I refuse to read TFA. After all, the first thing I learned about gravity was that if I don't know anything about it, it can't effect me! Thank you, professor Coyote.

Seriously, do some research into the project I mentioned, and stop accusing me of bigotry when all I'm advocating is a long term solution. A solution to help prevent future tragedies for the people you accuse me of being prejudiced against. Stop looking for reasons to hate me, and actually pay attention to what I'm saying.

The Army Corps of Engineers themselves say they don't know how much longer they can keep the MS River on its current course. That's the unsustainable situation; New Orleans won't be a port for long. The rest of your arguments are just arguments for the sake of arguing, and they're completely irrelevant to my original post. Anyways, any further replies that include random bashing will just mark you as a troll, so I'm out of this conversation.

It seems I was misunderstood. I was trying to point out that all this stuff is wasteful if no long term solution is being looked at. It's like throwing money at treating the symptoms of lung cancer without putting any money or effort into trying to find a cure, as well as paying for cigarettes for the patients. Taxpayer money is going to help people move back into an area that cannot be sustained. Read up on the Old River Control Structure; it won't last, and New Orleans isn't going to last once it fails.

I didn't research the information you posted, because it wasn't relevant to the post I made. None of that information says anything about how much money has been poured into that area, just that the money there is severely mismanaged. A serious problem itself.

Maintaining a dyke may not be expensive, but maintaining and constantly adjusting three dams on the largest river in North America is. I'm just pointing out that everything about this situation is short-sighted.

I'm completely lost on what relevance your psychopath reference has.

We're already spending significant sums of taxpayer money to not only keep those anti-flood measures kept up, but also to continue preventing the Mississippi River from going through its natural course changes (Wikipedia).

I realize that there's a huge economic consideration in the whole mess of the river changing course, but shouldn't we be spending effort and money on finding a long term solution, rather than fighting a losing battle against a force of nature we can only hold back for so long and giving money to people who already received plenty of tax money and charity?

Ok, then I'll agree 69.9999%

Aren't gun store owners required to have background checks done on customers? I don't know if they're responsible for reporting anything that would effect said background checks, but it's something to consider.

There are always exceptions. Also, some people enjoy seeing other points of view, whether it's to broaden their horizons, just to find places to argue or whatever other reason.

Advertising isn't simply manipulation. Advertising also serves the purpose of distributing information about products, services or ideas that people otherwise wouldn't ever know about. Isn't that one of the big issues people always bring up here? Distribution of information? Sure, it's slanted, but what human-generated information isn't? It's all presented based on our perceptions and intended purposes. At least when the info comes from advertising, we know it's slanted so we know to look into it further.

There are always exceptions to the rule; they don't disprove the general usefulness of paying people to promote products, services or ideas. Even various Linux distros use some forms of marketing, such as selling branded items like hats, shirts, etc. Traditional advertising isn't the only way to market something.

Anyhow, just because some people choose to purposely avoid heavily advertised products, it doesn't mean the advertising is worthless. Those companies that can afford to burn their messages into your head obviously get those billions they spend on advertising from somewhere, and they wouldn't have gotten where they are without it.

I'm not trying to start an argument. Just pointing out that there are different ways of looking at things, there is a valid and important purpose to advertising and marketing, and people in marketing aren't necessarily stupid just because most don't understand "technical stuff".