Making It Up As They Go Along

Like Josh Marshall says, you can't make this stuff up...

For starters, George W. Bush has announced that the investigation into his adminstration's failures will be led by ...

(wait for it...)

... George W. Bush.

And just to show how serious the White House now is about this disaster, they are also bringing out the gimp again! Dick Cheney, who is nearly always locked deep inside a White House bunker whenever bad news stories are hitting the TV screens, has apparently decided it's safe to come out now.

That's right folks! Big Dick will be touring the New Orleans devastation live and in person with his backup band, The Usual Suspects. Expect to hear all your old favourite tunes, like Blame the Democrats, Act of God, A Few Bad Apples and the classic, I Musta Bin Mis-Spoken. Big Dick's live stage show will culminate in a furious battle-axe guitar assault on Louisana Democrat Blanco, who will be pinned to the stage by "Uncle" Donald Rumsfled in a CIA-approved "stress position". Scotty "Boy" McLellan will also be singing his one-off acoustic ballad, "Now Is Not The Time".

Sorry, couldn't help myself there...!

Ahem! As I was saying, you can't make this stuff up. Marshall also points to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune about 1,000 firefighters who volunteered to serve in the devastated N.O. area:

But when they arrived in Atlanta to be shipped out to various disaster zones in the region, they found out that they were going to be used as FEMA community relations specialists. And they were to spend a day in Atlanta getting training on community relations, sexual harassment awareness, et al. This of course while life and death situations were still the order of the day along a whole stretch of the Gulf Coast.

It's an article you've really got a to read to appreciate the full measure of folly and surreality.

But the graf at the end of the piece really puts everything in perspective, and gives some sense what the Bush administration really has in mind when it talks about a crisis. The paper reports that one team finally was sent to the region ...

As specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

And now this just in from Associated Press:

"The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security employees to the region and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents. Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29. Brown said that among duties of these employees was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims.

Jesus H. Christ.

UPDATE: The image comes courtesy of Kos, who also has this to say:

Bush is so thoroughly a PR vessel that he can't even tour a disaster zone without his human backdrop. He's been a PR marionette for so long -- clear brush for the cameras! -- that he's become thoroughly incapable of keeping it real. God forbid he try to connect with people, get a better understanding of their efforts to cope with real disaster. That's not worth his time. Nope, it's got to be turned into a frickin' Bush campaign commercial. Everything is political. Everything...

Kos supplies another pic with helicopters sitting idle and Coast Guard staff standing to attention while Bush does his PR thing: