THE PRICE OF INCOMPETENCE

I've been researching the question of debris removal (i.e. bulldozers and dump trucks) and there is some very good information about that, the levees, and the infrastructure in general on the Army Corps of Engineers page, http://www.usace.army.mil/
(go down to Media Roundtables for transcripts of their "press conferences")
Right now their debris removal is focusing on clearing public rights-of-way such as roads, as well as assisting with what residents and business owners, etc are putting out in their trash (one of our units didn't have pickup for 3 weeks and they were operating the whole time...trash became an issue!).
Anyway some very interesting information on their site, stuff I hadn't seen elsewhere in the news.

Bob Schieffer, friend of the Bush family for years, gave all those soft ball questions to Bush in the last debate. Suprised how lately he has been more journalist than apologetic friend. Hope this trend will continue.

We need to remind, hammer on how lack of prevention and willful disregard resulted in murder. No amount of blame on the locals can undercut that, as Rove has been trying to do.

He also said at a recent non-press event that there is no anti-war movement. Please, everyone who can travel, come to DC this weekend and prove Rove the liar he is.

I post my "dinner with American Dems in Paris" back, because this means a lot to me. Democracy is a world wide concept. I just wish you had the opportunity to be with us yesterday night.
===================================

Sorry to stop you in the middle of your American, American topics, but yesterday night I had the most beautiful DEM dinner at my place, in Paris.
DiAnne was there with her husband Ken, as Amy ("Amyinvancouver" on the old old blog) witht her husband Andrew.; together with my daughters who started to learn English at the age of 3. Which means, that in a French home, everybody spoke English...
With different accents. My second daughter has a Californian accent, the third one has a Texan accent (she spent all her summer holidays in Houston, and the accent got mild because she is French, but don't say a word about Texas, she just loves them, except she never ever followed their praying stuff,) and the eldest, who was was not there, has a New-York accent.
That's how the wordl goes on. What about your children? What do you teach them?
I just have one thing to say : THANK YOU JOHN KERRY, because we all met thanks to you.
VIVE LA DÉMOCRATIE!
Indy,
Nowadays, this is the equivalent to your
"VIVE LA RÉVOLUTION"
If you want to make a revolution take democracy back. That's the best hope we have for you.
And for heavensake never, ever forget that the world is not America. I f you ever understand that some day, you'll be saved.
Sorry to be tough to you, but I love you dearly.

RETRIBUTION
Bush's new deal
By Hannah Selinger | RAW STORY COLUMNIST

In the wake of (another) national tragedy, it was refreshing to see the President in his new role as Franklin Delano Roosevelt on Thursday night. Bush, dressed for the part of Down Home President in a blue oxford shirt, stood in New Orleans’ Jackson Square and promised the American people the three r’s: resources, relief, and retribution.

Oops. Did I say retribution? I must have confused this August’s natural disaster with the man-made one that occurred four Septembers ago, when the President first emerged from reticence. This past Thursdays’ speech was not, however, a mere reaching out to the thousands of New Orleansians displaced by the storm. It was inherently political.

Don’t get me wrong. I applaud Mr. Bush for making the speech. I applaud the fact that he has finally taken some responsibility for something. If he passed the buck on the Osama Bin Laden memo and Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Mission Accomplished debacle and Social Security and the Kyoto Convention and Tom DeLay and every other inane event that has happened under his watch, at least he had the temerity to acknowledge that the response to Katrina had been botched.

That said, listening to empty promises of rebuilding New Orleans does not provide practical relief. The White House’s generators that were flown in to Jackson Square to provide light for the President’s speech would have been better served in the lower (and poorer) districts of New Orleans. The television time devoted to Mr. Bush’s New Deal-esque pontification would have been better served highlighting the vast economic discrepancies of a city that thousands of people can no longer call home. What’s worse, the harkening of terrorist acts like September 11 only serves to discredit the President further. We were there to hear about the flood, about FEMA, about government negligence, about what will be different next time. Instead, we were treated to the apocalyptic vision of a world of “terror threats and weapons of mass destruction” where “the danger to our citizens reaches much wider than a fault line or a flood plain.”

read on... http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/selinger/retribution_092105.htm

Go give Casey your get well wishes in the DCP family forum...

http://www.democracycellproject.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=885

Doing a little mandated NRP review -
SecDHS bears ultimate responsibility for failing to pursue a proactive federal response. More in the NRP and especially the Catastrophic Incident Annex. There is something called the HSOC (Homeland Security Operations Center) which is supposed to monitor things like approaching large hurricanes. They notify SecDHS about a potential Incident of National Significance (INS). SecDHS makes the decision to call it an INS and that designation puts several things in the NRP/Stafford Act into action. At that point SecDHS should set up a JFO (joint field office), designate a PFO (principal federal official), and start to pre-stage federal/military resources (or at least start getting them ready and moving them). The decision to designate as an INS should have come by Saturday and things should have been put in motion by Sunday regardless of whether or not the governors asked for help - this is what the NRP says at least.
The President can also supercede what SecDHS says or (doesn't) do...and can designate an INS.
I am not speaking at this point to the responsibility of the governor, the mayor, or the state's emergency/disaster response office, only to the federal portion of the NRP.
It should be noted that well in advance of Ophelia and Rita, an INS was declared, a JFO stood up, and a PFO appointed. Not to mention that resources were pre-staged. Now is that just acting out of embarrassment from Katrina response? Hmm.
I think Brown took the fall for Chertoff (and potentially Bush)...great timing considering Brown was already planning to leave the gov't for the private sector this fall.

An expert on CNN is talking about potentially major damage to oil and natural gas production should Rita hit the oil fields of Texas.

Hmmm, even God seems to be saying "No More Blood for Oil".

Pretty slick.

(go cindy!)

If this was posted before, I apologize for reposting. It is long but it documents some of the FEMA issues. We need to make sure that the Acadia people are asked to testify at any investigation of what happened during the Katrina response.

From John Tierney, editorial columnist at NYTimes, on 9-17-2005

Going (Down) by the Book

New Orleans - When President Bush spoke from Jackson Square on Thursday night, across the Mississippi River a few men sitting next to a trailer watched him on a television powered by a generator. They listened respectfully, but they were not exactly dazzled.

"Intentions and results are two different things," said one of them, Wayne Savoy, who knows something about results from his work at this makeshift command post of the Acadian Ambulance company. During the flood, it was a lonely island of competence.

The city's communications system was wiped out, but Acadian dispatchers kept working, thanks to a backup power system and a portable antenna rushed here the day after the hurricane. As stranded patients wondered what had happened to the city's medics and ambulances, Acadian medics filled in at the Superdome and evacuated thousands from six hospitals.

While Louisiana officials debated how to accept outside help, Acadian was directing rescues by helicopters from the military and other states. When the Federal Emergency Management Agency's paperwork slowed the evacuation of patients from the airport, Acadian's frustrated medics waited with empty helicopters.

The company sent in outside doctors and nurses to the airport, where patients were dying and medical care was in short supply. FEMA rejected the help because the doctors and nurses weren't certified members of a National Disaster Medical Team.

President Bush has promised to find out what went wrong and make sure the government has a better plan for the next disaster. But plans can do only so much. As the Acadian workers demonstrated, coping with a disaster requires the ability to improvise and break the rules - talents notably absent in most bureaucrats.

After Sept. 11, federal officials vowed to make sure that cities' communications systems would survive a disaster. Improving them was a priority of the new Homeland Security Department. But when a predictable disaster struck New Orleans, city officials couldn't talk to their rescue workers on the street and had a hard time even calling leaders in the state capital.

No government planners expected the only working radio network in New Orleans to be run by a private company, but Acadian had the flexibility to take on the job. It also had better equipment than city agencies - its chief executive, Richard Zuschlag, is a fanatic for state-of-the-art gear and backup systems.

When the phone system failed, his medics were ready with satellite phones. When the hurricane winds knocked over both of the company's antennas in the New Orleans area, Acadian quickly located a mobile antenna and communications trailer owned by Iberia, a rural parish west of New Orleans. The sheriff, fortunately, didn't ask FEMA for permission to move it to Acadian's command post, across the river from the city.

Thanks to their network, Acadian's dispatchers quickly learned before anyone else how bad the flooding was throughout New Orleans. Mr. Zuschlag tried alerting city and state officials, as Gardiner Harris reported in The New York Times. But the city and state communications systems were so bad that nothing got done.

So Acadian directed the evacuation of hospitals and dispatched help to local officials. Its medics improvised as they went along. Trees and light posts were cut down so helicopters could land. Medics commandeered three tractor-trailers to move patients out of a hospital. They packed newborns in cardboard boxes to squeeze more of them into the helicopter.

But when they tried to speed the evacuation of hundreds of patients at the New Orleans airport, the medics were no match for FEMA officials determined to get clearance from their supervisors in Baton Rouge.

"At one point I had 10 helicopters on the ground waiting to go," said Marc Creswell, an Acadian medic, "but FEMA kept stonewalling us with paperwork. Meanwhile, every 30 or 40 minutes someone was dying."

Mr. Creswell said he had ferried in more than a dozen doctors and nurses to help at the airport, but they weren't allowed to work because they weren't certified. This was explained with a line Mr. Bush might keep in mind as he contemplates expanding Washington's role in the next disaster.

"When the doctors asked why they couldn't help these critically ill people lying there unattended," Mr. Creswell recalled, "the FEMA people kept saying, 'You're not federalized.' "

Leahy Will Vote for Roberts

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/21/politics/politicsspecial1/21cnd-scotus.html

He says he is voting his conscience. Or is he playing an angle, and trying to buy influence (by going against Reid & company) in Bush's next selection?

Found this post on http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com & it made me laugh (but I'm a sickie...)

"According to the Heritage Foundation (not exactly a liberal propagandist), the rebuilding effort in New Orleans follows a 33 percent expansion of the federal government since 2001, a period that saw..."

The end of this article and Bill Maher have it right, Bush, this administration, has no plan for anything, just throw money at problems, propaganda is better than real ideas, cronyism, live to support your friends, and an inept leader hires inept employees.

"Is George Bush purely evil? Of course not. And that's what's so evil about him. He doesn't twirl a mustache and smirk and cackle. Well, he doesn't twirl a mustache. He's like the Peanuts character Pigpen. Wherever he goes, he stirs up such a humongous mess it can only be cleaned up by Halliburton. But he is not pure evil.

Because evil is a chain. Did any one person doom New Orleans? No, it's a chain. People vote for a corrupt leader; a corrupt leader puts unqualified cronies in high places, and when those cronies fuck up, evil gets done. The devil didn't fly up from hell and knock a hole in that levee. The levee just didn't get built because the money for it went to rich people's tax cuts and pork projects and corporate welfare.

Evil isn't "Salem's Lot." It's Trent Lott. This week, an ailing American bald eagle was found to be dying from mercury poisoning. Republicans immediately tried to blame it on the eagle's lifestyle choices. But it's worth noting that also this week, the White House threatened to veto limits on mercury pollution. Now, pure evil would be if George Bush sat around the White House saying, "Let's poison eagles!" And even I don't believe George Bush would do that.

Cheney would do that. And even he is not pure evil. Dick Cheney doesn't hate poor children and caribou. They're just in the way.

Bottom line: some people think Satan is real and some people think global warming is real. If you think stopping gays from doing it is more important than the ice caps melting, the boogeyman is you... "

9/21/2005 11:55 AM

Posted by: Matthew Carnicelli at September 21, 2005 12:58 PM

I just learned of this too.

Is it time for me to repeat Dick Cheney and tell Leahy to "go (bleep) yourself"?

He's really let me down. Roberts is the enemy of civil rights, and should not be confirmed even as an associate justice, let alone the chief justice.

Im reposting this from last night.. It made me lose sleep once it got into my head.

XXXXXXXXXXX

Think about that for a moment.

ONLY outrage is what got the bush administration to allow rescue.

Imagine if everyone had just stayed quiet...?

Ask yourself, would they have REALLY let those people just starve to death right before our eyes???

They DID TRY to do exactly that.

Posted by: Christy at September 21, 2005 01:09 AM

The Coast Guard worked very hard from minute 1 to protect, assist and rescue people in MS and LA. One cannot lump all organizations into a monolithic "they". It is totally unfair to the people like the "Coasties" Veritas told us about who have lost their own homes, had their families displaced and yet have still stayed on duty, working unbelievable hours over the last 3 weeks. Their devotion is sacrifice of the kind that every American should praise.

Oh and BTW Ally

Civil rights? Great idea, we must push it.

The problem is, different groups within our civil rights tent are bickering over each other.

Posted by: AllyMcLesbian at September 21, 2005 01:22 AM

See that is my point about the banner of civil rights in the first place.

We can try to break it down and say, ok I stand for voting rights, I stand for gay rights... womens rights ..whatever.

I prioritize those personaly so do you. One is more important to me than the others, you find a different one to throw your energy into, that is where the faction occurs.

You forget voting rights IS civil rights. Gay rights = civil rights, womens rights are civil rights..so forth and do on. By choosing a broken down slice of it fractures the platform and weaken ALL of the issues.

Lets take gay rights for a moment. As a straight woman with no openly gay members anywhere in my immediate family, YOU have to tell me WHY gay rights MATTER TO ME.

I dont know what it is like to be gay and discriminated against but I know that if you give them the same simple rights I am entitled too that would immediately go toward correcting the discrimination problem for 1 and for 2, if they can take away simple basic civil rights from you simply because you so happen to be gay, then oh shit, what would they say about my own lifestyle, my own chioces, hobbies, habbits or sexual behavoir.???

Im not saying gay rights is not a NOBLE cause to fight for, but its going to take more than gay people fighting for it. You HAVE to go back to the basic problem.

Will I rally for GAY MARRIGE..? Maybe. Would I rally to protect your CIVIL RIGHTS..oh yeah. Definately.

When you allow the base of your defenses to fracture suddenly you kill your own supply lines. If you fight for civil rights then gay rights AUTOMATICALLY become important.

It is this breakdown that has allowed faction. I have other priorities, you have other priorities, we all question each others stand, we wonder WTF IS the entire PURPOSE in the first place? It can not be any one issues NOR a collection of those issues as something seperate from one another.

I believe in allowing abortion he dont, we fight, you believe in the death penalty i dont so we fracture even more. We miss the forrest for the trees. we forget there is a HIGHER PURPOSE.

Everything we fight for can be defined by civil rights. Everything we hold dear is protected by civil rights. Everything we stand against diminishes our civil rights first and foremost.

It is the ONE THING every single one of us will rally for. It is the one thing we ALL believe in.

It is the only thing we will fight for as one. And indeed our very freedom hangs in the balance.

The more civil rights we have, the more powerful we become. In any democracy, the very practice of freedom plays out in the form and shape of thier rights.

It is not A issue. It is the ONLY issue that matters.

More on FEMA... what were they thinking? Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish

FEMA FOLLIES: Okay, you sitting down? FEMA is now sending ice to ... Maine:

The trucks started arriving this weekend, and they're expected to keep coming through Sunday.
City officials say they have no idea why the trucks are here, only that the city has been asked to help out with traffic problems. But the truck drivers NEWSCENTER spoke to said they went all the way down to the gulf coast with the ice -- stayed for a few days -- and then were told by FEMA they needed to drive to Maine to store it.
The truck drivers, who are from all over the country, tell us they were subcontracted by FEMA.

No, this isn't the Onion. It's the Bush administration.

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2005_09_18_dish_archive.html#112725158143339903

---

And here's the original news story that Andrew linked to as his source:

http://ksdk.com/news/us_world_article.aspx?storyid=85020

and here's the rest of the story that they posted:

They started arriving over the weekend, and city spokesperson Peter Dewitt says as many as 200 trucks could come to the city by the end of the week.

The trucks are storing the ice at Americold, a company with a warehouse on Read Street in Portland. People who live nearby say all the traffic has been baffling them for days.

The trucks can only unload 4 at a time -- so the city is allowing some of them to sit at the International Marine Terminal and at the Jetport's satellite parking lot.

No one NEWSCENTER talked to has any idea when, or even if the ice will go back to the gulf coast.

One for your browser bookmarks...

Someone has put together a website which lists links to free versions of op-eds that are now pay-to-see courtesy of NYTimes.

The site is called Never Pay Retail and you can find it here...

http://www.johntabin.com/neverpayretail/

Posted by: dwahzon at September 21, 2005 02:04 PM

Ummm I specifically identified the 'They' as the bush administration.

"ONLY outrage is what got the bush administration to allow rescue."

"Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee"
John Donne

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9424269/

New Orleans, Bangladesh, isn't it sad how the pictures look the same?

Yes, Andree, some of us know that America isn't the world.

ok I have no idea why but I did enjoy watching this.....

http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/georgie.htm

Thanks for the link to the Times Op-Ed reprints. Here's a Kristof column about our good ally in Pakistan.

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Musharraf's statements outrageous

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

NEW YORK -- Our close ally President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan visited the United States last week and fretted aloud about a surprising problem: The "easiest way" for Pakistani women to make money is to get raped, he said, so they're lining up to be raped and thus making him look bad.

That's right. He's nuts.

"You must understand the environment in Pakistan," The Washington Post quoted him as saying. "This has become a moneymaking concern. A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped."

That comment got Musharraf in hot water. So over the weekend, Musharraf denied that he had ever said any such thing -- noting that if he had, he would have been "stupid."

True.

The Washington Post reviewed its tapes and reported that it had quoted him correctly. It also added an additional quote from the same interview, in which Musharraf spoke of rape as an avenue to riches: "It is the easiest way of doing it. Every second person now wants to."

Sexual violence has become a sensitive issue for Musharraf because of the pioneering work of such women as Mukhtaran Bibi, whom a tribal council sentenced to be gang-raped as a way to punish her brother -- and who then used her compensation money to start schools and launch a nationwide anti-rape campaign. After I wrote about her last year, New York Times readers sent her a total of $160,000, which she is using to start an ambulance service, operate schools and campaign for women's rights.

Fearing that Mukhtaran's anti-rape campaign would make his country look bad, Musharraf barred her from traveling to the United States to attend a conference. When she protested to me and others, the government effectively kidnapped her to keep her from complaining, releasing her only after Condi Rice raised the issue with Musharraf.

Then in July and August, I wrote about Dr. Shazia Khalid, a Pakistani physician whom the authorities drugged, put in a mental hospital, threatened to kill and finally exiled to keep her from recounting her rape.

The latest victim to come forward is Sonia Naz, a 23-year-old woman whose husband disappeared. Desperate, she went to the National Assembly building in Islamabad to see if she could get help. Then, she says, the police arrested her and repeatedly stripped her, raped her and beat her.

Embarrassed by those revelations, Musharraf held a conference in Pakistan this month on women's issues. He wore a necktie with blue and pink, which he said could reflect cooperation between men and women -- and then he denounced Shazia.

Here in New York on Saturday, Musharraf held a meeting with an invited audience to show himself off as a sensitive man. The meeting started awkwardly when he tried to demonstrate his feminist credentials by saying he opposed violence against women because it's unchivalrous toward the weaker sex. Then, in response to skeptical questions, Musharraf lost his temper, shouting at audience members and threatening to "get" anyone who exposed Pakistan's problems to the world.

"He totally lost it," said Yasmeen Hassan, a Pakistani lawyer in New York who was present. "It's so unbecoming of a president to get into shouting matches, and to say, 'I'm going to get you.' "

Meanwhile, activists in Pakistan say that the government is stepping up its harassment of women's groups. I tried to phone Mukhtaran on Monday, but the government seemed to be blocking international calls to her line. Finally I was able to interview her by a circuitous route. She said that all her mail is now intercepted and that the government had just transferred away two senior police officials who had supervised her bodyguards and tried to protect her.

"I feel insecure and controlled," she said.

The irony is that while he's a nitwit on social issues, Musharraf has proved himself to be a good economic manager, and the 7 percent growth rates generated by his reforms will help undermine fundamentalism and sexual violence in the long run. During his visit, Musharraf pressed for a free-trade area between the United States and Pakistan, and that's a great idea to promote Pakistan's development.

So let's give Musharraf a free-trade deal -- but only on the condition that he clamp down not on Pakistani women fighting against rape, but on Osama bin Laden.

From the NYTimes...

Pentagon Blocks Testimony at Senate Hearing on Terrorist
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 - The Pentagon said today that it had blocked a group of military officers and intelligence analysts from testifying at an open Congressional hearing about a highly classified military intelligence program that, the officers have said, identified a ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a potential terrorist more than a year before the attacks.

The announcement came a day before the officers and intelligence analysts had been scheduled to testify about the program, known as Able Danger, at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Bryan Whitman, a Defense Department spokesman, said in a statement that open testimony about the program "would not be appropriate - we have expressed our security concerns and believe it is simply not possible to discuss Able Danger in any great detail in an open public forum." He offered no other detail on the Pentagon's reasoning in blocking the testimony.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the committee, said he was surprised by the Pentagon's decision because "so much of this has already been in the public domain, and I think that the American people need to know what happened here."

read more here...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/politics/20cnd-intel.html?ei=5065&en=07c39c7b2cfd74f4&?ex=1127880000&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

Billboard delivered to Norquist's office...

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Protest_billboard_parks_outside_top_GOP_mavens_0921.html

I will be off the blog for a while dealing with a little hurricane. Just received a message from Chuck who told me that he and his family are fine and he should be back with us on the blog soon and helping to clean up Houston after our storm passes and will help me find a careful strategy to register thousands of new Texans.

Take care Ira... let us know how we can help.

"let us know how we can help".

1. Please keep a careful watch on the O'Connor nomination probably next week while the media is distracted watching our hurricane.

2. Someone get with me personally in the next two weeks and help me with a strategy to reach and register 'new' Texas voter.

Help me defeat Tom DeLay.

And stay strong.

Am I asking for too much?

O'Connor 'replacement' nomination
and forgive my constant typos.

Good Luck Ira.

Via con dios Amigo.

Posted by: Christy at September 21, 2005 02:13 PM

Point well taken, Christy. Civil rights is the ONLY thing.

The hard part is convincing some of the minorities (especially homophobic black churches) that gay rights, for example, ARE indeed civil rights.

Yes, civil rights are the only thing, but the definition is still up in the air, and that's what we need to work on.

Ally, some day I will talk to you about our purple borough of Brooklyn, NY, in a so-called blue state. Many African-American, Caribbean "people of color," and from cultures prime for the anti-gay, abortion polarizations. We are at the end of the white, Jewish mayor cycle, and all the others are vying and organizing. Race is still the unspoken political hot potato, and has become something we can't avoid dealing with, head-on. There are mega churches here on the dole with Bush. Interesting times everywhere, challenging everyone to become grown-up and loving.

Posted by: Marjorie G at September 21, 2005 05:05 PM

I'd love to listen to you, Marjorie, about your experiences in Brooklyn. I do know that parts of the Caribbean are extremely homophobic - and other parts can be downright racist. It's indeed a challenge speaking out for them AND protecting the groups they bash.

And I'll be happy to share my own experiences in Los Angeles, especially with the Korean community, which is, as I've said countless times before, the Cuban community of the West Coast, both in its social conservatism and in its pro-Bush leanings.

Hoping to meet you this weekend!

Bob Schieffer, friend of the Bush family for years, gave all those soft ball questions to Bush in the last debate.

Posted by: Marjorie G at September 21, 2005 10:50 AM

Marjorie G,

I did not know that!!! So THAT EXPLAINS the knife in the back I felt he gave Kerry during the debate last fall that Schieffer hosted.

Maybe that also explains some of how Dan Rather came to be replaced with Bob Schieffer.

I did see Bob Schieffer on Larry King live last fall before the election though, and Larry King asked him why he thought the country was so polarized at that point in time. Schieffer said "Because so many Americans feel betrayed by this administration."

An expert on CNN is talking about potentially major damage to oil and natural gas production should Rita hit the oil fields of Texas.

Hmmm, even God seems to be saying "No More Blood for Oil".

Pretty slick.

(go cindy!)

Posted by: monkey at September 21, 2005 12:34 PM

Monkey, you do have a way with words. Bet butter would melt in your mouth.

I heard on the 5:30 news tonight that U.S. gas prices are expected to quickly rise to up to over $5.00 a gallon. So I quickly ran over and filled my car with gas. I already had a half tank, but I ended up paying $27.00 for a half tank of gas.
I just don't know how some of these poor working folks are going to do it, and single mom's.

Give this photo any caption you want:

http://photos1.blogger.com/img/74/890/440/dry_drunk.jpg