A letter from Michael Moore

[whitetop]

Everyone, don't worry about all this. Oprah arrived on the scene so we'll have her wisdom to straighten things out down in NO.

She said more people should open up their homes for these people. (Notice though she is not opening up her 4 empty mansions to the "refugees"-You have 5 homes Oprah -can only live in one at a time). Typical elite-do as I say but not as I do.

I'm also waiting for her to give away another bunch of Pontiac G6's out of the goodness of her heart. Of course GM actually gave away all the cars but who cares about the little details anyway.

[KnoxvillePig]

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Sean Penn took along his personal photographer(and a leaky boat!), typical..." we've got to help these people, how do I look?". Anyone ever seen ACTUAL proof that we're screwing up the ozone?

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AMEN!!!

Im glad most people can see through these shallow celebrities. It is all self serving publicity stunts.
Take the cameras away and I bet Penn, Winfrey or Clooney wouldn't pull your or my ass out of a mud puddle.
By the way, I thought Sean and Susan Sure-is-dumb were still on a "Fact Finding Mission" in Iraq.

Please guys do everyone a favor and go back to Hollywood.
Haven't the people of New Orleans already suffered enough?

Knoxville

[Canucklehead]

Spoken like a True "French" Canadian........If only World Politics and Policies were that simple......

Ken

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Westeners don't like French Canadians!!!!

[jfkheat]

Check out this article that was posted on Team Chevelle. There is a lot of truth in it. It is a long read but worth it.
James


An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State

By: Robert Tracinski

It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.
The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).

So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?

To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story: "Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.

"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....
"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.

" 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' " The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome? Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?

Sherri figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)
What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.
No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans.

And that is the story that no one is reporting.

Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005

[TDW]

I think Robert the Reporter is a pretty smart man.

[kwhizz]

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Spoken like a True "French" Canadian........If only World Politics and Policies were that simple......

Ken

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Westeners don't like French Canadians!!!!

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Cool!!!!!!!!!

Ken

[kwhizz]

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I think Robert the Reporter is a pretty smart man.



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Wow.......Someone with common sense who knows how to call the Kettle Black......I'm sure the "Reverend" Jesse would not agree........Imagine that......

Ken
Gonna take a Mango break.........

[tom406]

All this talk is diverting attention away from that chubby, egocentric jerkoff who spreads disinformation and lies for political gain- you know, Karl Rove.

As for Michael Moore, to say he's a no credibility celebrity who shouldn't be shooting his mouth off is sort of ridiculous. He's a celebrity BECAUSE he shoots his mouth off about hot button social issues. Nearly all of his movies (save one crappy comedy called Canadian Bacon), have been about stirring the pot and shining a light on sociopolicial issues that he wants discussed. If a semi-literate hack like Sean Hannity can babble on nightly and call that his "job", then Michael Moore should have his say as well. In this case, his "letter" is a bit too clumsy and blunt, but I believe the sentiment is real.

While the images and tales of crime were shocking, most of the desperation I saw was from a lack of shelter, food, and water. That and the difficulty of moving and caring for the elderly. Sure everyone should have evacuated voluntarily, but realistically, no car + no money = no leavng. And theres always going to be elderly folks stubbornly staying put, as anyone who's tried to get the car keys away from or convince their aging parents to go to assisted living can attest.

I think there's race and class issues at play, but mostly I think it came down to the fact that those who were left were politically invisible. They weren't active enough to make their plight known while policies were formed, and weren't noticed in the aftermath until all hell broke loose.

Whether you think its formed by a defective welfare state or the greed of the haves keeping the have-nots down, few would dispute that there is a bubbling undercurrent of poverty, desperation, and rage that comes to the surface with frightening speed when the veneer of society cracks. Whether its the LA riots, the WTO riots, blackouts or this, I'm genuinely troubled by the violence and lawlessness that erupts almost immediately. Whatever the cause, I think we have to find a solution, as it will surely corrode the society my children inherit.

As for the President, I believe that the co opting of the National Guard and its resouces to fight that misbegotten Iraq war "on the cheap" has come back to haunt him. (2008 election can't come soon enough for me. I'll leave it at that.)

Anyways, kudos to all that have sent support to the Red Cross and others. We donated to the Red Cross prior to SCR8, and are waiting to see who is most effective in the "recover and rebuild" phase and will send money then as well. If anyone finds an organization that seems to be really effective at getting people back on their feet, into homes, and on with their lives, post here or feel free to send me a PM.

Respectfully,
TOM

[kwhizz]

I think what you are seeing is the end result of a couple generartions of ACLU and MTV mentality....It's not a simple fix and I think it's only gonna get worse......

Ken
Bring back Commando Cody, Boston Blackie, and Superman

[Chevy454]

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Anyways, kudos to all that have sent support to the Red Cross and others. We donated to the Red Cross prior to SCR8, and are waiting to see who is most effective in the "recover and rebuild" phase and will send money then as well. If anyone finds an organization that seems to be really effective at getting people back on their feet, into homes, and on with their lives, post here or feel free to send me a PM.

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After delivering a load of stuff in our trailer yesterday, I had a chance to talk to a couple of the folks spearheading the effort in that area, and they explained that even the Red Cross has such an enormous amount of red tape that things move at a snail's pace...and this type of thing is old hat to the Red Cross. These folks have like 200+ refugees in a town of only 1800, and would've had more had the Red Cross "approved" one of the church's sanctuary...the Red Cross told them that since the bathroom wasn't directly adjacent to the sanctuary (it was down the hall) that they couldn't host any families...sounded a lot like a HUD inspection, not a relief effort. But anyway, they said the church decided to work *bypass* the Red Cross as the refugees just needed SOMEWHERE to go and having to walk down a hallway to a bathroom was their least concern. I was extremely pleased to hear that a couple of the farmers in the town had hired a couple of the refugees to help them get back on their feet, a trucking firm in the town was sending 10 of them to truck driving school, and all of the restraunts in town had agreed to hire as many folks as were willing to work...all from a town of 1800. Folks are pouring into all of the surrounding church camps here in our area, so the relief effort is gonna hit a lot closer to home than most people ever thought...

I'll withhold my thoughts on Michael Moore, as the focus needs to remain on those helping and those needing help...