burbleflyer

Yes, because I'm absolutely certain that among the other god-like attributes some people give GWB he also is a genius when it comes to meteorology. . Wow, your hate of the President is clouding your post so much you look...uh...kinda dumb? Fact is, EVERYBODY got their info from the weather guys, me you, GW, everybody. Brilliant statement there bud.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/011549.php

Holy crap. You guys that hate GW oughta step back a bit. Hating is bad, mmmk?

Interesting article. An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State by Robert Tracinski Sep 02, 2005 It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster. If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild. Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting. But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster. The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong. The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view. The man-made disaster is the welfare state. For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country. When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11). So what explains the chaos in New Orleans? To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story: "Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on. "The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire.... "Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders. " 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' " The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad. What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome? Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them? My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.) What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa. There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves. All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency. No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism. What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men. But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them. The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting. tiadaily.com/php-bin/news/showArticle.php?id=1026

Ya spilled some purple on your shirt there bud.

It's Bush's fault!!!!

I resent your personal attack. I am neither a redneck, nor a moron. I am an NRA member and I carry a gun everyday for personal protection. And you sir, have no idea what you're talking about. You ought to read up on the statistics of States which have enacted shall issue CCW laws. Violent crime goes down, and CCW holders are more law abiding than the general population.

You wanna call him John Kerry? Sorry, you already wasted your vote.

I am not angry, nor aggressive and I am not willing to trample anyones rights as enumerated by the constitution. Yes, I am passionate about owning guns. What does that mean? Do you own a car?

Not dying.

My dream is to win the lotto and go to a DZ where no one knows me and do AFF. I would be the worlds worst AFF student.

I would bet a nickle I'm mentioned in that book. Who wants to send me a copy they dont want?

You are my hero.

An AAD should only ever save your life if you are unconcious or physically unable to deploy. If it fires for any other reason, you need to rethink what you're doing. I would perhaps accept the argument of an instructor chasing a student but even then...

I have never seen a chick waddle into the surf with a board but I have seen quite a few waddle out to the airplane. Skydiving will never make you fit, you dont even have to be fit to skydive but it sure helps. Surfing, on the other hand, will be impossible for those who arent reasonably fit, and the more you surf, the fitter you will become. Why is it that all the CReW guys are fat and old? Just kidding! Ha ha Kramer you stirred up a real poo storm!

Rick drowned jumping NRG in Sept 87. He was Joe's brother. If you check your list, you'll find Rick's twin, Rob somewhere, I think. Thanks a lot for your help. It's been bugging me for years.

#82 is not deceased! Thats me, #81!

Thanks. I'll call tonite if I dont get an email response, I dont want to be a pest. I havent BASE jumped since 87 but I'm still an active skydiver. I remember when the bridge only had a set of steps up to the rail and you had to step over and place your heels on the outside of it. Not on piece of purpose built BASE gear except bigger pilot chutes. We all were jumping the same gear we jumped on the weeknds at the DZ.

Back in '85 it was little different. Not a lot of folks were getting #s back then and as far as I know there were no cards. You were just assigned a # over the phone by Jean. She was still a little active back then. My friend Steve had talked to Jean a lot on the phone before we made our qualifying jump and we knew beforehand what #s we were going to get if no one beat us to it. I just cant remember what the exact # is.

I was googling and I found Rick's email on Blincs forum. I've got an email out to him already. I was wondering if I could save some time. Jean Boenish issued our #s over the phone. We never actually got a card or anything like that. Thanks for the help.

No pun intended but is there an online Database with all the numbers? I got my number in 85 and I cant remember if its 80 or 81.

The ONLY reason Mr. Rather and CBS has not admitted these memos are fakes is because they are protecting the source. Its OK for a journalist to protect a credible source, but once the source is proven a fraud they must be revealed. The source of these documents is the dems and Dan and CBS is trying to protect them, and they are more than likely pretty high up the ladder. Dan is finished and CBS is finished as credible news sources. Kerry was already finished as a candidate. I predict a landslide for Bush.

Apparently he rates below Putin and equal with Martha Stewart. He edged out OJ by a point.

I hope they try to ban your little airplanes and rocket motors. Then we get to hear you scream about your freedoms being stolen. You dont need those airplanes, no one does. They came for the gun guys and I didnt help....

I'd hate to see your freedoms infringed or banned.