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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2018 5:38:43 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2018 14:47:31 GMT -5
"I think that Puerto Rico was an incredible, unsung success."
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RusskyHoya
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by RusskyHoya on Sept 11, 2018 18:35:47 GMT -5
*Sigh* I see this thread is back in action. Fun times. I am firmly a liberal and partisan Democrat, but I'd also like to think that my foremost commitment is to the facts as best we can get at them, which is why so many discussions of this topic from my ideological fellow travelers fills me with cringe. More than just being not particularly well-informed, though, I see many lines of argument that I'm afraid are actively counterproductive and will come back to haunt future Democratic administrations. Let's take, for example, this comment: The notion that 3,000 Americans died because the U.S. government "allowed" it presupposes that the U.S. government has to ability to prevent any and all deaths from natural (and other?) disasters. There's no remotely realistic hypothetical in which this is true, and anyone who thinks otherwise is setting themselves up for repeat shocks as these kinds of events get worse and worse due to climate change and continued development in high-hazard areas. The vast majority of deaths during Hurricane Katrina were caused not by some failure to achieve reasonable expectations of performance on the part of responders (Federal, state, or local), but rather failures in infrastructure - most notably levees - that had accrued over many years. Similarly, the vast majority of deaths that can be attributed to Maria were the direct results of decades of disinvestment in infrastructure, be it the power grid, transportation, communications, emergency management, or public health. That disinvestment can be directly linked to a continuing legacy of neglectful and negligent policy that can rightfully be called colonialist and racist. Those conditions were set long before Inauguration Day 2017, and there is zero reason to believe they would have been meaningfully different had the Presidential election turned out differently. The reality is that our national emergency management system was stretched to its limits like never before with the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season (and simultaneous California wildfires). Would more Puerto Ricans or Texans still be alive today if it were functioning at the utmost possible level? Undoubtedly yes, and both GAO's report and FEMA's own After Action Report on the matter provide details of what could have functioned better within the current system. But how many would have seen their lives prolonged - remember, many of those whose deaths are attributed to Maria were chronically or even terminally ill, and the deprivation caused by the storm is what hastened their deaths and caused the spike in deaths within the post-storm period - is an unknowable hypothetical. Even a well-functioning system, with the best of leadership (again, whether Federal, state, or local), would have seen several hundred fatalities at the very lowest, and more likely it would have been a number much closer to the real one... which is itself not perfectly knowable. This is an extremely important point to understand because the day will come when it is a Democratic president in office, faced with hundreds or thousands of fatalities despite the best and most valiant efforts of countless officials, volunteers, and survivors. And if the public does not have an honest and unblinkered understanding of what our emergency management system can and cannot do as it is currently constructed, then the assumption will be that the people in charge of the system failed, rather than the system not being up to the task. Especially because there is nothing like an agreed upon standard for whether a particular incident was managed successfully or not - it is almost entirely a matter of public perception, whether the public thinks its government did a good job. Unfortunately, we are living in a time of partisan polarization when many seem incapable of finding success in the performance of their rivals...or fault in the performance of loyal members of their own tribe. Think about how many dutifully pulled the level for Roy Moore). In a world where we need our civic institutions to be stronger, this is a recipe for the exact opposite. Especially if, as a liberal, you put more faith in public institutions and are more skeptical of private ones. It's easy and tempting for those on the left to pin all the blame on Trump, because as Secretary Mattis put it, he has the intellectual acumen - not to mention maturity and attention span - of a "fifth- or sixth-grader." He is grossly incapable of executing the duties of his office, or practically any other office that requires its occupant to be an independently-functioning adult. But the President is nowhere to be found in the operational doctrine for incident management in the United States. The system requires nothing of him or her to work as designed. Yes, Trump by himself creates multiple negative marks on the "did the government succeed?" test because of his narcissism, lack of empathy, and dearth of tact, but none of those things should have any bearing on how the many thousands of people involved in the emergency management system perform. It should not - and I would argue with very few exceptions does not - cause a single excess death. "I think that Puerto Rico was an incredible, unsung success." The issue with the mentality this betrays is not that the response to Maria in Puerto Rico was an incredible, unsung success. It was not. The problem is that a death toll of 2,975 is not by itself evidence of success or failure either way. Believing that the only required fix is replacing Trump with a non-cretin and various political appointees with non-Republicans is self-delusion that only holds the country back from making the very many, very hard choices we will have to make if we want to get to the point where thousands of deaths from a natural disaster is actually unthinkable. Because we are not anywhere remotely close to that now, nor were we even in the 'golden era' of James Lee Witt as a FEMA Director with Cabinet-level rank.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2018 20:05:24 GMT -5
*Sigh* I see this thread is back in action. Fun times. I am firmly a liberal and partisan Democrat, but I'd also like to think that my foremost commitment is to the facts as best we can get at them, which is why so many discussions of this topic from my ideological fellow travelers fills me with cringe. More than just being not particularly well-informed, though, I see many lines of argument that I'm afraid are actively counterproductive and will come back to haunt future Democratic administrations. Let's take, for example, this comment: The notion that 3,000 Americans died because the U.S. government "allowed" it presupposes that the U.S. government has to ability to prevent any and all deaths from natural (and other?) disasters. There's no remotely realistic hypothetical in which this is true, and anyone who thinks otherwise is setting themselves up for repeat shocks as these kinds of events get worse and worse due to climate change and continued development in high-hazard areas. The vast majority of deaths during Hurricane Katrina were caused not by some failure to achieve reasonable expectations of performance on the part of responders (Federal, state, or local), but rather failures in infrastructure - most notably levees - that had accrued over many years. Similarly, the vast majority of deaths that can be attributed to Maria were the direct results of decades of disinvestment in infrastructure, be it the power grid, transportation, communications, emergency management, or public health. That disinvestment can be directly linked to a continuing legacy of neglectful and negligent policy that can rightfully be called colonialist and racist. Those conditions were set long before Inauguration Day 2017, and there is zero reason to believe they would have been meaningfully different had the Presidential election turned out differently. The reality is that our national emergency management system was stretched to its limits like never before with the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season (and simultaneous California wildfires). Would more Puerto Ricans or Texans still be alive today if it were functioning at the utmost possible level? Undoubtedly yes, and both GAO's report and FEMA's own After Action Report on the matter provide details of what could have functioned better within the current system. But how many would have seen their lives prolonged - remember, many of those whose deaths are attributed to Maria were chronically or even terminally ill, and the deprivation caused by the storm is what hastened their deaths and caused the spike in deaths within the post-storm period - is an unknowable hypothetical. Even a well-functioning system, with the best of leadership (again, whether Federal, state, or local), would have seen several hundred fatalities at the very lowest, and more likely it would have been a number much closer to the real one... which is itself not perfectly knowable. This is an extremely important point to understand because the day will come when it is a Democratic president in office, faced with hundreds or thousands of fatalities despite the best and most valiant efforts of countless officials, volunteers, and survivors. And if the public does not have an honest and unblinkered understanding of what our emergency management system can and cannot do as it is currently constructed, then the assumption will be that the people in charge of the system failed, rather than the system not being up to the task. Especially because there is nothing like an agreed upon standard for whether a particular incident was managed successfully or not - it is almost entirely a matter of public perception, whether the public thinks its government did a good job. Unfortunately, we are living in a time of partisan polarization when many seem incapable of finding success in the performance of their rivals...or fault in the performance of loyal members of their own tribe. Think about how many dutifully pulled the level for Roy Moore). In a world where we need our civic institutions to be stronger, this is a recipe for the exact opposite. Especially if, as a liberal, you put more faith in public institutions and are more skeptical of private ones. It's easy and tempting for those on the left to pin all the blame on Trump, because as Secretary Mattis put it, he has the intellectual acumen - not to mention maturity and attention span - of a "fifth- or sixth-grader." He is grossly incapable of executing the duties of his office, or practically any other office that requires its occupant to be an independently-functioning adult. But the President is nowhere to be found in the operational doctrine for incident management in the United States. The system requires nothing of him or her to work as designed. Yes, Trump by himself creates multiple negative marks on the "did the government succeed?" test because of his narcissism, lack of empathy, and dearth of tact, but none of those things should have any bearing on how the many thousands of people involved in the emergency management system perform. It should not - and I would argue with very few exceptions does not - cause a single excess death. "I think that Puerto Rico was an incredible, unsung success." The issue with the mentality this betrays is not that the response to Maria in Puerto Rico was an incredible, unsung success. It was not. The problem is that a death toll of 2,975 is not by itself evidence of success or failure either way. Believing that the only required fix is replacing Trump with a non-cretin and various political appointees with non-Republicans is self-delusion that only holds the country back from making the very many, very hard choices we will have to make if we want to get to the point where thousands of deaths from a natural disaster is actually unthinkable. Because we are not anywhere remotely close to that now, nor were we even in the 'golden era' of James Lee Witt as a FEMA Director with Cabinet-level rank. *Sigh... That's why you investigate/have hearings so you can figure that out and try to at minimum learn from your mistakes. When you're the captain of the ship, you get the blame... That's how Government works and it's true for literally every other President. People didn't blame some engineer or worker messing up for the Deep Space Horizon, they blamed Obama. Katrina? Bush. The difficulties of those tragedies and the mechanisms that failed were built before they came along, were not a result of their doing, yet the blame fell squarely on their shoulders. That's not unique to Trump. Truman: The Buck Stops Here www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/science/earth/07spill.htmlObviously we're not ignorant and know the Hurricane is responsible for the majority of deaths in this tragedy. But is it true that there aren't certain elements of a recovery effort that can only happen with PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL? Yes. Was the ball dropped initially on some of those things? Yes. Does a President signaling to his people this is a priority have an effect? Yes. That's not blaming Trump for something he didn't do, and that's evidence of some sort of failure that likely cost some people their lives. We don't know how much of an effect it has had because our government is basically pretending like it didn't happen.... Personally I find that offensive, and more important than Chris Hayes' word choice. The reason why people are upset is because there has been NO discussion whatsoever of how to improve on it in our Government or why the discrepancy here... You might have all kinds of knowledge due to your profession, and that's fine. But the majority of Americans don't have that knowledge, and deserve an explanation from their Government on this. If you can have hearings on Conservative bias on Facebook, you can have some on the Hurricane Maria recovery. Don't understand how that is controversial...
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RusskyHoya
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
In Soviet Russia, Hoya Blue Bleeds You!
Posts: 4,596
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Post by RusskyHoya on Sept 11, 2018 22:43:28 GMT -5
*Sigh... That's why you investigate/have hearings so you can figure that out and try to at minimum learn from your mistakes. When you're the captain of the ship, you get the blame... That's how Government works and it's true for literally every other President. People didn't blame some engineer or worker messing up for the Deep Space Horizon, they blamed Obama. Katrina? Bush. The difficulties of those tragedies and the mechanisms that failed were built before they came along, were not a result of their doing, yet the blame fell squarely on their shoulders. That's not unique to Trump. Deep Space Horizon, huh? Does Avery Brooks play Obama in that one? I'd pay to see that! Anyway, Americans' obsession with associating everything - good and bad - on individual leaders is a sign of national immaturity (not to say childishness) that I think has a great deal to do with why we have failed to implement systemic fixes. Blame our Strong Presidential system, our First Past the Post elections, or whatever else you want, but it's something to be fixed, not celebrated. A single point of accountability is a useful management tactic - and it's a great political slogan, as Truman recognized - but it's not a good way to structure effective systems. It's why "single point of failure" is considered a sure sign of a defective system. Obviously we're not ignorant and know the Hurricane is responsible for the majority of deaths in this tragedy. But is it true that there aren't certain elements of a recovery effort that can only happen with PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL? Yes. Was the ball dropped initially on some of those things? Yes. Does a President signaling to his people this is a priority have an effect? Yes. That's not blaming Trump for something he didn't do, and that's evidence of some sort of failure that likely cost some people their lives. We don't know how much of an effect it has had because our government is basically pretending like it didn't happen.... Personally I find that offensive, and more important than Chris Hayes' word choice. Beyond approving the Stafford Act declarations in a timely manner - which was done - the President plays no operational role. The vast majority of declared Federal disasters and emergencies, of which there are dozens per year, happen with exactly zero involvement of the President beyond the signature on the declaration. That is as it should be - you do not want the President doing anything remotely like micromanaging. Or, hell, even macromanaging. Emergency management takes as fundamental the principle that the disaster needs to be managed at the lowest possible level. Our Federal system means that the state-level entity is 'in charge' and the Feds are in a supporting role. This construct permeates all U.S. emergency management doctrine. Most of the details from the articles you cite are great examples of what I mean by a system stretched to its limits. With most staff and pre-existing commodities in Texas and Florida for Harvey and Irma operations, Maria was at the point where everything was most stretched - and it showed. I don't really have time to go into each detail here, but it should be pretty obvious that it's much harder to respond to an incident on an island a significant distance away with limited functioning transportation and housing facilities when all of your resources are already stretched and there are no states nearby to render mutual aid. The emergency management construct that kinda sorta mostly works for the Lower 48 (and more or less for Hawaii and Alaska) simply does not for the insular areas. Period. It's a huge, longstanding gap. The exception is the nonsense about Mike Byrne vs. Alex De La Campa. Craig Fugate, with all due respect to him, was more than happy to completely ignore Puerto Rico for his entire time in office and let Alex manage basically everything related to the island from FEMA's perspective. He has long been deeply trusted by the various PR governors, who relied on him to navigate the Federal bureaucracy (for which they have no voting elected representatives). Mike Byrne is the best in the business at disaster recovery... but he doesn't speak a lick of Spanish and has none of the relationships that Alex does on the island. For those early days, he was the known, trusted face that was the right person for the job. It's telling that the people who try to point to this as a shortcoming and say Byrne should've been there from the get-go then turn around and ignore what Byrne himself says about disaster efforts. The reason why people are upset is because there has been NO discussion whatsoever of how to improve on it in our Government or why the discrepancy here... You might have all kinds of knowledge due to your profession, and that's fine. But the majority of Americans don't have that knowledge, and deserve an explanation from their Government on this. If you can have hearings on Conservative bias on Facebook, you can have one on the Hurricane Maria recovery. Don't understand how that is controversial... If the discussion you're looking for is specifically with respect to the Government, then I would point you to various hearings that *did* take place. Just because Chris Hayes wasn't paying attention to them doesn't mean they didn't happen. Here's all the FEMA sworn testimony from 2017 and 2018 and you can find the video by searching for the titles of the hearings. As just one example, here is the video and complete sworn testimony for Are We Ready? Recovering from 2017 Disasters and Preparing for the 2018 Hurricane Season. Included among the speakers is David Paulison, who was the FEMA director after Brownie and is a Democrat. The sad reality is, of course, that these sorts of hearings and Congressional reports are mostly full of grandstanding and offer little of value. The 9/11 Report, the Iraq WMD Report, etc. - they're all deeply flawed for that reason. I'm sure Congress is good at something, but getting to the bottom of complex issues is decidedly not one of them. Beyond that, I linked previously to the GAO Report, but here's FEMA's After Action Review. It's a type of document that is generally sanitized to avoid blaming individuals, but remains useful for the sort of discussion you're talking about.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2018 1:30:34 GMT -5
*Sigh... That's why you investigate/have hearings so you can figure that out and try to at minimum learn from your mistakes. When you're the captain of the ship, you get the blame... That's how Government works and it's true for literally every other President. People didn't blame some engineer or worker messing up for the Deep Space Horizon, they blamed Obama. Katrina? Bush. The difficulties of those tragedies and the mechanisms that failed were built before they came along, were not a result of their doing, yet the blame fell squarely on their shoulders. That's not unique to Trump. Deep Space Horizon, huh? Does Avery Brooks play Obama in that one? I'd pay to see that! Anyway, Americans' obsession with associating everything - good and bad - on individual leaders is a sign of national immaturity (not to say childishness) that I think has a great deal to do with why we have failed to implement systemic fixes. Blame our Strong Presidential system, our First Past the Post elections, or whatever else you want, but it's something to be fixed, not celebrated. A single point of accountability is a useful management tactic - and it's a great political slogan, as Truman recognized - but it's not a good way to structure effective systems. It's why "single point of failure" is considered a sure sign of a defective system. Obviously we're not ignorant and know the Hurricane is responsible for the majority of deaths in this tragedy. But is it true that there aren't certain elements of a recovery effort that can only happen with PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL? Yes. Was the ball dropped initially on some of those things? Yes. Does a President signaling to his people this is a priority have an effect? Yes. That's not blaming Trump for something he didn't do, and that's evidence of some sort of failure that likely cost some people their lives. We don't know how much of an effect it has had because our government is basically pretending like it didn't happen.... Personally I find that offensive, and more important than Chris Hayes' word choice. Beyond approving the Stafford Act declarations in a timely manner - which was done - the President plays no operational role. The vast majority of declared Federal disasters and emergencies, of which there are dozens per year, happen with exactly zero involvement of the President beyond the signature on the declaration. That is as it should be - you do not want the President doing anything remotely like micromanaging. Or, hell, even macromanaging. Emergency management takes as fundamental the principle that the disaster needs to be managed at the lowest possible level. Our Federal system means that the state-level entity is 'in charge' and the Feds are in a supporting role. This construct permeates all U.S. emergency management doctrine. Most of the details from the articles you cite are great examples of what I mean by a system stretched to its limits. With most staff and pre-existing commodities in Texas and Florida for Harvey and Irma operations, Maria was at the point where everything was most stretched - and it showed. I don't really have time to go into each detail here, but it should be pretty obvious that it's much harder to respond to an incident on an island a significant distance away with limited functioning transportation and housing facilities when all of your resources are already stretched and there are no states nearby to render mutual aid. The emergency management construct that kinda sorta mostly works for the Lower 48 (and more or less for Hawaii and Alaska) simply does not for the insular areas. Period. It's a huge, longstanding gap. The exception is the nonsense about Mike Byrne vs. Alex De La Campa. Craig Fugate, with all due respect to him, was more than happy to completely ignore Puerto Rico for his entire time in office and let Alex manage basically everything related to the island from FEMA's perspective. He has long been deeply trusted by the various PR governors, who relied on him to navigate the Federal bureaucracy (for which they have no voting elected representatives). Mike Byrne is the best in the business at disaster recovery... but he doesn't speak a lick of Spanish and has none of the relationships that Alex does on the island. For those early days, he was the known, trusted face that was the right person for the job. It's telling that the people who try to point to this as a shortcoming and say Byrne should've been there from the get-go then turn around and ignore what Byrne himself says about disaster efforts. The reason why people are upset is because there has been NO discussion whatsoever of how to improve on it in our Government or why the discrepancy here... You might have all kinds of knowledge due to your profession, and that's fine. But the majority of Americans don't have that knowledge, and deserve an explanation from their Government on this. If you can have hearings on Conservative bias on Facebook, you can have one on the Hurricane Maria recovery. Don't understand how that is controversial... If the discussion you're looking for is specifically with respect to the Government, then I would point you to various hearings that *did* take place. Just because Chris Hayes wasn't paying attention to them doesn't mean they didn't happen. Here's all the FEMA sworn testimony from 2017 and 2018 and you can find the video by searching for the titles of the hearings. As just one example, here is the video and complete sworn testimony for Are We Ready? Recovering from 2017 Disasters and Preparing for the 2018 Hurricane Season. Included among the speakers is David Paulison, who was the FEMA director after Brownie and is a Democrat. The sad reality is, of course, that these sorts of hearings and Congressional reports are mostly full of grandstanding and offer little of value. The 9/11 Report, the Iraq WMD Report, etc. - they're all deeply flawed for that reason. I'm sure Congress is good at something, but getting to the bottom of complex issues is decidedly not one of them. Beyond that, I linked previously to the GAO Report, but here's FEMA's After Action Review. It's a type of document that is generally sanitized to avoid blaming individuals, but remains useful for the sort of discussion you're talking about. ....... www.washingtonpost.com/politics/lost-weekend-how-trumps-time-at-his-golf-club-hurt-the-response-to-maria/2017/09/29/ce92ed0a-a522-11e7-8c37-e1d99ad6aa22_story.html?utm_term=.4ffa710acf9fRegardless of effectiveness it says something about priorities imo.. That doesn't sound like a person who is doing all he can. He could have ordered more military resources initially. He could have spent the cabinet meeting 2 days after the storm hit, when he met with the Elaine Duke, discussing a path forward in PR instead of his Muslim Ban. He could have had an official on the scene before day 5 to access the damage. He could have held his first coordinating meeting about the response in Puerto Rico before day 6. He could have spent his time NOT spreading misinformation about the relief effort, like claiming all of the buildings were inspected and safe. He could have waived the Jones act before day 10. There's a lot of people that say that's a mistake, despite you not thinking so. In what scenario do you think Byrne would say De La Campa was the wrong choice? I don't think anybody would expect him to say that in any scenario so not seeing how that's relevant. It doesn't make it true though, thus the reason for more oversight. The fact they changed course pretty quickly seems to suggest otherwise. When you choose to allocate resources to one area over another, and send in the "B team," it shows one area is being prioritized over another. Why that decision was made should be researched, investigated, and answered. As you stated above, Puerto Rico's problems were no secret. The logistical challenges were known beforehand. So why were they so lax initially? It doesn't matter if it's a Republican or Democrat when the death toll is this high there should be a ton of oversight. None of those hearings have come since the death toll was revised to close to 3,000. The Senate's hearing was on Nov 1st 2017, Hayes message was to Senate Leader. No full House hearing. Probably missed the GAO report because it came out last Tuesday, and there's been no hearing on it, but I'll check it out.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2018 8:03:43 GMT -5
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TC
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
Posts: 9,440
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Post by TC on Sept 13, 2018 8:52:47 GMT -5
We're two years into this and Haberman is still copying down whatever libelous claim Trump makes like a stenographer.
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Post by badgerhoya on Sept 13, 2018 13:22:20 GMT -5
"I think I’m never quite unaware that the president of the United States is insanely awful. Like probably most other people, I wear it around at all times, like a sodden and rotting wool sweater, scratchy at my neck and damp in my armpits and always, always, inescapably reeking. But still. Sometimes that awfulness crystallizes itself; sometimes it is like that crystallization has been chopped to a fine powder and blasted up my nose. Holy , man. The worst person alive—the pettiest, smallest, emptiest, most dishonest, most malignant -for-brains you could ever imagine, just an absolute worthless interpretively man-shaped lint clump from the absolute bottom of the human genetic drain—is the president. It’s not like presidents have never before rhetorically erased the preventable mass deaths of innocent people, and their own complicity therein. They certainly have! But there’s a horror particular to the blithe way this senile penny-ante crook rolls out of bed, whips out his goddamn phone, and just straight-up belches it out. How easily he’d feed to the memory hole any number of real whole actual people—their whole lives, their nightmarish early deaths, the monstrous failure of the society he oversees to look after them and help keep them safe—to ease what’s, for him, unburdened as he is by conscience or accountability or decency, no more than an itch on the side of his nose. Not empty thoughts and prayers, not even It wasn’t my fault, but They never existed. They don’t even get to have existed, if what happened to them, how they died, doesn’t gratify Donald Trump." theconcourse.deadspin.com/yep-americas-worst-human-is-still-president-1829025053
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2018 22:35:30 GMT -5
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prhoya
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Post by prhoya on Sept 14, 2018 23:02:51 GMT -5
Someone should tweet back one word: Manafort.
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SSHoya
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
Posts: 18,215
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Post by SSHoya on Sept 15, 2018 11:59:33 GMT -5
The amoral malignant narcissist occupying the WH can't handle the truth. He is divorced from reality. The complicit Republicans who enable and support him are no better. To set the record straight, our study was carried out with no interference whatsoever from any political party or institution. It was based on a careful examination of all of the deaths officially reported to the government of Puerto Rico between September 2017 and February 2018. Our scientists, in collaboration with scientists at the University of Puerto Rico Graduate School of Public Health, used state-of-the-art mathematical modeling to compare the total number of deaths during that time to the expected number of deaths, based on historical patterns as well as age, sex, socioeconomic status and migration from the island. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-calculated-the-deaths-from-hurricane-maria-politics-played-no-role/2018/09/15/2b765b26-b849-11e8-94eb-3bd52dfe917b_story.html?utm_term=.762d00dad6efIn the year since, Trump has mentioned Puerto Rico mostly to compliment himself for his performance, as he did again on Tuesday, describing his government’s response to Maria as “an incredible, unsung success.” His rosy rendition stands in direct contradiction to the opinion of most Puerto Ricans, eighty per cent of whom view his response unfavorably, according to a recent Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll. Over all, the government response, at both the federal and the local levels, is viewed as having been sluggish and inefficient, with inexplicably long delays in reactivating the island’s devastated power grid and in repairing damaged roads and homes. The crisis has also deepened the unemployment problem and accelerated an exodus of people from the island. www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/what-donald-trump-fails-to-recognize-about-hurricanesand-leadership?mbid=nl_Daily%20091518&CNDID=49123534&utm_source=Silverpop&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20091518&utm_content=&spMailingID=14256081&spUserID=MTgzNzEwODU2NDI3S0&spJobID=1481265094&spReportId=MTQ4MTI2NTA5NAS2
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SSHoya
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
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Post by SSHoya on Sept 15, 2018 15:25:03 GMT -5
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2018 11:39:12 GMT -5
Spousal abuse goes through the roof...
Brock Long FEMA Director: "I don't know why the studies were done"
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tashoya
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Post by tashoya on Sept 16, 2018 21:28:08 GMT -5
Mr. Long has a point. If you don't want results that reflect poorly on you, better not to investigate.
Nothing can bring back those that have been lost. All that can be done is to try to improve for the next and, likely, larger and more devastating storms that will come.
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SSHoya
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
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Post by SSHoya on Sept 18, 2018 5:21:07 GMT -5
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hoyarooter
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Member is Online
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Post by hoyarooter on Sept 18, 2018 19:48:07 GMT -5
Just more proof that the fish rots from the head down. Maybe he meant best convicts.
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ksf42001
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
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Post by ksf42001 on Sept 19, 2018 17:59:08 GMT -5
Disclaimer: I know Brock.
If Brock was specifically told "don't do this" and did it anyway, that's on him, and come what may. At the same time, the FEMA administrator should always be able to have secure communications 24/7, which would not be possible if he were driving a personal vehicle. Unfortunately, the law isn't set up that way apparently. After all the various cost/travel scandals in this admin, driving a gov't vehicle 6 hours home is almost quaint by comparison. I'd bet all his trips home combined cost less than Pruitt's $42k phone booth. He's probably wishing he'd gone all out and improperly chartered a plane instead if this will be his downfall. "Spousal abuse" comment (ugh) aside, Brock has been very good in the FEMA administrator role, and there's a reason he's widely respected within FEMA and the EM industry in general. The reason this issue has reached this point is the Nielsen wants to replace him and this is a convenient way of doing it. I wouldn't be surprised if he resigns Florence flooding goes down in the next couple weeks.
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SSHoya
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
Posts: 18,215
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Post by SSHoya on Sept 22, 2018 8:05:16 GMT -5
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2018 11:58:07 GMT -5
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