I did a similar post to this one yesterday, but it was lost in the quagmire of the usual hotel(I’m travelling at the moment, and am staying at a hotel in Washington, DC) Internet access. There will be trackbacks at other sites I linked to, that lead to the since-deleted post that this one replaces.

So, yesterday Mahmoud Abbas claimed he had things under control in the Gaza Strip

The chaos at the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt has been brought under control, according to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
“I think that the Palestinians are perfectly in control,” Mr Abbas said during a visit to the Rafah crossing.

Perhaps that was merely an indication of a profoundly distorted sense of reality at work, perhaps it was just a small fib to facilitate the opinion of the rest of the world that all is hunky dory in Gaza.

Whatever.

It’s difficult to believe that this could be even a remote possibility, considering that the man and his Fatah government couldn’t curtail terrorism, assuming he’d even wanted to, which I doubt, in the infinitely less stressful conditions that existed before the Israelis’ Gaza pullout. I say ‘less stressful’ because at the time, there weren’t thousands upon thousands of Palestinians on the move like a thundering herd of animals, looting, burning synagogues and generally acting like…well, animals.

According to the Jerusalem Post, the chaos in Gaza is still going great guns, and the Israelis are in overdrive implementing security measures, the job a major challenge as they’ve long since learned that they can’t depend upon the Palestinian Authority to be of any help. You know, the folks all those western leaders, including our own President{I’m sorry to say as I’m a Bush supporter on most issues and would vote for him again if he could run again}, apparently believe are somehow qualified to manage their territorial affairs of state.

Israel increased the security checks being conducted along the northern border of the Gaza Strip Friday, at the Karni goods crossing and the Erez crossing in northern Gaza, in an attempt to stop weapons and drugs from being smuggled to Gaza from Egypt.

“The aim is to set up a no-man’s land which Palestinians will be barred from entering,” a Defense Ministry official said.

I’ve blogged on this before, and my opinion hasn’t altered one iota: Israel’s ceding the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians and the rest of the world giving the PA vast sums of money over the years do nothing to promote peace in the Middle East.

Giving them Gaza sends them a message that terrorism works, and that increasing same will get them an entirely Muslim, Jewish-free country over time. They made this plain at the outset of the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, when Hamas and friends acknowledged their victory and vowed to terrorize even more. Yet the evacuation continued and the funds are to keep flowing.

Thus far, more of the money(taxpayers’ dollars, pounds, francs, pesos, etc. from the U.S. and elsewhere) given to the Palestinian Authority seems to have found its way into the personal coffers of the late and unlamented-by-most Mr. Arafat and his Fatah cronies or been invested in weapons and explosives with which to murder Jewish civilians and any other soft targets who just happened to be in the immediate vicinity, than to bettering the lives of those Palestinians who simply want to live in peace and watch their children grow up.

All in all, the terrorists of Hamas, al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Islamic Jihad and the rest are getting a great deal. A geographic subdivision all their own in which to stockpile weapons and explosives, congregate pretty much openly without fear of arrest as they plan and assemble the logistics for terror attacks within Israel and then stage these attacks, plus the financing, courtesy of yours and my tax dollars, to bankroll them. What a bargain!

To make self defense even harder for Israel, Gaza borders Egypt, and that country has long been one of the major ordnance conduits for Palestinian terrorist organizations. Despite any promises the Egyptians might make to secure their borders against a flow of arms to the Palestinians, they are an Arab country and Israel knows better than to place any aspects of their security in that quarter — so they’ll have to secure the Gaza-Egypt border themselves.

Israel has promised to deal “harshly” with the Palestinians in Gaza should the strip become a source of continued terrorism, and given the terror the Jews have had forced upon them by the Palestinians, I have no compunction about saying that when this inevitability occurs, the positive aspect will be that whatever the Israelis do, they won’t have to worry about any Jewish collateral damage in the Gaza Strip.

In Jewish World Review, Diana West asks What have we paid for with Palestinian handouts?
They say you get what you pay for. But what exactly have we paid for? As recently as Sept. 2, according to Palestinian Media Watch, the PA’s “Voice of Palestine” was sermonizing against “heretical” America, exhorting the Muslim faithful to attack Americans in Iraq — just the latest instance of anti-U.S. propaganda carried on PA-run radio. A few weeks ago, the PA’s so-called Ministry of Culture released its “Book of the Month,” a collection of poetry honoring murder-bomber Hanadi Jaradat. This “Rose of Palestine” killed 29 Israeli Jews and Arabs at a crowded Haifa eatery in October 2003, back when such carnage was still shocking. Palestinian Media Watch also noted a PA government newspaper report about female Hamas terrorists — photographed holding American-made automatic rifles.

All of which should make us wonder: Have we paid for a “peace process,” or have we financed holy war (jihad)? Have we supported a “peace partner”? Or have we just helped create a terrorist state?

I believe a grave error has been, and is continuing to be made, and that the result will be the engenderment of exponentially more violence between Israelis and Arabs than we have seen since 1973.

On a lighter note, Vinnie of Vince Aut Morire fame suggests an alternative location for a Palestinian state and, for those of you who plan to travel in the Middle East in the near future, a list of useful phrases that might make your trip more enjoyable.

On reading this morning’s Washington Times online, I was pleasantly surprised to find a statement I made in a previous post about Democrat politicians never accepting responsibility for their screwups but instead blaming Bush challenged, as it looks like we have an exception to the rule.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco yesterday took responsibility for failures and missteps in the immediate response to Hurricane Katrina and pledged a united effort to rebuild areas ravaged by the storm.
“We all know that there were failures at every level of government: state, federal and local. At the state level, we must take a careful look at what went wrong and make sure it never happens again. The buck stops here, and as your governor, I take full responsibility,” Mrs. Blanco told lawmakers in a special meeting of the Louisiana Legislature.

I applaud Governor Blanco for stepping up to the plate and admitting her role in the local mishandling of the Katrina disaster.
Of course, being somewhat suspicious of the motives behind the utterings of today’s Democrats, I’m kinda sorta wondering if her emulating George Bush in taking responsibility has anything to do with the fact that there seems to be an outcry among a segment of her constituency for her impeachment, and she’s trying to make nice. Sister Toldjah’s got something on that front, while Raven talks about Captain Wiener’s wife Hillary being put firmly in her place and Ogre posts a great funny about a U.N. response to aid for Katrina victims.

No matter how things work out in Katrina’s aftermath, I believe the recriminations will go on for a long time on both sides, but it’s good to see that with hindsight has come the beginnings of cooperation. We Americans are a resilient people, as we proved after 11 September 2001, and businessmen, yes, the private sector ‘way down yonder in New Orleans are already beginning to lay plans for rebuilding what has been destroyed, which is as it should be and always has been in America. The government is there to help, not to facilitate a free ride nor micromanage local affairs, which is also as it should be.

Yesterday morning, at a conference in Orlando, I attended a keynote speech delivered by Colin Powell, and I went away feeling vastly privileged to have been there. Our former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of State is profoundly youthful for 68 years of age and his speaking skills are, for lack of a better word, awesome.
He made us laugh with his great sense of humor and at the same time made many good points on many topics, but most of those are for another post — I’m attempting to obtain a transcript, at which time I will share some interesting highlights on a verbatim level.

There was only one part of his speech, near the conclusion, with which I did not agree, and that concerned China.

General Powell cited Beijing’s ongoing weapons buildup and even made reference to their goal of bringing Taiwan back into the fold, as it were, but he emphatically stated that he did not believe we would eventually have to go to war with what he termed{dating himself and the rest of us who’ve hit or exceeded the half century mark} “Red China.” His reasoning was that going to war with China’s largest trading partner when their economy is booming and still growing would be counter-productive.

In my opinion, he couldn’t be more wrong in that one regard.

China feels it needs more “space,” and I can’t think of any of their neighboring countries who would be willing to sell them any real estate on the scale they would require. Therefore, they would have to resort to more aggressive acquisition methods, and the only ones that come to mind involve military options. If China were to invade another country for the purpose of acquiring more territory under any pretext, the United States would inevitably spearhead the defense of that country. In that, General Powell was absolutely right while making an unrelated point, that America is always first on the scene when other nations are in trouble. {Despite whining from certain Euro countries and our very own liberals over our Iraq enterprise, my addition here, not Powell’s} the retired statesman rightly said that the rest of the world expects that of us.

China feels it still owns Taiwan, and has made much ado about getting it back. The United States maintains a standing promise to Taiwan that should China attempt to reclaim it using their military, we will protect Taiwan.

The only times America has gone back on her word in such events were under Democrat administrations, Kennedy over the Bay of Pigs, Carter over the ousting of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi by Khomeini’s insurgency. This will not happen under a Republican administration, which, thanks to the far left anti-American accusatory debacles of today’s liberal Democrats, will be enjoyed into the next presidency, hopefully for two terms and maybe the one after that as well.

But I digress.

Because of America’s global protective policies cited above, Beijing is well aware that in order to realize any ambitions of expansion or any plans for the reclamation of Taiwan, they will have to take out the United States first.
There is little doubt that in their minds, taking over America would eliminate any use for us as a trading partner, since they would have the goose that lays the golden eggs right there in their hand.

This is not paranoia, it is theory based on the diatribes of modern totalitarian states. Their logic is utterly convoluted by our standards, and while the American left and a good portion of the right are in many ways incapable of thinking outside the realm of established western sensibilities, I assure you that policy makers in many exotic regions are not.

China has been steadily and consequentially building up her war machine since the mid nineties, at the very least, and drafting resolutions that, as far as Beijing is concerned, make their taking back of Taiwan legal.

With a tip of my sombrero to Kira Zalan , there is an article(introduced as purported rather than confirmed, but every inch reflective of previous doctrine we’ve all heard from Beijing) translating a speech by China’s defense minister, Chi Haotian. To read the speech, go to Comment 9 in “Comments” replying to the linked post. But first read the post, it further demonstrates my point regarding the totalitarian mindset in Beijing, and unrelated to this Hard Astarboard post but useful to know, how Yahoo!’s Hong Kong subsidiary burned a Chinese journalist.

The Chinese Dragon, as the Washington Times Op Ed so succinctly puts it, is indeed awakening, and in my not so humble opinion, war will eventually follow.

Ah sorry, ladies an’ genemuns, but enuff be enuff o dis racial crap!

I’ve read liberal “opinions” that Katrina the Bitch was the fault of George W. Bush who, according to these idiots, caused the disaster by refusing to sign off on the Kyoto Assininity, thereby allowing global warming{already bebunked as myth by scientists} to create the devastating hurricane that blew along the gulf coast and caused so much devastation, some going so far, because so many poor blacks were stranded in New Orleans, as to label it a “racist” hurricane{owned, of course, by GWB}.
I’ve read liberal opinions that the poverty that stranded these people was the fault of the Republicans because of our belief in limited government, that we failed them by not awarding them a much larger share of our hard earned tax dollars so they could live a better, if unearned, life, thereby giving them the means to own cars and to drive themselves to safety as Katrina descended.
I’ve read liberal opinions that the sole reason there wasn’t a quicker government response to help in New Orleans was because the victims were poor blacks.
Naturally, all the blame somehow finds its way to Bush, if you take the portside braying of the liberal mainstream media as gospel, which unfortunately millions upon millions of Americans seem to do. It’s not their fault, they are simply folks who don’t know any better than to believe that venues like CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post and countless others value the truth more than they do partisan Democrat propaganda. Rarely if ever will you find anything that reports positive accomplishments by the Bush Administration on their news programs or in their newspapers, even the most glaringly obvious positive seems to be subdued to the point of nonexistence while the most picayune trace of the negative becomes a blaring epic.
So now every aspect of the Katrina debacle, from the hurricane’s creation to the breaking of the levee to the “slow” government response is the result of Bush’s “racism.”

I lived in New Orleans some years back and got out quite a bit.

It was always a Democrat city, in fact there was always a black mayor when I lived there, first a father(Dutch Morial), then a son(Marc Morial), and since, the son was ousted by C. Ray Nagin.

The city’s Democrat mayors and other politicians did absolutely nothing to help extract their large, poor black population from poverty, in fact those who did manage to pull themselves up, along with the politicians, always seemed sort of amused at the terrible joke that served for public education and the poorness of the poor. The locals had a reason for keeping these people down: A tradition of poverty among blacks kept available an abundant low paid, underbenefitted pool for staffing the hotel and restaurant kitchens, street cleaning, housekeeping, garbage collecting and other occupational needs of the tourist dependent city.
The only “help” these Democrats ever gave those particular constituents was welfare– enough income to keep them alive and “in their place” so they could continue to breed necessary cheap labor, a continuation of the slavery we abolished in most of the country in the early 1860s, only the postwar “masters” didn’t have to supply room and board out of pocket.

Crack addiction and street crime were rampant among the black population, murders literally a dime a dozen and the city simply shrugged and went about its collective business, as often as not with a humorous grin.
If there was any racism, it came from the collective of the city’s democrat majority.
And the poverty there didn’t just spring into existence when Bush took office, it was an institution, sad to say, going back to the end of the Civil War and the “abolition” of slavery.

Enter Hurricane Katrina, the breaking of the levee(the Levee Board was not comprised by engineers, as you’d expect, but by members of the unbelievably corrupt local old boy network, mostly businessmen who had made significant donations to the right political campaigns) and sheer pandemonium.
The Bush Administration had, at the outset, advised the people of New Orleans to evacuate the city, but had been mostly ignored.
Rescue workers were repelled by roving gangs of local blacks bearing arms, many stolen from looted gun shops and sporting goods stores, others already owned as implements of policy among gangs. Local blacks and even police looted stores like it was a new kind of Christmas and the mayor fled when he could have been using large fleets of school buses to evacuate those who would go. The governor, when offered assistance by Bush, had said she “wasn’t sure,” and needed 24 of what turned out to be crucial hours to decide. This is a governor’s decision to make, as local and state authorities “own” their natural disasters.
Yesterday, George W. Bush took responsibility for the “slow” federal response and the FEMA executive responsible resigned. I see that not as admitting to any fault so much as doing a leader’s job and taking responsibility for something happening on his watch. I have yet to see a Democrat do the same– no, he or she would just blame it on Bush.
The truth is, a whole bunch of Democrats failed to do their jobs– they even failed to implement a documented response plan put together after the last big hurricane that came to town.
The truth is, this whole issue that race is involved may be accurate, but if that’s the case it does not rest in the lap of the Bush administration. It rests in the laps of Nawlins Democrats who gave little priority to blacks except as vassals created for cheap labor.

Blacks who march to the false drum of Democrat support need to wake up and realize that they’re victims of a great con by a party whose interests are better served by keeping them poor and keeping racism alive.

A pretty on-point Opinion Journal commentary by Brendan Miniter is here

Yes, I’ve now moved into my new place, though there’s still renovation and redecoration in progress, none of it my own work, but that of the great people I mentioned in my last post: Phin and Sadie, who were responsible for the awesome new look, and Pixy, who hooked me up with Mu.Nu, the ultimate host for any blogger privileged enough to make this elite entity’s acquaintance.
To refer to their efforts as “contributions” would be false, because it would insinuate that they weren’t the collective prime movers in the rebuilding of my blog. My deepest thanks, therefore, go out to this creative trinity, as much for the excellence of their work on my behalf as for their taking the time to do it for me.

Thanks, guys and gal!

I will not be doing any real posting in the next few days, my travel itinerary is on the cusp of becoming busy and brisk and next week I’ll be at a convention in Orlando whose days will be filled with seminars, workshops and exhibits that will require every iota of my attention.

The rescheduling of the rally that brought me here to Washington, D.C. coincides directly with the convention schedule and I have to attend no matter what. If I can, I’ll try to get back up here a little early so as to participate for at least some of it. I had really looked forward to going at it with the LWAGAA (Leftard Wingnuts Against God And America), but the regrettable loss of Chief Justice Rehnquist, rest his soul, resulted in the change of many plans.  

Some great people named Phin, Sadie and Pixy are moving me to a brand new location with a brand new face, and when the dust settles, the new and vastly improved Hard Astarboard’s URL will be

http://hardastarboard.mu.nu/

Ah’ll be bock!  

Saturday was pretty laid back compared to the previous days of my stay here in Chicago, slept in, had a long lunch in Germantown with a friend– we went to a Mexican eatery called Garcia’s that she was raving about, a quiet little neighborhood establishment. The food was good, the neighborhood worth exploring, which we did.

Quaint, a lot of old shops of the type that have been mostly replaced in other areas and cities by newer businesses with only a fraction of the charactar of Germantown’s own. Two traditional delis on the same block, a Greek restaurant with outdoor tables, an old German sausage store, an open plaza with a fountain, shops that sold pewter and glass and really interesting blown glass goods, a couple of German brauhauses my friend, who had lived in the neighborhood for many years, told me were great places to hang out at. So we had a couple of beers at one.

That night, I had some folks here in my suite for drinks and it turned into an all night party, finally ending after sunrise, so I ended up sleeping well into Sunday afternoon and spent yesterday around the hotel recuperating, as it were, then the evening included a hearty room service dinner of penne pasta in a sauce that was abundant with Italian sausage, and molten lava cake for dessert followed by a couple of hours at the bar before going to bed early in order to get up early.

I’m flying to Washington, D.C. today, and I tend to like getting up really early when I have a plane to catch{it’s 5:30 am}.

Tomorrow the counter-rally for Judge Roberts begins, and I’ll be there from start to finish. My first political rally, I’m really looking forward to it, and wondering what surprises there might be due to the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. A lot of the liberal wingnuts are already yelling for a postponement of the confirmation vote, citing both the time proximity of the disaster in the south{they claim it will mean too much on Bush’s plate at one time, but as we have seen, this president and his cabinet are more than capable of extreme multitasking – and George Bush isn’t a senator, he won’t be voting anyway – and what some of them term "irreverence" in timing because of Mr. Rehnquist’s sudden passing}.

Is the latter a hoot, or what? Democrats concerned about irreverence! Here are people who have no problem using dead military personnel, funerals, natural disasters and any other grave circumstances to press their partisan political agendas, and they’ve got the moxi to want us to believe they give a flying f— about irreverence? Gimme a break!

These are people who accuse Bush of failing the people of New Orleans and making a racial issue out of the Katrina horror instead of attaching blame where it belongs, like to the black mayor of New Orleans who let his own people down by not doing his job by adhering to disaster response plans, instead slinking quickly away to safety in Baton Rouge, and the equally useless governor of Louisiana, who was as impotent in her own response as former liberal California Governor Gray Davis was to the exponentially less cataclismic energy crisis we had out there a few years ago.

These are people who, because it fits into their political agenda, ignore the fact that responding to the havoc wrought by Katrina was the direct responsibility of those local excuses for political leaders, not Bush. Democrats’ failure resulted in misery and death on a massive scale, and now they want to blame Bush. The left grows more pathetic by the hour, it makes me feel ashamed that these folks are somehow entitled to call themselves Americans.

That said, I’ll post some more from Washington, D.C.   

So Claire took me to a neat Brazilian place for dinner called Fogo de Chao, a dream come true for a carnivore like myself. I mean, they keep bringing on the meats….  That place rates a zillion yum-stars from me and another half million for  themselves.  That is, beyond any iota of doubt, a place to have dinner. Satisfying in an extreme, an eatery to get down on ones knees and be thankful for. Yummmmmmmmmmmm!

We came back to my hotel for a couple of drinks at the bar and a couple more in my suite, then I put her in a cab and sent her home. Many, seeing her, would wipe the drool from their lips and demand to know why "things" didn’t go further, and my answer would be that sometimes friendships are more valuable than intimate relationships.

I learned that the hard way(no pun intended) when I had a fling with a woman I’d grown up with in a near brother-sister relationship. We had a lot of fun and excitement for a couple of weeks, then had differences that cost us our friendship for several years.  Unlike some, I learn from my mistakes.

Tomorrow,{actually, later today} I have some interesting things to do of a casual nature, and will blog on them.

Today started early, since I got to bed earlier than anticipated. Room Service breakfast, pretty good, though they were kind of skimpy on the potatoes, and it was the first time I’ve ever had fresh asparagus spears as a breakfast garnish(unless I was meant to eat ‘em, which I didn’t) and I was out the door around noon.

My friends Carolyn, Patrick, Elaine and I went to the Navy Pier, one of Chicago’s tourist attractions, though a lot of locals also hang out there, there are some good bars and places to eat, plus a lot of good stuff for kids and I actually got to buy and munch on one of my favorite all time snacks, one I haven’t enjoyed since the last time I was on the Atlantic City Boardwalk: A funnel cake!

Funnel cakes aren’t complicated, they’re basically a carnie food of fried dough and powdered sugar, but man, they’re GREAT{even more than Frosted Flakes}!

We went for a 90 minute cruise on a four masted schooner named Windy– I couldn’t resist, had to drag the others along, of course, and I even got to help with the line handling. It was a lot of fun. Afterwards, we had lunch outdoors at Bubba Gump’s, a shrimp restaurant that I found quite good, then it was off to the Water Tower, a mall that isn’t much different from malls anyplace else, except for a glass walled elevator bank wherein you can see all the works and a cute stairstep styled marble fountain between the up and down escalators between the first and second floors that spits water bubbles straight up in the air. While we were at the Water Tower, I opened a T-Mobile Hot Spot account.

Claire, my stock broker friend, has invited me to dinner, but hasn’t told me where, so that should be a nice surprise. She’s not quite the party animal that most of my Chicago friends are, so I’ll have the opportunity to give my liver some quality time.

WELL….. I stand corrected, it appears, much to my surprise and undoubtedly the surprise of many others, that we are not alone where dealing with the New Orleans crisis is concerned, a number of countries have offered to help. I’ve been kind of out of touch with all the gallivanting around I’ve been doing since I got here, and when I got back to my hotel awhile ago, I found a comment by Dan Trabue of pacifist fame, http://www.paynehollow.blogspot.com , in which he informed me of my wrongness. Thank you, Dan. See? You’re not always a royal payne.

My linking icon has gone dim for some reason and the support folks at squarespace gave me a reply that was the laziest excuse for tech support I’ve ever received, maybe they ought to start employing the "Boyz From Bangalore," whom I’m sorry to say kick ass on Squarespace support. While I’m in DC, I’m going to spend at least one evening checking out alternative blog venues, maybe Blogger. Anyone got any suggestions?

More later.  

The friend I expected to visit with me last night called to say he needed to put off our drinking session for a night or two as his boss had stressed him out to the point that he could not be friendly to man nor beast. I respect his decision, because he works for Jimmy Lee, a little Japanese entrepreneur whose only friend is money and who treats, out of pure prejudice, his American employees like slaves. I’ve known Jimmy for awhile. He’s one of those slumlords(he owns a fleabag hotel in what was formerly Chicago’s skid row, a 17 storey building nestled now between a Comfort Inn and a parking lot in the most expensive zip code in this part of the country) who spends much of his time dodging city agencies in court over numerous code violations.

In the man’s defense, he does carry good tenants when they fall on hard times, though he tends to make their lives a living hell in the meantime. This is a case of a guy who arrived in the U.S. as a peon and built his own little empire. He’s got a good heart, he just doesn’t want anyone to know about it. Personally, despite his seeming greed, I like the man. He does a good job of hiding his humanity, but it is there. He simply wants to see others bust their asses and succeed like he did, and if they don’t or can’t, he views it as inferiority.

Oh, well.

So I went down to the hotel bar for a drink. Gabriel and Rebecca, the bartenders, were excellent at their job. I had a pint of Pilsner Urquel on draft and a shot or two of Sauza Hornitos. Then I returned to my suite and read the news.

I am distressed beyond belief about some of the things happening in Nawlins, according to the Associated Press.

New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday, as corpses lay abandoned in street medians, fights and fires broke out and storm survivors battled for seats on the buses that would carry them away from the chaos. The tired and hungry seethed, saying they had been forsaken. “This is a desperate SOS,” mayor Ray Nagin said.

“We are out here like pure animals,” the Rev. Issac Clark said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where he and other evacuees had been waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead.

“I’m not sure I’m going to get out of here alive,” said tourist Larry Mitzel of Saskatoon, Canada, who handed a reporter his business card in case he goes missing. “I’m scared of riots. I’m scared of the locals. We might get caught in the crossfire.”

I’m having some  technical trouble with links that will change in the near future when I change servers from customer unfriendly Square Space to another forum like Blogger, but here is a link to the story, via the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-5249697,00.html

This majorly sucks, but it’s not anything non-understandable where human nature is concerned. These people have been yanked from normal life into an existence not unlike pure horror: Their homes are gone, their entire world has turned into a hell few civilized people can understand and the disruption of communications has cut them off from the money they have in their bank accounts, so they are broke, undomiciled and basically "fucked" for the time being. The despair and the frustration are taking their respective tolls.

I’ve donated money to one relief venue and am going to donate more to another.

We already know that as usual, America is on its own, despite all the help we give other countries in times of disaster, none of those countries nor any of our "allies" will help us.  If you can, please donate whatever you can afford to help the people of New Orleans. If we don’t help our own, they will not be helped, because the rest of the world doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about the United States except when we can do for them.