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26th April 2019, 11:32 AM | #121 |
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That's just silly. First of all, I don't recall ever saying that Trump was "unique" in his greater likelihood of screwing up in catastrophic way. What I said was catastrophic results are probabilistically much more likely with incompetence such as Trump's--it's happened before with GWB, as I acknowledged days ago. If you disagree and continue to think I claimed "uniqueness" I invite you to post a link where I said such a thing.
Even so: "Why even to bother to complain"? Seriously???? You don't have to be unique in your incompetence and corruption to be worth complaining about, and I can't believe I have to explain that to an adult (assuming you are an adult). If other presidents suck as bad as Trump that does not mean we shouldn't complain about Trump sucking. How can you not realize this??? According to your "logic" once a president sets the bar so low, no subsequent president is worth complaining about until he "uniquely" lowers the bar EVEN MORE. If a president, for example, embezzles $1,000,000 from the treasury, we can't complain when future presidents steal <=$1,000,000 because he's not "unique". But sure, I'm going to tell my friend that he's not the only one suffering from cancer and therefore he has no right to complain. GTF outta here with that "argument". For what it's worth, I like to call this behavior TIS: Trump Infatuation Syndrome. |
26th April 2019, 11:36 AM | #122 |
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26th April 2019, 11:41 AM | #123 |
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26th April 2019, 12:39 PM | #124 |
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I think you need to step away from this thread for a bit. You seem to be getting understandably upset by what is going on here.
I'm reading posts by the Trump apologists that imply that the disaster on Puerto Rico wouldn't have been as bad if the people had just had some home insurance and bottled water. Well, Trump apologists: **** you. I really hope that one day you find yourself in the situation of seeing your house a pile of rubble with all the bottled water underneath it, with no prospect of a roof overhead for tonight because there are no roofs anywhere within twenty miles, with no prospect of help from the "local government" because all their buildings are just as flat as yours and their emergency response vehicles are gone. Not that there's any way for them to find out your predicament because all communications are dead. And your insurance claim will not get processed for many months because it's three millionth in the queue. You Trumpistas should be ashamed at the way your government failed your fellow citizens on Puerto Rico. You should be humiliated that Oxfam felt the need to step in. The first duty of the US government is surely to protect its citizens. It failed on Puerto Rico and Trump, as the chief of the executive bears ultimate responsibility. Time to step away from the thread a bit. |
26th April 2019, 02:00 PM | #125 |
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Actually, I'm perfectly fine. I'm just tired of the BS and decided the BS needed to be pointed out somewhat forcefully.
I do sincerely appreciate the thought, however, but it's long past the time to pretend Trump apologists' have an argument worth considering. Admittedly, perhaps some of them do. The one I was responding to was not one of them (We shouldn't complain about Trump sucking because other presidents have sucked...hurr durr). That argument absolutely deserves the scorn I gave it, and theprestige should be embarrassed that he even thought it was worth posting. |
26th April 2019, 02:05 PM | #126 |
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Bottled water always helps in an emergency because, get this, people need water. That's one of the reasons that the government delivers bottled water in an emergency, and one of the reasons it's always near the top of the list of disaster preparedness lists. So yeah, it DOES help to have bottled water in an emergency. A lot. Especially if emergency response vehicles can't reach you.
As for insurance, that's actually an interesting story. First, note that flood insurance doesn't cover wind damage. Ordinary home owner's insurance may do that, and that's private. Not everybody buys flood insurance. The rates can be quite high since you may be at high risk, which is why the government created the National Flood Insurance program. This is a government-run program, and payouts from the program are included in disaster spending totals referred to earlier. Now let's look at Puerto Rico specifically. https://riskcenter.wharton.upenn.edu...uerto-Rico.pdf There were only something like 4,200 National Flood Insurance policies for ALL of Puerto Rico. So payouts from flood insurance are going to be minimal, and that's going to skew the totals. But that's not the whole story. Puerto Rico is actually unusual in that unlike the rest of the US, the flood insurance market is dominated by private insurers, NOT by the National Flood Insurance Program. So there's another 40,000 odd privately insured flood insurance policies, and payouts from them will not be counted in the federal disaster relief totals. Why are there so many more private insurance policies in Puerto Rico? Because they're cheaper than the National Flood Insurance policies, because most house construction in Puerto Rico is concrete rather than wood framing, making structures much more flood resistant than most US construction. But even including these numbers, the total number of people with flood insurance is quite low. That's not Trump's fault. Wind damage (such as a roof being blown off) may be covered by other home owners policies, and I don't have numbers on that. But damned straight insurance matters in the aftermath of a disaster. If you've got insurance, that helps A LOT. If you don't have insurance, you may be able to get a government loan to rebuild, but loans have to be repaid. You can get a FEMA grant to help you, but those are quite limited by law, not executive decision, and nothing close to a substitute for insurance. For some reason, the indisputable fact that having bottled water and insurance helps in a disaster causes consternation in you. You haven't disputed this. Instead, you've tried to create a straw man that I'm saying those are the only things that you need. But I never, ever made any such claim. Assuming you survive the actual hurricane (and the government can't do much about that), bottled water is the number one thing that will help most people survive the aftermath. That doesn't mean that other emergency services aren't important. That doesn't mean bottled water will restore things to normal, or that returning to normal isn't important. I haven't argued any of those things. |
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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26th April 2019, 02:07 PM | #127 |
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And I will acknowledge my cancer reference in the post at the top of the page wasn't really analogous or appropriate, but I do stand by everything else I posted.
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26th April 2019, 02:10 PM | #128 |
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26th April 2019, 02:37 PM | #129 |
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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26th April 2019, 03:21 PM | #130 |
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26th April 2019, 03:23 PM | #131 |
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Unless, of course, your interest in the debate truly was, for some reason, disaster preparedness.
I see no evidence of that. |
26th April 2019, 04:13 PM | #132 |
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Hmmm.....Interesting line of argument. The government always screws things up, so of course they would screw up this, too?
Well, whatever. To my way of thinking, the military ought to be capable of moving lots of heavy stuff into place in a very short time, and a good civilian administrator ought to be capable of finding out which heavy stuff to move in order to get things going. All it takes, then, is a guy who is in charge of both to make it happen, and a little bit of cooperation from a couple of guys named Ryan and McConnell just in case some checks need to be signed. I'm not even sure that's necessary. I read somewhere that the military can do construction and can pull the money from somewhere else to do it if the president declares a national emergency. Maybe Trump isn't aware of that law. I think it could have happened faster, and if it had happened faster, fewer people would have died. |
26th April 2019, 09:23 PM | #133 |
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Whoa! Stand back fellow members. Zig and theprestige are moving some goalposts!
When did the question turn to "unique". You are both rather literate, so I know you know what "unique" means. Grossly Incompetent doesn't mean unique. Bilious Pimp doesn't mean unique. Racist Toad doesn't mean unique. Autocratic Nepotist doesn't mean unique. Vindictive Man-child doesn't mean unique. (I'm limiting the list to avoid terms that we can't all agree on. ) |
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26th April 2019, 11:12 PM | #134 |
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That isn’t at all what I said. I said the government rarely operated optimally. That’s true of large organizations in general.
And get specific about what should have been done. It doesn’t suffice to say that you think something should have been possible. What was needed to turn the power back on? Was it rate limited by transportation, or some other factor? And if it was some other factor, was it even possible for the military to speed it up? And if so, by how much? Do you know any of this? Or do you just assume because Orange Man Bad? |
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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26th April 2019, 11:16 PM | #135 |
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Trump is definitely unique in some ways. But not all ways are relevant here. For this discussion, the question is whether he poses a unique threat because of an inability to respond to a catastrophe. And that hasn’t been remotely demonstrated. His unique penchant for insulting his opponents, for example, doesn’t matter for that question.
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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27th April 2019, 05:23 AM | #136 |
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27th April 2019, 06:11 AM | #137 |
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Hmmm...."Always screws up" versus "rarely operates optimally". Deciphering the difference between the two seems like an extremely productive activity. Then, once we establish the difference, we could try and debate whether the two are kind of the same, or very much the same, or "not at all" the same. That could entertain us for weeks, no doubt, but I'll leave it to others to take up the challenge.
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And yet, despite the fact that I don't know how any of that stuff works in detail, I have confidence in saying that the French army did it very badly in 1940. I can't get more specific than that, but I'm sure they screwed up in a big way. Likewise, I don't know much about getting water and electricity to a hospital. I know if involves plugging in parts, and replacing some that may have been damaged. I know that it might involve tracing a line, and perhaps moving one or more large trees that might have fallen on it, or putting up a tall pole and stringing a new wire, but I know that if you have heavy equipment in place, and you don't have to deal with all the paperwork that is usually required as part of normal activity, you can get it done. It didn't get done in a timely manner. People died. I blame the guy in charge. It was interesting searching through the web for some discussion of these issues. What I found was a lot of government agencies talking about what they did. As it turns out, they all did great, but they could have done better if they had more funding. One organization that discussed it was the Army Corps of Engineers. The general in charge talked about getting the call 8 days after the storm. In my opinion, he should have gotten the call 1 day after the storm. But....the White House phone system isn't like a regular phone system. Since I can't describe the specific steps necessary to make a phone call from the White House, I guess we can't conclude that Trump could have notified them to start moving the day after the storm. Maybe it was impossible. |
27th April 2019, 06:46 AM | #138 |
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This is at least a step up from what Trump serves for lunch to visiting sports teams
Not by much though |
27th April 2019, 03:41 PM | #139 |
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Yeah, because serving a fast food hamberder meal to a football team at the White House is really no different in significance from a failure to respond to a disaster that killed thousands of Latinos. In fact, I struggle to find any meaningful distinction between them at all.
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27th April 2019, 05:27 PM | #140 |
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If one can't explain large scale military operations in enough detail for Zig, he gets to hand wave away any complaints about Trump. Likewise, unless you were literally there, on the ground, and can explain to Zig in enough detail everything that needed done and how it was done and what could have been done to improve that process, then Zig revokes your right to complain about Dear Leader.
Really, Zig? 'Where you there?' mixed with irreducible complexity? This is really your best argument to defend Orange Man Bad? |
27th April 2019, 10:28 PM | #141 |
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It's not just about military logistics. It's also about power grid infrastructure. What was broken? What's required to fix it? How long does that take? Some of the equipment in a power grid is very expensive, very specialized, and doesn't always have spares available. It can take a long time to repair some of that stuff even under ideal conditions. Without a clue about what broke and what it takes to fix it, then you really can't say how long any of it should have taken.
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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13th June 2019, 01:47 AM | #142 |
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...Gosh, who could have ever predicted that an incompetent president might leave federal agencies (disaster or otherwise) understaffed/underfunded? |
29th November 2019, 08:00 PM | #143 |
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Hey, I've tried telling you all this repeatedly, but some of you just refuse to listen. Just what the hell does it take for you to finally pay attention?
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https://www.dcreport.org/2019/10/24/...ster-recovery/ ....Go ahead. Let's start hearing the usual excuses from the usual suspects..... |
30th November 2019, 09:27 AM | #144 |
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Think of the children. Especially of all those corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, and contractors who could have skimmed millions off additional aid.
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1st March 2020, 04:14 PM | #145 |
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I think it may be time to revisit this exchange:
I continue to think that theprestige's insistence that I be able to specifically pinpoint the nature of a catastrophe that results due to Trump's incompetence was an absurd demand. On the other hand, I think I may soon be prepared to finally deliver that answer. |
1st June 2020, 07:26 PM | #146 |
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Dear Zig/Dear theprestige,
With US coronavirus deaths over 100,000 (the most of any country throughout the world), are either of you now prepared to acknowledge how wrong you were to simply scoff at my concerns over the competence of the Trump administration in this thread? Even if, perhaps, you think Trump hasn't had any major blunders, there absolutely is cause for concern? And while I continue to maintain that I am not a prophet, I must admit I am amused by the fact that "virus outbreak" just happened to be first on my list of concerns: |
1st June 2020, 08:13 PM | #147 |
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I don't think that's an accurate characterization of what I did. I'm concerned about the competence of every presidential administration. I've never seen an administration that was as competent as I would like. So it isn't the fact that you have concerns which I disagreed with.
But I'm not sure why you think the coronavirus death toll is particularly relevant to your claim. The worst blunders responsible for the most deaths have happened at the state and local level, such as the order to force nursing homes to accept Covid-19 positive patients into their facilities. |
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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1st June 2020, 11:32 PM | #148 |
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The above disclaimer is inconsistent with the fact that, for example, when discussing federal hurricane aid to Puerto Rico, I claimed that the federal disproportionately smaller than aid given for hurricanes in TX or FL: You responded: And so I countered with a post covering total aid through 180 days: To this you made what I consider to be one of your most amusing posts ever: Oh, so suddenly you're not interested in total aid anymore (now that you see it doesn't fit your narrative), huh? Spin, Spin, Spin, My Little Darling! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg-zN6oNA4U The point I am making is that, despite your protestations (both then and now) your objective has always been to defend Trump at any cost. Your protestations were BS then: And they are BS now. And now that your position of defending Trump is even harder to support, I fully expect you to double down on your claim that you're not actually defending Trump. LOL! Like with this part:
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2nd June 2020, 02:24 AM | #149 |
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Indeed your first point on the list triggered the third point.
In another thread I was suggesting that President Trump will find a way to draw focus away from the omnishambles which is his handling of the George Floyd related unrest. rdaneel reminded us all that hurricane season is on its way and a Sharpie-related incident would be one way to to this. By the way, is Puerto Rico still in a bad way and we've all just forgotten it in the shuffle of all the other bad stuff or did the Trump Administration finally do its job ? Don't worry, it's a rhetorical question |
2nd June 2020, 07:32 AM | #150 |
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Nope. You're moving the goalpost. The original complaint was that Trump's incompetence was a direct threat to people's lives. But that's not the complaint you have with long-term disaster relief aid.
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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2nd June 2020, 09:25 AM | #151 |
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I wasn't implying it was incompetence exclusively--Pettiness and Racism are also factors, and all three of them played a role in underfunding the Puerto Rican recovery, which was and is a direct threat to people's lives. No goalpost move at all. Do you understand now?
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Oh, so now you pretend to know what I do and do not care about? Yes, I do care about making COVID-19 positive patients go back to nursing homes; whatever gave you the idea that I do not? I'd like to see you present evidence of that claim. Please note: The Venn Diagram of "Stuff I Care About" and "Stuff I Post About" are distinct circles--While the circles do indeed overlap, both of their relative complements are nonempty. This should be obvious. You seem to think otherwise, for some reason (I can't think of any other hypotheti cal "evidence" you could possibly base your claim on. I guarantee you have no other form of "evidence". Go ahead: Try me. Total Logic Fail). At any rate, your Whataboutism is merely a deflection (as previously noted) and in no way excuses the incomptence/pettiness/racism of the Trump administration and the chaos that it has led to today (which, as I am sure you know, goes far beyond merely COVID-19). I'd also like to see you present evidence that my objective is to attack Trump at any cost. The fact that Trump has so many things to attack does not imply that my (or anyone's objective) is to attack him at any cost. You, on the other hand--I've never seen you acknowledge even one significant complaint against Trump (as illustrated by the above exchange regarding Puerto Rico ). |
2nd June 2020, 09:34 AM | #152 |
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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2nd June 2020, 09:38 AM | #153 |
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