If you haven't already seen this video clip, please watch it. Checkpoints?

[Pirate Smile]

There are checkpoints at the only road out of NOLA that won't let people leave! This was the first I heard of this and I'm completely shocked.

Horror Show

Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera were livid about the situation in NOLA as they appeared on H&C. When Hannity tried his usual spin job and said "let's get this in perspective," Smith chopped him off at the knees and started yelling at him saying, "This is perspective!" It was shocking.

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Video QT

Geraldo who I'm no fan of was crying, holding a little child up to demonstrate the extremely inhumane conditions these people are forced to live under. Forced is the right word because they are locked in the dome by our government and can't leave. Troops are guarding the bridge.



This goes beyond political lines and it's as sad a situation as I've seen. Let's see all the happy politicians slap themselves on their backs after viewing this segment.

Digby has more: 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....read on

Talk Left: I've never seen anything as harrowing as Fox News' Geraldo Rivera and Shepard Smith on Hannity and Colmes. While Aaron Brown on CNN said we have "turned the corner" on CNN, it's clearly not the truth....read on

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/02.html#a4763

[JI7]

1. especially shocked at Shephard

Geraldo has always been the type to make big emotional scenes. and to be fair they are genuine feelings. and he has a history of being on the liberal side.so it isn't too surprising coming from him.

but Shep is more surprising. i would have expected him to jump to the assholes defense. i wonder how his future reporting will be like.

Hannity as usual is disgusting.

[Pirate Smile]

2. If you missed this one also, you should watch:

Breaking News: Kanye West: George Bush doesn't care about black people"



During the Concert for Hurricane Relief, Kanye West and Mike Meyers were celebrity narrators during the segment, West said: (rush transcript)

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(fuller Transcript by Tracy& Eric)

"I hate the way they portray us in the media. "If you see a black family it says they are looting if you see a white family it says they are looking for food.

"We already realize a lot of the people that could help are at war now fighting another way and they?ve given them permission to go down and shoot us."

"George Bush doesn't care about black people."

Mike Meyers was floored...

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/02.html#a4762

[politicasista]

3. I saw it

live and he looked like he was close to breaking down in tears


I am not a fan of Kanye West, though he produces some tight music, but he was saying what needed to be heard. Bush has and never did care about us. This makes me feel sad because I wish we should have listened more to Kerry instead of buying into the character RW media spin about him.

I know a lot of peeps may not have been impressed with him, but I (and others) would have given him a chance. Sometimes I feel like maybe we were asking for another four years anyway. All we did was complain about Kerry anyway (and still do).

[whometense]

4. I just read

that they censored Kanye West's remarks for the later (West Coast) feed. Disgusting. Can't let anyone speak the truth, can we? It's just too disturbing for our viewers.

[Pirate Smile]

8. I cried after I saw it. I feel nothing but contempt, outrage and disgust

for the current administration. It needed to be said. I'm glad he said it. I just can't believe everything that is happening. I don't know how anyone can argue that what he said isn't true at this point.

I feel like my government has betrayed me. I feel personally violated, my faith in everything I believed in about our Government is gone and I'm a white middle class woman in Iowa. I just can't imagine depths of the feelings of African Americans throughout the Country. I have never been more shocked in my life then I am watching what is happening.

[whometense]

9. I feel exactly the same way.

It's just beyond comprehension.

I've hated W since the first time I saw him. I thought he was an arrogant, swaggering bully. But what is happening now shocks me. As much as I hated him, I didn't imagine he was capable of this kind of monumental disinterest in fellow human beings. He calls himself a Christian?????????

[wisteria]

5. Saw it last night. Unbelievable video. Moved me to tears.

Those poor babies and desperate people. So many questions and no answers.
The only thing good to come from this video is that Hannity comes off like a real uncaring jerk- just trying to focus on the convoys and make Bush look good.

[whometense]

6. I've watched the report twice,

and both times in tears. It's just unconscionable. I also just read that no helicopters were allowed to fly overhead while Bush was in NO. Which delayed relief even more.

And then there's Laura:

First lady visits Louisiana center, says it's not like what you're seeing on T-V

LAFAYETTE, La. First lady Laura Bush says she's seeing proof that not all parts of Louisiana are in terrible shape.
Mrs. Bush has visited an evacuation center inside the Cajundome in Lafayette. She told reporters the center "doesn't really look like what we're seeing on television." The first lady says "some things are working really, really well in Louisiana."

[whometense]

7. If you get HBO

check out last night's Bill Maher show on repeat.

[Pirate Smile]

10. I thought Michael Eric Dyson made an excellent point on Real Time

with Bill Maher last night.

(paraphrasing) The Democrats are morally required to stand up and defend and fight for the people they represent. These are people they represent. They have a moral obligation right now, they can not sit back and let this administration implode. They must fight for their people.

We need to make sure they are thinking of it in these terms.


edit to add a point from another thread: Meanwhile the Oil Companies are GOUGING the entire nation. Now THOSE are Bush and Cheney's people.

[TayTay]

11. We called it what it ws earlier this week: Genocide

And incompetence and mismanagement and unfortunately, for the Bush Admin, business as usual. Bush doesn't give a damn about poor people. At all. He bleieves that poverty is a moral failure and that the poor should be held accountable for their own poverty. That is the essence of Reaganism, and Bush has carried it out to it's logical conclusion. Social Darwinism at it's worst.

This is the most heartbreaking thing I have ever witnessed. I find myself having to turn off the computer and the TV and just go find a quiet spot to 'be' for awhile. I am grief stricken with worry about all the good people who are suffering so much while Bush continues to try and find out which end of the water bottle is up.

The Democrats have to come out strongly next week and speak for all those who have suffered so much. They have to pick up the mantle of being 'The Party of the People' and speak for those who are powerless, those who are poor and those who are marginalized. No one else will.

Honestly, it's just on the verge of being something that actually jeopardizes your mental health to watch.

[whometense]

12. Great article

here by Alan Wolfe, with enough intellectual distance to make it absorbable right now. I found it encouraging.

Socially created, Katrina's chaos can be socially cured. Horrifying as its stories are, they will serve a positive purpose if we use them to talk about race, poverty and disaster planning. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake launched the Enlightenment; since a good God could not have killed so many innocent people, philosophers began to argue that humans were themselves responsible for the good and evil around them. Hurricane Katrina's devastation could have the same consequence: If government could have prevented it, and if government is required for dealing with it, then could we not at the least stop bashing government? Government, for modern people like us, is civilization; it is what keeps us from descending into the state of nature that, like Lake Pontchartrain, threatens the earthly city in which we live.

Some worry that the events unleashed in the aftermath of Katrina will inflame the American culture war. If only we could be so lucky. Our culture war is puny when compared with Hobbes' war of all against all. As we watch the tragedy of Katrina unfold, we are not talking about relatively insignificant matters such as who should marry whom. We are talking about civilization itself, why its invention has been humanity's greatest accomplishment and why we should do everything in our power to protect it. That we have so many people in our midst, including in the seats of power in Washington, who cannot understand what an improvement society is over nature is a tragedy fully as destructive as Katrina's. And when the totality of that tragedy is reckoned, it may cause more death and destruction than nature is capable of doing.

[TayTay]

13. I do predict greater splintering in the GOP

There have always been people in the GOP who didn't like the way the Reaganites were going with things, but they said nothing because the tax cuts were really good, and they could close their eyes and imagine it wasn't really all that bad. Well, knock, knock, it's that bad.

I keep thinking about all those 'felt needs' that are piling up and how we just kept putting off the inevitable. Well, it's here. We have an unfair distribution of wealth in this country. The gap between rich and poor is growing at a rate that signals social unrest and a weakening of the foundations of representative democracy itself. Either we do something, or we risk chaos.

It is encouraging to read in things like the conservative Financial Times that corporations are starting to get the idea that you don't put money into poverty eradication programs just because you are a good person, you put the money in becuase it saves your civilization and staves off devastating social consequences.

We also have to start to think of government as a wide social good, not something that is evil. Hell, we need Democrats. Just good old fashioned, I speak for the people, Democrats. We need the media to stop being RW lapdogs and tell the truth, the way many of them have started to in light of Katrina. The media has failed America, failed to say what would happen when basic support structures in America are allowed to erode and failed to show us the lies of certain elected officials. They also have to start to do their jobs and be the '4th estate' of American government.

There is so much blame to go around here, it's mind-boggling.

[whometense]

14. It's been truly eye-opening

for a lot of those media types.

We've been watching Anderson Cooper, who's flat out of patience with spin, tear apart repuke apologists, including very rough handling of Trent Lott. (all video is at Crooks and Liars) I saw Geraldo crying while holding a baby trapped in the NO Convention Center with thousands of other brutally suffering people. I saw Shepard Smith, for god's sake, snap at Hannity for being the blithering fool he is.

It's hard to imagine that after this experience they go right back to being snarky about windsurfing. After seeing the COLOSSAL ineptitude and offhandedness of these criminals I'm incline to think that - at LONG LAST - Bush's free ride is oh-so-over.

By the way, if you haven't seen it, do not miss this Boston Herald article (who knew they still had reporters over there?) about the qualifications of FEMA head Mike Brown, who was fired from a job overseeing horse show judges. You can't make this stuff up.