On CBS Man Blasts Bush for Stuporous Response Compared to Iraq --9/2/2005

1. On CBS Man Blasts Bush for Stuporous Response Compared to Iraq
In the middle of a Thursday CBS Evening News story on the destruction in Slidell, Louisiana, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, reporter Mark Strassmann showcased a distraught man "with a message for the President" who blasted Bush for how he responded in Iraq while not doing so for Louisiana. Anthony Nata charged: "You can go into Iraq and come in with big helicopters and set stuff up for people, but you can't do this for us? Come on, Bush. You can do better than that."

2. CNN's Jack Cafferty Again Goes on Anti-Bush Tirade, CBS Joins In
Two days after CNN's Jack Cafferty demanded to know, "Where's President Bush? Is he still on vacation?" and snidely suggested that "based on his approval rating in the latest polls, my guess is getting back to work might not be a terrible idea," on Thursday's Situation Room Cafferty took off after Bush again. At about 3:30pm EDT during his "Cafferty File" segment, he suddenly found the conservative New Hampshire Union Leader very wise and quoted approvingly from their Wednesday editorial: "'A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource....The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months following 9/11, has vanished.'" He piled on with how a New York Times editorial excoriated Bush "for 'appearing casual to the point of carelessness.'" Later, on the CBS Evening News, Bill Plante also found the Union Leader editorial worthy of highlighting. with audio

3. Olbermann Mocks Condoleezza Rice for Seeing "Comedy on Broadway"
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Thursday night took a series of gratuitous shots as he strongly suggested George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice have some personal culpability for shortcomings in federal action following Hurricane Katrina. On his Countdown show he asserted that "8,000 Guardsmen from Mississippi and Louisiana who might have helped, might have been deployed in the relief efforts are, in fact, in Iraq and not in Mississippi and Louisiana" and cited how Bush "claimed this morning, quote, 'I don't think anybody anticipated a breach of the levees,'" but countered that "there was a U.S. News and World Report article detailing just what would happen if they were breached that was published exactly six weeks ago." (So, if President Bush read an article in a magazine that would have changed anything? Isn't there a whole federal agency full of people charged with disaster relief?) And, in his cheapest shot, Olbermann pointed out how Rice "has cut short her vacation and made it back to her office just four days after New Orleans was besieged, just a day after she reportedly saw a comedy on Broadway in New York City."

4. Raines: Bush Worries Over Big Oil as "Poor Drown in Their Attics"
In a Thursday column for the Los Angeles Times, former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines joined the left wing in using the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina to bash Bush: "The dilatory performance of George Bush during the past week has been outrageous. Almost as unbelievable as Katrina itself is the fact that the leader of the free world has been outshone by the elected leaders of a region renowned for governmental ineptitude." Raines ended with this blast which echoed the radical left: "The churchgoing cultural populism of George Bush has given the United States an administration that worries about the House of Saud and the welfare of oil companies while the poor drown in their attics and their sons and daughters die in foreign deserts."

5. ABC's Diane Sawyer to Bush: "Will You Call for Tax Increases?"
Update to the Thursday CyberAlert item about how ABC's Diane Sawyer, in a live Good Morning America interview, hit President Bush with a series of liberal talking point questions designed to politicize the hurricane recovery effort. That interview aired in the 7am half hour. At the top of the 7:30am half hour Thursday, Sawyer related some questions she had posed to Bush off air, including her using the tragedy as an excuse to push for a tax hike: "I also asked him about this idea that the whole economy could be torqued by this in such a way. And I said, 'will you call for tax increases, in fact, if that's required?'"

On CBS Man Blasts Bush for Stuporous
Response Compared to Iraq

In the middle of a Thursday CBS Evening News story on the destruction in Slidell, Louisiana, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, reporter Mark Strassmann showcased a distraught man "with a message for the President" who blasted Bush for how he responded in Iraq while not doing so for Louisiana. Anthony Nata charged: "You can go into Iraq and come in with big helicopters and set stuff up for people, but you can't do this for us? Come on, Bush. You can do better than that."

Over video of flattened houses, Strassmann set up that soundbite from Nata: "This community is a landscape of loss -- subdivision after subdivision flattened or flooded. Police whisper to you they suspect hundreds of bodies in those homes. Anthony and Edith Nata now live in a lean-to by the side of the road with a message for the President."

Of course, going into Iraq took months of logistical and transport efforts.

For a picture and bio of Strassmann: www.cbsnews.com

To watch a video clip (RealPlayer or Windows Media) of Strassmann's lead-in and the man's comment featured by CBS, go to the posting of this item on NewsBusters.org, the MRC's new blog: newsbusters.org

At that node you can also submit your comment about the CBS story.

CNN's Jack Cafferty Again Goes on Anti-Bush
Tirade, CBS Joins In

At about 3:30pm EDT during his "Cafferty File" segment, he suddenly found the conservative New Hampshire Union Leader very wise and quoted approvingly from their Wednesday editorial: "'A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource....The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months following 9/11, has vanished.'" He piled on with how a New York Times editorial excoriated Bush "for 'appearing casual to the point of carelessness.'"

For that Wednesday editorial: www.unionleader.com

Later, on the CBS Evening News, with a montage of newspaper editorials on screen, Bill Plante also found the Union Leader editorial worthy of highlighting: "The Katrina catastrophe comes at one of the lowest points of George Bush's presidency. In a new CBS News poll, his approval rating is as low as it's ever been -- 41 percent -- driven down by both the war in Iraq and the soaring cost of gas. Editorial pages across the nation aimed sharp barbs at Mr. Bush: 'What appeared to be a halting response Tuesday,' and 'A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource.'"

Back to CNN, Cafferty soon launched a rant: "I have never, ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can't sandwiches be dropped to those people that are in that Superdome down there? I mean, what is, this is Thursday. This is Thursday. This storm happened five days ago. It's a disgrace."

Cafferty and Plante ignored a Thursday Union Leader editorial which castigated Louisiana's Governor: "Louisiana Gov't Fails Its People." See: www.theunionleader.com

One answer to Cafferty on dropping sandwiches: Wouldn't that just cause a stampeded and more deaths? To say nothing about the danger there caused by thugs and gang members with guns.

To watch video of Cafferty's rant, go to the MRC's NewsBusters.org blog where RealPlayer and Windows Media clips, rendered by the MRC's Michelle Humphrey, are posted: newsbusters.org
A full transcript of what the Manhattan-based Cafferty, at about 3:30pm EDT on September 1, told Wolf Blitzer at CNN's Washington, DC studio:

Cafferty: "The thing that's most glaring in all of this is the conditions continue to deteriorate for the people who are victims in this and the efforts to do anything about it don't seem to be anywhere in sight. I want to read you something, Wolf. This is a quote fro an editorial (text on screen): 'A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource....The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months ["immediately' on screen but not said by Cafferty] following 9/11 ["Sept. 11, 2001" on screen], has vanished.'
"Now, that's not from some liberal rag. That is an editorial from one of the most conservative newspapers in the country, New Hampshire's Union Leader. The New York Times, not unexpectedly kind of chimed in, they said the President 'showed up a day later than needed' and they excoriated him for 'appearing casual to the point of carelessness.' Harsh words coming from FEMA's former disaster response chief, Eric Tolbin (sp?), who says the government was not ready and shifted its attention from natural disasters to fighting the war on terror. The questions that we ask on The Situation Room every afternoon, Wolf, are posted on the Web site two or three hours before we go on the air and people who read the Web site often begin to respond to the questions before the show actually starts.
"The question this hour is: 'How would you rate the response of the federal government to Hurricane Katrina?' I got to tell you something. We got five or six hundred letters before the show even went on the air. No one, no one says the federal government is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and embarrassing and far reaching and calamitous things that has come along in this country in my lifetime. I'm 62. I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things. I have never, ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can't sandwiches be dropped to those people that are in that Superdome down there? I mean, what is, this is Thursday. This is Thursday. This storm happened five days ago. It's a disgrace. And don't think the world isn't watching. This is the government the taxpayers are paying for and it's fallen right flat on its face, as far as I can see in the way it's handled this thing."

# The August 31 CyberAlert item on Cafferty's Tuesday rant: In the 5pm EDT half hour Tuesday of CNN's The Situation Room, Jack Cafferty used the hurricane as an excuse to trash President Bush for being on vacation, as if the location of Bush, who already authorized federal action, has any impact on that federal response to the devastation. Cafferty asked host Wolf Blitzer: "Where's President Bush? Is he still on vacation?" Blitzer answered that "he's cut short his vacation. He's coming back to Washington tomorrow." Cafferty snidely contended: "Well, that would be a good idea. He was out in San Diego, I think, at a Naval air station giving a speech on Japan and the war in Iraq today. Based on his approval rating in the latest polls, my guess is getting back to work might not be a terrible idea." See: www.mediaresearch.org

Olbermann Mocks Condoleezza Rice for
Seeing "Comedy on Broadway"

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Thursday night took a series of gratuitous shots as he strongly suggested George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice have some personal culpability for shortcomings in federal action following Hurricane Katrina. On his Countdown show he asserted that "8,000 Guardsmen from Mississippi and Louisiana who might have helped, might have been deployed in the relief efforts are, in fact, in Iraq and not in Mississippi and Louisiana" and cited how Bush "claimed this morning, quote, 'I don't think anybody anticipated a breach of the levees,'" but countered that "there was a U.S. News and World Report article detailing just what would happen if they were breached that was published exactly six weeks ago." (So, if President Bush read an article in a magazine that would have changed anything? Isn't there a whole federal agency full of people charged with disaster relief?) And, in his cheapest shot, Olbermann pointed out how Rice "has cut short her vacation and made it back to her office just four days after New Orleans was besieged, just a day after she reportedly saw a comedy on Broadway in New York City."

The Secretary of State's attendance at a play in Manhattan impeded rescue efforts in what way? What does the Secretary of State have to do with a hurricane recovery?

The MRC's Brad Wilmouth caught Olbermann's comments on the September 1 Countdown.

At about 8:20pm EDT, Olbermann opined: "The theme throughout this fifth day has been 'Where is the help? Where is the government?' The Secretary of Homeland Security says the government is sending 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to New Orleans, that 2,800 are already there. But 8,000 Guardsmen from Mississippi and Louisiana who might have helped, might have been deployed in the relief efforts are, in fact, in Iraq and not in Mississippi and Louisiana. About 40 percent of all U.S. troops there are drawn from the Guard and Reserves. While the President claimed this morning, quote, 'I don't think anybody anticipated a breach of the levees, there was a U.S. News and World Report article detailing just what would happen if they were breached that was published exactly six weeks ago."

Olbermann soon added: "The President plans to fly over the scene again tomorrow meeting with some local officials. We were told the Secretary of State has cut short her vacation and made it back to her office just four days after New Orleans was besieged, just a day after she reportedly saw a comedy on Broadway in New York City."

Raines: Bush Worries Over Big Oil as
"Poor Drown in Their Attics"

In a Thursday column for the Los Angeles Times, former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines joined the left wing in using the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina to bash Bush: "The dilatory performance of George Bush during the past week has been outrageous. Almost as unbelievable as Katrina itself is the fact that the leader of the free world has been outshone by the elected leaders of a region renowned for governmental ineptitude." Raines ended with this blast which echoed the radical left: "The churchgoing cultural populism of George Bush has given the United States an administration that worries about the House of Saud and the welfare of oil companies while the poor drown in their attics and their sons and daughters die in foreign deserts."

In a Thursday posting on the MRC's NewsBusters.org blog, Clay Waters, Editor of the MRC's TimesWatch.org site, relayed how Raines contrasted Bush with two Governors: "Louisiana's anguished governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, climbed into a helicopter at the first possible moment to survey what may become the worst weather-related disaster in American history. Even Gov. Haley R. Barbour of Mississippi, a tiresome blowhard as chairman of the Republican National Committee, has shown a throat-catching public sorrow and sleepless diligence that put Bush to shame.
"This President who flew away Monday to fundraisers in the West while the hurricane blew away entire towns in coastal Mississippi is very much his father's son. George H.W. Bush couldn't quite connect to the victims of Hurricane Andrew, nor did he mind being photographed tooling his golf cart around Kennebunkport while American troops died in the first Iraq war. After preemptively declaring a state of emergency, the younger Bush seemed equally determined to show his successors how to vacation through an apocalypse."

For the September 1 Raines rant in full, titled, "The Crescent City blues," go to: www.latimes.com

To share your comment on Raines' reasoning, go to the node about his op-ed on the MRC's NewsBusters.org blog, dedicated to exposing and combating liberal media bias: newsbusters.org

ABC's Diane Sawyer to Bush: "Will You
Call for Tax Increases?"

Update to the Thursday CyberAlert item about how ABC's Diane Sawyer, in a live Good Morning America interview, hit President Bush with a series of liberal talking point questions designed to politicize the hurricane recovery effort. That interview aired in the 7am half hour. At the top of the 7:30am half hour Thursday, Sawyer related some questions she had posed to Bush off air, including her using the tragedy as an excuse to push for a tax hike: "I also asked him about this idea that the whole economy could be torqued by this in such a way. And I said, 'will you call for tax increases, in fact, if that's required?'"

Of course, if the economy were being "torqued," common sense would say a tax hike would be the last thing you'd want to do.

The September 1 CyberAlert recounted: Live from the White House in the 7am EDT half hour of Thursday's Good Morning America, Diane Sawyer pressed President George W. Bush to respond to a series of liberal talking points, starting with how "people have worried that the National Guard is stretched too thin" with "so many overseas" in Iraq. Later, she demanded: "Do we have to make a choice, at some point, between what we're doing in Iraq and what is needed, right now, to funnel massive amounts of money" to the hurricane victims? She also wanted Bush to "guard against price gouging" and wondered: "Is this a time to call on Americans to simply pull back, not use the gas? Pull back and stay at home and save the gas for those who are in dire need." Sawyer forwarded how "some people have said that the oil companies, themselves, should simply forfeit some of their profits in this time of national crisis." She suggested the federal government owes everyone a job as she asked "how far the federal government is going to go to get their lives back? Do you promise jobs? Do you promise that they will be moved back into housing, and how soon?"
For all of Sawyer's questions shown on-air: www.mediaresearch.org

The MRC's Brian Boyd later took down what Sawyer related just past 7:30am EDT, as she sat in a chair in the White House, about some other questions she put to Bush:
"The President and I continued to talk, by the way, after the interview. He said several interesting things. Among them, I asked probably what's a simple minded question, which is what about just air-drops of food and water right now to some of these people who are in the roofs? And he said that his understanding is that that's not the most efficient way to deliver it and that there should be a dramatic change in the amount coming in very soon.
"I also asked him about this idea that the whole economy could be torqued by this in such a way. And I said, 'will you call for tax increases, in fact, if that's required?' And he said there won't have to be tax increases, that he believes that it's very important not to throw a curve to the economy at this particular moment.
"And, I also asked about the question of security in the area and the looting. He said they're watching it every minute and that of course he would be standing by should additional troops be required including military troops, but that no requests have come in and they simply are going to stand by and watch."

-- Brent Baker