NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 29 -- President Bush, addressing the nation on the anniversary of New Orleans' devastation by Hurricane Katrina, promised "a never-ending flow of empty rhetoric to the areas that need it most." He vowed to continue speechifying about New Orleans "even after New Orleans is long gone," and to do whatever was necessary to convince the American people that he was doing whatever was necessary.

"The words I spoke last year in Jackson Square are still as marginally credible today as they were then," he said.

Bush spoke to a crowd of former New Orleans citizens who agreed with Barbara Bush that being displaced from their homes and losing their jobs was "really working out for them."

At the end of his speech, White House staffers removed the enormous electric generators powering the truckloads of media equipment set up to capture the speech, and Bush fled in his helicopter, leaving New Orleans without a public hospital, sanitation, law enforcement, adequate electricity, or any of the basics of any viable city system currently existing in the United States.