nklr help! my brother in law wants a bike (and my mother in law ain

[Eric Lee Green]

scott quillen wrote:

>Blake, > >You make good points and my response is not directed >at you but the others on this list who believe they >could do such a MUCH BETTER job of providing relief >than those currently involved in that process. > >

Well, the problem is that in the past, disasters of this sort WERE handled better. But that was back when the United States was a can-do nation, that could win the greatest war this world has ever seen, build the Interstate highway system, and send a man to the moon. Nowdays we can't win a war against a bunch of dipstick pray'n'spray insurgents in Iraq, our highways are crumbling, and our Shuttle won't fly without pieces falling off of it. Now it seems that all anybody wants to do is parse legalities and make excuses for why things can't be done. I kick the rear of any of my subordinates who whine that something is impossible, and I sure don't want to hear it from my politicians that things are impossible, I want them to DO it, dadburn it! A reporter asked Mayor Nagin whether he thought legal issues regarding the state needing to make a formal request yada yada were preventing help from reaching New Orleans. Nagin basically went ballistic, saying that people needed help, and the right thing to do was help them first, and worry about the legal stuff later. I.e., that people are the most important thing, that he needed 500 busses to evacuate the people, and that anybody who cared more about legalities than about those people who are dying by the minute was bound for the lowest levels of Hell. Good interview with the Mayor (note that the transcript is incomplete, listen to the interview for the whole thing): http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/nagin.transcript/index.html

[Walter Mitty]

Mayor Naglin makes Dubya look like a genius by comparison. He is bitchin' about buses when he had more than a thousand available to him before the storm hit. Affirmative action at its finest. Eric Lee Green wrote:scott quillen wrote:

>Blake, > >You make good points and my response is not directed >at you but the others on this list who believe they >could do such a MUCH BETTER job of providing relief >than those currently involved in that process. > >

Well, the problem is that in the past, disasters of this sort WERE handled better. But that was back when the United States was a can-do nation, that could win the greatest war this world has ever seen, build the Interstate highway system, and send a man to the moon. Nowdays we can't win a war against a bunch of dipstick pray'n'spray insurgents in Iraq, our highways are crumbling, and our Shuttle won't fly without pieces falling off of it. Now it seems that all anybody wants to do is parse legalities and make excuses for why things can't be done. I kick the rear of any of my subordinates who whine that something is impossible, and I sure don't want to hear it from my politicians that things are impossible, I want them to DO it, dadburn it! A reporter asked Mayor Nagin whether he thought legal issues regarding the state needing to make a formal request yada yada were preventing help from reaching New Orleans. Nagin basically went ballistic, saying that people needed help, and the right thing to do was help them first, and worry about the legal stuff later. I.e., that people are the most important thing, that he needed 500 busses to evacuate the people, and that anybody who cared more about legalities than about those people who are dying by the minute was bound for the lowest levels of Hell. Good interview with the Mayor (note that the transcript is incomplete, listen to the interview for the whole thing): http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/nagin.transcript/index.html Archive Quicksearch at: http://www.angelfire.com/ut/moab/klr650_data_search.html List sponsored by Dual Sport News at: www.dualsportnews.com List FAQ courtesy of Chris Krok at: www.bigcee.com/klr650faq.html Yahoo! Groups Links __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[scott quillen]

--- Eric Lee Green wrote: "Well, the problem is that in the past, disasters of this sort WERE handled better..." Eric, Were you around when the last "disaster of this sort" was handled??? So...you're at least a hundred years old then or thereabouts, huh??? I'd sure like to know the specifics of where and when that last "disaster of this sort" happened in this country... And I repeat...WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HELP THIS SITUATION??? Regards, Scott __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

[scott quillen]

Jim, AMEN!!! YOU hit that nail right on the head! Regards, Scott --- Jim wrote:

> > > Where is it, then? The mayor of New Orleans says > he hasn't seen it. > > he's there on the ground. He should know. He's > there. > > Perhaps it's next to all these busses now sitting > usless in the water > when they should have been used (by the mayor) to > get the poor folks > out BEFORE the storm hit. >

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050901/480/flpc21109012015>

> > > > > who had no cars due to being too poor or not > needing one (due to the > > excellent public transit system) and thus had no > way to get out of town > > other than taking a bus (which quit running on > Saturday) > > blame the mayor and Governor for not figuring out > some way to evacuate > > that 23% of the population that had no cars, > > Again look at the picture in the link and rerethink > your position on > the effectivness of the NO mayor and LA gov. > --Jim > A-15 > > > > > > Archive Quicksearch at: >

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[Eric Lee Green]

scott quillen wrote:

>--- Eric Lee Green wrote: > > >"Well, the problem is that in the past, disasters of > this sort WERE handled better..." > >Eric, > >Were you around when the last "disaster of this sort" >was handled??? So...you're at least a hundred years >old then or thereabouts, huh??? > >

No. I have, however, lived through more than one hurricane. The National Guard was out in force shortly thereafter to ensure that there was no looting and that water and food were available to those in need.

>And I repeat...WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HELP THIS >SITUATION??? > >

I am currently 1,500 miles away from Louisiana, so I donated money to the Salvation Army relief fund and called my Congressman and Senators to tell them to put the heat on to get help to those poor people. I've also volunteered the use of an old trailer house on my property in Louisiana for temporary housing of people displaced by the hurricane. It's not the lap of luxury, but it's a roof. And finally, I've spent a bit of time praying. It's a small thing but from where I am it is pretty much all that I can do. Finally, regarding the drowned buses, you'll note that I've blamed the state and local officials for not running the buses to evacuate the people without transportation who were unable to hitch a ride elsewhere, not evacuating the hospitals and nursing homes *before* the hurricane hit, etc. There was altogether too much complacency on *everybody's* part prior to the hurricane hitting, a denial that the worst could happen. While the Bush quote about "nobody thought that the levees could break" was stupid (even Saturday Night Live's lump of clay, Mr. Bill, knew better in a 2004 commercial aired in the N.O. area urging people to evacuate when a hurricane neared), there was a lot of denial -- a LOT of denial -- going around beforehand that the worst could be about to happen. That said, those buses are useless now, they're underwater. The question is what we do now. And that answer is simple -- get the National Guard out there maintaining order and distributing food and water, get the busses running to evacuate these people out of those miserable conditions to some place where there is electricity and sewer and running water, and get it done. This isn't brain surgery, this is Hurricane 101, it's been practiced dozens of times over the past few decades, if the people currently running FEMA can't execute it fire them and re-hire the folks who left who DO know how to do it. I'm glad that finally -- FINALLY -- the aid is getting there. Hopefully now that the logjam is broken, those people will get the help they need. But I'm with Mayor Nagin that making excuses as to why people can't be helped blah blah procedure blah blah law blah blah request blah blah is disgusting. As Mr. Mayor put it, it's bull****. What matters is getting the help to the people who need it. Hopefully this is going to happen now that whatever logjam in D.C. was holding up the aid is apparently broken. - E

[Luc Legrain]

Pardon my french but " what in the f..." are you all talking about ?? Putiing the blame on some body else will not change or solve the problem ; the " he did this " or "he should have done that " is over with .... TOOO LAATE.... It happened... let's ALL deal with it .. As far as I know those states are part of MY country ,or do I have to cross a border ?? Not that I can recall on my last trip with the old Goat ( KLR 650) to Jackson ,MS. Could we all get back to what this group is about? MY BIKE and MY questions?? So... who is going to answer me about Lucas Oil Treatment ? Next time you vote put the CORRECT " X" on your ballot ......... Thanks.. scott quillen wrote: --- Eric Lee Green wrote: "Well, the problem is that in the past, disasters of this sort WERE handled better..." Eric, Were you around when the last "disaster of this sort" was handled??? So...you're at least a hundred years old then or thereabouts, huh??? I'd sure like to know the specifics of where and when that last "disaster of this sort" happened in this country... And I repeat...WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HELP THIS SITUATION??? Regards, Scott __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com Archive Quicksearch at: http://www.angelfire.com/ut/moab/klr650_data_search.html List sponsored by Dual Sport News at: www.dualsportnews.com List FAQ courtesy of Chris Krok at: www.bigcee.com/klr650faq.html Yahoo! Groups Links __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[KD]

Dear Friends: Several things of note. Federal help was released... 2 days before the hurricane hit and the Governor did not act very quickly. Additionally, we might remember that the entire town and area are flooded, not just rained upon thus making it very difficult to find any ground to pin point relief into. Now... let's all stop our talking and start getting to work helping all these people. Talk is very cheap and non-productive. Start volunteering and taking ACTION. Lovingly, Carson --- Luc Legrain wrote:

> Pardon my french but " what in the f..." are you all > talking about ?? Putiing the blame on some body else > will not change or solve the problem ; the " he did > this " or "he should have done that " is over with > .... TOOO LAATE.... > It happened... let's ALL deal with it .. As far as > I know those states are part of MY country ,or do I > have to cross a border ?? Not that I can recall on > my last trip with the old Goat ( KLR 650) to Jackson > ,MS. > Could we all get back to what this group is about? > MY BIKE and MY questions?? So... who is going to > answer me about Lucas Oil Treatment ? > Next time you vote put the CORRECT " X" on your > ballot ......... > Thanks.. > > scott quillen wrote: > > > --- Eric Lee Green wrote: > > > "Well, the problem is that in the past, disasters of > this sort WERE handled better..." > > Eric, > > Were you around when the last "disaster of this > sort" > was handled??? So...you're at least a hundred years > old then or thereabouts, huh??? > > I'd sure like to know the specifics of where and > when > that last "disaster of this sort" happened in this > country... > > And I repeat...WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HELP THIS > SITUATION??? > > Regards, > Scott > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam > protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > > > Archive Quicksearch at: >

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[BLBacon]

Why would anybody build a city below sea level next to the ocean? Does it really take hindsight to see that below sea level next to the ocean is not a good idea? There are a lot of whys here. Mine is just one of them. I am not trying to be insensetive. I would really like to know. Just never understood it. Country boy from the hills, Brent Date: Fri, 2 Sep 2005 05:10:00 -0700 (PDT) From: scott quillen Subject: Re: Re: NKLR Stupid Bush quote of the day Hindsight is ALWAYS 20/20... Many valid points...HOWEVER...New Orleans was a DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN!!!

[Russell Scott]

To specifically address the Bush Bashers of America. Sunday August 28, 2005 3:46 PM AP Photo LACG102 NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Mayor Ray Nagin ordered an immediate mandatory evacuation Sunday for all of New Orleans, a city of 485,000 people, as Hurricane Katrina bore down with 160 mph wind. Ten emergency shelters were set up, including the Superdome. ``There doesn't seem to be any relief in sight,'' Gov. Kathleen Blanco said, joining the mayor at a news conference. The mayor called the order unprecedented, but said Katrina's storm surge would likely top the city's protective levees. Blanco said President Bush called and personally appealed for the mandatory evacuation for the city, which sits below sea level. Powerline Blog. A number of our readers have been highly critical of state and local authorities in Louisiana. However, it must be acknowledged that they did one important thing that saved countless lives: they ordered the mandatory evacuation on Sunday that caused most people to leave the city. This mandatory evacuation order was a departure from past practice, when evacuations in the face of approaching hurricanes have always been voluntary. So what prompted the order that prevented Hurricane Katrina from being a natural disaster of unprecedented magnitude? The mayor called the order unprecedented and said anyone who could leave the city should. Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding. The City of New Orleans and its residents owe the President a profound debt of gratitude.

[Eric Lee Green]

BLBacon wrote:

>Why would anybody build a city below sea level next to the ocean? >

Ports have to be near the sea (doh). In the case of New Orleans, Iberville (or was it Bienville?) sailed up the Mississippi River looking for a place to found a port. He sailed past the current location of New Orleans, which was the first high ground he came to (the French Quarter being a lofty 12 feet above sea level), then he sailed on further and found nothing but swamps (the current Bonne Carre Spillway). So he turned back and, despite the rather, err, limited, amount of dry real estate, he decided to build at the current location of the French Quarter. It was the best place, he decided, to take the furs coming down the Mississippi River on barges and longboats, and put them into ocean-going vessels. In other words, it was all about commerce -- taking the goods coming down the river and putting them on boats to go elsewhere. After the United States won its war of independence and settlers started moving west of the Appalachian Mountains, they needed to ship their goods to market. The Ohio, Tennessee, and Mississippi rivers (to which the prior two led) were the obvious conduits for trade. The barges would come down the river and unload their goods at New Orlean's warehouses, then the oceangoing ships would come up the river and pick the goods up to carry overseas. By the mid 1800's, New Orleans was the largest port in the United States, taking the grain that came down the river on barges, loading it onto ships, and shipping it to the growing and hungry cities of the east coast. Then two disasters happened: the coming of the railroad, which took away a lot of the river traffic, and the American Civil War, which turned much of the South into a ruin. The city took over fifty years to regain its prosperity, but by 1910 was once again a major port, albeit primarily trading with Latin America by this time and receiving as many bananas coming in as it shipped corn outwards. The limited amount of land had become a major liability so ambitious farmers and land developers diked portions of the swamps, pumped them out to the nearest waterway, and either farmed the resulting land or built houses on it. Because this was mud, it did what mud always does when it dries out -- it shrank. Ending up below sea level. But the business of trans-shipping goods coming down the Mississippi River was not going away, and the people involved in that business needed places to live and shop, and shipping fresh vegetables long distance was not possible in that era prior to refrigeration so they needed places to grow fresh vegetables, so they made land where they could by buiilding dikes and installing large steam pumps to pump out the water behind the dikes. There was a major flood in the 1920's that overwhelmed portions of this haphazard dike system, luckily mostly only flooding farmers' fields, but it was clear that things needed to be regularized. One land developer was often pumping his storm water into another land developer's diked area! Thus the Corps of Engineers came in and designed the basic levee, dike, and storm pump system that is a direct ancestor of today's system, designed to carry storm water to the low points of the city where it would then be heaved over the dikes by first enormous steam-driven pumps, then later on diesel and electric pumps. Most of the area west of the Ship Channel was drained during this time, and eager land developers plunked housing and shopping centers. The "new" downtown, in the newly drained area between the French Quarter and the Metairie Ridge (the natural levee of a stream which once ran down the center of today's New Orleans, and the only other part of New Orleans that is above sea level) was also built during the next 30-40 years that in many ways was the prime of New Orleans. WWII brought major changes to New Orleans. The shipyards were building the ships that won this nation's greatest war, and the men (and women) who came to work in those shipyards needed a place to live. The lowest least desirable lands were drained and had housing slapped together on it in order to slam up temporary housing. Once the war was won, New Orleans attained its greatest population (approximately 650,000 people) and these people were demanding housing better than those enormous dormitory-style bunkhouses. The parts of the city to the east of the Ship Channel were diked and drained at this time, basically reclaiming salt marsh and seabottom, and thus New Orleans reached its final size, as instant slums were slapped into that newly-diked "land" as fast as the wood could be floated down the Mississippi River to build them. By 1955, New Orleans was at its peak. The current levee/dike/pump system was in place, basically remaining unchanged until 1995 when a major overhaul was undertaken other than minor renovations here and there. Two things happened in 1955: Brown vs. the Board of Education, and the start of a series of corruption scandals that continue unto this very day. The white population of New Orleans fled to the suburbs in order to avoid having their children be required to go to school with "niggers" (their word, not mine), destroying the city's tax base, and large national corporations that were set up in New Orleans started slowly drifting away because the combination of the tax base evaporating and the corruption caused the city's infrastructure to decay alarmingly, and also because they had trouble attracting employees from outside the South (often the best-educated employees) because the best employees usually did not want to live in a place full of what they considered inbred hate-filled bigots. That was an era where the national news showed pictures of fat-bellied Southern cops beating well-dressed (suit and tie) black people holding signs saying "I am a man" to the dirt for being "uppity niggers" (their term, not mine). Major companies didn't exactly want to be associated with those kinds of images. So in the aftermath of desegregation, the tax base was a shambles, the city's infrastructure was a shambles, and the city was rupturing population. It still remained a major port, but the shipyards that had led to its greatest prosperity were largely gone. And that was the situation in 2005, before the city was basically destroyed. To summarize: New Orleans is where it is because it's the logical place to trans-ship goods that come down the Mississippi on barges and go out the Mississippi on ocean-going vessels. The Corps of Engineers has now dredged the Mississippi to the point where ocean-going ships can make it further upriver all the way to the Port of Baton Rouge, but the river further north is not as wide and flows faster, so it is less economical to go further upriver in a big ocean-going ship. The downside of this is that in order to house the people needed to support a major port, swamps were diked off and pumped out and housing built there, and these swamps, when they were drained and the mud dried and sank, ended up below sea level.

> Does it >really take hindsight to see that below sea level next to the ocean is not a >good idea? > >

Despite a-holes like Hastert whining that New Orleans (or, rather, the parts below sealevel -- the newer parts) should not be rebuilt, it *will* be rebuilt, even if not in its current form. The fact that the city flooded does not change the fact that it is *still* the only logical place to transship goods between barges and ocean-going vessels. We can only hope that whatever arises in the aftermath of this disaster is much better protected, with seawalls capable of withstanding even a Category 5 hurricane and pumps capable of handling even 20 inches of rain in a two hour period (as might happen during such a hurricane) and buildings designed to withstand hurricane-force winds. Because there is no doubt that *something* will get rebuilt at that point, because there just isn't any other logical place to put a port near the mouth of the Mississippi -- wasn't when Iberville set down there, still isn't today. -E