<p>Vox Dei, please don’t address those kind of personal remarks to me. You have no idea how I live my life, much less who my friends are and what they do. </p>
<p>And I certainly don’t need advice from someone’s ghostnic!</p>
<p>Seriously, no one’s asking you to go to Iraq; you don’t have to trot out the bad knee excuse so loved by College Republicans…but if you’re going to patronize other posters, at least do it under your regular screen name.</p>
<p>…but times are good. As I mentioned a while ago, the Democrat Party thrives on bad news…a very sad, and ultimately defeating position (which does make me happy) to take.</p>
<p>Go Elephants!</p>
<p>Well, if you think the deaths of our soldiers is something to revel in, there isn’t much to say.</p>
<p>Some of us put country over party, so no, we don’t find the debacle in Iraq joyous news and we won’t be giving you any tickertape parades for it.</p>
<p>Connie</p>
<p>You’re funny.</p>
<p>How’s the weather in Chicago?</p>
<p>May I recommend the chicken at a wonderul little place just across Michigan Avenue from the Art Institute…a new Irish place…can’t remember the name.</p>
<p>Are the Cubs in town?</p>
<p>You’re making even less sense than usual. If you’re going to make these weird posts, you should at least use your own screenname. To post these bizarre things to people under a ghostnic is really disturbing.</p>
<p>ETA: Seriously, if you’re having fantasies that you can see where I am and monitor my personal life over the Internet, you need to get some help. This kind of ideation is not normal and could pose a risk to people close to you.</p>
<p>“No one’s flown a plane into your house…” I reiterate the point that New Yorkers en masse do NOT support the war in Iraq; in fact, we did not even support the invasion of Afghanistan. I think the stance of the Bush Administration has more to do with macho self-image than true political goals, an anxiety inherited from Daddy Bush’s reaction to the perception he was not manly enough. During Desert Storm the slogan “Make America a Man Again” appeared in the media as an antidote to Viet Nam syndrome.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but I don’t think arguments need to be made against the death of young people (military personnel on both sides), Iraqi children and other civilians. I think the onus is on the administration to demonstrate that these tragic outcomes are in any way justified. I can’t see that this case has been made.</p>
<p>And in terms of domestic self interest, of course there is a relationship between our eroding infrastructure and the unconscionable amount of money being spent on the war. At the start of the war the NY Times reported that one second of bombing cost the equivalent of the NYC school budget for a year. Will every bridge have to collapse before we acknowledge that we can’t afford this war? There are so many historical precedents of empire building countries collapsing from within because of costs of senseless and exorbitant wars. Again, this constitutes a real victory for our “enemies”.</p>
<p>Thank you, Mythmom, for your excellent post.</p>
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<p>This takes disingenuousness to an extreme, where everything negative that happens in this country is related to the war. All you have to do is look back at the presidential campaign of 2000 when, because of the dot com bubble, we were flush with money. Both the Dems and Republicans had their lists of how they were going to “spend” this windfall, yet no one mentioned infrastructure improvements. Now, all of a sudden, “if it weren’t for the war, we would be out there repairing every bridge in the country.” It’s time to get back to reality and quit trying to score cheap political points off a tragedy.</p>
<p>Well, if we don’t have the money we certainly can’t. And I can tell you that After MN bridge inspectors are out all over the country. Maybe you don’t need bridges very often where you are (or maybe you do) but we LI’ers need 'em to get anyplace west or south. The north we can take the ferry. East we fall into the ocean.</p>
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<p>Wow. Very misleading or perhaps uninformed. There was rather a lot of money in the federal budgets of the Clinton administration for infrastructure. Bush quickly began reducing or eliminating it, like he did at least one anti-terrorism program.</p>
<p>Just one small example:</p>
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</p>
<p><a href=“http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070803/NEWS09/708030441/1041/SPORTS09[/url]”>http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070803/NEWS09/708030441/1041/SPORTS09</a></p>
<p>Stories like this are repeated all over the nation.
In early 2001, people were already reporting that the Bush administration had shifted from prevention to response on all sorts of mitigation issues, including infrastructure.</p>
<p>You can argue that spending on bridge repair and inspection to prevent tragedies at home is a waste and that the money is better spent on building projects in Iraq that Iraq doesn’t want, won’t accept, and are all ready crumbling and inoperable. </p>
<p>But you have to face the fact that in the long run, you’ll end up spending more for repairs here at home than you would have on maintenance.</p>
<p>
Bring 'em on. Mission accomplished. Bush-supporting Republicans are the last people in the universe to even <em>bring up</em> the subject of scoring political points off a tragedy. The court of retribution has not yet spoken. If you didn’t like November 2006, I suspect you’re going to positively hate November 2008.</p>
<p>Transportation is just one of those issues for the common good and general welfare that conservatives undercut federal funding for as much as possible. Along with health care, education, safety, etc. As they don’t really believe in government, it’s no wonder that they’re so incompetent and godawful at it when they do. Fortunately, there’s a solution for that.</p>
<p>Here was Gore’s plan for the surplus:
<a href=“http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Al_Gore_Budget_+_Economy.htm[/url]”>http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Al_Gore_Budget_+_Economy.htm</a></p>
<p>Notice that he didn’t allocate anything extra to highways even when he had a perceived surplus. </p>
<p>Also note that the ASCE, in its latest report card on bridges, shows an improvement in the percentage of bridges that are structurally deficient over the Clinton years.
<a href=“http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=103[/url]”>http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=103</a>
And this was during the height of the recession.</p>
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<p>You keep leaving out the fact that there was money budgeted–money the neocons would later cut to fund there adventure in Iraq.</p>
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<p>Wouldn’t any new bridges constructed during 2000-2003 automatically have lowered the % of bridges in disrepair? Just by basic arithmetic? </p>
<p>I notice you also leave out all the very troubling declines during those few short years: energy grid, dams, drinking water, hazardous waste, navigable waterways, roads, transit, and waste water.</p>
<p>Just as I suspected. The figures FF is touting represent a negative, rather than a positive trend. The % of bridges in disrepair fell significantly during the Clinton years. This trend was almost completely arrested during the Bush years. </p>
<p>From the 2000 ASCE report card:</p>
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</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.asce.org/reportcard/index.cfm?reaction=factsheet&page=2[/url]”>http://www.asce.org/reportcard/index.cfm?reaction=factsheet&page=2</a></p>
<p>27.5% Clinton’s last year in office, after a drop of 7.1 points in 10 years–an average drop of .71 per year. </p>
<p>Two years of Bush rule later, 2003, the rate is down to 27.1, a drop of .20 per year. </p>
<p>The rate of bridges in disrepair was dropping 3.5 times faster during the 10 pre-Bush years than the near standstill during the Bush years. Shows you the huge difference in focusing on prevention rather than relief after a tragedy.</p>
<p>The situation with the bridges is a lot like Bush’s view of health care; no need for doctor visits, because you can always just go to the emergency room. Never mind that the doctor visit is cheaper and healthier.</p>
<p>And you can’t blame the recession. Federal spending ROSE during the Bush administration, even in real dollars. You can see the sharp uptick at the end of this graph:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.tomgpalmer.com/images/Federal%20Budget%20Growth%20Since%201850.jpg[/url]”>http://www.tomgpalmer.com/images/Federal%20Budget%20Growth%20Since%201850.jpg</a></p>
<p>They spent more money overall, but made far less progress on bridge repair. This has nothing to do with a recession, and everything to do with priorities.</p>
<p>If you have read Oryx and Crake, then you should be familiar idea of “humans making the same cretinous mistakes over and over”.</p>
<p>ETA: It’s very interesting how whenever I cite statistics that back up my position, and that there is no logical argument against, people like HH suddenly are crying louder than the bereaved about Katrina. It would be funny, except that they keep reciting the same urban legends over and over no matter how many times they’re debunked. </p>
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<p>Higherlead you have such an incredibly distorted version of what happened, so badly tinged by your own preconcieved notions and prejudices that it’s barely worth discussing Katrina with you. </p>
<p>But FYI, we did use the bridges to get people out. Over a million from SE Louisiana. The Superdome became the last resort only after the floodwalls failed. Yes it would have been wonderful if the schoolbusses had been used to evacuate more people, and if people had known that the floodwalls had been built improperly and couldn’t stand (something the President himself said that no one could have predicted), but that doesn’t change the fact that we mounted the largest disaster evacuation in US history. Could you get a million people out of your state on 24-48 hours notice? Would they all go?</p>
<p>And the floodwalls didn’t fail because they were “35 years out of date.” They failed because they were built with a design flaw. They were not built to engineering standards of the time they were built, period, and would not have withstood a Category 3 storm (which Katrina was in NO) regardless of when it happened. The design flaw was discovered by the Corps before the floodwalls were built, and the Corps chose to keep the information to itself and to proceed with the flawed design anyway, resulting in the largest civil engineering failure in human history. The Corps has acknowledged this numerous times. </p>
<p>Nor was there an expectation that the federal government do anything “within hours” much less clothe/feed/shelter, etc. The standard for any disaster is 3 days. The local CD officials and citizenry should be prepared to take care of themselves for 3 days, then the feds and RedCross step in. It was well past 3 days before there was federal help down here, and as you should be aware by now, among the first things the feds did was to suspend local and civilian rescue efforts till they could get their act together…then bar other federal agencies from participating even once they allowed the rescues to resume. </p>
<p>Might I add also that in most natural disasters when lives are at stake and people need rescue, the federal government is involved much earlier–even if it happens in Indonesia or Pakistan.</p>
<p>I realise that it’s much easier to live in the land of the imagination than it is to face the facts, but telling lies about what happened will not suddenly change what happened.</p>
<p>And please keep your racist and sexist epithets to yourself. Although at least they do perform a public service by letting people know what filter you use to process events.</p>
<p>
Conyat’s excellent response about Katrina aside, no Bush-supporting Republican should have the gall to talk about anyone’s priorities in light of Bush’s invasion Iraq as a response to 9/11.</p>
<p>The miscalculation about how easy it would be (Bring 'em on. Mission accomplished.) only masks the nature of the strategic blunder in the first place. You can see the neocon thugs preparing their fall-back positions right now: Iraq was the right thing, it was just badly executed, whereupon they blame others. Well, that’s one main cluster of evolving neocon thought…the other is to blame the Democrats and the media for being stabbed in the back.</p>
<p><a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070804/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq;_ylt=A0WTUfuA8LRG4DIAjwys0NUE[/url]”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070804/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq;_ylt=A0WTUfuA8LRG4DIAjwys0NUE</a> </p>
<p>Speaking of priorities, as we’ve spent hundreds of billions on building projects that the Iraqis don’t want, don’t need, and won’t accept responsibility for (the lion’s share of which are already crumbling and inoperable), the power grid is near collapse.</p>
<p>Baghdad is down to one hour of power a day. In Karbala, the situation is so bad that because there is no power to pump water, the water mains have gone dry. That’s right, people have no water, in the desert, in 110 degree weather. </p>
<p>I believe that the Geneva Convention says that if you take the responsibility to occupy a country, you take with it the responsibility for ensuring that its residents have basic food, water, and sanitation.</p>
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<p>I wonder if all the people who thought it was acceptable for black people in New Orleans (which was all they saw on their TVs) to die of dehydration will feel the same way about Iraqis?</p>
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<p>Another reality-free post.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.startribune.com/10204/story/1339411.htm[/url]”>http://www.startribune.com/10204/story/1339411.htm</a></p>
<p>The bridge fell because the state DOT knew it was deficient and didn’t fix it.</p>
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<p>Who do those officials work for? The state government, headed by Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty.</p>
<p>So did some evil Democrat take away the money that the Republican governor would otherwise use to fix the bridge? In a word, no.</p>
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<p>All fantasies about Muslim cabdrivers aside, this was nothing but a bad decision by a state agency under the control of a Republican governor.</p>
<p>ETA: Personally, I don’t think party entered into it. I think the same decision probably would have been made whomever was governor. But Higherlead’s way off base to blame it on the bogey-man of the party not running the agency that made the decision.</p>
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