Ollie ping!
Posted on 09/01/2005 8:04:34 PM PDT by smoothsailing
Hurricanes, Hatred and Hypocrisy
by Oliver North
September 1, 2005--Washington, D.C. –
At one time in the history of our grand republic, political discourse was a much more civil endeavor. While politicians have disagreed, debated, argued, and even on occasion, fought on the floor of Congress, there has generally been a certain level of decorum between the two major political parties and among the three branches of government. Sadly, that no longer seems to be the case – and it's hurting our country.
"Mr. President, congratulations. You're a tough adversary," Tip O'Neill said in a 1981 telephone call to President Ronald Reagan after Congress voted to approve the President's economic package. The very liberal Mr. O'Neill had strenuously opposed the Reagan tax cuts, but the Speaker went on to say, "I want to wish you all the success in the world."
Who in today's Democrat party would offer such words to President Bush? Who on "the Hill" – which liberal pundit – what Democrat party leader – would adhere to what once was an unwritten rule of mutual respect between political rivals? Extremists in today's Democrat Party are so full of anger that even the horrific devastation and human suffering brought on by Hurricane Katrina have failed to produce any discernible détente in their torrent of viscera.
Katrina has created a humanitarian crisis worse than any natural disaster in U.S. history. Yet, while hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast are mourning dead family and friends and trying to comprehend their losses in the flooded streets, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is blaming Haley Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi, and the GOP for the devastation caused by the hurricane.
"Now we are all learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged," read Mr. Kennedy's post on Arriana Huffington's anti-Bush website. The eco-evangelist went on to suggest to his disciples that God may have been offended by a memorandum Mr. Barbour – former Chairman of the Republican Party – had written to President Bush about flaws in the United Nations Kyoto Protocol on global warming. "Perhaps," Mr. Kennedy wrote, "it was Barbour's memo that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst flailings (sic) for the Mississippi coast."
Set aside for a moment whether the people of New Orleans consider themselves "spared" the worst of Katrina. The Kennedy screed is not only theologically offensive – it is at best, outrageously insensitive to the plight of countless Americans now searching through waterlogged rubble for the bodies of loved ones and treasured belongings. At worst, it ranks with Senator Richard "Dick" Durbin's likening American soldiers to the armies of Hitler, Stalin or Cambodia's Pol Pot.
Regrettably, Mr. Kennedy is not alone in ignoring the humanitarian and refugee crisis occurring along America's Gulf Coast to further a narrow political agenda. On Wednesday, as government, Salvation Army and Red Cross officials were appealing for every possible kind of help, a coalition liberal activists brushed aside the plight of Katrina's victims to demand media attention for their opposition to John Roberts, Mr. Bush's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.
This is the kind of press-prompted, vitriol that has been evident for much of the summer outside the President's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Aided and abetted by the so-called mainstream media, Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, has been reduced to the role of center-piece for aging, '60s-era, anti-military radicals. Surrounded by a coterie of sound-bite savvy activists, she deviated from her "Get Out of Iraq Now" script this week to join Mr. Kennedy in blaming President Bush for the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.
All of this in the midst of the Katrina crisis is enough to make one wary of what Washington will be like for administration officials when Congress returns from their month-long vacation next week. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has already been summoned to appear before the Armed Services committees to "answer questions" about the war.
Mr. Rumsfeld, a regular target of rhetorical abuse from the left, has been through this before. When he last testified before Senate Armed Services Committee on June 23rd, the Defense Secretary was subjected to a disgusting verbal barrage from Senators Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Robert Byrd (D-WV) that was shamefully personal. Had it not taken place in "the world's greatest deliberative body," it could have been branded as "hate speech."
The record of the hearing is replete with rancorous character attacks against a man who has worked tirelessly to prosecute a war against enemies who behead hostages and kill innocents. Senator Kennedy's hypocrisy was boundless: "I'm talking about misjudgments, gross errors and mistakes. Those are on your watch. Isn't it time for you to resign?" he shouted. "Our troops deserve better, the American people deserve better." The Massachusetts liberal concluded his diatribe with a comment that might have been introspective: "They deserve competency and they deserve facts. In baseball, it's three strikes and you're out."
Senator Byrd was equally shrill and contemptible, but he may simply have forgotten that Mr. Rumsfeld once served as a naval officer and a member of Congress. "I've just heard enough of your smart answers to these people here who are elected. We are elected. You're not elected," said the West Virginia Senator who never served in any uniform except the white cloak of the Ku Klux Klan. He then ordered the Defense Secretary: "So get off your high horse when you come up here…Have a little respect for what we try to do."
As they used to tell us in the Marines: You cannot demand respect. You have to earn it.
Oliver North is a nationally syndicated columnist and the founder and honorary chairman of Freedom Alliance.
I hope they continue to.I don't want them wallowing in the gutter with the Democrats.
They have proven they can win in the "arena of ideas".My fear is that they will become too cautious.
Without pushing ideas forward and standing on principle,they will lose their advantage.We'll know that's happened if the Democrats start showing them any courtesy.
Democrats can be quite pleasant when everything is going their way.
Blumenthal was the worst, blaming the President, by claiming he diverted funds meant to reinforce the levee, for the war in Iraq. The only wall I remember the Clinton administration built, the one he was a lead hatchet man for, was the wall not even Able Danger could surge through. Can you imagine what kind of levee they could have built if they put the same kind of energy into protecting New Orleans, as they did into protecting Al-Kduh?
Katrina has created a humanitarian crisis worse than any natural disaster in U.S. history.There have been other huge natural disasters in the US. Just a few examples: the hurricane that hit Galveston, TX in 1900 (http://www.1900storm.com/)and the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco (http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/info/1906/). In both cases, cities were destroyed but we didn't have 24 hour MSM news coverage that politicians could exploit.
For the last few years the Democrats have reminded me of a bunch of brand new second lieutenants on their first day at the .45 range. You just KNOW one of them is going to shoot himself in the foot.
Is it possible to be named Kennedy and be sane?
But the Republicans are the one winning one election after another. What do you think is the end game in any political fight? Winning election, as simple as that. The liberals and their media whores have thrown everything under the sun on President Bush last year, no sitting President was ever attacked by his political opponents as President Bush has been attacked by his, but at the end the liberals and thier media whores were crushed and he was re-elected with the largest number of votes ever cast for a President in US history. Never forget the lessons of the 2004 elections, we can win despite the most difficult of odds.
LOL! Especially the ROTC types!
This is all correct, but remember that Bush and the GOP could count on the alternative media to deal with the opposition, and there are more than enough involved in that arena now to handle pretty much any challenge from anywhere.
I don't want all-out trench-brawling, but someone has to be the nightwatchman.
I just realized some folks might have read the post I responded to in a different light. I saw it as a warning that we ought not to get too complacent.
Something to the effect that Blumenthal's opinion was so important that he could only get it published in German and in Germany. LOL!
You don't realize that he is Worthy to do all the things that you I aren't supposed to do, because he is one of the "Anointed".
Because he is a Kennedy, and he is also a Liberal Democrat!
Senator Byrd was equally shrill and contemptible, but he may simply have forgotten that Mr. Rumsfeld once served as a naval officer and a member of Congress. "I've just heard enough of your smart answers to these people here who are elected. We are elected. You're not elected," said the West Virginia Senator who never served in any uniform except the white cloak of the Ku Klux Klan. He then ordered the Defense Secretary: "So get off your high horse when you come up here…Have a little respect for what we try to do."
Thanks for the Ollie Ping! How did I miss this one?
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