God, it is really hard to get the nation's top brass to cut short a vacation. Between Condi kicking up her Ferragamo-clad heels in NYC and Bush waiting four days to cut his Crawford time short, we'd have seen (or rather, not seen, enough) -- but where was Cheney? The Veep has been whisperingly under the radar since Katrina began, and Lloyd Grove's Lowdown knows why: Cheney was fly-fishing in Wyoming until Thursday, when he was "forced" to cut the good times short and return to D.C. (no word on what forced him: his boss, who has dispatched him to the region? Public opinion? A visit from The Ghost of Christmas Past?).

In any case, we took a look at our posts from last Thursday just to refresh on what was going on in the world. A random sampling:

• At the Superdome: "You have about four days until dysentery sets in. And it's been four days today."
  
• Fox's Steve Harrigan comparing New Orleans to a war zone: "The last time I needed water purification tablets was Afghanistan. I didn't think I'd need them in Louisiana."
  
• CNN's Jim Spellman calling New Orleans a "refugee city": "People are just baking out on these highways. There is nowhere else for them to go."
  
• A post called simply "Thousands" - as in, the death toll.
  
• Two days before, on Tuesday, the levees broke.