Quote of The Day

From the Wall Street Journal's Political Diary (a subscription-only service:

The only way to follow anything that happens in the United States today is not to rely on what drifts back into the British media from the overwhelmingly liberal American establishment newspapers and national television bulletins: almost the sole source for, say, the BBC. Instead we must search America's blogs and Web sites.

-- Frank Johnson, a columnist at the London Daily Telegraph, commenting on biased coverage of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath in the British media.

Johnson continues:

From them it will be discovered that nearly everything being reported most insistently about Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans is questionable. By checking evacuation figures against census figures, it seems that the great majority of blacks - about 70 per cent - reached safety before the storm. Concerning the argument that President Bush did not rush to help the city because most of the victims were black, four of the five local government districts worst affected by the storm had white majorities ranging from 67 to 88 per cent.

For these, and many other correctives, I especially recommend the website http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/exit.jhtml?exit=http://www.americanthinker.com/.

I also liked this:

The lack in President Bush that New Orleans has exposed is not his lack of organisation, but of eloquence. Contrast the then prime minister, Churchill, on the 1953 floods.

"The House will have heard of the disaster which fell upon the country on the night of January 31," he begins. But he knows that this is no time for rhetoric. People wanted to know what was being done. He proceeds: "As one might expect after the experiences of two wars, organisations of all kinds, national and local, military and civil, reacted immediately to the call upon them." He mentions accommodation, blankets and food. "There have been the difficulties of contamination of water... military stores are being drawn upon wherever necessary. Certain emergency plans for restoring healthy sewerage are already working under the guidance of local and central engineers."

Doubtless the government was more confused than that. But Churchill did not sound it. Compare with Bush's words to his crony, the now-removed Michael Brown, who was in charge of national emergencies: "Brownie, you're doin' a heck of a job."

I love George W. Bush the man and the president. George W. Bush the communicator, however, often makes me cringe.