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Posted on 05/03/2008 8:48:06 AM PDT by HairOfTheDog
Heh...I dunno. He towers above me and Steve (being short folks, you know) and he’s a former pipe-fitter.
The thing is, he’s nuts, old, and has nothing to loose. He once told me that...he told me when his house got egged if he ever caught the kids that did it he was gonna shoot them, because he has nothing to loose.
Eek! I hope maybe he’ll forget about it.
You just watch...it’ll be me that has the stroke.
...and they can’t get the soybean crop planted....
It's temptin'. Can I send him collect?
At lunchtime we went downtown to get fingerprints done for our Utah non-resident permits, and apply for our Iowa ones.
I don’t find the cake decorating thing to have anything to do with Talon’s manliness... for one thing I’m not sure when the last time was he cooked for us...
Okay, I'll say this once (at least). Yes, you've got major issues out there in the midwest and yes, it is absolutely not fair that there is not more attention being placed on it. But the issue with Katrina is just not that simple.
Missisippi handled it a lot better than New Orleans. No question about it. And I suspect that's only one reason why we now have Governor Jindal in Louisiana.
But you can't place all the blame on the victims. Yes, they're angry (still), they're hurt (still), they're homeless (still), but they were also royally screwed. The entire mess was one big cluster**** from the beginning. Everybody screwed up. Bush, FEMA, Blanco, Nagin and on and on.
But even with that, when the relief came, it didn't always get to the right people. Sometimes it went to people three or four times. Sometimes it when to people from Minnesota and New York who had never lived in New Orleans, but showed up and claimed to have lost everything. They got a FEMA check.
Even this many years later, the devastation is still horrifying. Over half the city population of New Orleans didn't return. You don't see that downtown. You don't see that unless you get out into places like the 9th Ward or Gentilly.
I don't know if the FEMA trailers are making anyone sick. But they are miserable places. I've been in one. Think about the average "camper" you could pull with a pickup. They ~might~ be that large.
Yes there are whiners, and they make good TV and they give a good excuse to blame President Bush. But you can't paint with a broad brush and put everyone in that category. For the most part, New Orleans ~is~ out of the news because downtown and the French Quarter are back. But many of the residents outside those areas feel like ~they've~ been forgotten. Most aid groups have pulled out. There are still church groups and some others going down, but most of them are heading elsewhere as well.
When we were there several of our group went to the funeral of an elderly man we'd helped before. He spent 4 days in his attic because after all he'd been told that the storm had passed, the city had been spared and that the levees would never break. It was literally months before he was able to come out of his FEMA trailer and even look at his house.
I can tell you lots of those stories because I've been there. And I've met the people. Some of whom haven't even ~seen~ TV in years.
< /end of rant>
I don’t think cooking has anything to do with “manliness” either...
I hear you, brother.
On the other hand, I can’t help wondering...if the billion and a half dollars spent by the government on New Orleans relief thus far had been divided per capita among the residents thereof, each would have received nearly a half-million dollars in cash. Do you suppose they could have bought new houses and started their lives over with that amount of cha-ching?
A lot more went to waste than fraud, IMHO, and hasn’t stopped yet.
Oh, there's no question there. But just like every big government program, the money never gets to those who really need it.
Reagan proved in his "Up from Dependency" report that at that time, we could have dismantled the welfare system and sent a check for $18,000 to every single family under the poverty level.
And a lot of that N.O. money that didn't go to waste or fraud went to rebuild the tourist areas.
They say you get what you pay for....and we pay all this tax money to the govt and what do we get? Squat.
no... we get more opportunities to pay more taxes... and seethem wasted by pandering politicians...
Yep, even my retiring GOP congressman lacked fiscal restraint. No matter who we vote for we get more of the same.
I’ll foot half the bill... I can get it back from him later... I can garnish his wages...
That’s why I’d be willin’ tuh be emperor for a year... one year is all I need, then I’d gladly hand the reigns over...
I’d have the backhoes busy... when a year is up, anyone that held office at the Fed level would be gone... term limits would be in place... the days of the profeesional politician and beauracrat would be gone...
and the soil around DC would be much more fertile...
Sounds like a much better plan that what we have now.
Road Trip?
If’n you keep him, you can have his wages.
I did get some good(ish) news today though. I thought my insurance plan said he had to be a full time student to stay on my insurance (without additional life threatening charges). But I checked today and he can stay on until the end of the year he’s 23 as long as he’s livin’ here.
That covers the “don’t have to rush through college” plan.
...Y2K??!!
Remember the panic surrounding...
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