Each new headline leaves you shaking your head...

From the Chicago Tribune:

Daley 'shocked' at federal snub of offers to help

Tribune staff reports
Published September 2, 2005, 2:44 PM CDT

Frustration about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina has reached Chicago City Hall, as Mayor Richard Daley today noted a tepid response by federal officials to the city's offers of disaster aid.

The city is willing to send hundreds of personnel, including firefighters and police, and dozens of vehicles to assist on the storm-battered Gulf Coast, but so far the Federal Emergency Management Agency has requested only a single tank truck, Daley said.

"I was shocked," he said.

"We are ready to provide considerably more help than they have requested," the mayor said, barely able to contain his anger during a City Hall news conference. "We are just waiting for the call."

The mayor's remarks came at the announcement of a city-sponsored "Chicago Helps Fund," which will accept donations from citizens for the hurricane relief effort.

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And then you read this on CNN:

The big disconnect on New Orleans
The official version; then there's the in-the-trenches version

Friday, September 2, 2005; Posted: 4:10 p.m. EDT (20:10 GMT)

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Diverging views of a crumbling New Orleans emerged Thursday. The sanitized view came from federal officials at news conferences and television appearances. But the official line was contradicted by grittier, more desperate views from the shelters and the streets.

These conflicting views came within hours, sometimes minutes of each of each other, as reflected in CNN's transcripts.

The rest of the article has the conflicting views.

Back in 2004, The New York Times published an article including this quote from one of Bush's senior advisors:

''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

The problem with creating your own reality comes when your reality is no longer anyone else's reality. "Reality" based on fantasy ultimately hits the hard wall of real reality...