People don't loot when it's -10F outside

[Edited on January 18, 2007 at 6:49 AM. Reason : snopes mofo:http://www.snopes.com/katrina/soapbox/dakota.asp]

1/18/2007 6:45:26 AM

To all the normal Conservatives,
I would be embarrased if people like this represented my party. Or is no one on the right bothered by shit like this?

1/18/2007 8:43:54 AM

^^PWNT

1/18/2007 9:44:42 AM

the floods in NC left more black people homeless than white people

you'd realize that if you left the interstates down east


it's not a black/white thing at least with the flooding here

1/19/2007 2:51:40 PM

what was that in response to?

1/19/2007 4:07:39 PM

Quote :

"Actually, there's a reason farmers are subsidized. It's because if they wern't, they would just quit farming and do something else. Why don't we just let them do that? Because you can't depend on the rest of the world for food in times of crisis."

This is wrong on many seperate levels.

First of all the reason we subsidize farming is pretty straight foward. The US has 100 senators, two from each state. However, industry and commerce are clustered in a few states where farming takes place in all states (not sure how many farms there are in New Jersey but I bet they still have a few).

Therefore if we tax industry to subsidise farming we take from a few Senators and give to many Senators. Since each Senator has one vote thats the way it goes.

Secondly, if there were fewer farmers the price of food would rise and induce people to go back into famering.

Third, the US is the world's largest exporter of food

Fourth, a healthy fraction of those subsidies pay farmers not to farm. Yes, thats right. We are paying money to have less food and therefore higher prices.

1/19/2007 5:12:04 PM

Quote :

"Katrina was a man-made disaster. Had FEMA acted the way it has in the snow storm, namely doing nothing, everything would have worked out better."

AND, perhaps the lack of the media itself is part of the solution in the case of the snowstorm. They did there level best to make NO a bigger story by falsely spreading rumors of rapes and random violence. The media has no political motive in the midwest snowstorm story so those folks are safe.

1/19/2007 5:43:32 PM

That Snopes article is probably the worst article I have ever read from that site. Normally the site avoids biases, but this time, it shines right through.

The email writer was extremely bias also. He exagerates a lot. However, he still makes his points. Did the state ask for federal aid? Yeah, they did. But it was hardly the outcry that was seen with Katrina.

But I have to agree with something in the Snopes article. Although the fact that it was a natural disaster in both cases, both situations have very little in common. In Colorado, temperatures were at 90 degrees two days before the incident. They had little warning of a natural disaster of that magnitude incoming. NO, on the other hand, had several days to see a disasterous storm approaching and get ready to leave at a moment's notice. Not to mention that NO has been warned for years that a bad hurricane could destroy the city, and one came close a year or two earlier.

Colorado also realized that they live in an area where nature can turn on you. They were prepared for unforseen incidents. New Orleans . . . was built in a giant bucket next to a large body of water with little to protect themselves. They were completely unprepared for an incident that people have been predicting for years. And it goes much further than building higher walls or whatever they are blaming the government for now. The fact is that the people of Colorado were significantly more prepared for their incident even though they had much less notice than NO.

New Orleans was a tragedy, but could have been more like the Colorado incident if they were prepared. And don't compare the death toll and monetary damage in both incidents. Of course NO was worse, but that is their own fault.

1/19/2007 5:47:32 PM

Quote :

"Secondly, if there were fewer farmers the price of food would rise and induce people to go back into famering. Third, the US is the world's largest exporter of food Fourth, a healthy fraction of those subsidies pay farmers not to farm. Yes, thats right. We are paying money to have less food and therefore higher prices."

No, the price of food would not rise. We would simply buy it from China or South America for cheaper than American farmers could/would produce it. This isn't a universal principle, but it is applicable in most things farmers produce.

We pay farmers not to farm because there is more money in other things and otherwise they would not keep their operation extant.

You're not going to convince me I'm wrong on this, I know many many farmers, my family has dealt with many more in business.

[Edited on January 19, 2007 at 5:49 PM. Reason : ..]

1/19/2007 5:48:35 PM

^^ignoring the ignorance with which you approach the question I will focus just on the monetary damages.

Exactly how is one supposed to move your house with an extra week of notice?

[Edited on January 19, 2007 at 5:50 PM. Reason : up]

1/19/2007 5:50:27 PM

^^ That the U.S. is currently a sizeable exporter of food to both those regions means what to you? Do you not realize that China and South America are not the best places to be growing wheat?

And even if we did stop growing so much food, so what? We already import everything including many foods, what's wrong with importing a little more?

[Edited on January 19, 2007 at 7:31 PM. Reason : .,.]

1/19/2007 7:29:22 PM

Quote :

"ignoring the ignorance with which you approach the question I will focus just on the monetary damages. Exactly how is one supposed to move your house with an extra week of notice?"

Why just the monetary damages? That is indeed an ignorant approach to the question.
You're not supposed to try to move your house. You're supposed to move YOURSELF when a category 5 hurricane is approaching and you live below sea level. Apparently there were thousands of completely able bodied people in NO that didn't get that memo that their government and the rest of the country was frantically waving in their face.

But no, instead, these people stayed, and then blamed everyone else for their plight when the hurricane did come and the damage was just about what everyone expected. And then the survivors moved to points around the country, were welcomed as guests by the residents in these places, then these NO transplants proceeded to immediately start making the crime rates in the areas where they moved go up.

1/19/2007 7:40:34 PM

Quote :

"And even if we did stop growing so much food, so what? We already import everything including many foods, what's wrong with importing a little more?"

This country MUST be able to produce enough food within its borders to feed itself and then some, on short notice. In WWII, our country fed itself and almost ALL of our allies. You can't do that if you dismantle the farming complex and infrastructure and outsource it.
If you can't see the necessity of this, there's no way I can explain it to you.

[Edited on January 19, 2007 at 7:44 PM. Reason : ,]

1/19/2007 7:42:50 PM

Quote :

"And don't compare the death toll and monetary damage in both incidents. Of course NO was worse, but that is their own fault."

Quote :

"You're not supposed to try to move your house."

im sorry. you were saying?

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/stormcenter/2005-08-28-katrina-gulf_x.htm
80% of the city evacuated according to that article. Now, you can not believe Ray Nagin (no one will argue with that), but in my opinion that is a pretty impressive number.
As for that memo frantically waving, apparently Bush didnt get it either. "No one could have predicted this." (Yes, I know they did, but your comment is still amusing)

Quote :

"And then the survivors moved to points around the country, were welcomed as guests by the residents in these places, then these NO transplants proceeded to immediately start making the crime rates in the areas where they moved go up."

To begin with, the very fact that so many former residents of NO are still spread out across the country is a pretty good indication of why that was so much worse. I doubt anyone will move from Colorado because of this storm. Second, most of the areas that are now uninhabitable were some of the poorest sections of the city. Poverty is directly related to crime. What happens when you take a bunch of poor people, destroy everything they own and move them hundreds or thousands of miles away? They become even poorer.


Find me ten families from these storms in Colorado who have to move because their home and place of employment were both destroyed and I will apologize for thinking that you have your head up your ass.

1/19/2007 9:19:40 PM

Quote :

"In WWII, our country fed itself and almost ALL of our allies. You can't do that if you dismantle the farming complex and infrastructure and outsource it. If you can't see the necessity of this, there's no way I can explain it to you."

When World War III starts I think we are going to have bigger problems. For a few examples, the clouds of radiation, the nuked cities, the tens of millions dead, etc.

1/20/2007 12:39:38 AM

Ds97Z, youre a fool. do you fall for every chain letter hoax that comes in your inbox? did you know, Bill Gates will give crippled african children XBoxes if forward this letter to 10 of your friends.


Claim: North Dakotans weathered a severe blizzard without requesting assistance from the federal government.

Status: False.

Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2005]

Quote :

" North Dakota News Bulletin This text is from a county emergency manager out in the western part of North Dakota state after the storm. Amusing, if it were not so true... WEATHER BULLETIN Up here in the Northern Plains we just recovered from a Historic event — may I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions" — with a historic blizzard of up to 24" inches of snow and winds to 50 MPH that broke trees in half, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed all roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to 10's of thousands. FYI: George Bush did not come.... FEMA staged nothing.... No one howled for the government... No one even uttered an expletive on TV... Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards..... No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.... No one looted.... Phil Cantori of the Weather Channel did not come.... And Geraldo Rivera did not move in. Nope, we just melted snow for water, sent out caravans to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars, fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Aladdin lamps, and put on an extra layer of clothes because up here it is 'work or die'. We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for 'sittin at home' checks. Even though a Category "5" blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early...we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves. "In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90% of the worlds social problems evaporate." "

Variations:

* E-mailed versions circulated in November 2006 changed the location of the blizzard-stricken community from somewhere in North Dakota to Marquette, Michigan, and attributed the article to The Mining Journal News of that city. While that paper exists, it didn't publish the piece.

* December 2006 versions of this item changed the setting to Colorado, reflecting the back-to-back snowstorms that paralyzed portions of the state during the 2006 holiday season and twice shut down Denver International Airport. (Many of those versions falsely asserted the item came from The Denver Post.) In the wake of those storms, Colorado has requested assistance from FEMA to help ranchers recover their livelihoods.

Origins: On 4 October 2005, portions of Montana, the Dakotas, and Wyoming were hit by an early snowstorm that Shoveling snow knocked out power, closed roads, and dumped up to 2 feet of snow. Some schools were closed by the storm, and thousands of power outages were reported. The National Guard was called out in North Dakota to aid the Highway Patrol in rescuing stranded motorists, of which there were hundreds.

In Dickinson, snowplows led emergency vehicles that were used to deliver fuel to a nursing home and to the Police Department to run generators during a power outage.

Sam Walker, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Bismarck, North Dakota, said of the storm: "It is, on our records, probably one of the earliest ones, as far as our recorded history goes, in 126, 130 years." But that wasn't the only surprising thing about the storm — only days before, 90 degree temperatures had been recorded in the state (e.g., 92 degrees in Bismarck on 1 October 2005).

The e-mail makes the claim of the snowbound Dakotans that "No one howled for the government." Yet in a 31 October 2005 letter to President Bush, Governor John Hoeven of North
Dakota did indeed "request that you declare a major disaster for the State of North Dakota as a result of a severe winter storm/snowfall, accompanied by record-breaking snowfall, rain and high winds, that occurred on October 4-6, 2005." Said request for official disaster status was spurred by an interest in obtaining FEMA assistance: "Additionally, eleven counties meet the criteria established by the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] 'for near record snowfall' and should be eligible for assistance with FEMA's snow policy [9523.1].

Midwesterners hit by this storm appear to have overcome their short-lived catastrophe without federal assistance (although as of 31 October 2005, North Dakota was seeking to recoup its storm-related expenditures from the federal government). However, the bulk of the digging out from under the snowfall and rescuing stranded motorists from snow-entombed cars fell to North Dakota's police and emergency service workers and the National Guard, not (as the e-mail would have it) to rugged individual citizens who hadn't been "immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for 'sittin at home' checks." The comparison made in this piece to New Orleans' attempt to cope with the massive destruction resulting from Hurricane Katrina is also badly flawed, as the two weather-related disasters were completely different in nature and severity — one could be coped with locally, but the other could not.

Barbara "one can shovel snow, but one cannot shovel water" Mikkelson

Last updated: 8 January 2007

The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/katrina/soapbox/dakota.asp

Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2007
by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson





[Edited on January 20, 2007 at 3:15 AM. Reason : ]

1/20/2007 3:13:10 AM

holy shit this is a stupid thread

1/20/2007 3:49:26 AM