They Really Dropped the Ball..

[dissention]

Originally Posted by sodascouts

Ah. Perhaps we should compile a list of things one is not allowed to do within a certain number of days after a disaster, which also needs to be determined. I am sure Josh can help us with this.

Sure. I think it's obvious how inappropriate it is to do such things while there is literally no real help for the people down there. For her to go on vacation in the middle of this is shocking because of the audacity involved in doing so.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by Brwn_eyes0511

I agree with you. I don't think unless you were there...that anyone of us could know what it was like, and what it is like now. Time, energy, effort, all these things a good evacuation make! I think considering we are only human, things are being taken care of now as fast as they can be.

My brother was there. He went on his own with 500 other self-organized people from the state govt. and pulled people out of houses at his own peril. So, don't hand me that.

[estranged4life]

FEMA="F**ked Every Minority Around" in NOLA!!!!

[sodascouts]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

My brother was there. He went on his own with 500 other self-organized people from the state govt. and pulled people out of houses at his own peril. So, don't hand me that.

That's very admirable. I hope everyone in your family is OK, BTW.

[Mad4stevie]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

My brother was there. He went on his own with 500 other self-organized people from the state govt. and pulled people out of houses at his own peril. So, don't hand me that.

I am surprised that he was allowed to go in. I have heard numerous stories of others driving there to help and being refused access because of the shooting, etc.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by sodascouts

Ah. Perhaps we should compile a list of things one is not allowed to do within a certain number of days after a disaster, which also needs to be determined. I am sure Josh can help us with this.

Edit: Oops there I go being sarcastic again! But that's the way some of us deal with conflict. In fact one of my friends wrote an interesting article on sarcasm being the weapon especially of women... but I won't get into that. At any rate I do not see why sarcasm is any less legitimate than other means of expressing criticism. In fact I often find it a little more amusing than the other types.

Here's one - follow the plan you set in place years before that

Here's another, when people offer vast amounts of help while you are still thinking about what to do - take them up on their offer - it will save the lives you are supposed to be saving.

Finally, don't let W or his cronies anywhere near any place that needs to be evacuated in less than five or more days.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by Mad4stevie

I am surprised that he was allowed to go in. I have heard numerous stories of others driving there to help and being refused access because of the shooting, etc.

If Harry Connick Jr. and Charmaine Neville can drive right on in there to help people...

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by Mad4stevie

I am surprised that he was allowed to go in. I have heard numerous stories of others driving there to help and being refused access because of the shooting, etc.

Many went. Many are helping on their own. Many know places the Feds have no clue about. Also, the state govt. was organizing on its own once FEMA deceided it could not give any assistance other than rescue and the dome feedings until Friday.

[Mad4stevie]

Originally Posted by dissention

If Harry Connick Jr. and Charmaine Neville can drive right on in there to help people...

Yeah, I know. It was just something that I had read about. I don't know much about access to the city, so I don't know what all ways people can get in there.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by sodascouts

That's very admirable. I hope everyone in your family is OK, BTW.

Thanks they are. My bother is displaced, but his house is relatively fine. He, a staunch Bush supporter until now, cannot stand W. He told me about things I just cannot even believe - deafening cries for help from 360 degrees, so many bodies floating you could walk across them, the smell of death, animals feeding, and some so horrible I will not say them here. This was in America. I am so horrified I cannot sleep at night.

[David]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Many went. Many are helping on their own.

Nobody in my family went to help. I am extremely disappointed over their selfishness & laziness. I told them so recently. We really hashed it out.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by David

Nobody in my family went to help. I am extremely disappointed over their selfishness & laziness. I told them so recently. We really hashed it out.

LOL - I think they should have walked from Cali to help

[David]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

LOL - I think they should have walked from Cali to help

Don't stand up for them. They're rotten selfish batards.

All of this makes me want to go watch "Paddle to the Sea." Amber, do you want a DVD copy of "Paddle to the Sea"?

[Mad4stevie]

Ya'll gonna love this . . .

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9206991/

Some evacuees see religious message in Katrina
Across three states, survivors weigh links among faith, sin and the storm

HOUSTON - In the last week, Joseph Brant lost his apartment, walked by scores of dead in the streets, traversed pools of toxic water and endured an arduous journey to escape the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in his hometown New Orleans.

On Sunday, he was praising the Lord, saying the ordeal was a test that ended up dispelling his lifelong distrust of white people and setting his life on a new course. He said he hitched a ride Friday in a van driven by a group of white folks.

“Before this whole thing I had a complex about white people; this thing changed me forever,” said Brant, 36, a truck driver who, like many of the refugees receiving public assistance in Houston, Texas, is black.

“It was a spiritual experience for me, man,” he said of the aftermath of a catastrophe al Qaida-linked Web sites called evidence of the “wrath of God” striking an arrogant America.

Brant was one of the evacuees across Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi who gave thought to religion Sunday, almost a week after the floods changed their lives, perhaps forever.

For one, ‘the work of Satan’
At the Astrodome in Houston, where 16,000 refugees received food and shelter, Rose McNeely took the floods as a sign from God to move away from New Orleans, where she said her two grown children had been killed in past years in gunfights.

“I lost everything I had in New Orleans,” she said as she shared a cigarette with a friend. “He brought me here because he knows.”

Gerald Greenwood, 55, collected a free Bible earlier in the morning, but sat watching a science fiction television program above the stands in an enclosed stadium once home to Houston’s baseball and football teams. “This is the work of Satan right here,” he said of the floods.

The Bible was one of the few books many of the refugees had among their possessions. On Friday, several Jehovah’s Witnesses walked the floor of the Astrodome, where thousands of cots were set up, to offer their services.

For another, the wages of sin
On Sunday, the Salvation Army conducted an outside religious service that included songs such as “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

“Natural disaster is caused by the sin in the world,” said Maj. John Jones, area commander for the Salvation Army, who led the service. “The acts of God are what happens afterwards ... all the good that happens.”

“God made all this happen for a reason. This city has been going to hell in a handbasket spiritually,” Tim Washington, 42, said at New Orleans’ Superdome Saturday as he waited to be evacuated.

“If we can spend billions of dollars chasing after [Osama] bin Laden, can’t we get guns and drugs off the street?”, he asked. Washington said he stole a boat last Monday and he and a friend, using wooden fence posts as oars, delivered about 200 people to the shelter. “The sheriff’s department stood across the street and did nothing,” he added.

The Salvation Army’s Jones was one of many trying to comfort victims in Sunday services across several states.

What God demands
At St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Baton Rouge, several hundred local parishioners and storm survivors attended the Sunday service. “I wish we could take your broken hearts and give you ours,” Rev. Donald Blanchard told the gathering.

In addition to consoling storm victims, the church’s lead pastor, Jerald Burns, said Katrina’s tragedy needed to be a rallying cry for parishioners, church leaders and government leaders to help the needy.

“It’s not what God is asking of us,” Burns said. “It is what God is demanding of us.”

Some people walked out of the church in tears in mid-service.

Churches in many states have taken in evacuees and organized aid for people who in many cases lost everything they had in the storm. But at least some bristled at the role of religion in helping the afflicted.

“We’re getting reports of how some religion-based ’aid’ groups are trying to fly evangelists into the stricken areas and how U.S. Army chaplains are carrying bibles -- not food or water -- to ’comfort’ people,” Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheist, said in a statement.

“People need material aid, medical care and economic support -- not prayers and preaching,” she said.

Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

[amber]

Originally Posted by amber

You guys who are saying we shouldn't be blaming, and denying that the gov't didn't care about these people might want to read this.

If they had cared, they would have, like the article said, spent more time and money shoring up new orleans, instead of Washington. Read the bold part again - sounds like they didn't care, to me. Do you really need the literal words "they don't care about the people in New Orleans" to infer that they don't? Their actions show they don't. And you're smart, I think you can see that just as well as I can. it's all about someone's actions. They can say a billion times that they care, but if they don't do anything to help those people - it's obvious they don't care.