It used to be really nice, back in the days when a looming natural disaster meant the national/local media and pundits were focused on preparation, possible outcomes, human stories, helping authorities get needed word out…you know. How it was going to affect the people in harm’s way, what was being done to mitigate those dangers that could be addressed, and what plans were in place for the immediate aftermath to bring relief and aid. Get things up and running, from lives to infrastructure, and it was an all-hands-on-deck effort.

We seem to have a whole different ballgame going with the news and online winners we have now. The morning has been spent picking my jaw up off the floor. I expect it from the ghoulish Leftists, all happy as clams at the thought of DeSantis and Co. being beaten into submission with epic wind and rain, but the snarking reports from “journalists”? Perhaps I use that terms too loosely with CNN-affiliated people, but still…

As DeSantis prepares Floridians for Ian, he is urging residents to heed advice from the same local leaders he suggested they ignore during COVID and praising a federal agency he previously alleged withheld aid to the state bc Biden was playing politics.https://t.co/CB8Dxjj8w2

— Steve Contorno (@scontorno) September 28, 2022

Vurt da furk was THAT?! Pretty unnecessary, no?

Media was also pushing a “Florida’s LAX RESPONSE” narrative, and WOOF. Ron DeSantis was having none of it.

The media can't help themselves – everything must be politicized. No opportunity to smear opponents is too low. This reporter misrepresented FEMA Director's words@RonDeSantisFL won't accept it. He'll always stand up for Florida & our world class emergency response professionals pic.twitter.com/Uemzm5vcPH

— DeSantis War Room 🐊 #FloridaStrong (@DeSantisWarRoom) September 27, 2022

Then there’s also a constant refrain from FEMA officials I’ve now heard repeated several times in other venues, and I don’t understand it at all. Here it is, in a correction that Politico had to issue re: “lax response” (DeSantis War Room)

“Not seen a major strike…close to 100 years”?! Then what would you call Hurricane Charley, who made landfall on August 13, 2004 as a Cat 4, with 150mph winds just south of Boca Grande, FL? That is a mere 20 miles north of where Ian has just come ashore, and it shot right across Central Florida. Are we memory holing this as well? To what purpose? There has to be some reason behind it.

Some of the well known liberal pundits thought they’d get their DeSantis digs in while the digging was good, and I hope they’re being savaged. Andrew Sullivan stepped in it big time.

DeSantis now being tested as a governor not a troll.

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) September 28, 2022

The pile-on was immediate and brutal. And BACK PEDAL! BACK PEDAL! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!

Sullivan called the best governor in the United States a “troll,” implying he had little to offer besides his rapier wit, and…no, he says he didn’t. Get out. They are such transparent ghouls. As for the question Sullivan left hanging out there, it’s not just COVID nor just the Surfside condo collapsing challenges that Ron DeSantis has met head-on. This hurricane is not his first big storm rodeo. His first hurricane hit us, in Pensacola/South Alabama, on the anniversary of Hurricane Ivan: 16 years to the day, almost to the same hour, on the 16th of September, 2020. As Ivan did, she took out a critical bridge, besides doing $7.3B+ worth of damage, making the most expensive tropical system NOT to have its name retired. Hurricane Sally. was a trip.

That bridge severed a local artery that turned a 15-minute commute across Pensacola Bay, from Gulf Breeze to downtown Pensacola, into a 2-hour, one-way commute. For tens of thousands of people. The bridge itself took 9 months to repair. Governor DeSantis suspended tolls on the only other bridge into Santa Rosa County and did everything humanly possible to facilitate that God-awful daily trek.

Their desperation is showing, and the problem they’re running into is that we all have the receipts for everything they forget to mention, every tale they twist, every snide aside they drop into a report.

“Just the facts” still works. They should try it.