Like Pavlov's Dogs

....So is the port side of the blogosphere:

A handful of liberal bloggers have wasted no time politicizing the Hurricane Katrina disaster, alleging that the Iraq war has stripped New Orleans of National Guard protection and blasting President Bush for not dealing with global warming.

"So far today, I've looked at Global Warming and Katrina and the crisis resulting from Louisiana's National Guard being in Iraq instead of defending their state," complains the "Swing State" blog.

"Will Bush stay on vacation? At this point, it doesn't really matter. Because Bush has been asleep at the wheel for four years."

Over at the [ironically named] "American Blog," they've started a "Hurricaine [sic] Bush Vacation Watch," which is "keeping a tab on whether Bush is going to return to Washington to deal with this historically devastating hurricane, or whether he's going to stay on vacation while a major American city faces imminent disaster."

"Can't you just see Bush staying on vacation while all this happens THEN touring the damage like he's some kind of concerned hero?" the American Blogger griped.

Would it be impolite of me to break the news that the President's "vacation" (which wasn't and never is one in the commonly understood sense, since, with the exception of Bill Clinton, presidents haven't truly "gotten away from it all" since the days of FDR) ended last week?

On the other hand, perhaps I should laud them for their neo-moderation. When I saw the headline I thought there'd be long screeds on how the Bush Administration had contracted with Halliburton to create a giant weather machine to direct killer storms against countries targeted for U.S. imperialist neocon conquest, and then bungled the aim on the first volley (aimed at Hugh Chavez and Venezuela, of course) and sent it slamming into New Orleans instead.

Maybe they didn't want to, er, "rain" on Cindy Sheehan's parade.