On 12 Sep 2005 11:58:01 -0700, "kk4tl" wrote:

Probably the same amount as Ted Kennedy, AlGore, John Kerry and all the
others.

I don't know about the MA Senatorial complement, but Vice President
Gore appears to have done something:

""KNOXVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- Al Gore helped airlift some 270 Katrina
evacuees on two private charters from New Orleans, acting at the
urging of a doctor who saved the life of the former vice president's
son.

Gore criticized the Bush administration's slow response to Katrina in
a speech Friday in San Francisco, but refused to be interviewed about
the mercy missions he financed and flew on September 3 and 4.

However, Dr. Anderson Spickard, who is Gore's personal physician and
accompanied him on the flights, said: "Gore told me he wanted to do
this because like all of us he wanted to seize the opportunity to do
what one guy can do, given the assets that he has."

An account of the flights was posted this week on a Democratic Party
Web page.

It was written by Greg Simon, president of the Washington-based
activist group FasterCures. Simon, who helped put together the
mission, also declined an interview.

On September 1, three days after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast,
Simon learned that Dr. David Kline, a neurosurgeon who operated on
Gore's son, Albert, after a life-threatening auto accident in 1989,
was trying to get in touch with Gore. Kline was stranded with patients
at Charity Hospital in New Orleans.

"The situation was dire and becoming worse by the minute -- food and
water running out, no power, 4 feet of water surrounding the hospital
and ... corpses outside," Simon wrote.

Gore responded immediately, telephoning Kline and agreeing to
underwrite the $50,000 each for the two flights, although Larry Flax,
founder of California Pizza Kitchens, later pledged to pay for one of
them.

"None of the airlines involved required a contract or any written
guarantee of payment before sending their planes and volunteer crews,"
Simon wrote of the American Airlines flights. "One official said if
Gore promised to pay, that was good enough for them."

He also recruited two doctors, Spickard and Gore's cousin, retired
Col. Dar LaFon, a specialist in internal medicine who once ran the
military hospital in Baghdad.

Most critically, Gore worked to cut through government red tape,
personally calling Gov. Phil Bredesen to get Tennessee's support and
U.S. Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta to secure landing rights in
New Orleans.

About 140 people, many of them sick, landed in Knoxville on September
3. The second flight, with 130 evacuees, landed the next day in
Chattanooga.''

cable news network