We're talking about stuff that could easily be in your backyard in a month or two, or at least mine. Just the day before my mom and I met her best friend for her birthday lunch and she was expressing concern because she's getting up in years and was considering her brothers offer to move in with him and his wife--on Floridas west coast, the only part of the state the wife likes. That's kinda on hold now. I don't think relocating the entire Gulf Coast is really a viable option here. Even if the US economy were in a state to absorb millions of newly unemployed people and train them in the kind of jobs they need to support a family (which it very much isn't. ) Frankly, I've always been a little dubious of the whole "just retrain them" panacea when an industry is in crisis; other industries may need help, but they can't take on the entire workforce of, say, the auto industry, or the steel mills. Or the Gulf Coast fishermen. Even if they could, the price of labor would plummet, and while I know that's like Christmas for many on the right, it's not really good for the country.

That's more a rebuttal to your rebuttal of a rebuttal though; to answer your initial question, the reason people are asking why no benefits are being held for Gulf Coast residents is exactly what I said: 1) People in other countries don't have to wait this long for help from both the US government and its citizens during a disaster and 2) BP isn't burning up the highway to get them relief they need now either. Someone needs to step into that breach, and you'd think the government to whom these people have paid taxes for decades would be at least as quick as they are when an earthquake strikes Pakistan or Haiti, or a tsunami hits the Indian Oceans coastline. Yes, the cost should ultimately be recouped from the company liable, but we shouldn't expect these people to wait around for them to provide what they can no longer provide for themselves. To bring it on home: Your mom sponsored families in Pakistan trying to get back on their feet after the earthquake, and that's laudable; why doesn't she or someone else in the US do that for a shrimp fisherman in Mobile...?