Dan's Tuesday links, etc.

I've been out of my usual morning routine of bookmarks and aggregator runs thanks to a number of variables: A bunch of deadline work, the start of football season, a cold (which I'm still not over), etc. But it's time to get back in the saddle.

The funny thing is, so little has changed:

In Washington, the big story seems to be much nattering and grommishing regarding the appointment of Karl Rove to oversee the Katrina response. On the Left: This is an outrage! On the Right: The people on the left are all fags! And at TPM Cafe, a wise observation: This is all a distraction.

From what? Well, we have a president who calls for $200 billion in federal spending for Katrina recovery, and then he says -- in front of God and everybody -- that we'll pay for this by cutting the budget. This is something akin to driving home in a small-penis-compensating $120,000 Hummer  H-2 and announcing to the family that you're going to make the payments by switching to generic-brand breakfast cereal and cutting out grandma's medicine.

As the blog Bad Attitudes puts it: "We take on an optional war in Iraq, and it is fine to put that on a credit card for the past three years and for years to come; but the minute we need to launch a two-year rebuild of a major region of the United States, we have to find budget offsets such as delaying/gutting the new Medicare drug benefit?"

Meanwhile, The Heritage Foundation moves ahead with its gameplan for the post-Katrina recovery: Waive environmental environmental regulations, eliminate the capital gains tax, let private investors buy up public school buildings in the disaster area and exempt heirs with a net worth of $1.5 million from having to pay estate tax.

And as for that $200 billion (which, despite conservative claims of getting it out of "waste, fraud and abuse,"  is going to  be borrowed from our children), it's a pretty safe bet who is going to wind up with the lion's share: The same people who got the bulk of the money we've wasted on Iraq.

Look folks, politicians remember their friends. It's just what politicians do, for crying out loud, and this bunch happens to be a bit more eggregious than most. As Molly Ivins wrote: "Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention."

Speaking of Texas, Janet and I went to bed last night with about six minutes to go in the Washington Redskins at Dallas Cowboys game. Dallas was up 13-0, and even though Washington QB Mark Brunnell had just turned 2nd-and-forever into a 3rd and 3 with a nice scramble, I'd had about enough. The Redskins were losing, and I was pleased.

Never do this.

I wake up this morning and find out the Redskins scored twice in the final four minutes and took the game 14-13. To salt the wound, both touchdowns went to WR Santana Moss, a player I'd been disrespecting out loud to Janet all night.

WHY I HATE THE REDSKINS: There are many reasons, not the the least of which being that if you grew up in North Carolina, like I did, everybody was a damned Redskins fan. But here's a reason that's worth talking about: THEIR NAME.

Every disgruntled white man in America got a chance to get-his-grouch-on earlier this year when the NCAA nixed Native American mascot names. It was as if every single white American male felt he had just discovered, independently, that there were some Native American team names that honored their inspirations: Seminoles, Illini, Utes, etc. And each one felt the urge to share this insight, simultaneously, on talk radio.

They were right, of course. The NCAA, collectively, has the brains of a blow fish. However, the talk radio outrage generally overlooked a clause in the NCAA ruling that will ultimately allow teams like Florida State to keep their mascots because, upon further review, there isn't anything overtly racist about them.

But is there anyone, ANYONE, in America who wants to argue that the name "Redskins" isn't overtly racist? If so, here's my message to them: SHUT UP.

A modest proposal: The Washington football franchise should announce, today, that it has changed its name to the Washington Warriors and chosen to revert to their "throwback" team logo: a spear with feathers on it.

Grouchy white men will bitch, but that's what grouchy white men do.

What have we learned? Last week I asked a public health official what, if anything, we have learned from the disaster in the Gulf. His reply: The people now understand that the government doesn't listen to the experts and just goes around doing whatever it wanted to do in the first place. He's hopeful that this will make people skeptical when the government says that it has a working plan in place for an H5N1 pandemic.

I remain skeptical. Never underestimate the ability of the American people to underestimate.

And what does it all mean? Like I would know. But here's what it means if you're in the White House: Your poll numbers are in the toilet, Mr. President.

"Bush stands at a precipice," says Carroll Doherty of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. "He's lost ground among independents. He seems to be starting to lose ground among his own party. And he lost the Democrats a long time ago."