Bob Herbert documents the America-in-Iraq style reconstruction of New Orleans:

What is actually happening is worse than anyone had imagined.

New Orleans is a mess. It was brought to its knees by Katrina, and is being kept there by a toxic combination of federal neglect and colossal, mind-numbing ineptitude at the local level.

The police department here is a sour joke, and crime is out of control. More than 16 months after the storm, children roam the streets with impunity during school hours. Debris still covers much of the city. Doctors, hospitals and mental-health facilities are in woefully short supply. Thousands of residents are still living in trailers, and many thousands more are stuck more or less permanently out of town.

The result is that blacks and whites, feeling unsafe physically and frightened by the long-term prospect of dwindling opportunities, are eyeing the exits.

Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who lost the mayoral race last May to Mr. Nagin, offered a grim assessment. While the ethnic breakdown may remain roughly the same, he said, the city is on its way to becoming “smaller, poorer and worse than it was before.”

How are we supposed to rebuild an entire foreign nation when we can’t even rebuild New Orleans?

And via Unfogged comes this dramatic clip from an Al Jazeera political chat show, which nearly dissolves into fisticuffs over the question of whether or not Saddam Hussein is a martyr. It’s like the Iraq civil war in miniature.

Via DCist, a man in Rockville has had it with the warm winter:

If you’re looking for snow, a home in Rockville, Md., has a front yard full of it.

The home is located on Westbury Road, just off Route 28.

The homeowner rented a snow-blowing machine and covered the front of the home with snow, NBC4 reported.

Pictures taken by Chopper4 showed the front yard and shrubs all covered with the white fluffy stuff.

Click-through for pictures.

From Faster, Please:

things are so hot in Iran right now that Iranian-made automobiles are setting themselves on fire all over the place. In the past six months, some seven hundred vehicles have spontaneously combusted in Tehran alone. Most of them seem to be local versions of the French Peugeot 405.

Hot as hell.

Contra Michael Ledeen, however, the cause of the fires is apparently a problem with their fuel systems, not the weather.

If President Bush had realized the hard truths he seems to have finally accepted last night back in 2003, or even 2004, things would be very different right now. One quick point: It seems that the role for the new troops Bush plans to send to Baghdad is akin to what the British call the “over the hill” strategy, where the foreign troops are available for back-up and clean-up functions for the Iraqi forces, and as a kind of reasurance to them as they press forward into operations with newly trained and somewhat nervous individuals.

Indeed, if I were assigning stories right now, one of them I’d ask for is this: What has the British strategy been and what have the Americans learned — and what can they learn — from the British military strategy in Iraq as the British draw down their forces?

I watched the presidential speech, and yet, three hours later, I feel like I didn’t. Some impressions: The mic, at least on my NBC affiliate, was not quite working right so when the president started he sounded like the Borg, or as if he’d had throat cancer, and then later faded in and out. He looked tired, and only slowly warmed to the speech. He had a flat affect, and did not sound like he meant it when he said he took responsibility. His hair was askew. He did not make much of an impression.

More on the substance and proposals in the am.