He wondered if Chertoff's "gastrointestinal rumblings" were any better than tea leaves.

When you (read Bush) get rid of qualified, experienced people, all you (read us) got left are gut feelings.

Then there's the other "gut:" Webster's says it's "b) to destroy the essential power or effectiveness of."

It all works together in this administration.

Camille Paglia.

... one had to have competent and experienced people to begin with, I don't think ANY Bush appointee going all the way back to his very first day in office has been worth their own weight in manure much less in salt.

Ideology, creative ass kissing, and sucking capabilities only rivaled by high end industrial grade vacuum cleaners have been the only qualifications required by Bush since Nov. 2000 to get a job in his administration. In fact, I would make a case that education and a good record have been seen as actual handicaps by this most moron of presidents.

Let's not kid ourselves trying to think that the good people got fed up and left Bush to his own devices. There was never any competent operator in this calamity of administration to begin with, it is just that now it is not possible to avoid the trail of shit that this group of GOP goons have left behind.

God bless Americans and their constant state of denial, in any other country most of these people would be hanging like strange fruit in a Billie Holiday's son. I am having a hard time deciding if Americans are such good natured people that would endure such level of punishment with such stoic patience, or that something went terribly wrong in the gene pool in this country 50 or so years ago and we are facing the fact that a large number of the populace would qualify for the special olympics.

I couldn't believe my ears when I heard the quote from Chertoff today. What kind of person is he to be saying such things, especially as the head of Homeland Security?! It's an embarresment to our country. What's the point of the department again? I'm glad you brought it up, Joan. It seems no one else really cares or minds that the pinnacle of all the time, effort and money spent to set up Homeland Security has amounted to a "gut feeling."

Exactly. Bush has replaced anyone with any competence or experience from previous administrations with incompetent "friends." He sure gutted FEMA, to name just one organization. Way to go, . . . .

What else would you expect from some who was hand picked by one of the greatest pin heads to ever set in the oval office? Makes one wonder about the IQs of those who voted for him not once but twice. It's more than past impeachment time, throw the rascals out, they are beneath contempt, as are those who support them.

For years the US government has been spying on US citizens, kidnapping and torturing God knows how many people around the world to get information (at least that's why they say they do it), and spending more money on defense than the rest of the world COMBINED, and the best terror assesment this guy can come up with is a "gut feeling?"

Our tax dollars at work. January 2009 cannot come soon enough.

In a letter sent earlier today to Chertoff, Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS and Chairman, Committee on Homeland Security) poses the excellent question: "What color code in the Homeland Security Advisory System is associated with a 'gut feeling?' "

Might I suggest: yellow-belly?

Read Thompson's full letter at http://speaker.house.gov/blog/?p=569

I get "Gut Feelings" also,every time I see or hear the people this administration has trusted with protecting us--I WANT TO PUKE!!!!! Tommie27

Another stellar Chertoff moment is his interview with NPR during the height of Katrina about getting supplies to New Orleans. Robert Siegel (of NPR) kept informing him that their veteran reporters on the scene were saying there were thousands of people of the convention center, (and CNN cameras at the time were showing the people who were trapped there) and in response Chertoff kept saying that he wouldn't respond to "rumors" of anyone being at the convention center (of course now we know he responds only to his "gut", like Bush and Colbert).

Even NPR's Siegel loses his patience with him during the interview. The clip is online on NPR's website if you care to listen to the sound of incompetence.

Well, it DOES take guts to talk this shit. Or is it chutzpah? Hmmmm... "I have chutzpah that something bad, really bad, is going to happen." Nah, that doesn't work. Pardon my musings.

If anyone cares to hear about a mystical message from a just plain folk rather than a cryptic one from an alleged security expert, here's my story: I am cynical about almost everything -- but I do place great stock in nature as a conduit of all things amazing and revealing. Or, I should say, I've done so ever since two days before Sept. 11, when I became transfixed by EXTREMELY bizarre, scary, roiling, dusty clouds outside my high-rise window, the likes of which I'd never seen before or since. (I do NOT live in tornado country.) I went into some hyper-focused, altered state of consciousness just looking at them, to the point of finding myself literally saying out loud, "Sky, what are you trying to tell me?" An "answer" rushed into my being, that a terrible thing was going to happen to one of our cities. (Unfortunately, when I asked the question, "which city," no answer was forthcoming, and I tried to use my intellect to "guess" but to no avail.) I know it may sound like piffle in the re-telling, but I'll always consider it one of the most mysterious, truly religious moments of my life.

But please, don't ask me to try to work with Chertoffian paranormality; it's just too scary.

This administration began as "somewhat embarrassing", went through a brief "we've got no one else, so you'd have to do" phase, quickly turned "kinda freaky", then became "very freaky", then was revealed to be "terrifyingly criminal", and now, finally and with great fanfare, entered the real of the "absurd".

Yeah. Complete with a Homeland Security chief that looks like a mechanized zombie from outer space. Not that ugliness of face has anything to do with competence (I don't consider Eisenhower, for example to be much of a looker either) but, damn. Ugly AND incompetent. And an asshole. But in tune with his GI tract, apparently.

Seriously, an invasion IS on the way! But it's localized to Mr. Chertoff's "gut" and it's likely just E. coli. From that spinach. Last time HE joins W. and Dick at one of their lunches.

Witnessing this administration's descent into bizarre day-dreams is terrifying. This is what stands between us and an invasion of Man-Eating Tomatoes, or whoever wants to take over this place. Seriously, classify that last comment: I've just emboldened the terrorists!

(In all seriousness, if 50% of CIA's classified records were packed up and sent to bin Laden, it would have a much smaller value to World Terror than this "gut feeling" of Mr. Chertoff's. If I were an al Qaida lieutenant, I'd be rubbing my hands and planning the next attack in confidence. These morons would never catch me. Ever. They'd be too busy listening to their stomachs.)