Posted on 09/12/2005 5:21:48 PM PDT by wagglebee
Excellent post!!!!
I remember when I was in college, I got a lot of offers for credit cards and sent away for all of them. Soon I was in way over my head and had no idea what to do (I owed about $20K). I went to my parent and told them what was going on. We worked out a deal, they paid them all off and cancelled the accounts. My father then took away my car, put me on a very tight allowance and I had to hand him my check every week when I worked over the summer. I remember being pissed and complaining that I wouldn't have any money to have fun, he said, "you had about $20000 worth of fun in the past few month, that should last you a while." I learned a very valuable lesson, IF YOU CAN'T AFFORD SOMETHING, YOU SHOULDN'T BUY IT!
I've never had these problems since, now I have money in the bank, perfect credit, a new car and everything I need; a few months ago I was about to buy a 60 inch plasma TV and my wife looked at me and said, "all you watch is Fox News, why the hell do you need a big screen TV?" Bottom line, it's not intelligence or ability which makes most people poor, it's their attitude.
If there is it was just formed.
Government, by its definition, is designed to grow. It matters not if it is a representative democracy or a tyrannical dictatorship. A read the Federalist Papers may show you what our Founding Fathers thought on the subject and how they tried to quiet that beast.
BTW ... Good luck on the move, and be sure to read the fine print of that government.
I am not sure what is meant by "worse" but I don't see many conservatives here that think that way.
I agree however with the main theme of the article. It must be terribly hard to break away from the mold and succede in spite of peer pressure to fail but we see examples of people who have done just that, all around us.
I did not come from a wealthy back ground but I did have parents who had values and those values were based on solid religious convictions.
While I don't consider myself "wealthy", I do consider my life a success (so far), in that I have raised my family while trying to instill in them the same values that were taught to me by my parents.
I now have the immense pleasure of having adult children, whom I see teaching their children the same things. Basically that there is a right and wrong and by example teach them to choose the right.
When push came to shove, almost all of the citizenry of New Orleans, and the surrounding Parrish's managed to get themselves to high ground.
It was the mayor and the governor who failed to inform them of the need to bring food, water, diapers, formula, medications, etc., once it was evident there was no evacuation plan in process. I am appalled at the number of people who have no idea what medications they take and for what, but, that of course is George Bush's fault.
bttt
Try New Zealand.
I received this via e-mail today and literally went postal. If anyone ever asks why Attorneys and the Far left are so despised, then read this (I'd post it as an article but I don't know how)
"The Two Americas
By Marjorie Cohn
09/03/05 "t r u t h o u t" -- --- Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.
What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go."
"Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, "nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis."
"Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable" in Cuba, Valdes said. "Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin."
They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff," Valdes observed.
After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does."
Our federal and local governments had more than ample warning that hurricanes, which are growing in intensity thanks to global warming, could destroy New Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush set about to prevent states from controlling global warming, weaken FEMA, and cut the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee construction in New Orleans by $71.2 million, a 44 percent reduction.
Bush sent nearly half our National Guard troops and high-water Humvees to fight in an unnecessary war in Iraq. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Paris in New Orleans, noted a year ago, "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq."
An Editor and Publisher article Wednesday said the Army Corps of Engineers "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain," which caused a slowdown of work on flood control and sinking levees.
"This storm was much greater than protection we were authorized to provide," said Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager in the New Orleans district of the corps.
Unlike in Cuba, where homeland security means keeping the country secure from deadly natural disasters as well as foreign invasions, Bush has failed to keep our people safe. "On a fundamental level," Paul Krugman wrote in yesterday's New York Times, "our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on prevention measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice."
During the 2004 election campaign, vice presidential candidate John Edwards spoke of "the two Americas." It seems unfathomable how people can shoot at rescue workers. Yet, after the beating of Rodney King aired on televisions across the country, poor, desperate, hungry people in Watts took over their neighborhoods, burning and looting. Their anger, which had seethed below the surface for so long, erupted. That's what's happening now in New Orleans. And we, mostly white, people of privilege, rarely catch a glimpse of this other America.
"I think a lot of it has to do with race and class," said Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. "The people affected were largely poor people. Poor, black people."
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reached a breaking point Thursday night. "You mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources we need? Come on, man!"
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had boasted earlier in the day that FEMA and other federal agencies have done a "magnificent job" under the circumstances.
But, said, Nagin, "They're feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are dying. Get off your asses and let's do something!"
When asked about the looting, the mayor said that except for a few "knuckleheads," it is the result of desperate people trying to find food and water to survive.
Nagin blamed the outbreak of violence and crime on drug addicts who have been cut off from their drug supplies, wandering the city, "looking to take the edge off their jones."
When Hurricane Ivan hit Cuba, no curfew was imposed; yet, no looting or violence took place. Everyone was in the same boat.
Fidel Castro, who has compared his government's preparations for Hurricane Ivan to the island's long-standing preparations for an invasion by the United States, said, "We've been preparing for this for 45 years."
On Thursday, Cuba's National Assembly sent a message of solidarity to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It says the Cuban people have followed closely the news of the hurricane damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and the news has caused pain and sadness. The message notes that the hardest hit are African-Americans, Latino workers, and the poor, who still wait to be rescued and taken to secure places, and who have suffered the most fatalities and homelessness. The message concludes by saying that the entire world must feel this tragedy as its own.
Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists."
Rush was right on today. The fed respone was better than its ever been. I still think that some Dems in that state did what they could to delay help in NO just to sling mud on Bush.
Bingo. You got it exactly.
The U.N.,the NAACP? /sarcasm off
Rush has been on the top of his game lately. It's almost like the old days...
It was like music to my ears to hear Rush spell it out so perfectly. We have also seen another characteristic of the parasitic left: whenever their corruption is about to be exposed, make big noises about someone else so that the press focuses on that and not them.
Methinks the New Orleans locals and the state government do not want the Feds in looking over their shoulders. They will position themselves to protect their money laundering schemes.
Anyone who believes that Castro is taking better care of the poor in Cuba than the US takes care of its own poor is really deluded or a Marxist. The only reason that people would evacuate when ordered to do so in Cuba is because of what the soldiers would do to them if they refused...and as far as having relief and medical care in Cuba, it is squalid. They don't risk their lives to escape to Florida to get away from such fine care.
And of course, it must always be mentioned that blacks and latinos were hit hardest. Have you ever read a news story after any disaster that proclaimed 'whites hit hardest'? I'm afraid the world would have no sympathy for such a disaster, none at all.
Rush has it right --
OMG...No!!
A responsible orginization!!!!
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