Some Candles, a Flashlight, and a Can of Beans

I think I am gonna scream if I hear one more prissy boy Republican banker tell us how everyone could have fared a lot better if they were just prepared.

I live in ALASKA. I routinely spend two or three weeks at a time in the bush hunting moose, sheep, caribou, or fishing. It is tough. It is brutal...and I am prepared. Living primitive is tough, it is even tougher in brutal climates.

I have all of the right gear to survive up here. Bomb proof tents, synethic sleeping bags, wool clothing, water purifiers, and such. My gear weighs about seventy pounds in a pack, and that is very little comfort.

I want to SCREAM when I see Bill O Reilly, Scott McClellan, and his ilk spouting nonsense about prepardness. Bill, you could not hack it. YOur prissy primadona ass would be crying like a baby after a week in the Alaska Bush. Sean Hannity would make good bear bait, that is about it.

Survival gear is not cheap, at least the stuff that actually works is, and the bottom line is....if they would have had the money to purchase the right kind of surivival gear THEY WOULD HAVE HAD THE MONEY TO GET IN A CAR AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE.

excellent perspective.

:yourock:

(lol at how that came out...)

No internet porn or falafels out there....

I lived in Sweden, a tad warmer than Alaska, never used any and never got sick. OK I knew what water not to drink...

otherwise known as beaver fever is in almost every freshwater source up here. If you have ever gotten it once....you won't want to get it again.

obviously it's not common in Scandinavia. The worst you can get there is diseases transmitted by ticks.

Even if you are prepared things happen in life that we can not control. And there is a little thing called money. People might not have had the money to stay in a hotel. To buy gas to get out and far away. I remember reading someone had a taxi and was going to charge someone $100 to get out of the city! Instead this person could've said "come on" and got out together and helped each other out. It's always me, me, me. *sigh*

You may also want to mention that you spend two or three weeks at a time hunting because you are able to, at least physically. A lot of the survivors of Katrina were not in such physical shape.

My mother has recently gotten religion on emergency preparedness (she's been glued to the TV after the disaster) and is surprised at how much it would cost to lay in even a modest emergency kit. She's also been surprised that I've been able to assemble most of what we need for survival, without her being aware of it -- down to a battery-powered TV that can run for 2 hours on 6 D cells. My insistence that we keep at least 3 days of food "in case there's a snowstorm or a tornado" used to strike her as a bit neurotic, but not now.

And I well know that if I was trapped for a week in the house, MY prissy prima donna ass would be crying like a baby. The Alaskan bush would not be necessary. But at least I'd survive.

So my mother decided to figure out what all this extra "junk" cost, and I made her add the cost of the few other things we still don't have (like some cans of Sterno for hot food), and it came to over $400. That would allow us probably two weeks of survival time, maybe a month if we strictly rationed.

How many poor people have an extra $400 laying around the house for emergency supplies? How many have the presence of mind to plan for survival in an emergency, when more pressing life-and-death decisions need to be made? And as for the elderly and disabled, how many of them can spend a few days trotting around scrounging stuff to keep them alive when the feces hit the fan?

If the "Rectal Right" is serious about emergency preparedness, they could spend a few bucks so FEMA could give out emergency prep booklets, upgrade the FEMA website, and maybe even give the po' folks some money to buy survival supplies with. But, egads! that would be Socialism! Socialifm Moft Foul!

The whole thrust of this public screwing is to take the responsibility off Bush, who legally does assume all the responsibility, per the FEMA charter, approximately 20 Public Laws, USA-PATRIOT, and the laws enabling the actions of the new Department of Homeland Security. If Ray Nagin was slacking off on his responsibility to make sure New Orleans was prepared for a cat-5 hurricane, it was Mike Chertoff's job to make sure Nagin kept NO "up to code", and George Bush's job to make sure the whole system was working, ready, and in top shape.

Bush failed. That's all there is to it. He had help in his failure, but he's the Boss. If he's able to crush all opposition when he wants to invade a country or shut down medical research, why can't he do the same to make sure all local governments can handle a disaster?

But failure isn't Bush's main sin. If he just came clean and 'fessed up, people might be inclined to forgive him, even over a hill of 500 or 1000 or 10,000 bodies. But Bush is never wrong; he never takes responsibility; he's the blameless schlemazel who has to clean up after the schlemiels make a mess of things.

And that's why people hate him, and why his few remaining catchfarts spend so much time justifying his irresponsibility. It's a losing battle for Mr. Bush, but the real losers have been the American people -- and to an increasing extent, the people of the World.

Perhaps, DD, you can invite him up to Alaska this winter for a few weeks. For a vacation. Tell him you have a big old load of brush that needs clearing. And then take him into the Alaskan interior and tell him not to come back until he finds a penguin.

--p!

send him up here and I can stuff bacon in his pockets and tell him it is bear deterent!!!

"That's it Georgie. Rub that shit all over you now. Real good. Gotta get the smell reeeaaaallly strong. Bears HATE the smell of bacon George."

And the cats and dogs should have grown wings. The Whiny Righties just love to hate and blame. They are truly sick.

after this failure we know I cannot trust this administration to respond if the fault goes... so next item, a good portable kitchen, can recomend one? I was looking at coleman, but way, WAY too bulky

it is higher end coleman products but not up there like MSR or Mountain Hardware. I like the Apex stove = dual fuel, very simple, few parts, easy to repair. I had an MSR whisperlite that, while very light, was a pain in the rear. I sold it. I am a gear hound and I like what is simple and works well while keeping weight to a minimum.

As a side note, propane stoves are about worthless when it gets down around zero degrees.

The water came in fast. People who are coming out of the houses where they stayed in New Orleans are talking, and to a man, they've said that the flood waters came in fast when the levees gave way.

So even if they were prepared - there wasn't time to get the emergency provisions. Some of them barely made it into their attics ahead of the water.

The best emergency kit in the world is no good to anyone if it's inaccessible. Things can change in the blink of an eye in an emergency situation, and the best prepared person in the world could end up with their emergency supplies under water, stolen, lost in some way.

These people who are saying these things are just scrabbling for excuses for their own failings. I would love to see them making minimum wage or less as many of the people who were left behind in New Orleans do, and try to assemble a high powered emergency survival kit! That $5.35 an hour (or $2.01 an hour if you're a waitperson at a restaurant) really goes so far. YOu have so much left over at the end of the week to buy extra provisions, candles, generators and all that stuff.

Who knows when you will be stuck in a disaster or terror zone for days.

Why do these Republicans think this is somthing to brag about?