09-06-2017, 04:02 AM
(08-28-2017, 01:51 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(08-28-2017, 11:23 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: President Trump bragged about how well he has done with the response to Hurricane Harvey before the storm was over.
30K people are displaced.
The job isn't over, and he is bragging about how well he has done.
The area just lays low. Much of New Orleans is below sea level. Much of Texas is just flat. It's not that the latest storm is that spectacular, but it hit a problematic target area. It will take some time to clean up.
That's true about the topography of Florida and the Atlantic and Gulf plains. But let one of those storms strike hilly terrain, and things get messy. Texas Hill Country north of San Antonio and west of Austin? The southern and central Appalachians?
Quote:It's been said there hasn't been a major hurricane hit on the US in years. In theory, that should have given the disaster relief agencies time to build readiness. I guess we'll see if the instinct to cut domestic spending has crippled the federal response. It seems so if the attempts to clean up after Sandy are any gauge.
Foresight and preparation are no longer sexy in a 'do-it-now-if-it-is-fun, take-the-money-and-run' culture. In view of how vile American social attitudes are it might take something like this to change the American character:
Quote:Edit: CNN reviews past struggles over funding with Hurricane Harvey likely to provoke polarizing fights. One major theme is from the unraveling memes, cutting domestic spending. When you need large amounts of domestic disaster relief, Republicans have liked there to be a cut in domestic spending elsewhere to balance. The idea from the medical debate, "I've got mine, up yours" flares. The idea that you want to share risks and costs fights a tribal notion that if the storm didn't hit your area, lets save money by letting folks suffer. In the past, the Republicans have lost their attempts to cut other domestic spending, but the change in Congress's balance might change things. On the other hand, the storm hit in the Republican south. Who knows?
Our politicians got the wrong message in 2016. If we still believe that stuff and so vote in 2018, 2020, and 2022, then we deserve to be a poor people. The GOP has much the same pitch as televangelists pushing a wealth cult, and I am tempted to believe that the people who can watch televangelists and not laugh at the quality of the discourse (until they can no longer laugh at the staleness of the stupidity) are vulnerable to the appeals of Donald Trump. "Send me your love offering and God will prosper (sic!) you" prepares people well to give up their freedom, the social welfare system, and prosperity to people like Donald Trump. Sure, I expect President Trump to fail, but unless the character of America moves away from Unraveling/Degeneracy themes we will be vulnerable to the next demagogue, a political hustler who simply offers a Trump-like message with more sophistication and a better-planned 'reform' of public policy.
Quote:Another idea is that global warming causes climate change with more and bigger storms. Perhaps. One storm doesn't say a lot. The long time between hurricanes striking the continental US doesn't make a for a great case. On the other hand, the slow rise in sea levels isn't helping.
Irma is projected as a Category 5 storm.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.