I guess if that "great social commentator" Michael Moore can get print time, so should the editor of the Washington Times. I respectfully suggest that Mr. Pruden has a much more fact and logic based presentation.
"Not much traction with the abuse"
September 6, 2005 (Wesley Pruden, the Washington Times)
George W. finally gets it -- in more ways than one. The tardy president was back on the Gulf Coast yesterday, bucking up the spirits of the damned and stiffening the resolve of the slackers.
He's getting it as well from his critics, many of whom can't believe their great good luck, that a hurricane, of all things, finally gives them the opening they've been waiting for to heap calumny and scorn on him for something that might get a little traction. Cindy Sheehan is yesterday's news; she couldn't attract a camera crew this morning if she stripped down to her step-ins for a march on Prairie Chapel Ranch.
The vultures of the venomous left are attacking on two fronts, first that the president didn't do what the incompetent mayor of New Orleans and the pouty governor of Louisiana should have done, and didn't, in the early hours after Katrina loosed the deluge on the city that care and good judgment forgot. Ray Nagin, the mayor, ordered a "mandatory" evacuation a day late, but kept the city's 2,000 school buses parked and locked in neat rows when there was still time to take the refugees to higher ground. The bright-yellow buses sit ruined now in four feet of dirty water. Then the governor, Kathleen Blanco, resisted early pleas to declare martial law, and her dithering opened the way for looters, rapists and killers to make New Orleans an unholy hell. Gov. Haley Barbour did not hesitate in neighboring Mississippi, and looters, rapists and killers have not turned the streets of Gulfport and Biloxi into killing fields.
The drumbeat of partisan ingratitude continues even after the president flooded the city with National Guardsmen from a dozen states, paratroopers from Fort Bragg and Marines from the Atlantic and the Pacific. The flutter and chatter of the helicopters above the ghostly abandoned city, some of them from as far away as Singapore and averaging 240 missions a day, is eerily reminiscent of the last days of Saigon. Nevertheless, Sen. Mary Landrieu, who seems to think she's cute when she's mad, even threatened on national television to punch out the president -- a felony, by the way, even as a threat. Mayor Nagin, who you might think would be looking for a place to hide, and Gov. Blanco, nursing a bigtime snit, can't find the right word of thanks to a nation pouring out its heart and emptying its pockets. Maybe the senator should consider punching out the governor, only a misdemeanor.
The race hustlers waited for three days to inflame a tense situation, but then set to work with their usual dedication. The Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, our self-appointed twin ambassadors of ill will, made the scene as soon as they could, taking up the coded cry that Katrina was the work of white folks, that a shortage of white looters and snipers made looting and sniping look like black crime, that calling the refugees "refugees" was an act of linguistic racism. A "civil rights activist" on Arianna Huffington's celebrity blog even floated the rumor that the starving folks abandoned in New Orleans had been forced to eat their dead -- after only four days. New Orleans has a reputation for its unusual cuisine, but this tale was so tall that nobody paid it much attention. Neither did anyone tell the tale-bearer to put a dirty sock in it.
Condi Rice went to the scene to say what everyone can see for himself, that no one but the race hustlers imagine Americans of any hue attaching strings to the humanitarian aid pouring into the broken and bruised cities of the Gulf. Most of the suffering faces in the flickering television images are black, true enough, and most of the helping hands are white.
Black and white churches of all denominations across a wide swath of the South stretching from Texas across Arkansas and Louisiana into Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama and Georgia turned their Sunday schools into kitchens and dormitories. In Memphis, Junior Leaguers turned out for baby-sitting duty at the city's largest, most fashionable and nearly all white Baptist church, cradling tiny black infants in compassionate arms so their mothers could finally sleep. The owner of a honky-tonk showed up to ask whether the church would "accept money from a bar." A pastor took $1,400, some of it in quarters, dimes and nickels, with grateful thanks and a promise to see that it is spent wisely on the deserving -- most of whom are black.
The first polls, no surprise, show the libels are not working. A Washington Post-ABC survey found that the president is not seen as the villain the nutcake left is trying to make him out to be. Americans, skeptical as ever, are believing their own eyes.
Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.
please! I am so f**kin tired of the right wing bullsh*t like this (I'm also tired of the left wing bullsh*t). Can we please think for ourselves! We don't need people like Moore to speak for us, unless of course many others like Fox and this incredible a@@hole take over the main stream media. Who runs these organizations anyway? you would think they were run by people who use to be part of the right wing machine....oh yeah, thats right, they are!
Unfortunately,it does not appear that you would recognize bias vs common sense.
When your argument falls apart, personal attacks work well. Bravo!
I'd have to rate that rant as the Cultural Conservative Rant:
"The race pimps and hustlers keep saying this is about race. It isn't. It's about niggers being too stupid to move out of the way of the storm."
Governor Blanco declared a state of emergency on 8/26, and asked for federal help. Conveniently ignored by the Bush/Rove spin machine.
S. O'BRIEN: There are people who say your evacuation plan, obviously in hindsight, was disastrous.
MAYOR RAY NAGIN, NEW ORLEANS: Which one?
S. O'BRIEN: Your evacuation plan before -- when you put people into the Superdome. It wasn't thought out. You got 20,000 people in there. And that you bear the brunt of the blame for some of this, a large chunk of it.
NAGIN: Look, I'll take whatever responsibility that I have to take. But let me ask you this question: When you have a city of 500,000 people, and you have a category 5 storm bearing down on you, and you have the best you've ever done is evacuate 60 percent of the people out of the city, and you have never issued a mandatory evacuation in the city's history, a city that is a couple of hundred years old, I did that. I elevated the level of distress to the citizens.
And I don't know what else I could do, other than to tell them that it's a mandatory evacuation. And if they stayed, make sure you have a frigging ax in your home, where you can bust out the roof just in case the water starts flowing.
And as a last resort, once this thing is above a category 3, there are no buildings in this city to withstand a category 3, a category 4 or a category 5 storm, other than the Superdome. That's where we sent people as a shelter of last resort. When that filled up, we sent them to the Convention Center. Now, you tell me what else we could have done.
S. O'BRIEN: What has Secretary Chertoff promised you? What has Donald Rumsfeld given you and promised you?
NAGIN: Look, I've gotten promises to -- I can't stand anymore promises. I don't want to hear anymore promises. I want to see stuff done. And that's why I'm so happy that the president came down here, because I think they were feeding him a line of bull also. And they were telling him things weren't as bad as it was.
He came down and saw it, and he put a general on the field. His name is General Honore. And when he hit the field, we started to see action.
And what the state was doing, I don't frigging know. But I tell you, I am pissed. It wasn't adequate.
And then, the president and the governor sat down. We were in Air Force One. I said, 'Mr. President, Madam Governor, you two have to get in sync. If you don't get in sync, more people are going to die.'
S. O'BRIEN: What date was this? When did you say that? When did you say...
NAGIN: Whenever air Force One was here.
S. O'BRIEN: OK.
NAGIN: And this was after I called him on the telephone two days earlier. And I said, 'Mr. President, Madam Governor, you two need to get together on the same page, because of the lack of coordination, people are dying in my city.'
S. O'BRIEN: That's two days ago.
NAGIN: They both shook -- I don't know the exact date. They both shook their head and said yes. I said, 'Great.' I said, 'Everybody in this room is getting ready to leave.' There was senators and his cabinet people, you name it, they were there. Generals. I said, 'Everybody right now, we're leaving. These two people need to sit in a room together and make a doggone decision right now.'
S. O'BRIEN: And was that done?
NAGIN: The president looked at me. I think he was a little surprised. He said, "No, you guys stay here. We're going to another section of the plane, and we're going to make a decision."
He called me in that office after that. And he said, "Mr. Mayor, I offered two options to the governor." I said -- and I don't remember exactly what. There were two options. I was ready to move today. The governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision.
S. O'BRIEN: You're telling me the president told you the governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision?
NAGIN: Yes.
S. O'BRIEN: Regarding what? Bringing troops in?
NAGIN: Whatever they had discussed. As far as what the -- I was abdicating a clear chain of command, so that we could get resources flowing in the right places.
S. O'BRIEN: And the governor said no.
NAGIN: She said that she needed 24 hours to make a decision. It would have been great if we could of left Air Force One, walked outside, and told the world that we had this all worked out. It didn't happen, and more people died.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
From The Washington Post: Many Evacuated, but Thousands Still Waiting.
Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.
The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.
A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.
Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said.
And I don't know what else I could do, other than to tell them that it's a mandatory evacuation. And if they stayed, make sure you have a frigging ax in your home, where you can bust out the roof just in case the water starts flowing.
That was dated two days before the hurricane - the Rove spin machine flat out lied when it said that no state of emergency had been declared by state and local officials. maybe they were supoosed to wear a special secret hat when they made the declaration in order to get FEMA to do it's job?
He's careless with his facts, and between the wisecrack or getting it right, he'll choose the wisecrack. But he also takes on much harder targets than Limbaugh, harder than say, the homeless.
There was a racial angle to this, but not in the way people think, nor the way the right accuses the left of thinking.
one needs to think of THEM as they think of THEMSELVES,
as entertainers.
I think of them as health hazards because they both give me headaches.
I think he might be more the Pat Robertson of the left. I honestly believe, even he doesn't believe half of the crap that comes out of his mouth. I think he is just profiting off the lunatic left, just like Robertson profits off the wacko religious right. The more outrageous the better, keep in mind this fat fuck is rich and getting richer. Why should he let the facts get in the way?
But so does Limbaugh. Like Limbaugh has apparently always been on the right, Moore has a history of always being on the left, long before they could be said to have a "business plan."
Robertson is a different story because of the use of the Christian religion.
Not that I disagree with you, but how does Robertson's abuse, I mean use of the Christian religion make him different? The far left's fanaticism and narrow mindedness rivals the lunatics of the Christian right.
BTW I picked Robertson as an example mainly because there are few people that I despise as much as Moore. Robertson certainly rises to that level of contempt IMHO. Limbaugh has some redeeming qualities, don't ask me what they are. lol maybe Sean Hanity would be a better example.
Would they have anything to do with his prescription drug addiction?
There are many things that I will criticize Rush Limbaugh for, getting addicted to pain killers because of chronic pain is not one of them
I have used drugs over several decades for recreational use, and anybody who doesn't like it can kiss my ass, it's my own business. To anybody who has ever taken a toke of pot, a sip of beer, or puffed on a cigarette, who criticizes Rush Limbaugh for becoming addicted to pain killers to relieve his excruciating pain due to circumstances beyond his control can please go fuck yourselves. You are the epitome of hypocrisy.
Disagree with him over his politics if you will, there are many subjects that I can find fault with him, but for liberals of all people, to criticize him for trying to relieve his unbearable pain(anybody who has ever gone through back surgery will agree with me) that's a cheap shot that even a Michael Moore supporter should be above.
I can't believe I'm defending Rush Limbaugh of all people, but fair is fair.
according to Rush you should be locked up with no mercy shown you. The fact is that he frequently condemned drug use and said that addicts and users should be prosecuted fully and put away. No excuses. Get it? It is not a cheap shot. I believe drugs should be legal. He does not. It is proof that that fat drug addict is a hypocrite and a LIAR!
One other thing, he did not accept excuses from people like Daryl Strawberry, so saying that it was because of a bad back is lame. Again you believe his excuse because he says so. If that were the case, he wouldn't be trying to hide his medical records so much. Sorry, but he does not accept excuses so why should I?
He has to listen to himself talk every single day. If I had to listen to him talk every single day, I'd be in excruciating pain myself.
Make mine a Demerol drip, please. 
-- Modified on 9/9/2005 1:56:48 AM
I don't care if he screws farm animals on the air. He can do whatever he wants with his own life, but he is the hypocrit after preaching what should become of drug users, while being one.
Agreed,Rush is a hypocrite and he does deserve heat for being one. What bugs me however, is that the very people who should be pointing out the fallacies of our draconian drug laws are instead castigating Limbaugh for getting addicted to pain medication.
You would think that a forum made up of people who admittedly commit one victimless crime on a regular basis would not be so quick to ridicule someone for committing another. Limbaugh's only transgression was trying to obtain the means to manange his pain due to surgery.Ridicule his hypcrosy, not his addiction.
You would think that the party that claims to be the compassionate party could get past their hatred for someone who disagrees with their politics, and show a little compassion for someone who is obviously in chronic pain. Or are libs just the hateful, spiteful bunch that the righties accuse them of being?
Maybe if we realized that our "war on drugs" is costing us most of what we'll spend on NOLA cleanup, we'd come to our collective senses.
I'll amend what I said before, since you've enlightened me...Rush is an ass and a hypocrit. As I said before, I don't call what he does in private.
We should show compassion to Rush Limbaugh. Ha! Ha! Ha! Thanks. That was a good one.
I'm happy to be here for your amusement. lol Well allright, I'll concede a bigmouth like Rush probably deserves what he gets, but I do stand by the rest of my post.
First of all, Rush has a national radio program and is heard every day. Moore makes a movie and writes a book every couple of years and posts sporadically on his blog. The right wails about him more than he speaks.
Second, Rush is a mouthpiece for the Republican Party and GWB. Moore had criticized Clinton during his term, opposed Gore and only supported Kerry as an alternative to the Chimp in Chief. He is hardly a mouthpiece for the Democrats. In fact I don't think he even is one.
Finally, every side has a fringe element. Why is it that only Democrats have to do a Sistah Soljah on anyone's ass?
P.S. Rush is fat too.