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All Katrina victims need is a tape of the Bible (since many of them can't read anyway) so they ca

Posted By: find out why God did this on 2005-09-19
In Reply to:

From http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news0905/relief.html


(My personal favorite part of this whole thing is the *trademark* sign next to *True Christians*)


Help Us Send Bibles to the Victims of Hurricane Katrina!

Faith-Based Response

Freehold, Iowa - Landover Baptist Church members have been glued to their television sets for the last few weeks, watching survivors of God's powerful hurricane (named Katrina by secular meteorologists) try to make sense of their ravaged lives. When you live in an area of the world God despises, and He gets ready to blow it off the map, you'd best duck low or high tail it out of town, says Pastor Deacon Fred. The Bible teaches us that when it comes to wiping out sinners, God has a history of having some pretty bad aim. This time I understand He knocked down a few church steeples and even took some good Christian folks back home with Him to Jesus. 


What saddens members of the Landover Baptist community the most however, is that the unsaved world is hell-bent on doling out artificial optimism to the victims of God's latest attack.  They are providing food, money, gasoline, and shelter, says Pastor Deacon Fred. These are temporary gifts that give these poor lost people a false hope!  The only real hope comes from the Word of God!  The Holy Bible! These folks need to get fed and sheltered on the Word of God.  We daresn't open our doors to the homeless, because we know it never gets at the real source of their problem, and we always end up with dirty floors. 


How are the lost of Katrina going to understand why God did this to them if they don't have a Bible to read? says Pastor Deacon Fred. How are they ever going to be able to prevent it from happening to them again, if they are not able to study the Word of God?  Through the Bible, history teaches us that God has serious issues with large cities that condone prostitution, abortion, homosexuality, mixing of the races, sexual promiscuity, drunkenness, idol worship, practicing false religions (voodoo), and loud pulsing music. Some of them folks in New Orleans, were luckier than Lot's wife though - they stayed behind even though they received the message to get out, and God spared their lives.


It is understandable that the survivors of God's hurricane are confused, starving, homeless, and distraught - but as True Christians™ we know without a doubt in our hearts, that giving them food and shelter is not going to solve the biggest and only real problem in their lives. In fact, it will turn them into beggars and make their misery even worse.  The issue that caused their condition is not an earthly condition at all.  We know that it is an eternal condition, and there is only one sweet balm to soothe a lost soul who has no respect for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.   And that is getting a Holy Bible KJV 1611 into their hands. From what I've seen of these survivors, I doubt many of them know how to read, so we will be sending Bibles on tape for them as well, says Pastor Deacon Fred. They can play the Bible tapes on the boom boxes it looks like they made it a priority to salvage or loot.  


Landover Baptist's effort to assist in providing Bibles to victims of Hurricane Katrina is known as a, faith-based response. It is our heartfelt hope that some worthwhile people might be saved from a destruction much more powerful than God's hurricanes - for they are but a precursor to what is really going to happen on that great and glorious day when He finally gets so ticked-off He just blows up the whole world.


So help us by sending a spiritual relief offering of no less than $100 (we do not accept checks, so please send cash, or money order) to:


BIBLES FOR HURRICANE VICTIMS
Landover Baptist Ministries
777 Soulwinner's Lane
Freehold, Iowa


If you are paying by credit card, please address your payment to:
Wexler Offshore Holdings - Care of Landover Baptist Ministries


What Will Be Done With My Faith Based Response Donation?


Each $100 gift will absorb the cost of printing and recording *Bibles, and packaging. 


Care packages to New Orleans flood victims will include the following:



  • 1 King James 1611 Bible or Bible on Tape
  • 1 Chick Tract (Assorted)
  • 1 Self Addressed Stamped Envelope
  • A small insert containing instructions on where to send a financial love offering of thanks to the Landover Baptist Church once the recipient of the care package gets back on their feet and receives their first paycheck.  

*Disclaimer:  If Landover Baptist receives reports that hurricane victims are using the pages of our Bibles are for hygienic purposes, such as toilet paper, we reserve the right to end this faith-based response effort immediately. 




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I actually think that Katrina victims have gotten...
more than enough compassion. Having just moved from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where the hurricane hit the hardest, by the way, not New Orleans, I have seen people milk this hurricane for all it's worth. It has been 3 years, for goodness sake. Don't whine because they are taking away your FEMA trailer--and some people steal them--get a freakin job already! Also, I would be so upset if my husband had to risk his life as a first responder to help people that should not have been there in the first place. They were told to leave and even given transportation, but many chose not to. I can understand those who are handicapped or very old, but able bodied, non-working, wefare begging young people make me angry and, no, I do not think that they deserve any more compassion. Every one of them can come up with enough money for several packs of cigarettes a week, but can't feed their kids or find a place to live on their own. It is a real problem.
911 and Katrina victims don't deserve compassion?
Wow....Oh that's right...he's on Fixed Noise.  That means he must be the perfect pub.  Get a grip.  The man's a radical right winger just like the rest of the crew over there.
911 and Katrina victims don't deserve compassion?
Wow....Oh that's right...he's on Fixed Noise.  That means he must be the perfect pub.  Get a grip.  The man's a radical right winger just like the rest of the crew over there, which is the why, by the way, he got kicked off CNN.  Hopefully Lou Dobbs will be next. 
If you truly have read the Bible then you know...
God makes no distinction for sin and lumps it all together except in a very few cases where the word *abomination* is attached, and homosexuality is one of those things. So I was not comparing a homosexual and a killer...I was comparing sins. And yes, we do sin, all of us, every day, and will have to account for that some day. But calling it other than a sin does not make it so, at least in my book. I did not call homosexuality an abomination...God did. So take your argument to Him. I choose to believe what He said. I do not hate anyone, I do not treat gays any differently than anyone else as fellow human beings. I have been lied to, stolen from...I don't hate those people, but I don't condone what they did. However, I do not condone homosexuality, any more than I condone lying, stealing, murder or any other sin. You can love an individual but not approve of the sin. That is what, I believe, treating others as you would be treated means. Treat the person with dignity without condoning the behavior. I don't believe in abortions, but I do not condone blowing up abortion clinics or shooting abortion doctors. I do not believe in changing laws to accept aberrant behavior, and we seem to keep trying to go down that road. Years ago, you are right...premarital sex did go on, but it was called what it was...a sin and something that should not be done. No longer the case. Same with homosexuality...it has gone on since time immemorial. But it was called wrong. There used to be laws against it in the US. No longer the case. What next? Polygamy? Bestiality? Necromancy? You say that could never happen here. Thirty years ago your parents probably would never have thought that adultery would be celebrated as entertainment news, premarital sex celebrated on prime time TV, and gay marriage becoming law. Just be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. We have experienced a big moral decline in this country and frankly, it did not begin with conservative Americans.

My opinion only...don't attack all conservatives for what I say. Opinions differ. That is mine.
Read your Bible. The

antichrist will come from Rome or EU.  Obama as the antichrist is absurd.


I don't read the bible
And I don't want to.

Don't get me wrong. I've read it. I decided at a pretty young age that it's a fairy tale that for the most part was written by a lot of people who weren't around when Jesus was & that didn't have all that much to do with reality. If it works for you, fine. I don't need to read in some book what the right thing to do is, & I don't assign any particular importance to Jesus. I find it irritating, condescending and naive for someone to suggest that I should "know Jesus" and have my life saved.

It's possible to think all of the above and still be a moral person, & what makes a lot of (not all) Christians narrow-minded is their belief that this isn't so, but they unfortunately can't see this from the narrow place from which they operate. Do I believe in God? I believe in the godhead; the life force; the force that drives the green shoot up, as Dylan Thomas would say; the inferno of activity in the nucleus of every cell... Do I believe this life force manifests as a person? Sure I do. The godhead is in everyone. Jesus didn't have any more of a hotline to the godhead than any of us has. The thing that makes a lot of (not all) Christians narrow-minded is their belief that "God" only speaks "Christian." This concept is too ridiculous for words. The godhead "speaks" every religious "language." I put this into quotes because I specifically don't personify the godhead; i.e., the godhead doesn't "do" the same things that a human body does, though in this instance it's a fairly good metaphor.

I believe that everything -- EVERYTHING -- came from the godhead. Because I'm not a Christian, I don't believe in "The devil," who is a big enough part of that religion that you really must accept the existence of the devil if you want to be Christian, & I don't think that kind of polarization is healthy, nor do I have any compulsion to externalize/personify every human impulse into a creature with horns or one that sits on a cloud or whatever. The universe creates trying, challenging scenarios of all sorts, which in the interest not just of survival but of enlightenment are our tasks to address, understand, & solve, & these would include ALL forms of religious extremism.

The bible is a book that simply doesn't interest me. There are spiritual books that do interest me for their complexity and illumination, but I don't need to live my life by any of them, & I don't need any of them to be a moral or spiritual person.

There are many religions much, much older than Christianity. The godhead was here long before any of it (& believe me, it was longer than 4000 years) & we as a species did not only obtain the capacity for enlightenment after the bible was written or after Jesus arrived.

If you "love Jesus," great. Go for it. Just don't end a conversation with some smug, proselytizing last word that in the end is just a way to think you are superior.
yeah and what religion is that anyway. I read the bible
and when I hear people like Palin addressing someone in the audience 'god bless you sir' and then without even taking a breath turning and stirring up hate and fear, boasting her son is over in Iraq fighting for freedom of speech, well it does not add up. No thanks,

I never really cared for Hillary but at least she did not come off as some kind of a kook
Are you Christian? Ever read the Bible? Sermon on the Mount.
Doubtful. If you had, you would know just how ashamed you should be of yourself.
He has it on tape
it has been played in various media outlets. 
Duct tape??
Let me in on it. Duct tape for what?
What, no duct tape this time? NM
]
She did cooperate. She turned over the tape of....
one of her office people calling the guy in question. Which he has already testified to was not at her request. She did not lie. Was Hollis French lying when he said that the governor's office was cooperating and no subpoenas would be necessary? Or is he lying now? When things changed is when she was named as the VP candidate. We should all be able to do the math on that one.
If the LA Times would release their tape...
he couldn't very well deny it.

http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=ZDFkMGE2MmM1M2Q5MmY0ZmExMzUxMWRhZGJmMTAyOGY
Lets all get our correction tape out......nm
X
Blame the victims
So...lets just blame the victims, the ones who live in New Orleans..OMG..Put the blame where it belongs, on the federal govt for cutting funds to shore up the levees..and who was in control at that time.....BUSH..he needed the money for the rich peoples tax cuts and the insane war.
The way I understand it, he was supposed to tape letterman....
to tape letterman at a certain time, and letterman's people wanted to change it. The time they wanted to change it to was when he was taping with Couric. He can't be two places at one time. Letterman should be happy...he still got to skewer him, this time to his back and not to his face, but he still got to skewer him. It's not like Letterman is not in the tank for Obama...lol
They played the whole audio tape and it's HIS words
Even the democratic supporter kept saying "If I haden't heard it with my own ears I would have never believed it. The audio is from an interview Obama gave with the San Francisco Newspaper. The democrat also said why have the held this so long and now release it on Sunday evening 2 days before the election. Should have been out a long time ago.

Sheesh - how much more will it take to get through. The O said it, it's on tape, dems who support him on the TV are saying I can't believe he said it if he's trying to win the Presidency. He said he's going to bankrupt the Coal Industry and that electricity prices will skyrocket. How much more plain can you get than hearing his own words on tape. Then he doesn't even have the decency to defend himself because he's too busy trying to attack Palin/McCain and trying to be a little too cutesy with his so called jokes. He is a joke!

Shaft!
These are fallen soldiers not WTC victims

And the why is pretty clear.  By the way, this was addressed to Liberals who definitely understand and appreciate the ***why***


I am remembered the 911 victims today by
having the TV on and observing the moments of silence at the times of the attack. Also the new memorial at the Pentagon was dedicated. It looks beautiful. I hope the families can find some peace when they go there. I also put out 7 small American Flags to represent the 7 years. I also am going to try to see the lights from where the World Trade Towers stood. I live in Northern NJ. I have a hill by my home and you can actually see the city on a clear day. We will never forget.
Do you also blame victims of crime and
inciting the crimes perpetrated against them. Yours is truly an ignorant, ignorant statement.
The Obama ඁ states" comment is on tape
-so it is not a rumor. I have seen him say it myself. There are people at his rally laughing at him in the background, yet he never realizes himself what he said.  As far as the "bomb on Pearl Harbor" comment, he later admitted he meant to say the "bomb on Hiroshima". He had the 2 confused.  I only brought up those examples because people seem to love to make fun of McCain and his age, and act as if he has Alzheimer's or something. Obama makes plenty of speaking mistakes when he does not have a scripted speech to make. I am not a big fan of either candidate, but fair is fair, and it is NOT fair to ridicule McCain for "mis-speaking" and act as if Obama doesn't.
That's how I feel. How dare the victims be judged.sm
while we sit cumfy in front of our PCs and eat popcorn. That kind of stuff makes me SICK!


Just hope the victims are the gun-totin' kinds that
nm
You will all be back., drama queens, seeing yourself as victims...nm
nm
Cindy isn't interested in helping the victims down there. She's just mad they are stealing
her thunder.  Hopefully, she will be relegated to the pathetic pawn that she is and real news of real importance will come back to the world.  Every time she speaks, she puts our troops in danger.  The troops even said so, but she is too far gone to listen to the troops. They are all brainwashed.
Unprovoked Israel on Palestinian settler violence caught on tape
http://sabbah.blip.tv/#1586762
Settler Violence in Hebron

http://sabbah.blip.tv/#1550798
Israeli Settler Shooting Palestinians in Hebron

http://sabbah.blip.tv/#999702
Jewish Settlers Attack Elderly Shepherd and His Wife

http://sabbah.blip.tv/#916017
More Settler Violence in Hebron

http://sabbah.blip.tv/#1653918
CNN Rick Sanchez report on who really broke the cease fire, 01/07/2009

I agree. I am helping the victims with all the financial support I can spare BUT
if we don't ask the question what happened to the levees, what can we do to make sure this doesn't happen again, where did the funding go? then we will find ourselves in the same position again. We can not afford to be policing other countries when the funding is bankrupt for our own needs. That's just the truth.

Don't you remember the gas/toxic warfare scare and we were told to duct tape our windows? SM
So, with the bird flu plan, what kind of silly advice do you think we'll get to keep us safe? 
Ohhh, yeah! I still have plenty duct tape and candles left over, so I should be aiight :):) nm

Katrina was

the classic Good Samaritan scenario in high def.  The government failed but the true enlightened souls stepped up. Bless em all.


 


Katrina --

They should pull themselves up by their soaking wet boot straps and the federal government had no responsibility who do they think they are expecting help nobody ever gave me welfare I worked all my life but if anyone is to blame it is the local DEMOCRATS because what were they doing besides floating around on rafts the whole time anyway.  Everybody knows this it is a plain as the dumb look on my face.


 


The Post Katrina Era

 


The Post-Katrina Era


George Lakoff


It is impossible for me, as it is for most Americans, to watch the horror and suffering from Hurricane Katrina and not feel physically sore, pained, bereft, empty, heart-broken. And angry.


The Katrina Tragedy should become a watershed in American politics. This was when the usually invisible people suddenly appeared in all the anguish of their lives — the impoverished, the old, the infirm, the kids, and the low-wage workers with no cars, no tvs, no credit cards.


They showed up on America’s doorsteps, entered the living rooms, and stayed.

Katrina will not go away soon, and she has the power to change America.


The moral of Katrina is mostly being missed. It is not just a failure of execution (William Kristol), or that bad things just happen (Laura Bush). It was not just indifference by the President, or a lack of accountability, or a failure of federal-state communication, or corrupt appointments in FEMA, or the cutting of budgets for fixing levees, or the inexcusable absence of the National Guard off in Iraq. It was all of these and more, but they are the effects, not the cause.

The cause was political through and through — a matter of values and principles. The progressive-liberal values are America’s values, and we need to go back to them.

The heart of progressive-liberal values is simple: empathy (caring about and for people) and responsibility (acting responsibly on that empathy). These values translate into a simple principle: Use the common wealth for the common good to better all our lives. In short, promoting the common good is the central role of government.


The right-wing conservatives now in power have the opposite values and principles. Their main value is Rely on individual discipline and initiative. The central principle: Government has no useful role. The only common good is the sum of individual goods.


It’s the difference between We’re-all-in-this-together and You’re-on-your-own-buddy.

It’s the difference between Every citizen is entitled to protection and You’re only entitled to what you can afford.

It’s the difference between connection and separation.

It is this difference in moral and political philosophy that lies behind the tragedy of Katrina.



  • A lack of empathy and responsibility accounts for Bush’s indifference and the government’s delay in response, as well as the failure to plan for the security of the most vulnerable: the poor, the infirm, the aged, the children.


  • Eliminating as much as possible of the role of government accounts for the demotion of FEMA from cabinet rank, for Michael Brown’s view that FEMA was a federal entitlement program to be cut, for the budget cuts in levee repair, for placing more responsibility on state and local government than they could handle. for the failure to fully employ the military, and for the lax regulation of toxic waste dumps contributing to a “toxic stew.”


  • This was not just incompetence (though there was plenty of it), not just a natural disaster (though nature played its part), not just Bush (though he is accountable). This is a failure of moral and political philosophy — a deadly failure. That is the deep truth behind this human tragedy humanly caused.

    It is a truth that needs to be told starting now – over and over. There can be no delay. The Bush administration is busy framing it in it’s own way: bad things just happen, it’s no one’s fault; the federal government did the best it could — the problem was at the state and local level; we’ll rebuild and everything will be okay; the people being shipped out will have better lives elsewhere, and jobs in WalMart! Unless the real truth is told starting now, the American people will accept it for lack of an alternative.


    Katrina fiasco
    Somebody's finally gotten it right and isn't afraid to say so.
    Katrina and Gustav

    Remember where Dubya was when New Orleans was drowning?  Having his picture taken while eating cake with John McCain.  Now we have Gustav. What interesting timing.   Perhaps Palin was selected because she is a good baker .... ? ? ? ....


     


    McCain and Katrina

    McCain Katrina


    In New Orleans on 4/24/08, McCain said: “I would’ve landed my airplane at the nearest Air Force base and come over personally.” But as Newsweek notes, on Aug. 29, 2005, when Katrina had just hit New Orleans, McCain was posing with President Bush for his 69th birthday.

    McCain aggressively sought the endorsement of conservative evaneglical leader John Hagee, who said repeatedly that Hurricane Katrina was punishment to New Orleans.


    McCain told reporters he was not sure if he would rebuild the lower 9th ward as president. "That is why we need to go back is to have a conversation about what to do -rebuild it, tear it down, you know, whatever it is," he said.


     


    Transplanted Texan writes,



    I guess it's no surprise. McCain has opposed the creation of an independent 9/11-style commission to investigate the failure of the levees, voted against a 2006 bill that included $28 billion in hurricane relief, and opposed Medicaid and unemployment benefits for Katrina victims.


     


    Why Jindal used Katrina as example
    Jindal used Katrina as an example,a word picture, as an example of government not working. He was not talking about corruption in Washington D.C. but in Louisiana (which was pretty bad)So what if the pubs have not ever proposed healthcare reform - we are doing it now! Sorry, you are wrong! The spirit of the people in Louisiana because of Bobby Jindal is awsome! He is such a relief after years of corruption - trust me! I live in Louisiana!
    Hurricane Katrina: A sign from God.
    God is telling us that Bush is an idiot who destroys everything in (and out of) his path, and it's time for Americans to wake up.
    Katrina and Disgusting Exploitation.







    Katrina and Disgusting Exploitation






    By James K. Glassman  Published   08/31/2005 




    A profound tragedy is unfolding in New Orleans, the most beautiful city in America, with the richest cultural history and the most wonderful style of living. I lived in New Orleans for seven years. I was married there. My children were born there. I have many friends there.


     


    My daughter, her husband and their little baby managed to get out of the city ahead of the flood on Sunday, driving 14 hours into Texas with the few belongings they could stuff into their car. They have no idea what has become of their house and their possessions, not to mention their friends, their pets, their jobs, their way of life.


     


    Tragedies happen, and my daughter and her family are happy just to be alive. Their losses and those of hundreds of thousands of other innocents deserve mourning, prayer and respect.


     


    That is why the response of environmental extremists fills me with what only can be called disgust. They have decided to exploit the death and devastation to win support for the failed Kyoto Protocol, which requires massive cutbacks in energy use to reduce, by a few tenths of a degree, surface warming projected 100 years from now.


     


    Katrina has nothing to do with global warming. Nothing. It has everything to do with the immense forces of nature that have been unleashed many, many times before and the inability of humans, even the most brilliant engineers, to tame these forces.


     


    Giant hurricanes are rare, but they are not new. And they are not increasing. To the contrary. Just go to the website of the National Hurricane Center and check out a table that lists hurricanes by category and decade. The peak for major hurricanes (categories 3,4,5) came in the decades of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, when such storms averaged 9 per decade. In the 1960s, there were 6 such storms; in the 1970s, 4; in the 1980s, 5; in the 1990s, 5; and for 2001-04, there were 3. Category 4 and 5 storms were also more prevalent in the past than they are now. As for Category 5 storms, there have been only three since the 1850s: in the decades of the 1930s, 1960s and 1990s.


     


    But that doesn't stop an enviro-predator like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from writing on the Huffingtonpost website: Now we are all learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and - now -- Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.


     


    Or consider Jurgen Tritten, Germany's environmental minister, in an op-ed in the Frankfurter Rundschau. He wrote (according to a translation prepared for me): By neglecting environmental protection, America's president shuts his eyes to the economic and human damage that natural catastrophes like Katrina inflect on his country and the world's economy.


     


    The bright side of Katrina, concludes Tritten, is that it will force President Bush to face facts. When reason finally pays a visit to climate-polluter headquarters, the international community has to be prepared to hand America a worked-out proposal for the future of international climate protection.


     


    He goes on, There is only one possible route of action. Greenhouse gases have to be radically reduced, and it has to happen worldwide. In other words, thanks to Katrina, we'll finally get Kyoto enforced. (He might start at home, by the way. Europe is not anywhere close to reducing CO2 to Kyoto standards. In fact, the U.S. is doing much better than many Kyoto ratifiers.)


     


    Ross Gelbspan, in a particularly egregious, almost giddy piece in the Boston Globe that was reprinted in the International Herald Tribune, wrote that the hurricane was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service Katrina, [but] its real name was global warming. He also finds global warming responsible for droughts in the Midwest, strong winds in Scandinavia and heavy rain in Dubai. The reason for all this devastation, of course, is that the Bush Administration is controlled by coal and oil interests.


     


    And the Independent, a widely read British newspaper, reported today that Sir David King, the British Government's chief scientific adviser, has warned that global warming may be responsible for the devastation reaped by Hurricane Katrina. King contended that the increased intensity of hurricanes is associated with global warming.


     


    The Kyoto advocates point to warmer ocean temperatures, but they ought to read their own favorite newspaper, The New York Times, which reported yesterday:


     


    Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming. But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught 'is very much natural,' said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season.'


     


    An article on TCS quoted Gray last year as saying that, while some groups and individuals say that hurricane activity lately may be in some way related to the effects of increased man-made greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide,…there is no reasonable scientific way that such an interpretation…can be made.


     


    Indeed, there is no evidence that hurricanes are intensifying anyway. For the North Atlantic as a whole, according to the United Nations Environment Programme of the World Meteorological Organization: Reliable data…since the 1940s indicate that the peak strength of the strongest hurricanes has not changed, and the mean maximum intensity of all hurricanes has decreased.


     


    Yes, decreased.


     


    Not only has the intensity of hurricanes fallen, but, as George H. Taylor, the state climatologist of Oregon has pointed out, so has the frequency of hailstorms in the U.S. (see Changnon and Changnon) and cyclones throughout the world (Gulev, et al.).


     


    But environmental extremists do not want to be bothered with the facts. Nor do they wish to mourn the destruction and death wreaked on a glorious city. To their everlasting shame, they would rather distort and exploit.




    Katrina Pushes Bush Down Further

    Katrina Pushes Bush Down Further

    A new Survey USA tracking poll suggests a can't win dynamic is unfolding for President Bush as he struggles to deal with the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina.

    The number of Americans who now approve of the President's response to Hurricane Katrina is down: 40% today compared to 42% before he announced the Gulf Opportunity Zone in a speech last week. The number of Americans who disapprove of the President's response to Katrina is up: 56% today compared to 52% before the speech.

    Key point: The more cash President Bush throws on the fire, as compensation for what some see as an inadequate initial response, the more it antagonizes his core supporters.
    Yes, we are so horrible we are fundraising for Katrina right now.
    HORRIBLE PEOPLE WE ARE!
    Last Katrina child goes home












    Last Katrina child goes home



    A mother and her missing daughter are reunited seven months after a hurricane devastated New Orleans

    src=http://images.thetimes.co.uk/images/trans.gif





    THE last of more than 5,000 children missing after Hurricane Katrina has finally been reunited with her mother, ending the largest child-recovery effort in US history.










    After seven months of searching by her mother, amid fears that her daughter had died in the flooding in New Orleans that followed the hurricane in August, four-year-old Cortez Stewart was reunited with her family in Texas.

    Cortez was the last of the 5,192 Gulf Coast children listed as missing or displaced after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck the region. Of those, all but 12 have been found alive and all of those are now back with their parents.

    For Lisa Stewart the happy ending came when she was contacted by the National Centre for Missing & Exploited Children that said it had found her daughter. “I was overwhelmed, happy, joyous,” she said.

    During their separation her daughter’s fourth birthday had passed last November with no sign that she was dead or alive. “It was devastating,” Mrs Stewart said.

    When the storm struck, Cortez was with her godmother, Felicia Williams. After seeking refuge in a hotel, Cortez and Ms Williams were winched to safety by helicopter and flown to Atlanta, Georgia.

    Mrs Stewart and her five other children were rescued from their home in New Orleans as the floodwater rose.

    They were taken to the nearest piece of dry land, an interstate overpass, where they stayed for four days, before being evacuated and placed in a flat in Houston, Texas. For months Ms Williams and Mrs Stewart tried to make contact, not knowing if the other was alive, but without success. Their efforts were hampered by incorrect name spellings and other misleading information given to government officials.

    “Many agencies didn’t have a good account of who they were helping,” Bob O’Brien, director of the centre’s missing children division, said. “More than 411,000 were evacuated to more than 40 states, and it became very hard to track the movement.”

    The centre traced information about Ms Williams through her former employer and then located relations in Georgia. When Cortez was reunited with her mother and five siblings last week in Houston, Mrs Stewart almost fell upon her, screaming: “The baby! It’s the baby!”


    More than 12,000 adults were reported missing after Katrina. About 1,900 are still missing. More than 1,300 others have been confirmed dead.


    If Katrina was a clue, I would say probably UN forces.sm
    In addition to the Blackwater security and Israelis, armed Mexican soldiers entered the US for the first time since 1800s to supposedly provide aid. Possibly conditioning Americans to the perception that foreign troops on US soil policing US citizens in times of emergency is normal. I know they train here on our military bases because I have met some in Colorado, mainly Romanians.

    The Army Times reported that hurricane survivors who wouldn't leave New Orleans were to be treated as insurgents and that combat operations to eliminate them were undertaken. This is where the so-called 'relief' effort was directed towards - treating American citizens like terrorists and hunting them down simply for wanting to stay in their own homes. And once they were caught, FEMA treated evacuees as internees, registering them and giving them ID cards, preventing them from leaving the internment camps.


    This is about Katrina/Bush, not Clinton.
    nm
    O would never vote no on Katrina funds unless
    Just for good measure, I am going to post the reasons I know that to be fact.
    http://thinkonthesethings.wordpress.com/2007/08/29/when-the-cameras-are-off-barack-obamas-hurricane-katrina-record/
    1. Here is O's record on rebuilding after Hurriane Katrina
    2. Sept. 2, 2005: Obama holds press conference urging Illinoisans to contribute to the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
    3. Sept. 5, 2005: Obama goes to Houston to visit evacuees with Presidents Clinton and Bush.
    4. Sept. 7, 2005: Obama introduces bill to create a national emergency family locator system
    5. Sept. 8, 2005: Obama introduces bill to create a National Emergency Volunteers Corps. Sept. 8, 2005: Obama co-sponsors the Katrina Emergency Relief Act of 2005 introduced by Senator Harry Reid
    6. Sept. 8, 2005: Obama co-sponsors the Hurricane Katrina Bankruptcy Relief and Community Protection Act of 2005 introduced by Senator Russ Feingold
    7. Sept. 12, 2005: Obama introduces legislation requiring states to create an emergency evacuation plan for society’s most vulnerable
    8. Sept. 15, 2005: Obama issues public response to President Bush’s speech about Gulf Coast rebuilding.
    9. Sept. 21, 2005: Obama co-sponsors bill to establish a Katrina commission to investigate response to the disaster introduced by Hillary Clinton
    10. Sept. 21, 2005: Obama appears on NPR to discuss the role of poverty in Hurricane Katrina.
    11. Sept. 22, 2005: Obama and Coburn’s Hurricane Katrina financial oversight bill unanimously passes Senate committee.
    12. Sept. 22, 2005: Obama’s amendment requiring evacuation plans unanimously passes Senate committee.
    13. Sept. 28, 2005: Obama and Coburn issue statement about the need for a Chief Financial Officer to oversee the financial mismanagement and suspicious contracts occurring in the reconstruction process
    14. Sept. 29, 2005: Obama and Coburn investigate possible FEMA refusal of free cruise ship offer
    15. Oct. 6, 2005: Obama and Coburn issue statement on FEMA Decision to re-bid Katrina contracts
    16. Oct. 6, 2005: Obama co-sponsors Gulf Coast Infrastructure Redevelopment and Recovery Act of 2005.
    17. Oct. 21, 2005: Obama releases statement decrying the extension of FEMA director, Michael “Brownie” Brown’s contract. Obama calls Brown’s contract extension, “unconscionable.”
    18. Nov. 17, 2005: Obama and Coburn introduce legislation asking FEMA to immediately re-bid all Katrina reconstruction contracts.
    19. Feb. 1, 2006: Obama gives Senate floor speech on his legislation to help children affected by Hurricane Katrina
    20. Feb. 2, 2006: Obama introduces legislation to help low-income children affected by Hurricane Katrina
    21. Feb. 23, 2006: Obama issues statement responding to a White House report on Hurricane Katrina. Obama noted that the top two recommendations that the report had for the federal government were initiatives he had been working on since immediately after the storm hit. Obama called the administration’s response “delinquent.”
    22. May 2, 2006: Obama gives speech about no-bid contracts in Hurricane Katrina reconstruction
    23. May 4, 2006: Obama’s legislation to end no-bid contracts for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction passed the Senate.
    24. June 15, 2006: Obama and Coburn announce legislation to require amendment to create competitive bidding for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction for federal contracts over $500,000. Although it passed previously, the language was stripped in conference.
    25. June 15, 2006: Obama releases podcast about his pending Katrina reconstruction legislation in the Senate.
    26. June 16, 2006: Obama and Coburn get no-bid Hurricane Katrina reconstruction amendment into Department of Defense authorization bill.
    27. July 14, 2006: Obama and Coburn’s legislation to end abuse of no-bid contracts passes senate as amendment to Department of Defense authorization bill.
    28. August 11, 2006: Obama visits Xavier University in New Orleans to give Commencement address
    29. August 14, 2006: Obama and Coburn ask FEMA to address ballooning no-bid contracts for Gulf Coast reconstruction
    30. Sept. 29, 2006: Obama and Coburn legislation to prevent abuse of no-bid contracts in the wake of disaster passes Senate to be sent to President’s desk to become law.
    31. Feb. 2007-Present: As Obama begins his Presidential campaign he references Katrina as a part of his stump speech as he travels around the country in his familiar line, “That we are not a country which preaches compassion and justice to others while we allow bodies to float down the streets of a major American city. That is not who we are.”
    32. June 20, 2007: Obama co-sponsors Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act of 2007 introduced by Senator Chris Dodd.
    33. July 27, 2007: Obama and colleagues get a measure in the Homeland Security bill that will investigate FEMA trailers that may contain the toxic chemical, formaldehyde.
    34. Aug. 26, 2007: Obama outlines a detailed Hurricane Katrina recovery plan.
    35. December 18, 2007: Obama calls on President Bush to protect affordable housing in New Orleans
    36. February 16, 2008: Obama releases statement on toxic Gulf Coast trailers

    let people drown in Katrina?
    Are you serious. Those people were told to evacuate. They were given transportation to do so and places to go. If they chose to stay, what should Bush have personally done for them? Deliver SCUBA gear? Be realistic.
    Katrina Reveals Poverty Reality






    It wasn't long ago that I was told by my conservative mtstars buddies that poverty in American was not as bad as we thought.  To them poverty only meant you didn't have extra spending money and that the impoverished had color TVs, air conditioning, cars, the whole enchilada.  They even went through the spiel of posting articles to support them.  It has always been my opinion that poverty is alive and well in America and Katrina has unfortunately revealed this to us all too tragically.


    --------------------


    Katrina Reveals Poverty Reality


    Thursday, September 08, 2005

    By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos















    PHOTOS
    VIDEO














    Click image to enlarge








    STORIES




    Stories of the grinding poverty among the survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans vividly illustrate what many say is a forgotten truth of modern American life — that pockets of desperate poverty still exist in a country of unsurpassed wealth and privilege.


    Underscoring that reality, a report by the U.S. Census Bureau (search) released the same week Katrina hit the nation's southeast announced that the national poverty rate rose for the fourth straight year despite continuing growth in production and political rhetoric that the nation's economy is on the upswing.


    Click here to read the U.S. Census Bureau's report.


    According to that report, the number of Americans living under the poverty line grew by 1.1 million in 2004 for a total of 37 million people nationwide. That equals 12.7 percent of the total U.S. population. It is the fourth annual increase.


    [Poverty] is a problem in America that hasn't gone away — it just went underground for a while, and it shouldn't have, said Sheila Zedlewski, director of the Urban Institute's Income and Benefits Policy Center.


    Through images of the predominantly black residents of New Orleans pleading for help, leaving destroyed homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs, America got a wake-up call according to Sheldon Danziger at the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan.


    People are putting these things together, and it will be interesting to see if the attention of the public stays on this, he said. As a country we'd like to think we moved beyond it, but in reality, [poverty] is still a substantial problem.


    Others caution against putting too much weight into the new numbers, pointing out that they do not reflect the public assistance low-income individuals and families receive, like Medicaid (search) and welfare, and do not distinguished between truly impoverished individuals and those who are temporarily poor.


    The poverty rate began to climb in 2000, the year it hit a 26-year low of 11.3 percent of Americans living under the poverty level, according to U.S Census Bureau figures. That was the lowest point since 1974, when the number was 11.2 percent. The highest point of poverty in recent times was in 1993 at 15.1 percent. Before that, was in 1983, at 15.2 percent.


    In 2004, according to the latest study, the poverty rate among African Americans remained the same — at 24.7 percent. Hispanics also saw no change in their poverty rate at 21.9, while whites saw an increase, from 8.2 percent to 8.6 percent. Asian Americans experienced the only decrease, from 11.8 percent to 9.8 percent.


    The poverty rate among American families remained at 10.2 percent of the population in 2004. The Office of Budget and Management (search) defines a family of two adults and two children with a median household income of $19,157 or less as living in poverty; or a family of two with no children, making $12,649 a year.


    Median household income went unchanged in 2004, according to the census bureau, at $44,389. Blacks continue to have the lowest median income among all ethnic and racial groups, making $30,134 annually.


    Wages earned among Americans, however, declined in 2004. For men over 15 working full-time, year round, the real median earnings declined 2.3 percent from 2003, to $40,798. For women with similar work experiences, wages declined by 1 percent to $31,223.


    And while unemployment has gone down from 5.5 percent in August 2004 to 4.9 percent in August this year, unemployment among blacks is still the highest in the country, at 9.6 percent in August compared to 4.2 percent for whites and 5.8 for Hispanics.


    In New Orleans, where blacks make up 67 percent of the population, 27 percent of the residents are living below poverty level according to a recent study by Total Community Action, Inc. (search), a public advocacy group based in New Orleans.


    Click here to read that study.


    But some warn that the new census bureau figures may not be an ideal measure, given that they do not take into account the impact of public assistance on a household, or recent tax cuts and child tax credits. Others say the poverty rate had been in steady decline since the early 1990's and see the recent increases as the tail end of the 2000 recession.


    It's a bit unfortunate to link the hurricane with the issue of poverty in this country, as though there has been no reduction in poverty since the 1980's, said Rey Hederman, senior policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation.


    Since a high point in 1983 the poverty rate for the U.S has been on a decline, aside from the four years following the brief recession in 1989 and the most recent hike, according to the Census Bureau.


    Like other economic analysts, Hederman believes the growth in productivity in the U.S economy will eventually produce more jobs and higher incomes for workers.


    But so far, Hederman admits, that hasn't happened.


    We've got strong productive growth but wages have been relatively stagnant. It's a bit of a paradox as to why it hasn't happened sooner, said Phillip Swagel of the American Enterprise Institute, who blames, in part, the Internet bust six years ago.


    Nonetheless, he calls today's economy the most golden era for productivity growth in more than 50 years.


    In the short term, it means that firms have been able to produce more without hiring more people, Swagel continued. But in the long term, it will mean that wages and income will go up. It takes time for that relationship to take hold.


    But on Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office (search) announced that hurricane's damage to the southeast could reduce national economic growth by nearly a percent at time when forecasters were hoping for a three to four percent increase by the end of the year. It also expects a loss of 400,000 jobs in the labor market.


    Some say that inner cities that have never fully recovered from past economic recessions will no doubt be the hardest hit.


    I think for the last 25 years, we have had an economy where most of the gains have been concentrated in a small percentage of the workforce, said Danziger. [The] rising tide has not lifted all boats, the economy has shifted so that a smaller portion of the population gets the increases, and the rest is simply happy to have jobs that experience no wage increase or income increases.


    According to the recent Total Community Action study, poverty rates have remained stagnant in New Orleans in the last 40 years and even without the near total destruction of the city, have been the highest in the nation.


    It would be ironic that it would take a disaster like this to focus [national attention] on this,


    Rep. Mel Watt, R-N.C., and member of the Congressional Black Caucus (search), told FOXNews.com, Every area of our lives these disparities exist and we have tried to focus on them all year.


    Minority populations left behind in many cities often suffer from bad schools and are at a real disadvantage compared to their suburban middle class and affluent counterparts, say experts.


    The poverty differences by education, by race, by central city versus the suburbs, are long standing, said Danziger, who also said that by leaving New Orleans' most disadvantaged, immobile residents behind the hurricane clearly brought that into stark contrast.


    The Urban Institute’s Zedlewski admits that over the last several years more resources have been focused on the symptoms of poverty — poor education and healthcare.


    If you look at the long haul it is true progress has been made, she said, adding that more needs to be done, particularly in the African American community, regarding single motherhood, the high rate of incarcerated males and investing in adult education.


    Swagel, who recently left his job as chief of staff for the White House Council of Economic Advisors (search), believes the current administration has put into place policies — notably tax cuts — that have stimulated growth and are benefiting middle and lower income families the most.


    I would say our policies are on the right track, he said. They are working in the right direction, and we should not reverse course when things are improving.


    Watt doesn't buy the tax cut stimulus scenario. As soon as this President came in and passing these massive tax cuts, [the poverty rate] turned and went in the opposite direction, he said. This administration is about supporting people of higher income and it makes no bones about it.


    Meanwhile, thousands of displaced people from New Orleans are looking for jobs, and trying to begin new lives in places like Houston and Baton Rouge. Poverty advocates hope that in the long term, available education and job training opportunities, as well as the higher wages that have been promised by economists, aren't out of reach.


    Katrina Reveals Poverty Reality





    Katrina Reveals Poverty Reality

    Friday, September 09, 2005

    By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos















    PHOTOS VIDEO














    Click image to enlarge








    STORIES




    Stories of the grinding poverty among the survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans vividly illustrate what many say is a forgotten truth of modern American life — that pockets of desperate poverty still exist in a country of unsurpassed wealth and privilege.


    Underscoring that reality, a report by the U.S. Census Bureau (search) released the same week Katrina hit the nation's southeast announced that the national poverty rate rose for the fourth straight year despite continuing growth in production and political rhetoric that the nation's economy is on the upswing.


    Click here to read the U.S. Census Bureau's report.


    According to that report, the number of Americans living under the poverty line grew by 1.1 million in 2004 for a total of 37 million people nationwide. That equals 12.7 percent of the total U.S. population. It is the fourth annual increase.


    [Poverty] is a problem in America that hasn't gone away — it just went underground for a while, and it shouldn't have, said Sheila Zedlewski, director of the Urban Institute's Income and Benefits Policy Center.


    Through images of the predominantly black residents of New Orleans pleading for help, leaving destroyed homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs, America got a wake-up call according to Sheldon Danziger at the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan.


    I want to see him impeached for the slow response in Katrina...sm
    I think that alone is enough. Him and Blanco, and their coherts, they've got to go!!!
    Water Rising in New Orleans....Get your tissues. OMG Katrina.





    Rescuers Race to Save Katrina Victims

    Tuesday, August 30, 2005









     





     



     

     
    NEW ORLEANS — Rescuers along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast pushed aside the dead to reach the living Tuesday in a race against time and rising waters, while New Orleans sank deeper into crisis and Louisiana's governor ordered storm refugees out of this drowning city.


    As looters stripped stores of items, sometimes in front of police, violence broke out in the Big Easy. At around 11 p.m. EDT, two gunmen with AK-47s fired shots into a police station. No one was hurt, and the men fled into the city's French quarter section.


    Meanwhile, two levees broke and sent water coursing into the streets of New Orleans a full day after the city appeared to have escaped widespread destruction from Hurricane Katrina. An estimated 80 percent of the below-sea-level city was under water, up to 20 feet deep in places, with miles and miles of homes swamped.


    The situation is untenable, Gov. Kathleen Blanco said. It's just heartbreaking.


    One Mississippi county alone said its death toll was at least 100, and officials are very, very worried that this is going to go a lot higher, said Joe Spraggins, civil defense director for Harrison County, home to Biloxi and Gulfport.


    Several victims in the county were from a beachfront apartment building that collapsed under a 25-foot wall of water as Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast with 145-mph winds. And Louisiana officials said many were feared dead there, too, making Katrina one of the most punishing storms to hit the United States in decades.


    After touring the destruction by air, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said it is not of case of homes being severely damaged, they're simply not there. ... I can only imagine that this is what Hiroshima looked like 60 years ago.


    New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said hundreds, if not thousands, of people may still be stuck on roofs and in attics, and so rescue boats were bypassing the dead.


    We're not even dealing with dead bodies, Nagin said. They're just pushing them on the side.


    The flooding in New Orleans grew worse by the minute, prompting the evacuation of hotels and hospitals and an audacious plan to drop huge sandbags from helicopters to close up one of the breached levees. At the same time, looting broke out in some neighborhoods, the sweltering city of 480,000 had no drinkable water, and the electricity could be out for weeks.


    With water rising perilously inside the Superdome, Blanco said the tens of thousands of refugees now huddled there and other shelters in New Orleans would have to be evacuated.


    She asked residents to spend Wednesday in prayer.


    That would be the best thing to calm our spirits and thank our Lord that we are survivors, she said. Slowly, gradually, we will recover; we will survive; we will rebuild.


    A helicopter view of the devastation over the New Orleans area revealed people standing on black rooftops baking in the sunshine while waiting for rescue boats. A row of desperately needed ambulances were lined up on the interstate, water blocking their path. Roller coasters jutted out from the water at a Six Flags amusement park. Hundreds of inmates were seen standing on a highway because the prison had been flooded.


    Sen. Mary Landrieu (news, bio, voting record) quietly traced the sign of the cross across her head and chest as she looked out at St. Bernard Parish, where only roofs peaked out from the water.


    The whole parish is gone, Landrieu said.


    All day long, rescuers in boats and helicopters pulled out shellshocked and bedraggled flood refugees from rooftops and attics. Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said that 3,000 people have been rescued by boat and air, some placed shivering and wet into helicopter baskets. They were brought by the truckload into shelters, some in wheelchairs and some carrying babies, with stories of survival and of those who didn't make it.


    Oh my God, it was hell, said Kioka Williams, who had to hack through the ceiling of the beauty shop where she worked as floodwaters rose in New Orleans' low-lying Ninth Ward. We were screaming, hollering, flashing lights. It was complete chaos.


    Frank Mills was in a boarding house in the same neighborhood when water started swirling up toward the ceiling and he fled to the roof. Two elderly residents never made it out, and a third was washed away trying to climb onto the roof.


    He was kind of on the edge of the roof, catching his breath, Mills said. Next thing I knew, he came floating past me.


    Across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, more than 1 million residents remained without electricity, some without clean drinking water. An untold number who heeded evacuation orders were displaced and 40,000 were in Red Cross shelters, with officials saying it could be weeks, if not months, before most will be able to return.


    Emergency medical teams from across the country were sent into the region and President Bush cut short his Texas vacation Tuesday to return to Washington to focus on the storm damage.


    Federal Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown warned that structural damage to homes, diseases from animal carcasses and chemicals in floodwaters made it unsafe for residents to come home anytime soon. And a mass return also was discouraged to keep from interfering with rescue and recovery efforts.


    That was made tough enough by the vast expanse of floodwaters in coastal areas that took an eight-hour pounding from Katrina's howling winds and up to 15 inches of rainfall. From the air, neighborhood after neighborhood looked like nothing but islands of rooftops surrounded by swirling, tea-colored water.


    In New Orleans, the flooding actually got worse Tuesday. Failed pumps and levees apparently spilled water from Lake Pontchartrain into streets. The rising water forced hotels to evacuate, led a hospital to boatlift patients to emergency shelters, and drove the staff of New Orleans' Times-Picayune newspaper out of its offices.


    Officials planned to use helicopters to drop 3,000-pound sandbags and dozens of giant concrete barriers into the breach, and expressed confidence the problem could be solved. But if the water rose a couple feet higher, it could wipe out water system for whole city, said New Orleans' homeland security chief Terry Ebbert.


    A clearer picture of the destruction in Alabama became to emerge Tuesday: cement slabs where homes once stood, a 100-foot shrimp boat smoldering on its side, people searching for swept-away keepsakes. The damage in some areas appears to be worse than last year's Hurricane Ivan.


    In devastated Biloxi, Miss., areas that were not underwater were littered with tree trunks, downed power lines and chunks of broken concrete. Some buildings were flattened.


    The string of floating barge casinos crucial to the coastal economy were a shambles. At least three of them were picked up by the storm surge and carried inland, their barnacle-covered hulls sitting up to 200 yards inland.


    One of the deadliest spots appeared to be Biloxi's Quiet Water Beach apartments, where authorities estimated 30 people were washed away, although the exact toll was unknown. All that was left of the red-brick building was a concrete slab.


    We grabbed a lady and pulled her out the window and then we swam with the current, 55-year-old Joy Schovest said through tears. It was terrifying. You should have seen the cars floating around us. We had to push them away when we were trying to swim.


    Said Biloxi Mayor A. J. Holloway: This is our tsunami.


    Looting became a problem in both Biloxi and in New Orleans, in some cases in full view of police and National Guardsmen. One police officer was shot in the head by a looter in New Orleans, but was expected to recover, Sgt. Paul Accardo, a police spokesman.


    On New Orleans' Canal Street, which actually resembled a canal, dozens of looters ripped open the steel gates on clothing and jewelry stores, some packing plastic garbage cans with loot to float down the street. One man, who had about 10 pairs of jeans draped over his left arm, was asked if he was salvaging things from his store.


    No, the man shouted, that's EVERYBODY'S store!


    Looters at a Wal-Mart brazenly loaded up shopping carts with items including micorwaves, coolers and knife sets. Others walked out of a sporting goods store on Canal Street with armfuls of shoes and football jerseys.


    Outside the broken shells of Biloxi's casinos, people picked through slot machines to see if they still contained coins and ransacked other businesses.


    People are just casually walking in and filling up garbage bags and walking off like they're Santa Claus, said Marty Desei, owner of a Super 8 motel.


    Insurance experts estimated the storm will result in up to $25 billion in insured losses. That means Katrina could prove more costly than record-setting Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which caused an inflation-adjusted $21 billion in losses.


    Oil prices jumped by more than $3 a barrel on Tuesday, climbing above $70 a barrel, amid uncertainty about the extent of the damage to the Gulf region's refineries and drilling platforms.


    By midday Tuesday, Katrina was downgraded to a tropical depression, with winds around 35 mph. It was moving northeast through Tennessee at around 21 mph, with the potential to dump 8 inches of rain and spin off deadly tornadoes.


    Katrina left 11 people dead in its soggy jog across South Florida last week, as a much weaker storm.


    Jindal Admits Katrina Story Was False

    Jindal Admits Katrina Story Was False




    Looks like the game is up.


    Remember that story Bobby Jindal told in his big speech Tuesday night -- about how during Katrina, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a local sheriff who was battling government red tape to try to rescue stranded victims?


    Turns out it wasn't actually, you know, true.


    In the last few days, first Daily Kos, and then TPMmuckraker, raised serious questions about the story, based in part on the fact that no news reports we could find place Jindal in the affected area at the specific time at issue.


    Jindal had described being in the office of Sheriff Harry Lee "during Katrina," and hearing him yelling into the phone at a government bureaucrat who was refusing to let him send volunteer boats out to rescue stranded storm victims, because they didn't have the necessary permits. Jindal said he told Lee, "that's ridiculous," prompting Lee to tell the bureaucrat that the rescue effort would go ahead and he or she could arrest both Lee and Jindal.


    But now, a Jindal spokeswoman has admitted to Politico that in reality, Jindal overheard Lee talking about the episode to someone else by phone "days later." The spokeswoman said she thought Lee, who died in 2007, was being interviewed about the incident at the time.


    This is no minor difference. Jindal's presence in Lee's office during the crisis itself was a key element of the story's intended appeal, putting him at the center of the action during the maelstrom. Just as important, Jindal implied that his support for the sheriff helped ensure the rescue went ahead. But it turns out Jindal wasn't there at the key moment, and played no role in making the rescue happen.


    There's a larger point here, though. The central anecdote of the GOP's prime-time response to President Obama's speech, intended to illustrate the threat of excessive government regulation, turns out to have been made up.


    Maybe it's time to rethink the premise.


    http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/jindal_admits_katrina_story_was_false.php?ref=fp1


     


    I wasn't kidding. I don't remember a disaster like Katrina during the Clinton sm
    presidency with someone inexperienced at the helm of the fed agency responsible for it, but I will do my research on travelgate.