When the levee breaks

We're days and days away from the highest water on the Missouri River, and already the levee near Hamburg, Iowa, has given way.

Does this Omaha World-Herald dispatch sound familiar at all, Brownie?

Two levee breaches just south of Hamburg, Iowa, prompted authorities in Fremont County to issue a mandatory evacuation order Sunday for residents in southern Hamburg.

The Fremont County Emergency Management Office said about 240 residents — roughly 20 percent of the town — were ordered out of their homes following the downstream levee breach in Missouri's Atchison County.

Record outflows from upstream reservoirs have swollen the Missouri River this year, adding considerable pressure to a vast system of levees erected along the river's banks.

Early assessments determined the second partial breach near Hamburg and the damaged areas are likely to fully breach as water levels continue to rise.

As a temporary measure to reinforce the levee to delay a full breach, the Iowa National Guard on Sunday was using a Black Hawk helicopter to drop 1,000-pound sandbags onto the affected part of the levee. Authorities had removed heavy equipment and workers from the area because of concerns about the levee's strength.

The situation in southwest Iowa reflects part of authorities' biggest concerns. Although the stream of river water leaking from the levee into nearby fields was minimal Sunday, authorities worry that part of a community's infrastructure could be inundated.

EVENTS OF the past six years may have caused me to become somewhat cynical, but I do believe I have figured out the government's approach to flood control across these United States:

President ___________ came down in a ___________

With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand

The president say, ''Little fat man isn't it a shame

What the river has done to this poor cracker's land."

Heck of a job.

29 feet and rising

How high's the water, Mama?

Twenty-nine feet and rising.

And if the experts are to be believed, the Missouri River at Omaha is going to rise another 5- or 6 feet over the next couple of weeks, washing out crops, homes and parks all across the metropolitan area. Already, the water engulfs a small part of Lewis and Clark Landing downtown (at right).

Today the "Salute to Labor" sculpture, tomorrow on to the floodwall!

Above, we see flooding across an unfinished riverside park in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Below, sandbags on the now-closed floodgates on the Omaha side of the Maniacal Mo.


OF COURSE, that's nothing when you consider what's happening on the north side of Omaha and above.

Below, we take a panoramic view from high above N.P. Dodge Park, all of which is swamped and getting swampier.


NORMALLY, the Missouri River is beyond the tree line. Far in the distance, we see the bluffs on the Iowa side of the waterway.

And north of Dodge Park, a few miles beyond the city limits, there are scenes such as this.


AND SCENES such as this.


AND SCENES such as this.


HOW HIGH'S the water Papa?

Twenty-nine feet and rising.

Or, to further paraphrase Johnny Cash . . .

We can make it to the road in a homemade boat
That's the only thing we got left that'll float
It's already over all the corn and the oats,
Twenty-nine feet high and risin'.

Casting pearls before Darwin

A week ago, some nihilist in New Orleans wrote the following on Twitter:

"Morganza stays closed, LSU might flood. Morganza opens, oyster beds might die. I know what I'd prefer. Damn, I'm mean."

As Lisa Loopner might have said three or so decades ago, "That's so funny, I forgot to laugh."

But it's Louisiana, so you know that the ability to eat fresh oysters is more important than pedestrian fare such as higher education, the economy or even survival itself -- if LSU and Baton Rouge went under the muddy waters, you know New Orleans would, too. Again.

SO THIS essay by Ivor van Heerden on the New Orleans news site, The Lens, really didn't surprise, shock, dismay or enrage me at all. And it shouldn't shock you that LSU fired van Heerden more than a year ago amid speculation it feared the professor's criticism of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would cost the university serious federal money.

What LSU didn't see coming was the loss of lots more state money at the hands of Louisiana politicians, who value just about everything more than higher education.

So consider the following and reflect that natural selection isn't just a matter of evolutionary biology. It's a matter of anthropology, too.

Denied an annual dose of sedimentation, coastal wetlands are shriveling. Thousands of square miles have been lost, a problem accelerated by the oil industry as it sliced and diced the coast with canals that invite vegetation-killing salt water.

In the last 30 years there have been calls — first by academics and concerned citizens, more recently by politicians — to set the river free … well, parts of it anyway. The idea is to mimic nature and build new land or at least sustain existing land. This is achieved by cutting “diversions” in the levee walls and letting the muddy water spill out over the surrounding wetlands. An alternative is to use siphons that suck water from the river to the lower wetland side. A number of diversions and siphons have been constructed – notably those at Davis Pond, pictured on The Lens’ home page, and Caernarvon – and have been acclaimed as the beginning of the way forward.

A test run with a different purpose in mind was prompted last year when the deepwater blowout in BP’s Macondo tract threatened to invade Louisiana’s coastal wetlands and coat them with oil. Scientists contacted the Governor’s Office and pushed successfully for the continuous operation of all diversions and siphons. The concept was that the lighter fresh water would act to flush out the oily salt water, and there is ample evidence that it had an impact.

Small wonder, then, that Louisiana is begging for the billions that will be needed – from Congress, or perhaps, the eventual settlement with BP – to create vastly more diversions and siphons in a truly serious campaign to rebuild the coast.

The unusually high and dangerous spring floods of 2011 present a glorious opportunity to demonstrate not only the land-building power of re-sedimentation, but our own resolve to get serious about coastal restoration. But are the diversions and siphons wide open? They are shut tight. Why?

It seems there is another power almost as mighty as the Mississippi: the power of special interests in Louisiana politics – in this case the oyster business. It appears to be a force sufficient to scare Baton Rouge into a state of paralysis that must be causing the rest of America to question the sincerity of our lamentations about land loss and coastal erosion. Why give billions more to a state that won’t work with the coastal-restoration infrastructure already in place?

IT TOOK an asteroid to do in the dinosaurs. Apparently, all it takes to doom Louisiana is an oyster . . . and a culture that's too short-sighted and dysfunctional to survive.

A matter of perspective

I'm not sure people "get it" when reports about flooding on the Mississippi River dominate the evening news.

For example, Omaha fought a hellacious battle with the rampaging Missouri River in 1952, and it survived by the skin of its teeth. Many towns didn't.

But the thing is, when you've grown up on the Mississippi River, you have a term for the Mighty Mo: "That little bitty river."

Above, we find, courtesy of Louisiana State University, a shot taken at noon today of the swollen Mississippi where it borders the west end of campus. It's only a few feet from the top of the levee.


THING IS, the levees on the Mississippi in south Louisiana are as big and bad as levees get in the United States.

To give you an idea, the first photo was taken from atop the levee, looking toward the water. The second one is from atop the levee looking the other way.

It's pretty much like taking a picture from the top of a three-story building. And if, say, this particular levee were to fail, the water would stretch as far as the camera can see.

And farther.

Did I mention the Mississippi won't crest for another two weeks at Baton Rouge?

Perspective. It something that's nice to have.

Katrina + 5

Five years. And it's still hard to get your brain around this thing.

Five years.

Five . . . years.

Dear New Orleans: Up your Prozac dosage

The Katrina-shocked combox warriors of New Orleans are convinced America hates their city.

To tell you the truth, if their enraged, paranoid, lunatic rantings are what Americans get to see of the Crescent City, they might be right. And America certainly would have its reasons.

HERE'S THE latest rant -- referencing this post -- your Mighty Favog has gotten from one of the Noo Orluns Wrecking Crew (a title infused with multiple layers of meaning). It's from a Big Easy (HA!) blogger by the name of Schroeder:

Schroeder said...

Let's see what New Orleans has had to defend itself from. Let's see who's disgracely exploited the victims of one tragedy in the Midwest to vilify victims of another tragedy in New Orleans.

Here's Rush Limbaugh:

"I look at Iowa, I look at Illinois—I want to see the murders. I want to see the looting. I want to see all the stuff that happened in New Orleans. I see devastation in Iowa and Illinois that dwarfs what happened in New Orleans. I see people working together. I see people trying to save their property…I don’t see a bunch of people running around waving guns at helicopters, I don’t see a bunch of people running shooting cops. I don’t see a bunch of people raping people on the street. I don’t see a bunch of people doing everything they can…whining and moaning—where’s FEMA, where’s BUSH. I see the heartland of America. When I look at Iowa and when I look at Illinois, I see the backbone of America."

So, Rush Limbaugh "wants" to see murders and looting in the Midwest? Really? Wow, there's a real standup conservative. Not to mention, his accounting of the comparative damages would be laughable, if it weren't so despicable. Good Americans don't count the casualties and use them as tools of a partisan political campaign of defamation.

What's more, people in the Midwest are "whining" and there has been looting, and there has been the need to use troops to deter criminals. The reports of murders in New Orleans were exaggerated by the carpetbagging press which chose to sensationalize rather than fact check.

The scale of tragedy in New Orleans is on a par which no one should wish upon anyone. To vilify the proud American citizens of New Orleans and Louisiana, who's sons and daughters bled for this nation's freedoms as much as any from the Midwest or anywehre else, is a complete abomination, and the sign of a weak mind.

New Orleanians didn't help themselves? How else did they survive for days before your commander in chief proclaimed, "you're doing a heckuva job Brownie." They got into their boats and rescued babies and elderly. They distributed their own food supplies and water. They gutted each other's homes despite a complete lack of support from your commander in chief after he proclaimed that he would "do what it takes" to help this great city rebuild.

No one is more critical of Ray Nagin and Governor Blanco for their role in bungling the relief and recovery than are New Orleanians. But far more blame may be assigned to that two-faced liar occupying the White House. Bottom line: If George W. Bush kept his word, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place.

Last word: If you aren't here in New Orleans trying to understand and helping to rebuild after the greatest manmade disaster in this nation's history, then keep your uncharitable attitudes to yourself. May God strike you down for being such a wicked SOB.

HERE IS my response, though I must admit I barely knew where to start:

The Mighty Favog said...

Schroeder ,

You are a #&%@ing whack job.

With that kind of attitude, you're wondering why a lot of America would just as soon see Noo Orluns sink into the sea and leave them the hell alone?

Listen, I am your (well, at least New Orleans') friend. I was born and raised in Baton Rouge. My family has been in Louisiana since before "les Americains" were.

I now live in Omaha and, thus, have gained a hell of a lot of perspective about how others perceive N.O. and Louisiana.

I was TRYING to tell you perpetually enraged Defenders of New Orleans that you are harming your cause with your insane rants and uncharitable attitude toward suffering in the Midwest -- suffering you ought to empathize with.

But no.

Rush Limbaugh is a piss ant. He is unimportant.

Do unto others, Cap. Do unto others.

BTW, if you want to take up the "may God strike you down" banner . . . it would seem that God got to y'all first. If that's how you think the Almighty rolls.

Damn lunatic. Good grief.

Here's a little advice for you from Robert Burns:


To a Louse

Ha! whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie?
Your impudence protects you sairly;
I canna say but ye strunt rarely,
Owre gauze and lace;
Tho', faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.

Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her-
Sae fine a lady?
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body.

Swith! in some beggar's haffet squattle;
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle,
Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle,
In shoals and nations;
Whaur horn nor bane ne'er daur unsettle
Your thick plantations.

Now haud you there, ye're out o' sight,
Below the fatt'rels, snug and tight;
Na, faith ye yet! ye'll no be right,
Till ye've got on it-
The verra tapmost, tow'rin height
O' Miss' bonnet.

My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out,
As plump an' grey as ony groset:
O for some rank, mercurial rozet,
Or fell, red smeddum,
I'd gie you sic a hearty dose o't,
Wad dress your droddum.

I wad na been surpris'd to spy
You on an auld wife's flainen toy;
Or aiblins some bit dubbie boy,
On's wyliecoat;
But Miss' fine Lunardi! fye!
How daur ye do't?

O Jeany, dinna toss your head,
An' set your beauties a' abread!
Ye little ken what cursed speed
The blastie's makin:
Thae winks an' finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice takin.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!

How New Orleans defends its 'honor'

Here's how some in the Big Easy "defend their honor" as New Orleanians:

Take handgun. Insert into mouth. Squeeze trigger.

I'M SORRY, but for New Orleans' "honor defenders" to look at the immense suffering in the American Midwest and perceive nothing more than a grand opportunity to say "Hey, look! They suck, too!" is -- How shall I put this? -- whiny, trashy and pathetic.

It will gain them so many friends.

Here's one example of what surely will be a winning public-relations strategy:

Then, there’s the fact that eighty percent of New Orleans evacuated with just 48 hours notice after Katrina turned north instead of going to Pensacola. This was the most successful private evacuation in American history, implemented without any federal contingency plans for disasters, despite four years between 9/11 and 8/29 for George W. Bush — the “war president” — to prepare for another attack on an American city.

How many people evacuated from the Midwest? Oh, they were busy stacking sandbags to protect their homes and crops. Did they deserve their tragedy for staying behind?

Then we could talk about the high percentage of New Orleans homeowners who had flood insurance compared to the national average.

Or maybe those Midwesterners wouldn’t have been subjected to God’s wrath if they didn’t allow homosexuals in their midsts.

It’s at about this point that I might conjure the memory of those poor Boy Scouts, but that wouldn’t be decent. By now it should be apparent to any self-proclaimed conservative out there that blaming the victim is pretty nasty business if turnabout is fair play — this is really repulsive territory. We shouldn’t even have to go there, but we will defend our honor as New Orleanians if the rest of the nation doesn’t smack down Rush Limbaugh and all of the other intolerant [expletive deleted] around the country who are repeating the same bull [expletive deleted].

YOU STAY CLASSY, New Orleans. Mighty big talk for a city that's just a Category 2 hurricane away from real oblivion . . . as opposed to the "Well, maybe we'll rebuild it . . . we'll see" slow-motion oblivion you're dealing with now.

And you know what? Some of us would consider that a catastrophic loss for the country.

Slingin' bile at Iowa while New Orleans sinks

Dear combox warriors of New Orleans:

Shut the [expletive deleted] up!

Once you've done that, perhaps you'll have the time and energy to find a work-around for your disastrously failed attempts at self-government before and after Hurricane Katrina. Therein lies your real problem -- not some bunch of prideful Iowegians who survey their swamped state and publicly thank the Almighty that they're respectable, self-reliant Midwestern flood victims. As opposed to You Know Who.

Yes, southeast Louisiana got screwed by the U.S. government. Yes, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers just as well had built your hurricane-protection levees and floodwalls out of toilet paper for all the good they did. Come to think of it, those levees may well have been TP.

And several Midwestern states are learning that for themselves as I write.

UNCLE SAM, however, did not kill your city. Y'all did that yourselves -- all the feds did was mutilate the corpse, and they're still at it.

Yes, the Bush Administration and Congress have been stingy with the relief and infrastructure money, given their culpability in your recent misfortune. Unfortunately for you, your own elected officials -- particularly C. Ray (Not lately!) Nagin and his Apple Dumpling Gang of administrators -- have been even slower in getting off the pot.

See, it's not federal black helicopters or Delta Force units that have swarmed over your city to gun down your young black men.

And black women.

And white men.

And white women.

That, you've done your own damn selves.

LIKEWISE, it wasn't Rush Limbaugh devotees -- apart, possibly, from the ones in D.C. -- who left a quarter of New Orleans' population inside the city when Katrina hit. You largely have your mayor to thank for that.

And, in fact, you did thank him for that. You re-elected Mayor Whack Job. Because we all know what a bang-up job he did . . . and is doing still.

For decades before John Hagee's God decided to smite your Sin City -- or not -- it was a dead municipality walking. Your government was corrupt and ineffective. Your schools were fetid hellholes. Your parish prison was (and is) where killers stay for a few months before your courts turn them loose again.

Your infrastructure was crumbling and your people were leaving. Your municipal calling card was a "KICK ME!" sign taped to your ass. And we Americans have obliged . . . particularly since The Thing.

Perhaps if y'all had been as worried then about having become a Third World enclave as you are now about what Iowans write about that sad fact in letters to the Des Moines Register. . . .

IT DOESN'T MATTER that Katrina was worse or bigger than, or different from, the Midwest floods. And it can't be disputed that what happened as "the bowl" filled was not the people of New Orleans' finest hour.

There are any number of reasons for that. Primarily, though, the Crescent City's underclass did what members of the underclass do pretty much everywhere on Earth. For what too many cops did, there is no excuse.

The true scandal is that Louisianians -- and Americans -- were OK with that massive underclass being there. That few cared to start working on the problem or helping those poor people.

It was all good in The City That Care Forgot. At least until the fit hit the shan.

You know, if I were in New Orleans, I'd be worrying about stuff like that to the exclusion of all else. Hell, I'm an expatriate Louisianian living in Omaha, and I worry about it more than is good for my digestion.

BUT NOOOOOOOOO . . . it's much easier to savage people with whom you ought to be empathizing. I guess the slow-motion death of your own city "absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part."

And you're just the guys to do it.

Got corn? Uhhhhhhh . . . no.

America, allow us to introduce ourselves. We're the Midwest.

OF COURSE, you probably know us better as Flyover Country, home of rubes, hicks, yokels and rustics. I think you like to bandy around the quasi-slur "corn-fed."

You ought to know us better as The People Who Feed Your Condescending Selves. And here's a news flash for you: What with all the terrible weather and flooding and everything else we've been having all across America's Breadbasket . . . there ain't no corn.

Crop yields are going to be down. Way down. And that's assuming the corn crop can finish being planted -- or, in many cases, replanted -- in time for a timely harvest.

Soybeans? Who knows?

BUT THERE'S NO REASON for you to panic over our recent misfortune. Unless you use corn meal, eat corn flakes, cook with corn oil, like tortilla chips (or tortillas), drink bourbon whiskey or white lightnin', drink milk, eat beef, eat pork, feed your pets, consume any number of processed foods or put ethanol-blend gasoline into your vehicles, you should be just fine.

Otherwise, you're screwed.

Nighty-night, America. It's late . . . time for us hayseeds to pitch some of the rubble of our tornado-damaged dwellings out of the way so we can grab some shuteye on our soggy matresses.

Come winter, perhaps you might give us a thought one chilly morn, as you sit down at the kitchen table for a hearty bowl of . . . nothing.

Horror on the Plains

There were about 100 Boy Scouts at the tornado-struck camp 50 miles north of here in Iowa. No basements.

Television reports say the entire camp was leveled. Around 40 of the 100 injured; four confirmed dead. KETV cited officials who said many of the injured have head wounds.

The scouts were on a weeklong campout. And now the whole camp is gone. Gone.

HERE'S AN EARLY REPORT from the Omaha World-Herald:

The storms that struck Omaha Sunday caused damage only to homes, trees and property. Wednesday night’s storms that sprung up from Lincoln to western Iowa took lives.

One tornado, according to Harrison County dispatchers has four fatalities and up to 30 to 40 injured.

According to an Omaha city official, at least one of the groups of scouts at the camp was from Omaha

Mercy Medical Center in Sioux City will be getting two young juvenile males by medical helicopter right around 8 p.m. from the tornado that touched down at the Little Sioux Scout Ranch.

Parents are to call 431-9272 for information on injuries.

Shortly after 9 p.m., parents who had gathered at the Fellowship Hall in Little Sioux had yet to learn who had been killed and who had been injured.

A state trooper told parents he would deliver a list of names as soon as possible, but the scene at the Boy Scout camp was chaotic. He asked for their patience.

More than 100 people were gathered at the hall, a one-story brick building, and many more were streaming in.

There were numerous reports of damage and tornadoes touching down in Lincoln but nothing confirmed yet as of 7:45 p.m. said Kerry Eagan, chief administrative officer for Lancaster County.

Mike Krysl, a spokesman, for Mercy Medical Center in Sioux City, said the hospital in full-scale disaster alert. Krysl said he did not know the extent of the two juvenile's injuries.

Living on the Death Star

Hey, Louisiana, how are you doing?

Fading fast, you say?

Yeah, I know how that goes. See, I'm from Omaha (by God) Nebraska, and we're the folks who are killing your ass. Not to mention the rest of you, too.

WE'RE THE FOLKS who brought you coastal erosion. And the Dead Zone in Gulf of Mexico, which has crippled your sport- and commercial-fishing industries.

And that little unpleasantness in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina? That was us, too.

We may look like a bunch of corn-fed hicks and earnest upper-Midwestern professionals right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, but that's just to disguise who we really are. To pull the wool over the eyes of the rustic likes of your own backward-ass selves.

But I'll let you in on a secret. I can do this because, frankly, you can't act on your newly acquired knowledge. You're economically stunted, abnormally poorly educated, unusually poverty-stricken and unhealthy as all get-out.

We can piss on your erstwhile largest city, and we can crap on your seafood industry with the tons and tons of chemical fertilizers we dump into the watershed to grow more corn that will go not into hungry people's stomachs but, instead, into more ethanol that will go into our SUVs' gas tanks.

Who are we? We are the Death Star.

Bye, suckas.

WE NORMALLY AREN'T so forthright about any of this. It's bad for bidness. But since your John M. Barry unfortunately divulged our proprietary information on the op-ed page of the Los Angeles Times, secrecy doesn't matter anymore.

And, as I noted, what are you bunch of dumb rednecks and coonasses going to do about it, anyway?

See, here's how it works, in a nutshell, as explained by that Barry fella:

To understand the link between the High Plains and Louisiana, one has to understand the Mississippi River system -- which stretches from New York to Idaho and drains 31 states -- and the sediment load the system carries. This sediment load was so great that it changed the nation's geography. Sixty million years ago, the ocean reached north to Cape Girardeau, Mo., but as the sea level fell, the river dropped enough mud into what geologists call the Mississippi Embayment to create all the land from Cape Girardeau to the sea, a total of 35,000 square miles in seven states.

That land-building process created Louisiana's coast, along with barrier islands that provided a buffer protecting populated areas in Louisiana and part of Mississippi's coast.

Human engineering has reversed that process, causing the loss of roughly 2,000 square miles of land since World War II. If this buffer -- equivalent to the state of Delaware -- had not been destroyed, New Orleans would need little other hurricane protection.

Numerous man-made actions have caused the land loss, but the most important, yet least recognized, may be the decline of sediment in the river. Dams built to provide electricity, irrigation and flood protection in the Upper Midwest and High Plains are largely responsible for the decline; sediment level is now only 30% to 40% of the natural amount. A particular problem has been a series of dams on the upper Missouri River beginning above Bismarck, N.D., and ending above Yankton, S.D. Historically, roughly half of the total sediment load in the Mississippi River came from the upper Missouri, but the dams trapped that sediment upstream. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, since the dams' construction in the 1950s, "the discharge of sediment from the upper Missouri River basin virtually was stopped."

Without this sediment, Louisiana began losing land. Other contributors to the land loss include energy production. About 30% of the nation's domestic oil and gas production comes from Louisiana, which has benefited the entire country. But the industry dredged 10,000 miles of canals through Louisiana's marsh, bringing in saltwater, which killed it. Another factor is the manipulation of sediment for shipping; this too has benefited the national economy by turning cities such as Tulsa and Pittsburgh into ports with direct access to the ocean.

IN SHORT, because of the Missouri River dams, we get cheap electricity and Omaha doesn't have to worry about catastrophic floods on the Not-So-Muddy-Anymore Mo . . . like the one we oh-so-narrowly staved off in 1952 with miles of sandbags and the blood, sweat and tears of thousands. Likewise, we get water for irrigation to grow the corn that goes in our gas tanks and to help wash that fertilizer down the watershed to the Gulf -- to kill your fish.

We also get great fishing and watersports on all those reservoirs up here, and lots of fine camping around them. Just check out the outdoors pages of our newspapers if you don't believe me. All in all, the damming of the Missouri River -- and its sediment flow -- has been a pretty good deal for us, which is why Congress authorized it during World War II.

SO . . . what has Louisiana gotten out of the deal? Besides screwed, that is.

Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

Sucks to be you. In, oh, so many ways.Too bad, so sad. We're doing fine here on the Death Star, though. "Bobby JIN-dalllll . . . come to the Dark Side, Bobby Jindal!"

OK, I keed, I keed. Seriously, though . . . don't send us any of those hoardes of refugees running north when their towns start to go under the waves, one by one. We can't comprende their lingo, and they're just not that well suited for our info-tech economy, capiche?

We do like your colorful musicians and baseball fans, however. They're quaint and interesting, in an anthropological kind of way.

Well, it's late and I really must run. Every day is a busy day on the Death Star, and we're not even half done blowing your state to Kingdom Come. I can't say "See you later," because -- well -- we won't.

In that light, I'll just close by wishing you well wherever you end up -- so long as it's not here -- and will simply say . . . "So long, it's been good to know 'ya!"