My mom said - in agreement with yours truly - there'll be days like this:

...April Eaton, an Allstate "relations manager" claims that because Allstate has been around 75 years and insures more than 17 million households, they are acting neither unethically nor illegally. She says that after Katrina changed the world and insurance industry, it is Allstate who is "stepping to the plate first to find solutions that help protect and prepare citizens, while making sure our company can continue to insure as many customers as responsibly possible."

Folks, the above is an idiotic and very unethical response for a number of reasons. I can talk about two of them without cursing until I am blue in the face.

1) Katrina only exposed a decades-in-the-making problem around here, which is that of coastal erosion, coupled with the A.C. of E.'s shoddy maintenance of the levee system and the widening of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, which acted as a major conduit for the storm surge waters. All of this is reversible over time, Somestates. Get responsible and get with THAT.

2) I recounted my experience with Left Coasters' general responses to the plight of New Orleanians a while back, in part to make Maitri feel better, but also to point out that eventually, the kind of crap we are going through here is going to turn around and topple over onto the Californians - and they knew it would. Those who were clueless certainly have a clue now. I just hope that my in-laws aren't insured by the almighty Somestates. Then again, we have been recommending they move out to Atlanta, so this might be the push they need...

Terrible stuff to have to contemplate on Mother's Day, so I will simply smell the dozen Israeli roses Dan and the little guy got for me, thoroughly enjoy my brunch later on today, and direct you to this guy's latest post so that you can help him get his head outta the whiskey bottles and find him a good woman.

Share some love, y'all, and thoroughly chew out the next Allstate provider you see for their legal and thoroughly unethical behavior.

Heh.