WHY IS IT SO EASY TO FORGET? Why is it that we can lose our compassion for ppl so easily? As easy as a new more glammed-up headline coming across our television...that's how easy it is. I don't only blame us but I blame the MSM who constantly bombard us with mind numbing articles ripe with sterotypes, war/hate mongering phrases and pundit opinions that DO NOT INFORM US OF THE REALLY IMPORTANT ISSUES! HUD in LOUSISIANA is spending $762 million in taxpayer funds to tear down over 4600 public housing subsidized apartments.

During campaign season, most of us receive emails that make us fighting mad. When I receive an email trashing Obama (or prior to that trashing Hillary...oddly I never got any trashing Edwards) I just correct the factual errors and broken logic chains and reply to all.  That has significantly reduced the amount of smear emails I receive.

But the email I just got tonight had nothing to do with the campaign.  It's from a long-time friend with whom I completely disagree about all things political. He calls himself an independent, but he's libertarian with regard to dismantling the government and Republican with regard to social issues.  The only saving grace is that he is by all other accounts, extremely intelligent, and not likely to pass on bad information. So usually we avoid discussions of politics and discuss other things.

So I have to confess, when I received his weekend joke update, I was shocked and saddened to see this commentary at the top preceding the jokes.  I don't know if he formulated this opinion on his own or if he is parroting some talking head, but I am shocked and I am saddened.  Read over the fold for my reply to one man's comparison and contrast between Katrina and the Midwest flooding.

Haven't we had enough Ron Kovics, Patrick McCaffrey...? In the 21st century, we need a peaceful productive army that builds not bombs nations.  The organizations named in People's Lobby's non-partisan American World Service Corps Congressional Proposals builds that productive army that has yanks compete on the field of sane, healthy development.  Push your Congressperson to cosponsor the AWSC, so we lose fewer legs and loving hearts.

but I don't care right now.

I just received one of those awful Republican & racist themed crappy chain emails from a person that I love & cherish dearly, my favorite aunt. This email was also sent to several family members, friends & strangers to me.

After I had read it and the steam stopped coming out of my ears, I hastily fingered out (I admit it ... I can't type, but I could compete in the world's fastest one finger typist competition) response & then hit the "reply all" button.

Along with the blazing hot sun here along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the debate over whether to fund lower income housing or to fund the repair and expansion of the local port has been heating up like nobody’s business.

There’s something fundamentally wrong, though with the way that this debate has been framed. It smacks of the scarcity mentality, and I myself have fallen prey to it. Whether to provide funding for housing or for job creation falsely pits against each other two important aspects of rebuilding our Gulf Coast community. We need both housing and jobs.

The truth is we need the port to be rebuilt. We need the good paying jobs with good benefits that the port itself can provide. And, we need those jobs now.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing


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I am originally from a town outside of Chicago. I feel the Midwest loyalty. It has obviously upset me that there are people I know who have lost their property or have been cut off from going to see their loved ones because of the recent flood crisis.

But, despite these inbred loyalties, there is no possible way I can say that the Midwest flooding crisis comes anywhere near the death and destruction of Hurricane Katrina. And there's no way I could conscionably say that the floods in the Midwest in any ways "dwarfed" what happened in New Orleans, which Rush Limbaugh Tuesday had the audacity of saying. Let's look at the differences: In New Orleans, you had a poverty-endemic urban center experiencing one of the most powerful natural distasters, which resulted in a death toll of nearly 1,900 deaths and $81.2 billion in damages, which the victims were given no warning to and FEMA feebly came to aid very, very late in the game; on the other hand, the Midwestern floods impacted a sprawling, white, rural population, who were given warning and immediate aid from FEMA, resulting in 24 deaths and $1.5 billion in damages.

It's hard to believe what can come out of the mouth (butt) of Rush Limbaugh but his latest tirade is beyond belief, beyond disgusting, beyond loathsome.

Yes it's very hard to believe this mindless little man could stoop so low as to praise the flood victims in Iowa, Illinois who happen to be mostly white and at the same time, condemn the Katrina victims with the same old rhetoric, innuendos and outright bigotry that the KKK type people carry in their bags of hateful garbage.

Those poor hurrican victims, who happen to be mostly of color are responsible in the intolerant brain cells of Rush, for their fate. I know beyond the pale, is too weak a phrase for this criticism from a genuine butt-hole. The only bewilderment I feel of such a creep sputtering into a microphone that goes out over the airwaves is, WHY THE HELL WOULD ANYONE LISTEN TO HIS SHIT AND STILL THINK OF HIM AS A CREDIBLE BEARER OF THE TRUTH?  thinkingblue Please watch the youtube video below:

My friends know I'm obsessed with Ayn Rand, who for better or worse I’ve got to own up to as an influence.  For a long time I've been wanting to write about that influence.  

I thought I would use Kossacks as guinea pigs (since in a Randian world there wouldn’t be a law against it).  Is this of any interest at all?  

Like the indecisive security guard in Atlas Shrugged who deserves to be murdered in cold blood because he would not make a choice, I’m waiting to be told what to think.  

Thanks for taking a look at this.

(A little note before diving into the body of the diary: I wrote this on an old blog I published in May of '07.  This was before the constant supplemental capitulations, and before the divisive primary we have so mercifully concluded.  What strikes me is how my optimism has diminished to the extent that it has.  I'm publishing this here tonight in an attempt to reclaim it.  We're so close to booting the crooks and liars out for a generation, and if we can make the points listed here as clear and prevalent now as they were a year ago, we will do it.)

       2008 might go down in history as the collapse of the Republican Party as a primary organization in American politics.  While this would certainly be celebrated by many (my hat and noisemaker are sitting in wait); the remarkable nature of the near-epic disintegration of popular support for the GOP is its self-infliction.  This isn't an attempt in any way to marginalize the work done by many who have toiled (often at great personal detriment) in opposition to some of the more debased acts of the Republican-controlled government; but facts are what they are.

When the first real winds of Hurricane Katrina reached my home I immediately questioned  the sanity of my decision to ride out the storm rather than evacuate.  Sitting at 40 feet above sea level I had felt invincible, secure in the knowledge that no storm surge could get that high.  I realized the folly of my flawed logic when I watched a massive live oak tumble to the ground a few hundred feet from my front door.  Most of the pine trees in the area met their doom in the same manner.  For many long hours I huddled in a windowless bathroom and listened to the sounds of destruction that came from every angle, inside and outside the old house.   After the storm ended I was happy, because my house was still standing and suffered only minor damage.

New Orleans might have slipped off the national radar a long, long time ago, but the residents still have to contend with the incompetence of the US Army Corps of Engineers on a daily basis.

Recently released documents show that the Corps and their contractors continue to use - shall we say - "unorthodox" construction methods in their flood protection works around New Orleans...

You see, it's this way.

No one told us anyone needed anything and we didn't ask.

That's about how it boils down in FEMA latest buterfingers handling of the much-dropped Katrina football.

One of the things I have found very disturbing as this campaign has wore on, is John McCain's attempt to come across as strong on certain topics such as Iraq, Katrina, and the environment simply because he has visited Iraq, New Orleans, and the Everglades.

232 years ago today the Continental Congress assigned a committee to write a Declaration of Independence, listing grievences the 13 Colonies had with the King of England.

Now we have a new list of grievences.

If you a Democrat in Florida, you need to make sure this video gets seen.  McCain already had a lot to answer for in last week's visit concerning his opposition to Everglades restoration, but that is nothing compared to his dismal record on helping hurricane victims.  He even bragged about disregarding Floridians who needed help after the devastating hurricanes:  

John McCain did it again. This time, he claimed to support every call for an investigation into the Katrina tragedy. But it turns out that he lied because he conveniently forgot that he opposed a Democratic proposal to set up a 9/11-style commission to investigate the causes of the tragedy.

A summary from FactCheck.org
http://www.factcheck.org/...

Katrina Kerfuffle
June 5, 2008

McCain claims he "supported every investigation" into the government's role regarding the hurricane, when in fact he twice voted against an independent commission.

Summary...