Helicopters bringing in food and water and bringing out survivors were stopped when George W. Bush was in New Orleans Friday, and key scenes of Bush’s visit were staged for the cameras.

You can read the complete story at Blah3, but here are some choice cuts:

There were a lot of questions asked yesterday morning about the phony briefing that Bush got in that hangar, featuring a backdrop of Coast Guard helicopters. People were wondering why those choppers were not out picking up flood victims or delivering supplies. The reason why is simple — Bush had the majority of helcopter traffic stopped while Marine One was in the Gulf Coast region. . . .

Then it was off to Biloxi, MS to survey the damage. As Bush, Haley Barbour and others walked down a street, 2 women appeared seemingly out of nowhere for Bush to ‘comfort’ them. But it turns out that the two women didn’t even live in Biloxi, and had just come down for the day to try to ‘salvage’ clothes from the area for one of the women’s son (were they looters?). But they were apparently reasonably telegenic and happened to be in the area, so they were recruited to represent an area where they didn’t even live. . . .

Wherever Bush went yesterday, it seemed as though people were already hard at work rebuilding the affected areas. Unfortunately for Bush, there were a few foreign journalists at his photo ops, and they pulled back the curtain on what we saw on TV to reveal that the ‘work’ was staged for the media. . . .

Flying over this critical spot [thhe 17th Street levee] again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment.

In the meantime it’s come out that FEMA chief Michael Brown is truly incompetent — so much so that he was fired from his last job for incompetence and only got the FEMA appointment through his connections with the Bush administration.

I am truly appalled that the government is playing politics while people slowly die in New Orleans. So much so that I can hardly bear to continue to write about it, and I may just refer you to NOLA.com to keep up with breaking news.