I urge you all to do the same. Most humans and houses have enough food to sustain life for months, but dehydration kills in days.

We've all seen Bush strumming a guitar while people drowned. Can you imagine FDR doing the same? He would have been there, in his wheelchair, even if he'd had pneumonia.

I expect you understand that elephantman was race-baiting you.

In his head, it goes: It was scary because there were black people there.

I expect a lot of those FEMA folks were grads from places like Falwell's school, Liberty U. They lacked chops and compassion, but had the necessary passion for flag and cross waving.

And, I think, Rice attended a play that evening and was booed. Bush, Rice, Cheney, and company will have to live the remainder of their lives in a bubble. They are so widely hated.

Meanwhile, Bush voters will go back to voting for their far from capable replacements.

"By the way, thanks for your service in what was a really difficult and, at the time thankless job. I hope more people than me have thanked you and will continute to thank you."

He race-baited you and now he's thanking you because...he supports the troops.

And just never you mind that he voted for the bad guys who cut troop bennies and extended tours of duty and ordered the invasion and occupation because they gotta have that crude.

...of people like Elephantman.

I always save some rightous anger for Bush voters.

"I've offered contrarian opinions on any nuber of Salon issues, from judicial appointments to the conduct of the war on terror; this Katrina issue seems higher on the emotion-meter than any of them."

I have no words for a man who has no heart.

...tortures people, much like Jesus was tortured.

Why aren't you in Iraq?

...in jail cells, even though I prefer stocks.

there are bargains to be had. Much antique furniture is selling for a third of what it cost 30 years ago. Solid homes in my neighborhood can be had for $65,000. And land is dropping too. I've looked at a couple parcels for $1,000 an acre. However, McMansions will be increasingly hard to sell. I expect in a few years, the ones in the country will be filled with hay and mice.

Well, that'll be coming to an end.

It's not fancy, but it's fine. A monthly mortgage costs as much as rent.

Regardless of what Seinfeld asserts, there's nothing better than a woman with man hands, with calluses and dirt under the fingernails. Likewise, there's nothing better than a man with the same hands. And it gives me the heeby-jeebies to shake hands with someone whose hands are softer than dough. Likewise, it probably gives them the creeps to shake my rough and dirty hands. It's that class thing. I've been in groups where racism and sexism and heterosexism are discussed, but no one wants to discuss class.

I was in a Wyoming bathroom once and two women with leather for skin entered. They were as leggy and lean as Angelina Jolie, but had more wrinkles on a single finger than Ms. Jolie has everywhere. And they were sexy, for they were real. Ms. Jolie pretends to be tough in movies, but these women were tough. I expect that when things go badly, it will be people like those women (and their male counterparts) who will survive. They know how to suffer and it'll just be another day.

I imagine that reality shows that show people who do dangerous labor allow folks who sit on cushions and sip and watch to consider class. I saw one of those WPA murals that praised people who labor and disparged those who beat ploughshares into swords. That sensibility of respecting labor is long lost and reality shows that turn hard labor into entertainment for soft folks unsettle me.

Heather might like to watch them, but I pass.

All of the bigot's posts are still up. The editors might like the conflict that they generate and the consequent hits. Or they might truly believe that everyone deserves voice. I go with the former since they deleted one of my posts once.

I'm glad you used the c-word: class. That other c-word is a unsheathed dagger. Class is a dagger with all of us as the sheath.

I think that watching others sweat is vile. Labor is too frank, hard, and honest to be used to amuse others. Watching labor is like watching local news and seeing a grieving mother watch her home burn: it's morality porno. Soft people have no right to watch people with hard hands sweat. It's just wrong, but it happens because of the distance, because of the safety of one's sofa. On the high seas and in the oil fields, no man or woman with soft hands would dare approach a group of laborers and gawk at them. But because of tv's distance, too many feel free to do so. And those laborers who've been seduced and prodded by producers to behave as the Olsen Twins further titillate the doughy tv watchers.

Ironically, America's debt and the related rise of the cost of oil will mean that more and more Americans will become laborers. Producing steel here and other commodities will become more and more cost-effective. And when those future laborers return home, dusty and greasy and weary, tv will have lost its audience for labor.

The rich once went slumming. I once read of a party thrown by East Coasters where a ballroom was turned into a slaughterhouse. Guests were given a butcher's apron and splattered with blood. Cow carcasses circled the ballroom on meat hooks.

Well, when people lift weights and swallow pills to develop puff muscles, that's a form of slumming. They're mimicking the strength of laborers. What you can't bench press shouldn't matter. Strength is getting up each morning and going back to labor.