UPDATE: Welcome Daou Report Readers

UPDATE II: Welcome Readers of The National Review Online.

Update at bottom of page.

From Frumious Blues:

Through the day, I saw sporadic reports on various blogs that the military in New Orleans are trying to keep journalists out of the city. Via Atrios (via Josh Marshall) comes this confirming report from NBC anchorman Brian Williams:

National Guard soldiers are ubiquitous. At one fire scene, I counted law enforcement personnel (who I presume were on hand to guarantee the safety of the firefighters) from four separate jurisdictions, as far away as Connecticut and Illinois. And tempers are getting hot. While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won’t be any pictures of this particular group of guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media

obvious members of the media armed only with notepads. Her actions
(apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the
scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

What are they trying
to hide? Their dicks have been hanging out on national TV for a week
now. The only possible rationale for prohibiting press access is to
keep us from knowing exactly how badly they fucked over the country.

You know what I find most offensive in all this.... It is that the media has been complicit in their own defanging. Where has the outrage been for five years as this administration has operated time and time again in secret. The no bid contracts, Abu Gharib, Camp Delta, Downing Street, Gannongate, 9/11... Time and time again this administration has played it's Rovian games unquestioned by the Press. The Majority of the American public have went about their business oblivious to the putrid stench of a political system rotten to the core.

The Press, long champions of "the truth," have served as miserable lap dogs to an unacknowledged "Ministry of Propaganda," run by Karl Rove. The Republican Spin Machine, supported by Conservative Blogs have fed the American public a constant steam of "truthspeak," creating an impression of Leadership when it never existed beyond the photo op and sound bite. A couple of two bit lawyers and a call center manager from the Midwest become celebrities while shamelessly calling dissenters, "traitors." While the real treason lies among those who fail to question. We have lost our way as a Democracy because some people have feel in love with the idea of power, power at the cost of freedom.

What happened in the Gulf remains a National Embarrassment. No amount of censorship will rid the American mind of the sense of powerlessness we all now feel. Nor will it change the fact that the sense of Safety Americans have had, the promise of Security was a sham, and God help us if another disaster or terrorist strike happens in the U.S. anytime soon. The utter ineptitude of the people running our country, long ago exposed to those us who immune to the snake charmer tactics of Rove and Company, has now been exposed to the entire world. Unfortunately thousands of Americans may have died to finaly demonstrate that indeed... The Emperor has no clothes.

Unfortunately there are still those who refuse to believe what their own eyes and ears tell them. I had a long discussion with a conservative friend tonight who absolutely refused to believe that Bush said that no one anticipated the levies not holding. Even confronted with video of Bush saying those very words, he still insisted that video can be edited and he wanted to see a transcript. How does one fight that kind of partisan lunacy. I have come to the conclussion that you dont... If New Orleans in all of it's horror did not serve as a wake up call for these people, then nothing less than a catastrophic terrorist attack will. I am affraid that even with that, they will find a way to spin Bush out of responsibility for it. My conclussion is that they all suffer from a sense of guilt, that will not allow them to acknowledge their own culpability in a disaster that far exceeds the carnage of Katrina.

And the Spin Continues... (I discovered this piece from Wizbang as part of the same Daou Report.) I applaud Paul for acknowledging the obvious,

"Of course FEMA, and the idiot who runs it, are a different matter."

But the premise of the post, that Lefties are being unfair to Bush for being on vacation, is way off the mark. The Photo of Bush being briefed before the storm means nothing, if it took five days for his team to adequately address it. FEMA, Homeland Security... They were missing in action for days as people died, and this falls directly on Bush's doorstep. There is NO excuse for it. As for the contention that others shared the blame for what went wrong. I agree. Every politician from the local, state and Federal governments share blame in what was a failure of unimaginable proportions. What has happened since has been even more disgraceful. The lying and spin in particular. So Paul may feel comfortable excusing the failures of the Administration, after all, he survived... His brethren who didn't, or who lost people in the aftermath, may not be so generous.

And while the press is effectively shut out of reporting the real tragedy... There is THIS.

You angry yet???

What I truly DON'T understand, is how some Republican Appologist are trying to make Bush a victim in all this.... HELLO! The victims are the potentially thousands who have died.

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Posted by: zencomix at September 8, 2005 04:17 PM