’s noteworthy as well. Whether it’s taking on the current President because he “doesn’t care about black people” in the wake of the fed’s tepid response to Katrina, or the rap world’s overt homophobia, it’s apparent Kanye isn’t afraid to take a stance.

Politics and style aside, what makes Kanye a singular talent is his music. As Time Magazine wrote in their recent cover article, “Jesus Walks (off of Kanye’s freshman album) is one of those miraculous songs that you hear for the first time and immediately look forward to hearing on a semiregular basis for the next 30 or 40 years.” Rolling Stone lauds the new album as well:

If this album has an emotional stunner a la "Jesus Walks," it's "Hey Mama," where West honors his mother, who had to work nights to keep on the lights. It loops a simple la-la-la vocal hook into a soul-sonic force, like Side Two of Prince's Sign 'o' the Times after aliens hacked into it. It's the best family-affair tearjerker since Ghostface's "All That I Got Is You," as West raps, "Can I cry, please?/Gimme a verse of 'You Are So Beautiful to Me.'"

Video of Kanye West's rant can be seen here.

CNN has compiled a list of administration quotes and juxtaposed them against the reality on the ground.

As always, Craigslist is demonstrating a value far beyond anyone's wildest dreams. A page with Katrina relief information can be found here.

Kanye West letting his frustration boil over last night:

"George Bush doesn't care about black people" and said America is set up "to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible."

Telethon host Matt Lauer backed away from Kayne's comments as quickly as possible but it's apparent that there is an OJ-esque rift in America that Katrina is exposing.

Camille Paglia is writing a little more frequently these days. It's good to have her back. Her take on Katrina and the administration's shortcomings.

What is highly surprising now is the disintegration of the administration's mask of competence and confidence, as New Orleans sinks day by day into squalor and savagery, a shocking panorama of unrelieved human suffering.

Oh, you're kidding me. You've got to be kidding me. Hat tip (as always) to Sulli, but can you belive these words from Bush today?

"The good news is - and it's hard for some to see it now - that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house - there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch.' (Laughter)." - president George W. Bush, today. Just think of that quote for a minute; and the laughter that followed. The poor and the black are dying, dead, drowned and desperate in New Orleans and elsewhere. But the president manages to talk about the future "fantastic" porch of a rich, powerful white man who only recently resigned his position because he regretted the failure of Strom Thurmond to hold back the tide of racial desegregation.

Apparently the members of our major media organizations have rediscovered their role. You are not publicity arms for whatever administration is in power, you are the watch dogs of our democracy. Cowards hiding behind microphones. Your collusion with irrelevance doesn't allow you to avoid the impact of your (in)decision.

A lot of you have written and asked about my lack of posting related to Katrina and the aftermath. I really don't have too much to add other than what has been discussed by others more qualified to do so. (Hurricaid is a great resource for all things Katrina).

Best wishes and our prayers (and hopefully some dollars too) go out to the good folks in Gulf Coast.

Whites "find" food in New Orleans and blacks "loot" food. Interesting distinction from the AP.

So now the Assn. of Christian Schools International is suing the UC system because they don't value schools that teach creationism in admissions process. The assault on knowledge and common sense continues.

Virginia Postrel has famously written about design, both in her columns and her book, The Substance of Style. She coined the term "esthetic economy", celebrating the fact that the cost of style has decreased to the point that good design has reached into the lives of more people, and perhaps more significantly, indicating a world where basic needs have been met and increasingly value being perceived from style. The esoteric nature of design discussions has taken a very serious turn over the past few weeks with a controversial redesign that is cracking wide fissures that may be too deep to repair.

The Daily Show has changed their set.

The new set both evokes and mocks the hyper-kinetic visual space of the cable news channels and at the same time is intended to create a unified atmosphere that puts funny man Jon Stewart on center stage.

"I thought it was important to get Jon more at the center of things, so that he was more clearly the epicenter of the visual set," said James Biber, an architect with the New York firm Pentagram who led the set project, "And to strip away a lot of the talk-show cues, like the couch. It's not a talk show."

The erstwhile couch is where the battle line is drawn between those who appreciate the changes and those who despise them.

The advantages of the couch format are multifold. Guests can not only be seen from head to foot, giving us a sense of their physical presence, their posture, and even their choice of shoes; they can also use the space however they want. They're free to hump the couch, as Al Green did in a Daily Show interview earlier this year, or jump up on it and make asses of themselves, like Tom Cruise on Oprah last May.

An underground campaign to bring back the couch has received support from a Daily Show correspondent, hinting at how deep the division is.

The set redesign truly is a matter of some serious thought on the part of the producers. They felt the show was changing in terms of tone and wanted to have a set that would reflect Stewart's new, more aggressive style. Pentagram was also the team that created the design elements of the widely successful book America: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction and wsimilarlyily tasked with creating something that was evocative of an American standard (i.e. a high-school text-book) and simultaneously derisive.

Related to our discussion about lethargy in conservatism today, it's worth noting that the Weekly Standard has celebrated it's 10th anniversary. As Virginia reminds us at the Dynamist, perhaps their greatest accomplishment was lighting a fire under The National Review.

Shocking photos from Iraq but an amazing example of photojournalism from Salon. The Unseen War isn't easy to look at, but it can be considered important nonetheless.