Savage Republican

Trillin over at MN Lefty Liberal got an email regarding a Move on sponsored initiative that deserves wide spread recognition.

“Hurricane Katrina’s toll on communities, homes and lives has devastated the nation. Now victims must face the daunting question of where to go next—and we can help.Tens of thousands of newly homeless families are being bused to a stadium in Houston, where they may wait for weeks or months. At least 80,000 are competing for area shelters, and countless more are in motels, cars, or wherever they can stay out of the elements. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Red Cross are scrambling to find shelter for the displaced.This morning, we’ve launched an emergency national housing drive to connect your empty beds with hurricane victims who desperately need a place to wait out the storm. You can post your offer of housing (a spare room, extra bed, even a decent couch) and search for available housing online at:http://www.hurricanehousing.org“

Go to MN Left Liberal and read the whole post and then if you can, sign up to host a displaced family.

I got this information via email today. If you are a pet person (like I am) and you are still looking for some way to help, here is another one. If you know someone in the afflicted area that needs shelter for their pets, direct them here.

Subject: Help for Pets in New Orleans

Please crosspost widely… Help for pets in New Orleans….Cross-posted – please share! Please just let all members know that we have opened a pet shelter at Blackham Coliseum in Lafayette, right next to the Cajundome. Evacuees may bring their pets their for housing. We havePLENTY of food, water, crates, cages, bedding and newspaper. BUT the owners are responsible for feeding, watering, walking and medicating their own pets. Interested parties may call Lafayette Parish Animal Control at: 337-291-5644 for more information. Also many area vets are accepting animals right now, until they fill up. Get the Yellow Pages out! Please help me to get this word out.

Annie Milliron
Visit our newfs: Cora, Kira and Sailor (plus our Foster Newfs) at our website: http://freewebs.com/coranewf>

The reports are trickling in from New Orleans. Massive flooding, people who refused to evacuate with the first evacuation order trapped on their roofs with no food and water, looting, the scale of the misery is impossible to describe. Rather than try to describe it myself, let me refer you to the stories here and here from the Washington Times, here and here from the New York Times and here from NOLA.com. NOLA.com is the best place to go for up to the minute news as they are in the thick of it.

Now is the time to act dear readers. Our southern neighbors desperately need our help. Please contact either the American Red Cross or the Salvation Army or any of the other worthy charities listed on the Blog for Katrina Relief effort. No amount is too small. Please donate today!

People can post queries about friends and family who were in areas hit by Katrina.

Please pass along this URL www.GulfCoastNews.com

For the next 24 hours there is no right or left, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Socialist or whatever. For the next 24 hours, I want to concentrate on Louisana, Mississippi and Alabama. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have been displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Many more have taken severe damage to their homes and businesses. The over 300 (and counting) bloggers, including your friends here at Savage Republican, have gotten together and are asking their readers to step up to the plate and contribute to one of the many worthy charities that are coming to the aid of our fellow Americans (hat tip to NZ Bear at Truth Laid Bear for organizing this). Savage Republican has already posted his request to contribute to the American Red Cross and I would like to lend my request for donations to the Salvation Army. Others are plugging for Catholic Charities USA, United Jewish Communities and United Methodist Committee on Relief. Whichever charity you choose, please indicate that the donation is for Hurricane Katrina relief.

My plea to you, dear readers, is to find a charity that is helping out the citizens of the Gulf States and give generously. Our countrymen and women will definately appreciate the assistance from their neighbors across the country.

For the next 24 hours, I will be posting about the great need in Louisana, Mississippi and Alabama. Please take a few minutes and make a pledge – no matter how big or how small – to help in the recovery effort! For more information on the Bloggers drive for hurricane relief please go to http://www.truthlaidbear.com/communitypage.php.

Seeing Hurricane Katrina come ashore brought back memories of the stories my Grandmother told of Hurricane Audrey hitting Lake Charles, LA.
As the storm was coming ashore, my Uncle (an Eagle Scout) was part of a group that was out rescuing people during the storm. Some day I may share more about those brave folks, but for now I will use them as inspiration.

While I may not have the opportunity to help during this storm, I can do my best to help now.

If you have a chance you can join me in donating online to the Red Cross and help out.

I’ll list some of the other groups providing relief and updates as I get them from friend down in the Big Easy and Mississippi way.

It just seems right that those of us at the head waters of the Mississippi should help our neighbors at the other end.

May God bless and keep them in his care.

When earthquakes level large portions of Mexico City, which country is the first to respond with money, people and equipment to aid in the recovery and rebuilding effort? When tsunami’s struck Asia, who had an aircraft carrier there within 72 hours in order to get food, shelter and potable water to the hardest hit areas? Who later pledged over $950 million in long term aid to the countries hit by the tsunami? When droughts hit Africa, causing massive crop failures on the continent, which country is the first to pony up money and food for the afflicted? Is it France? Germany? Iran? Saudi Arabia????? NO!!!! It is the USA, that horrible country that is (according to the leftists) the cause of ALL that is wrong in this world! And yet, when the US is hit with their own “storm of the century” do any of these countries (who think that they are soooo much better than we are) pony up a single pfennig or franc? Heck no, they couldn’t be bothered…..

Well guess what guys, we don’t need your help. We will take care of our own, this time as we have always done. And when disasters hit your respective countries, we will cough up the money again, because that is who we are. We are a country of people who genuinely care for others and when the need is really and truly there (such as tsunami relief) we will open our hearts and pocketbooks as we always have in the past.

Having said that, I certainly hope that I never hear (out of Turtle Bay or Paris or Berlin) that the US is too “stingy” in their aid relief. Because, Mr. Annan, Herr Schroeder and Monsieur Chirac, until you follow Hugo Chavez’ lead, you have no moral authority to stand on. Yeah, President Chavez might have stolen his election, but he is the only foreign leader to date to offer the citizens of Louisana, Alabama and Mississippi – people whose loss was no less tramatic than the losses of the people Sri Lanka and the rest of southeast Asia. Shame on the UN, shame on Europe and shame on anyone else who dares to think only about themselves when others are suffering as the people of Louisana, Mississippi and Alabama are.

This is how Cindy Sheehan’s friends at Code Pink and Veterans for Peace “suport” our troops. Just to show you that I am not taking just the word of some “right wing news source” I will direct you here and here and here and here. The Freepers have pictures at their site and there is a video link at the CNS news site.

Every Friday night, armed with props like mock CASKETS and signs that read “Maimed for a lie” and “Enlist here to die for Halliburton”, Cindy Sheehan’s friends from Code Pink and VFP protest in front of Walter Reed Medical Center – in full view of the patients (soldiers wounded in the line of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan) and their families. The protestors are unapologetic when confronted (by soldiers and their families) with the inappropriateness of their protest at the hospital gates. One said (in the video clip) that he was “offended” at people being offended by his protest!

Now, I have no problems with these folks protesting the war. We have free speech in this country, however, there is a little restriction to full free speech. You are not allowed to engage in speech that can incite a riot and this could certainly qualify for that. The location and the style of the protest are at best questionable. It would be like staging a KKK march through North Minneapolis. Or Downtown DC. Or the Jewish neighborhoods of Skoie Illinois (as was done 5 years ago). Would that be considered “acceptable free speech”? In the case of the 2000 Klan Rally in Skokie, the city of Skokie sued to get the rally stopped, stating that it was (and correctly so in my very humble opinion) a public safety issue.

The demonstrations are held of Friday nights for a reason. Friday night is a popular night for family visits. This protest is DESIGNED TO HURT the family members of the wounded soldiers! So the next time one of these anti-war types tries to tell you how much they “support the troops” I hope you will join me in telling them what they can do with their so-called support.


UPDATE: I am truly honored. This entry was choosen as one of the top 5 entries in the inaugural “Blog of the Week” competition that Hugh Hewitt is hosting. Voting is over at Radio Blogger. The winner of the contest will be interviewed by Hugh (gulp!) on his program next Monday night and will hold bragging rights for the week. I hope that you will all go over to Radio Blogger and read all of the fine entries. The competition is tough. May the best blog win!

I got this story from the Chicago Sun Times. I wonder if we will ever hear about it on CNN, ABC, NBC or any of the other alphabet media outlets or in my favorite “fishwrap” (aka Pravda on the Mississippi).

In June of 2003, a US Customs agent working at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport would not let Ra’ed Mansour al-Banna enter the country. The agent just marked him as a “suspicious traveler”. The officers that interviewed him felt that his verbal reasons for entering the country didn’t match what was on his visa. Fast forward to February 28, 2005 where a homicide bomber in Hillah detonated himself and killed 125 people – one of the DEADLIEST attacks in Iraq’s history. The bomber was later identifed to be on Ra’ed Mansour al-Banna! Now we don’t know what al-Banna’s intentions were when he tried to enter the country in 2003, but I can tell you this, I am so very grateful to the unidentified agents at O’Hare who decided not to let this bomber into the country.

Having said all of this, I have to ask the following question of Cindy Sheehan and her friends at Code Pink…..would you rather have the homicide bombers coming over here and blowing up your friends and family? Not me, I want to keep them over in Iraq where our valient men and women – people who VOLUNTEERED to go into harms way, can take care of them.

Hugh Hewitt was talking this evening about a story that has him disturbed. 65 girls (out of 490) at Timkin High School in Canton Ohio are pregnant. Now you may know (if you have read this blog before) that I am a mother and as such issues like this interest me greatly. Hugh was of the opinion that the school should be held responsible, in large part, for this situation. Now I rarely disagree with the distinguished Mr. Hewitt (except for his opinion of Pittsburgh Steeler football, but I digress) however I must disagree here.

According to the story the girls will “face mounting tensions created by unplanned child-rearing responsibilities, causing students to quit school and plan for a GED. ” Pardon my sounding like the teen-ager I’m not, but “DUH”. Did you need a college degree to figure THAT out Mr or Ms. Journalist that wrote this story???? I graduated from high school in the 1970’s and I knew that BEFORE graduating from high school.

The statistic from the story that stunned me the most was the fact that number of babies born in Canton, to girls between the ages of 11 (11 year olds????) and 19 is 15% and the number of babies born to girls in the same age group in outside the Canton area (does this mean the rest of the state of Ohio or just the surrounding Canton area?) is 7%.

Just what are the parents of Canton teaching their children? That have kids is an easy thing? Where are the parents of these girls? These are the people, dear Mr. Hewitt, that need to be held responsible for the predicament that these girls are in, not the school. The school does not have the influence that most pundits (and parents) give them “credit” for. Whether we realize it or not, our children watch our every move. They watch for us to do what we say. When they catch us in the “do as I say not as I do” mode, we loose them.

The school is reacting to this situation correctly. Now that there is this “epidemic” they need to give these girls classes on what comes next. Child rearing is not easy. Also, the fathers of these babies need to be included. It takes 2 to make a baby and the boys need to be held accountable for their actions as well as the girls. Next, I think the school needs to re-think their sex education cirriculum. Maybe a cirriculum that includes abstinance education? It certainly can not be as much of a failure as the current cirriculum is.

Parents – you can not be your child’s best friend – forget it, it’s not happening. So for heaven’s sake BE THE PARENT!!!! Know where your kids are and who they are with. Be the “bad guy” once in a while and maybe, just maybe your kids won’t end up pregnant and dropping out of school.