I have heard NO logical argument as to how on earth those people could still be stranded in New Orleans.

Americans expect to be taken care of, they don't think about having to survive in life-threatening instances when no one can reach them. The people who are stranded may not have realized that part of the responsibility was theirs, to be taken on their own behalf. Keep supplies handy, have an escape plan, and go when you're told to evaculate.

I also cannot explain why they are not, at the very least, airdropping food and water onto the people in New Orleans,

You haven't been paying attention. They have been airlifting this stuff in for some time now. There hasn't been enough, but you can't say nothing has been done.

I have seen abandoned highway strips that could sustain a landing,

What kind of plane do you propose fly in and land on a short strip of precarious highway? Have you seen how many of those bridges have already buckled? You'd have to be nuts to try to land a jet on one of those.

My friend was cleaning pools in Beverly Hills during the Rodney King riots and she said there was a cop car on every block. But when she got into the lower income areas, a cop could not be found. So, from my own disaster experiences,

That wasn't your experience, that was your friend's, and it is hear-say here. A cop on every block? Surely you exaggerate.

Again, I wish I did not have to write this article. And I hope I am wrong in this conclusion.

I think you were wrong--you're overwrought. Turn off Fox News and listen to NPR for a while. And why start this new thread? There are plenty of others going on the topic. You could have vented on one of those.

I understand where you're coming from, but your defensive post in support of this targeted (as you suggest) homogenous poor minority underclass paints this group as innocent childlike victims, sheep for the slaughter. It doesn't allow them agency, yet most of these people are the agents of their own difficulties--they should have listened and gotten out. The services to move people were inadequate, but they were not unavailable. Many of these people made the conscious decision to stay in their houses and wait it out. And now they are paying for that tragic miscalculation.

The ones who did move to the stadium, who did what they were asked to do, have been victimised as much by those free agents on the outside as by the storm. Those outside who waylay buses, fire shots at aircraft and people, have held those in the stadium hostage. They're caught in the middle, but no one is practicing a subtle or unsubtle form of genocide against them.

We've been discussing the state of race and population and wealth versus caste on other threads. But no one has so far gone off so half-cocked as you have. I'm sure my response is going to start a big defensive argument, but your rant doesn't demonstrate any critical thinking, it exhibits the kind of knee-jerk emotional reaction that just makes things worse. It also disenfranchises vast groups and shows great misunderstanding of the rest. The rescue workers who are there in New Orleans and in Mississippi and Alabama are working until they drop. But you would suggest that they are not really there and this is all a giant defacto genocide.

Sorry. I just can't buy it, won't support it, and can't let it go by without a strong comment response.

SRS