The Week America Lost New Orleans: A Presidential Retrospective (#1)

Bushkisser400

The Katrina Disaster — Day 2

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Dubya is in San Diego likening his private war to WWII. The occasion is VJ Day — the 60th anniversary of the victory over Japan.

Bush still has a few days left in his five week summer vacation. Even so, it is his third Iraq speech in two weeks, coming immediately on the heels of the Iraqi constitution debacle. Of course, it is also shadowed by the distraction caused by grieving mother and anti-war activist, Cindy Sheehan.

In his speech to a sea of white-clad officers at the North Island Naval Air Station, Bush ignores the hurricane — even though tens of thousands have already filed into The Superdome; New Orleans is already 80% submerged; and his Republican cohort, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, has already appeared that morning on The Today Show declaring that the Gulf Coast has experienced "catastrophic devastation."

Because I would not hear about the New Orleans disaster till later that
afternoon, I am already starting to tease this picture apart. At first,
I think it captures the Administration’s tension and ever growing
desperation over Bush’s war. What begins to really crystallize, though,
is just how many images I have seen of Bush "in the act." Certainly,
this "serial kissing" behavior must have a functional nature. Beyond
its false intimacy, I think it serves (depending on the situation) to
disarm, charm or endear.

What I find particularly interesting about this shot,
however, is its almost urgent adolescent quality. What it seems to lay
open is the awkward and otherwise blind bumbling that underlies (and
ultimately, undermines) George’s every attempt at assertiveness.
Besides that, it suggests our country is in the hands of a stabbing and
nervous man-child with severe difficulty more deeply or
consistently interacting with others when there are real (particularly
life-and-death) feelings involved.

(image: Susan Walsh/AP. August 30, 2005. North Island, San Diego. In YahooNews.com)

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The Reach Of Compassion

The Week America Lost New Orleans: A Presidential Retrospective (#2)

Tuffy

Is he just behaving how mommy taught him too?
http://www.futurebird.com Susan Murray

This photo makes me shuddeer.
VF in Toronto

As the unbelievable images from New Orleans kept flooding in – with similar news report that sound like they’re describing the going ons of Sudan (looting, rapes, violence and more) rather than a city in the most powerful nation on earth, I tried desperately to figure out what I could do to help. (As in almost everything else: Nothing).
People were asked to donate to the Red Cross, but the Red Cross was nowhere to be seen until Bush landed for his photo-op. Upon further investigation, I learned that not only were the police and army not helping the poor and displaced, but the Red Cross had been ordered (by Homeland Security no less!) not to deliver any food or water to the thousands of displaced persons finding shelter in NO’s stadium on the absurd and infuriating pretext that ‘the evacuees wouldn’t leave’ if they had food and water (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/2/2125/04978). Actually, no adjective – not even absurd and infuriating – can help explain how fucking pissed I was upon reading that.
One can ask what went wrong, or one can simply look at the pictures coming in. Poor, almost entirely black people, are the ones who are suffering. We often tend to think that natural disasters are great equalizers, but NO’s proves otherwise.
As soon as the hurricane hit, Bush reached out to his fellow Americans. He announced that he would be taking 36 million barrels from the Strategic Reserve and giving it to oil companies like Exxon-Mobil. Forget that hundreds of thousands didn’t have drinking water, food or shelter. It is infinitely more important to make sure the oil keeps comin in. Fake, pathological persons (ie, corporations) matter more to this confederancy of dunces than the real ones suffering down below.
When he finally did address the situation (a day too late, which has become a trademark for this administration), he showed no empathy whatsoever, even grinning once in a while in between figuring out how to pronounce this or that word.
Once the few buses did arrive at the centre, they ordered the thousands of suffering to wait while the nice tourists staying at the Hyatt across the street were helped onto the buses. The National Guard even helped these nicely dressed folk – all 700 of them – get their luggage on board. Further reports indicated that the police and army brought in had been ordered to protect properties rather than help the children, women and grandparents who had been without food or water for so many days now. Since martial law has been imposed, they can act with impunity and have been doing so, beating up whoever gets in their way and even threatening reporters with the same if they didn’t hand over their rolls of film that had captured their policing behaviour for posterity.
As Jefferson once wrote, this country wil not be destroyed from without but from within. If Bush doesn’t get impeached over this (and I have no doubt that he won’t) then this is the beginning of the end for this empire’s delusionary dreams. If this doesn’t fuel Black anger and hatred against whites (and I’m sure that it will), then it will only be because they will be oppressed and forced to shut their mouths even more. But how long can this go on? How long can you keep dispossessing the poor of their rights and not expect any consequences? The grave and worsening situation of the poor (and mostly Black) people in America has been brought from the peripheries into centre stage by New Orlean’s disaster. Once a topic no newspaper ever discussed, now we can see it starkly and unequivocally on display in all of the images coming in. Will they once again be relegated to the peripheries once this administration conjures up a way to get the media’s attention focused away from this disaster? If so, then it can not be very far off when the state of anarchy now engulfing New Orleans becomes the fate of this entire nation. And that will be something no amount of grinning will save.
hauksdottir

Is there any woman who doesn’t feel a bit queasy over images of him kissing us? There is something so forced and fake about it (the camera has to be at the right angle?), that it seems like our bodies are being used for a commercial purpose… his commercials.
Like all of the 9/11 images that he used during his reelection campaign, he exploits people. Even something as friendly as a hug becomes dirty and cheapened once the commercial element enters in.
Carolly
michel

The party of pro-life has abandoned babies, the elderly, the infirm, the poor to die. NEVER let them say that they are pro-life again. They talk double. They are evil. Jesus does not love them. This is NOT what Jesus would do. SHAME.
fotonique

Not Now
Sarah

Bush is a man-child lost in his own perpetual adolescent hallucination. Those more savvy around him know this and perpetuate it.
Diane

The woman’s arms indicate she accepted the embrace, but found that she loathed the kiss itself, perhaps reflecting the red/blue split of America. Regarding the disaster, this ignorant, fumbling man had forgotten “the least among us” and is no more a Christian than Pat Robertson. I find that I am enraged realizing that the poor (and mostly black) people of NO, the sickest and children are completely out of the mind of people planning for disasters in the US. If this had been a terrorist “dirty bomb” you know for sure these people would all be dying a bad, bad death. It’s as if nobody in government could imaging they exist. This tells more about our national mindset than any words. Hey, if you couldn’t fill up the SUV and cruise out of town to stay in a decent hotel on your credit card, you don’t count. Are these the “freedoms” we are so graciously “giving” the country of Iraq? I am more angry and ashamed than I thought possible.
MonsieurGonzo

01-SEP-2005: NOLA Mayor Nagin on the radio (speakers ON; flash-audio)
…and {cringe} Halliburton gets Katrina Contract.
pragmatic_realist

Here’s another interesting photo from Reuters, similar in its strange mixed message.
“I am satisfied with the response”
Mad

Very weird photo. It’s hard to picture what the story is, funny photo to have been used as a news photo. What occurred immediately before and after the photo, because it is unlikely to be consistent with the brief second of this photo.
What is on the woman’s mind is certainly not the same as on Bush’s mind. Different worlds.
Since this was celebration of World War II surrender, is this woman Japanese and is Bush apologizing for sending Japanese-Americans to the internment camps? Will Bush’s descendant (as president, or maybe as emperor) be making similar apologies to Arab-Americans?
I agree with BagMan’s “analysis” of Bush the Man-child, but still, as a Serial Kisser, Bush continually takes “advantage” of women while they are emotionally weak. Some people get arrested for that.
And fianlly, we may suspect Bush of being the Serial Kisser, but what do the conservatives see? Do they see The Compassionate Leader?
Dennis

You still don’t get it this is compassion from a man that depends on God (Jesus) to be in control of all things. We can’t do it right unless God is in control. You wait for every opportunity to ridicule a man of God and you praise those who practice wickedness. Don’t you see, the wickedness has been wiped out for now! Sodomy, witchcraft, false religion, and other deviations have been blown away. It will happen again if we don’t change our ways and remove our false pride!
Repent (turn away from your sin) so that your sins may be wiped out and times of refreshing may come from the Lord.
A Union Carpenter from Los Angeles.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/vicfitz82 Victor F

I wonder why this “W kising somebody” pic looks so… unappealing… forced… awkward? The lady he’s kissing seems to be clinging to him at the same time she’s turning away. Her grip on his arms and shoulder suggest a tight embrace but the look on her face seems horrifying, as if she is repulsed by the kiss or crying about something. The body language is so confusing I can’t tell if this kiss was wanted or not.
As a photographer, it’s difficult to tell when the people you are photographing are posing or if they are only doing what they are doing because somebody with a camera is there. Bush would have seen the photographer (probably would have been a pack of them clustered together to make sure they all get the same photos) and a lady to kiss, put his PR know-how into action, and posed a kissyface photo-op for the media. I’m sure he kissed the lady’s right cheek because he saw the photographer standing there and wanted to make sure both their faces showed up. Looks like this image gave Bush something he didn’t want: an instant-long off-moment, stretched out forever on the stillframe, that might suggest all his kisses won’t make him look good every time.
http://schrmm.blogspot.com SCHRmm

Incredible, this man never fails to disgust me, no matter whathe is doing.