My bleeding liberal heart takes a bath: Have Katrina victims followed GWB'

[hadrons]

I just got an e-mail from a friend in Dallas. It was a shocker. "People need to know what is going on with the Katrina evacuees here," she wrote me. "My feelings right now about the Katrina folk is that they should be thrown out with the bath water. I WANT THEM ALL TO GO THE HELL BACK TO NEW ORLEANS!" She goes on to detail how the victims of Hurricane Katrina are using their access to government funds to go on elaborate spending sprees. And they are also acting like thugs.

Like the victims of Katrina, GWB now has billions of dollars of OUR tax money -- and he is spending it even more wildly than my friend says that the Katrina victims are spending it. So. We should crack down on the one but not on the other? Have a double standard -- one that points the wagging finger of shame at the Katrina victims but lets that welfare queen in the White House slide?

"They are turning Dallas into a crime-ridden city," continued my friend. "They are turning the prices of everything upside down." You could say that about George Bush too.

"In school, these kids are way below grade level and they are starting fights in the schoolyard. And the gangs in South Dallas have even called a truce in order to stop the New Orleans gangs from taking over. They beat the hell out of them and for once the police are happy!" Not only does that sound exactly like the results of Bush's "No Child Left Behind" fiasco but our George has also succeeded in uniting the Republican and Democratic gangs against him too.

"Dallas bit off more than it can chew here," said my friend, "but thank God the police chief knows the score. He's had a couple of 'come to Jesus' talks with some of these folk." And a few "come to Jesus" talks with GWB -- preferably in a courtroom -- might work wonders too.

"And don't let me forget the sex offenders who are now running loose in Dallas. There are something like 350 that we know of." Okay. And Bush had Jeff Gannon, a well-known male prostitute, spend the night in the White House 20 different times according to Secret Service records. There's a definite correlation here.

....

PS: There IS one difference between the Katrina evacuees in Dallas and George Bush. Many of the Katrina victims are spending like drunken sailors because they have never had any money before and don't know how to handle it whereas GWB has always had money. However, he too spends it like a drunken sailor -- especially now, ever since he got his hands on ours.


# posted by Jane Stillwater : 9:36 AM

http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_jpstillwater_archive.html#113415027026979229

I love how some people just like to get angry over made-up stories because they just like to be angry

[Debau2005]

1. I had a relative

that sent around an email screaming about the increase in car jackings since Katrina evacuees came to Atlanta. She shut up VERY quickly when I asked her for a link to the actual numbers, and of the car jacking numbers how many were verified to be Katrina victims...Amazing how they never have any proof. Oh and I have not received any more Katrina emails from her.

[Whoa_Nelly]

2. So true

But Snopes does give some credence to this happening :shrug:

http://www.snopes.com/katrina/charity/debitcard.asp

Claim: Debit cards issued to Hurricane Katrina evacuees have been used to purchase luxury or entertainment items.

Status: True.

Example:

[Child_Of_Isis]

4. I read about the suit.

I bet one suit of Laura Bush's cost more than most families see in a month. Our tax money pays for that and nobody says a word. Crazy, ain't it?

[robbedvoter]

5. Damn "refugees", 911 wives, welfare queens! Snopes went RW I see.

Yeah, right after we deal with the Happy Holliday terrorists we need to kick them disaster opportunists! How dares a NO woman buy a suit I can't afford?
Don't they know their place? Only the BFEE& their clients are entitled to things I cannot afford - no lucky bastards who had their possessions wiped out. They should only be buying bread and water and listen to Faux!

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. Is it really so difficult to understand why people who

have known nothing but grinding poverty, should splash out on expensive consumer goods, when they are compensated however scandalously inadequately for their brutal expulsion from their homes and communities. There are so many levels on which this would seem a rational response, in terms of their historical situation.

A real saint of a Jesuit priest who I first met on a military pilgrimage to Lourdes and, later, by chance in Australia, who when not serving in an old folks' home, works as a prison chaplain, told me rather ruefully that he was puzzled why poor young Aborigines were given to buying expensive trainers, when they had money. But as I suggested to him, well, they are vilified because of their plight as a very spiritual minority people, living in a materialistic Western society. They would like to be able to integrate with the mainstream Caucasian and Asian society. I once reads that Arfur Daly of "Minder" was the most popular TV character among Aborigines. It's good that they can see the funny side of it.

In our materialistic Western cultures, keeping up with the Jones's is the rule rather than the exception; so why would not a people who, are looked down on for their characteristic poverty (the common plight of the poor throughout the world and throughout history), given moreover that "deferred pleasure" is a middle-class principle, while the principle they customarily live by is that of the Beatitudes of living for the day... why would they not want to splash out on the many "shiny things", the bling bling, the status symbols, the perquisites of affluence?

Many of our cockney lads in the UK, rich or poor, pride themselves on the designer-label gear they wear. If they were true materialists they would save up their loot to buy properties and sell them for a nice profit (Maybe some do so as well. A Tory ploy is to keep property prices high and rising, to attract people to vote for them, once they're in the property market. No quicker way, I believe, to make money here in the UK on a safe basis, or to seal in prospective Tory voters). But life to most of them is for living, not for squirreling away their money for a rainy day.

How much more understandable could it be then that a minority persecuted for being black AND poor, should be more than usually profligate with money. I fear... and I know it is eminently understandable in the US, where life has become so hazardous for most people, even when healthy... to feel a certain envy at the money paid to them and then squandered on the baubles of affluence. But, apart from any personal buzz they may get from their purchases they are trying to fit in, to integrate, to be respected. Remember, money and the perquisites of affluence signify respectability in our sick society. The poor of New Orleans, as today's outstanding representatives of the Beatitudes, are representd by Mary of Bethany; Opus Dei types, ironically, by Martha.

We must becomes more like them, not them more like us. But as long as they don't, it is little wonder that they should at least try try to meet mainstream society half way, and be accepted on its terms. But Jesus told Mary that she had chosen the better part, and it would not be taken from them. That is more like the corollary of Jesus' saying, "The poor you have always with you". It was not meant to be taken as an excuse for personally doing one's best to ensure that they remained poor, still less as poor as they can be made.

[niyad]

3. has your friend been able to provide one iota of proof of any of the

allegations? I mean, from some reliable source.