This is a rant!  I watched with complete disbelief last night and this morning the news that over one hundred thousand people disobeyed mandatory evacuation orders from Hurricaine Ike and chose to hunker down in their homes instead of filling up their gas tanks with $5 a gallon petrol and empty their wallets out with expensive hotel and motel costs safely inland.  And then these coastal scofflaws actually expect the rest of us to then rescue them from "certain death" by drowning?  They made their poor decision!  Let them go under three times and then die with it!  By what right, say, do workers at McDonald's and dish-washers and Social Security retirees not put a little aside each month as a fund to help them evacuate when killer hurricaines come knocking (as they do sometimes every year)?  Yet these Texas moochers actually expect me (& other good people like me in, say, Colorado) to pay out of our own pockets for their rescue when they chose--mind-you: CHOSE!--to stay behind?  Just like the good Christian Lieutenant Governor of Texas said a few minutes ago on the Weather Channel: we live in a Free Country, which means workers at McDonald's, dish-washers and Social Security retirees, et al, are completely free to die if they can't afford to live!

And this is as it should be in this Great Land of Ours, doncha think?

In my recent experience, I have witnessed a young man being slandered by women in the neighborhood.  I have watched as this young person has been isolated because of the gossip and slander.  The question becomes: what would be the LDS/Libertarian/Humanitarian way to respond to this kind of slander?  I am incensed at the injustice of it all--and yet I see it all around me.  I remember it happening when I was young, and am ashamed to say that I might have been a part of it myself occasionally...which sincerely pains me now.  What would the Lord have us do in this circumstance.  Any responses?

This article has really bugged me for the people who donated money and time to help this family.  At least it wasn't 'forced' help and donation like some would say is needed but still...  What do you think about this?

LAKE CITY, Ga. (AP) -- More than 1,800 people showed up to help ABC's "Extreme Makeover" team demolish a family's decrepit home and replace it with a sparkling, four-bedroom mini-mansion in 2005.

Three years later, the reality TV show's most ambitious project at the time has become the latest victim of the foreclosure crisis.

After the Harper family used the two-story home as collateral for a $450,000 loan, it's set to go to auction on the steps of the Clayton County Courthouse Aug. 5. The couple did not return phone calls Monday, but told WSB-TV they received the loan for a construction business that failed.

The house was built in January 2005, after Atlanta-based Beazer Homes USA and ABC's "Extreme Makeover" demolished their old home and its faulty septic system. Within six days, construction crews and hoards of volunteers had completed work on the largest home that the television program had yet built.

The finished product was a four-bedroom house with decorative rock walls and a three-car garage that towered over ranch and split-level homes in their Clayton County neighborhood. The home's door opened into a lobby that featured four fireplaces, a solarium, a music room and a plush new office.

Materials and labor were donated for the home, which would have cost about $450,000 to build. Beazer Homes' employees and company partners also raised $250,000 in contributions for the family, including scholarships for the couple's three children and a home maintenance fund.

ABC said in a statement that it advises each family to consult a financial planner after they get their new home. "Ultimately, financial matters are personal, and we work to respect the privacy of the families," the network said.

Some of the volunteers who helped build the home were less than thrilled about the family's financial decisions.

"It's aggravating. It just makes you mad. You do that much work, and they just squander it," Lake City Mayor Willie Oswalt, who helped vault a massive beam into place in the Harper's living room, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Obviously there are many deserving families in need of homes, and the fact this family got their mortgage paid off and and ADDITIONAL $250K for their kids from other hard working individuals really bugs me.  I hope they can't get to the kids education money. 

Also, do you think anyone truly appreciates anything they are 'given' without any work or effort on their part?  I've heard numerous stories of people hitting the lottery only to be broke a few years later.  Anyway, what do you think ?