THE POTEMKIN COUNTRY

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA IS NOW CAPITOL to a Potemkin country, where what things "look" like to some match not at all what is real, where all the effort is to hide truth rather than to make a better reality.

FOR THOSE UNAWARE RUSSIAN MINISTER POTEMKIN is said to have so wanted to  pleased his czarina that he created entire beautiful fake villages to ride through so “progress” might be perceived.  REALITY is something else than Bush would tell us  HERE. Consider a scene where a FAKE RELIEF STAND was built and heavy equipment placed only to be removed as soon as the President was removed from the scene. 

EMOTIONAL REMOVE OF THE PRESIDENT is the order of the day. FANTASTIC.  A mission accomplished is declared, but again unrealized.  On one of the few pieces of dry land in New Orleans, our "leader" drowns in self self delusion.  ABSURDITIES abound.

NOT JUST THE SPIN OF EVENTS in New Orleans are sorry. Worse is the way the Bush administration weaves a web to control all that will be done in Louisiana.  The LOCALS are not AMUSED.  SOME are challenging what fate would hand them.  Language itself is a battleground.  In the Nerocentric world of the White House, control of who to blame is central to Bush survival.  Again it is all about Bush.  We are seeing similar attempts to controlling coverage in New Orleans as we have seen in Iraq. We are also seeing attempts to control Red Cross access to the area as happened after the battle of Fallujah. Quite a frightening scenario for the residents and for onlookers as well. We are right on the edge of seeming police state down there. Now the Bush administration is making a push for controlling all relief efforts which it so incompetently has previously misplayed.

EVEN BUSH SUPPORTERS NOTE WHAT IS NOT there and unlikely to ever be.  Even THE RIGHT WRITES of a scene gone wrong where we have gone from a time of a seeming hero on a hill of 9/11 rubble to an UNSEEMLY ZERO who sees no sinking country underwater for what it truly is.  Katrina is the ANTI 9/11.  You would THINK we are SEEING THE END DAYS.

THE ANTI 9/11 IS A GOOD DESCRIPTION for the terrible horror we now witness. And sadly so. When somebody like David Brooks makes a comment like that, you know Bush is in trouble. Which may or may not be the way the White House sees things. The larger problem is that our leaders seem to see nothing of what is going on in this country. "Brownie" being unaware of just how many are in trouble in NOLA is a harsh indictment of how this administration is informed.

NO ONE SHOULD BE SURPRISED If Bush acts as surpised that a levee could fail, we should remember Condi Rice was equally “surprised” jet planes could be used at bombs on buildings.  Incompetence again is used as the excuse for . . . incompetence. We are reminded again of the bragging, too busy, know nothing, do nothing Bush saying he doesn't read the papers, but gets his news from his advisors,  advisors who are all ill advised and uninformed. This administration looks like something out of a Marx brothers movie, slapstick attempts at damage control only to perception of how they respond.

DUMB AND DUMBER, THE SEQUEL  Led by a “Boy Genius” Karl Rove, this administration has gone out of its way to announce its brilliance in handling all things.  Now we know how little light shines in the White House, how petty the minds there are, how small the spirit found in Bush’s heart.  This country demands better to restore the bones and body of this country to health and even more to heal the spirit.

THE WORLD SEES WHAT OUR LEADERS DO NOT [WAPO] 

Pick the comparison: New Orleans looks like Haiti, or Baghdad, or Sudan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. The images of all the rubble and corpses and empty-eyed survivors remind people of those places, not the United States. 
"Third World America," declared the headline in the Daily Mail in London on Saturday. "Law and order is gone, gunmen roam at will, raping and looting, and as people die of heat and thirst, bodies lie rotting in the street. Until now, such a hellish vista could only be imagined in a Third World disaster zone. But this was America yesterday."

AND A LAST WORD FROM MAUREEN DOWD:  Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses. 

THE REAL LAST WORD FROM JOHN HOWARD: Anyone can make excuses for why this isn't Bush's fault, and isn't the administration's fault, and a lot of thoe excuses might be valid and might be true, but if you want to sit around making excuses for why you can't do anything, then why the fuck do you become the President of the United States in the first place?It's a job that requires action, not excuses. [HAT TIP: MIMUS PAULY/ SKIPPY]

THE TATTERERED COAT has a bit more.

SHORT AND NOT SO SWEET FROM MANNION: Bush's lazy and half-hearted attention during the first days of the disaster was a moral failure.

BLAH THREE GOES OFF ON THE POTEMKIN PHOTO OP: It was a full-on effort to change the subject of discussion from the utter failure of the Bush administration to handle the crisis with even a hint of competency, and in true Bush fashion, he wrapped it up at 5:00 PM and announced that he was 'Flyin' out of (t)here.' [HAT TIP: NIGHT BIRD ]

AND THE HERETIK WILL SAY THIS  People are dealing with tragedy all day and all night. The President of the United States leaves at the end of his "work" day.  Would it have been too much to stay over night in a hotel somewhere, even out of harm's way in Louisiana?  What about in a tent?

 

Comments

[jillian]

Sorry to not stop by for Karaoke last night...didn't feel like singing. Been crying all week.

May these words haunt these evil men to the day they die...and for eternity in hell.

Aaron Broussard

"sir, they were told like me. every single day. the cavalry is coming. on the federal level. the cavalry is coming. the cavalry is coming. the cavalry is coming. i have just begun to hear the hooves of the calvary. the cavalry is still not here yet, but i have begun to hear the hooves and were almost a week out.

...three quick examples. we had wal-mart deliver three trucks of water. trailer trucks of water. fema turned them back, said we didn't need them. this was a week go. we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a coast guard vessel docked in my parish. the coast guard said come get the fuel right way. when we got there with our trucks, they got a word, fema says don't give you the fuel. yesterday, yesterday, fema comes in and cuts all our emergency communications lines. they cut them without notice. our sheriff, harry lee, goes back in. he reconnects the line. he posts armed guards said no one is getting near these lines

....the guy who runs this building i'm in. emergency management. he's responsible for everything. his mother was trapped in st. bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said. are you coming. son? is somebody coming? and he said yeah. mama. somebody's coming to get you.. somebody's coming to get you on tuesday. somebody's coming to get you on wednesday. somebody's coming to get you on thursday. somebody's coming to get you on friday. and she drowned friday night. and she drowned friday night. nobody's coming to get us. nobody's coming to get us. the sectary has promimsed. evrybody's promised. they've had press conferences. i'm sick of the press conferences. for god's sakes, just shut up and send us somebody."

http://xnerg.blogspot.com/2005/09/words-that-haunt-soul-mr.html

[The Heretik]

Understood, J. More of what we are up against can be found at Skippy HERE

conditions in the convention center

• fema chief brown: we learned about that (thursday), so i have directed that we have all available resources to get that convention center to make sure that they have the food and water and medical care that they need

• mayor nagin: the convention center is unsanitary and unsafe, and we are running out of supplies for the 15,000 to 20,000 people.

• cnn producer kim segal: it was chaos. there was nobody there, nobody in charge. and there was nobody giving even water. the children, you should see them, they're all just in tears. there are sick people. we saw... people who are dying in front of you.

• evacuee raymond cooper: sir, you've got about 3,000 people here in this -- in the convention center right now. they're hungry. don't have any food. we were told two-and-a-half days ago to make our way to the superdome or the convention center by our mayor. and which when we got here, was no one to tell us what to do, no one to direct us, no authority figure.

uncollected corpses

• brown: that's not been reported to me, so i'm not going to comment. until i actually get a report from my teams that say, "we have bodies located here or there," i'm just not going to speculate.

• segal: we saw one body. a person is in a wheelchair and someone had pushed (her) off to the side and draped just like a blanket over this person in the wheelchair. and then there is another body next to that. there were others they were willing to show us.

• evacuee cooper: they had a couple of policemen out here, sir, about six or seven policemen told me directly, when i went to tell them, hey, man, you got bodies in there. you got two old ladies that just passed, just had died, people dragging the bodies into little corners. one guy -- that's how i found out. the guy had actually, hey, man, anybody sleeping over here? i'm like, no. he dragged two bodies in there. now you just -- i just found out there was a lady and an old man, the lady went to nudge him. he's dead…

violence and civil unrest

• brown: i've had no reports of unrest, if the connotation of the word unrest means that people are beginning to riot, or you know, they're banging on walls and screaming and hollering or burning tires or whatever. i've had no reports of that.

• cnn's chris lawrence: from here and from talking to the police officers, they're losing control of the city. we're now standing on the roof of one of the police stations. the police officers came by and told us in very, very strong terms it wasn't safe to be out on the street.

the federal response:

• brown: considering the dire circumstances that we have in new orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.

• homeland security director chertoff: now, of course, a critical element of what we're doing is the process of evacuation and securing new orleans and other areas that are afflicted. and here the department of defense has performed magnificently, as has the national guard, in bringing enormous resources and capabilities to bear in the areas that are suffering.

• crowd chanting outside the convention center: we want help.

• nagin: they don't have a clue what's going on down there.

• phyllis petrich, a tourist stranded at the ritz-carlton: they are invisible. we have no idea where they are. we hear bits and pieces that the national guard is around, but where? we have not seen them. we have not seen fema officials. we have seen no one.

[Lauren]

Is it bad that that picture made me laugh. I hope not. I needed one.

[Michael Hawkins]

The National Review is calling for the 2008 GOP Convention to be held in New Orleans.

Am I the only one who hopes they do it?

[eRobin]

The fake relief stand I was talking about (in addition to the scene at the levee) was in Biloxi. I blog some more about that here.

[denisdekat]

No one is buying it, did you see the great article on der spiegel?

I can't get over it. It is basically what I wish I could write ;)

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,372746,00.html

"So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability."

[Mad Kane]

I loved your propaganda squad cartoon, and I sure needed that laugh. Thanks!

[xristim]

It never ceases to amaze me that we invest elected officials and stars with such an aura of glamor that brain function ceases in those who approach them to shake hands or be introduced. Myself, I'm a dedicated egalitarian. A British friends describes irreverence as "kicking the queen". Well, I sure as hell would kick her if she had caused as much suffering, misery, grief, pain, anguish, and destruction as W. As it is, at 71 I'm not so spry as once I was, but if someone will bring the "Chief of the Compassionate Conservative And Oh Yeah By The Way Caucasian Caucus" within range, I'm more than willing to give it a try. As the Yiddish curse says, "May he become a chandelier, to hang all day and burn all night."

[Jeff Field]

Just as I posted on Body and Soul... I am fed up with my government. Guerilla warfre is called for. Tagging (graffiti) is the best place to start. Do not tag just any poor slob's business. Tag only federal buildings.

Remember "Z"!

[The Countess]

I loved that picture. Brownie is going to get a medal, you just know it.

[cruelanimal]

I'm often drawn to the power and beauty of your images, but I just had to leave a note to say that this post is wonderfully written.