And that wasn't meant to be snarky.

I didn't see it that way at all, and thanks for the kindness.

But I am worried about all the rain the same areas of Florida targeted by Milton are getting in advance. If I read the meteorological information from Helene correctly, when a hurricane moves over already saturated land it weakens more slowly and recycles the existent water vapor into more intense downpours leading to catastrophic flooding.

It would be a shame if the storm is still packing a wallop by the time it reaches Orlando. Things simply are looking bleak right now for Tampa Bay and central Florida in the likely path of Milton.

Logistics, the means of strategy and tactics, determines what is practically possible in war.

Weather isn't war. Warfare is far more predictable than our current history-making supercharged hurricanes.

First and foremost, supply depots can be hit just as readily as any other place. And do you see the spaghetti modeling of hurricane tracking? Even with the best planning, a storm can change on a dime and move in another direction which completely alters response plans. There isn't certainty until there is.

Helene was a once in 1000-year storm. No one can adequately prepare for something so vast and catastrophic in a matter of days, maybe a week, when there is no absolute certainty of just when and where it will do its damage.

The storm changed since they left this morning to what they thought might be safer area.

I've got peeps heading there tomorrow from Tampa Bay. If the storm follows the track out now, Orlando will still be far safer than anywhere on the west coast. It's scheduled to move very quickly across the state. I guess it depends how large it is when it hits and how drenching the rains are.

Thank God it isn't forecast to stall over the state.

Again the only State I see as organized is Florida.

And you along with DeSantis will be here Friday, complaining about the federal government's response should Milton hit as a major hurricane.

Trust me, I hope that I'm wrong. I've got family evacuating Pinellas County tomorrow heading inland to Orlando.

Florida has had the most practice in hurricane response so they should be better than states hit more rarely.

#52

How do you reach towns where the single road in and out was washed out? How do plan for entire towns being washed away and no useable infrastructure left? No water, no electricity, no cell service, no commercial radio, no way to communicate to survivors stuck where they are?

The preparations were there, the ability to activate them was disabled by Mother Nature to the point man literally must first remove debris and impediments just to reach people where they're stranded.

How many hurricanes in the past have required airdrops in order to supply areas because they're completely inaccessible by land?

I'll take the words of professionals who've been doing relief for decades over your opinions.

#50

MTG certainly noticed this on her partisan map of voters affected by the storm. I wonder if the GOP will again stand against any non-legislative accomodations for voters in the affected areas. And how many of the survivors might have left the state to stay with friends and relatives? Will Republicans rail against extending deadlines or opening specific mail-in voting for their own constituencies?

This will be interesting to see. Thanks for the reminder Donnerboy.

Congress boosted the budget from $360 million in fiscal year 2023 to $650 million in fiscal year 2024.

This has been elevated to the "billion dollar program spending FEMA money on immigrants." It's the program Congress mandated that FEMA oversee - wholly unrelated to its disaster relief duties.

Lying right wing media are conflating these issues and creating false impressions in people's minds and these need to be corrected with the truth every single time the lies resurface.

And you know what the worst part of this whole convoluted lie is? Trump actually did divert disaster relief funds to pay for immigrant control programs in 2019.

How come they don't see it that way?

Why does anyone support Trump after watching his act for the last 9 years? Teamsters are no different. Many of them hate the same people Trump hates and blames the same people for their problems that Trump does and they believe he'll actually try to make their lives better instead of just his own and increase his wealth accumulation.

If anyone knew how to change these people's minds it would have been done by now.

The more we hear about FEMA and the handling of budgeted funds during this current administration, the more things aren't looking good for a Harris win.

You're not hearing the truth, and the truth still matters. All you're doing is repeating lies just like Trump and just like Vance and just like Haitians are eating dogs and cats.

There is no mishandling of funds, FEMA is doing what CONGRESS mandated in regards to taking care of immigrants in a separately funded program, not by using disaster relief fund money!

Worth repeating:

I feel like you righties are susceptible to the nonsense on this topic because you don't really grasp the scales involved. The number of square miles of difficult terrain, the amount of space between need and the difficulty in getting from A to B (see point 1), and the sheer scale of the breadth and volume of needed supplies. You can't just *poof* this stuff into thin air, *shazam* it to the people's front porch and *boing* know exactly where to go next.

Like I said, you're really showing your anti-America ass on this because your bias is making you susceptible to believing BS without a second thought.

#17 | Posted by jpw at 2024-10-04 09:17 PM

Frankly, it sort of makes sense and is quite believable actually, considering everything else that has been done the last few years, that disaster money has been diverted leaving Americans doing without, who desperately need financial help, and instead are doling it out to immigrants here illegally.

As I said, you believe in lies and expect others to as well.

4th time:

The occurance of this storm and the people suffering could make Harris lose in what might have been a sure thing for her.

Why? It was the Democrats who tried to strengthen building regulations in the affected areas only to be rebuffed by the GOP majorities overriding vetoes from the Governor allowing builders to go cheap to keep prices down.

I think you're buying into the political narrative and ignoring the reality that every governor - but DeSantis - has praised Biden and the federal response PUBLICLY, even Brian Kemp who just appeared with Trump who lyingly bashed the feds.

It's this simple: Helene caused a once in 1000-year flooding event which struck people in sparsely populated, mountainous rural areas. In many places, entire towns were washed away in the raging waters. There is an unprecedented amount of people and materials either headed towards these people or already nearby to help them. Everyone cannot be reached at the same time, so yes, some people weren't reached or reachable in the immediate days after the storm passed.

But this is through no fault of anyone in the chain of command. Mother Nature dealt this hand and it's a doozy. Outside of the party not in power turning tragedy into a political weapon, there is no reason the very people and party who've warned that our warming climate is supercharging hurricanes in ways we haven't experienced in our lifetimes should be blamed for being right with their warnings and predictions. It's the GOP currently standing in the way of passing needed funds for the bridge reconstruction in Baltimore harbor, and compensating victims from past weather events, not the Democrats. Just today, Speaker Johnson claims that Congress need not return to pass funding in advance of Milton and to bolster FEMA's disaster relief coffers, but you expect voters to blame Harris if they feel the federal government is letting them down?

Like I said, I'll be watching it.

No disrespect, you're the one that brought up NC after the hurricane hit.

And on the polling in general, I'm having a hard time thinking any pollster has a model reflective of the electorate who'll vote this year.

Don't know if you've read the stories, but Trump has outsourced his GOTV efforts and they're focused on low propensity rural/exurbans who typically don't vote. No one is polling for that.

In their own ways, both parties are trying to expand their own electorates by getting people to the polls who don't consistently participate. That's why we won't really know what polls were right or wrong until after the election. All of them are hoping to be polling the electorate that votes, but none of them can be certain.

What we do know for certain is an awful lot of prior Trump voters will not be voting for him this year and will he be able to not only replace those folks but also expand on the 73 million total who voted for him in 2020?

After the hurricane, support for Trump over Harris has increased since Oct 1.

So you trust polling taken when half the state's voters are digging out from a 1000 year storm and no cell phone service nor electricity is available for hundreds of thousands if not millions of people?

You go with that bro.

Yeah, and the surprising aspect is that those who continue to propagate those conspiracy theories are hurting those who need the help by encouraging them to distrust FEMA to the point they do not ask for help.

It's not surprising with Trumpists, it's expected. They have no compassion for the suffering - unless they can benefit politically by showing what looks like empathy but then turns to scorn for their political opposition who is always to blame for whatever happens that ends tragically.

They raise money off misery and death like ghouls even when the misery and deaths are tied to decisions (or lack thereof) they made when in power. And then they expect everyone else to forget their fingerprints figure prominently in most every thing they rail against one way or another.

I read somewhere from a person with decades in emergency relief efforts state that every person who hasn't yet been reached by government response people think they've been overlooked when the reality is the responses are initially focused where they can reach the most people first, and then work their way towards less dense areas as time passes.

So yes, folks in hard to reach areas where roads have been destroyed didn't find someone from FEMA at their door hours after the rains passed. That doesn't mean anyone did anything wrong and certainly doesn't mean the response was inadequate or poorly organized. Responders cannot beam into troubled areas where there are no roads, electricity, and no cell phone service. They have to reach remote areas as their ability to do so allows them to.

What is it the Dems were right to insert an unelected candidate because Joe is senile or Joe is still a master statesmen and the DNC inserted their will with a non primaried candidate?

You people are far too desperate to be wrong. Kamala Harris IS the elected Vice President of the United States from 2020. Joe Biden cannot fire her, only voters can do that. Her constitutional job is to replace the President if he can no longer perform his duties. That is all she did. She was on the ticket in 2024 as VP and got the very same votes as Biden - again with every single voter in full knowledge that she'd replace Biden if he could not serve.

Primary elections aren't in the constitution. They exist as a mechanism for political parties to determine their ultimate representative, and that only comes after a vote by the party's version of the Electoral College, called their party convention, with selected delegates taking the place of its state's voters. Harris was overwhelmingly elected by the delegates and is as valid a nominee as every other one elected the same way before her. Party delegates and members had the option of stepping forward and running against Harris at the convention, and none did because everyone agreed that she was the best person to lead the ticket and so they voted that way.

Not getting their endorsement might lead Harris to believe she's viewed as biting the hand rather than being the hand.

Not catching your juxtaposition Ebs. How is Harris biting the union's hand? She backed them with her deciding vote and made sure that they got their pension support. She isn't lashing out against the union because they didn't endorse her, she's remained quiet as I'm sure she will with the IAFF non-endorsement as well.

If it were up to the GOP, the Teamsters' pension wouldn't have received a dime of support from the government since ZERO voted to support the IRA. To me, Harris provided her hand and got it bitten, while the GOP slapped the union with theirs and is now touting the non-endorsement as a win for them - a net positive along with the release of internal polling showing significant support from the rank and file for Trump, another sleight towards Harris.

Only 3 out of 17 voted to endorse Harris and the other 14 voted to endorse nobody.

Why was that? Why the unwillingness to support Harris? Why choose to endorse nobody?

The 'why' is that the E-board doesn't want to enrage the vocal rank and file who support Trump even though he doesn't support them and wants to weaken unions in general and undermine overtime pay and regulations - many union members' lifeblood. That explains the 14 absentions. These are elected positions, and usually those elected don't want to sign their own future pink slips by crossing their voting members. The new international head spoke at the RNC and was told to pound sand by the DNC, nominally for having been seen as kissing Trump's ring so publicly.

As noted the non-endorsement is seen as a tacit endorsement of Trump by all sides, which is another reason so many of the largest and most influential locals singularly gave unqualified endorsements of Harris in response to the international's refusal to.

bloated administrative costs. = third world levels of corruption

For the third time on different threads:

Why do Cons need to lie about everything?

Because the truth seldom serves their purposes in the sensational way lies do.

Posted by commnotes at 2024-10-04 03:59 PM | Reply

#6 | Posted by commnotes at 2024-10-06 02:06 PM |

You still peddling the same lies I destroyed 2 days ago?

It's buying votes with loan forgiveness.

But it's never 'buying votes' when it's tax cuts for already wealthy and profitable individuals and businesses, or oil subsidies for domestic producers, or defunding IRS field agents who go after wealthy tax cheats, or eliminating estate taxes, or allowing businesses to go through unlimited bankruptcies - stiffing their private lenders and investors - while student loan recipients are barred by law from lifting their debt through bankruptcy courts?

Gee, wonder why all that is?

Many O'Brien critics are angry that the union could look past the pension rescue, to say nothing of Trump's hostility to unions during his first term. The Teamsters' Central States pension fund was the biggest plan facing insolvency, with thousands of Teamsters facing benefit cuts so steep it would threaten their retirements.

"The Biden-Harris administration carried out their promise to solve the Teamsters' pension problems," Jim Hoffa, the union's former longtime president who preceded O'Brien, said in an interview. "That alone should be enough to cement a commitment from the IBT."

Local Teamsters councils covering a majority of the union's members across the U.S. have since come out for Harris, often citing the pension issue, among others.

O'Brien himself is a trustee of the New England Teamsters Pension Plan. That plan was on track to run out of funding by 2028, but now it will receive $5.7 billion in federal money due to Democrats' stimulus package, according to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the government-run entity that insures defined-benefit pensions. Without that funding, the plan's 72,000 recipients could have seen their benefit payments slashed by roughly 75%.

John Palmer, a member of the Teamsters' executive board, who plans to challenge O'Brien for the union's presidency in 2026, said he was one of three executive board members who voted to endorse Harris, while 14 voted to endorse no one. (Trump received no votes, he said.) O'Brien made the case that backing Harris would defy members' wishes, Palmer said, and he believes O'Brien's position influenced the thinking of other board members.

Palmer argued the non-endorsement would prove to be "very costly."

"We're not here to reflect members' polling," he said. "We're here to make sure facts are put forward to members so they can make an educated choice."

And after FY 2009, every single year afterwards saw declining deficits until FY 16. Every year of Trump's term saw higher deficits even before the pandemic hit in 2020. Biden's budgets have followed the same trend of being lower each year after coming in the highest during the pandemic crisis.

#26

The ignorant preying upon the ignorance of other ignorants.