blinky waived some affirmative-action rules

* " In the past week, the Bush administration has suspended some union-friendly rules that require federal contractors pay prevailing wages, moved to ease tariffs on Canadian lumber, and allowed more foreign sugar imports to calm rising sugar prices. Just yesterday, it waived some affirmative-action rules for employers with federal contracts in the Gulf region.
Now, Republicans are working on legislation that would limit victims' right to sue, offer vouchers for displaced school children, lift some environment restrictions on new refineries and create tax-advantaged enterprise zones to maximize private-sector participation in recovery and reconstruction" (link)

* ThinkProgress has the rightwingnoisemachine Katrina talking points - this one is my fave:
"There’s always discussion about raising taxes but right when businesses and people are trying to get back on their feet in the gulf coast region, the worst thing we can do with these families is pop them with another tax."
of course, the hurricane areas only account for about1% of the economy - so we'd have to think local businesses and families would be net winners in any tax increase (or roll-back).

* Yglesias(discussing Drownie Brownie and Chertoff): " I had the chance to see former Attorney General John Ashcroft speak last week, and he argued, sensibly, that during his tenure at Justice his top priorities were counterterrorism and fixing the notoriously screwed-up INS (since relocated to DHS). Naturally enough, Ashcroft had experience in neither of those fields. He was, arguably, instead chosen for his strong appeal to the anti-abortion lobby (and, perhaps, the neo-confederate lobby, but that's another story). His successor, Alberto Gonzalez, likewise has no experience with key Justice areas. He, too, is the president's buddy. Colin Powell was a widely-respected figure when he was appointed Secretary of State, but he had never been a diplomat and -- most astoundingly -- didn't like to travel. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow isn't an economist, has never worked with financial markets, has no experience with his department's international role, but he did used to run a heavily-regulated firm in the freight rail industry, the cornerstone of our 19th-century economy. His predecessor ran an aluminum monopoly. The Secretary of Defense? The less said about Donald Rumsfeld the better."