I am absolutely FLOORED!

[laylah]

I have never be the recipient of such a hate e-mail!

Following is an e-mail I just received from my freeper neighbor. I could only get through the first paragraph but thought I might share the ignorance with others. My response was to "respond to all" (and there were plenty, believe me) and link them to the Wise essay in the Black Commentator. Help for further responses would be appreciated. I was so stunned my first response was all I could muster.

Edited to warn that this is a bit long. Grab your barf bags before continuing on :puke:

An Unnatural Disaster
A Hurricane Exposes The Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State

by Robert Tracinski Sep 02, 2005

It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself
included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind,and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not
happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be
confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response ofNew Yorkers to September 11).

So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?

To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a
description from a Washington Times story:

"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists,
knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.

"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....

"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened
Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with
shoot-to-kill orders. " 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "

The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?

Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further
destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?

My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a
sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)

What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a
whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the
informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.

No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about
saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own
anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their
businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.

[nickinSTL]

1. what a load of absolute crap

n/t

[Waya]

7. People haven't reacted the way they have in other disasters.....

...I guess when you have thousands of people trapped in buildings with no food, no water and other necesseties, for days on end, it is not surprising that they take survival into their own hands and do what they have to......Maybe they haven't REACTED the way people have in other disasters...but never before have people in a disaster been made to way that long before the Feds got their ACT together, got off their asses and sent help.

[Triana]

2. That we have such abject POVERTY in the richest...

...country in the world is the story that no one is reporting. "The projects" are not the problem - they are a SYMPTOM of the problem.

Your neighbor is barking up the wrong tree.

[benburch]

3. That is indeed pure hate.

I get similar and worse things sent to me at White Rose all the time.

[flowomo]

4. I got the same one myself....

although I had seen this article when it came out, I was so angry to see it again that I wrote my weekly newspaper column about it, which will be published today. Here's an advance look:

Some people say this is not the time for what they trivializingly describe as "the blame game" for the initially ineffective response to the devastation of New Orleans.
They are wrong.
Local, state and federal agencies were all shamefully unprepared to deal with a disaster repeatedly predicted, and even foretold in detail. Questions must be asked while the American public is still paying attention -- and assigning responsibility for the deadly failures won't hinder the ongoing efforts at rescue.
But in this debate over blame, one particularly scurrilous argument has received widespread attention and apparently gained some credibility. It was made by Robert Tracinski, editor and publisher of a magazine called The Intellectual Activist.
I saw Tracinski's poisonous rant the day it was published, and normally would be loath to spread awareness of it, but a friend I admire and respect later e-mailed it to me. He said it was "provocative." I confess I got angry because, perhaps wrongly, I took the word "provocative" to mean "worth considering."
It is provocative -- but in the sense of "infuriatingly stupid."
Tracinski claims the destruction of New Orleans "is not a natural disaster" but "a man-made disaster." The real story is not about "rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting."
The horror in New Orleans, Tracinski insists, was not the result of a hurricane, or the breakdown of emergency planning and response, but was "the psychological consequences of the welfare state.... and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages."
This explains "the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans."
The city, he aserts, was left in the hands of "large numbers" of people who were not "normal" but were "criminals... and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness."
Of course, the vast majority of those trapped in New Orleans were black -- many lacking the money or vehicles to flee or anywhere to go if they could.
Tracinksi's cruel eye is not on the tens of thousands of dead, injured and displaced -- but on the handful of people who engaged in violence and looting before government provided meaningful help.
We do not yet know how widespread the violence and looting were. The news media seized on it in the first few days, and perhaps inflated its significance, as part of its need to create conflict and drama.
The Associated Press, for example, was castigated for writing photo captions that described white people carrying bags of goods as "finding" or "shopping" while blacks were said to be "looting."
In fact, many desperate people were taking food, water, diapers and medicine from abandoned stores. Do you really find that so shocking? Sure, a few ripped off TVs and clothes -- but aren't your local stores robbed now and then too?
Isolated incidents of residents shooting at emergency personnel were heavily publicized, but they were rare occurrences.
And most cases of rapes and beatings seem to have taken place in the hot, stinking, lawless chaos of the convention center and Superdome where people had been herded like cattle and abandoned.
Tracinski was actually forced to retract his claim that "New Orleans police let criminals out of the jails" and that these criminals ("welfare parasites" who "used to live in the housing projects") were the "real story." He lamely said he had "not been able to confirm it."
But Tracinski's core assertion -- that "welfare" drained the people of New Orleans of their decency and turned them into rampaging animals -- is gaggingly ignorant.
Looting?
What about the Enron executives who systematically looted the company, lining their pockets with millions stolen from their trusting workers?
What about Halliburton's looting of the American public? As Jeffrey St. Clair wrote in Counterpunch, that company's fatcats have made billions from the war in Iraq amid charges of massive overbilling, shoddy work, bribery and political influence-peddling. The U.S.
treasury nailed Halliburton red-handed for bilking the government for $108.4 million in overcharges on just "one task order."
I don't suppose many of those well-educated, sharply dressed executives had grown up in the projects or cashed a lot of welfare checks. So what explains their criminal appetites?
Violence?
What about the nice, middle-class folks in Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles and other cities who engaged in violent rioting after their baseball, football or basketball teams won championships? Had they been molded into "abnormal" savages because they lived in public housing or cashed a few AFDC checks?
And Tracinski overlooks the multitude of examples of patience, courage and generosity exhibited by the residents of New Orleans. Why didn't they become depraved "abnormals"?
People of every class, color and income level are prone to violent and greedy behavior when they sense an opportunity or are engulfed in chaos. The people of New Orleans behaved remarkably well given the way they were abandoned by their governments.
The purpose of Tracinski's obscene assault on Katrina's victims is to dull our willingness to assist them, and to convince us to deny poor people everywhere what meager public assistance government now provides.
How could he engage in such "moral ugliness"?
I guess he must have been raised on welfare.

Rich Lewis' e-mail address is [e-mail]

[laylah]

8. Excellent!

May I have a link to your newspaper so that I might pass on this great piece of work?

Jenn

[flowomo]

10. yes, it goes online at about 12 noon or so....

I write a weekly column and the website just adds the latest one on top of the previous one. Right now, this link gives you last week's column (you might like that one, too!) but later on, the same link will go to the new one:

www.cumberlink.com/articles/2005/09/07/editorial/rich_lewis/lewis01.txt

to see all my recent columns:
www.cumberlink.com/articles/2005/09/07/editorial/rich_lewis/

(go to the bottom of the page for me)

[laylah]

Thanks! Will do n/t

[laylah]

29. Excellent column!

I have bookmarked for further reading. Thank you!

Jenn

[OneTwentyoNine]

41. Great...and you can add Denver to your list of upper class riots...

http://www.cnn.com/US/9801/26/denver.riots/

That state votes Repuke just like most of Kansas does next door. There have actually been several riots,every time the Broncos win the Super bowl. Must be those damn black,crack addicts once again.

[Inland]

5. Golly, I wonder who the parasites and criminals are, exactly?

Are they the fraction of a percent that actually commit crimes or receive welfare?

Or are they everybody who lives in a city, receives disaster assistance, or gets something like free education?

After all, there's a "significant overlap" in the populations, right?

I wonder if the Mississippi and Alabama coasts also suffered a man made disaster of the welfare state? I wait with baited breath to understand why Trent Lott's destroyed house is a natural disaster and the flooded Ninth Ward home of a NO middle class educated black man is a result of his sucking at the teat of the welfare state.

[Nikki Stone 1]

38. YES!! Perfect!!

"I wait with baited breath to understand why Trent Lott's destroyed house is a natural disaster and the flooded Ninth Ward home of a NO middle class educated black man is a result of his sucking at the teat of the welfare state.:

[zbdent]

40. That's because Trent Lott is a "finder"

and the guy in New Orleans is a "looter" . . .

Edited to add: :sarcasm:

[Art_from_Ark]

6. What a jerk

spewing Libertarian crap

pfffffft

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. Reply to your neighbor as follows:

"So, you're just openly a racist now?"

That's it. Then ostracize. These people need tough love. They need to be shown that their behavior is hurting themselves and others. Inform your neighbor that he is cut off, and that you'll have nothing to do with him any more.

[nmliberal]

27. Thank you for your short and simple response.

It just feels so right.

[bunkerbuster1]

11. Not surprised. It's what much of White America believes.

"Dumb niggers" -- only they call them "blacks" today -- more or less reaped what they sowed.

It's beginning to sink in that there really are two Americas, but it's not really the economic divide so much, as John Edwards likes to say.

There are willfully ignorant and heartless pricks who vote Republican and digest only those facts that fit their prejudices; and there are enlightened, decent people who are willing to look wayy back into the past and wayy ahead into the future to try to seek real solutions.

The willfully ignorant and heartless pricks are just believing what they want to believe about NO. Chimpy McFuckstain will continue to be Preznit. We'll lose in 2006, and probably in 2008.

This is a grotesque oversimplification, but it makes it easier to cope with shit like that forwarded email.

[win_in_06]

12. What do you expect from a writer who lists as his sources

Fox News and the Washington Times.

[TheCowsCameHome]

13. Did the eyeholes in his hood hinder his ability to type this?

Nice neighbor, eh?

[ProudDad]

32. Maybe the author was overcome

by the smoke from his burning cross...

[yy4me]

14. This same e-mail was forwarded to us by a retired military

member. I zipped him a reply to fast that I'm sure his eyes were stinging after reading it. I never saw such a stupid, ill conceived piece of prejudiced bull and I told him so. He did not e-mail me back. I wondered who in his right mind can even begin to accept this baloney. I'm glad you posted this, I don't know how to cut and paste something from an e-mail or even if it can be done but I would have sent it to DU if I could. I'm not sure of the position of the fellow who e-mailed it, he said "someone just sent it to him", for what its worth. I'll tell you what its worth. NOTHING

[buff2]

15. I would move

I wouldn't want to live anywhere NEAR that racist moron.That is one sick SOB. It's the true face of the republican party. :puke:

[laylah]

18. Trust me buff2

If I wasn't such a great example of our wonderful "economic recovery", I would, in a heartbeat. As it is, I am stuck for awhile longer.

Jenn

[RubyDuby in GA]

16. Only four decades

Try four hundred years of being made slaves to the "civilized whites." Those people in New Orleans were probably born poor and would have died poor without anyone knowing had it not been for this disaster to pull back the veil and shine the ugly truth for all the world to see.

Tell your neighbor that the true America has no place for such arrogant, bigoted racists like him and if he doesn't like it he can kiss my lily-white ass!

[drthais]

17. my husband got this email at work yesterday

he works for Georgia Pacific
and someone in the corporate hierarchy sent it around to other managerial types

he was so furious that he sent the culprit
a copy of Maureen Dowds latest column
then he had to just leave work

he was fuming when he got home

[PA Democrat]

35. He should send a copy of the email to the company's Human Resources

Dept. I doubt that use of company computers and time to spread racist emails is something that the company would support.

[melissinha]

19. If James Lee Witt were in charge...

THe disaster would have been due only to the Hurricane.

Right wing zealots dismantled FEMA because they claimed it was a public program of entitlement, meanwhile they divert the funds from entitled victims to corporations.

Rachel Maddow interviewed George Haddow the deputy chief of staff at FEMA during the Clinton Administration.
Haddow described how FEMA used to work.. he said that there would be no "blame game" because federal, state and local agencies would work side by side in unison.... this means it used to be coordinated and obviously no room for what looks to be a coordinated effort to undermine local and state authorities.

[abluelady]

20. I Received That Too

I was shocked. I do know some racists but they keep it hidden. I wrote back to this one saying I was amazed that she would send out such a racist article to others. Glad she is an acqaintance, not a friend, because she wouldn't be a friend anymore!

[laylah]

21. I followed up

my first response with: Do me a favor and keep your racist bullshit to yourself :mad:

Jenn

[abluelady]

22. Good for You

Life is too short to spend time with such people!

[underpants]

23. I'm not

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=152276

[guruoo]

24. Speaking of welfare...

<>

[faithfulcitizen]

25. Wow, seems many got it, and memo to pass it around.

Fox will be reporting it shortly.

[underpants]

26. Fred Barnes, "Well you know Britt some people say......."

:grr:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

28. The racists have crawled out of the woodwork

I was impressed to see how orderly the majority of the stranded people were, how they helped one another, and how the majority of them "looted" only to get necessities. (I remember a shot of a woman giving a baby some orange juice. If she got that orange juice out of a store to save that child's life, more power to her!)

That right-wing bozo was probably writing his diatribe in an air-conditioned office with a bottled water vending machine and an executive washroom down the hall and a deli on the first floor. How dare he judge the actions of starving, dehydrated people who were forced to sit around in 90+ degree temperatures among dead bodies?

I'm a middle-aged, middle-class white woman who has nothing on her record but accidentally running a stop sign, and under those conditions, I don't know what I would have done? Probably cracked up and started screaming and babbling, for all I know.

The poor people of New Orleans were more sinned against than sinning.

[Art_from_Ark]

44. Well said, Lydia

:toast:

[Wordie]

30. He hasn't read Victor Frankl...people who have no hope (such as those who

have been oppressed for ages) react very differently than middle class persons who have confidence that the system values them enough that it will protect/rescue them.

[ProudDad]

31. Rascist Slime

Your neighbor is a rascist pig if he/she believes this shit.

[laylah]

34. DING! DING! DING!

We have a winner! He IS a racist pig and he DOES believe this hateful stuff. I told him to keep his racist bullshit to himself. He and his ilk are what is wrong with this world!

As a woman living alone for over three years, he and his wife have been very kind to me; however, once I started seeing his racist/bigoted mind-set, I have had to back off. This e-mail was the icing on the cake!

Jenn

[texpatriot2004]

33. The people of the Lie. This makes my blood boil.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not
happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

[Nikki Stone 1]

36. Don't be floored. You knew they were gonna go there.

Do notice, however, that even FAUX makes it clear that 75% of NO residents got the hell out. Tell THAT to the people who blame the local officials for the disaster.

[laylah]

39. I agree; however

I never dreamed I would know anyone who would "go there" with me. I feel dirty :puke:

Jenn

[interupt]

37. Google is your friend

Regular contributor to FR
http://www.freerepublic.com/~roberttracinski/

The only way to get things published launch a "blog" you have to pay for.
http://www.intellectualactivist.com/

TIA Daily will provide you with a concise news digest gathering together links to the day’s most interesting news reports on the Web, carefully selected according to TIA’s unique philosophic perspective, with brief comments on the wider meaning and future implications of each news item.

(Care to guess what the bold means? anyone?)

Popular I see...

Robert Tracinski's Radio/TV show appearances
Sep 06, 2005
Robert Tracinski is available for Radio and TV show appearances. Please write to [e-mail] with "PRESS" in the subject line.

Scheduled appearances:

September 6, 4:00pm Eastern - WZNN 1350, Asheville, NC

[CTyankee]

42. Ask them "Where would Jesus be?"

with the rich and comfortable or with the wretched poor? Hmm....

[Roland99]

43. Robert Tracinski is the editor of The Intellectual Activist magazine

http://www.freerepublic.com/~roberttracinski/

"Robert Tracinski is the editor of The Intellectual Activist magazine and of TIA Daily, which offers daily news and analysis from a pro-individualist perspective."

:puke:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

45. Pro-individualist=

"It's all about me and my money."

[TexasThoughtCriminal]

46. Note the date of this drivel: Sept 2

Last Friday looting and despair were still a large part of this disaster story. As the shock recedes, the story has broadened to issues of poverty, racism, federal incompetence & corruption, corpses, and personal stories of human tragedy & compassion. Though cretins like Tracinski will always be among us, his hateful thesis will lose currency as the looting story becomes a small footnote in the history of the Katrina/Bush disaster.

[bkcc]

47. Why are you surprised?

Republicans and conservatives are narrow-minded assholes. What have they done in the past..oh, I don't know...15 years to make you think that they have a shred of compassion or decency?

Of course they would think something like this. After all, anyone who is poor only has themselves to blame, right??

People who write shit like this are racist, ignorant, and the lowest of the low.

[Bryn]

48. I Got the same shit from my Freeper Relative

this morning. I was going to post it, but you already did so it's going around and around now...making Freepers happy happppppy!!

What a piece of shit!! I'd love to reply!

[thecrow]

50. I think they picked out the most vitriolic peace and sent it

Nice... they can cut and paste.
Big deal. They still can't THINK!!!!

[McCamy Taylor]

49. Would have been worse in any other city. NOLA is full of nice people.

[Catrina]

51. Yes, NOLA apparently is full of very patient, and nice people

This dolt hasn't been listening to the news.

Fox has been pushing this 'crime wave' and 'welfare state' crap from the beginning. The propaganda machine is hard at work.

But today, the police chief of NO, I believe, went on CNN to say that this kind of crap is all lies. He said the 'widespread rape' stories are garbage. They had two reports of 'attempted rape' at the Convention center which they handled.

He said the people were calm and despite the horror of their situation, maintained order amongst themselves and helped each other as much as they could to survive.

I believe HIM, and I think all this hate-filled, racist garbage should be saved for posterity, as the truth unfolds and they will be exposed for what they are.

I hope no one I know, dares to send me that piece of garbage ~ but it's a product of the usual suspects, with whom we are all now familiar.

Freerepublic, Fox, Drudge, rightwing hate radio and Newsmax ~ the sooner this chain of propaganda spewers is exposed to the sunlight, the better. They were allowed to fester for way too long ~ we should take their crap and use it as an example of the Bush administration's hateful hidden agenda.

I will show this to my friends and use it as exhibit A of all that's been wrong with this country for way too long ~ that's about the only good purpose I can think of using it for. To really scare people about the radical rightwing in this country.

[ismnotwasm]

52. I had gotten that one also

From a libertarian I know. My husband, who didn't read it through, thought is was * bashing for some reason, and forwarded it to a few people. Talk about EMBARRASSING. (To be fair, my husband has MS, and has a difficult time interpreting written words. He's now under strict orders to have me help interpret such things prior to forwarding anything!)It's vile nonsense. The person who originally sent it to me is going to get told off in person, probably tonight. Usually I send an email, please don't send me these types of emails-blah blah, but this crap deserves a in person dressing down. The who sent it guy isn't a * fan, he just has some very strange ideas about the government's role in things.

[ginnyinWI]

53. Then do something about it!

That's what I'd say to this guy. Create jobs. Educate. Build up the infrastructure so that we don't have so many poor! Let our taxes go to these rather than the wealthys' toys.

But anyway, it's a no-brainer: you always have to call in the National Guard ASAP when a disaster hits and you have no regular law enforcement. Duh.

[TheFarseer]

54. YEAH, If people would get of their butts and get a job

we wouldn't have hurricanes! :sarcasm:

If you don't like welfare - fine, but don't try to act like that's why this disaster happened. What the hell difference does it make if the people in the Superdome were on welfare of working for minimum wage at Walmart when the cat 5 hurricane is coming? I struggle to connect these dots.