HURRICANE KATRINA- archive of links

Thanks so much!

Good ammo to counter the MSM lies this week!

Thanks so much! Good ammo to counter the MSM lies this week...

Thanks for looking- we've got the timeline and the facts here, for any to see. I already hear the Media Hive tuning up for an all "Bash the Evil Boosh" week of propaganda.

FLASHBACK: Sharing Images From Storm’s ‘Ground Zero’

Big Government - Recovery From Katrina Shows That It can't Get Out Of It's Own Way

New Orleans Blues

The Tragedy of New Orleans (ingrained culture of political corruption in New Orleans)--Turned its back? As the chart nearby indicates, Congress has approved $122.5 billion... New Orleans' plight is not the result of federal underspending. Uncle Sam has spent some five times more on Katrina relief than any other natural disaster in the past 50 years. Methinks the US has hit the....."a democracy that votes itself freestuff"....stage.....If I remember correctly the next stage of a democracy is "downfall"...

LOUISIANA GOV. BLANCO "RE-ELECT" SUPPORT STILL VERY LOW

CNN Starts Weeklong Attack on Insurance Companies--The insurance companies have absolutely raped those folks in New Orleans. If you go there you will see house after house, completely ruined, with signs saying "Allstate paid me $3,500 for this."

MOVEON: "We will not forget" KATRINA LETTER CAMPAIGN

Katrina Redeaux

email from Queen Hillary, pontificating on Katrina

Katrina fatigue setting in

THE LESSON OF KATRINA

Insurance crisis slamming S.C. coast (Housing)--premium increase from $126,000 to $879,000...

Hugo vs. Katrina: Tale of Two Cities

Katrina's punch at the pump {year later, what have we done}

Hope waits - Lawsuit over cocker spaniel underscores Katrina rescue problems.

Katrina Survivors Sue Over Rescued Pets

September 3rd, 2006

From the Austin American-Statesman:

Tiffany Madura loves Hope, a cocker found in perilous health after Hurricane Katrina. But a New Orleans woman says the dog is her pet, Jazz, and has sued to get her back.
Hope waits

Hey, for once everybody has a dog in this fight.

17 Comments »

Army General Recalls Katrina Aftermath (Lt. Gen. Russel Honore -John Wayne Dude !!!)

New Orleans Suffers From New Blast of Violence

Is Plenty Intl. Stealing Katrina Supplies From Pat Robertson?

Taxpayer Abuse: Your Millions in Katrina Relief Go To . . . A Football Stadium--$170 Million of Your Katrina "Relief"...come right out and say it-Katrina was a big scam. It covered up corruption in the state of Louisiana, allowed the media to blame a sitting President for a natural disaster, and bought a lot of TVs, tattoos, and ipods. Were people hurt by the storm? Absolutely. But honest and resonable people moved on with their lives, while a multitude are still scamming the system. But anyone who points out the scams, is labled insensitive..

Survey: New Orleans Under 190,000 People

New Orleans infested with wildlife--This is a rat's paradise...

Give Them Back (Nagin's New Orleans thugs refuse to return confiscated guns)

#138

ec marm 12/29/2006 03:58PM PST

#103 WrathofG-d
I think, in light of what you wrote, you will thoroughly enjoy this SERIOUS Scott Ott of Scrappleface article. Also, some of the longer comments after the article talking about the post Katrina volunteer relief efforts. It's going to take some time, but well worth reading. http://www.scrappleface.com/?p=2448

ScrappleFace Editor Responds to Real Editor

by Scott Ott

To: ScrappleFace Readers
Fr: Scott Ott, editor, ScrappleFace.com
[You can listen to a portion of this post at ScrappleFace Audio.]

In the four and a half years since ScrappleFace began, my little satirical stories have reached millions of people. Those who read them on the website, for the most part, understand the satirical context. However, thanks to the magic of clip-and-paste, many stories have been ripped from their context and distributed via email, listserv and forum, causing consternation and ill-will in some cases. Normally, the vast editorial staff at ScrappleFace when notified of such offenses, dutifully ignores them, preferring to let the work speak for itself. We simply continue to ply the trade of creating “fake but accurate” news that we learned in journalism school, and at the feet of Dan Rather and The New York Times.

However, today we received the note below from an apparently “real” editor, and felt moved to respond. The following, both the email we received and our response, is non-satirical. (That means it is not satire.)

On Dec 28, 2006, at 10:08 PM, SF Bay View wrote:
Dear Scott,
I hope the story you wrote, “One Year Later, Some Katrina Victims Still Slow to Respond“, is satire and is not based on comments actually made by Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. An excerpt from your story had been sent to me, and I forwarded it to this list, which is read by Katrina survivors and people who want to support them. I had thought the excerpt was authentic until just now, when I read the full story on your website and detected that the entire website is satire. I might not have been fooled (assuming the story IS satire) if I didn’t know Pelosi. But I do. I live in her district and know her as extremely cold and callous, often blaming the victim - just the way you portrayed her.
If your story is satire, please tell that to the people on this list. As you can see, your story has caused them immeasurable pain. Think for a moment how it would feel to be condemned by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the person next in line to become president of the U.S. if something should happen to the president and vice president … and a woman at that! We all expect a woman to have some empathy or at least some compassion.
To me and to the readers of our newspaper, Katrina survivors are heroes. Just having survived the worst catastrophe ever to hit the U.S. is heroic. And the fact that they are members of this email listserve, where every day they reach out from their own pain and loss and give material help, resources, encouragement and love to others in desperate need, is heroic. I even read on this list the last words tapped out by a man who then died from the Katrina floodwaters that had poisoned his body.
After reading these messages, I hope and expect that you will be moved to use your writing talent and your very impressive and obviously well read website to generate great waves of help and support for Katrina survivors. The members of this listserve can no doubt give you suggestions and guidance about how you can be most effective. We need you to be a hero too!
Mary Ratcliff
San Francisco Bay View
editor@sfbayview.com
www.sfbayview.com (badly hacked but coming back - soon)

The following is the non-satirical response from ScrappleFace editor-in-chief Scott Ott:

Dear Mary Ratcliff,

First, here’s a link to a site that contains dozens of links that provide ways for people to help Katrina survivors. May all who read this visit and give.

Your email address indicates you are an editor of something. Part of an editor’s job is to check sources before “going to press.” You clipped and pasted a bit forwarded to you from a satire website and sent it out as if it were something that Rep. Nancy Pelosi said. Now, you have asked me to write to this group of people (on a listserv) who have endured some of the harsh realities of life, that I might somehow atone for the confusion you have caused.

I embrace the opportunity.

In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, journalists sought someone to blame. They, predictably, found President George Bush was the best scapegoat. But in lashing out, yet again, at their favorite source of all discontent, they missed a bigger target. If anyone “out there” is to be blamed, it is the large, remote, centralized federal government which has become a surrogate father to so many millions of Americans.

Over the decades, we have ceded power, authority and responsibility to the federal government far beyond anything envisioned or desired by our founders. As a result, instead relying on our own intelligence, resources and ability to work with others in our communities to solve problems, we have turned to Washington D.C..

This is not a matter of ‘blaming the victim’, because the victim has become so immersed in this twisted view of human life that he cannot see what has happened. The federal government’s dehumanizing effect has torn up neighborhoods, torn apart families and turned brave, capable people into compliant recipients of redistributed wealth.

The problem is that the morsels of that wealth never provide enough to do anything other than keep folks in a perpetual state of dependence upon the State. Even if those morsels became chunks big enough to choke a horse, the dependency would remain. The federal government has become not only the safety net, it is everything from the crib blanket to the casket lining.

The danger of centralized government control is not that it robs a few dollars from rich people and gives them to the poor. It’s not even that such a bureaucratic behemoth spawns the waste of billions of dollars. After all, it’s just money.

No, the threat of this system is that it strips a man of what makes him a man, and turns him away from his inner resources, or the inclination to partner with neighbors to solve problems. It humiliates him, blinds him and ultimately cripples him.

Of course, when a government-built levee bursts, and a government-subsidized house is immersed, the natural, reasonable reaction of the displaced person is to turn to the government; both to blame for the disaster and to petition for relief. Many of the homes that were destroyed belonged to middle- and upper-class citizens as well, and yet still somehow even some of those people turned toward Washington to vent anger and cry out for restoration.

Sadly, the story that rarely gets told are the daily acts of bravery, fortitude and cooperation in dozens of communities where people — often through the agency of local churches — have pulled together in reliance upon each other and in a shared dependence upon superintending grace. Work crews that report to no one in Washington have poured into the region to cart off debris and help lay the foundations for a better future. Against all odds, many of the washed-out residents have worked long hours, endured separation from family and almost-overwhelming hardship in order to rebuild what the waters ravaged. These people are beyond number, and below the media radar.

Journalists, by habit, prefer stories they can receive from the tip of a spoon held by an “expert” or official. They, too, have turned to big government and have become dependent upon her for their sustenance. What most Americans know of the situation in the hurricane zone is only what TV or other news sources tell them. Most of that information comes from “authorities” in the government. The reporters have told us that the real story is all about the government’s response. They have largely ignored the responsible activities of thousands of unseen hands restoring towns, parks, homes and lives.

Success stories are buried. Tragedy is blared from the housetops. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle that further deepens dependence upon the government, and further strips the dignity of the person.

The victims of Katrina are not really the victims of Katrina herself. The tragedy began long before the hurricane hit.

Natural disasters have always happened and always will. While, mercifully, they don’t occur every day in every place, they are common enough that we ought to have an expectation that bad things can and will happen. We need to cultivate the inner resources in ourselves, our children and our neighborhoods to cope with the inevitable. When we cede that power and responsibility to the federal government, we surrender a part of what makes us human and leave ourselves more vulnerable to the tempest.

Whether you believe in God or not, you have surely experienced how the human soul sings when we gather in chorus to accomplish a great purpose in the midst of tragedy. It’s as if we were designed to work together with our family, friends and neighbors. There is a blessing in it that exceeds the penalty of the curse.

When my own community was hit by flooding some years ago, people stepped off their porches, shouldered sandbags, delivered meals, took in the homeless, wielded shovels against the muck, and generally helped each other in the task of restoration. As awful as that flood was, I will always remember it fondly, not for the harm it did to us and to our property, but for the good it did in us and in our community.

Our state-run schools and spoon-fed media have conditioned us to look to government. They’ve also trained us to take offense at any expression of love that doesn’t result in government intervention and redistribution of taxpayer dollars. ‘Compassion’ has been redefined as ‘entitlement’ and thus stripped of its power and utility.

The devastating impact of this mindset is the apparent withering of the individual spirit and of community cooperation which have been the hallmarks of this great nation.

But all is not yet lost, and perhaps not so much is lost as we have been led to believe.

Since what we know about America flows mostly from the media, we can be certain that most of what we know is just plain wrong, or at least atypical. My old journalism professor used to say, ‘News is coups, earthquakes and three-legged chickens.’

In other words, Walter Cronkite was exactly wrong to say ‘That’s the way it is.’ Journalists don’t report the truth about life. They are carnival barkers selling the unusual, the atypical, the freaks. And we continue to reward them for doing so.

The actual truth about life in our great Republic is quite different from the daily portrayals in the media.

Everywhere in this God-blessed America covert radicals roam, committing seemingly-random acts of kindness — unmonitored, untallied, uncontrolled, unshackled from the federal government. It is, in effect, a shadow government that we have set up for ourselves to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty.

This decentralized movement of men and women accomplishes most of the great work of charity, compassion and community building. Their individual efforts are a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of government largess, but in the aggregate and ultimate their service far exceeds anything that government can deliver.

In fact, the vast majority of Americans behave as if the federal government did not exist in their day-to-day lives. This underground movement is entirely healthy and necessary for the maintenance of our Republic and for our pursuit of happiness.

We don’t have time to blame anyone for our misfortunes. We’re too busy working to overcome them. We don’t have faith in some distant bureaucrat, rather we turn to the resources that God has placed near at hand. We lean on our brothers. Many of us call on our Father in our time of need, and He sends our neighbors who love us more than we love ourselves. Later, we will turn to our helpers when they need us and repay the debt, only to learn that no debt existed because acts of compassion shower blessings on giver and receiver alike.

We find these local (and spiritual) solutions not only adequate, but invigorating and inspiring because it is only when we are pressed hard by life that we discover there is more life in us, among us and beyond us than we had imagined in carefree hours.

Sincerely,
Scott Ott, editor
www.ScrappleFace.com

You can listen to a portion of this post at ScrappleFace Audio.

| Read Comments

We had a kid here fixing the dishwasher last week from NO and he started talking about the fact that “they” blew up the levees. We asked him who ‘they’ were and he didn’t know.

My husband tried to explain that levees wash out from under the water level where you can’t see them and they must be maintained to prevent that. He got that ‘deer in the headlights look’ and didn’t comment but you knew he had never considered that before.

He didn’t fix the dishwasher BTW and I have to call and get him back.

Hi, Ditter- it's always nice to "see" you around the forum. Regarding this?

He didn’t fix the dishwasher BTW and I have to call and get him back.

You might want to consider another repairman- anyone subscribing to that "'they' blew up the levees" theory probably believes in Alchemy, too. That's probably why he couldn't fix it...

Hi backhoe, nice to see you too. Well I am going to call his repair company because they got my money. Hopefully they will send someone other than Jermaine, in fact I am going to insist on it.