Al Franken Sense

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http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/08/30/140853.php

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[Frankenette]

We are trying to understand where you are coming from, Complete.

A broad and sweeping statement such as you made leads us to believe you are somewhat naive and quite possibly someone who espouses the feeling that those that suffer in this world are to be afforded no pity or help because you deem that they are somehow at fault...sorry but this is a liberal board and we don't usually wonder how someone got in a fix, we still want to help them, ya git me?
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"Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved." Aristotle

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[Bob Dobalina]

Yes we are endangering people by giving Bush a free pass when cut the funding that led to this disaster and went into operation ignore for three days after hurricane struck . Let's blame the victims instead, yeah, uh huh, yeah. Dutifully spoken like a good little German.
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"These are the facts." Facts? What country does he think he's talking to? Facts are to Americans as salads are to Americans. --The Rude Pundit

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Drowning New Orleans
October 2001 issue

A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands. Human activities along the Mississippi River have dramatically increased the risk, and now only massive reengineering of southeastern Louisiana can save the city By Mark Fischetti

The boxes are stacked eight feet high and line the walls of the large, windowless room. Inside them are new body bags, 10,000 in all. If a big, slow-moving hurricane crossed the Gulf of Mexico on the right track, it would drive a sea surge that would drown New Orleans under 20 feet of water. "As the water recedes," says Walter Maestri, a local emergency management director, "we expect to find a lot of dead bodies."
New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south and west. And because of a damning confluence of factors, the city is sinking further, putting it at increasing flood risk after even minor storms. The low-lying Mississippi Delta, which buffers the city from the gulf, is also rapidly disappearing. A year from now another 25 to 30 square miles of delta marsh--an area the size of Manhattan--will have vanished. An acre disappears every 24 minutes. Each loss gives a storm surge a clearer path to wash over the delta and pour into the bowl, trapping one million people inside and another million in surrounding communities. Extensive evacuation would be impossible because the surging water would cut off the few escape routes. Scientists at Louisiana State University (L.S.U.), who have modeled hundreds of possible storm tracks on advanced computers, predict that more than 100,000 people could die. The body bags wouldn't go very far.

A direct hit is inevitable. Large hurricanes come close every year. In 1965 Hurricane Betsy put parts of the city under eight feet of water. In 1992 monstrous Hurricane Andrew missed the city by only 100 miles. In 1998 Hurricane Georges veered east at the last moment but still caused billions of dollars of damage. At fault are natural processes that have been artificially accelerated by human tinkering--levying rivers, draining wetlands, dredging channels and cutting canals through marshes. Ironically, scientists and engineers say the only hope is more manipulation, although they don't necessarily agree on which proposed projects to pursue. Without intervention, experts at L.S.U. warn, the protective delta will be gone by 2090. The sunken city would sit directly on the sea--at best a troubled Venice, at worst a modern-day Atlantis.


As if the risk to human lives weren't enough, the potential drowning of New Orleans has serious economic and environmental consequences as well. Louisiana's coast produces one third of the country's seafood, one fifth of its oil and one quarter of its natural gas. It harbors 40 percent of the nation's coastal wetlands and provides wintering grounds for 70 percent of its migratory waterfowl. Facilities on the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Baton Rouge constitute the nation's largest port. And the delta fuels a unique element of America's psyche; it is the wellspring of jazz and blues, the source of everything Cajun and Creole, and the home of Mardi Gras. Thus far, however, Washington has turned down appeals for substantial aid.
Fixing the delta would serve as a valuable test case for the country and the world. Coastal marshes are disappearing along the eastern seaboard, the other Gulf Coast states, San Francisco Bay and the Columbia River estuary for many of the same reasons besetting Louisiana. Parts of Houston are sinking faster than New Orleans. Major deltas around the globe--from the Orinoco in Venezuela, to the Nile in Egypt, to the Mekong in Vietnam--are in the same delicate state today that the Mississippi Delta was in 100 to 200 years ago. Lessons from New Orleans could help establish guidelines for safer development in these areas, and the state could export restoration technology worldwide. In Europe, the Rhine, Rhône and Po deltas are losing land. And if sea level rises substantially because of global warming in the next 100 years or so, numerous low-lying coastal cities such as New York would need to take protective measures similar to those proposed for Louisiana.


more here

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[Bob Dobalina]

[mostomotus]

[chickenhawkdown]

[bedtimeforbonzo]

Complete is a complete __________________________.

Sorry to get personal, but the guy/gal has too thick a shell around his/her soul for me to every break through. I leave the task to a preacher/psychologist and Complete's own desire if and when (s)he wants to rediscover a sense of humanity and compassion.

Complete is representative of the US as a whole. Which, incidently, ties exactly back to my original point: throughout US society, individuals and groups (read as "favored social classes) have tried to enclose themselves behind their own NeoCastle walls ensuring their own wealth and survival while largely abandoning the NeoSerfs and NeoPeasants (old terms: rabble, commoners, riff-raff, and--not inappropriately in thís case--the flotsam and jetsam) outside the NeoCastle walls.

My point, once again, is that this sense of class difference and apathy, and the actual abandonment being seen in which the gov't is almost begrudgingly being prodded into action WOULD NOT HAPPEN in an European-style welfare state, because such states foster a deeper sense of "we are all in it together". What I am seeing back in America, and it horrifies me, is a very deep chasm between a large numer of hopeless people, some of whom are now in open revort against the decades of neglect, and an afluent class that never considered doing anything in advance to help them. It simply, in Complete's terms, told them to hop in the cars and flee. (Bush to poor: "fend for yourself, I'm still on vacation. I got to photographified looking manly clearing brush and mountain biking!")

What is going to happen next is the Herr Hannities are going to point out the very blackness of these looters as proof that these poor deserve even less the little they got and are subhuman.

Well, if (big if) they are subhuman, what has been the role of slavery, then post-slavery ostracism and subsequent ghettoization? Why and how are "these people" (a real popular phrase "these days") supposed to respect property rights of (basically) whites when whites had held there forebears as property and ever since been holding them at arm's length? New Orleans is Watts is Baghdad.

To the degree that the situation in the South resembles Watts & Baghdad, is America's chickens coming home to roost for institutionalized rascism, both foreign and domestic.

Earlier this week was a report that said for the fist time ever US poverty in both absolute and relativew terms increased for a fifth consecutive year. Billions of bucks are missing from Iraqi aid money, waaaaaaaaay more than enough to have build super-deluxe levees. GOP lobyist/legislators have allowed the pertochemical industry a free hand, and now the poor are litteraly wading in a chemical film, and the Bushies are as bad as Holocaust-deniers in denying global warming, when ANY and EVERY scientist who knows any atmospheric physics and chemistry knows how sea temperature ramps up storm intensity. This is OLD science. Textbooks from the 1950s have the basics of heat and storm intensity well outlined.

And Bush's response?
* cut SUV milage by 2-3 mpg (whoopee!)
* take away air standards restrictions on power generation (incl cars) to make up for the loss refineries.
* build lots coal electric plants to replace oil (a recipee for climate hell).
* Occupy oil countries whose leadership cannot be trusted to provide us with oil. (If he had the funds, Venzuela would be next on the pretext of Castroization. Remember to Cuban missile crisis? We'll guess where John Bolton, and the NeoVista Social Club have finally found them, right alonside Saddam's missing missiles being set up in silos hidden in the slums of Maracaibo. That's right. Honest. And they got a drug-running airplanes fitted-out with modified crop-dusting sprayers to hit us with Ebola and Dengue fever germs! Chavez mollests little rich boys and girls his goon squad kidnapps from the oppressed rich in their concentration compounds, AND most horrifying of all, he's breeding mutant killer bees and packing the queens in crates of fruit marked "export to USA". Honets! Would the Office of Special Plans ever lie to you?)

Whoops, digressed a'gin.

Solution to the US' mess:
Toss out laissez fairre, cowboy crony-capitalism, and institute a modern welfare state like, say Finland's, and leave the 1800s and join the 20th century, if you don't have the gas to go all the way to the current millenium.

The rich right beat down Jeffersonism, beat down Populism, beat down the New Deal, beat down The War on Poverty and now it's time to beat down them.

No taxation without representation!
Down with King George and institute rule by the people!

Finish the Revolution of 1776 and get it right this time.