• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Vacation or not, a hurting Louisiana needs you now, President Obama

To be fair a lot of people and agencies learned a lot from Katrina and Sandy.
 
apdst said:
Blanco screwed the pooch. She lied about most of those requests, because she was trying to get re-elected.

Again, Katrina presented challenges that had never been encountered.

But, let's ignore the facts.
Click to expand...
Her office turned over 100,000 pages of documents that confirms her role after the storm.

Even at the time the claim was made, it was disproven.

And other FEMA chiefs, facing similar unprecedented situations -- such as a massive hurricane hitting New York City, turning off the electricity to 1/3 of Manhattan and almost every river crossing -- did not screw up anywhere near as badly.

You're welcome to continue ignoring the facts. I'm going to keep paying attention to them.
 
apdst said:
Sandy wasn't **** compared to Katrina and it was after Katrina.
Click to expand...
Or, not.

Sandy was the 2nd costliest US hurricane after Katrina. Both were very large storms. Sandy hit highly populated areas, notably the DC-NYC corridor, and 24 states in total were affected. There should be no question that the complexity of the logistics for responding to Sandy was equally complex as Katrina -- if not more so, due to it hitting highly dense urban and suburban areas.

Katrina caused more deaths and destroyed more homes, but a substantial reason for that was the lack of preparation... and the deeply inadequate response. Sandy did not take anywhere near as many lives, despite knocking out power to about 1/3 of Manhattan for a few weeks, because the response -- including the federal response -- was on the ball.

Keep in mind that despite large sections of NYC losing power, and having most of the routes into NYC cut off, there was nothing comparable to the disasters at the Superdome and Convention Center. Fugate wasn't finding out about masses of storm refugees camping out at Madison Square Garden from a news anchor. He didn't blame Homeland and Obama and Cuomo and Christie for things going wrong. Instead, he was proactively working with state officials, getting liaison officers on the ground, and caching supplies close to areas where they expected impact.

By the way: Brown, who had already largely discredited himself by then, criticized Fugate the day before Sandy because... yep, FEMA was placing supplies and prep in advance. Showing yet again that Brown was never fit for the job.

So again: You're welcome to continue ignoring the facts. I'm going to keep paying attention to them.
 
Visbek said:
Or, not.

Sandy was the 2nd costliest US hurricane after Katrina. Both were very large storms. Sandy hit highly populated areas, notably the DC-NYC corridor, and 24 states in total were affected. There should be no question that the complexity of the logistics for responding to Sandy was equally complex as Katrina -- if not more so, due to it hitting highly dense urban and suburban areas.

Katrina caused more deaths and destroyed more homes, but a substantial reason for that was the lack of preparation... and the deeply inadequate response. Sandy did not take anywhere near as many lives, despite knocking out power to about 1/3 of Manhattan for a few weeks, because the response -- including the federal response -- was on the ball.

Keep in mind that despite large sections of NYC losing power, and having most of the routes into NYC cut off, there was nothing comparable to the disasters at the Superdome and Convention Center. Fugate wasn't finding out about masses of storm refugees camping out at Madison Square Garden from a news anchor. He didn't blame Homeland and Obama and Cuomo and Christie for things going wrong. Instead, he was proactively working with state officials, getting liaison officers on the ground, and caching supplies close to areas where they expected impact.

By the way: Brown, who had already largely discredited himself by then, criticized Fugate the day before Sandy because... yep, FEMA was placing supplies and prep in advance. Showing yet again that Brown was never fit for the job.

So again: You're welcome to continue ignoring the facts. I'm going to keep paying attention to them.
Click to expand...

Right. Behind Katrina. I rest my case.
 
Visbek said:
Her office turned over 100,000 pages of documents that confirms her role after the storm.

Even at the time the claim was made, it was disproven.

And other FEMA chiefs, facing similar unprecedented situations -- such as a massive hurricane hitting New York City, turning off the electricity to 1/3 of Manhattan and almost every river crossing -- did not screw up anywhere near as badly.

You're welcome to continue ignoring the facts. I'm going to keep paying attention to them.
Click to expand...

Most of it was bull****, too.
 
Anybody playing the "Obama played fiddle while Louisiana drowned," card is sadly misinformed.

I'm not even going to TRY to enlighten them. I give up on that a long time ago.

Now I just SMH and watch them wallow in their ignorance. It's to the point that these ignorant people have become insignificant to me. You can only lead a horese to water so many times before you just give up the ghost.
 
Visbek said:
Thanks for conceding 90% of my comments.

Anyway, you sure you want to go there? OK.

Bush never begged Blanco for federal assistance. She was begging the White House for everything they had, including asking for 40,000 troops the day after landfall. In return, the Bush administration (notably, Karl Rove) was hammering (not "begging") Blanco repeatedly to federalize the effort, which would basically turn standard disaster protocols on their head. The normal modus operandi is for state and local authorities to handle things, and for federal authorities to provide resources and coordination. The Chief of the National Guard told Blanco "You don't want to do that. You lose control, and you don't get one more boot on the ground."

And as I wrote elsewhere in this thread (slightly expanded):

New Mexico was ready to send 200 National Guards right away; Washington didn't authorize it for 5 days. Hundreds of volunteer firefighters were sent to Atlanta for 2 days, to receive sexual harassment and "history of FEMA" training before being sent on. This was typical of the response; cities and states were offering resources, and ignored or rebuffed. FEMA turned away water offered by Walmart, fuel offered by the Coast Guard, civilian pilots offering to transport people stuck in hospitals, Amtrak's offer to help with the evacuation, US Forest Service with another water transport, offers of medicine and communications equipment. They redirected shipments of ice away from the disaster area.

Cheney personally directed electrical crews to redirect power to a pipeline; those crews, by the way, were trying to restore power to 2 local hospitals.

Michael Brown, head of FEMA at that time, was basically an incompetent crony of Bush. He had absolutely no emergency management experience, and prior to being head of FEMA he was a commissioner for some Arabian horse organization. (In contrast, Obama's pick, who had non-partisan support, has worked in emergency management since 1987.) He apparently expended more effort excusing his disastrous performance, and blaming everyone else (including Homeland Security and the White House) than he apparently spent on the effort itself. E.g. He told a bunch of students that the Bush administration deliberately wanted to embarrass Blanco because she was a Democrat, and they wanted to rub her face in it.

Brown didn't know there were people in the Convention Center for 3 days after the storm. He found out by Brian Williams asking him about it.

What was Bush's response, to Brown screwing the pooch? On September 2, Bush publicly praising him, saying "Heckuva job, Brownie." "Brownie" quit 10 days later.

But hey, maybe you're right, maybe they were taking it seriously. In which case, they were simply guilty of utter incompetence, which thoroughly compounded the misery and destruction from the hurricane, and the local lack of preparation for its aftermath.
Click to expand...

I doubt serious what Brown says there, because that's not the kind of man Bush is. He never did that kind of **** while in office for 8 years. Brown is a liar, if he said that.

Stop Blaming Me for Hurricane Katrina - POLITICO Magazine
 
American said:
I doubt serious what Brown says there, because that's not the kind of man Bush is. He never did that kind of **** while in office for 8 years. Brown is a liar, if he said that.

Stop Blaming Me for Hurricane Katrina - POLITICO Magazine
Click to expand...

I fully understand your reluctance to believe Brown would say something like that, as it's pretty egregious. Unfortunately, it happens to be true.

Brown: Politics Played Role in Katrina - washingtonpost.com

"Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking, 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,'" he said, without naming names. "'We can't do it to Haley (Barbour) because Haley's a white male Republican governor. And we can't do a thing to him. So we're just gonna federalize Louisiana.'"


As to his article in Politico, I read it when it came out, and basically it's an attempt to blame everyone except himself for the outcomes. I don't think he was as much lying, as engaging in the normal human practice of shifting blame. He takes very little responsibility for the outcomes, while making sure to blast Nagin, Blanco, Chertoff, Bush, Anderson Cooper, TIME, Congress, lack of sleep.... Although he may take more of the blame than he deserves, it seems almost delusional for him to refuse to take any responsibility.
 
Visbek said:
I fully understand your reluctance to believe Brown would say something like that, as it's pretty egregious. Unfortunately, it happens to be true.

Brown: Politics Played Role in Katrina - washingtonpost.com

"Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking, 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,'" he said, without naming names. "'We can't do it to Haley (Barbour) because Haley's a white male Republican governor. And we can't do a thing to him. So we're just gonna federalize Louisiana.'"


As to his article in Politico, I read it when it came out, and basically it's an attempt to blame everyone except himself for the outcomes. I don't think he was as much lying, as engaging in the normal human practice of shifting blame. He takes very little responsibility for the outcomes, while making sure to blast Nagin, Blanco, Chertoff, Bush, Anderson Cooper, TIME, Congress, lack of sleep.... Although he may take more of the blame than he deserves, it seems almost delusional for him to refuse to take any responsibility.
Click to expand...

"Certain people in the White House", and so you make this certain people Bush. Nice try.
 
Captain America said:
Anybody playing the "Obama played fiddle while Louisiana drowned," card is sadly misinformed.

I'm not even going to TRY to enlighten them. I give up on that a long time ago.

Now I just SMH and watch them wallow in their ignorance. It's to the point that these ignorant people have become insignificant to me. You can only lead a horese to water so many times before you just give up the ghost.
Click to expand...

And can certainly understand your unwillingness to "enlighten them".

If the liberals had to accept responsibility for anything they'd be doomed. So far, they haven't accepted responsibility for anything. Amazing how it keeps working.
 
apdst said:
LMAO...at no time did the FBI say there were, "terrorists in flight school", and you damn well know it.
Click to expand...


ap, I posted a blurb from the 9-11 commission. You've simply invented a special (and secret) definition of words for that post. Here's the blurb again, please fill in the special definitions you are using

the “possibility of a coordinated effort by Usama Bin Ladin” to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools. The agent based his theory on the “inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest” attending such schools in Arizona.

and fyi, that was the first FBI report of TERRORISTS IN FLIGHT SCHOOLS
 
Vern said:
ap, I posted a blurb from the 9-11 commission. You've simply invented a special (and secret) definition of words for that post. Here's the blurb again, please fill in the special definitions you are using

the “possibility of a coordinated effort by Usama Bin Ladin” to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools. The agent based his theory on the “inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest” attending such schools in Arizona.

and fyi, that was the first FBI report of TERRORISTS IN FLIGHT SCHOOLS
Click to expand...

If the FBI knew there were terrorists in The United States, why didn't they arrest them?
 
apdst said:
If the FBI knew there were terrorists in The United States, why didn't they arrest them?
Click to expand...

ap, I've proven the FBI did indeed report TERRORISTS IN FLIGHT SCHOOLS. Your deflecting question doesn't change that fact so don't pretend otherwise. Instead of flailing at reality, the question you should ask why the Bush administration ignored that report of TERRORISTS IN FLIGHT SCHOOLS. anyhoo, here's the second report of TERRORISTS IN FLIGHT SCHOOLS (also from the 911 commission)

There was substantial disagreement between Minneapolis agents and FBI headquarters as to what Moussaoui was planning to do. In one conversation between a Minneapolis supervisor and a headquarters agent, the latter complained that Minneapolis’s FISA request was couched in a manner intended to get people “spun up.” The supervisor replied that was precisely his intent. He said he was “trying to keep someone from taking a plane and crashing into the World Trade Center.” The headquarters agent replied that this was not going to happen and that they did not know if Moussaoui was a terrorist

the Minneapolis FBI was enraged to find out that the person "arguing" with them failed to mention the Phoenix report and they said he sabotaged their search warrant request. Again, deflecting questions don't change the facts.
 
Patrickt said:
And can certainly understand your unwillingness to "enlighten them".

If the liberals had to accept responsibility for anything they'd be doomed. So far, they haven't accepted responsibility for anything. Amazing how it keeps working.
Click to expand...

What are liberals supposed to be taking the blame for this time? I can't keep track of the projection anymore.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom