Bringing Rush to New Orleans will not solve the problem. You're just going to be more frustrated when he reports that he saw the 9th Ward, and it had been completely rebuilt with luxurious mansions for all the liberals to live in at taxpayer expense.

Rush Limbaugh is not saying that things are back to normal in New Orleans because he's misinformed. He's a liar, and he always will be. When he's telling lies you agree with, you think he's great, and when he tells lies about the situation in your own city that you can see as lies, you sycophants try to convince yourselves that he's not really lying, but that he must not know the real situation. Trust me, he knows the truth. It just doesn't fit with his view of reality.

Remember, you neocons are running an Empire. You make the reality. Just don't try to actually live in it, and you'll be fine. Move to Houston, and live in envy of your former neighbors who are now living in paradise in New Orleans. As long as you don't talk to them, you can keep believing it too.

Why doesn't Ms. Newman just turn Limbaugh's time slot over to someone who is "informed"?

Gee Rush, tell us who your "friends" are with this great insight? Otherwise, your "reporting" is just like the tabloids when they want to make something up. But, of course, Limbugh doesn't care about the truth only passing on the GOP talking points and propoganda. Not coincidently, his report is timed directly with the release of the FEMA documents that place the blame squarely on the federal government's response and refute all those claims by the administration about it being the local officials fault. What a shock...

Of course Rush will pretend that the people who have boot straps are all fine if he comes to New Orleans, but you are missing the point. Just as Bush lost all credibility with Gulf Coast residents when he said, "You're doing a great job, Brownie," Rush will do the same. The truth is that we hear about the poor, but it's not just the poor who have had their lives destroyed, who will never recover financially. I am a tax-paying, college graduate, healthcare administrator who lost two homes -- one I was living in, one I was renovating. I am homeless. I lost my job. I haven't gone on welfare or applied for jobless benefits, but I am rapidly burning through my savings. My husband is living in a spare bedroom 350 miles away so that we can have health insurance, because in order to keep his job he had to work in a city without one house or apartment available for rent. And I'm actually better off than most people I know. If Rush can look at people that he can't dismiss as welfare queens and deadbeats and realize that all is not okay, and then pretends it is so on his show...well, it will be his Brownie moment. And if Al Franken and Oprah and Jon Stewart came down and did a broadcast or two, it wouldn't be only New Orleanians that finally realized the emperor has no clothes.

The problem is that conservatives are trying to pretend that New Orleans is bouncing back, and the liberals as well as the media are simply failing to point out that this is not true. So many people are in danger of foreclosure, many people have yet to hear from FEMA or see an insurance adjuster. So many people who had enough savings to get by comfortably for a couple of months are running out of savings and don't know what they are going to do. A commentator on the BBC recently pointed out that he didn't think there would be any long term fallout from Katrina because in a tragedy, "Americans tend to look, and then they look away." New Orleans needs Americans to keep looking, and if they do they will see exactly how conservatives have hung an entire city out to dry.

Life here in New Orleans is nowhere near normal. Schools are not open, services are spotty at best and this is even in the non-flooded areas! Leave it to Limbaugh to make general assumptions when he clearly justs wants to promote his anti-liberal, anti-reality agenda. Yes, Limbaugh, leave your assumptions at home and come visit my fair city.