Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[froot loops]

Russel Honore on the response, he was the guy who was put in charge of the Katrina task force.

http://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/815944/1

The historian I saw down in New Orleans give a talk on Katrina probably would have running into a burning house for that guy.

[CGVT]

He is right.

[froot loops]

That historian also gave a 30 minute speech on the Battle of New Orleans right next to the Rodriguez Canal, it was awesome

[whodean]

We fired our guns but the British kept a comin.
There are not as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began t' runnin.
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico

[CGVT]

That historian also gave a 30 minute speech on the Battle of New Orleans right next to the Rodriguez Canal, it was awesome

We fired our guns but the British kept a comin.
There are not as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began t' runnin.
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico

Ha!

[Jeff Buchanan]

Russel Honore on the response, he was the guy who was put in charge of the Katrina task force.

TBF, the scope of damage to US interests from Harvey, Irma and Maria is unprecedented. Honore, focuses on the failure of the logistics chain and, IMO, he is right.

As it became apparent that as Harvey was going to hit the Texas Gulf Coast, FEMA was telling reporters that asked that there was a lot of prepositioned supplies there for a disaster relief effort should it be needed. Again, the same reassurances came from FEMA regarding Irma when it was approaching FL.

By the time Harvey hit Houston and then headed north, relief supplies started rolling in, a degree of control appeared to be in place and folks started the massive clean-up from the flooding. A month later, Irma does it's thing to FL and then Maria does PR.

Here's the thing. FEMA is a major entity under the Department of Homeland Security. The scope of the current relief effort cannot possibly be handled with FEMA assets alone. Honore implies this when he states DOD - not at all organized to automatically be involved in on-going FEMA relief efforts - needed to be involved earlier in the process to support the massive logistics needs associated with support to PR and the USVI.

I mentioned this up thread somewhere but the organization chart that might tell us a bit about how a logistics support plan would be developed and implemented by DOD in support of FEMA relief isn't at all clear.

And no, I'm not going to give Trump a pass on this. Nor any FEMA officials for not understanding the seriousness of the potential relief problems when Maria was first identified as a threat to PR and the USVI.

Given the on-going FEMA efforts for Harvey and Irma, once Maria had it's sights on PR, and that was known a week before Maria hit, an order from the president to develop and activate a military operation to support relief efforts in PR should have been given and the chain of command for such an operation should have been identified.

Like the UK's appropriate and effective military response to Irma that I have already described, US officials, and I'll point right at Trump, needed to step up to the plate and direct his SecDef to get on it.

It's pretty clear at this juncture that involving DOD and organizing the logistics to get supplies, troops and equipment into PR via DOD ships and transport aircraft was sort of a last minute undertaking. IMO, that did not need to happen. It has and as Harry Truman said, "the buck stops here." That's square on DJT.

[CGVT]

And in other news... Rick Pitino is shocked! Shocked, I say!

[THE_WIZARD_]

fuckin' FBI

[The Oracle]

I'm so happy for him. Gets to retire in beautiful Transylvania in peace.

[Da Geezer]

where is the discussion of the Pitino firing located?

Value of college basketball programs' deal with shoe companies was covered on the news this morning.

UCLA
Ohio
Texas
Louisville
Nebraska

[Jeff Buchanan]

Having been associated with the "Progs" for hammering DJT for the PR FEMA relief effort, just wanted to provide one more piece of evidence that what is coming out of the mouths of government officials is not very accurate. Shocking, I know.

TBH, this is a much bigger problem for the US and it's territory, PR than just getting relief supplies there and the re-building process started. The territory of PR is headed in the direction of Haiti (see second link).

https://a.msn.com/r/2/AAsvUmq?m=en-us

Here's what happened in PR after it lost it's status as a corporate tax haven. A good deal of the financil problems PR is facing can be laid at the feet of the elimination of corporate tax breaks there many years ago. No surprise.

https://a.msn.com/r/2/AAsuXsA?m=en-us

[hack]

I wonder if there was a good case to be made for manufacturing on PR. Locate factories close to the port and it makes sense, but then again if the labour savings were really notable manufacturers would have found their way there on their own. But the Jones Act inflates shipping costs within the US because you have to pay the workers a living wage, so it probably didn't make any sense at all. If true that pharma cos flocked there, that looks like an example of bullshit rent seeking by the pharma cos and economic overreach by Congress.

[entropy]

I think it's reasonable to give Trump a break on Puerto Rico.

With Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria hitting as they did, it has no doubt pushed FEMA manpower resources and made the help sent P.R. harder. For what it's worth, I know that FEMA is hiring nurses and other staff in this area to help with this, but even without Harvey and Irma, FEMA isnt set-up to feed, clothe, and provide medical services for every man, woman, and child in P.R for an extended time.

I think a good leader would articulate the need for additional volunteers and explain the unique situation presented by this years storms. JMO

[THE_WIZARD_]

Iffen Trump was any kind of decent human being he woulda ordered NASA to stop those hurricanes in the first place...

heartless bastard

[The Oracle]

He is a heartless piece of shit no matter how much you like to joke about it.