Let them eat moldy sheetrock

That's monkeyass Bush's answer to the citizens of New Orleans.

"I'm just the president. It's not my job to come up with a plan. That's your job. I'm givin' yer some sheet pilin' and some more dirt and rocks and stuff. Now get busy and clean up your own mess."

President Bush talking about New Orleans in today's press conference:

Q Okay, can I --

THE PRESIDENT: No, it's --

Q But, sir, I'm sorry --

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it's unfair to the other people.

Q No, I'm just -- I'm just following up --

THE PRESIDENT: You're trying to hoard. (Laughter.)

Q I'm not trying -- I have a question about New Orleans, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: This is -- I agree with you. I can see the expressions on your colleagues' faces that it's --

Q Well, I hope it will be worth your time. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: They don't think so. (Laughter.)

Q The administration has rejected a local plan to rebuild New Orleans, and your administrator down there, Don Powell, said that the focus for federal money should be to rebuild for those 20,000 homeowners who were outside the flood plain. Critics, local officials say that that ignores so many people in New Orleans, the poorest of the poor, the hardest hit areas, people who didn't have flood insurance or didn't expect the levees to break. And they feel, sir, that this is a certain betrayal of your promise that New Orleans would rise again. So why did you reject it? And do you think that the people of New Orleans have to expect that there is a limit for the extent to which the city can be rebuilt?

THE PRESIDENT: The Congress has appropriated $85 billion to help rebuild the Gulf Coast. And that is a good start; it's a strong start; it's a significant commitment to the people whose lives were turned upside down by that -- by those -- by that hurricane.

Secondly, we have said that we look forward to the time when each state develops its recovery plan. I, early on in the process, said it's important for the folks in Mississippi to come forward with a recovery plan. And it's important for New Orleans and the state of Louisiana to work together to develop a state recovery plan. And the reason I said that is because I was aware that folks in Congress will want to spend money based upon a specific strategy. We've got to get comfortable with how to proceed. Those plans haven't -- the plan for Louisiana hasn't come forward yet, and I urge the officials, both state and city, to work together so we can get a sense for how they're going to proceed.

Now, having said that, I recognize there were some early things we needed to do to instill confidence. One of them was to say that we will make the levees stronger and better than before, and study further strengthening of the levees. In other words, I recognize that people needed to be able to say, well, gosh, we can't even get started until we got a commitment from the federal government on the levees.

A lot of the money we're spending is prescribed by law, but we also went a step further and proposed to Congress, and they accepted, the CDGB money so that monies can actually go directly to individual families that need help. We'll continue to work with the folks down there. But I want to remind the people in that part of the world, $85 billion is a lot, and secondly, we were concerned about creating additional federal bureaucracies, which might make it harder to get money to the people. ...

QUESTION: ... Mr. President, as you're saying Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath is one of your top priorities...

BUSH: Yes.

QUESTION: ... why is it that this administration is not allowing the senior staff, your senior staff that you conversated with prior to Hurricane Katrina, during and after, to testify, to interview or talk with congressional leaders?

And why not push Michael Brown, who is now a private citizen, to go before them, as he is what many are calling the lynchpin for the whole issue?

BUSH: Well, let me make sure you have the facts.

We have given 15,000 pages of White House documents to the investigators, congressional investigators. Some, I think it's 600,000 pages, administrative documents.

BUSH: We have sent a fellow named Rapawanna (ph) up there to talk about -- he's a White House staffer -- to talk to the committee.

There have been a lot of interviews. There have been public testimony.

As a matter of fact, we are so concerned about this that we've started our own investigation to make sure that we understand the lessons learned from this. This is a problem we want to investigate thoroughly, so we know how to better respond on behalf of the American people.

And so we're fully cooperative with the members of the House and the Senate. And we'll do so without giving away my ability to get sound advice from people on my staff.

You see, here's -- and this is an issue that comes up all the time. And you might -- we've had several discussions like this since I've been the president.

If people give me advice and they're forced to disclose that advice, it means the next time an issue comes up, I might not be able to get unvarnished advice from my advisers.

BUSH: And that's just the way it works.

But we've given thousands of pages of documents over for people to analyze.

QUESTION: Does that include Michael Brown?

BUSH: Pardon me?

QUESTION: Does that include Michael Brown?

BUSH: People who give me advice -- it will have a chilling effect on future advisers if the precedent is such that, when they give me advice, that's going to be subject to scrutiny.

Now, we've analyzed -- we've given out all kinds of pages of documents for people and we're cooperating with the investigators. And that's important for the American people to know.

What's also important is we want to know how we can do a better job. And so we're having a lessons-learned investigation led by Fran Townsend.

And anyway, we need to know.

Of course, you really have to hear the speech to appreciate the fact that the ol' boy's hittin' the bottle again (refresh the page if you don't get a prompt to play or save the file -- the host is a little buggy), but we understand, 'cuz bein'a preznit's ... you know ... HARD ... HARD WORK ... waitin' fur pra-POH-sals ... and readin' DOC-YOO-MENTS ... and tryin' ta understand POWER-POINT presen-TAY-SHUNS.

Well -- and you know you can't believe anywhere from 5 to 95 percent of what you read here -- but I was talking to someone who was going to cover some dull Laura Bush visit to New Orleans today, and the conversation revealed that it would be more interesting if, for example, they caught her smoking -- because it turns out Laura's a bathroom smoker. Now, I always suspected it. Just look at those wrinkles around her lips. That's not something you get just from being a pursed-lips, frigid apologist for a lazy son of a jackass.

(Hat tip to whichever New Orleans radio station I scanned to yesterday morning that aired a drunk Bush speech. Today's actual press conference can be viewed at normal speed at the White House Web site, or go directly to the file here if you're worried that the NSA is watching which sites you visit).