That popping sound you hear is Teabagger heads exploding all over the country as Chris Christie commends FEMA's response to Irene.

From the MTP transcript:

MR. GREGORY: Safety first, as you've repeated over and over again. There will be a morning after kind of damage assessment. And this is going to be a big story, isn't it, Governor, up and down the seaboard? We already have local municipalities and states being so hard hit in this economy, what kind of cost, damage estimates are you expecting at this early point? 

GOV. CHRISTIE: Well, listen, I've got to imagine that the damage estimates are going to be in the billions of dollars, David, if not the tens of billions of dollars. We're going to start later this afternoon as soon as the storm clears. I'm going to personally go and start making assessments of the coastline and see what the damages are like there. And, at the same time, we need to deal with this inland flooding, which may not completely subside in New Jersey until Tuesday, some of our rivers. So the damage assessment's going to be a rolling one. The coastline will be the first we'll be able to judge. But then inland we're going to have a lot of damage, too, from these river floodings. 

MR. GREGORY: Any lessons you take away? I mean, this has been an extraordinary week, and not only for your state and this storm, but also an earthquake. As a Los Angeles guy, I was, I was not as freaked out about that, but now as an Easterner, I was. If you look at that and the coordination between a big state like yours and the federal government, are there lessons you take away from this week? Jobs well done, things that you can improve on? 

GOV. CHRISTIE: Well, certainly we're going to have an after action, you know, program, to look at what we could do better. I know there's always things that we could've done better. But what I'm proud of is that we're coordinating well with the federal government. We have FEMA folks right here on site in the operations and intelligence center you see here. They're working incredibly hard in providing things to us that we need. Our own team at the state level has put aside everything except for saying, listen, how do we best serve--making sure that human life is safe and then trying to minimize property damage? So we'll do an after action report, David, and take a look at--I know there's always things we could do better. But here's the key: The key is that we've tried to keep people fully informed, be fully transparent, to lower fear and raise confidence. And that's what we're trying to do, and I think that's the best thing a governor can do in this circumstance.

Now Christie did not personally give credit to President Obama for his response to Hurricane Tropical Storm Irene, but by giving mad props to FEMA he may as well have.

I would suggest that we will probably NOT hear Christie's name popping up as a potential GOP candidate for President any time soon. Because despite the Teabagger's seeming reverence for the idea of "common sense," they really don't like it when a Republican demonstrates any.

Now this in no way makes me a Chris Christie fan, but I can hardly wait to see his response if Eric Cantor interferes with the federal government's ability to respond to the needs in New Jersey because the House Republicans cannot find enough cuts in other federal programs to offset the cost.

Somehow I just don't think that Cantor wants to take on Governor Christie over budgetary concerns while people in his state are suffering.

Update:  Then as counterpoint to Christie, who realizes the need for government spending during a crisis like Irene, we have Michele Bachmann, occupying the space usually filled by crazed embarrassment to Christianity Pat Robertson, who seems to believe that the disaster was God's way of telling Ameircans to cut spending.


“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.”

And of course the truly sad thing for politics in this country is that Michele Bachmann is one of the favorites of the small minority of poorly educated, and historically ignorant, Teabaggers who are now holding the GOP by the balls.

Michele Bachmann goes all "deer in the headlights" while being grilled by David Gregory. This is why Teabaggers avoid the mainstream press.

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Check out those bug eyes.  She has NO idea what to say to this line of questioning.

"I am running for the Presidency of the United States. I am not running to be anyone's judge."

"But you have judged them."

"I..I..I don't judge them. I don't judge them. I am running for Presidency of the United States

WTF? Gregory reads off her own statements and she acts as if she has never heard them before.

And besides these clearly homophobic statements, she and her husband have charged the Federal government, through Medicaid, to provide psychologically damaging "reparative" therapies in an attempt to alter the sexual proclivities of homosexual men. If she and her husband Marcus had not judged this lifestyle as deviant than why would they provide a service to try and change it?

When Bachmann is asked if, as President (I'm sorry "Presidency"), she would appoint an openly gay person to her cabinet or to the courts, she lists three criteria: "Where do they stand on the Constitution, are you competent, and do you share my views?"

It should be crystal clear to anybody that, based on Bachmann's stated opinion about homosexuality, that the last one ("Do you share my views?"), ABSOLUTELY precludes any chance of a gay man or woman being provided any opportunities during a Bachmann Presidency.

I know she and her people probably think she effectively danced around that question, but I have little doubt that most Americans, especially gay Americans, had little trouble recognizing how the rights of homosexuals would be treated if Michele Bachmann had her way. 

By the way, I am not a David Gregory fan as a rule, but I thought he did a pretty good job here.

Sarah Palin on the cover of Newsweek, "I can win!" Really? Does ANY credible person still believe that?

It looks like Snowdrift Snooki is still relying on that water bra of hers to garner attention.

I find it rather ironic that this article about Sarah Palin shows up in the same issue which contains Bernstein's scathing piece about the crumbling of Rupert Murdoch's empire, without which Palin would probably ALREADY have faded away into the shadows of our memory.

As it turns out the piece is one long Valentine to Sarah Palin, which must have been the agreed upon approach before Palin would ever dare to talk to a national magazine. It is no wonder Newsweek is going out of business.

Here is a some of what the article reveals. (And believe me, it is not much.)

I believe that I can win a national election,' Sarah Palin declared one recent evening, sitting in the private dining room of a hotel in rural Iowa.

“The people of America are desperate for positive change, and deserving of positive change, to get us off of this wrong track,” she told me during a conversation that lasted late into the night and, inevitably, kept returning to the subject that has titillated the media and spooked Republican presidential contenders for months: her political intentions. “I’m not so egotistical as to believe that it has to be me, or it can only be me, to turn things around,” she said. “But I do believe that I can win.”

Palin NOT egotistical? Yeah okay.

Here Palin readies the excuse she will use not to run, or that she will trot out to explain why she is quitting partway through a very short lived campaign, her favorite of all human shields, the kids.

If Palin doesn’t end up running, the reason will be simple, she said. “Family. If it came down to the family just saying, ‘Please, Mom, don’t do this,’ then that would be the deal-killer for me, because your family’s gotta be in it with you.”

By the way, just WHO is caring for Trig these days?

It is an abiding source of annoyance to Palin that her success story as Alaska’s governor vanished overnight in 2008. “Do people not understand why McCain picked me?” she said with some exasperation.

Oooh, oooh, let me answer that! Yes we do understand why he picked you, but it is NOT because you were a good governor!

“You know, I rarely use the term ‘bipartisanship,’?” she said. “I use the term ‘independent.’ Piper’s middle name is ‘Indie.’ That’s the Alaskan way of life. Seventy-three percent of Alaskans aren’t registered Republican or Democrat, they’re independent. Todd’s not a registered Republican. Most of the people I know, they’re independent people saying, ‘Just use common sense.’?”

You know that is just another way of saying that she refuses to work with anybody. Which is the LAST thing this country needs right now, and I think most Americans are well aware of that.

Her current status as a freelance celebrity is plenty rewarding: she is reportedly paid $1 million a year by Fox, earned another $2 million for her TLC reality show, had a multimillion-dollar book deal with HarperCollins, and is a top-tier figure on the speaking circuit, able to command upwards of $100,000 per speech.

Moreover, Palin plainly thrives within that very tight circle she has drawn around herself, with Todd at its center, acting as gatekeeper and principal adviser. A campaign—even one as defiant of conformity as Palin’s would likely be—would require expanding that circle to include political professionals of uncertain loyalty. And it would mean opening the door to news organizations with which she has been openly feuding for the last couple of years.

Or not.

“The mainstream press is becoming less and less relevant,” she said, adding that she would have no hesitation in shunning media outlets she does not trust.

If this lunatic truly believes that she can run for public office while avoiding the press than she is even crazier than even I thought she was!

This is what Chuck Todd, Eugene Robinson, and David Gregory said about this article on Meet the Press this morning.

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(Palin Newsweek discussion starts at the 2:30 mark.)

I think Palin is just leaving another trail of breadcrumbs to keep the Palin-bots hopeful.  What do you all think?