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Deadly PR Stunt

Arthur has posted a couple of awful, frustrating stories. There are so many.

This little detail, however, stands out:

…for the entire time Bush was in the state, the congressman said, a ban on helicopter flights further stalled the delivery of food and supplies.

Has anyone else heard that?

I suppose that as long as he wasn’t getting a haircut that caused no inconvenience whatsoever, no one will cause a stink. But, let’s face facts. This was a photo op for purely political purposes. There was nothing he couldn’t have seen by simply turning on television over the last 5 days. People were dying out there.

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Compassionate Conservatives

“It seems to me that the poor should have had the EASIEST time leaving. They don’t need to pay for an extended leave from their home, they could have just packed a few belongings and walked away to start over somewhere else. What did they have to lose?

When the wealthy evacuate, they leave behind nice houses, expensive cars, possibly pets that they treat as members of the family, valuable jewelry, family heirlooms, etc. This makes it emotionally difficult for wealthy people to leave. But by definition, the poor do not have this burden: they either rent their homes, or they are in public housing; their cars are practically junk anyway; and they don’t have any valuable possessions. This is what it means to be poor. These people could just pick up their few belongings, buy a one-way bus ticket to any city and be poor there. Supposing they even had jobs in NO, it’s not like minimum wage jobs are hard to come by.”

More at the link if you can stand it.

I’m going to have one stiff drink. And then another. I don’t recognize that as a fellow human much less a fellow American.

Update: For the record, that comment and all the others shown on Corrente are not made by Jane Galt herself. They are comments from her readers. I’m not sure what that says about her, but the post to which this is attached seems to have been written by a member of the human species.

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Not A National Disaster

Bill O’Reilly is trying with all his might to make this story about “thugs” and bad Democrats but both Fox news reporters on the ground are having none of it. Shepard Smith and Steve Harrigan are both insisting that the story is about people dying and starving on the streets of New Orleans. Smith is particularly upset that the mayor sent buses to the Hyatt today and took tourists over to the Superdome and let them off at the front of the line.

O’Reilly says “you sound so bitter” and said they need a strong leader like Rudy Giuliani. Smith replies that what they needed “on the first day was food and water and what they needed on the second day was food and water and what they needed on the third day was food and water.”

O’Reilly is practically rolling his eyes with impatience at Smith’s pussified outrage about the plight of a bunch of losers who were asking for it. He really, really wants to talk about scary black boogeymen and steppin-fetchit politicans. It doesn’t work out. He looks relieved to move over to the Natalee Holloway story.

Luckily, they’ve got it straight over on The Corner:

NOT A NATIONAL DISGRACE [Rich Lowry]
A dissent from this column I wrote yesterday:

It is not. It is – or ought to be – a disgrace and an embarrassment to Louisiana and New Orleans. I see the way Florida prepares for and responds to hurricanes; I see the way Mississippi and Alabama are dealing with this one; I’ve seen the Carolinas and Virginia deal with hurricanes, too. I’ve been in Miami and Norfolk when hurricanes hit, though not as severe as this one, and seen folks come together to support each other in the crisis. I see the outpouring of support from surrounding states and from the federal government heading to Louisiana as fast as it can.

And then I see citizens of New Orleans shooting, raping, burning, and plundering while their government officials stand by helplessly…

Fox News reporters have played this story pretty straight (for them) and it’s making the stars extremely uncomfortable. Somebody’s going to have to have a talk with the supporting cast. They are going off script.

Update: Sean’s up now and he’s equally uncomfortable with Shep’s story about the thousands still stuck on freeways and bridges with no food and water — who have been ignored for days now. He’s been covering one single bridge for days and nobody knows why they haven’t been helped yet. He’s almost shrill.

Now Geraldo comes on and he freaks out, begging the authorities to let people still stuck at the convention center walk out of town. Shep comes back and he says they have checkpoints set up turning people back to the city if they try. (wtf?) They are both on the verge of tears.

Sean says they need to get some perspective and Shep screams at him “this is the perspective!”

This was some amazing TV. Kudos to Shep Smith and Geraldo for not letting O’Reilly and Hannity spin their GOP “resolve” apologia bullshit. I’m fairly shocked.

Update: Crooks and Liars has the video.

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Priorities

This is going to be a problem:

Vines also said U.S. troops in Iraq whose family members were injured or killed by Hurricane Katrina may be allowed to go home, but those who have no confirmed casualties among family members will have to stay in Iraq.

If their families are mere refugees, I guess it’s tough shit.

They could come home if Jonah Goldberg and his friends took their place, though. Surely they’ll be willing to make that sacrifice, right?

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Dithering or Scared?

For three days, Corps officials had lamented the difficulty of gaining access to the canal, but yesterday a local contractor, Boh Bros. Construction Co., apparently drove to the mouth of the canal and started placing a set of steel sheet pilings to isolate the canal from the lake. This job was finished yesterday afternoon.

What’s the deal? Aren’t engineers usually pretty good at figuring out how to get into inaccessible places?

I wonder if maybe they were actually all askeered of the roving thugs that seem to have been reported everywhere, but rarely seen? A number of reports in today’s newspapers are much more skeptical of the criminal anarchy that was reported all day yesterday. It was more than a little bit odd that the news crews that had access all over the city weren’t able to get any pictures of these roving gangs of beasts that were said to be stalking everyone.

It’s not that I doubt that there was a lot of criminal activity. People both evil and desperate become barbaric when the social order breaks down. But the stories sound an awful lot like the tall tales we’ve heard for centuries in this country about barbaric slave revolts. It’s like a tick that comes back whenever people see large numbers of poor, angry black people.

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Press Conference

Still making excuses. Still being an asshole. Nobody had the balls to ask him why he was fucking around in Coronado, California with country music stars while the levees were overflowing. It wouldn’t be polite, I guess. Too bad he wasn’t getting a blow job — they would have been all over it.

Has everyone noticed that Bush seems to be saying that “Haley” handled his disaster better than Louisiana? (Mostly by being “ruthless” I would guess.)

I’ve been thinking these last two days that we may just see Haley Barbour being the anointed Bush successor after this. Peggy Nooner was gushing all over him yesterday. Bush doesn’t have enough good things to say about him. And Larry King has been delivering spectacular sycophancy to him every night. Southern governor and a big money lobbyist/political hack both. Other than the fact that he’s not physically fit, he’s Bush’s wet dream.

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Blame The Victim Talking Points

I heard this shocking exchange between Aaron Brown and Jamie MacIntyre lst night too, and was stunned. There is clearly a culture of pass-the-buck whining about military failure taking over the Pentagon if their first reaction is to complain about partisanship…

But I think there is more to it. Everyone has noted that Michael Brown (the estate planning lawyer/Bush crony who is in charge of the biggest logistical challenge in FEMA’s history) was making the rounds implying that the victims asked for what they got when they didn’t obey the mandatory evacuation. But he wasn’t the only one who said this explicitly. I wrote yesterday that Michael Chertoff, his boss, said the same thing:

“The critical thing was to get people out of there before the disaster,” he said on NBC’s Today program. “Some people chose not to obey that order. That was a mistake on their part.”

This was an official talking point. On Thursday, September 1st, three days after the scope of the disaster was well known, George W. Bush sent his disaster officials out to the media with the instructions that they were to blame the victims — the same day that we were seeing dead bodies and dehydrated children all over our television sets.

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Disaster Pageant

Is it really appropriate for all these disaster officials to be on television pretending to be “briefing” the president (who is dressed in his campaign costume) so that he can appear to be engaged in the problem? Don’t they have better things to do than raise Bush’s poll numbers?

Now he’s “going to go comfort some people.” Who says he isn’t doing his job?

Update: Well, waddaya know. The next pictures we see are of Bush “comforting” a pretty young black woman and her white husband(?) They were very good. Must have had an awesome audition to make it onto “Presidential Kabuki: In Excess.”

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More Stories

From Salon:

Lacking any reliable source of information about how to proceed, residents from the flooded eastern parts of the city and stranded visitors wander westward in a state of desperation. People shout at cars, pleading for rides to anywhere, and ask each other where they’re headed. Several thousand residents forced from their homes line Convention Center Avenue, where rumor has it evacuations were set to begin. National Guard personnel say they had no immediate plans to begin evacuations from that location.

While chatting with some of the National Guardsmen, another guardsman approaches and informs us that a woman is in the middle of a stroke around the corner. The guardsmen shrug. There is no emergency medical tent in the downtown area, and many people in need of medicine have no way of getting what they need, even inside the shelters. On our way into the French Quarter, a wild-eyed man flags down our car, begging us for insulin or information about where some can be found. We cannot help him.

In contrast, some residents of the French Quarter appear comfortable, well-fed and relaxed. About 150 New Orleans police officers have commandeered the Royal Omni Hotel, part of the international luxury chain of Omni hotels that is housed in an elegant 19th century building, complete with crystal chandeliers and a rooftop pool. “All of the officers that are here, I can tell you in a classical sense, are gladiators,” says Capt. Kevin Anderson, commander of the Eighth District of the NOPD (French Quarter). “To be able to put your family’s concerns aside to protect the citizens of New Orleans, it’s just an awesome job,” he says.

Across the street from the Royal Omni at the Eighth District police department, several police officers keep a wary eye on the street with shotguns at the ready, while some fellow officers grill sausage links over charcoal barbecues. They are under strict orders not to communicate with the media. Capt. Anderson does confirm, however, that locations where officers were housed came under gunfire on Tuesday night. No officers were injured. “It is a very dangerous situation that we’re in,” Anderson says.

Apart from rescue operations, the police department patrols for looters, who have ransacked stores in virtually every part of the city. Looters are visible on every street corner. Every kind of business, from rundown corner markets to the Gucci storefront on South Peters Street, has been looted.

We walk half a block down Royal Street from the Eighth District headquarters and come upon Brennan’s Restaurant, one of New Orleans’ most venerable dining institutions. The Brennans are a high-profile family of restaurateurs and run several of the highest-end eateries in town. Jimmy Brennan and a crew of his relatives are holing up in the restaurant along with the chef, Lazone Randolph. They are sleeping on air mattresses, drinking Cheval Blanc, and feasting on the restaurant’s reserves of haute Creole food.

The atmosphere in the French Quarter, while relatively quiet, is decidedly tense, but Brennan isn’t worried. “We’re not too concerned. The police let us go over to the Royal Omni, to take a shower, freshen up, and we cooked them some prime rib. We take care of them, they take care of us,” says Randolph. Two Brennan emissaries whisk past, bearing multilayer chocolate cakes, headed toward the precinct. “This has been working out real well for us,” says Jimmy Brennan.

Contrary to many reports, the French Quarter remains undamaged by flooding. The streets are dry and damage to the 18th and 19th century buildings appears to be minimal. Heavily pierced French Quarter denizens are emerging slowly, almost groggily, and some are looking to evacuate. One woman, wearing a black lace slip and fanning herself with a souvenir fan from a production of “Les Miserables,” makes her way toward the Superdome, carrying no luggage.

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I Wondered About This

From Kos diarist Militarytracy:

I have also spoken today on post here with Army pilots really pissed off that when the helicopter was shot at yesterday at the Superdome, they suspended operations. What I have been told is IT IS A MILITARY HELICOPTER AND YOU ARE PREFORMING A KIND OF MILITARY MISSION AND YOU ARE TAKING FIRE SO WHAT’S THE FUCKING PROBLEM? I heard this from pilots who have served in Iraq. They are really upset right now that it is okay to take fire to liberate Iraqis but it isn’t okay to take fire attempting to rescue and save people in your own country!

I’ve been a little bit gobsmacked by this fraidy-cat reaction to the surly thugs in the streets I’ve been hearing about all day. The national guard and the coast guard are trained to operate in hostile environments where people are shooting at them. And big city police forces are no slouches either.

Yet they completely cancelled the rescue operation because some bozo shot at a helicopter. And the national guard now refuses to escort patients who are being transferred from hospitals that have no power, food and water.

Gosh I sure hope someone is guarding the oil ministry.

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