John is manufacturing a complaint about ad hominems, huh? Better give that crocodile a hanky. :rolleyes:
Not really guru. A 5 min search turned up this:
How accurate it is I don’t know, but it seems to be saying that Nixon’s approval rating was 24% when he left office. So…I have to question that figure being tossed around all over that Bush is lower than Nixon. Maybe they mean he’s lower than Nixon was at a certain time in his presidency. Maybe they are just full of shit, manipulating the data to make their point (‘Look look! Bush is more unpopular than Nixon!’). I don’t know.
How is it not zero? Has it been a factor in any other impeachment? Should be easy enough to check historically I’d think.
So I can throw it at you? 
-XT
Bingo. If you’d read any of the information you’d been given, you’d know that already.
You must not have read any of that discussion, either.
Do make an effort here, okay?
Since I don’t have a ton of time to do reseach about the levee question, I’ll just post some things from the Factcheck article I read earlier. It doesn’t go into how much money it would have taken to get the levee system up to a CAT 5 rating…but it addresses the money that was allocated, and what it was going to do for the system.
Ok, so the funding was cut…we all knew that. But what was that funding for exactly?
This seems to imply that the project was to fix or repair the levee system up to CAT 3…which would have been inadiquate reguardless as it was a CAT 4-5 storm.
I did find a brief mention of what it would take to get the system up to CAT 4 or 5, but haven’t had time to read through the whole thing (they claim 2-3 billion…thats far short of what they were saying on the show I watched last night. No idea who is right on this right now). I’ll post it anyway:
-XT
Here’s one cite that describes the $14 billion plan in more detail.
I have no idea what dollar figures have been discussed regarding getting the levees up to withstand a Category 5 hurricane. Since you have some apparent familiarity with the issue, could you please provide your own citations.
You can always go to www.pollingreport.com, or directly to the Bush Job Approval page to see what is going on in the polls. Rather than being “all over the place,” they are banded pretty tightly between 38% and 42%, and all heading south.
I said a near majority, and here’s the results of the Zogby poll I was talking about:
I also made very clear in my post that I don’t expect him to be impeached until there is enough heat to make Republicans uncomfortable, and that I don’t suspect this will happen. Folks like you seem quite content with Bush no matter what he does.
Be honest. You don’t really just play devil’s advocate, because you never advocate against the conservative or Bush defending position. You thus are someone who takes up in defense of Bush just to be doing it (i.e. not based on any real knowledge or information). One then has to work fairly hard to work through arguments you’ve proposed on a whim, and you show no lasting changes as a result. For instance, you agreed that the Bush administration lied about justifications for Iraq, but extend them every iota of credibility regarding their claims about disaster preparation regarding Katrina. It has everything to do with this debate or any other. Since I feel strongly about these topics, it really means “nada” to me to work to convince someone who is whimsical about the issues.
Interesting…lets see what I was responding too.
Nixon’s bottom…reaching Nixon’s bottom. Were you refering to Nixon’s ass, or the bottom of his ratings? There is no qualifier here saing ‘Nixon’s bottom rating at a certain point in his presidency’. Maybe I missed your qualifier? This SEEMS (to me granted) to be saying that Bush is reaching the low point of Nixon’s presidency…which seems to be the ‘24%’ approval rating when Nixon left office. Maybe you meant that you project Bush’s ratings to BE that when HE leaves? Because frankly I can’t twist enough to see how you can make this work otherwise considering the second quote.
Ok, fair enough, though ‘all over the place’ was just a turn of phrase…wasn’t implying anything with that. 38%-42% is probably with the MoE, depending what that is.
Folks like me, ehe? Were I content with the man I’d have voted for him. I used to have a higher opinion of you Hentor…now I wonder why.
Bullshit. I have been against any number of ‘conservative’ positions…and have blasted Bush when he deserved it. Just because I don’t agree with you on THIS issue (or, more to the point, just because I’m not going to jump on the Bush Bash train as it left the station 2 hours after the dikes broke) you want to spout this bullshit. ‘You Bush lover!’ seems to be the extent of your debating abilities Hentor…at least, recently. You USED to be must more interesting.
As to extending Bush ever iota of credibility about this disaster, thats bullshit too. I notice you never came back and addressed the points (which turned out to be true btw) I made in your pit thread…not once it was clear things weren’t going your way. What I’ve done on this issue is try and hold back to make an informed decision…instead of jumping to my feet and beating my chest that its all Bush’s fault, blah blah blah blah blah.
Oh, whats the use? Who is John Galt…?
-XT
Well, then, I apologize, but I just have not seen it. In fact, I can only think of instances of mindless Bush defending on your part. If it’s important, perhaps you can cite examples of your having done otherwise. Maybe a different thread would be more appropriate.
You mean where it turned out that the Bush administration did actually recruit specialized firefighters to hand out leaflets? Oh yeah, I see. I was wrong to propose that they did so inadvertently and that Mary Hudak was covering up with spin afterwards. I fully acknowledge I was wrong, and that in actuality, they fully intended from the outset to recruit firefighters to hand out leaflets after giving them a day’s training in sexual harrassment and equal opportunity employment practices. Boy, how embarrassing to be proven wrong in my belief that it was a mistake, rather than a purposeful incompetent fuck-up. :o
Now, weren’t you claiming that they sent out a general request and were getting all kinds of administrators and secretaries as well as firefighters? Were you really proven correct on that?
I think you’ve known all along, and have just been playing devil’s advocate.
Just to note that, yes Virgina, this is another exaggerated smear from the apologists:
Also note that Mayor Nagin did use what busses were available to evacuate residents:
Certainly a different thread would probably be more appropriate. I can tell you that my positions on things like gun control, abortion (most of the quasi-religious bullshit from that branch of conservativism in fact)…even things like legalization of drugs and prostitution…are at complete odds with many ‘conservatives’. As for Bush I’ve blasted him on thing like trade, deficit spending and increasing the size and scope of the government, Iraq…and I’m not giving him a pass on this storm either. I’m just not willing to blindly heap all or even most of the blame on his scrawny little shoulders.
Yes, that one. You seem to have forgotten what points I was making…and your usual (lately) knee jerk response of ‘Bush lover’ without actually trying to take in what I was getting at.
Yep, I was claiming that…and I was big enough IN THE THREAD to acknowledge that I was full of shit on that point. Since I was also freely admitting I was merely speculating and trying to pose some questions to look more critically at the issue, it stung when you jumped in with your Bush lover BS. Its like one can’t even look critically at something if it might put a more favorable light on Bush’s (or in this case FEMA’s…a distinction lost on many) actions without the knee jerk reaction.
Ha! Well, whatever else you are Hentor or may be, you are certainly a droll fellow.
-XT
I’m confused. Did the Mayor use the school buses (whether 400 or 2,000) or not. What I’m reading in your post and elsewhere seems to say:
1)school buses are part of the city’s bus fleet
2)the Mayor used some buses (undefined) to evacuate some residents
3)therefore, the charge that the Mayor didn’t use the school buses is false
I’ve seen some NO city officials use the same logic. From what I’ve heard and read it seems that what happened is that the Mayor did use city buses to evacuate some people, but not the school buses. That they did, in fact, just sit there. But that doesn’t seem right either. I mean, they were using buses to evacuate people, so why didn’t they use them as well. There were certainly many people who weren’t evacuated. Did they all stay by choice? Did the evacuation by bus have to stop because of the whether? Were the school buses being used in conjunction with the city’s public buses?
Anyone have a timeline regarding the evacuation by bus. Maybe that’ll help clear things up.
I’m not sure why the school busses weren’t also used (lack of drivers?), but my understanding is that even using the entire fleet of 700 city and school busses would not have been enough to evacuate the folks who were stranded. To quote from the abovelinked article,
In any event, the notion that Mayor Nagin twiddled his thumbs while “2,000 busses” sat idle is a gross distortion of the facts.
You are correct in that it wouldn’t have been enough to evacuate everyone - assuming that the contraflow order was in place (i.e., not allowing vehicles to return once out of parish limits).
Commandeering those busses would have been easy enough to do. But that fact overlooks the realities of the rest of the ‘plan’.
-
There was no active list of qualified drivers for those busses.
-
There were not active (i.e. pre-storm) shelters outside parish limits ready and waiting to bring that number of people to.
-
No provisions in the ‘plan’ for medical needs of passengers.
That there was a ‘plan’, in writing, is not enough. Based on what I’ve read of that plan, there was no way it could be implemented without additional assistance and/or resources (assumably on a federal level, since it would involve multi-state cooperation).
The local and state govt knew the plan was not fully implementable as written. But so did the Feds.
Under those conditions, how would you portion out the blame?
Just out of curiousity - is there any major city in the US that has the resources and jurisdictional power to evacuate the entire population in that time-frame without federal assistance? Think about it.
You didn’t look critically at anything. You didn’t do your homework. You posted speculation when the facts were, in fact, available to you. When someone who *did * do their homework, and *did * have the appropriate facts available, provided them to you, you chose to pout about Bush-bashing. No, friend, what you’re seeing is simply finding presenting the facts and drawing the only reasonable conclusion. That’s how it works. Anyone, not limited to you, who acts as irresponsibly as you have here merits only derision. Clear now?
I’m sure you know damn well what the point is about Bush’s public support and the appropriate criteria for his removal. If you were able to address that issue responsibly, you no doubt would have done so by now.
How many other major cities would have the *need * to evacuate their entire populations for any reasonably-foreseeable reason? The one under sea level, protected only by fragile levees, is obviously one, but we only have one of those. What other cities and reasons did you have in mind?
Horseshit. Go back and read the other thread. When I was posting there WEREN’T any ‘facts’…and no ‘homework’ to do. Because it was hot off the presses and no one knew the details. Didn’t stop the immediate howls from guys like you though. We were ALL speculating in the beginning. When someone DID bring in a fact that contridicted my speculations (wasn’t YOU of course…ironic that you would call me on such a thing though I doubt you see the irony) I retracted that part. Much of the rest of what I was speculating was borne out by folks doing their ‘homework’. As for the Bush-Bashing…yeah, I mentioned it. Was kind of hard to miss, since there were floods of the same crapola all over the board…and every post before mine was an uncritical kumbya circle jerk.
But I grow bored with this Elvis. You simply aren’t worth the bother.
-XT
Good question.
Apart from hurricanes? Earthquakes? Nuclear attack? Some other natural or terroristic attack I didn’t mention specifically?
Just what are we paying Homeland Security for?
My point was, it is probably not within the local govt’s jurisdiction to facilitate a total evacuation of a major city without state or federal assistance.
Do you disagree with that?
New Orleans bus update, courtesy of the Boston Globe: On Sunday, the day before the storm, the Louisiana National Guard asked FEMA for 700 buses to evacuate people. It received only 100.
That is a factoid devoid of context and therefore of little use.
How many buses does FEMA own? I’d be surprised (and disapointed) if FEMA owned thousands of buses stationed throughout the country. How long should it take to relocate 700 buses from who-knows-where? 24 hours? Unlikely.
We know there were hundreds of buses owned by NOLA that sat in a flooded lot. No one moved them to higher ground. I saw an interview with Naigin asking him what happened. His response (paraphrased, alhtough I might have it exactly right): “That’s a question for someone else to answer”.
This quite nicely side-steps my previous post, doesn’t it?
-
Who should have stepped up to drive those busses out, knowing they could not return (to save their own families, or whatever)
-
If those busses had been commandeered, and driven out of parish limits, where would/should they have taken those people?
I’m still waiting for answers to these questions.
No, you’re absolutely right.
'Bout time you started providing some facts and context yourself then, huh?
John Mace, a bit upthread you claimed that there had not been a second terrorist attack against the United States since September 11. You were mistaken. There was a little dust-up involving some anthrax in late 2001. Nobody has been brought to justice for that one, either.
Bush delenda est.