Pic of the Day
| Quote of the Day Although there may be nothing new under the sun, what is old is new to us and so rich and astonishing that we never tire of it. If we do tire of it, if we lose our curiosity, we have lost something of infinite value, because to a high degree it is curiosity that gives meaning and savour to life. --Robertson Davies |
| Subject: My upcoming trip Dear President Bush: I'm about to plan a little trip with my family and extended family, and I would like to ask you to assist me. I'm going to walk across the border from the U.S. into Mexico, and I need to make a few arrangements. I know you can help with this. I plan to skip all the legal stuff like visas, passports, immigration quotas and laws. I'm sure they handle those things the same way you do here. So, would you mind telling your buddy, President Vaccinate Fox, that I'm on my way over? Please let him know that I will be expecting the following: 1. Free medical care for my entire family. 2. English-speaking government bureaucrats for all services I might need, whether I use them or not. 3. All government forms need to be printed in English. 4. I want my kids to be taught by English-speaking teachers. 5. Schools need to include classes on American culture and history. 6. I want my kids to see the American flag flying on the top of the flag pole at their school with the Mexican flag flying lower down. 7. Please plan to feed my kids at school for both breakfast and lunch. 8. I will need a local Mexican driver's license so I can get easy access to government services. 9. I do not plan to have any car insurance, and I won't make any effort to learn local traffic laws. 10. In case one of the Mexican police officers does not get the memo from Pres. Fox to leave me alone, please be sure that all police officers speak English 11. I plan to fly the U.S. flag from my house top, put flag decals on my car, and have a gigantic celebration on July 4th. I do not want any complaints or negative comments from the locals. 12. I would also like to have a nice job without paying any taxes, and don't enforce any labor laws or tax laws. 13. Please tell all the people in the country to be extremely nice and never say a critical word about me, or about the strain I might place on the economy. I know this is an easy request because you already do all these things for all the people who come to the U.S. from Mexico. I am sure that Pres. Fox won't mind returning the favor if you ask him nicely. However, if he gives you any trouble, just invite him to go quail hunting with your VP Thank you so much for your kind help. Sincerely, A US CITIZEN and TAXPAYER |
| Web Site Worth the Visit Remember Walter Brennan and his tear-jerker song "Old Shep"? Take a walk down memory lane by clicking on this site. Get your Kleenex ready. Old Shep by Walter Brennan |
Voting For New Orlean's Mayor
Kaitlyn Mae,
Time for a Katrina update that history is not re-written.
We begin with the New Orleans' Mayoral primary. As difficult as it is to believe, Mayor Naginhead, who left his citizens to drown as school buses remained idle and unused, garnered the plurality of the votes to be re-elected Mayor!
Once a city becomes corrupt and living essentially off of the public teat, Kaitlyn, old habits die hard.
It remains to be seen whether Nagin will follow through to win Mayor. Because neither contender, Nagin or the inbred Landrieu, garnered over 50% of the vote, there will be a runoff vote in May in this year of our Lord 2006.
Oh, and by the way Kaitlyn, the school buses worked just fine when came time to bus in voters from where they are living out of state...STILL!
From ABCNEWS.com:
Forman had about 17 percent of the overall vote Saturday, trailing Nagin's 38 percent and Landrieu's 29 percent.
Nagin and Landrieu begin a monthlong run-off campaign where both will hope to win over the white conservative voters that made up Nagin's 2002 base in order to win the May 20 vote.
An Interesting Voter Demographic tidbit
This might explain the Nagin win, Kaitlyn. In that, even with so much of the NO population re-located, the percentages remain, per NOLA.com, the same as before Hurricane Katrina.
They get what they vote for.
From NOLA.com:
A substantial majority of New Orleans' registered voters still reside within the city or its suburbs, and their racial makeup closely mirrors that of all registered voters before the storm, according to new data commissioned by the secretary of state.
The new data challenges the popular notion that the out-of-state votes of displaced New Orleans residents loom large over the April 22 election, as well as the perception that in-town voters are overwhelmingly white and those out of town are overwhelmingly black, said Greg Rigamer of GCR and Associates, who produced the data[....]
Further, the data shows the proportion of white voters to black voters living in the metro area -- although not necessarily in Orleans Parish -- remains almost the same as before the flood, about 32 percent white and 62 percent black. And the data on race is more reliable, Rigamer said, because of the massive size of the sample.
Yet Another Interesting NO Demographic
In May 2006, Kaitlyn Mae, there is currently raging a mighty war between this country's political class and the middle class. For as of this date there are allegedly twelve million illegal aliens in this country, most of them from Mexico. The politicians want the votes of the illegal aliens while the middle class, who finance the health and educational costs of these illegal aliens, wants a)something done to stop the constant inflow, then b)some method of legalizing these foreign workers that they pay their share of taxes and contribute to the cost of the country's infrastructure.
I pray that you never have to wear a burqua, Kaitlyn. Now I pray you never have to sing the National Anthem in Spanish.
To add to the problem, it seems that illegal aliens are pouring into New Orleans to assist in rebuilding of that city. Assist for less than minimum wage I suspect.
From NOLA.com:
Across south Louisiana and into Mississippi, police are learning Spanish or hiring translators to deal with migrant workers who have shown up since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Volunteer interpreter Essie O'Neill, whose husband is a police lieutenant, said she used to be called about once a month. Now it's more like two or three times a week, and Chief Freddy Drennan has signed up more than two dozen more people to help the 70-officer department.
"Before the storm, we had a small Hispanic population that was pretty much bilingual, but now we have a lot of people who only speak Spanish," Drennan said. "We're facing some interesting times, and we're not the only ones."
A Katrina Cartoon
For giggles and grins.
Houston Still Dealing With Katrina Evacuees
The good citizens of Houston, Texas kindly received evacuees from New Orleans with open arms, Kaitlyn.
Only some of those temporary citizens aren't behaving very nice in their new town. Well they're used to misbehaving not to mention not working for a living. A change in geography doesn't equal a change in personality it would seem.
Houston is right next door to New Orleans, Kaitlyn. Houston is a thriving, happening city, mostly law-abiding and with little unemployment.
The two cities share essentially the same weather, the same geographic, and a similar locale.
What on earth brought one city-Houston- to become a hub of economic activity, while another-New Orleans-to be a black eye on America's landscape?
Think about it, Kaitlyn. We'll talk more later.
From Houston City Journal.org:
From the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina emerges a historic natural experiment: Can one city's good governance help undo what another city's bad governance helped create?
In the decades before Katrina, New Orleans was a place where failed urban policies let social pathology fester. Its economy was listless, its population declining. Free-market employers and middle-class residents shunned the city, because its public sector was seen as corrupt, its citizenry was uneducated, and its neighborhoods were crime-ridden. Failed criminal-justice and public-education systems helped perpetuate a large underclass, mostly black, as the city's productive class, white and black, dwindled. Decades of government mismanagement and private-sector abandonment had turned New Orleans's once-whimsical local nickname-"The City That Care Forgot"-into a sad epitaph before Katrina.
To escape Katrina, about half of New Orleans's population, or about 240,000 people, fled 350 miles west on Interstate 10 to Houston, whose increasing population and expanding economy have been the inverse of New Orleans's over the past five decades. More than seven months after the storm, Houston remains home to about 150,000 New Orleans evacuees.
more Katrina Posts HERE.
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