Random Thought

[Gage]

What? no political forums exist that you like?

Who reads those?
Besides, I have to know who to avoid if I ever make it to a TD gathering.

YOU KNOW IRA, I GET A REAL KICK OUT OF READING YOUR POST (I'll let you figure out why). AND TO GO TO A TD GATHERING, YOU SHOULD FIRST HAVE A HATCH ON YOUR TEARDROP TO KEEP THE UNWANTEDS OUT OF YOUR GALLEY.

HAVE A GOOD DAY

[mikeschn]

No fighting okay guys?

Mike...

[Guy]

Mike, yes I do like the rendering AND the tear. Really class work.

[TomS]

Why discuss religion and politics when you can make really inflamatory comments like this:

HEY IRA,

YANKEES SUCK

YOUR BELOVED YANKEES MIGHT BE IN FIRST. BUT THAT'S ONLY TEMPORARY BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO FACE THE SOX THIS WEEKEND.

JUST CHOKING ... OOPS! I MEAN JUST JOKING.

[s4son]

Tom,

I wish we had a major league team in Kansas City you could make fun of.



Scott F.

[Gage]

No fighting okay guys?
Mike...

Heck, I was just letting Ira know how much I enjoy reading his post. I haven't said anything yet about cigars.

Have a good day.

Now I bet I have you confused.

[mikeschn]

No fighting okay guys?
Mike...

Heck, I was just letting Ira know how much I enjoy reading his post. I haven't said anything yet about cigars.

Have a good day.

Now I bet I have you confused.

You and Tom better not get together... you'll find a whole new tact to use on people!

Mike...

P.S. I figure you'll tell me about cigars when you're good and ready!

[Laredo]

mike,
thanks for clearing that up.

[TonyCooper]

Dear Tony,

ou just can't admit you got caught BS'ing. No problem, you just lie again, good tactic. John Taranto never wrote that statement. So you are not using something substantiated by the WSJ. You say his Best of the Web is no longer available as best you can tell", well, Tony, that just is another example that "as best YOU can tell" ain't good enough for nothing. Here is the link to his archive, http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/archive/. Gee, isn't it funny, he never wrote anything like what you say he wrote.

Please don't put words in my mouth. I NEVER said Taranto wrote it. I said it was in his OP Ed Piece. My quote is here...

"The quote came from John Taranto's Best of the Web section on the WSJ site. I subscribe to that column by email and it appeared in it recently."

He quotes a great deal of folks and prints feedback from readers in most every column.

I spent the better part of the day searching the archives you listed (thanks for the link, I looked and could not find it) for that quote. You are correct, it is NOT there. I then spent additional time searching my email. I also subscribe to the Federalist Patriot. I found the quote in that mailing. It is a Conservative Journal.
It is located in this issue:
26 September 2005 | FederalistPatriot.US | Patriot No. 05-39

Thank you for finding the error (WSJ OpinionJournal email vs Federalist Patriot email) and calling me on it. I strive to be as accurate as I can and you helped me get there.

Also another mistake I made... It is JAMES TARANTO not John...

So we have established I am human, with a flawed memory and make mistakes...

That said...I stand by my statements.

The original statement was nothing more then a quote/suggestion from a reader that the Sierra Club should be sued for compensation for stopping the Corps. It was a thought... nothing more... And it IS in that mailing I rec'd and probably online on their site as well.

As to Mr. Brown:
Now we find out you were not watching hearings, you were "catching a snipet" of a news program and not the hearings. If that was the impression you were trying to convey, Boy, did you miss the mark. Yet, even now, you do not have the manhood to say you got it wrong.

I stand by my original statement in the original post. What I said I said and it stands or falls on it's on merits.

And now for your Sierra Club diatribe: Since you do not seem capable of separating Save our Wetlands from Sierra Club, the Mississippi River from Lake Ponchatrain, or fact from fiction, and you do not seem able to understand the posts on this thread from others who tried to make you understand the lawsuits and the involment of the Sierra Club, I have tried to find a real non-partisan organization that maybe you could listen to and learn from. So here is a post from All American Patriots http://www.allamericanpatriots.com/m-news+article+storyid-12774.html

Sierra Club: Blaming Environmentalists For Katrina: What You Should Know
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration has faced significant criticism due to failures preparing for and responding to the catastrophe that hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region. Now the administration's emissaries are trying to deflect that criticism by blaming environmentalists. As they say in Louisiana, that dog won't hunt.


At issue is the role that conservation groups played in two cases -- one almost 30 years ago -- involving levee projects proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers. The following is a quick summary of those projects and an accurate account of the role that those groups played. What the accusations have in common is that they mistake efforts to ensure good government decisions with a tragedy that had everything to do with bad judgment on the part of our government leaders. In each of the legal cases cited so far, conservation groups simply asked government agencies to look before leaping into projects that would have had major impacts on people and the natural systems on which they depend and to give local communities what our democracy requires: a say in projects coming out of Washington. That isn't just common sense; that's also the law.

Here's what you need to know about the specific cases that have been mentioned:

Save Our Wetlands v. Rush - 1977

In 1977, the Army Corps of Engineers proposed project would have built a 25-mile long barrier and gate system from the Mississippi border to the Mississippi River. As designed the project would have choked off water exchange into Lake Pontchartrain, dooming an incredibly productive fishery. Communities around the Lake and local fisherman opposed the project because of the massive impact it would have had on the economy and environment in the region. Those groups had advocated building higher levees as a simpler and safer alternative to the Corps’ plan.

After the Army Corps of Engineers refused to evaluate the impacts of its proposed project and consider ways to reduce them, Save Our Wetlands filed suit and secured an injunction from U.S. District Judge Charles Schwartz, Jr., who concluded that the region "would be irreparably harmed" if the barrier project was allowed to continue and chastised the Army Corps of Engineers for a shoddy job. The Judge required the Corps to properly study its proposed massive new levee construction project before moving forward. The Corps has never bothered to do the work despite having nearly 30 years to do so.

BOTTOM LINE: There was widespread local opposition. A Federal Judge demanded that the Army Corps provide more info, it never did, and it abandoned the project years later on its own.

Mississippi River Basin Alliance, et al. v. H. Martin Lancaster -- 1996

In the mid-1990's, the Army Corps of Engineers proposed raising hundreds of miles of levees 100 miles north of New Orleans in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Conservation groups and others did not oppose the idea of raising the levees, but they did have strong concerns about the fact that Corps wanted to drain as much as 11,000 acres of bottomland hardwood wetlands, crucial to health and safety of the Lower Mississippi Basin, to supply the construction material for those levees.

And they weren't the only ones who had concerns: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Environmental Protection Agency and the Louisiana Legislature all urged the Corps to look at how the proposed project would have impacted the area. It refused to do so. That led the Sierra Club, American Rivers, the National Wildlife Federation, Arkansas and Mississippi Wildlife Federations, and the Mississippi River Basin Alliance to take the Corps to Court. The case was soon settled, with the Corps of Engineers agreeing in 1997 to look at ways of minimizing the damage to the wetlands.

But other problems plagued the project. According to a 1997 Baton Rouge Advocate article, "Corps officials said it will take them 30 years to finish the levee work. That much time is required because funding is lacking for the projects -- not because of the new environmental study, called an environmental impact statement."

BOTTOM LINE: The project was 100 miles away from flood area and wouldn't have made any difference with Katrina. Conservation groups never opposed raising the levees; just the heavy handed way in which the Corps was going to do it. And it wasn't just conservation groups; even the LA Legislature had concerns. The case was settled one year later but the Corps never had the funding to move ahead on the project

.

This is basically the same statement issued by the Sierra Club. Almost word for word. Their spin on it. Check the two links in my posts. I believe that they read substantially identical to the post above.

"I have tried to find a real non-partisan organization that maybe you could listen to and learn from. So here is a post from All American Patriots"

Regarding your statement on finding a "Neutral" site... the site you present could be construed as a "wacko leftist" (I'm borrowing from your terminology - "wacko right wing libertarian website")organization. I did see where they were claiming neutrality but...

Under Patriotic Merchandise Left Nav Bar they are selling "Florida was Fixed" thongs, "Wax Bush T Shirts", "Cheney- Bush - No Convictions Just Crimes" coffee mugs, Bush = Evil Memorabilia... "The only Bush I trust is my own" Shirts... "Wax Bush - Elect Kerry" Shirts ...

SARCASM ON:
Hmmm... That sounds neutral & centrist to me
SARCASM OFF:

And without belaboring the point, the Sierra Clubs' own statement supports my quote that started this thread.

Finally, you ask for a definition of "unsubstantiated right wing hate garbage". What part of this do you not understand? "unsubstantiated" means not able to be verified as being true, which applies to every point I have shown is unsubstantiated. Right wing I think you understand. Hate garbage is false information that is trotted out during this terrible crisis and only serves previously held political views and is meant to provoke and evoke strong emotional and visceral feelings against a group of people and/or an organization.


Tony, if your intent was to disseminate "false information that is trotted out during this terrible crisis and only serves previously held political views and is meant to provoke and evoke strong emotional and visceral feelings against a group of people and/or an organization." then you are engaging in hate mongering. If not, then you are just one, severely misinformed individual.

I am amazed at how you attack the individual and not the position. If I do not agree with you or your version of the facts, I'm either a misinfomed idiot, or evil, or a liar. I will not be drawn into condescending personal attacks. You are free to openly question my sincerity, intelligence, honor and integrity, but you will have to play that game all by yourself.

PS: Note that I have corrected my statement on the WSJ in the initial and subsequent posting and have given credit to you for catching it.

I stand by my statements...

[TonyCooper]

Here IS an OP Ed from the WSJ that came from TODAYS Page.

It supports my contention of Mr Brown.

WSJ Article "WonderLand - Daniel Henninger Leviathan 101: Don't blame it all on FEMA.

WONDER LAND

Leviathan 101
Don't blame it all on FEMA.

BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, September 30, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

And so it came to pass this week that official Washington got the event it most fervently desired. No, not the indictment of Tom DeLay. Not even the confirmation of the Supreme Court's 17th chief justice. The big event was the ceremonial bearbaiting of the bureaucrat designated "responsible"--a term of unique application in Washington--for the human devastation wrought by a Category 5 hurricane called Katrina. "I don't know how you can sleep at night," Rep. Kay Granger of Texas hissed at Michael Brown, the pilloried, disgraced and disowned former FEMA director. The members poked him for hours. It was a good show.

Mission accomplished?

All that's left of the post-Katrina political cleanup is for George Bush to appoint an avowed managerial superhero to "fix" FEMA. Hey Jack Welch, wanna take this one on? Michael Brown accidentally spoke truth to power when he yelled back at his grandiose inquisitors, "I guess you want me to be the superhero." Well, yeah Brownie, don't come to Washington if you can't dream the impossible dream.

But didn't we just do that with the Department of Homeland Security? When DHS was deemed "dysfunctional," President Bush in January gave the job to superlawyer Michael Chertoff. But at crunch time, a credentialed superhero couldn't save DHS from complicity in the Gulf performance meltdown.

A reality-check will reveal that we remain a government of men, not superheroes. A grimmer reality is that we remain a government of bureaucracies. The more serious question that Katrina lays before us, one no congressional panel will touch, is whether after 75 years of uncapped growth, our domestic bureaucratic system is simply too fat to answer the fire bell.

Throwing Michael Brown into the media shark tank isn't going to divert a public that is now acutely focused on the problem of modern bureaucratic dysfunction. Yes, we endure lines at the department of motor vehicles. It was ever thus. But last year the 9/11 Commission report described in detail the failure of the national-security bureaucracy to protect us from terrorism. And now Katrina. Looks like the problem here is a lot deeper than a bureaucratic failure to communicate.

Arguably the most useful thing one should know about DHS's inability to "function" is also the most pedestrian. The department, which at its inception combined 22 agencies into a 170,000-person workforce, is party to a lawsuit brought by a federal employees union over new work-rule proposals. The department wants to rationalize labor disputes by creating a more flexible internal review board. In theory this would let managers move workers around more easily. A "concerned" federal judge said recently that this system might force the federal workers' unions to bargain collectively "on quicksand." Thus we discover that DHS stands for Dilbert's Home Security, not ours.

George Bush knew these things when the idea of creating Homeland Security first arose. Ultimately, he signed on. The devil's bargain with this agency has been the hope that first Tom Ridge and now Michael Chertoff would somehow rationalize this new Leviathan to protect us before a WMD incident blows in a major U.S. city. Doubts that Homeland Security can do this is what led the Department of Defense recently to put forward a Strategy for Homeland Defense, which would give the Pentagon primary responsibility for mitigating a post-WMD disaster. This is the RoboCop solution.

Amid Katrina's multiple catastrophes, people heard of fast action by Wal-Mart and Home Depot and wondered why the Federal Emergency Management Agency can't be more like that. The ancient answer lies in examining the rituals and incentives to perform, or not perform, of the old Leviathan.

Take the Brown bearbaiting this week. The public humiliation of bureaucrats is a Washington ritual. Rep. John Dingell turned it into a public spectacle. The Brown hearing elicited little helpful information, and the next day Gov. Kathleen Blanco, astonishingly, was not asked to reply to Mr. Brown's accusation that her administration was "dysfunctional." They let her off the hook because like them, she's a member of the elected aristocracy.

Every senior manager in the federal bureaucracy followed that Brown bonfire, and they don't want to go there. For them the message is: Be careful, not decisive. FEMA won't get better; it will hide until the storm passes.

Compared with the bureaucracies, Home Depot operates in an alternative universe. Home Depot's managers answer to flexible procedures; bureaucracies have rules that carry the force of law. In 2004, federal agencies issued 4,100 final rules. Congress enacts new legislation for Medicare alone every year. Those rules accrete into layers of do's and don'ts, subject to understandably random interpretation by agency rule-keepers of what they might mean. Eventually, no one has an incentive to reform or "shake up" these systems. If the change were to cause a highly publicized problem, all "responsible" would pay a political price. Medicare is as unchangeable as the orbits (though planets don't expand).

Much of this maddening inefficiency is the result of political checks and balances the Founders intentionally built into the system. They agreed with John Adams that "government turns every contingency into an excuse for enhancing power in itself." Their error was in not assuming that government in time would discover sufficient "contingencies" to create regulatory bureaucracies of a scale that now require some $840 billion in compliance costs, according to the Small Business Administration.

Most of the time we are numb to government inefficiency (though some, like those who blamed FEMA's problems on "opposition to big government," revel in it). If it's only choking the economy and destroying jobs, well, life goes on. But with 9/11 and Katrina comes an uncomfortable reality: The same forces that have caused the deterioration of performance across the public sector, from shameful public schools to the slow ruin of New Orleans, are now eroding government's ability to perform its one, undisputed function--providing for the citizenry's personal security. I can think of one thing that shouldn't be part of the solution: more of the same.

Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.

[Laredo]

Ordinarily I would adhere to Mike's rules and not go into politics, but that last paragraph you quoted -- that the government only has one purpose, which is to protect people -- is so very, very wrong that I just wanted to throw up.

In their own words the founding fathers described the purposes of the government they proposed. Go read the preamble to the constitution, since you're such a great researcher, Tony. Or better yet here it is. Pay attention.

We the people of the United States,
in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice,
insure domestic tranquility,
provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare,
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.


I suggest very strongly to you that providing for the common defense and promoting the general welfare are both highly, highly, highly inconsistent with the performance of the Bush administration in August of 2001 and again in August and September of 2005.

We have seen that this government is not interested in defending the citizens, the Constitution, or the very land of this nation against any enemy, foreign, domestic or weather-related. We have seen that, when faced with the horror and shock of 9-11-01 as well as 8-29-05, the competency, caring and response of this government are far far far more remarkable for what is lacking than what is prepared or put into action.

[madjack]

...I believe it was old Ben Franklin(or one of his cronies ) that said something to the effect that if you give up a some of your freedom for better security you will soon have neither freedom or security(paraphrased). Remeber that the next time the "GOVERNMENT" talks about "temporarily" suspending some rights in the name of better/more security
madjack

[cracker39]

Jack, it depends on whose rights are suspended. I'm pretty sure you weren't referring to the same rights as I am thinking of though. I believe that we give potential terrorists many more rights than they'd give us in their countries. I am disgusted with the cries of "racial profilling" and "withholding rights" when it comes to investigating potential terrorists just because they are muslim. I have muslim friends in Maryland who are in no way connected with the terrorist factions, and they understand the problem. Why can't all the do-gooders understand we are in a war with terrorists and need all the weopons we can get, eve if it means stepping on the rights of someone who is trying to kill us?

Sorry, didn't mean to start a new topic.

[TomS]

...I believe it was old Ben Franklin(or one of his cronies ) that said something to the effect that if you give up a some of your freedom for better security you will soon have neither freedom or security(paraphrased). Remeber that the next time the "GOVERNMENT" talks about "temporarily" suspending some rights in the name of better/more security
madjack

Historically, almost all of our governments transgressions against the rights of its citizens have been driven by fear. The PATRIOT ACT is a recent example.

.

[Laredo]

What a long sad way down we have come since those days.


I am sick of hearing how afraid we all need to be. Afraid of hurricanes. Afraid of our neighbors who are stranded by those hurricanes. Afraid of people who live on the other side of the world because they call God a different name.
(They speak a different language. It only makes sense their name for God would be different, just like their name for chair or donkey or president or gun or butter or anything else.)

"We have to fight them over there so we won't have to fight them over here."

H O R S E F E A T H E R S.

To put it very politely indeed.

We all need to stop living in the past and being afraid of whatever monsters under the bed or in the closet we hear about on TV. It sucks out your life.

I had four days off. I spent one being very sick. I spent two on a lovely trip into New Mexico. The bottomless lakes state park has some lovely campsites. Capitan's 'Smokey the Bear' museum is a wonderful way to spend an autumn morning -- or afternoon. I spent the last one getting the odds and ends of after the trip cleaned up and put away.

I saw this quote on a poster there: We should think more about the future because it's where we're all going to spend the rest of our lives.