On Tuesday, September 6th, we posted an article “FEMA: Mac users drop dead – Hurricane Katrina online assistance site is Windows only,” which explained that FEMA’s online aid application for hurricane survivors worked only on Windows PCs with Internet Explorer. At the time, we commented that this was “more short-sighted Windows-only bullshit from the U.S government.”
Many other websites also reported the story and it looks like it has made something of a difference.
FEMA updated their online FAQ on “Monday, 09-Sep-2005” which, of course is impossible, unless you’re part of the government. Maybe that’s why some of these government agencies botched the hurricane relief efforts? The simple lack of a common calendar?
Anyway, FEMA explains that they are now, as of “Monday, 09-Sep-2005” presumably, “in the process of modifying the application so that it will be available to additional browsers.” How long that will take is anybody’s guess, especially since the boys and girls at FEMA seem to have their own totally unique calendar, but we cynically tend to believe support for non-IE browsers will be later rather than sooner. Still, we suppose one can always hope.
Related articles:
Macs need not apply for use on UK Parliament network – September 12, 2005
FEMA: Mac users drop dead – Hurricane Katrina online assistance site is Windows only – September 07, 2005
World Wide Web Consortium objects to US Copyright Office’s Internet Explorer-only browser plan – August 25, 2005
U.S. Copyright Office: Use only the world’s most insecure browser to secure your copyright – August 17, 2005
U.S. Copyright Office: is it okay if our new website only works with Internet Explorer? – August 11, 2005
Are they using a Julian calendar?
Its monday 12 September. Oh FEMA , and you wonder why people think your incompetent.
Why exactly do you feel the need to add your own words to quoted statements? Is it because you don’t think your own opinion is convincing enough unless you manipulate quotes? Great job with the unbiased news reporting. Keep it up.
Apparently, FEMA is still too busy working on the 01-Jan-2000 “Y2K” bug to worry about anything else.
For a special insider look of what the Bushes did on vacation…
http://maxblumenthal.blogspot.com/2005/09/bushvacajpg.html
…now, it all makes sense!
As an unpaid professional (read that volunteer) firefighter, I have direct experience in working in emergency situations.
The three most important things in emergency management are preplanning, preplanning, and preplanning. It is obvious that FEMA failed on all three counts.
Competency flows downhill from the leaders. Micheal Brown, the current head of FEMA is a lawyer with NO Emergency Management experience. James Lee Witt, Clinton’s FEMA head, was the former head of the Arkansas Office of Emergency management. Now I understand politics, but couldn’t President Bush have found a qualified, Republican, experienced Emergency Management professional somewhere in the 50 states, D.C., territories, big cities, etc.? Inexperience at the top never bodes well for those working at the bottom.
MW = meet, as in FEMA has failed to meet the needs of America
An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
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.
whatever,
Are you functionally retarded?
One New Orleans woman interviewed on CNN said she’d “live wherever they put me, I’m never coming back.”
How sad. So steeped in the Liberal cycle of entitlement that she will end up living wherever the government puts her. She’s completely subservient, as long as she gets her paltry check and food stamps each week (or however often they come).
These people actually thought the U.S. Government was their daddy. And, then one day, the truth slapped them squarely in the face.
Welcome to the real world. Go to school, get a good education, work hard and you won’t end up floating face down in New Orleans shit.
I have news for you: I don’t kill myself working so hard to pay taxes to support some giant, fat, Oprah-watching, welfare mamas’ massive pancakes and MacDonald’s daily intake. I resent it. And I have a hard time feeling compassion for them because they swallowed all of my hard-earned cash in the form of bacon and can’t even walk a short distance to save their fat asses. What do these people contribute to society except more useless welfare-dependent lard asses that just cause even more problems?
The welfare state is a Democrat or Liberal concept. The Republicans and Conservatives have worked to limit the Welfare State’s nasty wealth redistribution effects. Hopefully they keep it up.
For that, they get my vote. I am an American who happens to be black, if that matters to you.
I know generations of black people who can bareky speak english, can’t write, and eat Cheetos and potato chips constantly. I’m sick and tired of paying for them. The reason they thought they were starving after a day was because they are so used to eating every 5 minutes.
The fact that people have been allowed to become so dependent on the government is liberal and Democrat shame. Shame. They’ve kept slavery, just called it something else.
As an educated American who happens to be black, I must vote conservative in order to try to save as many of my brothers and sisters as I can.
Take care of yourself. The government is not your daddy.
Democrats will now attempt to blast away this post, because if enough people read it and saw the facts clearly, the Democrats would never win another election.
I can’t find this FAQ … the only thing I can find under FAQ dealing with what it takes to access the application online still says you’ve got to use a windows system
Err…. I thought this was a Mac news forum…. I feel like I’m in the middle of a municipal political debate. Do people find it difficult to post their political opinions in the proper places (NYT, CNN, etc)? You may find a more involved audience there.
MW: without. I want to read some Mac news without having to deal with politics. I get enough of that on CNN.
Reality is a bitch –
You are a fool.
“Democrats will now attempt to blast away this post, because if enough people read it and saw the facts clearly, the Democrats would never win another election.”
Or whatever … take your politics to a political board and not a tech board. I can recommend a few for you if you cant figure out where to go. This really isn’t the place to spout off your views.
The federal governments reliance on closed browsers to do everything is at issue, as is FEMAs creative dating.
The real key argument is that Internet explorer no longer has 90 percent of the market and its actually easy to code in HTML and make web pages that everyone can access. Considering its important that everyone has access to the government in a Republic it makes sense that that republic should be required to make its websites open to a larger cross-section of the public. At least Massachusetts figured that out when they decided to switch to open office.
MDN’s magic word… END. As in end all this stupid political trolling.
so long thread … we wish the best in the after-life
/poor little blighter never had a chance
RiaB,
“Welcome to the real world. Go to school, get a good education, work hard and you won’t end up floating face down in New Orleans shit.”
So, you’re saying that everyone that was left behind in NO didn’t go to school, and that all of them fit into your stereotypically skewed perceptions? Are you implying that the fair and just consequence of lack of ambition is death?
“Democrats will now attempt to blast away this post, because if enough people read it and saw the facts clearly”
Um, you kind of forgot to put any actual facts into your post.
That is very short sited to think that there are only windows users that would need to ask for assistance in the world.
If this is the attitude of American’s today, then you’re all just complete assholes.
I saw old people, the sick and young, left to die, with no way of helping themselves,
Your fellow Americans, who were only asking for the help that anyone in there saturation would need, rich or poor.
What your saw for the first time my American friend, is what happens when you build a society on the “fuck you I’m all right attitude cos I got money” principle.
Good luck to you all because you need it…..
Robert, be careful your prejudices are showing.
Your outright condemnation and knee-jerk reaction to welfare states ignores a huge part of the world that does have a welfare state [the EU with a population of over 450m].
Funnily enough, the Dutch [benefactors of a welfare] had a catastrophic flood back in the 1950s that caused massive economic damage and considerable loss of life. The Dutch didn’t start shooting or raping each other or attacking rescuers.
The massive flooding after a typhoon hit Mumbai, India last year also did not result in a breakdown of social order, nor did the massive damage caused by a hurricane in Japan a few years back.
The problem you’re identifying in N.O. is a problem of the culture of gun ownership, wrapped up in so-called ‘constitutional rights’ and rampant laissez-faire capitalism. Another poster referred to it as a “fuck you, I’ve got money” attitude.
I live in New York and I’d suggest more Americans take a closer look at themselves and their attitudes first.
Saxon,
It must be nice for you to be able to hide behind your little computer screen and judge 295,734,134 people with a few over-simplified statements. You must be feeling quite superior about now.
Saxon,
You are an idiot. Obviously everyone feels sorry for the young children of the welfare addicted, overweight, lazy, uneducated many, that found themselves in this perdicament. It was sad to see the old people too that may not have had access to news or family to help them. It was disgusting to see the young, many very overweight, uneducated, take advantage of the system, causing much of the problems, and at the same time being victimized. All while waiting for someone else to come and take care of them. Absolutely pathetic. You people that enable this type of behavior should be ashamed of yourselves. Wherever you’re from. The free handouts to people need to stop. They need to be forced to better themselves in order to receive any aid. The resources are all over the place. They’re just too lazy to bother when the democrat inablers are all to willing to give them free handouts at the expense of the hard working masses.
[The welfare state is a Democrat or Liberal concept.]
Necessity is the mother of invention. And the middle class pay the bill.
[The Republicans and Conservatives have worked to limit the Welfare State’s nasty wealth redistribution effects. Hopefully they keep it up.]
No, the Republicans have worked extremely hard to redistribute the wealth – to, as much of the upper 2% as possible. The ‘Liberals have only done what Mother Nature would do herself, if she could – balance the playing field.
[Democrats will now attempt to blast away this post, because if enough people read it and saw the facts clearly, the Democrats would never win another election.]
Oh what a wet dream to have. Pure, savage and unrelenting capitalism. Screw this notion of charity and forgivness for being poor. Those lazy Welfarites can begin their journey to Billionairdom starting at the KFC.
Look at your hero – Bill Gates. He started his grim ‘career’ with a measly 50 thousand dollar loan that he got from his struggling mother against his million dollar inheritance from his deadbeat grandpa.
‘Some people say’ that Bill is living “The ‘American’ Dream”.
Black or not, your momma had potty training issues with you. And now and forever more you will exact your revenge because momma flushed YOUR POSSESSIONS down the toitie.
Enjoy your I.B.S. You’re going to need ALL the money you can get for Metamucil, Dicetal, Emtec, and eventually a Hemicolectomy.
Referee,
Sounds like you’re afraid someone might take away your food stamps.
OK Charlie. I’ve been only half amused by the ramblings in this thread and was about to click it away when I saw your comment, “gun ownership, wrapped up in so-called ‘constitutional rights’ “.
I want to know if you can read and comprehend the English language. If you think you can, please tell me what this sentence says (not what you WANT it to say, but what it SAYS) … “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
Let me give you a clue. It says I can keep a gun, and carry it. And even though we (probably) no longer need a militia consisting of the average citizen, it doesn’t hinge the gun ownership on that requirement. In fact, it outright states that we DO need a militia, and therefore it is not a case for argument. Finally, it says that no one can take away my right to own a gun and carry it. Is there anything about “shall not be infringed” that confuses you?
So don’t go calling my constitution rights “so called”. If you don’t like my rights, then change it with an amendment. But don’t go twisting my constitution into saying something it doesn’t.
I suppose “Monday, 09-Sep-2005” sounds perfectly reasonable if all you have to work with is a virus infested Windoze box.
But wasn’t it FEMA who said that IE was a security risk and shouldn’t be used? No, wait, that was Homeland Security. But isn’t FEMA part of HS?
You’ve gotta admit, the quality of these boys’ thinking shows through in the quality of their work, like with Katrina.
Oh Dear Lord…
And the above posts are representative of one of the most influential nations on the globe?
/shudders…
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Sadly, the offer has been rescinded.
Referee –
Reference the post ofbove and add…Oprah.
Ah, I see the blame game is now in earnest. Isn’t modern America wonderful?
Liberal scum!!! Nazi Conservative!!! Liberal scum!!! Nazi Conservative!!! Liberal scum!!! Nazi Conservative!!! Liberal scum!!! Nazi Conservative!!! Liberal scum!!! Nazi Conservative!!! Liberal scum!!! Nazi Conservative!!! Liberal scum!!! Nazi Conservative!!! Liberal scum!!! Nazi Conservative!!!
If I were God, I’d be throwing hurricanes at you too…..
</bad taste comment>
Ah, sad little insults. They’re so cute. But, they’re not very interesting.
The unfortunate bipolar nature of your national struggle will be your undoing. On EVERY issue, you choose to see only black and white – while nature sees shades of grey.
Try to understand that the road does not lead left or right, but through the center. And you have to actually carve the road – together.
Let’s get a grip here, people. Though a liberal utopia may look quite similar to socialism and a welfare state, keep in mind that a pure conservative agenda is to eliminate the middle class and restore a very tiny, untouchably wealthy aristocracy.
So, for those of you who want to wish away the liberals and democrats, you middle class supporters of conservative Republicans would also be cast aside to join the mass of peasants.
Hopefully, that’s the balance of our system. — a Democratic watchdog government that polices the business practices of an aristocratic Republican elite in an effort to protect a fastly shrinking middle class.
Besides, there’s plenty of cross-over in liberal vs. conservative beliefs within each of us. It’s not black and white.
I couldn’t have said it better myself
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
Atleast, someone is paying attention.
justified — speak for yourself, everything IS black and white; you’re either a volunteer or a slave, there is no middle ground.
Referee — you’re an idiot
Wingsy — you’re heart’s in the right place but the constitution doesn’t say you CAN do or CANNOT do anything, it says what the government CAN or CANNOT do; you have the RIGHT to do ANYTHING that doesn’t tread on others. In the real world, of course, you can only do what your socialist neighbors will allow.
Markus — you’re right about Saxon.
Robert — nice thoughtful editorial
Misc posters mentioning Americans — your brush is too broad; why not denigrate all earthmen while you’re at it, present company excluded.
Wingsy, the 2nd Amendment doesn’t say anything about guns. It says “arms” as in swords and single shot muzzle loading flintlocks, which was all there was at the time. Can’t use it to justify handgun ownership or assault rifles for sure. The NRA is nothing but the lobbying arm of the firearms industry.
Regarding: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
A bunch of gunning toting idiots and gangsters IS NOT a well regulated militia.
A well regulated militia by definition would be an organized body of trained and discerning men and women capable of defending and maintaining said free state from a tyrannical government and/or from mob rule.
And this decree stipulates that said mititia is officially recognized by the state.
YOU as an individual do NOT have the right to bear arms. YOU as a citizen ‘Of The People’ have a right to be a member and maintainer of a well regulated militia. You duty is to the preservation of a free state, not in protecting you from a bogeyman who MAY come an steal your big screen TV.
It’s subtle, but it is different.
misanthrope,
Thank you for your Reader Feedback reviews. But I have to ask, do you have a point to make?
No point – just wanted in on the fun.
mw-federal – you can’t make this stuff up.
While entertaining momentarily, name-calling doesn’t present a very interesting argument. And certainly, it offers no solutions to ANY of life’s problems.
However, your ‘Predator or Prey’ mentality leads eventually to your extinction. There will always be a faster gun, huh? Someone that WILL screw you at your highest moment.
The ‘Get Rich Or Die Trying’ ideal, insures that too many do. And too many become Collateral Damage in your battle to conquer your inferiority.
Reality is a bitch,
You are 100% correct.
Referee.
Isn’t it time for your line-up. You know, to get your welfare hand-out.
Well, now. Ron really is a good boy if you get to know him. I guess he always did have trouble getting along with the other children. And, I’ll admit, he was never the brightest bulb on the tree — debate wasn’t his strong suit. Still, he’s a trooper. If it weren’t for that bedwetting habit of his, he might just get himself a nice girl and settle down.
Referee,
Because I see the state of man as volunteer or slave, black or white, doesn’t translate into “Predator” or “Prey” – there will always be predators but their number will only be as high as the population of prey will sustain – this is a law of nature. And disarming people turns them into easy prey. Being strong enough to resist a predator doesn’t make you a predator yourself.
Katrina is allowing for a land grab by the Elites,.. the right wing is bankrupting the government, to say ‘see it doesn’t work’ b.s., did you know there is oil under N.O.? Bush screwed things up on purpose to kill and steal.
Why make infantile assumptions that I collect welfare?
You bring nothing to the discussion, and promote more purile disintegration of any chance of a reasoned discussion.
Is it not possible to state your concerns, and offer reasonable solutions? Are all folks that don’t ‘see things your way’, welfare bums?
Not all folks that use excuses to not go actually do work, are poor. You’ve obviously don’t seem too chafed by the reality of Corporate Welfare?
You choose to only see the ‘poor’ layabout. I see both. I see the middle class breaking their FSCKING backs to ‘support’ both versions of the ‘needy’.
I would actually welcome comments other than any further immature outbursts.
ron sent his mother to Welfare camp but she failed the test. She was too thin.
[there will always be predators but their number will only be as high as the population of prey will sustain – this is a law of nature.]
Aren’t humans above nature?
[And disarming people turns them into easy prey.]
You of course mean: A well regulated militia — an organized body of trained and discerning men and women capable of defending and maintaining said free state from a tyrannical government and/or from mob rule.
[Being strong enough to resist a predator doesn’t make you a predator yourself.]
Of course not. But then you know that I never said that.
I just think, as a collective – we the citizenry should protect ourselves from predators – private or governmental.
It seems to hold more ‘authority’ if ‘we’ do this. Then, I am not a man alone to protect my own home, if WE won’t let predators succeed in preying on any ONE.
Get it?
Referee:
Hurricane Katrina was one of the most destructive and expensive tropical cyclones ever to hit the United States. The hurricane’s storm surge caused several breaches in the levees protecting New Orleans from inundation by Lake Ponchartrain. The subsequent flooding of most of New Orleans resulted in catastrophic flood damage, many deaths, and a massive evacuation effort.
The hurricane also caused extensive damage to the coastal regions of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Recent estimates have placed the death toll in the thousands, and the damage higher than Hurricane Andrew as the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history (estimates run higher than $100 billion). Over a million people were displaced — a humanitarian crisis on a scale unseen in the U.S. since the Great Depression.
You ask: Aren’t humans above nature?
I’m thinking not.
[Aren’t humans above nature?]
No.
[You of course mean: A well regulated militia — an organized body of trained and discerning men and women capable of defending and maintaining said free state from a tyrannical government and/or from mob rule.]
That has never been the definition of militia and, of course, you know that is not what I meant. The constitution is a straw man argument. The constitution is not the people’s law – it’s the government’s law. And as you can see, they don’t obey it.
[Being strong enough to resist a predator doesn’t make you a predator yourself.
Of course not. But then you know that I never said that.]
You implied there were only two conditions.
[I just think, as a collective – we the citizenry should protect ourselves from predators – private or governmental.]
The only thing socialism has done for us is make it impossible to protect ourselves from the government.
[It seems to hold more ‘authority’ if ‘we’ do this. Then, I am not a man alone to protect my own home, if WE won’t let predators succeed in preying on any ONE.
Get it?]
Yeah, I get it, you’re a socialist and think the ‘authority’ of two people is greater than the ‘authority’ of one. The flaw in this reasoning is self-evident. Authority to defend oneself flows from the individual right to life. There is no ‘group’ right to life. Socialists like to think that there is concept of ‘greater good’ – this is their way of sacrificing the minority to the pleasure of the majority. The highest authority is the individual – any sacrificing to be done is up to him. And you ARE a man alone in your home when the wolf comes to the door.
Actually, I’m a Centrist. I’m certain that you find this even more distasteful than if I were a Liberal.
My natural inclination is to bring BALANCE. I view, comprehend, then act accordingly. Anyway, all the best solutions are in the middle —somewhere.
BTW, read your Constitution. The first bloody words are: WE the people. It doesn’t say I the dictator. Or I the Strong. Or I the most desperate to succeed.
No one is free, unless everyone is free.
“…..but we cynically tend to believe support for non-IE browsers will be later rather than sooner.”
you should judge FEMA response in a historical context, in relation to past responses, like the hurricanes.
FEMA’s top person, Mr Brown, didn’t know 20,000 people were stranded at the convention center in New Orleans, although it had been on tv news for 24 hrs. so it might take them a while to learn about safari, opera, etc.
but lets not judge them too harshly. surely if we can give the a break when lives are a stake, we can do the same with browsers.
Well Brown is gone, Bush is overseeing the investigation that should be great, and I can see the blame game going on, what fun.
Well something a little different. The FEMA web site will hopefully change. And the world is chipping in a few resources to give the Americans a helping hand. I hope you dont’ bite it much.
Nigeria ($1 million), China ($5 million and specialists), Japan ($200,000 and resources), India ($5 million and medicine), Singapore (helicopters), South Korea (upcoming pledge), Afghanistan ($100,000 impressive for such a poor country), Sri Lanka ($25,000), Taiwan ($3 million), Canada (naval ships, supplies and people), Cuba (1,100 doctors), Mexico ($ 1 million, people, medicine, equipment), Venezuela (fuel, humanitarian aid), Australia ($10 million), France (helicopters and other equipment, the french city of Orleans is organizing a benefit jazz concert, Germany (medical and transportation, oil), Italy (equipment), the Netherlands (dike specialists, equipment), Spain (oil), Sweden (water purification equipment), Qatar ($100 million), Iran (humanitarian aid), Sri Lanka ($25,000 impressive considering the effects of the Tsunami). Britain and Russia are also poised to offer aid. This list of countries and support is only a small sample of over 100 countries that have offered help and pledges.
Misanthrope-
Misanthrope a self-imposed name? “Malaprop” would be more true to life. Let me quote you: “The flaw in this [Referee’s] reasoning is self-evident. Authority to defend oneself flows from the individual right to life. There is no ‘group’ right to life.”
Do you understand the flaw in your own reasoning? “Individual right to life . . . no ‘group’ right to life.”?! WTF is a ‘Right’? Absent ‘group’, or ‘culture’, or ‘society’, the term ‘Right’ is without meaning. Your all-too-obvious lack of study/understanding in philosopy and logic implies that you live in a Hobbesian state of nature, a “war of all against all”. Perhaps being w/o friends in junior high or high school is like that (Are you 16? You sound 16. Such ‘ressentiment’ in your voice).
You read and you write- your reading/writing (poor though they are) are the result of your GRANTED RIGHTS within OUR culture, your RIGHT to education.
You post here, in a forum, that celebrates Apple- a company run by a man whose politics are at the left-end of American culture. Even if corporate contributions to our world in no way go beyond monetary growth (and, by God they do!), does it bother/disgust you that Apple’s stock has STOMPED on the Fortune500 because its CEO values both ‘man’ and aesthetics, and not merely himself for his own sake?
There’s hope for a society that rewards such work. There’s hope for you- go to college.
“The responsibility,” of government, Churchill told the British Parliament “for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence.”
Remember, “We the People …
The People – not just windows users
The People – not just the skinny ones
The People – not just the healthy ones
The People – not just the rich ones
The People – not just the smart ones
The People – not just the white ones
You would think ProLife would include all The People.
To all those who agreed with the MDN take on hurricanes this should nnot be an issue, surely the Mac users only have themselves to blame for their situation and they should stop complaining and take responsibility for the situation and buy a PC like everyone else. Loosers.