http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/007/22.52.html

Is poor decision making really a product of "poor education"? How much education do you need to know stuff like "put some of your money away for a rainy day"? The most educated person on earth can still be willfully stupid in terms of basic survival.

That's outrageous to expect the poorest of the poor in America to have planned for this outrageous scenario. Would it not be fair to expect that this city, sitting in certain and acknowledged danger, would be more adequately prepare to defend against a fluctuating, but seasonal threat? Don't you think it's systematic failure, rather than personal failure, when there are thousands of people that have been properly fucked?* Run like hell, and I'm sure everything will be fine!

"Put some money away for a rainy day"

Is that a joke? How much do you have saved for your hurricane/earthquake/terrorist attack/imminent sacking? Ray Nagin has words for you...

At minimum it's a poor choice of words. To loosely quote Ray "that air conditioning must be nice... and there must be some smoke in those vents to prevent you from seeing..."

*properly fucked being defined here as: uninsured loss of all material possessions and/or loved ones; completely hopelessness.

I've always enjoyed that Rheostatics song you quote. It was written, if memory serves, by Dave Bidini, middle-class guy from around the corner in Etobicoke in reaction to the Mike Harris "regime". Implicit in the lyric is, of course, the notion that there was previously a time when "being poor" didn't suck all that much. It takes a peculiar kind of myopia to not just believe something that facile, but to actually commit it to song.

"...there was previously a time when "being poor" didn't suck all that much."

Just about the only description of being poor that made it seem like it didn't entirely and completely suck is Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London - at least in the Paris portion; the London part pretty-much sucked as well. Not that I would choose the lifestyle - but it wasn't altogether unbearable if you were single, and in your late twenties or early thirties. I think it is an outlier, though; other than that instance, being poor sucks pretty much all the time.

Dean

I trust Kathy, the unrelenting critic of impoverished passivity, isn't pleased with Condi Marcos^H^H^H^H^H^HRice's empty advice:

Asked to say a few words from the pulpit, Rice, a preacher's daughter, said: "The Lord Jesus Christ is going to come on time." She added: "If we just wait."

Nothing passive about the way Kathy is running around scolding the poor and comforting the corrupt.

I saw a wonderful bumper sticker the other day down here in Ocala.

In big letters it said "Jesus Save Me" and when you got closer up, in smaller letters underneath it said "From your followers"

I had a chuckle over it.

None of that "Easier for a camel to go thru the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" jazz that good old J.C was always blathering on about... eh Kathy?