If This Is His Idea Of "Success"...

[Lord Jim]

I sure as hell don't want to see what failure looks like:

Despite massive death toll, Trump calls Puerto Rico hurricane response 'an incredible, unsung success'

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump touted his administration's response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico as "an incredible, unsung success" during an Oval Office briefing on the upcoming hurricane bearing down on the Carolinas.

His comments run counter to how many locals and experts have assessed the federal government's response.
"I think Puerto Rico was incredibly successful," Trump said, noting that the island location is "tough" during a hurricane due to the inability to transport vital equipment and supplies by truck. "It was one of the best jobs that's ever been done with respect to what this is all about."

Earlier this month, the island's governor formally raised the death toll from the 2017 storm to an estimated 2,975 from 64 following a study conducted by researchers at George Washington University. The study accounted for Puerto Ricans who succumbed to the stifling heat and other aftereffects of the storm and had not been previously counted in official figures. Much of the US territory was without power for weeks.

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, who has been a vocal critic of the administration's handling of the storm, has cast blame on the federal government for failing to provide adequate assistance in the aftermath of the storm, and slammed Trump's assertion Tuesday.

"In a humanitarian crisis, you should not be grading yourself. You should not be just having a parade of self-accolades.[what a radical idea]You should never be content with everything we did. I'm not content with everything I did, I should have done more. We should all have done more," Cruz told CNN's Anderson Cooper later Tuesday evening.

She continued, "But the President continues to refuse to acknowledge his responsibility, and the problem is that if he didn't acknowledge it in Puerto Rico, God bless the people of South Carolina and the people of North Carolina."

More:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/11/politics ... index.html

Nearly every pronouncement that issues forth from Il Boobce could go in the "You really can't make this shit up" thread...

[wesw]

you know that that is bullshit.

the immediate death toll was in the 30 s, and the three thousand are all the deaths that were attributed to the aftermath in the six months after the storm itself.

bullshit

3000 people died in Katrina right away, if the toll were calculated in the same way as port rico, it wold likely have been over one hundres thousand.

your intellectual dishonesty knows no bounds.

your hatred makes you stupid

yrs

wesbato

[ex-khobar Andy]

Speaking of

intellectual dishonesty

. . . do you have a reference for that 3,000 deaths attributable to Katrina? My recollection was a little more than 1000 and Wikipedia seems to agree with me.

[BoSoxGal]

My understanding is that the Katrina death toll number is as high as 1800, but will never be definitive.

Beyond the deaths is the 1 million people who were displaced and many of whom never returned. PR is losing a lot of human resources in this same way, and will likely continue to as long as the rebuilding continues to be stalled - far as I know, there is still a lack of reliable electricity service on much of the island.

[Lord Jim]

Fatalities: (directly or indirectly)
- Alabama: 2
- Florida: 14
- Georgia: 2
- Louisiana: 1,577
- Mississippi: 238
- Total: 1,833

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL122005_Katrina.pdf

Please note that those numbers include both direct and indirect deaths, so this typo-laden assertion:

if the toll were calculated in the same way as port rico, it wold likely have been over one hundres thousand.

is pure

bullshit

and yet another excellent example of how

your intellectual dishonesty knows no bounds.

Of course a capacity for boundless intellectual dishonesty is kind of a prerequisite for being a Trumpanzee in the first place...

It would be incorrect and unfair to lay all of the blame for the enormous humanitarian catastrophe wrought in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria on the Trump Administration...

Years of inadequate planning for this kind of event at both the federal and local levels played a central role...

But it takes a rare (and unbelievably callous and tone deaf) sort of intellectual dishonesty to characterize an enormous humanitarian catastrophe as an "unsung success"...

[wesw]

oh well , my memory was wrong.

1800 immediate deaths compared to 38.

the recording of every death for six months that they could vaguely attribute to a broken ac unit is not good science or accurate reporting

[Lord Jim]

You know, I've always considered the Redskins 38-9 Super Bowl XVIII loss to the LA Raiders to be a humiliating defeat...

But I guess now I can think of it as an "unsung success"...

ETA:

The sinking of the Titanic is another one of those "unsung successes"...

Afterall, 706 people were saved; you almost never hear about that...

[Big RR]

3000 people died in Katrina right away, if the toll were calculated in the same way as port rico, it wold likely have been over one hundres thousand.

So wes, you at ehonestly saying that there were over 100,000 deaths after Katrina attributable to the lack of getting aid to people in more remote regions because of road damage and the damage to the electrical grid? And before you say it, these were generally not deaths due to lack of air conditioning, but lack of power for medical equipment, lack of potable water and food, and inability to travel an access medical care. Whether it is the federal government's fault that these deaths occurred is debatable, but it is ludicrous to say that the response was a success, let alone a superlative one as Trump claims.

and by the way, it is Puerto Rico, so far as I know the spelling "porto rico" has not been used since the early 1900s.

Jim--yep, they're all out to get Trump.

[wesw]

I wrote port rico , not "porto rico"

maybe I shoulda written Richport....

[Big RR]

Or maybe just the name, Puerto Rico.


ETA:

Or if you insist on translating into English, you could star calling Arizona--the arid zone, Colorado--red colored, Nevada--snow covered, Montana--mountain, Florida--flowered, and those are just the Spanish named states; we'd have to look into what to call the Native American named states and others (like Hawaii) as well.

[wesw]

just yanking your chain, man.....

somethings are better in Spanish.....

the other day, while crabbing on the Nanticoke river, in Wicomico county....

I was giving some crabs to some Spanish folks.....

when I got pinched, and loudly exclaimed..., "cabron! , pendejo!, ijo y puta!!!!, " in my flawless Honduran accent, they were greatly amused and surprised....

my vocabulary sucks, but my accent is great....

[Big RR]

Well you know the best words, a plus in any language; but I think it's hijo de puta (son of a whore, or more colloquially, son of a bitch). The other two are harder to define, but carbon comes from the word for goat, and is a guy who can't keep his wife from cheating on him, and pendejo is more like whipped, a guy who let's his wife or girlfriend push him around. Swear words in other languages are always fun.

[wesw]

well the Honduran fellas I learned the words from told me that carbon translated to bastard (and of course goat) ( I nicknamed my peruano friend el carbon Viejo de las montanas, that seemed to be funny to them)

and my understand that it is hijo Y puta , not hijo DE puta, even tho a more literal English translation would seem to make "de" correct...

pendejo is slang for dick

[Big RR]

Each country does have its own slang Spanish. Either way, they are valuable words to know at the right time.

[Big RR]

And wes, do you really think the response after hurricane maria is "an incredible, unsung success"? I think we can differ as to who should shoulder the blame (and there is enough blame to go around), but I cannot see how any sane person would characterize it as a success, let alone an incredible success. PR is still reeling from the effects of the hurricane nearly a year later.

[wesw]

I don t know , RR

I understand that the Keys are far from recovered too.....

[Big RR]

I wouldn't be surprised; and if they are still as devastated as much of the news pro PR shows that island is, I wouldn't call it a success. Indeed, at best it is a learning experience for the next storm and how we use/fund FEMA. Sometimes it's better, sometimes worse, but it is rarely, if ever, a success which should be trumpeted for political gain. If he wants to point out what he thinks are he successes there, I'll listen, but handing (really throwing) out rolls of paper towels is not the measure of success, nor are the deaths of (at least) hundreds, if not thousands, because of their inability to access necessary services due to decimated infrastructure. this is a time to regroup and see what we can do better going forward, but that appears to be something Trump does not understand.

[BoSoxGal]

Meanwhile the news just broke that Trump’s DHS transferred $10 million from FEMA to fund detention of asylum seeking families broken apart at the border - and $29 million from the Coast Guard, who are of course one of the primary first responders to people in crisis during hurricanes. These transfers occurred just before the start of hurricane season.

Trump is a monster.

[BoSoxGal]

FEMA director gets name of Hurricane Florence WRONG in emergency briefing while denying car abuse

FEMA chief Brock Long botched the name of the hurricane threatening the East Coast Thursday while denying allegations of his own misuse of government cars – saying he was '100 per cent' focused on the storm.

'Regardless of an article, right now I'm 100% focused on Floyd, and that's exactly where our attention needs to be with the life-safety mission,' said Long at an emergency briefing to update Americans on Hurricane Florence.

'Florence, excuse me,' he added later.

Long may have been referencing a 1999 hurricane that slammed the East Coast and inundated parts of North Carolina.

He denied distraction at the top of a briefing where officials schooled Americans on what bare necessities they should bring to shelters, where and how to evacuate, and what disabled citizens should do to prepare.

He said as FEMA administrator he followed policies 'according to regulation and bottom line is we'll continue to fully cooperate with any investigation that goes on and own up to any mistakes and push forward and keep going, keeping moving on.'

'Regardless of an article, right now I'm 100 per cent focused on Floyd and that's exactly where our attention needs to be with the life safety mission. We'll invite in our federal partners – Florence, excuse me,' said, possibly after being corrected.

Asked if he was confident he followed the law, Long shifted the subject back to the storm and repeated the error. 'We're going to get to Floyd we're going to get to Florence, excuse me, and we're going to concentrate on the life safety issues,'he said.

The embarrassing gaffe came as Long fended off a new report that he was under investigation for the use of government cars.

The report said he clashed with Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen over the issue. An Inspector General is probing his use of a government Chevy Suburban and other vehicles during repeat six-hour drives to Hickory, N.C.

His use of a staff driver began last year, and aides would stay at hotels at government expense, an official told the publication.

News of Long's use of government vehicles for long-range commutes follows reports that $10 million was transferred from FEMA funds to pay for immigration detention centers. The transfer, revealed in documents released by Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, showed funds came out of the operations and support budget before the start of hurricane season.

[Econoline]