politics are so heated in my family sometimes we actually find ourselves arguing about who gets to l

• How do they do it? - oldmt
  • They have to stay objective. It's their job. - sm
  • politics are so heated in my family sometimes we actually find ourselves arguing about who gets to l - anon
    • Politics... LOL - Emily Ayn

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so give it all a rest would you. 

September 7, 2005

Women were Being Raped, Babies were Being Killed, Alligators were Eating People, But Where the Hell was the National Guard?
How We Survived the Flood
By CHARMAINE NEVILLE

  This is a transcription of an interview Charmaine Neville, of New Orleans's legendary Neville family, gave to local media outlets on Monday, September 5.

I was in my house when everything first started. When the hurricane came, it blew all the left side of my house off, and the water was coming in my house in torrents.

I had my neighbor, an elderly man, and myself, in the house with our dogs and cats, and we were trying to stay out of the water. But the water was coming in too fast. So we ended up having to leave the house.

We left the house and we went up on the roof of a school. I took a crowbar and I burst the door on the roof of the school to help people on the roof.

Later on we found a flat boat, and we went around the neighborhood in a flat boat getting people out of their houses and bringing them to the school.

We found all the food that we could and we cooked and we fed people. But then, things started getting really bad.

By the second day, the people that were there, that we were feeding and everything, we had no more food and no water. We had nothing, and other people were coming in our neighborhood. We were watching the helicopters going across the bridge and airlift other people out, but they would hover over us and tell us Hi! and that would be all. They wouldn't drop us any food or any water, or nothing.

Alligators were eating people. They had all kinds of stuff in the water. They had babies floating in the water.

We had to walk over hundreds of bodies of dead people. People that we tried to save from the hospices, from the hospitals and from the old-folks homes. I tried to get the police to help us, but I realized they were in the same straits we were. We rescued a lot of police officers in the flat boat from the 5th district police station. The guy who was in the boat, he rescued a lot of them and brought them to different places so they could be saved.

We understood that the police couldn't help us, but we couldn't understand why the National Guard and them couldn't help us, because we kept seeing them but they never would stop and help us.

Finally it got to be too much, I just took all of the people that I could. I had two old women in wheelchairs with no legs, that I rowed them from down there in that nightmare to the French Quarters, and I went back and got more people.

There were groups of us, there were about 24 of us, and we kept going back and forth and rescuing whoever we could get and bringing them to the French Quarter because we heard that there were phones in the French Quarter, and that there wasn't any water. And they were right, there were phones, but we couldn't get through to anyone.

I found some police officers. I told them that a lot of us women had been raped down there by guys, not from the neighborhood where we were, they were helping us to save people. But other men, and they came and they started raping women and they started killing, and I don't know who these people were. I'm not gonna tell you I know, because I don't.

But what I want people to understand is that, if we hadn't been left down there like the animals that they were treating us like, all of those things wouldn't have happened. People are trying to say that we stayed in that city because we wanted to be rioting and we wanted to do this and, we didn't have resources to get out, we had no way to leave.

When they gave the evacuation order, if we could've left, we would have left.

There are still thousands and thousands of people trapped in their homes in the downtown area. When we finally did get into the 9th ward, and not just in my neighborhood, but in other neighborhoods in the 9th ward, there were a lot of people still trapped down there... old people, young people, babies, pregnant women. I mean, nobody's helping them.

And I want people to realize that we did not stay in the city so we could steal and loot and commit crimes. A lot of those young men lost their minds because the helicopters would fly over us and they wouldn't stop. We would make SOS on the flashlights, we'd do everything, and it really did come to a point, where these young men were so frustrated that they did start shooting. They weren't trying to hit the helicopters, they figured maybe they weren't seeing. Maybe if they hear this gunfire they will stop then. But that didn't help us. Nothing like that helped us.

Finally, I got to Canal St. with all of my people I had saved from back there.

I don't want them arresting nobody else. I broke the window in an RTA bus. I never learned how to drive a bus in my life. I got in that bus. I loaded all of those people in wheelchairs and in everything else into that bus, and we drove and we drove and we drove and millions of people was trying to get me to help them to get on the bus, too.

Charmaine Neville is a member of the third generation of New Orleans's legendary Neville musical family. She fronts the Charmaine Neville Band.

opinion and I have mine.  Sorry but I heard it directly from McCain's own mouth that he would stay in Iraq 100 years if that's what it took?  If that's what it took for what?   The region has never been "stable" and it isn't going to be stable now.  The people don't want us there.  If they want freedom let them fight for it themselves.  Read much about the American Revolution lately?  This war was and is about oil.  Wasn't Bush cronies with Sadam?  As well as Cheney?  Maybe even McCain?

I suppose your comments will not bother me if I do not try to argue/respond, so I no longer will.  Easy solution.  It's not that I don't think you have some relatively reasonable views on providing health care to kids, you just aren't willing to have your taxes raised to provide that care, and that is your personal feeling.  I could come up with some great solutions too, but the fact is that you and I are not a part of Congress, and any hypothetical solutions we come up with are going to do nothing to cover the families that could benefit from the S-SCHIP right now, which is when these families need help - right now.  I will gladly support any bill that is designed to ease medical costs for any family.  I will gladly have my taxes raised if it means children and families making middle-income wages suffer less.

So you can respond to this if you want, but I will no longer respond to any of your posts.

Alex Jones is not a physicist or a structuralist, I presume.  The people who built the WTC explained how the extreme heat from the jet fuel caused the buildings to topple.  There is no use arguing this with you. You have chosen to believe it and there you have it. 

simply stating my opinion. It seems like many here on this board have some bug up their behinds, are bitter and angry (most tend to be O supporters, go figure) and can't have adult conversation without resorting to name calling.

S.Amdt.4170: To protect families, family farms and small businessees by extending the income tax rate structure, raising the death tax exemption to $5 million and reducing the maximum death tax rate to no more than 35%; to keep education affordable extending the college tuition deduction; and to protect senior citizens from higher taxes on their retirement income, maintain U.S. financial market competitiveness, and promote economic growth by extending the lower tax rates on dividents and capital gains.

NAY: Biden and Obama   YEA: McCalin

I.E., this is in the voting record in the public records. There are not too many voting records there for the O since he started his campaign and most of those he voted NAY or say Not Voting.

She was left unsupervised at a very critical age (like the Down baby will be) and did not receive enough parental guidance to prevent this tragedy.

Barack and Michelle have been married for years with not a hint of scandal.  they have two beautiful age-appropriate children. Joe Biden has a beautiful blended family that truly loves each other. McCain dumped his gravely injured first wife for a beauty queen.  Then he was pressured into picking another beauty queen with an Down infant who obviously needs a full time mother and pregnant teenager for his running mate.  Family values, family values, family values.

They looked great to me.  Cindy McCain reached for the child, it wasn't handed off to her.  Bristol looked anything but terrified.  She looked proud of her mother.  And well she should be.  She is running for VP of the United States.  I thought it was especially sweet with the little girl licked her hand to smooth down the baby's cowlick.  Circus freaks are the last words I would use to describe this family.

of your business. I am being viciously mistreated by the press. Wait, film this.  It will get me some votes. Watch me bravely send my first born off to the endless war my political party started.

by picking O and I have been running into a lot more people including strangers who also agree.  No more freedom and some of the elderly seem to think our country is going to turn out like Germany years ago.  I guess this is what the young people want. 

There sure are a lot of people stocking up and buying ammunition too.  Afraid guns will be gone and cannot buy anymore.  Others believe to stock up on guns to use for barter exchanges down the road.  That is what some Americans are seeing how our FREEDOM country will turn out down in the future.  You can do A LOT OF DAMAGE in 4 years to this country.  Just kissed good-bye to the ole USA as of late Nov. 4, 2008.  I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK, DANG IT.