Amie Stuart ~ On the Back Porch

Kate says:

I’ve spent a lot of my life believing that other people will do the fighting and I could remain happily….not indifferent… but not activist. It’s startling to see how wrong that is. On the other hand, I’m teetering close to the crazy edge of magical thinking (that I can control the world with my thoughts). That’s supposed to end at about age seven, right?

I have made it a huge point to avoid the news for years (but esp the last three or four years) *ahem* because what I saw was a corrupt government that wasn’t changing and I knew that at some point the train that is our country was going to wreck. Guess what? I hate to keep ragging about government ineptness right now, but my fear is that three and six months down the road, people will forget. Guess what? At the rate we’re going, we’ll hop right over a recession and just skip to the good stuff.

If I shut up about governmental inneptness, will you forget? Or will you just breathe a big sigh of relief because I finaly shut up? I’m not an activist. I tried the activist bit once. After five years I just flat out burnt out. An adoptees rights to open records is still something I believe in but as long as our president has any power, Texas will not have open records (Bush is vehemently against open records). If Texas, one of the largest states in the union can’t secure open records for ADULT adoptees, what makes me think that those who are truly responsible for the post-Katrina disaster will be held accountable? I would be shocked if they were. But the idealist in me hopes you don’t forget. :heythere:

I’ve been good for two days but when I saw this clip on the Daily Show last night, I thought it was a joke.

The president calls the head of FEMA Brownie? WTF?

Last week, President Bush demonstrated support for Mr Brown on a visit to the Gulf Coast region, telling him: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

Trent Lott on Brownie:

“If he doesn’t solve a couple of problems that we’ve got right now, he ain’t going to be able to hold the job, because what I’m going to do to him ain’t going to be pretty,” Mr Lott said.

tsk tsk….Bush might not want to sit on his porch if he hurts Dear Brownie….

Edited to add this link. Be sure to check out the memo.
________
Americas Second Harvest….courtesy of the blondes who’s link kate hooked me up with.
Missingkids.com - search for Katrina Lost persons.
Nora Roberts and Habitat for Humanity.

So help me, God.

The World is Watching…..from the Guardian.

Two thoughts occur: that systemic negligence causing death and suffering on a grand scale merits presidential impeachment rather more than does sex in the office; and that a fundamentalist Christian, contemptuous of scientific evidence, might respond to a sign from God.
Edward Pearce
Thormanby, Yorks

Donald Rumsfeld declared the looting in Iraq following “liberation” to be the consequence of “the pent-up feelings that result from decades of oppression”. We await his wisdom on New Orleans.
Chris Mazeika
London

Shame on the world’s only superpower that it seems not to have planned for, nor to have the ability, to help its poor in this natural disaster.
Margaret Fawcett
London

Katrina exposes the hollowness of the American dream.
RMJ Harvey-Amer
Croydon, Surrey

BTW Where’s Dick?

Oh yeah…..

The grisliest quote of the week, the one to cut out and keep, came when reporters asked Lea Anne McBride what her boss was doing as New Orleans sank, stank and suppurated. “He’s working from Wyoming today,” said Vice-President Dick Cheney’s official spokesman brightly.

At least he wasn’t shoe shopping.

Kate said in the comments below:

I’m stuck up on this soapbox and I can’t seem to climb down.

My comment got so long I decided to make it a new post.

It’s okay Kate. I DO understand. I guess as much as it’s about race it’s about class, or maybe haves and have-nots. In the case of NO the majority of the have-nots are black.

Some people are blantantly racist. Some people are subtlely racist and some people are just flat out stupid racist. I’m not sure how to classify the photo link that Kate posted. But you can take and substitute class-conscious (for lack of a better word) in place of racist if you like.
(more…)

I have so much more I want to say. Maybe I’ll just sit here and ramble. Maybe I’ll finally STFU. There are more blogs out there with information than I can ever link to. Opinions that left my cackling and bouncing up and down in my seat. Photos that left me angry as hell. Scalzi’s list on being poor that I had to leave my own on.

Right now all I can do is sit here and count my blessings. I’m so lucky. I finally overloaded and took the kids to a movie because making the blog circuit had taken on the feel of a train wreck. I can’t even write. But you know what? At least I could go to a movie today and for that I’m eternally thankful (and feeling more than a little bit guilty about).

While I was at the movies, I saw this on the poster for “V is for Vendetta”……

“People should not be afraid of their government. The government should be afraid of their poeple.”

More than a little appropriate. Bless you, Kanye West for having the balls to say on national television what so many of us were thinking.

I’m a firm believer in signs and not just the big honking billboards like Katrina. Life as we know it is over, and has been for a while. I’m not thinking of something as obvious as revolution (though the thought has MUCH meritt :uzi: . At it’s most basic level, I suppose revolution is nothing more than change); I’m just talking about LIFE.

I’ll just leave a little Common Sense…..

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an in tolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer!

Link whorage of the head shaking kind….
I’m disgusted that the last picture 20/20 showed was Bush hugging some crying black woman. Can you say propaganda, boys and girls? :pimpn:
From USAToday

“The people of our city are holding on by a thread,” Mayor Ray Nagin warned in a statement to CNN. “Time has run out. Can we survive another night? And who can we depend on? Only God knows.” Earlier, in a rambling radio interview, Nagin erupted in tears and anger, saying, “Get off your asses and let’s do something.”

From Monica: A Rant

From Raine: A Rant

Glommed from Monica’s site…… Florida Blues

From USA Today:

Four days after Katrina killed hundreds if not thousands, Republicans joined Democrats in wondering why it was taking so long to relieve the misery of so many people living in squalor without the necessities of life.

That’s what I’m screamin…….:loser:

And after Pat Roberts wanted to shoot his ass…
Cuba and Venezuela have offered to help despite differences with Washington.

Musicians pledge more than a professional sports team–they’re from Texas and they play baseball. I won’t mention any *coughrangerscough* names.

Sean “Diddy” Combs and Jay-Z have pledged $1 million to the American Red Cross to help victims of Hurricane Katrina

**Edited to add John Scalzi’s take on being poor.

And The Greg Biffle Foundation is organizing an auction to help animal shelters on the Gulf.

Can someone please explain to me why we can spy on people from BILLIONS Of miles away in outter space but we’re still dependant upon fossil fuel (and the countries who pump and refine it) to run our cars? Can someone please explain to me why Ford made a Hybrid SUV and not a Hybrid car? Can someone please explain to me WHO is getting rich? Cuz I guaran-damn-tee you someone is and it ain’t us poor suckers.

How much is gas where you live? Here it was 2.59 for reg unleaded this am.
I’m so tempted to park my car and buy a moped….

*Edited to add two links I found from the news last night.
Dallas Gas Prices
Ft. Worth Gas Prices
Scooterists sing praises…

Randy Campbell sold 18 Vespas in three days last week, a record at his dealership. “Our numbers this year are on pace to be at least 400 percent over what we did last year,” he said. “Everybody who’s coming into the store seems to be asking about ‘How many miles per gallon do the scooters get?’ now, versus ‘What colors do you have?’ and ‘How fast will they go?’”