Relief for the South
At 3:47 pm, Laura Gross posted Relief for the South, writing, in part:
These people need relief supplies now, so they will be able to focus on reconstructing their lives. I know from my work with an international relief organization that the best thing we can do for them is to donate money to an organization that is working on the ground, like the Red Cross. They will be able to buy supplies immediately to help the survivors of the hurricane.
I know the DFA community has a big heart and you have pulled together before for many activities, like the tsunami in southeast Asia and buying phone cards for veterans during the holidays. Situations like this remind me that this is the reason I'm involved in politics—to help people—and I'm sure that's part of the reason you are involved too.
Click here for the rest.
The Shadow is first!
ReplyDeleteLeaving to teach my class now. As I mentioned in the previous post, I'd really appreciate help spreading the word that this space exists.
ReplyDeleteHey, all! I just posted a link here in the BFA comments. The smoke is pretty thick there right now.
ReplyDeleteCome on in, everybody else, the water is fine!
ReplyDeleteThanks Demetrius for the head's up.
We need to keep our eyes on the prize! The anti-Iraq occupation forces have the upper hand. The pressure must be maintained.
It is obvious that even in regards to one of the worst natural disasters in American history the deployment of National Guard units to a region that did not need 'pacifying' is going to come back and bite us on the butt.
We have been lucky so far in the West, where wildfires and forest fires COULD have been the worst in centuries, and where we also would have regretted the loss of manpower.
The disaster in the South needs to be dealt with, but we cannot let Bush off the hook for he has contributed to the chaos.
"Sleepless in Seattle said... 4:50 PM"
ReplyDeleteThis administration just fails time and time again to think things thru. I don't know if they don't know any better or if they don't *care*.
Thanks Demetrius. It is when he starts going on about how you gotta love the work of killing people that I struggle to keep from replying. The man is soulless. How incredibly sad.
ReplyDeleteWar and killing may sometimes be necessary but to take joy in it is soulless.
And it is particularly ironic, to me, that George W. Bush dodged getting shot at in Vietnam by 'joining' the Air National Guard, but has NO problem sending National Guard units overseas WITHOUT the necessary armor.
ReplyDeleteThe man ought to be given his last cigarette at dawn...
Shénme tèshü said...
ReplyDeleteWrite on!
Unfortunately, to DFA HQ he is a 'franchise player'. An untouchable.
"Shénme tèshü said... 4:53 PM"
ReplyDeleteThere are a number of people in the Smoking Section who have opinions that run contrary to the mainstream of BFA. But, they aren't nearly as abrasive. Some people need to not only smoke but to blow the smoke in your face.
You're right about that, sleepless. And I can't, for the life of me, figure out WHY?
ReplyDeleteYes, you can make a point without stabbing somebody with it.
ReplyDeleteI read that the Red Cross has already collected 21 million. I'm thinking of donating to Feed the Children instead of RC.
ReplyDeleteWell put, Demetrius. Much more poetic than my method.
ReplyDeletesusand: A misguided notion about 'free speech'? I don't know. I would suggest bombarding HQ with requests to remove the offender until they relent. We will not lose the free-speechers, and we will regain some of those who cannot tolerate incivility and rudeness on a daily basis.
Or we can herd the cats over here...
ReplyDeleteAnd another one for me. I want to be close, but not too close.
ReplyDeletehey, donna!
ReplyDeletehey, barbara!
look, Demetrius, 2 cats!
It seems that I always log on when I don't have much time to stay. And just when some of my favorite folks are here too.
ReplyDeleteThe Evanston Link-Up Steering Committee had our meeting this afternoon. We are gearing up for petition signature gathering and for Cindy Sheehan's bus tour coming through Chicago.
But for now, a hungry dog awaits dinner. Later, shadowblog family.
love
ReplyDeletean update from ca. 44 th district;
Federal Relief Efforts:
* FEMA has deployed a National Emergency Response Team to Louisiana with a coordination cell positioned at the State Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge to facilitate state requests for assistance. In addition, four Advance Emergency Response Teams have been deployed to locations in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. The teams include federal liaisons who work directly within county emergency operations centers to respond to critical needs as they are identified by local officials and prioritized by the state.
* Urban Search and Rescue task forces and incident support teams have been deployed from around the country, including personnel from Orange and Riverside Counties.
* Thirty-one teams from the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) have been deployed to staging areas in the region. The teams bring truckloads of medical equipment and supplies with them and are trained to handle trauma, pediatrics, surgery and mental health problems. Two Veterinary Medical Assistance Teams are also included as part of NDMS assets deployed, which are able to support and rescue pets, and provide any needed veterinary medical care for rescue dogs.
* Voluntary agencies, important partners in disasters, are prepared to augment local government services with shelters, mobile feeding units, water and clean-up supplies.
* FEMA has 500 trucks of ice, 500 trucks of water and 350 trucks of meals ready to eat (MREs) available for distribution over the next 10 days.
oooh! and love love love and a virtual hug to all the homies in shadowland :)
ReplyDeleteNow here's something to ponder: does Bush really want to compare the madness in Iraq to WWII? I've got news for Herr Bush - he ain't Roosevelt in that analogy...
ReplyDeleteWrite your thoughts, and they will come...
ReplyDeleteHi, guys. I've mostly been playing with my new blog. This is a repost, lol, because I didn't realize there was a new thread. . . .
ReplyDelete~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Too funny. I went to my blog to add some links and nothing seemed to work. Then I noticed that the little pencils next to comments weren't there. I thought, I must not be signed in. Tried several ways to do that, no luck. So I came here, signed in and went back, refreshed the page: bingo! My pencils are back. Trooth: gotta find a better way than this to sign in to my own blog.
Off to add links.
Anybody wanting to see me blog, click my name.
(Leaving a comment would be *nice* since it's the only way I have to know who's been there, LOL! Leave a paw print for me kiddles)
Hey Puddle,
ReplyDeleteNice blog! I tried to leave a comment there but since I am still "other" and not a blogger I couldn't sign in.
Thanks, franster! Are you on a Mac? Mac people seem to have more problems with blogger.com.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks, Oscar, for the paw print!
ReplyDeletePuddle,
ReplyDeleteNo. Not on Mac. Just a Cyber dummy. ; )
Just got back from my meeting with my long awaited, much sought out meeting with my US Rep I will write up a full unofficial report later and sent the more "politically correct" one in to Chris.
ReplyDeleteAll I can say now is how can anyone believe or at least act like they belief the Presidents BS as much as my Repub rep. I was wishing I have those BS ear-thingies on at our meeting. :-)
See ya all later
franster, it may be that you have registered some time in the past at blogger. That's what happened to me: I'd registered, so when hit the make an account/register thang, it wouldn't budge. When I hit the login button, and used one of the two names I *always* use for surfing, with the password I always *use* for surfing: Bingo! Felt REAL silly, lol!!
ReplyDeleteHey puddle, I just visited your new site. Well done!
ReplyDeleteI would suggest bombarding HQ with requests to remove the offender until they relent.
ReplyDelete-----------------------------------
Sleepless, the problem with that is that Tara seems to resent having to take care of bidness -- I've seen "indications" that she feels "we" (the protesters) are the ones keeping her from her REAL work, creating the new software!
I'd suggest that we wait till that's rolled out, and see if it's any help. If not, time to start a revolution!!
POWER TO THE SHADOWPEOPLE!
ReplyDeletedonna thanks ~~ and thanks, again, to Renee, if she hadn't brought us here, blogger never would have had a chance to offer me a blog, me to turn it down, and rethink it, lol!
ReplyDeleteActually, it's easier than you think (once you find a name, grin): they have a lot of nice templates set up. You can even make them pretty private.
At this point, I'm enchanted. And it gives me something interesting to do when it's quiete here, and the big blog is uninhabitable. . . .
Does anyone here believe that HQ has any idear what the blog IS? I don't. I think Howard did, but I wonder if we're not just an annoyance to the rest of them.
ReplyDeleteLike they have not an inkling of what a blog can DO. Irony is, that I think Trippi did figure it out. Too late.
test.
ReplyDeletehow weird. I just tried to get in using "other." I guess that's the only way it works for me.
ReplyDeleteSusanD said...
ReplyDeleteI read that the Red Cross has already collected 21 million. I'm thinking of donating to Feed the Children instead of RC.
Where did you hear that? If so, the RC will need more than $21 million when the damage estimates are around $25 billion.
FEMA identified the following agencies needing cash to assist hurricane victims:
American Red Cross, 800-HELP-NOW
America's Second Harvest, 800-344-8070
Adventist Community Services, 800-381-7171
Catholic Charities USA, 800-919-9338.
Christian Disaster Response, 941-956-5183 or 941-551-9554.
Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, 800-848-5818.
Church World Service, 800-297-1516.
Convoy of Hope, 417-823-8998.
Lutheran Disaster Response, 800-638-3522.
Mennonite Disaster Service, 717-859-2210.
Nazarene Disaster Response, 888-256-5886.
Operation Blessing, 800-436-6348.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, 800-872-3283.
Salvation Army, 800-SAL-ARMY (725-2769).
Southern Baptist Convention Disaster Relief, 800-462-8657, Ext. 6440.
United Methodist Committee on Relief, 800-554-8583
And unfortunately, the Katrina scams have also begun so stick with these charities just to be on the safe side.
I always vote for the Salvation Army. A few years ago, I remember reading the head of the Red Cross makes $450,000 a year. The head of the Salvation Army relief services? $13,000. Those people know how to stretch your donation, lol!
ReplyDeletedonna in evanston said...
ReplyDeleteI have wondered myself about the blog. For one thing, at DemFest, the bloggers' conference was headed by Kos and Jerome Armstrong; not one frigging BFA blogger was asked the represent us.
I may be wrong because I didn't attend DemFest but wasn't Democracy for Texas and/or My Vote is My Voice responsible for the program and inviting speakers?
Hi, all. I am back. Have more articles to post but it may take awhile.
ReplyDeleteOn charities, try to get one that only has 10% administrative costs...90% to actual relief. If you can't find that, try 80% ones.
Many charities lost my support when I check their financials.
The Multiple Sclerosis Society only gives 30% of it's money to actually doing something. No wonder they are so useless. I pulled any support for them when I found that out. A bunch of employees getting rich off of others misery.
STILL trying to sign up, but no luck yet.
ReplyDeleteI'll check back later.
(The Family wants to watch a movie.)
Love to all who are struggling with Katrina's aftermath
and to all who love them.
We saw just a whisper of Katrina's wrath today in the form of
45kt winds torrential rains and a little thunder...
...way up here in Vermont.
Thinking of you. ♥
corinne said...
ReplyDeleteIsn't 'operation blessing' Pat Robertson's front org he set up just to get massive tax loopholes? You might want to delete that one from the list. I don't think we should support terrorists, and after his recent comments, he qualifies as one.
click
Okay, in an effort to make this blog really special, there will be some articles I post only here. Starting with this one:
ReplyDeleteSixteen more soldiers, law officers plead guilty in drug sting
by aRTHUR H. ROTSTEIN
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
FBI agents posing as cocaine traffickers have snared another 16 former and current soldiers and law enforcement officers in Arizona who agreed to take bribes to transport drugs past law enforcement checkpoints.
All 16 agreed to enter guilty pleas before a federal magistrate as participants in a bribery and extortion conspiracy, a Justice Department official said Wednesday. CLICK
Good thing my former boss raked in $60 million as a manager there before the policy change. click
ReplyDeleteA pardon 60 years after her execution
ReplyDeleteATLANTA - Six decades after she was executed for killing a white man in the Jim Crow South, a black maid was granted a full pardon Tuesday.
Lena Baker, 44, the only woman put to death in Georgia's electric chair, had maintained until she was put to death in 1945 that she shot E.B. Knight in self-defense.
Members of the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles read a proclamation saying the board's refusal to grant clemency before the execution was "a grievous error, as this case called out for mercy."
It was only the third posthumous pardon granted in the agency's 62-year history.
During her trial, Baker testified that the 67-year-old Knight, a man she had been hired to care for, held her against her will and threatened to shoot her if she tried to leave. She said she grabbed Knight's gun and shot him when he raised a metal bar to strike her.
Because the all-white, all-male jury did not recommend mercy, death by electrocution was required by state law at the time. Baker was executed on March 5, 1945, at Georgia State Prison in Reidsville.
I think this really IS business as usual:
ReplyDeleteLegislator guilty of accepting bribes
MEMPHIS - A state lawmaker pleaded guilty to taking bribes in exchange for legislative favors, saying he got snagged "by business as usual" at the Capitol.
State Rep. Chris Newton told a federal judge he sought and accepted bribes from undercover FBI agents, becoming the first lawmaker charged in the continuing federal investigation to admit guilt. Two men described as bag men for lawmakers have pleaded guilty.
Newton, a Republican, and four current or former state senators were charged in May with taking payoffs to help a company called E-Cycle Management get favorable legislation passed in the General Assembly. The lawmakers all had pleaded not guilty.
Newton already had said he would resign from his House seat Nov. 1, but Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, asked him to step down immediately after the guilty plea.
Can you believe this misogynist racist prick is allowed to practice medicine? And worse, the medical community let him for 10 years after the first issues of him lying.
ReplyDelete{CONCORD, N.H. - The state is investigating a doctor accused of telling a patient she was so obese she might only be attractive to black men and advising another to shoot herself following brain surgery.
"Let's face it, if your husband were to die tomorrow, who would want you?" the state Board of Medicine says Dr. Terry Bennett told the overweight patient in June 2004.
"Well, men might want you, but not the types you want to want you. Might even be a black guy," it quoted him as saying, based on the woman's complaint.}
Click for full article
I've been especially heartbroken thinking of all the pets displaced by Katrina.
ReplyDeleteMany people wouldn't evacuate or go to shelters because they couldn't bring their pets.
I believe I would have been among them.
Plans HAVE to include safe ways to shelter pets during disasters.
Not only for those who have the resources to drive to a pet-friendly motel or board their pets at an animal hospital out of harm's way.
So my hat is off to the wonderful folks at
NOAH'S WISH
who rescue animals from disaster-stricken regions!
Read all about them at:
http://www.noahswish.org/index.htm
or click!
Note: I read about their finances the other day and at least 90% goes to their real work of rescue. It's amazing! Many ways to contribute beyond cash, too. See what you think.
Report is critical of tactics by cops at GOP Convention
ReplyDeleteTHE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK - One year after large-scale protests at the Republican National Convention, the New York Civil Liberties Union issued a report on Tuesday criticizing police for using heavy-handed tactics it says resulted in hundreds of illegal arrests.
The report argues abuses were extreme enough to warrant the creation of an independent agency to negotiate and oversee future demonstrations - a job now handled by the New York Police Department.
It suggests peaceful protests should be treated more like large outdoor concerts or street fairs.
CLICK
Listener, that sounds like a very good charity. For the people that evactuated a day or two in advance, I don't understand why they did not take their pets. I can understand if it is an emergency, but if you have enough time to scoop up some belongings you think you would make the pets a priority as they are part of your family. Very sad.
ReplyDeleteNew thread
ReplyDeletecHeRyL ~
ReplyDeleteIt all depends on where they're headed. I'm sure many did take their pets!
But for those who were going to shelters (most of which do not allow pets!)
there was no choice: either leave your pets or stay.
Just so everyone is clear...I use all lower case letters when I post. LOL
ReplyDelete~ listener
hello, shadowblog.
ReplyDeleteJayDean here. Don't know why HQ wants to subject its most loyal supporters to abuse. This situation has become very tiresome. Glad to see the shadowblog. I tried to sign up yesterday, but wasn't able for some reason.