Spike Lee's documentary on HBO - the Katrina thing

[eyeknow]

oh, we were cool before that..........

It's just that if you read the SECOND part of that, you would understand I was not being anything but APOLOGETIC for how WE were responding........

[eyeknow]

these threads are starting to sound like sheep.........

someone says "hey, follow me.......I have some edited one-sided views"......and a large group of people just bbbaaahhh bbaaaahhhh along......

that wasn't cool though, that adds to the analogy you made more than takes away from it....

No, it doesn't.......

glu, seriously, and again you should know by now.......I don't make things personal......try to put it together from the very first word I wrote to the last one.........

What bothers me is the "eyedon'tknow" and the slicing and dicing of what was said.

I can't even understand what would bring that on in the first place........

fuck man, your opinion is important........why isn't mine the same.......regardless of if we agree or not?

Ya know, I'm an old fuck........If I really felt so "deeply" about shit......I'd just not post........but fuck, it should never be so personal, it's opinions..........let's not be hatin'..........ya know what I mean?

[glu]

alright mr mad magazine dude, just explain it and do be such a smartass.......

No hating here. Sorry if you took any of it personal. I was just being as smart ass with your name btw. Of course your opinion is as important as anyone elses. Sorry for the miscommunication. I had no intentions of making it sound like a personal attack.

Capeche?

[robtronik]

Do the dutch have tropical storms with 150+ mph winds, and tidal surges greater than 20 feet?

Not quite:
http://www.thehollandring.com/1953-ramp.shtml

and yet it's funny how they still spend something like $1 billion a year on maintaining their dykes while the Bush administration chose to ignore the Army Corps of Engineers and slash funding for Louisiana flood control. But hey, I guess we had better things to spend say $300 billion on.

Bush? How about the last several administrations? This hasn't been localized to the last few years. The ACOE has been recommending improvements for decades...

rob.

[mikemc]

From what I saw on the documentary - they knew the Levee's could and would break

It is simple scientific fact that water and gravity are both incredible forces which cannot be completely tamed. You fuck with mother nature, and build a city below sea level..... then at some point the sea is going to claim it back. Well, to be fair.... the city sank below sea level over the years.

I'm curious...

...is there any evidence pointing to the fact that this problem was actually made worse by all the levee development in places further up the Mississippi?

There was a PBS (peals before swine ) documentary about the Mississippi Delta and how the development of the waterway and the area contributed to this.

The cedar swamps that make up the delta have been dying as a result of development. So trees that would form natural windbreaks along the rim of the delta area are missing, and the "sponginess" of the swamp that would otherwise soak up storm surges is decreased also.

The interesting thign is this: delta is of course built up by sediment deposited by the river, which kind of breaks up into a bunch of paths through the swamp. The reason that New Orleans is so much more below sea level than it was when it was first built is because of the waterway development.

The waterway out to the ocean at the terminus of the river has been modified to optimize shipping, it's a dredged corridor with concrete walls, and it inhibits this distributed deposit-- so the sediment basically blows straight out into the gulf, rather than adding to the delta landmass. Additionally, the meandering course it would normally take serves to filter it somewhat, so any pollutants are concentrated into that stream.

So the combination of the dying swamps and the diverted sediment means that the delta is eroding away, causing NO to sink more than it normally would.

Even worse, that waterway also acts as a conduit that conveys ocean storm surge directly into to Ponchartrain, computer models show this, to cause it's levels to rise higher and more rapidly.

In other words, if you wanted to engineer this situation, where the city would sink deeper as the commerce it supports would attract more population, where you could eventually drown a bunch of them more effectively in the event of a huge storm, this would be how you'd do it.

[djadonis206]

Gentlemen, please

just watch the damn documentary - then we can debate

syke do whatever you want

I hate Michael Moore

but the thing Spikes got up on Michael is Michael didn't make the movies

SCHOOL DAYZ
SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT
DO THE RIGHT THING
JUNGLE FEVER
GIRL 6
and the one really good movie about HOPPERS in NEW YORK (with Harvey Kietel)

wasn't in commercials with Micheal JORDAN
wasn't sponored by NIKE

and Doesn't sit courtside at KNICK games

BIG WINK to SPIKE LEE for uh, BALLING!!!

Oh wait, Micheal Moore WAS in TEAM AMERICA - I forgot, duh

anywayz - just watch it. It's not all one sided and it's pretty educating for someone like me who wasn't there

plus I'm from the South and love the south - anything that takes me backhome is cool (ahh, how cute)

watch the documentary, it's not all bad

[melocoton]

Bush? How about the last several administrations? This hasn't been localized to the last few years. The ACOE has been recommending improvements for decades...

from http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/art ... 1001054510

"...When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

...The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs...

...About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said."

...The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need."

[Dave Dub]

Now, as far as spike lee's concerned, I'm worried that it's a one sided "michel moore" type thing........after all, he is an ungrateful little bastard......kinda hard to trust...........

Ungrateful for what exactly?