No problem, A... Just quit attacking me and you won't have to deal with me... Kinda simple... I thought that was the point that you understood... Maybe you don't... Maybe you think I'm yer Mudcat punching bag... Guess again... You punch and yer gonna get one back... Tit-for-tat... Ain't that I'm a mean spirited kinda guy 'cause I ain't... But I do defend myself and my core values...

Maybe what you don't like is that I'm a good counter-puncher...

Robo,

I'm with ya' to a point... When you speak of that part about "responsibilty", I'd just point out that it's easy to talk about this when one has either beaten the odds and found an escape from the opoverty they were born into or they never had to worry much about those things in the first place...

What we have in America is a social-econmis disater and we aren't teaching life skills to kids in poor neigborhoods, that is if we can even get them into the schools... I don't know what the drop out rate is in N.O. But I'd bet it is within the top 5 highest on nay major city in the U.S.

Poor folks just don't have life skills that others have... Street skills ain't life skills and it took life skills to know how to get the heck outta N.O. on Sept 28th or 29th... Yes, you are right that a lot of folks just didn't take "resonsibility" for their lives but, like I said, like why would we have expected anything different???

And, yes, FEMA has been kicked down a rung or two since 9/11 and it really does take the President to make the call to the Secretary of DHS to make the call to FEMA... Sure, a Secretary of DHS, who has the balls can order it without the President's call but that is asking a lot of any appointeee in this president's cabinet...

Brown had spoken with the president two, perhaps three, days before the storm and warned Bush that a Cat 4 ot Cat 5 was going to hit the region...

This is where I see Bush havin' fumbled the ball... He can't say he didn't know about Katrina... He can't say that he hadn't gotten requests for help... He can't say that he didn't know the chain of command...

And that is why I place much of the balme at his feet for the poor federal response and that is why there seesm to be a real hollowness in Bush's own words, "My job is to protect the American people"...

Bobert