Subj : Um...no comment? To : Frank Reid From : Daemon Date : Sun Sep 04 2005 08:52:00 Re: Um...no comment? By: Frank Reid to Daemon on Sat Sep 03 2005 07:14 pm > You're actually more full of yourself than I originally gave you credit. Th No, Frank. What you gave too much credit to was the strength and momentum of your own sanctimony. > source of that article you cited was Blumenthal, and Blumenthal is an idiot. Finnigan was absolutely correct. *I* gave you far too much credit for being able to hold your attention to the conversation long enough to follow all the relevent points, because this is the third time, I believe, that I'm pointing out that which you already know: I didn't cite the article. My reference was to the same topic, but based on entirely different sources, some of which I've cited specifically, though you pretend the information in them doesn't exist. > The fact that you've subsequently done some "research" on your own doesn't > change the fact that you piled onboard the anti-Bush wagon just as quickly a > it rolled through town. Catch-up, Frank. I've been anti-GWB from the very beginning, for a huge list of reasons, long before there was a bandwagon to jump onto. And by placing the word "research" within quotation marks, are you, in fact, alleging that you DO know better than both the Army Corps of Engineers and Disaster Relief agencies, or is it simply that you prefer unsupported opinion to supported opinion? > it rolled through town. Don't feel bad... you're among the same suckers the > PACs count on with their advertisements at election time... you know, the on > that claim "Candidate Jones created a law that encouraged killing babies?" Once again, you STILL don't have a clue about my political views, though I couldn't make them more plain to you if I drew them in crayon across your forehead and handed you a mirror, but the clueless sanctimony just goes on and on. Or maybe it's the big-word thing getting in your way again. Perhaps I should ask you straight out if you even know what "beaurocratic" or "patronage" mean as I continue to pound home the points that they're what's fundamentally wrong with the system. > Now, along the facts... first, funding for this particular pet project was c > in the 2001 omnibus budget. Er... wait... the Iraq war didn't start until More evidence you didn't so much as glance at the ACE pages I cited, which document work continuing right into 2004. The name of the project changed, Frank. Not the mission, except by expansion of goals. > in the 2001 omnibus budget. Er... wait... the Iraq war didn't start until > 2003, right? That particular budget cut was addressed specifically on the That is correct. Congratulations. And by 2004, the expense of the whole deal sucked the funding right out from under efforts to continue the MYRIAD projects under way towards repairing and updating the whole system, leaving a large number of them unfinished. But those are more of those pesky fact things that were contained in the pages I cited and the quote I referenced by the Disaster Chief, and they're not convenient to your sycophant position, so I'm not at all surprised you don't recognize them. > place there. Was it a bad move, even in hindsight? Well, let's see... this > particular project (to shore the levees) began in 1965. It was originally ONE of them did, yes. > planned to be finished by 1975. However, the project was *never* (not a sin > time) funded at the requested level since its inception. So, maybe you shou > really be blaming LBJ! See, Frank, there's a difference between not being 100% funded and being stripped of funding. It's a numbers thing, so don't think too hard about it. It'll go way beyond how many fingers and toes you've got. > those lives, right? Wrong! According to LTGen Strock, Chief of Army Corps > Engineers, it would "not have changed the situation in downtown New Orleans. Sure. Because downtown New Orleans, by stupid design, was the most succeptible to ANY catastrophe. BUT - The damage wouldn't have been NEARLY as widespread nor as long-lasting if the pumps hadn't failed and if the levees had held better. Plus (now brace yourself, because I'm about to criticize GWB even more here and I don't want you to wet yourself or anything) there's the fact that we seem to rather short on available equipment and National Guard manpower to simply call-up and send down to handle the problem. Now... I wonder where all that equipment and manpower IS, and whose dimwit idea it was to make them unavailable to US so they'd be available on the other side of the ocean where they have no business by charter being... Hmm. > For two decades, the residents of New Orleans have talked about "the big one > devastating their city. Well, this was the Big One. You can give Bush cred > for lots of things. We know you don't like the Iraqi war... we get that. > However, giving him credit for the acts of God is a bit of a stretch! No, Frank, I don't believe you actually get that. See, there are consequences to stupid decisions that go quite far beyond philosophical and run straight through the practical rather like a hurricane in a city built below sea level left stripped of the resources to continue to prepare for what they've spent considerably more than 2 decades trying to prepare for, according to constantly improving understanding of documented weather patterns, strengths, and tendencies. > Like I said to Angus (somewhat tongue-in-cheek)... maybe your inability to > reckon the existence of a higher power is what leads you to this kind of bla > game when natural disaster occurs. And maybe you should stop trying to use religion to legitimize stupid points of view that only hold water if you selectively twist facts to suit them. > Maybe your opinion of yourself is so huge > that you think man must be dominant of all the physical around him. Well, > sorry... you're not your own god. Or maybe you really are an idiot that can't discern a fact from a pile of dung. Guess it's just a matter of opinion, there. And mine is that it's very telling that you consider your point of view so unassailable that you utterly discount documented work by the Army Corps of Engineers and the Disaster Agency Chief in question himself in deference to a sycophantic knee-jerk protective petulant point of view for GWB; that you know so much better than they that the fact that work continued, fully-documented, right up until 2004, leaving the person IN CHARGE of the issue in general VERY concerned that unfinished work was a recipe for disaster. But you go ahead and continue genuflecting to your hero, GWB, who can apparently do no wrong in your book. [daemon] In the shuffling madness... --- þ Synchronet þ necropolisbbs.darktech.org - Tonawanda, NY .