Is the Louisiana flooding Obama's Katrina?

[Babbylonian]

So what's your take on Obama's decision not to take time out of his vacation to visit Louisiana? Do you think it's just fine and dandy? Do you think you would be criticizing Mitt Romney, if he were President now and doing the same thing?

I think that visits by presidents and presidential candidates are a waste of time and resources in an area where there is a continuing crisis. Best case scenario, it's a feel-good story that makes residents feel like they're cared about (though one would assume that providing needed shelter, consumables, and general financial relief ought to get that message across); worst case scenario, it can jam up an area and slow things down to deal with unnecessary traffic and security because a politician wants a good photo op.

See how I did that? I have an opinion and I can state it. I don't have to play rhetorical games in order to make the issue about "us versus them" like so many of the morons who post on this forum*.

*And then do it anyway because I'm only human.

 

[sunmaster14]

I think that visits by presidents and presidential candidates are a waste of time and resources in an area where there is a continuing crisis. Best case scenario, it's a feel-good story that makes residents feel like they're cared about (though one would assume that providing needed shelter, consumables, and general financial relief ought to get that message across); worst case scenario, it can jam up an area and slow things down to deal with unnecessary traffic and security because a politician wants a good photo op.

Fair enough, but I think a visit by a President increases publicity and attention and can spur the donation of more resources. Not sure if that's net good or net bad for the country as a whole, but I think it would definitely be a net good for the victims of the disaster (despite any resources temporarily diverted for a Presidential visit). You didn't answer my Mitt Romney question though.

See how I did that? I have an opinion and I can state it. I don't have to play rhetorical games in order to make the issue about "us versus them" like so many of the morons who post on this forum*.

*And then do it anyway because I'm only human.

backs away slowly ...

 

[Babbylonian]

You didn't answer my Mitt Romney question though.

Yeah, I did, in the post before last. I don't criticize politicians based on their political affiliation. If I think that a visit to a disaster area by a politician is stupid, then it's stupid whether the politician is a Democrat, Republican, or Communist.

Geez, until the facts came out I supported George DoubleDumb Bush's desire to go to war with Iraq (though I thought and continue to think that he was too dumb to be allowed to be President in the first place). Even now I have a hard time reconciling the fact that Saddam Hussein needed to be gotten rid of with the fact that liars lied to make it happen and it hasn't turned out well at all in the long run.

The world is a complicated place (too complicated to think everything comes down to conservative versus liberal or, worse, Republican versus Democrat) and the sooner all the schmucks who support Donald Trump figure that out, the sooner we can all get comfortable with the fact that the world needs Hillary Clinton to be President since she's the only viable alternative.

 

[TheGoldcountry]

Not sure why it would crack you up, or even strike you as ironic. The people here are uber-informed on current events, relative to the average American. I learned about the scale of the disaster from perusing right-wing news sites, not from the mainstream media. If you want to try to justify your insinuation that the media coverage was adequate, then perhaps you can run some google searches to see. Here's a quote from an article supporting my claim. Note who the speaker is:



ETA: Here is the NY Times Public Editor calling out her newspaper for its lack of coverage:

If your point is that mainstream media pushes a lot of crap, I will agree. But the floods have been reported. Half of the responsibility is on the viewer to find real news. If someone is distracted by the Olympics, or the latest actor/actress breakup/hookup BS, that is on them. The news is there; as the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water....

 

[Craig4]

Were thousands of people left in a stadium, stranded for days? If not, then no, it's not Obama's Katrina.

 

[kookbreaker]

You're strawmanning this a little bit, but I think any objective observer should agree that the optics are jarring, and it's the kind of thing that the media likes to play up for certain kinds of politicians. Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 911 played up the incongruity of Bush denouncing a terrorist attack in Israel (which was not an uncommon event back then, and didn't involve Americans) while on the golf course, and then a few seconds later hitting a golf ball down the fairway. Obama did roughly the same thing after giving a statement on the beheading of an American by ISIS, although there was muted criticism of Obama then. I think the image of Obama golfing on Martha's Vineyard, day after day after day, while 100,000 people have been displaced from their homes - with nowhere near enough shelter available, by the way - is far more jarring than those other two examples.

If Michael Moore is going to be your go-to example, then you cannot complain about strawmen.

The outrages fed on each other.

Gibberish.

Personally, I think that FEMA did as good a job as could be expected,

Dude, you demonstrated here several times that you don't even know what FEMA does. That does not promote confidence that you can assess its effectiveness.

but because of the scale of the disaster, the fact that a hundred Geraldo Riveras were down there documenting the worst problems they could find, and coupled with the media spin on a couple of "perfectly-timed" media fumbles by the administration, it turned into a narrative of criminal negligence. It was anything but.

Resources were wasted, volunteers were routed to useless locations, deliveries of critical foodstuffs were stopped or needlessly delayed. Like I said, even the CATO institute had a laundry list.

First of all, mechanisms that work smoothly for typical disasters can completely breakdown if stressed beyond a certain point. Katrina stressed the system beyond that point. I think if the federal government could have been blamed for anything it was not realizing early enough how dysfunctional the governments of New Orleans and of Louisiana were.

The purpose of the Federal agencies is to be prepared for when local agencies are unable or unwilling to function. At a minimum this means the Federal agencies should not be making things worse.

As I argued in the other thread, FEMA mainly writes checks and coordinates other agencies. They help local first responders prepare plans to handle disasters.

No, in the other thread you flatly stated FEMA was just to hand out funds. I'll quote you so you remember:

Keeping in mind of course that FEMA's main function is to distribute funds, not do evacuation or search and rescue, since those are properly state and local responsibilities.

This would be why I don't consider you reliable to evaluate FEMAs performance.

Those plans existed, by the way, but they were not properly implemented. Ray Nagin, the mayor, delayed the evacuation, and that led to hundreds of thousands of poor people being stranded in low-lying areas.

Besides the point. After the failure to evacuation was evident FEMA and DHS promptly screwed the pooch with rescue and relief efforts. They fumbled and all the apologetics won't change that.

Contrast that with Chris Christie who ordered an evacuation from the New Jersey shore before Hurricane Sandy hit, on pain of arrest.

And as I pointed out to you in that older thread there were still people who did not evacuate, and these are people with much greater resources.

And again, this was besides the point as the major errors with FEMAs handling was after the Hurricane where they effectively hindered efforts for relief and rescue.

The failure to evacuate hundreds of thousands of poor people in New Orleans was the original sin. After that, the most competent and well-funded disaster relief organization in the galaxy would have looked woefully inadequate.

We'll never know. Because we do know that what we had wasted resources, sent relief volunteers to other locations, and was crippled by indecision.

Here's the CATO institute list of failures (by no means a complete one), now I strongly disagree with their conclusions but their list of failures is damning.

I know you desperately, desperately want to blame all of Katrina on the local governments for everything that went wrong with Katrina but that just won't wash.

It's a fact that the relief agencies are pretty much working effectively? Tell me, what exactly have they done so far? Do you have any idea?

What have they done? Their job, that's what. Your precious 2005 FEMA didn't, in fact they made things much, much worse.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

CATO on Katrina
http://www.cato.org/blog/hurricane-katrina-remembering-federal-failures

 

[Travis]

Do we have any examples of disaster relief being completely bungled here yet?

Is the complaint still about how NBC, which paid billions to cover the Olympics, is still covering the Olympics?

 

[Nova Land]

Well, this is another kind of logical fallacy you're deploying - selection bias.

No, it's not.

Selection bias is "the selection of individuals, groups or data for analysis in such a way that proper randomization is not achieved, thereby ensuring that the sample obtained is not representative of the population intended to be analyzed."

Here the data set is your posts. The question is whether you ever say approving things about Barack Obama. If you had posted, say, 70% negative and 25% neutral and 5 % positive things regarding Obama, but I had chosen a method of sampling your posts which selected 100% negative comments in order to portray you as only saying negative things about Obama, that would be selection bias.

But I didn't select any of your posts. I told you my impression was that you seemed to post only to criticize Obama, and offered to let you select counter-examples to demonstrate the falsity of that impression if it were indeed false.

In my post I used both the word praise and the word approval to express the concept of having a non-negative judgment about something Obama says or does:

my impression is that you routinely find things to criticize in Obama and that you rarely if ever find things to praise. I don't recall you ever approving of any significant action Obama has taken or policy Obama has espoused.​

In other words, I'm not asking for instances in which you have written glowing flattery about Obama. I'm aware of numerous cases where you've posted how you think Obama got things wrong; I asked for examples of where you've posted acknowledging Obama got something right. And your reply seems to be that no, you don't post that and you don't see the need to.

No matter whether Obama chooses to visit or not to visit, no matter whether Obama chooses to visit this week or next, any comment you make on the matter (according to you) will be to criticize Obama.

Which essentially confirms the statement Babbylonian made, and you incorrectly said there was no rational basis to believe:

There is no time that you would have found a presidential visit acceptable, at least not for this particular occupier of the office.

Babbylonian is saying that you will only post to say Obama is wrong; you are agreeing that you will only post to say Obama is wrong and will keep quiet rather than say Obama is right.

[M]y main point in this thread was to highlight media bias when it comes to Democratic Presidents, and Obama in particular. I think the mainstream reflexively paints Republican politicians' actions in the worst possible light and Democratic politicians' actions in the best possible light.

Which appears to be exactly what you say you routinely do: reflexively painting one party in the best possible light, reflexively painting the other party in the worst possible light.

Probably not even consciously, but the effect is very real nonetheless.

In your case, yes, it does appear to be very real. And it's the opposite of skepticism.

Skepticism should be about trying to separate what's true from what's false -- not about trying to paint one side as good and the other side as bad regardless of which side is actually right or wrong in a matter.

If you don't like it when you think others are engaging in biased and selective presentation of facts and arguments, I encourage you to stop engaging in it yourself. If you think a person is behaving incorrectly point that out regardless of whether the person is a Republican or a Democrat; and if you think a person is behaving correctly point that out regardless of whether the person is a Republican or a Democrat. Let's try to get at the truth of matters, whether those matters have to do with the paranormal or with politics.

 

[sunmaster14]

If Michael Moore is going to be your go-to example, then you cannot complain about strawmen.

Huh? Where is the strawman there? I wasn't actually complaining about Michael Moore. I was pointing out that such juxtapositions look bad, and can easily be made to look worse.

Gibberish.

Nice Rebuttal.

Dude, you demonstrated here several times that you don't even know what FEMA does. That does not promote confidence that you can assess its effectiveness.

Umm. No, I didn't. In that other thread, I think I had referred people (RandFan in particular) to FEMA's website. IIRC, RandFan ran off in a huff because he was under the misapprehension that FEMA rides to the rescue like the cavalry.

Resources were wasted, volunteers were routed to useless locations, deliveries of critical foodstuffs were stopped or needlessly delayed. Like I said, even the CATO institute had a laundry list.

Well, CATO is pretty much anti-government, so they're happy to point out the problems with centralized control. Those problems have always occurred and always will. During the BP oil spill, plenty of help, including advanced oil skimmers from Norway, was turned away, and non-union workers were turned away as well. But that happened under Obama's watch, so you probably averted your eyes and ears.

The purpose of the Federal agencies is to be prepared for when local agencies are unable or unwilling to function. At a minimum this means the Federal agencies should not be making things worse.

No, that's not the purpose of federal agencies. We live in a federalist system. The federal government is not supposed to usurp the authority and the responsibilities of the states. In fact, Bush had to beg Governor Blanco to give him control of the Louisiana national guard, and it took several days for him to do it.

No, in the other thread you flatly stated FEMA was just to hand out funds. I'll quote you so you remember:

Not sure if you noticed, but my two claims are fully consistent. FEMA's main function is to write checks. That is not their only function, but it's their main one.

This would be why I don't consider you reliable to evaluate FEMAs performance.

Hey, you're welcome to provide evidence that I'm wrong. I don't expect anybody here to take my claims at face value, unless they follow logically from undisputed facts.

Besides the point. After the failure to evacuation was evident FEMA and DHS promptly screwed the pooch with rescue and relief efforts. They fumbled and all the apologetics won't change that.

How many people died because they "screwed the pooch?" Anybody? Arguably some resources were wasted. Arguably ten thousand or so people were inconvenienced more than was reasonably expected, but did the delay in busing people out of the Superdome and Convention Center actually lead to permanent damage? The stories of mass rapes and people dying of hunger and thirst turned out to be wild fabrications.

And sure, you can point to $100 million wasted here and $100 million wasted there, and perhaps $1 billion of waste do to fraud and abuse, but is that abnormal for the federal government? That's the cost of doing business when you get the government involved. Especially when the government is being pushed back on its heels by a hostile media and attacks from the opposition party.

And as I pointed out to you in that older thread there were still people who did not evacuate, and these are people with much greater resources.

And again, this was besides the point as the major errors with FEMAs handling was after the Hurricane where they effectively hindered efforts for relief and rescue.

Whatever. Such things occurred during Hurricane Sandy too, but the media didn't make a big deal out of them. People on Staten Island were homeless for months. Some of my relatives in Central New Jersey were without power for two weeks. Chris Christie's battle against so-called price gougers caused massive shortages of gasoline for weeks. Chris Christie is a Republican, but unfortunately he understands economics like a Democrat and thinks he can repeal the law of supply and demand through executive orders.

We'll never know. Because we do know that what we had wasted resources, sent relief volunteers to other locations, and was crippled by indecision.

Here's the CATO institute list of failures (by no means a complete one), now I strongly disagree with their conclusions but their list of failures is damning.

I know you desperately, desperately want to blame all of Katrina on the local governments for everything that went wrong with Katrina but that just won't wash.

It's ironic that you're accusing me of being desperate. Do you think I really care about defending Brownie or Bush at this point? I seem to be the only one who is calm and composed here.

What have they done? Their job, that's what. Your precious 2005 FEMA didn't, in fact they made things much, much worse.

Dodge noted.

 

[sunmaster14]

No, it's not.

Selection bias is "the selection of individuals, groups or data for analysis in such a way that proper randomization is not achieved, thereby ensuring that the sample obtained is not representative of the population intended to be analyzed."

Here the data set is your posts.

And this is where you have started out with a gross error which makes responding to the rest of your post unnecessary. The data set is my set of beliefs, not my set of posts. And if you read Babbylonian's claim more carefully, you'll see that.

<snip>

Babbylonian is saying that you will only post to say Obama is wrong; you are agreeing that you will only post to say Obama is wrong and will keep quiet rather than say Obama is right.

LOL. Um, no that is not what Babbylonian is saying. He is saying something much stronger than that. I don't have to post my approval here of an Obama action in order to approve of it.

 

[Babbylonian]

And this is where you have started out with a gross error which makes responding to the rest of your post unnecessary. The data set is my set of beliefs, not my set of posts. And if you read Babbylonian's claim more carefully, you'll see that.



LOL. Um, no that is not what Babbylonian is saying. He is saying something much stronger than that. I don't have to post my approval here of an Obama action in order to approve of it.

It's an accurate clarification of what I was saying. What the **** do I care what you believe outside of this forum? Would you prefer that I believe that every one of your posts is a troll?

 

[sunmaster14]

It's an accurate clarification of what I was saying. What the **** do I care what you believe outside of this forum? Would you prefer that I believe that every one of your posts is a troll?

What I believe outside of this forum is precisely what I believe inside of this forum. What I post is what I believe. I don't necessarily post everything I believe. That would be impossible.

How about if you rephrase your claim so that it means exactly what you meant? Then we can examine how reasonable it is and/or how meaningful.

 

[kookbreaker]

Umm. No, I didn't. In that other thread, I think I had referred people (RandFan in particular) to FEMA's website. IIRC, RandFan ran off in a huff because he was under the misapprehension that FEMA rides to the rescue like the cavalry.

Not from what I could see. You were doing apologetics for FEMA's pooch screwing. RandFan may have been off base at times but the major misconceptions were yours.

Well, CATO is pretty much anti-government, so they're happy to point out the problems with centralized control.

Not the point. The point was even they could find a whole list of issues.

Those problems have always occurred and always will.

Not to the extent that happened with Katrina.

During the BP oil spill, plenty of help, including advanced oil skimmers from Norway, was turned away, and non-union workers were turned away as well. But that happened under Obama's watch, so you probably averted your eyes and ears.

Obama was criticized and there were cases where the aid offered would not have been as helpful as efforts already on site. But again the BP spill was no Katrina screwup.

No, that's not the purpose of federal agencies. We live in a federalist system. The federal government is not supposed to usurp the authority and the responsibilities of the states. In fact, Bush had to beg Governor Blanco to give him control of the Louisiana national guard, and it took several days for him to do it.

She had reason to not trust Bush. He failing to return her calls for hours at a time, and really did not think it would help.

[/QUOTE]
Not sure if you noticed, but my two claims are fully consistent. FEMA's main function is to write checks. That is not their only function, but it's their main one.
[/QUOTE]

Their function is also coordination and management, a part you glossed over . That part of their job is not just a footnote. It is a critical part of their job and requires experienced people to operate They screwed the pooch on that during Katrina.

Hey, you're welcome to provide evidence that I'm wrong. I don't expect anybody here to take my claims at face value, unless they follow logically from undisputed facts.

You haven't even done a single thing to support your claims that FEMA was unfairly treated during the Katrina screwups. All you have been able to do is try to point at other disasters with issues and whine that we aren't turning them into Obama's Katrina. Boo-hoo.

How many people died because they "screwed the pooch?" Anybody?

We will never know, we don't even have an exact count of total deaths some 10 years after Katrina.

Arguably some resources were wasted. Arguably ten thousand or so people were inconvenienced more than was reasonably expected, but did the delay in busing people out of the Superdome and Convention Center actually lead to permanent damage?

Delays that should never have happened, and that you describe the suffering at the Superdome as an 'inconvenience' makes it seem like they were just waiting for a late train. Sometimes these folks only had food and water because someone looted some from nearby stores. Meanwhile FEMA was blocking deliveries of water and diesel fuel.

The stories of mass rapes and people dying of hunger and thirst turned out to be wild fabrications.

Food and water supplies were extremely scarce at those sitesand while don't know if anyone died because of it, the total mismanagement of relief effort dragged that process along for far longer than one should have to endure. Keep in mind the guy in charge of FEMA has since stated that people suffering from lack of food, shelter, and electricity should just 'toughen up'.

And sure, you can point to $100 million wasted here and $100 million wasted there, and perhaps $1 billion of waste do to fraud and abuse, but is that abnormal for the federal government? That's the cost of doing business when you get the government involved. Especially when the government is being pushed back on its heels by a hostile media and attacks from the opposition party.

The waste came from supplies that were put too far from the impacted areas, physically prevented from getting to the people who needed it, and other gross mismanagement problems. The cost is pretty much irrelevant.

Whatever. Such things occurred during Hurricane Sandy too, but the media didn't make a big deal out of them.

No. they. did. not. happen.

*NOTHING* on the scale of Katrina screwups happened with Sandy. This list you have simply does not compare:

People on Staten Island were homeless for months.

But they had food, water and shelter in the meantime. Was FEMA actively blocking supplies from the region? Were they rejecting requests from BUs agencies and Amtrak to evacuate people? NO!

Some of my relatives in Central New Jersey were without power for two weeks.

Were they without food and water for several days, uncertain if anyone was ever coming to help?

Chris Christie's battle against so-called price gougers caused massive shortages of gasoline for weeks. Chris Christie is a Republican, but unfortunately he understands economics like a Democrat and thinks he can repeal the law of supply and demand through executive orders.

Does not even come close to comparing to the clustereff of Katrina mismanagement.

There were gas shortages, but most sources blame the lack of working pumps at gas stations (can't pump gas without electricity, only a handful of arch-conservative economists tried blaming anti-gouging legislature

Why am I defending this? A long line at the pump doesn't even compare to when FEMA is blocking food, supplies and evacuation methods to people who don't even know if anyone knows they are there!

It's ironic that you're accusing me of being desperate. Do you think I really care about defending Brownie or Bush at this point? I seem to be the only one who is calm and composed here.

You obviously do because you desperately try to compare these apples and oranges and have stated several times that FEMA in 2005 was 'unfairly maligned'. Between that and the pathetic attempts to equalize incidents after Sandy vs those at Katrina it seems you care a lot about trying to minimize the utter failure of Bush's cronies at Katrina.

Dodge noted.

Several posters in this thread have provided bipartisan quotes about FEMA being on-site from the start. If you can find comparable issues, list them. As it is you are still just showing you ODS.

 

[sunmaster14]

Hey, whaddya know? Now the Governor of Louisiana is saying that Trump's visit was helpful:

Edwards said Trump's visit to the state was positive for Louisiana.

"Because it helped to shine a spotlight on Louisiana and on the dire situation that we have here, that it was helpful," he said.

"I also appreciated the good phone call, the conversation that I had with Gov. [Mike] Pence [R-Ind.], who was sincere and genuine when he called, and we spoke for a long time on Friday morning about their desire to be helpful," he said about Trump's running mate.

I guess maybe the Governor, and perhaps the President, had something to learn from Trump after all.

 

[kookbreaker]

Is it Katrina yet?

 

[Foolmewunz]

Hey, whaddya know? Now the Governor of Louisiana is saying that Trump's visit was helpful:



I guess maybe the Governor, and perhaps the President, had something to learn from Trump after all.

I guess it wouldn't occur to you that YOU might learn something from him, too? Like that perhaps everything really doesn't have to partisan politics and used as an excuse to stick it to the other guy? Go, and sin no more.

 

[sunmaster14]

I guess it wouldn't occur to you that YOU might learn something from him, too? Like that perhaps everything really doesn't have to partisan politics and used as an excuse to stick it to the other guy? Go, and sin no more.

Hey, this thread isn't about sticking it to anyone. It was about double standards. Honestly, I wanted to see if any of Obama's supporters would say, "yeah, you know what, this is some pretty poor politics on the part of Obama. I wish he had gone earlier, or at least not played so much golf." I don't actually think anybody said anything remotely like that here. Pretty pathetic if you ask me.

 

[kookbreaker]

Hey, this thread isn't about sticking it to anyone. It was about double standards. Honestly, I wanted to see if any of Obama's supporters would say, "yeah, you know what, this is some pretty poor politics on the part of Obama. I wish he had gone earlier, or at least not played so much golf." I don't actually think anybody said anything remotely like that here. Pretty pathetic if you ask me.

Pretty pathetic is that you insisted this be compared to one of the biggest clustereffs in emergency response history.

Had you simply said that perhaps Obama could appear to be a bit more pro-active about the flooding then you might have gotten some response.

Instead, you cried "KATRINA! ITS OBAMA'S KATRINA!!!!" and whined when you were schooled on why it was such a bad comparison.

 

[sunmaster14]

No, the comparison to Katrina is apt. Bush was excoriated for far more than the perceived incompetence of the federal government's response. He was excoriated for his perceived indifference or nonchalance, especially because the majority of the victims we were seeing on our TV screens were poor black people, and Bush was a white Republican. Kanye West famously claimed on national TV that Bush didn't care about black people.

Now we have a situation where the majority of the victims are poor white people - rednecks, if you will - and probably Trump supporters. Equivalent treatment would be if Ted Nugent went on national TV and said that Obama doesn't care about white people.

It was that aspect of the Katrina mess that I was focused on.