Katrina

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by dissention

I knew about his arrest, but I never actually saw the mugshot. That sucker's just as good as James Brown's mugshot. I love it.

Your prejudice is showing

I mean



is hardly

[dissention]

Originally Posted by amber

Is he starring in the new "V" series?

[dissention]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Your prejudice is showing

I mean



is hardly

It's all in those freaky eyes, man. He looks reptilian. Imagine if he created some spawn with Minute Rice.

[amber]

Originally Posted by dissention

It's all in those freaky eyes, man. He looks reptilian. Imagine if he created some spawn with Minute Rice.

He really is creepy.
Oh, my, that's funny, I saw her (Condi) on TV last night and I was thinking the exact same thing. She is "V" and the pod people all rolled into one. Oh, and add evil robot, too. She freaked me out, big time.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by amber

He really is creepy.
Oh, my, that's funny, I saw her (Condi) on TV last night and I was thinking the exact same thing. She is "V" and the pod people all rolled into one. Oh, and add evil robot, too. She freaked me out, big time.

I don't know if you listen to Air America, but back when it launched last year, a guy emailed Randi Rhodes a song he wrote called "She Still Looks Reptilian To Me" about Condi. I'm sure Chris remembers it, it was priceless. Soooooooooooo f*cking good. I even burned it to a CD for posterity.

"She's Chevron's old shill
But she still looks reptilain to me..."

[strandinthewind]

^^^^^
I just think if these people were not associated with something you all hate, you would not be as harsh on them. But, only you know your motivations I mean I was five feet from Condi in Beijing last March and she looked okay and even pretty. Then again, I do not think there are any truly ugly people - it just is not the way I think.

[macfanken]

Originally Posted by David

That's funny that you say that because that one dude ... who's that dude on opposite Hannity? HE'S a lizard. He looks like a monitor lizard, or like an extra in that Strother Martin movie "SSSssss."

I have no doubt Fox picked him to sit opposite Hannity in order to make liberals look A) lizardlike, B) pansyish, C) weak, D) unable to shout down dumbkopf opponents.

Week after week, installment after installment, that poor guy just quivers & shivers & lets everybody walk all over him. Plus, he looks like a lizard, which doesn't go over too well in Midcult America's attraction to people who don't look reptilian.

So I think Fox deliberately put him there so that Middle America would subconsciously link liberals with lizards & with namby-pambies who make weak debaters.

I totally agree with you David... I think they tried to find the weakest, wimpiest, beady eyed guy they could find. The title of the show should be...


Hannity and Colmes

[dissention]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

^^^^^
I just think if these people were not associated with something you all hate, you would not be as harsh on them. But, only you know your motivations I mean I was five feet from Condi in Beijing last March and she looked okay and even pretty. Then again, I do not think there are any truly ugly people - it just is not the way I think.

Nah, I don't think she's ugly, but that song was bloody hysterical. Shepherd Smith, on the other hand, looks like something out of "V," just like Amber said. He looks like he can catch flies with his tongue.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by dissention

Nah, I don't think she's ugly, but that song was bloody hysterical. . . . .

touche' mon amis - touche'

[Livia]

Makes me proud to live here:

HURRICANE KATRINA: THE AFTERMATH
An early thanksgiving in Austin
4,000 Katrina survivors now call city home.

By Jennifer Barrios

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Monday, September 05, 2005

Thanksgiving came early in Austin, as grateful and exhausted evacuees from Hurricane Katrina spent Sunday enjoying hot food, clean blankets and fresh water.

Volunteers continued to converge on the Austin Convention Center on Sunday, as Mayor Will Wynn pledged the city's long-term support of the 4,000 evacuees who have arrived in Austin and praised the community's outpouring of support.

"This is a great day in Austin," Wynn said.

For many, the Austin Convention Center offered a taste of normalcy after the harrowing days in states hit by Hurricane Katrina.

Low cots under subdued lights lined cavernous halls, and large signs pointed evacuees to areas with computers, food, showers and rows of red telephones.

Children tossed footballs between the cots and pushed toy cars through the aisles, while elderly evacuees reclined on beds and sat in wheelchairs.

Many ate plates of rice, chicken and gravy, and cake, while others enjoyed their first showers in days.

"It's been great since we've been here," said Victoria Litt, who spent four days at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans before arriving in Austin on Saturday. "Everyone's been polite, kind and courteous."

Litt and her family were rescued from the roof of her daughter's home after the flood. Sitting on her cot and wrapped in a United Airlines blanket, Litt said she spent her time at the dark and filthy Superdome cowering under a chair, hiding from the gangs of armed marauders who roved the halls.

As two generations of her family slumbered nearby, Litt said she probably would move to Austin permanently.

Her daughter, Diane Hale, agreed: "I'm not going back!"

For some, Sunday was a day of rejoicing.

Joan Hampton arrived at the convention center with only her work uniform and four Bibles in a plastic bag.

"I am so thankful to be in Texas," Hampton said, sitting on her new bed surrounded by chairs that she had arranged into a cubby of personal space. "I am home. I am surrounded by love."

Her house, in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, probably was destroyed in the flood, but Hampton is grateful for what she does have.

"I didn't lose anything. The Lord has blessed me," she said.

Hampton planned to spend the day writing down all she had seen on white notebook paper, which she kept tucked on a pillow next to one of her Bibles.

Austin Energy employees turned the Palmer Events Center into a shelter for people with minor medical problems. Evacuees slept behind high pink curtains as volunteers sorted clothing and tucked cans of soda into coolers.

Robert Mingea, a cardiologist at St. David's Medical Center, said he saw people with a wide range of ailments during his volunteer shift on Sunday morning.

"These were people who weren't healthy to begin with, and now they're even more unhealthy," Mingea said.

Many people's illnesses worsened after they were unable to get medicine for several days after the hurricane, he said.

The center has seen about 500 patients so far, said Jeff Brockman, a nurse and assistant clinical coordinator with Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services.

At a news conference Sunday, Mayor Wynn said that the city will be able to keep the evacuee centers open "a very long time."

"It's going to be open as long as it needs to be open," Wynn said. "The real challenge is how do we make sure that is as short as possible, not for our sake, but for the sake of the refugees."

Wynn said that he expected community nonprofits and faith-based groups to step in as days become weeks, while other evacuees are likely to end up with family members and friends.

But for the short term, Austin has no shortage of willing volunteers.

City staff were caught by surprise when the planeloads they thought were landing late Saturday night ended up arriving through the morning.

City Manager Toby Futrell said the city issued an emergency call for 100 volunteers to help set up cots and greet arriving evacuees. Four hundred people showed up asking what they could do to help.

Austinite Penny Smith spent most of her holiday weekend volunteering.

"I was lucky enough to get to greet people as they came in," said Smith, who was serving iced tea and coffee at the convention center. "The volunteers get as much out of this as the people we're helping."

jbarrios@statesman.com; 246-1150

[amber]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

^^^^^
I just think if these people were not associated with something you all hate, you would not be as harsh on them. But, only you know your motivations I mean I was five feet from Condi in Beijing last March and she looked okay and even pretty. Then again, I do not think there are any truly ugly people - it just is not the way I think.

I didn't say she was ugly. I said reptilian. Her eyes are as cold as a reptile/pod person/robot. She's not ugly, though.

[Moony]

Originally Posted by amber

I didn't say she was ugly. I said reptilian. Her eyes are as cold as a reptile/pod person/robot. She's not ugly, though.

Condoleeza Rice is one of the few truly ugly people I've ever seen.

She looks like a constipated bulldog.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by Lux

But Mr. Devil's Advocate, they are associated with something they hate, and not just in the way one hates Britney Spears, they should be as harsh on them. She (not Britney, the other subject) is a very ugly person to me. I can barely stand to look at her and her friends up there and because of their actions I couldn't give a crap about any insults directed at them. They deserve all the harshness some message board uses can offer. Just to play along though, Al Gore looks like Roger Ramjet.

I know that and that was my point. But, I do not look at the world that way.

and - bless his heart - ITA and Gore just is a snore

[BombaySapphire3]

'This is criminal': Malik Rahim reports from New Orleans

by Malik Rahim

Malik Rahim, a veteran of the Black Panther Party in New Orleans, for decades an organizer of public housing tenants both there and in San Francisco and a recent Green Party candidate for New Orleans City Council, lives in the Algiers neighborhood, the only part of New Orleans that is not flooded. They have no power, but the water is still good and the phones work. Their neighborhood could be sheltering and feeding at least 40,000 refugees, he says, but they are allowed to help no one. What he describes is nothing less than deliberate genocide against Black and poor people. - Ed.

New Orleans, Sept. 1, 2005 - It's criminal. From what you're hearing, the people trapped in New Orleans are nothing but looters. We're told we should be more "neighborly." But nobody talked about being neighborly until after the people who could afford to leave … left.

If you ain't got no money in America, you're on your own. People were told to go to the Superdome, but they have no food, no water there. And before they could get in, people had to stand in line for 4-5 hours in the rain because everybody was being searched one by one at the entrance.

I can understand the chaos that happened after the tsunami, because they had no warning, but here there was plenty of warning. In the three days before the hurricane hit, we knew it was coming and everyone could have been evacuated.

We have Amtrak here that could have carried everybody out of town. There were enough school buses that could have evacuated 20,000 people easily, but they just let them be flooded. My son watched 40 buses go underwater - they just wouldn't move them, afraid they'd be stolen.

People who could afford to leave were so afraid someone would steal what they own that they just let it all be flooded. They could have let a family without a vehicle borrow their extra car, but instead they left it behind to be destroyed.

There are gangs of white vigilantes near here riding around in pickup trucks, all of them armed, and any young Black they see who they figure doesn't belong in their community, they shoot him. I tell them, "Stop! You're going to start a riot."

When you see all the poor people with no place to go, feeling alone and helpless and angry, I say this is a consequence of HOPE VI. New Orleans took all the HUD money it could get to tear down public housing, and families and neighbors who'd relied on each other for generations were uprooted and torn apart.

Most of the people who are going through this now had already lost touch with the only community they'd ever known. Their community was torn down and they were scattered. They'd already lost their real homes, the only place where they knew everybody, and now the places they've been staying are destroyed.

But nobody cares. They're just lawless looters ... dangerous.

The hurricane hit at the end of the month, the time when poor people are most vulnerable. Food stamps don't buy enough but for about three weeks of the month, and by the end of the month everyone runs out. Now they have no way to get their food stamps or any money, so they just have to take what they can to survive.

Many people are getting sick and very weak. From the toxic water that people are walking through, little scratches and sores are turning into major wounds.

People whose homes and families were not destroyed went into the city right away with boats to bring the survivors out, but law enforcement told them they weren't needed. They are willing and able to rescue thousands, but they're not allowed to.

Every day countless volunteers are trying to help, but they're turned back. Almost all the rescue that's been done has been done by volunteers anyway.

My son and his family - his wife and kids, ages 1, 5 and 8 - were flooded out of their home when the levee broke. They had to swim out until they found an abandoned building with two rooms above water level.

There were 21 people in those two rooms for a day and a half. A guy in a boat who just said "I'm going to help regardless" rescued them and took them to Highway I-10 and dropped them there.

They sat on the freeway for about three hours, because someone said they'd be rescued and taken to the Superdome. Finally they just started walking, had to walk six and a half miles.

When they got to the Superdome, my son wasn't allowed in - I don't know why - so his wife and kids wouldn't go in. They kept walking, and they happened to run across a guy with a tow truck that they knew, and he gave them his own personal truck.

When they got here, they had no gas, so I had to punch a hole in my gas tank to give them some gas, and now I'm trapped. I'm getting around by bicycle.

People from Placquemine Parish were rescued on a ferry and dropped off on a dock near here. All day they were sitting on the dock in the hot sun with no food, no water. Many were in a daze; they've lost everything.

They were all sitting there surrounded by armed guards. We asked the guards could we bring them water and food. My mother and all the other church ladies were cooking for them, and we have plenty of good water.

But the guards said, "No. If you don't have enough water and food for everybody, you can't give anything." Finally the people were hauled off on school buses from other parishes.

You know Robert King Wilkerson (the only one of the Angola 3 political prisoners who's been released). He's been back in New Orleans working hard, organizing, helping people. Now nobody knows where he is. His house was destroyed. Knowing him, I think he's out trying to save lives, but I'm worried.

The people who could help are being shipped out. People who want to stay, who have the skills to save lives and rebuild are being forced to go to Houston.

It's not like New Orleans was caught off guard. This could have been prevented.

There's military right here in New Orleans, but for three days they weren't even mobilized. You'd think this was a Third World country.

I'm in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans, the only part that isn't flooded. The water is good. Our parks and schools could easily hold 40,000 people, and they're not using any of it.

This is criminal. These people are dying for no other reason than the lack of organization.

Everything is needed, but we're still too disorganized. I'm asking people to go ahead and gather donations and relief supplies but to hold on to them for a few days until we have a way to put them to good use.

I'm challenging my party, the Green Party, to come down here and help us just as soon as things are a little more organized. The Republicans and Democrats didn't do anything to prevent this or plan for it and don't seem to care if everyone dies.

Malik's phone is working. He welcomes calls from old friends and anyone with questions or ideas for saving lives. To reach him, call the Bay View at (415) 671-0789.

[Brwn_eyes0511]

Originally Posted by BombaySapphire3

The Republicans and Democrats...don't seem to care if everyone dies.

And we wonder why no one from the green party has ever been elected for office.