JOSH MARSHALL on looking at the substance underneath the spin in Pres. Bush's speech:

I caught the latter part of the president's speech and then a few moments of coverage on NBC afterwards. And I quickly realized why I never watch television news anymore. Russert, Gregory and Williams (who's actually been pretty good through this whole thing -- online at least) talking about how well the president did on contrition, how it was new for him, how the president took responsibility, how important it is "not to let this become a tale of two cities." And on and on.

There's real news to be reported -- how the president is approaching the reconstruction, what plans he's putting in place right now. He's put his chief political operative in charge of running the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast. Shouldn't that be raising a lot of questions -- a man whose entire professional experience is in political messaging and patronage?

He's also at the center of on-going criminal investigation and the target of a much-rumored indictment. But set that aside.

Then there's what Rep. John D. Dingell (D-MI) said in his statement out this evening. "With a stroke of the pen, in one of his first Katrina directives, the President cut the wages of the workers who will undertake our largest reconstruction project since the Civil War."

That cuts right to the heart of the matter. The president's first major initiatives were deep wage cuts for the people who will do the reconstruction.

Which paper is going to dig into this?

I suspect that, as usual, it's going to be mostly the bloggers, not the papers.