Crooks, liars, and video tape

Greyhawk

Watch this video. (Scroll to entry titled "Broussard: "We have been abandoned by our own country."" if permalinks don't work)

Then read this.

Update: In this follow-up report on the arrest of the owner's of St Rita's, MSNBC notes:

Authorities said the death toll would be lower if Salvador and Mable Mangano, owners of the St. Rita?s nursing home in Chalmette, a New Orleans suburb, had heeded warnings to evacuate their patients as Katrina came ashore Aug. 29.

?The pathetic thing in this case was that they were asked if they wanted to move them and they did not,? Foti said Tuesday. ?They were warned repeatedly that this storm was coming. In effect, their inaction resulted in the deaths of these people.?

?They had a duty and a standard of care to people who could not care for themselves,? Foti said of the owners. ?If you or I decided we are going to stay, we do it of our own free will. ... The people at the nursing home don?t have that choice.?

?Thirty-four people drowned in a nursing home when it should have been evacuated. I cannot say it any plainer than that,? Foti said, his voice rising with anger.

Tom Rodrigue, whose mother died in the home, echoed that. ?She deserved the chance, you know, to be rescued instead of having to drown like a rat,? he said.

The nursing home tragedy had been described more than a week ago by Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, who told a national television audience how an emergency official busy fighting the flood had lost his mother.

?She called him and said, ?Are you coming, son, is somebody coming?? And he said, ?Yeah mama, somebody?s coming to get ya, somebody?s coming to get ya on Tuesday, somebody?s coming to get ya on Wednesday? ... and she drowned Friday night,? he said, breaking into tears during a Sept. 4 interview on NBC.

Then, several paragraphs and a page break later, the story adds that The victims died Aug. 29, the day the hurricane hit without ever pointing out a)the disconnect between that statement and Broussard's claims; b) the fact that Tom Rodrigue - mentioned in the paragraph immediately preceding Broussard's quote - was actually the official that Broussard was referencing; and c) Broussard's initial purpose in relating the story through his "tears" was to blame the federal government for their "slow response" to the storm area. This bit of playing fast and loose with facts would perhaps be forgivable except that MSNBC reported both 'b' and 'c' in an earlier report on the topic - of course, that was before 'a' was known.

I've heard rude remarks about politicians who would "sell their own mother for a vote" but this is the closest thing I've seen to an actual example.

Update 2: By the way, be sure to read the comments on the original video post if you think no one is gullible enough to be fooled by this sort of stuff.