Katrina was not the disaster. It was the failure of the levies that caused the disaster. THAT is not natural. Building a city under sea level, and then failing to maintain the protective structures is a man-made problem. If you want to place blame for Katrina, the root cause is the legislative process that *knew* about the status of the levies, and yet year after year failed to repair them. And I dont' think it my inability to read, my friend...I think and your friends have spent so much time simply trying to clever assholes and throwing insults that few of you have rubbed more than two brain cells together.

As far as reading definitions...I was unaware of this Wiki definition until JUST now...so how was I to read and respond to it. Regardless, your inability to to look at cause and effect *beyond* what the media has told you to think is what is so laughable. The flooding of New Orleans was *100 %* preventable - the disaster ONLY occured because of the failure of the man-made levies. That is not natural in the least.

The proper analogy is this? KATRINA Analogy: Man knows his vehicle's brakes are failing, and yet refuses to fix them. He keep finding his car parked on hills, and knows someday a hill will be too steep and his brakes will fail, but he refuses to fix his brakes still, untill one day his car rolls unrestrained down a hill and kills a baby. Natural disaster, because of that damned gravity? Or man made disaster? Everyone knew that hurricanes exist, and that if a significant enough hurricane hit New Orleans the levies might fail, but the politicians never devoted the needed resources to repairing the levies. The brakes failed....the big one hit...properly built levies never would have failed from that storm, so it is a man made disaster.

BP is very analogous, except that they still really have no idea what failed. There is conjecture, but no actual detailed answer as to what failed yet...or more specifically what multiple failures occurred. By all appearances, BP screwed up...but they didn't screw up by purposely installing defective components. It is arguable at this point that BP is less guilty that those responsible for New Orleans until it is proven that gross, willful negligence occurred. such evidence has not come forth yet...in fact congress says BP is stonewalling, so they clearly don't have the smoking gun they are looking for.

But, as I suspect, you will reply with silly insults and fail to understand the argument...as trolls do.

Oh..as far as "simple" definitions...maybe that is your problem. You want everything wrapped up into a pretty little "simple"box so you can label who's right and who's wrong, when in fact the answer is far, far more complex than that. But to the original posting point, whether BP is guilty or not (most likely guilty), the Federal response - specifically the direct refusal of foreign aid - demonstrates willful negligence at the highest levels.

Draugnar wasn't even trolling. You called him a troll because he disagreed with you.

lol.

Respond to what mockeries people are making of your points krellin, before you drift off on new tangents to distract us from your retardedness.

Krellin, I'm sorry. I feel I should apologize. When I said that you failed to read and apply a simple definition, what I meant to say was that you failed to understand the words "natural disaster" intuitively, which is a different matter entirely. My mistake, and I admit it. However, I don't feel too bad seeing as the wikipedia definition is exactly what one would guess the words "natural disaster" seem to mean.

And once again, you fail (emphasis: fail) to understand that Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster. You continue harping on the aftermath as though that were the actual hurricane (and I granted you that the aftermath was so terrible because of human negligence). You said that you can "make the argument that Katrina was not a natural disaster at all," which, in my understanding, means you can argue that a hurricane was not a natural disaster. Apparently, I misunderstood you. When you said "Katrina was not a natural disaster" what you meant was "the aftermath was not a natural disaster," a point I granted.

If I had realized that you were talking about the aftermath (and New Orleans, specifically), I would not have made the analogy I did. That's quite unfair of you to call me wrong when you're on a different page than what you said you were on (specifically, you said you were talking about Katrina, a hurricane, and instead you were talking about a flooded city, which is not a hurricane).

Penultimately, I have said nothing one way or the other about blame for any parties, only that you are not talking about "natural disasters to push political agendas," which you stated is something you want to talk about.

Lastly, you still aren't talking about pragmatic politics.

I believe the overall conclusion of this forum thread is that krellin is really a radical left winger who is messing with all posters' and readers' minds. Next conclusion is please stop posting. krellin, admit you're wrong, rlumley, admit you're right, then we can all read other posts in tranquility.

trolls because instead of discussing a topic, they spend most of the time attacking the person. dubmdell - you FAIL, emphasize FAIL to understand that Katrina was a disaster ONLY because of human failures. Hurricanes happen all the time, and Katrina was not even a cat 5 by the time it hit shore. I understand your simple-minded notion that a big wave came by...I get it. I also understand that had years of warnings been heeded about what would happen WHEN this event occurred the levies would have been repaired and NO disaster would have occurred at all. You just can't wrap your pea-brain around the concept that we wouldn't even remember Katrina if the levies had been properly maintained. It was not the storm that caused the disaster, it was the failure of the levies.

I haven't talked "pragmatic politics" lately because all you people want to do is attack me. But...pragmatically...Katrina was used to bash Bush / Republicans, instead of first looking at the local and state Democrat parties that failed first and second. Pragmatically, the BP disaster will be used...and is *possibly* being allowed to be worse than is necessary - to vilify the oil industry to pass unpopular energy legislation. I HAVE mentioned this pragmatic politics issue up in this thread, but you have only sought to throw insults instead of responding to that suggestion. So...it isn't ME not discussing it...it's the responders who only know how to attack and throw insults.

Abotu natural "disasters"....it is only considered a disaster when something man cares about gets harmed. In Katrina's case, had a strong wind blowed, and waves crashed high against a strong levy, then the worst would have been some localized damage due to winds, etc, but it would have been in no way a disaster. The disaster ONLY occured when the levies failed...pretty much after the hurricanes full force was passed...so the disaster was the failure of the man-made structure that everyone knew was faulty. THAT is no longer a natural disaster. that is a failure of man on multiple levels....STARTING with living below sea level, followed up by not properly protecting the area you know is at risk.

@rlumley - I respond to the responses to my comments...and then assholes like you come along with nothing worthwhile to say and I respond to you. What's the matter, rlumley - get tired of being called an asshole on other threads? Seems that is the response you generally get. You seem to never have anything to add to the discussion...just a little boy out throwing insults. I bet that really stretches your mind...

As far as Draugnar is concerned....that Troll draug, that is...he (vainly) attempted to insult me by telling me the Coast Guard is part of the Department of Transporation, if I recall correctly. 1. His purpose in posting was to try to insult me...and 2. he was flat out, 100% wrong, which makes him 1. stupid, 2. a troll.

Lol. I actually made a response like four pages ago you never responded to.

So stfu.

@redcane - I'll stop posting as soon as I stop getting replies! :P Particularly when the replies are nonsensical arguments that completely ignore or misrepresent what I have said. as far as declaring rlumley right...well if the guy actually said anything other than just throwing insults (for which he is vilified on many threads) then someone might be able to say he is right or wrong...but I don't think his mind stretches far enough to post relevant comments.

@rlumley - fucking moron. You replied 4 pages ago...on a 3 page thread. Once again proving you are either a time traveler or an asshole...

@rlumley -- "stfu" Oh!!! We are getting a little testy, aren't we? lol

You're right. I'm a time traveler.

Great....can you give me a ling on the World Cup? I've got some hot cash looking for a place to play?

France is going to pull a surprise comeback.

Okay, okay, you're right. All natural disasters are actually human failures because there would be no disaster, -ever-, if man would just build good stuff.

Also, rlumley did say "like four pages," as in, "a lot of thread ago." His grammatical usage of "like" here is a simile, albeit a rather poor though common form of the figure of speech. Please don't pick apart things people don't say. (And before you attack me for doing that to you, I haven't. I picked apart something you did say. Which you ignored.)

And it isn't fair of you to tell rlumley he's getting testy for saying "stfu" when you've been cussing seemingly every post since page one.

I heard something about a troll.
So here I am!
You summoned me.
I hope you can handle it.

"France is going to pull a surprise comeback. "
If that really happens I ll be absolutely convinced you are a time traveler and there is nothing you ll be able to do to change my mind.
I'm going to hunt you down and manipulate your knowledge of the future for personal gains.

"I heard something about a troll.
So here I am!
You summoned me.
I hope you can handle it."

LOL.

Don't you hear, hellalt? I'm the new community troll.

*builds a bridge*

I see...
So, you want to become my new whore now that I dumped Noob179?

Not particularly.