This morning’s NY Times starts with a simple bland fact about the fires in Southern California and then commits premeditated journalism.

With Katrina Fresh, Bush Moves Briskly

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 — It was not quite 2:30 a.m. in Washington on Tuesday when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California asked President Bush to declare an emergency because of the wildfires raging in his state. An hour or so later, the request — pre-approved by Mr. Bush before he left the Oval Office on Monday evening — was granted.

By the time most Californians awoke on Tuesday, the Pentagon had sent helicopters and troops to California and the homeland security secretary and head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were on their way. By Tuesday evening, the White House announced that Mr. Bush himself would go on Thursday. He canceled a trip to St. Louis, planning to send Vice President Dick Cheney instead.

Quite a difference between the California fires and Mr Bu$h’s lackadaisical reaction to New Orleans being flooded out. The Times starts out suggesting it’s all a case of “once burned, twice wary,” which is just not the sort of reaction we’ve come to expect from the Bu$h malAdministration, which has seemed ideologically determined to go to almost any lengths to cosset the wealthy and religiously insane bases of the country and to remove as much social support as possible from the middle class and poor.

But still, maybe it’s better to just calmly and objectively examine the situation. Maybe it’s better to hope, like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, that maybe this time is different.

[I]f actions were not enough, Mr. Bush also served up words, interrupting a speech on Tuesday morning about the global campaign against terrorism to talk about the disaster. After warning of the threat of a ballistic missile attack, he segued into the wildfires, saying, “We send our prayers and thoughts with those who’ve been affected, and we send the help of the federal government as well.”

I know the residents who have been displaced, and those burned out, are appreciative of Mr Bu$h’s prayers. We all offer them.

There are a lot of hell-on-earth quotes going around abut this series of fires. This one is representative:

"It was nuclear winter. It was like Armageddon. It looked like the end of the world." - San Diego city firefighter Mitch Mendler.

So, why the difference this time? Opinions vary.

He’s trying to be proactive on something that he can be proactive on,” said James Thurber, director of the Center for the Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. “He can’t be proactive on Social Security reform or Medicare funding, but this is one of the areas where he can. I think it’s part of a larger picture of how weak he is, especially domestically.”

Republican strategists say the all-out effort will help Mr. Bush but is not likely to be enough to restore his reputation — even in a state like California with a friendly Republican governor who is clearly coordinating his efforts with Mr. Bush.

But as Dan Schnur, a Republican strategist in California, said: “The worst possible situation for the White House would have been to have had even one state or local elected official complaining that they hadn’t heard back yet from the administration. This is still a very red state, so the accomplishment might be in terms of further damage avoided, rather than political capital gained.”

OK, that’s one view. The Times has a little sidebar that suggests another. Readers can draw their own conclusion about the sidebar and the reason it was included in the story.

THE AREA AFFECTED

Some people might say that the providential flooding of New Orleans required the dispersal of the very heavily Democratic population of New Orleans to 10 different states so as to thin out the numbers and allow the rest of the state, primarily Republican state to regain control of the state house and governorship. Louisiana only controls nine electoral votes, but that's still desirable in the red column.

Politics is just the art of the possible.