Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (64411)	5/3/2006 11:26:37 PM
From: SeachRE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

Mr. Vandegay, You're not credible ever. Whatever you say oughta be taken with a grain of salt always. Troubling...

To: Bill who wrote (64411)	5/4/2006 12:41:16 AM
From: Doug R	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

Serious about the budget? There's a major structural problem with the entire economy. "Fixing" the budget is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic: "A Borderline Criminal National Disgrace" This is the kind of thing that we used to associate with the old Soviet Union and other failed states. No amount of "We're number one!" boosterism can disguise the fact that the US increasingly displays the characteristics of a failed state itself. The big difference is that the US is still able to borrow a couple of billion dollars a day to keep up appearances. That won't last forever. Meanwhile, we're increasingly detached from reality. How else to explain the fact that we can leave a major American city in ruins and not see what a monumental failure that represents? "I sense that we in this country have Katrina fatigue. The New York Times reported as much recently, saying that people in some of the areas that welcomed Katrina evacuees last September are sick of hearing about the hurricane, the flooding and the aftermath. Well, my wife and I were in a car last Wednesday that toured the hardest-hit area of New Orleans, the Lower Ninth Ward. We worked a day at a nearby Habitat for Humanity site on Thursday, and we toured the Biloxi/Gulfport/Long Beach/Pass Christian gulf shore area last Friday. And let me just say this: I can absolutely guarantee you that if you'd been in the car with us, no matter how much you'd been hit over the head with the effects of this disaster, you would not have Katrina fatigue. What I saw was a national disgrace. An inexcusable, irresponsible, borderline criminal national disgrace. I am ashamed of this country for the inaction I saw everywhere. I mentioned my outrage to the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, on Thursday. He shook his head and said, "Tell me about it." Disgust dripped from his voice. What are we doing in this country? "It's been eight months since Katrina," said Jack Bowers, my New Jersey friend and Habitat for Humanity guide through the Lower Ninth Ward, as he took us through deserted streets where nothing, absolutely nothing, was being done about the wasteland that this place is. "Eight months!" he said. "And look at it. When people talk to me about New Orleans, they say, 'Well, things are getting back to normal down there, aren't they?' I tell them things are a long, long way from normal, and it's going to be a long time before it's ever normal. And I tell them they've never seen anything like this." [...] How can we let an area like the Lower Ninth Ward sit there, on the eve of another hurricane season, with nothing being done to either bulldoze the place and start over, or rebuild? How can Congress sit on billions of looming aid and not release it for this area? I can't help but think that if this were Los Angeles or New York, that 500 percent more money — and concern — would have flooded into this place. [...] Am I ticked off? Damn right I'm ticked off. If you're breathing, you should be morally outraged. Katrina fatigue? Hah! More Katrina news! Give me more! Give it to me every day on the front page! Every day until Washington realizes there's a disaster here every bit as urgent as anything happening in this world today — fighting terrorism, combating the nuclear threat in Iran. I'm not in any way a political animal, but all you have to be is an occasionally thinking American to be sickened by the conditions I saw. The Lower Ninth Ward is a 1.5-by-2-mile area a couple of miles from the center of New Orleans. It is a poor area. I should say it was a poor area. Before the storm, 20,000 people lived there. Fats Domino lived there. So, formerly, did Marshall Faulk. And now you drive through it and see nothing being done to fix it or tear it down, or to do anything. In Mississippi, we drove through one formerly thriving beach town that has two structures left. We drove past concrete pads with litter and shards of wood around them. Former houses. The houses, quite literally, have been eviscerated. Hundreds of them. This is what nuclear winter must look like, I thought." Katrina's old news. Except it's not, because much of New Orleans still lies in ruins with nothing being done to restore it. This, in a major American city. Bush did his photo ops, the media filed their stories, and now they've all moved on. Nobody wants to hear about New Orleans anymore, so it takes a sports writer, Peter King, to remind us of what we're all ignoring. pastpeak.com