I find myself fantasizing about the endless possibilities of political figures appearing to us in ways that we don't ordinarily expect. And, I confess that sometimes I scare myself, more than I'm self-amused, with what the imagination insinuates on one's sense of fair play. For example, I recently confided to a friend, a man who relishes his role as my severest critic, when he's not riotously inciting me to attack this or that left wing politician, that I'd been having freaky visions of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. Senator Reid seems a man so deficient in human imperfections, that bells and whistles go off each time I see him making a speech. There's something about his on-camera passive-aggressive-mean-mealy-mouthed temperament that causes my mind to itch. It's similar to the inkling of the kinky I had about J. Edgar Hoover, long before he died. Hoover's powerful knowledge of what was going on in this country, and abroad, made presidents afraid to go after him during his lifetime. He was ruthless and shameless, and the nation was safer for it. But, soon after he died, people starting writing books about him; some implying that after a hard day's work of running the last really efficient FBI, he was chauffeured in his bulletproof Cadillac to his house in the suburbs, where he reportedly bedecked his short pudgy body with one of his favorite Betty Davis-like "at home" gowns, and relaxed with a martini with his second in command at the FBI, and roommate for more than forty years, Clyde Tolson. Now don't get me wrong. One assumes no moral position from which to make "holier than thou" judgements about anyone. And, as I've said before, or maybe something like it, I don't care what adults do, as long as they don't do it in the street and scare and the postman.

One apologizes in advance for some of what is to follow. I've been having nightmare visions of Harry Reid, all trussed up in leather thongs, and cowering in a corner from a whip waving woman who is wearing an Abu Gharaib prison guard outfit. The woman's uniform is enhanced with spiked, thighs high, shinny red leather, boots. Harry's Abu Gharaib dominator turns out to be, in my nightmare, Hillary Clinton. Likely, Senator Clinton was having, in my nether nightmare, one of her "multiple personality disorder" seizures. This time her selected "personality" appeared (manifested itself) not as a young pro Vietcong law student, nor a lawyer in Arkansas with a knack for making a small fortune in "chickens," nor as an illusionist as in the Vince Foster affair, but as prison guard. By the way, with a feeling that approximates lust, if Senator Clinton, having helped ruin the real Democrat Party, runs for president in one's political party's primary, one has much more to share regarding the "mobile" dead body of poor Vince Foster.

Sadly, I have other involuntary sleep-time visions. Once, I dreamed that I witnessed an unusual performance of George Gershwin's (1898-1937) "Porgy and Bess," an American classic light opera, with such great songs as "Summer Time and the Livin' is Easy," and "I Got Plenty of Nothin," and many more wonderful Gershwin classics. In one of my imagined versions, there was Senator Ted Kennedy, in the leading role of "Porgy," singing one of the most famous and lyrically enchanting songs from that beautiful George Gershwin folk opera. The song was "Bess You Is My Woman Now," sung by Kennedy in a geriatric Irish whisky tenor, and with what seemed to be smooth political nuance, and Kennedy sincerity. He was singing to House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi, who was a last minute stand-in for Congresswomen Cynthia McKinney who had the co-starring role of "Bess" in the opera. In my nightmare, McKinney had just been kidnapped by Prince Charles, and taken to the Tower of London, accused of mutilating the English language?

In my hellish dream- state, Teddy was singing Gershwin from a dilapidated pier on Martha's Vineyard, while standing on a bobbing, upturned Oldsmobile sedan, but both Ms. Pelosi and Ms. McKinney appeared to be in Washington, standing before an operatic choral ensemble of left wing congressmen, who were shabbily dressed in the uniforms of the old "Communist Red Army Chorus." And, the opera-nightmare was being directed by Louis Farrakhan, smartly dressed in what appeared to be a mint condition Nazi SS uniform! It just made no sense at all.

My nightmares seem mild, when compared to the "waking" fantasies of TV journalists. For example, Dan Rather, discredited ex-CBS Anchorman, has said that, " . . . The coverage of Katrina was one of television news' finest moments." Anderson Cooper, according to Rather was, " . . .willing to speak truth to power." But the fact is, the report was, and is, one of the most slanted, misleading to lying, coverages of a news story since Rather left (was shamed out of) CBS.

Thanks to the Internet, and "bloggers," who more closely reported the truth about Katrina, the mainstream newspapers have finally, belatedly, reported the facts. The Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune (none is a Bush backer), are now writing about the huge journalistic errors that TV "news" committed. These left of center newspapers agree that President Bush is not responsible for the aftermath of Katrina in Louisiana. They also agree that President Bush's error is a political one. He should have immediately shown himself on the ground the day after the disaster. But, nothing, short of the president setting himself on fire in Jackson Square, would have appeased the "pacifists" in the left wing section of congress, who were suddenly made "warlike" by Katrina's political possibilities.

The real villain of Katrina is two centuries of Cajun malaise, apathy, and dishonesty that continues to give Louisiana lousy state governments and mayors of the City of New Orleans. Governor Kathleen Blanco is the first among politicians to be blamed for the unpreparedness for Katrina, and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is a full partner in Louisiana's negligence in preparing for hurricanes in general. The list of the way the state and city have, over the past sixty years, wasted (misdirected, and stolen) billions of federal dollars meant for flood control is longer than the bridge over Lake Pontchartrain.

Yet, there were stories that conditions at the SuperDome were such that, "evacuees were firing on helicopters trying to rescue them . . . and killing those around them for food and water . . . women and children and babies were being raped . . . of dead bodies being stacked in freezers . . . police shootouts with heavily armed gang members . . . and snipers were firing at doctors and policemen from rooftops." The New Orleans Times-Picayune finally reported the fact that NONE OF THE ABOVE HAPPENED.

However, the New Orleans Times-Picayune printing that Katrina's immediate disastrous human sufferings were the result of an incompetent governor, mayor, city council, and local levee board members and local "emergency" personnel, didn't keep the "professional racists" from spewing racist propaganda. Al Sharpton said that the broken levees were "weapons of mass destruction," implying the inevitable "Bush" connection. Of course, Al Sharpton is the scummiest, sludgiest, swampiest, politician since the late Earl Long of Louisiana, but Earl had insanity on his side. Sharpton has no redeeming quality to blame for his hate speech. Then there was Louis Farrakhan, (of whom it is said that the CIA has to have a warehouse to store copies of his taped telephone messages abroad) who suggested that the levees were blown to run black people out of New Orleans. In fact, well do to white and black people living in the Lakeview area were flooded much the same as were the poor whites and blacks living in the same area.

Randall Robinson (who should also be uneasy about NSA/CIA taped foreign conversations), the founder of "TransAfrica," an anti-American front organization dedicated to funneling our tax dollars to "sister" left wing, anti-American, organizations in Africa, exclaimed the outrageous lies that after Katrina, " . . . black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive . . . " [Salt Lake Tribune, Sept.2, 2005, Rich Lowry]

We can blame television "news" sensationalism ("saboteurs for ratings") for misleading viewers. Too many TV producers seem to hold the firm belief that the American public is largely fact illiterate, if so we have them to thank. Print journalism continues to the most reliable (fact determinable) source of news and news analysis, but one wonders if that would be so, except for good regional newspapers, without the Internet.

Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.