Monday, September 19, 2005
Bush, and Satchmo, in New Orleans:
It seemed almost a sacrilege for the president to stand in the jazz-mad French Quarter, using the St. Louis Cathedral and statue of Andrew Jackson as a Disney-like backdrop, and announce that now he is going to do something, after the death and destruction are done, leaving the taxpayers with a $200 billion bill (much of which will go straight into the already Iraq-packed pockets of his friends at Halliburton and Bechtel and the like). His speech came on the very day The New York Times published an article about the many jazz and blues musicians from the Big Easy now forced to live in Cajun country and beyond, perhaps never to return to their homes and livelihoods.
It seemed almost a sacrilege for the president to stand in the jazz-mad French Quarter, using the St. Louis Cathedral and statue of Andrew Jackson as a Disney-like backdrop, and announce that now he is going to do something, after the death and destruction are done, leaving the taxpayers with a $200 billion bill (much of which will go straight into the already Iraq-packed pockets of his friends at Halliburton and Bechtel and the like). His speech came on the very day The New York Times published an article about the many jazz and blues musicians from the Big Easy now forced to live in Cajun country and beyond, perhaps never to return to their homes and livelihoods.
