While taking advantage of a Labor Day photo op at Houston's Astrodome, Ma Bush let her racism and disdain for the poor shine through.

Surveying the victims, mostly African Americans, who lacked the means to escape the New Orleans' catastrophe her son, George W., allowed to happen and now find themselves crowded like cattle in Houston's Astrodome, Ma Bush, in an American Public Media's Marketplace interview, commented, "Almost everyone I've talked to says we're going to move to Houston. What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this—this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

Oh yes, it's working so well for them. There's nothing like losing your home, your job, being displaced and jammed together with some 15,000 strangers in an arena where the lights burn 24 hours a day. But, hey, that's what you get for being poor and black. Not that Ma Bush has much use for the poor, whether white or any other color.

In attempting to brush off Ma Bush's remarks, the White House press shill, Scott McClellan, offered his own insight into her mind by saying she was making a "personal observation."

From the Sept. 7 White House press briefing:

Q Does the President agree with his mother that the homeless taken from New Orleans to Houston are much better off now because they were underprivileged in New Orleans?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think she was making a personal observation on some of the comments that people were making that she was running into. I'm not sure that that's exactly what she said, but—

Q I have it right here if you need it.

MR. McCLELLAN:—what we're focused on—what we're focused on is helping these people who are in need.

Q Does he agree with his mother?

MR. McCLELLAN: And I think that the observation is based on someone who—or some people that were talking to her, that were in need of a lot of assistance, people that have gone through a lot of trauma and been through a very difficult and trying time. And all of a sudden, they are now getting great help in the state of Texas from some of the shelters.

Q "It's scary that they're all coming to Texas."

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I think you can look at her comments

Q That is what she said, though.

"Personal," when she made her remarks on radio? "Personal" indicates that in Ma Bush's ugly mind that the hapless victims of her son's catastrophe are lesser people and all poor people everywhere, especially people of color, are subhumans. Even McClellan can't spin that away, despite ducking a response to whether George W. agrees with his mother. But given Ma Bush's track record as the enforcer of the Bush Crime Family, her son wouldn't dare disagree with her.

That she finds it scary that these "subhumans" might decide to stay in her "beautiful" Houston, especially since the rich whites of New Orleans want to keep them from coming back there, son George can fix that by having them scattered to the four corners of the country, where they can clean other rich people's toilets and hotel rooms for slave wages. After all, she and Poppy don't want to have to lock themselves inside their Texas mansion or spend cold winters in Kennebunkport.

Ma Bush is typical of the inbred, filthy rich power elite who think they are superior to everyone else and have some divine right to rule the world by sacrificing the blood of the peasants' children in wars for empire.

None of us should be shocked by any of the vile and callous remarks that spew forth from this woman's mouth. After all, on March 18, 2003, right before son George launched his illegal war on Iraq, she said on ABC's Good Morning America, "Why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? It's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

Just another "personal observation?" And, undoubtedly, she doesn't want to " hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many" in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, either. Not to worry, George W. plans to hide those, too, as he has hidden the body tubes containing the American troops he murdered in Iraq, not to mention the unacknowledged 100,000-plus dead Iraqis. The edict has been handed down by FEMA to the press: no photographs.

While Marie Antoinette may not have said, "Let them eat cake," Ma Bush and her ilk might be wise to remember the fate Louis XVI, his queen and much of France's nobility suffered when the peasants rose up against them.

Though he now claims he meant "politically," Andreas Renner, social minister in the German state of Baden-Wuertemberg, Tuesday said Bush should be "shot down" for his handling of the crisis in New Orleans. A "personal observation?"

Rupert Murdoch's British-based Sky Television satellite network was nearly on the mark when it ran this flash news alert at the bottom of the screen: "Bush: One of the worst disasters to hit the US." It should have read: "Bushes: The worst disasters to hit the US."

Now that's enough to mess with Ma Bush's "beautiful mind." And when Ma ain't happy . . . well, you know the rest.