blzrul

Priceless.

I begrudge those people not one thin dime for the suffering they've gone through, and for what lies ahead of them in the coming months. Are you so cheeseparing with all those people who received largesse after 9/11, even though they weren't directly affected? Such as cab drivers, beauty salon owners etc who suffered loss of business?

A success would have been sending people to the superdome and actually having someone there to take charge. And maybe a few doctors and nurses. And a plan for what to do with them afterward. A success would have been airliftiing fuel and generators to hospitals and nursing homes MONDAY not WEDNESDAY or THURSDAY. Have you ever used to ambu bag to breathe for a patient? What do you think happened to the people on ventilators? A success would have been to NOT send people to the convention center knowing there were no doctors (one pathologist showed up on his own two days later) and no police protection. And the list goes on. Why are volunteers there cooking and feeding the people now on the ground (troops etc) using private funds to buy the food? The panic, the lawnlessness, and the dumbass politicians saying "they're doing a HECK of a job...". However I am not surprised that you would try to defend the indefensible.

Well if you scratch the discussion on this thread about how they can now use cash to buy drugs, how pushers don't take debit cards, etc, there isn't much of a thread. Read it yourself.

Al Gore is a private citizen, just like us. He chose to go there. We're still here. He chose to use his own funds. George Bush could have snapped his fingers on Monday after the storm had passed and been there in hours. So many of you sit here and criticize others for helping out any way they can. Some day you'll need help. It will be interesting to see how many people rush to help you.

No matter WHO is to blame, the soft underbelly of the US has been exposed to the world, and to our enemies. We just are not prepared to handle a major emergency. We had plenty of warning and still blew it. It's indisputible, and indefensible.

Why does it seem like everyone here is assuming all these evacuees are drug addicts? Hmmmmm?

My glass is half full. So shoot me. But before you do show me where you can buy lunch for a quarter.

Court-martial the traitor Excerpt: Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said that "arguably" a day or so of response time was lost due to the absence of the Mississippi National Guard's 155th Infantry Brigade and Louisiana's 256th Infantry Brigade, each with thousands of troops in Iraq. "Had that brigade been at home and not in Iraq, their expertise and capabilities could have been brought to bear," said Blum. Blum said that to replace those units' command and control equipment, he dispatched personnel from Guard division headquarters from Kansas and Minnesota shortly after the storm struck. (The word "arguably" is the wiggle room and expect when all y'all heads are done exploding you'll do just that.)

Well, now the debit cards have been cancelled. By the way I have heard a lot of interviews with evacuees over the past few days, and I haven't heard one say anything about buying a forty or some crack, but they have ALL said they want to work and they want to work ASAP to keep from going nuts (and broke) in the shelters. Many of these people were working before the hurricane...some are professionals, some business owners, some just plain ole blue-collar folk and, yes, a whole bunch of people living at or below poverty and just getting by. I certainly think that the majority of them are not welfare leeches...or bums or other pond scum. The leeches that seem to suck the MOST from our society and our economy are not the poor. But, that's another thread.

Yeah but Brown has that great, dark head of hair so beloved by the GOP. How could a guy over 40 with hair, unshot with grey, be so incompetent? (There's an old saying about "more hair than wit" but I'll save it for another time when I need a witty repartee). :-)

I have called you many things but sh-- heads is not one of them. That's not to say I wouldn't though!

Kerik got rid of his own self.

I think $2000 isn't enough but as stated it's a start.

Exactly so. Sadly, we will probably read about a family of evacuees being taken in only to have their children molested by their hosts. sh-- heads come in all shapes, sizes, colors, ages and from all social classes.

People ARE being moved out, to hotels and family residences, which is a good thing. Did you see that Carnival has offered up cruise ships but the people are slow to take advantage of it. One woman was interviewed and said she'd seen enough water to last a lifetime. Now a cruise ship is definitely more comfortable than a stadium! But in a way I don't blame her. I remember the ice storms. I was lucky enough to have a ski vacation booked right in the middle of the big one and left town, only to watch it all on CNN at the ski lodge. My mom was without power for two weeks. Ugh. We were supposed to get 3000 evacuees up here but that's not panning out. I think that for the next couple of weeks they'll be ok where they are until the shock wears off somewhat. I think the people who did get flown out, many of them, may wake up next week and wonder how they got so far and what the @#$@ they're gonna do now.

It wasn't MY argument. And the "smilie" denotes a joke. I keep forgetting that most of the wingnuts around here (although not all) have no sense of humor. I merely tossed out one reason why someone might take umbrage at being called a right-winger. And it's a pretty good reason too. That Stalin was a leftist means nothing to me. I am not Stalin and I don't take offense when it's pointed out that he's left of center because I know the difference. If certain people around here take offense at being called right-wing, that means they either can't see the difference between right-wing and maniacal extremist, or that deep down they have a negative association with right-wing. Hitler was probably worse than Stalin although I guess the people of Russia might think otherwise. In any event, both of them were bad. I identify with neither.

Well right now they don't have anywhere to go most of them, so they're trying to get them with caseworkers, find out if they are lost or have family members lost, assess their needs. Agreed that physically they're better off than they were though. The Reliant Stadium complex is right next door (relatively speaking) so on game day they can watch the circus parade in and out but there really isn't much to do around there and I'm not sure about public transportation. I'll be talking to my friend in a couple of days and see what's up then. But the way he was talking surprised me, I thought the overwhelming feeling would be of relief but that's not the case according to him.

I spoke with a friend of mine about and hour ago. He was involved with some of the airlifts of people to Houston. He was down at the stadium complex last night and said it's already going to heck. He said that they really don't know where to put all the people and keeping them in a stadium long-term isn't going to work. THEY are going crazy and the relief workers can't place them fast enough. They need housing, jobs and more. And they're moving slowly on the private placements because BOTH parties need to be protected. Here in Seattle they've put them on an army base in some empty housing, so that's an improvement over stadiums etc. but it's going to take a lot of work to get them settled anywhere. We offered to house someone but by the time both we and they go through the background check it will probably be weeks. I think that hearings are in order but not for awhile because we not only need to know why there were so many problems in the days before and just after the hurrican, but also how the post-evacuation process worked too. It's going to take time to get that all sorted out.

Probably because some of the most hateful awful people in history (like Hitler) were right wing and who would want to be associated with THEM? It's all about the labeling. Or perfuming the pig so to speak.

What's scary is that anyone would think Texas was much better.

Well now that the city is almost empty he must have run out of black people to hug.

Why is this so important? Whatever is the truth - we can't change it, kill it or grill it. So why does it matter? I realize that people are afraid of the unknown and so seek to make it knowable because they garner comfort from it, but for crying out loud there are so many other important things to work out. When you die, you'll find out. Or maybe not. In which case it was all a waste of time and useless worry.

If they wipe us out I don't see how we could "oblige them in return" for wiping us out.

And how many right-wingers would have known about it because they don't visit Moveon.org? My post had nothing to do with partisanship but the fact that the wingnuts around here apparently have the time and energy to throw stones at attempts to help. They' are the sanctimonious ones. Those attempts may fall short and may not be coming from an organization that people like, but it's SOMETHING. Which is far better than criticizing efforts made in good faith. That you're so defensive about it speaks volumes. I personally don't give a rat's ass how much anyone gives or who stays in whose house. It's just important to try to do SOMETHING, other than sitting around bitching about what others are doing.