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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (252570)	9/24/2005 1:51:02 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1571040

Compared to Europe, the US is subject to a much more dangerous environment. Ok, there are islands of safety like the Northeast, the Northwest and southern California, but much of the rest of the country is ready to kill you for any or no reason. The only way we can survive is as a group. The lesson we supposedly learned during WWII is that if we organize as a country, we can overcome anything. We can hang together, or we can hang individually. Exactly right. Its amazing to me how things have been set up in this country. The last few years have really opened my eyes. Case in point is this week's evacuation of Houston and SE TX. After the evacuation had commenced, it suddenly dawned on them that people would run out of gas and so they sent out tankers to help people. It was a total mess. Those tankers should have been set out along the routes well before the evacuation started but no one thought of it......and I don't think I would have thought of it. We are not used to thinking that way.....doing everything we can to do to make life easier for our fellow Americans. We need that level of planning......I suspect it would reduce road rage. One of the reasons why Nordstrom's, a PNW dept store, has been so successful nationwide is because it does provide a level of service to its customers that was atypical. A lot of thought and planning goes into the service aspect of their operation. In a similar vein, Starbucks raised coffee to its highest level. There is a tradition here in the PNW of providing good service and a good product for a decent price. It makes life so much easier.....it makes trips to shop for anything that much more pleasant. That tradition of good service permeates everything here including the gov't. That's what needs to happen on a national level. We've got to stop treating each other like we are not worth going the extra mile for. I am not sure I articulated this well but I hope you get what I mean.

To: combjelly who wrote (252570)	9/24/2005 4:38:21 AM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571040

CJ, Ok, there are islands of safety like the Northeast, the Northwest and southern California, but much of the rest of the country is ready to kill you for any or no reason. You're kidding me. Southern California is still waiting for "10.5". Tenchusatsu

To: combjelly who wrote (252570)	9/24/2005 8:09:17 AM
From: Road Walker	Respond to of 1571040

CJ, well said.

To: combjelly who wrote (252570)	9/25/2005 10:40:23 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1571040

As a civilization, we deserve better. A characteristic of a civilization is the ability to muster a lot of resources when required. Now true, historically speaking, that meant building a major monument to the leader. But in American history that meant providing for the common good. Look at the canals that were built in the Northeast. Look at the railroads. The Interstates. You really can't argue about this; sure, we deserve a government so big and powerful that no natural disaster, no matter how big, no matter how incompetent the local officials, no matter how long the problem has been ignored by the region's representatives, they can save us. But this is fairy tale stuff. In real life, not all problems can be immediately solved. Today, while interviewing a local official in the Rita destruction area, the remark was made, words to the effect of, "Hey, it takes a couple of days to figure out where people are; roads are blocked, there is no fuel, communications are down." Duh. Even longer when an entire city of 1.25 million is flooded. FEMA, along with the federal government in general, has done a fantastic job on both storms. The Media has done a great job of coloring the reporting so that a lot of people have unrealistic demands of the feds. And the American people have done a great job of being sucked in by it all.