Michael Bérubé - American Airspace

Lift every voice and scream

Some of yesterday’s highlights:

The Dauphin lands in the Gulf Coast and does a bizarre parody of George W. Bush, waving his arms woodenly and stumbling through simple sentences until he gets to that funny little joke about sitting up on Trent Lott’s porch. And let’s not forget the immortal line, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” I see a Medal of Honor in Mike Brown’s future. (You really do have to watch the video if you haven’t seen it. Even by Bush’s standards, it’s stunning.)

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist announces that the Senate will vote on the permanent repeal of the estate tax next week.

The Navy hires Halliburton to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi.

The American Family Association puts out a press release in which the Reverend Bill Shanks says that the decadent city of New Orleans got what it deserved.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency continues to funnel funds to Pat Robertson’s charity, Operation Blessing.

Mike Brown continues to chastise the poor for not evacuating New Orleans.

Condi Rice makes an urgent appeal to all Americans to donate funds to help her buy shoes on Fifth Avenue. (No, that’s not quite true. She did something almost as strange: “in an unusual foray into domestic affairs,” notes the New York Times, Rice “sharply disputed any suggestion that storm victims had somehow been overlooked because of their race.” Well, it’s a good thing she cut short her New York vacation to bring us that critical intervention. But why isn’t anyone asking Rice how she liked Spamalot?)

Rise up, O my people. You are being governed by incompetents, thugs, idiots, crazed clerics, and vicious looters. Lift every voice.

(And many thanks to AmericaBlog for keeping track of the atrocities and outrages as they pile up.)

Posted by on 09/03 at 09:25 AM

I’ve spent the past few days alternating between sorrow for those ‘Left Behind’ in NO, and anger at the GOP political machine, whose business trumps the antiquated notion of ‘government.’

It’s sad that it takes a compounded disaster like this to open up eyes, and even sadder when partisan wingnuts put their hands over their ears, so that ‘Reality’ doesn’t intrude on their talking points…

Will Bush *finally* fire somebody for incompetence? Mike Brown couldn’t even manage a Show Horse Association, much less our nation’s disaster recovery efforts--of course, he’s down the pyramid a bit from the top, where benefits flow to Pioneers and Fellow Idealogues…

There are too many people who believe in ‘Faith-based government,’ as in, ‘I have personal belief that George Bush and co. are doing a great job, because he looks like a nice guy, and goes to church on Sunday,’ who just want ‘to believe,’ no matter what the facts say…

The right wing is good at nullifying single points, and obfuscating the truth, but the points are filling in, and creating a picture that all but the most blindly loyal can see--our country is being ruled by an incompetent kleptocracy!

bastards…

Posted by on 09/03 at 11:53 AM
That clip of Bush thanking everybody, talking about Trent Lott’s house and giving props to “Brownie,” was almost like theater, like a rehearsal of a bad skit.

It was excruciatingly long (only because every word of it was useless, ill-conceived blather and platitudes, thus making it seem several times as longer than it actually was).

Bush’s voice will never sound the same to anyone who is watching him these last few days, that little press moment especially.

It is an iconic piece of Bush’s patronizing patois. As if anyone “needs to understand” that getting food, water, and medicine to people is critical and getting them out of there is a top priority. He spoke as if the public was a little child, a child he really did not want to deal with so he just keeps repeating himself, filling time and hoping the moment will end. Kind of exactly like it seemed when he was speaking in front of Clinton and the Dauphin’s daddy.

For those in the public who have not “heard” (as in felt and understood) the insulting quality of his speech when explaining other matters like Iraq, who have not “heard” the hollow sounds of his words echoing, they will now.

He says nothing but truisms and bumper sticker slogans and talks down to the world as if we do not understand such complicated matters like this disaster being “huge.”

I do think his voice will never sound the same to many people.

Posted by on 09/03 at 12:20 PM
"(And many thanks to AmericaBlog for keeping track of the atrocities and outrages as they pile up.)”

Sigh.

Posted by Gary Farber on 09/03 at 01:00 PM
For a long time I’ve wonder whether this administration is evil or merely incompetent. Now it is clear that the thoughtlessness that Hannah Arendt described as the banality of evil—really a vacuum where morality is supposed to be—animates everything Bush and company does and fails to do. At the very least their racism and elitism has been stripped of its varnish. Even the press is seeing it now.

Posted by on 09/03 at 01:30 PM
Lift every voice, indeed. The outrage is reaching some kind of tipping point, surely, when even Republican Fox-bots are upset. Yet where are the Democrats? Where is the leader who will stand up and say ENOUGH!!!!! No more business as usual! These Republican fuckers have ruined the country and it’s time to FIGHT BACK!

Unfortunately, as Michael said on the previous thread: “...waiting for Democrats on this might be a little like waiting for a rescue bus outside the New Orleans Convention Center.”

So I’m wondering: Where is our Huey Long? Greg Palast had a great piece yesterday: http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=453&row=0

Why are there no Huey Longs today? Obviously most Democrats are so completely of a piece with the establishment, so timid, so...whatever, that they’re incapable of behaving like a real opposition party. But surely there’s a Democrat somewhere who sees the potential—for self-aggrandizement, if for no more noble purpose—in Huey Long-style resistance to the powers that be?

Posted by on 09/03 at 01:40 PM
When I saw the speech, I thought Bush looked like a scared animal trying to make itself look bigger in the face of a predator. (What I really saw was a seeming sociopath trying to appear as if he had human feelings in the face of the obvious truth: he couldn’t give two shits about NO’s--or anybody else’s--poor.)

I know dems are to blame, too: Clinton and the GOP-lite had eight years to help NO build up its levees. Still, the Bush admin stands out as singularly cruel and inept.

Posted by on 09/03 at 01:42 PM
I give you the dynamic duo of Mike Meyers and Kanaye West, courtesy of the Washington Post. This happened Friday evening on a benefit concert on NBC:

. . . . West and Mike Myers had been paired up to appear about halfway through the show. Their assignment: Take turns reading a script describing the breach in the levees around New Orleans.

Myers: The landscape of the city has changed dramatically, tragically and perhaps irreversibly. There is now over 25 feet of water where there was once city streets and thriving neighborhoods.

(Myers throws to West, who looked extremely nervous in his super-preppy designer rugby shirt and white pants, which is not like the arrogant West and which, in retrospect, should have been a tip-off.)

West: I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, “They’re looting.” You see a white family, it says, “They’re looking for food.” And, you know, it’s been five days [waiting for federal help] because most of the people are black. And even for me to complain about it, I would be a hypocrite because I’ve tried to turn away from the TV because it’s too hard to watch. I’ve even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I’m calling my business manager right now to see what is the biggest amount I can give, and just to imagine if I was down there, and those are my people down there. So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help—with the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. I mean, the Red Cross is doing everything they can. We already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way—and they’ve given them permission to go down and shoot us!

(West throws back to Myers, who is looking like a guy who stopped on the tarmac to tie his shoe and got hit in the back with the 8:30 to La Guardia.)

Myers: And subtle, but in many ways even more profoundly devastating, is the lasting damage to the survivors’ will to rebuild and remain in the area. The destruction of the spirit of the people of southern Louisiana and Mississippi may end up being the most tragic loss of all.

(And, because Myers is apparently as dumb as his Alfalfa hair, he throws it back to West.)

West: George Bush doesn’t care about black people!

(Back to Myers, now looking like the 8:30 to La Guardia turned around and caught him square between the eyes.)

Myers: Please call . . .

At which point someone at NBC News finally regained control of the joystick and cut over to Chris Tucker, who started right in with more scripted blah, blah, blah.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090300165_pf.html

Posted by bill benzon on 09/03 at 02:59 PM
Chris Robinson’s last sentence represents something i too have been noticing. If there is even the tiniest shimmer of fools gold in all of the muck it is that there is anger and resentment among those that used to be compliant synchophants at the MSM news desks. The voice and face of human suffering created by gross imcompetence and possibly criminal negligence has forced folks like Brian Williams, Harry Smith, Ted Koppel to rediscover their journalistic intergrity and moral compasses. I even heard Tucker Carlson agree with Jesse Jackson that if this had happened in South Beach or Orlando the resources would have been on the ground and to the people in less than 12 hours. That sort of shift in perspective can only help to pressure Bushco et al to demonstrate more of their negative traits.

Perhaps another telling sign was the non-censorship of the West Coast version NBC Concert for Hurricane Relief, leaving in the segment of Kanye West’s tirade against a most glaring and obvious atrocity. Given the three hours that network executives had, the seven second delay that the director and producers had control over in the live studio, it is clearly evident that a choice was made to keep that speech intact and broadcast. This from one of the mother’s of all corporate prolifrigates---GE as NBC-Universal. When Bushco starts losing MSM and corporate support things are looking a little better.

But so much sadness tears anger disappointment being felt is hard to overcome. When it is the foreign athletes, the Russian tennis professionals for example, that stand up and remind us of our responsibilities, while the US primadonas worry about their fashion sense, it is so distressing. The images and stories from the world media are scathing in their contempt for this administration, while we still get FoxNews and Disney.

Posted by on 09/03 at 03:00 PM
As far as I know, Huey Long himself was reasonably enlightened on the subject of race, for a white Louisianian of his generation. But the fact remains that Black Louisianians were almost completely without the vote in his time. This means (a) Long is a very imperfect model for the leader of a populist revolt today and (b) the reason why there are no Huey Longs today is that no one has figured out how to overcome white folks’ stubborn belief that poor Black people are their enemy and tax-slashing law-n-order God-guts-and-guns white Republicans are their friends. The Rainbow Coalition was a terrific idea, whatever we may think of Jesse Jackson (on the basis of hindsight, mostly); the Dems gave it the fast shuffle at the 1988 Convention just as they did the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964. Clinton talked a good Black-white unity line but sandbagged Lani Guinier, Marion Wright Edelman, and Joycelyn Elders to placate the racists; how many of Katrina’s victims were poorer, when the waters started to rise, than they had been before Welfare Reform? Sure, the Greens are a national irrelevancy; Black voters understand that better than anyone, and dutifully support the Dems at election after election, only to be taken for granted and short-changed because--as everyone knows but few whites are ready to acknowledge--the white majority will flee any party that takes a strong, consistent stand for racial equality. Read Philip Klinkner’s “The Unsteady March,” or Ira Katznelson’s new “When Affirmative Action was White” for evidence--if any is still needed--that the elephant in the political arena is racism: not “race,” but white racism. That’s what’s the matter with Kansas. That’s what’s the matter with America. Will it go away? Not in this 63-year-old’s lifetime.

Posted by on 09/03 at 03:02 PM
Oh, and after that Aaron Neville sang a sweet and passionate “Amazing Grace.” His brother Charles was there too, in a pick up group including Harry Connick & Wynton Marsalis.

But Wynton was better Fri AM on the Early Show playing unaccompanied trumpet while they ran clips of the devastation.

Posted by bill benzon on 09/03 at 03:04 PM
I second the recommendation on “The Unsteady March.” They argue that African Americans have been able to move forward on civil rights only during periods where the nation faced an external threat - the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the major wars of the first half of the 20th century. When the external danger had subsided, gains were lost. From my point of view, they’re arguing that, when external danger looms large and demands attention, the citizenry can focus aggression there and so ease up on the internal colony. Beyond this, of course, it becomes necessary to recruit from the colony to fight the external enemy, both physically and propagandistically - be kind to your black citizens when you fight the Nazis, etc.

Posted by bill benzon on 09/03 at 03:17 PM
Lake George proves the negligence / incompetence / whatever-it-is (we need a new word) of this enterprise and also show its genius (we definitely need a new word). There is criminal effect here but no observable guilty action.

The tragedy and crime of Lake George is in the things that didn’t happen. We’ll find the perpetrators at the head a trail marked and defined by the hounds *not* barking. The pallets of clean water, food, and medicine that didn’t drop to the refugees on Tuesday (or Wed or Thu or into daylight Fri) came from non-existent caches that were never prepositioned for any catastrophic emergency, act of God, or terrorist attack. The police and emergency workers and reinforcements that didn’t arrive in the immediate wake betray a lack of planning, which argues the lack of a planner or a plan, but doesn’t finger a criminal.

It will be hard to isolate the decision to forego measures that would have saved lives, suffering, and property. (And any helpful source will be
“disgruntled” automatically.)

Sure Brownie is doing a heck of a job. He keeps his own hours, who can say different? Who could have foreseen a levee breach in NOLA? Brownie can say “I did nothing wrong” and I don’t think it is even possible to dispute him, no matter how many bodies come out of the attics of the Ninth Ward, no matter how many died waiting for water, medicine, medical care, or civilization to be restored.

Two reasons for pessimism:
1) can’t prove a negative,
2) asking for justice from the perps.

Posted by on 09/03 at 04:01 PM
Thanks for the props to John Aravosis over at “AMERICABlog: A great nation deserves the truth.” He’s done an extraordinary job all week and has posted more pertinent information and links than all the rest of the media put together.

Posted by SFMike on 09/03 at 04:36 PM
When talking about estate tax repeal, do note Sen. Reid’s less-than-rousing riposte to Frist (via dKos):

I am surprised at the Republican leadership’s insensitivity toward the events of the last week. With thousands presumed dead after Hurricane Katrina and families uprooted all along the Gulf Coast, giving tax breaks to millionaires should be the last thing on the Senate’s agenda. I understand that the Senate shouldn’t grind to a halt as a result of Hurricane Katrina, but there are issues that are of much greater importance both to the people directly affected by the hurricane as well as the nation as a whole than estate tax repeal.

This shouldn’t even be a choice. Families have been torn apart and homes have been washed in four states. These victims deserve the Senate’s time, not the handful of millionaires repealing the Estate Tax will affect. I once again urge Senator Frist to reconsider his decision. Gulf Coast families are counting on us. They are suffering, and they have no where else to turn. We owe it to them to make their safety and survival our top priority, and we should give them nothing less. Regardless of how one feels about the estate tax, we should all be able to agree that the Senate’s attention should be on the victims of this crisis.

Yes, it is grotesque to propose estate tax repeal in the midst of this crisis. But Reid doesn’t even attempt to mount a defense of the estate tax. Indeed, he explicitly punts: “Regardless of how one feels about the estate tax...” And like it our not there _will_ be a vote on the estate tax next week, the Dems have the numbers to filibuster, and my guess is that they won’t even try. Between the Democrats who have dedicated their career to serving the same monied interests as the GOP, and others who have simply given up trying to defend taxation, I expect them to whine a little about NOLA, and then roll over and play dead.

If there’s any tax that ought to be easy to defend, it’s the estate tax. Despite all the “death tax” blather (which went unanswered for years) and the latest “double taxation” nonsense, this is a tax on utterly unearned wealth. And yet the Dems aren’t even trying to defend it. They’re just vaguely hoping, once again, that the public will be so outraged at the GOP that they’ll just have to vote Democratic. We all know how well this has worked in the past. Perhaps the two most important differences between the two major parties at this point are that the Democrats seem incapable of articulating a coherent a vision for America, and don’t know how to win elections.

Posted by on 09/03 at 06:12 PM
Reid’s remarks are disgusting. In effect he’s saying “Look, Bill, we want to rob the Treasury just as much as you do, but can’t you be a liittle more tactful?” To which the predictable, and entirely reasonable, reply will be “Fuck you, when you’re in the majority you can rob ‘em your way, but until then, we’ll rob ‘em ours.”

Posted by on 09/03 at 07:09 PM
“(And many thanks to AmericaBlog for keeping track of the atrocities and outrages as they pile up.)”

Sigh.

Gary, my apologies—your coverage of Katrina kicks butt seven different ways. Thanks for doing it. Just so happens I checked AmericaBlog first this time. Alphabetical order, you know.

Posted by Michael on 09/03 at 10:11 PM
And Rehnquist died tonight. Maybe the dispensationalists are right. The end times are fast approaching. Lord, have mercy upon us.

Posted by on 09/03 at 11:54 PM
Wouldn’t it be cool if some Democrats went down to inspect the damage, purely in an official capacity, and were so moved and horrified by what they saw that they insisted on staying and working? As if they were public servants or something?

And what an opportunity for the Democrats to define themselves as being for something. Democrats: the party that’s for competence in emergency management. The party that actually is compassionate, as opposed to talking about it.

Picture the TV ads. Bush playing guitar on one side, Hillary Clinton pulling a mother and child into a rowboat on the other.

It’s never going to happen; I know. But it’s so frustrating to watch the Democrats try to be just like the Republicans, except a little less so, and it’s frustrating as hell to keep hearing the news about NOLA being the trainwreck that it is. Seems like there’s an opportunity to do something about both frustrations simultaneously.

Posted by Jessica Guilford on 09/04 at 01:03 AM
No, no, oh so sadly no. We’ll get ads of Bush nominating someone who could arguably be “from” New Orleans to SCOTUS (Edith Brown Clement) or someone who is black, grew up in poverty but still thinks he’s the bee’s knees (Janice “liberalism is like slavery” Rogers Brown). You see, because he *cares* about the region and wants to give them something. As long as it benefits him and is mainly symbolic, that is.

Posted by on 09/04 at 01:59 AM
I remember Bill Clinton’s first majore photo op during the 93 Midwest floods. Unlike Bush II, who touched down in a dry (and pre-cleared) spot while dressed in a starched Brooks Brothers shirt and pressed khakis, Clinton at least put on his jeans and tennis shirt and let himself get sweaty and muddy. He went down to a relief center and positioned himself in a serving line and greeted everyone who filed past. Compare this to Bush II who couldn’t even bring himself go inside the terminal at the aiport to console the old sick people at the triage center in the baggage claim area, just a few yards from where his plane was parked.

Admittedly, security concerns were less pressing in Clinton’s day--- and back then we had a President who could actually converse with his fellow citizens for more than ten seconds at a time without saying something moronic.

It could have been worse, though. Here is a fake Bush II quote I used by adding a little extra material to a real quote:

“You know, ummm, I’m going to fly out of here in a minute, heheh, but I want you to know that I’m not going to forget what I’ve seen. I understand the devastation requires more than one day’s attention. It’s going to require the attention of this country for a long period of time. It’s going to be hard work, heheh, very hard work. This is a—one of the worst natural disasters we have faced, with national consequences. And therefore, there will be a national response.

Once we get those folks out of that region, we have to, heheh, ummm set up camps for them, where we can concentrate them. Camps where folks can be concentrated, until, ummm, we find, you know, a final solution--- until we can finish cleansing that region.”

Posted by Tim Horrigan on 09/04 at 02:12 AM
Maybe the end times have already started. Maybe the rapture happened, but the numbers of the truly righteous who got raptured was so small that the event went un-noticed. It’s a dumb theory, but it makes as much sense as Intelligent Design.

Posted by Tim Horrigan on 09/04 at 02:18 AM
Screw the end-times talk. This is the second gilded age where the barons rape and plunder at will. And the only way it can end is when millions march in the streets and takeover the Capitol and the statehouses, peacefully, like they did in Moscow, and daring the Guard to shoot our peaceful asses in cold blood. They will not dare.

Our Glorious Leader dropped trou in New Orleans and didn’t get any beads.

Posted by Kevin Hayden on 09/04 at 03:46 AM
I’m so upset I can barely write, and everyday it just keeps getting worse.

I heard today on the Laura Flanders Show (Air America) that after a day or two of a tiny bit of real news coming through the TV, all the news channels are now spinning the, “All is well” message on full-tilt boogie, even though that could not be farther from the truth. It’s as if the White House took all the networks out to the woodshed for having dared to get “off messge”, even for a second.

As for the Dems, they’ve been speaking out, but only the Congressional Black Caucus. The question is not, “Where are the Dems?”, it’s “Where are the White Dems?” And how long does the CBC have to do all the heavy lifting for the whole damn party?

I just don’t have enough tears.

Posted by on 09/04 at 04:26 AM
Michael, on Friday you (tongue-in-cheek?) named Houston as one of the few cities about which Bush II might actually care. Having spent eleven hours at the Astrodome yesterday--trying, along with thousands of other Houstonians, to help out--I’m not so sure that Space City is really on the Dauphin’s list. There is *no* visible Federal presence here, although there is plenty of media. Our city is absorbing the bulk of the responsibility for the more than 30,000 evacuees who are now our (most welcome) neighbors. The scene at the Dome defies narration. Yesterday, a man got off the bus and walked across the hot asphalt with no shoes. The Blue States are not the only states that Bush II has abandoned.

Houstonians are volunteering around the clock at Reliant Center and the downtown convention hall. Don’t get me wrong; we don’t mind doing it and in fact wish we could do more. But we can’t do it alone. If you live outside of the Gulf Coast area, maybe you can put a little pressure on your own state and local reps to send supplies (clothes, diapers and formula, soap, tampons, bottled water, cereals, etc.) people, funds, anything.

Thanks for a bright blog in a dim time.

Posted by on 09/04 at 09:27 AM
In the course of his press conference held at the start of his photo-op tour of the Katrina damage, Bush included the following statement:

“My attitude is: if it’s not going exactly right, we’re going to make it go exactly right.”

Here’s what I think he meant by that:

Now he has seen that “it’s not going exactly right”. Obviously, he cannot back up time and edit what has happened. But what he intends to do is bring in Karl Rove and spin the story until “...we...make it go exactly right.”

Perhaps I shouldn’t use the term “spin”. What he often does when caught in a lie is to restate the lie. He then repeats it over and over again until his followers accept it as truth.

That’s his attitude.

Posted by on 09/04 at 10:34 AM
The person who’ll replace Rehnquist is Mike Brown. After he is awarded the Medal of Honor, that i.s

Posted by Michael on 09/04 at 10:59 AM
At the close of Face the Nation this morning Bob Schieffer delivered a short editorial in which he described the federal government’s response to Katrina as being “like dogs watching TV.” They see the moving lights and images, but don’t know what they mean.

Posted by bill benzon on 09/04 at 12:01 PM
“like dogs watching TV”

bill benzon, thank you for that! I laughed out loud—first time in days.

Posted by on 09/04 at 12:35 PM
Think of the possibilities for political cartoons. The basic set-up is an Administration Dog (or dogs) watching TV. On the screen you see an image from the disaster. In a thought baloon linked to the dog you see the doggies translation. For example:

Dog: Bush-dog.
TV image: Contains a prominent tree or fire hydrant.
Doggie-translation: Bush-dog “marking” the hydrant.

So, we need a set-up for a Condi-dog chewing on a shoe in front of the hearth, or perhaps presenting a pair of slippers to a male GWB sitting in an over-stuffed easy chair (labled, perhaps, the Big Easy).

You get the idea.

Posted by bill benzon on 09/04 at 01:34 PM
Dog: “I don’t know, but that looks like a bad situation.”
Bush: [licks balls contentedly]

Posted by on 09/04 at 01:42 PM
Here it is, from the official transcript:

SCHIEFFER: Finally, a personal thought. We have come through what may have been one of the worst weeks in America’s history, a week in which government at every level failed the people it was created to serve. There is no purpose for government except to improve the lives of its citizens. Yet as scenes of horror that seemed to be coming from some Third World country flashed before us, official Washington was like a dog watching television. It saw the lights and images, but did not seem to comprehend their meaning or see any link to reality.

As the floodwaters rose, local officials in New Orleans ordered the city evacuated. They might as well have told their citizens to fly to the moon. How do you evacuate when you don’t have a car? No hint of intelligent design in any of this. This was just survival of the richest.

By midweek a parade of Washington officials rushed before the cameras to urge patience. What good is patience to a mother who can’t find food and water for a dehydrated child? Washington was coming out of an August vacation stupor and seemed unable to refocus on business or even think straight. Why else would Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert question aloud whether New Orleans should even be rebuilt? And when he was unable to get to Washington in time to vote on emergency aid funds, Hastert had an excuse only Washington could understand: He had to attend a fund-raiser back home.

Since 9/11, Washington has spent years and untold billions reorganizing the government to deal with crises brought on by possible terrorist attacks. If this is the result, we had better start over.

© 2005 CBS Broadcasting Inc.
All Rights Reserved

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/04/ftn/main814722.shtml

Posted by bill benzon on 09/04 at 01:52 PM
Schieffer rocks. I am quite impressed with how journalists (some) have recovered their sense of purpose in this world: report facts and function as a watchdog.

I saw on Drum a comment from a reader on Laura Rozen. They said Germany’s ZDF reported that Bush photo-ops just left behind the people after the photo-op was done. That brought me to tears so I asked a friend fluent in German (lived there for years and worked for Volkswagen advertising), to check out ZDF’s reporting and translate any key passages that would refute or confirm Rozen’s Dutch reader. My friend found this:

Räumarbeiten nur für Bush?
“Wo der US-Präsident das Katastrophengebiet besuchte, räumten Hilfstrupps vorher ordentlich auf - aber nur dort. Aus Biloxi zitierte ZDF-Korrespondentin Claudia Rüggeberg verzweifelte Einwohner, Bush solle in seinen Limousinen statt lauter Bodyguards und Assistenten lieber Hilfsgüter herbeischaffen.
Entlang seiner Route hätte Räumtrupps vor Bushs Besuch Schutt weggeräumt und Leichen geborgen. Dann sei Bush wieder abgereist ‘und mit ihm’, so Rüggeberg, ‘die ganzen Hilfstrupps’. An der Lage in Biloxi habe sich sonst nichts verändert, es fehle an allem.”

“With the US president visiting the catastrophe region, troups cleaned up prior to his visit, but only in this area. Claudia Rueggeberg, ZDF correspondant quoted desperate residents in Biloxi who stated that Bush should have brought basic goods rather than bodyguards and assistants in his limousines.
Along the route of his trip, clean-up crews (troops) cleared the area of wreckage and removed corpses before Bush’s visit. Then, Bush left once again, ‘and with him,’ according to Rueggeberg, ‘the clean-up troops.’ Otherwise, nothing in Biloxi changed - people were in need of everything.”

So it is not exactly what Rozen’s reader described but it is pretty fucking awful. My translator did this quickly so any German speakers will likely find the translation loose.

The ultimate bubble. He can see no corpses and literally, when he drives away people are left to fend for themselves.

Posted by on 09/04 at 02:09 PM
Dean tells it like it is.

Money Quote:

“Perhaps seeing the images on television was not enough this time for Senator Frist and having now had the chance to actually look some of the victims in the eye, he’ll be able to better diagnose the situation, get his priorities straight and recognize that the victims of this crisis, and providing the resources to keep our people safe in the future, must be our highest priorities.”

Plus, you must listen to the BBC Today Programme interview--either streaming or downloadable as an mp3-- (8.10) with Trent Lott where he says that natural disasters are great equalizers, and he lost his house too. Boo hoo.

Posted by on 09/04 at 03:48 PM
Salon’s Scott Rosenberg:

http://blogs.salon.com/0000014/

This “CEO president” has repeatedly failed in the realm that was supposed to be his strong suit—basic management. When crisis management fails on this large a scale, the calamity may only take a quick moment, a day or a week, but inevitably it has been years in the making. In Katrina’s case, it’s the kind of outcome you get when you have a national leader who never fires anyone for doing a lousy job but who instantly dismisses anyone who breaks ranks or speaks out of line. You end up with a government of incompetents and yes-men placeholders who owe their jobs to loyalty and patronage, not achievement and skill.

Posted by bill benzon on 09/05 at 08:53 AM
I found you through Ms. Rox Populi Cooper. For this, I thank Ms. Cooper, the Goddessof All Wonderful Things and the Little Baby Jesus. As I read your plea on behalf of Condi Rice’s shoe fund I spewed my morning on my monitor, then launched into a frightening guffawing/weeping syndrome. My family simply looked on, then repaired themselves to the living room, shaking the heads and the dog crawled away on his belly.

I would ask that you would father my child, but unfortunately I’m in deep menopause. Plus your wife looks like she could totally kick my ass. I’ll do the next best thing and link you on my humble blog.

Posted by GraceD on 09/05 at 12:18 PM

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