Yours is the politically correct version of an Email I received this morning:
Subject: Why Wyoming is a great state!
Wyoming News Bulletin
This text is from a county emergency manager out in the western
part of Wyoming after the storm.
Amusing, if it were not so true...WEATHER BULLETIN
Last winter in Wyoming we recovered from a Historic event ---may I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions" --with a historic blizzard of up to 52" inches of snow and wind to
80 MPH that broke trees in half, stranded hundreds of motorists
in lethal snow banks, closed all roads, isolated scores of
communities and cut power to 10's of thousands.
FYI:
George Bush did not come....
FEMA staged nothing....
No one howled for the government...
No one even uttered an expletive on TV....
Jesse Jackson did not show up....
Nobody demanded $2000 debit cards.....
No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House....
No one looted....
Phil Cantori of the Weather Channel did not come....
And Geraldo Rivera did not move in.
Nope, we just melted snow for water, sent out people on horseback to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars, fired up wood stoves, broke out oil lanterns and put on an extra layer of clothes because up here it is 'work or die'. We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for 'sitting at home' checks.
"In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of
about 42 degrees North Latitude and west of 95 degrees West Longitude, 90% of the world's social problems evaporate."
It also helps to stay east of about 120 degrees West Longitude.
The environment is inhospitable for the urban outdoorsman. Still, Idaho has over 50% of the population collecting a check from the government either as a state employee or some kind of welfare. The "social problems" exist, but they get no attention from the media.
Conservative estimates indicate that around 1.5 million people were displaced by Katrina and the associated flood waters. I'm sure the good people of North Dakota are deserving, hard working folks...
but consider this....
Think about DOUBLING the current population of North Dakota and jamming all those good people into an area about 30 miles x 30 miles (a postage stamp compared to the actual 70,000+ square miles that North Dakota actually occupies). Now, when everyone's asleep, flood the area with up to 7 or 8 feet of water. Make certain that the water stays standing for a week or more. Take away people's electricity... their clean water... their sources of food... their phones... their toilets. Make certain that there's a decent amount of raw sewage, hazardous chemicals, and other dangerous substances floating in the water. Now take away most everyone's car (remember, they're all flooded). And even if they have a running car, take away the roads, because they're flooded too. Add into the mix several hundred (maybe thousand) dead bodies, and a temperature of 90 degrees or more. Finally, tell all those folks that they can't stay in or go back to their homes, to collect their worldly belongings, their pets, or even the bodies of their loved ones.
I've only begun to scratch the surface.
If the good folks of North Dakota could endure that kind of nightmare without pleading for help... well they're heartier souls than the rest of us.
As for Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson... I don't think North Dakota's 92% white population would require the endorsement of these two civil & human rights representatives. The 68% black population of New Orleans *DID* seem to need someone speaking up on their behalf... and it didn't seem to be coming from folks like Pat Robertson.
As for FEMA... yes, indeed they did respond to North Dakota's plight. After the snow storm, President Bush in coordination with FEMA responded to the snow disaster by making Federal funds available to designated counties in the State. Full, published details can be found on FEMA's own web site: http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=20798
I hope that this reply gets pushed "back up the ladder" to the North Dakota resident who wrote the original message. This kind of intolerant, uneducated rhetoric contributes nothing to the fence-mending this Country desperately needs.