Spin, Twist, Coverup; A Days Work in Bush Land

The administration is busy putting out press releases displaying what a wonderful job they are doing. Using catchy phrases that ring of heroism and effort regular updates flow out with loads of new data.

officials have sought to tangibly catalog crucial results, such as "lives saved," "people assisted" and "citizens evacuated."

There is only one little bit of trouble, the numbers don't make sense.

But a closer look at the administration's claims shows some of the most important numbers seem to contradict each other, including assertions made as recently as Tuesday afternoon about the number of people rescued from life-threatening situations.

In other cases, the numbers seem, at best, to be crude estimates, though they are not presented that way when uttered or released by administration officials.

My brother has a classy name for 'facts' of this type; anal extractions.

Of course, this is not about facts and information, but about controlling the message and trying to use the media to spin a failure into success. To further that goal, FEMA has come out with a new mandate, no photos of the dead.

FEMA wants a nice happy disaster area, and showing the dead, or discussing the gross screw-up that their effort was, would not make for a positive response from the people they want to impress.