Trump does not get it, and will never get it, and people die because of that.
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle
or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
Trump gets that the liberal media is trying to do to him what they did to Bush with Katrina.
No mikeN, that is not the point. The point is that Bush’s Fema did a crappy job, and he ignored it, and trump’s Fema did an even worse job, and he’s lying about it, and the ignorati (like you) don’t care about facts.
This is interesting, not because of what it says, but because it reveals a confirmation bias and conspiracy ideation so extreme that it either indicates paranoid insanity, a calculated willingness to accept any lies that support ones ideological predisposition, or an extraordinary gullibility.
Yesterday’s WaPo had an article that illustrates Trump’s ability to exploit his followers lack of critical sophistication.
“It’s a frequent tactic of the president — elevate a widely perceived failure or mistake and defend it as a great triumph while attacking his critics…
“Sometimes, he is trying to preempt criticism that he knows is likely to revive itself, like before this week’s hurricane. And he tells senior aides that his supporters will believe his version of events.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/never-give-an-inch-trump-keeps-touting-perceived-failures-as-successes/2018/09/12/12801b80-b6a9-11e8-94eb-3bd52dfe917b_story.html?utm_term=.92faea8345be
Trump knows when a sucker is a sucker. MikeN obviously doesn’t.
If MikeN was at all serious about proving that Trump was being done in by the liberal media, he would read the report on Maria’s mortality and explain why its methods and results are wrong.
https://publichealth.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/downloads/projects/PRstudy/Acertainment%20of%20the%20Estimated%20Excess%20Mortality%20from%20Hurricane%20Maria%20in%20Puerto%20Rico.pdf
Unless he’s prepared to do this, his remarks on this should be categorized as partisan drivel.
The ‘liberal media’ aren’t to blame for the failures of the Bush and Trump administration to protect and aid Americans.
And at this point, the lie by incompetent and loathsome presidents and their lackeys about the ‘liberal media’ is a sick joke.
Bush got whacked for Katrina, but not nearly enough IMO. And it wasn’t some exaggeration from the “liberal media” that branded him. It was his own ham handed inabilty to grasp the gravity of the situation as more than a photo op, and his stupidity in chosing some sort of horse association manager to head up FEMA. “Nobody knew this could happen” he whined. And yet Scientific American had published a headline article predicting the drowning of New Orleans just a few years previously. It was common knowledge in the scientific community that if a large hurricane hit New Orleans, the city would drown. And both happened. But who wants to listen to scientists when there is money to be made selling arms and stealing oil in the Middle East?
If conservatives and libertarians were interested in something other than their narcissistic Neanderthal self drives, if they had a better grasp of science, and had more empathy….then unicorns would be farting rainbows all over. But they don’t and they aren’t. Instead, the cons and libbies whine about the liberal media, tune in to Alex Jones, Q, Breitbart and FOX , and avoid the hard work of vetting sources and learning how to process information without peer or authoritarian oversight. Who wants to do the hard work of learning science and doing basic investigation when Alex Jones and FOX can do it for you? Certainly not Trump’s base.
A sociopath president who is lying and cheating deserves to be impeached.
And people who chose their political party with the same brainless devotion as a sports fan cheering their team deserve a sociopath president.
It’s also important to remember that Bush’s folks don’t hold all the blame for the terrible results of Katrina: Nagy’s failure to use city school buses to assist in evacuation was monumentally stupid, as was his delayed call for people to evacuate.
However, he’s not the one who was blissfully unaware of the situation at the Superdome (as Bush’s Fema was), and it wasn’t Nagy who (August 30 and the next day) called the leadership of the Southern Pines Electric Power Association. They had their engineers working to redirect power to restore electricity to hospitals in New Orleans: the calls, from the Vice President, ordered them to stop that effort and concentrate effort on diverting electricity to Collins Mississippi in order to ensure the Colonial Pipeline had power (it did, but the Southern Pines power was to be available if needed). Work on restoring power to hospitals was stopped.
As has been pointed out, Chertoff’s comment that
is pure bullshit, since the Corps of Engineers had described exactly the levee breach scenario that occurred, and the storm’s path and behavior was essentially that suggested by the National Weather Service.
It’s also true that Nagy wasn’t responsible for Chertoff waiting 36 hours (after landfall) to issue this (Chertoff was)
There was never an explanation for this delay, even when it was learned that Chertoff had been told 48 hours before landfall that the event would be “catastrophic”.
There’s tons more for anyone who has an honest interest (that leaves MikeN out).
– Brown urged all fire and emergency services departments not to respond to counties and states affected by Hurricane Katrina without being requested and lawfully dispatched by state and local authorities under mutual aid agreements and the Emergency Management Assistance Compact
– FEMA stopped the Astor Hotel’s’ plans to hire 10 buses to carry approximately 500 guests to higher ground. Federal officials commandeered the buses, and told the guests to join thousands of other evacuees at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
– FEMA officials ordered 3 Wal-Mart semi loads of water to leave the area without allowing the water to be unloaded to FEMA control
– FEMA officials cut the Jefferson Parish emergency communications line in order to force the use of their systems. The sheriff had the line reconnected and posted armed guards to prevent FEMA from cutting it again
– FEMA prevented over 50 civilian pilots from running evacuation flights for people who were at the airport
– FEMA replaced standard hospital patient identification bracelets for people being evacuated with FEMA bracelets, but did not coordinate records with hospitals. Officials at one hospital reported that three months after the event they had not be able to find several patients and had been given no assistance from FEMA
So when people like MikeN (and rickA, who on another post said, essentially, there was no reason to believe the number of deaths in Puerto Rico was anything other than the number originally reported) say that trump is speaking out because he knows the “liberal media” is preparing to smear him they way they did Bush, what they are really saying is trump knows that the facts about his actions are never in agreement with the things he says.
A little more discussion on this, with reference to a location where deniers like rickA and mikeN can obtain data and code ideas to develop their own estimates.
https://www.r-bloggers.com/how-many-deaths-were-caused-by-the-hurricane-in-puerto-rico/
Develop estimates? Why can’t they just list the names of all 3000?
mikeN, are you being deliberately stupid or are you so set on denying what multiple reliable studies (using well-accepted and widely used techniques) tell us that you continue to follow the trump lie?
A PERSONAL CAUTIONARY TALE
Do you know how many people REALLY die in hurricanes? No, you don’t. And neither do I.
Because I almost died last week in a non-hurricane. In sunny, mild Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the richest and supposedly “has-its-act-together” communities in the nation.
Here’s the deal. Yes, we hear about direct casualties: trees falling on houses that in turn fall on people; drownings in 10-foot storm surges; electrocutions from live wires downed by gales, that sort of thing.
But what about people, old and young, with or without disabilities, capable of heeding evacuation orders or stuck somewhere sans communication and transportation? Well, I’m not even necessarily alluding to them.
Before I cut to the chase, think for a moment about your own health insurance policy. How does it work? If it’s like mine, prescriptions are only filled for 30 days at a time. Some medications are life-or-death; don’t take them and you die, maybe in hours, perhaps in days. Now, consider what happens if the big storm, the neighborhood-wide gas explosions, or the massive power outage – perhaps even a giant sunspot – wreaks havoc on the technological underpinnings of this whole system. And worse, suppose such a minor or major cataclysm occurs on the 28th day into your 30-day supply of a controlled medication?
Your pharmacy can’t come to your rescue. Hell, they’re underwater or otherwise offline. The emergency shelter doesn’t stock your weird scrip costing megabucks. They probably have aspirin, Tylenol, Maalox, and maybe – just maybe – even a bit of insulin and adrenalin stashed away, plus an allergy med or two; or have one or two fancy battery-operated cardiac defibrillators affixed to the wall. How nice. However, your heart hasn’t stopped – not yet, anyway. And you can’t call your doctor, for she’s probably soothing her kids in the next row of cots in your home-away-from-home, the local high-school gymnasium. So without your hypertension medication you stroke out and die; without your anticoagulant — your Coumadin, say – you embolize and die. What, you ran out of your anti-arrhythmia drugs? Fibrillate and die. Do you happen to have a central venous line inserted, are you on home antibiotics for a virulent bone infection? Oh well, become septic and die. Die die die, dead dead dead. Natural deaths all, mind you. NOT to be included in any disaster statistics. What, the earthquake-triggered mudslide missed burying you, missed entombing you by the hair of your chinny-chin-chin? Does not matter, your medication cabinet is under 6 tons of mud and your are, perforce, a NATURALLY engendered cadaver: Congratulations.
And now for that chase I promised to cut to, earlier. Two weeks ago, by sheer happenstance [caveat lector, I’m about to name names – of institutions, at any rate], my physician electronically entered a new (not really new) medication for me. What I mean is, it wasn’t even new – it’s in my chart and everything – it’s just that my prior prescription renewal eligibility expired. (Get out your magnifying glass and check those labels, folks!) This was at Harvard University’s vaunted University Health Services (HUHS), 75 Mt Auburn Street for those of you who know the hallowed place, where millions of patients have received generally high-quality medical care over the decades. And not mere captive students, either, not by a long shot. Irven DeVore was cared for there. Natalie Portmann and I shared the same PCP. I once stood next to BF Skinner in the restroom, peeing into his specimen cup while I was peeing into mine. And so forth.
Anyway, there was a snafu of some sort, almost certainly HMO-generated, and my depended-upon [dependent in two senses] medication was never filled just as my doctor, who only works half-time but also happened to have a vacation coming up, disappeared into the wild blue yonder. Or wherever. Well, what about the covering doc? No such animal, apparently. For twelve seemingly intermidable days I languished – as UHS physicians, UHS Pharmacy, UHS Urgent Care, Rite Aid Pharmacy, etc., ALL dropped the ball. For the final four days – for I had planned well ahead, given myself (one might reasonably concede) more than enough wiggle room – after making some 15 phone calls on top of the 15 phone calls already made by the involved doctors and pharmacies – I suffered (yes, SUFFERED) cold-turkey without my needed medication. Fortunately, on the 5th hellish day, the Chief Pharmacist at my Rite Aid branch – a very sharp, very competent, and very empathic friend newly returned from maternity leave – had the common sense and decency to GIVE me enough medication to last me until my original prescribing physician returned, whereupon said doctor and oodles of other medicolegally negligent functionaries stumbled all over each other chain-calling me with one apology after another.
This is not the place to go into who dropped the ball and why, or even the arcane Catch-22 mechanics of what happened. That our health care system (and don’t blame dear old Haavaad, this happens everywhere all the time) has cracks bigger than the San Andreas fault is hardly news. But if our most affluent university, located smack dab in the middle of some of the most affluent real estate in the nation – possessing the most highly developed infrastructure – cannot, even during conditions of ideal weather and the utmost civil calm, somehow manage [despite all their by-the-book disaster drills] to process a straightforward routine medication prescription because of ‘rules’ (the excuse I kept hearing from triage nurses and insurance mediators alike) – well, to put it mildly, THIS DOES NOT BODE WELL for victims of Katrina, of Harvey, of Maria, of Sandy, of Lane, of Florence. Or of the disaster that will inevitably befall Boston.
And yes, I’ve done mah dootee, having already written some pretty scathing reports to some pretty high-and-mighty targets, anticipating their hemming and hawing, their deferring responsibility, their certain deflection of blame. For I know their tricks. But you know what, I don’t give a shit anymore about myself at this point. (I’ve accumulated more iatrogenic scars and PTSD than a thousand other folks …) But I DO care, and care very deeply, about all those invisible statistics – those thousands of individual human beings whose time, some would argue, was about up in any case – who have perished, are perishing, and will perish, anonymously, of “natural causes” in natural calamities managed with A+ aplomb by the likes of DJT and his minions.
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier? How about Tomb of the Unknown Hurricane Casualty?!!
Joe,
Thanks for the note. Yes, I Know the Holyoke medical facility well, that having been my clinic while going back and forth to Zaire with various ailments. I once spent six days as an inpatient. The food was excellent (the chef had been Rommel’s chef, and apparently the Field Marshal wanted a good chef. I assume he was old then and not around any more).
I’m very sorry that had happened to you. You had intimated earlier that you were going through a medical issue, I didn’t know it was this.
Interestingly, that circumstance, of a person needing a life saving medicine, must be widely known in our culture because it is a standard deus ex machina in movies and on TV. Just the other day I saw a hostage pretend to be diabetic in order that a different character could “go downstairs to get her meds” (the real plan was to hook up with the superhero in the basement).
If we turned off the entire infrastructure all at once, what percentage of the population would expire over minute or hours? Days? Weeks? Months? How would the demographic statistic of lifespan shift?
There is probably a pattern. Electricity, battery backup, electric motors or solenoids that run pumps, infrastructure to move drugs, to move machine parts, to move machines, to move patients; daily treatments, weekly treatments, occasional treatments (chest wall oscillation, dialysis, chemotherapy …). There are modalities (machinery, OTC and prescription drugs, in-clinic treatments, etc.) each of which has a sequence of things that have a strong influence on mortality or morbidity at short to medium to long time scales.
There is an academic paper in here somewhere. Does FEMA know what the mortality curve looks like (of mortality due just to this infrastructure failure, not falling trees and flooding,etc.)? I imagine it has a very steep part in the beginning, then a smoothing out with a long curve, and an eventual near asymptote. The first inflection point is probably between one week and one month in, the longer term flattening out maybe 8 months to a year and a half?
Most futuristic dystopian fiction skips to past that curve.
Anyway, very sorry that fiasco happened to you. Thanks very much for your description and comment, because I think people need to take that problem seriously.