Leslie and I are still stuck in New Orleans. As I noted yesterday, we have been stranded by US Airways which cancelled flights to Washington yesterday despite the relatively mild weather in the city. It appears that the airline simply did not want aircraft in Washington when the storm hit. My complaint has not been that decision but the lack of consumer support after trying for hours to reach anyone at the airline. We have little choice but to try to drive back to Virginia since we have four kids who are being watched over by our sitter (I also have classes to teach on Tuesday and Wednesday). We intend to be highly cautious and stop if it gets to dicey. However, we cannot leave the kids any longer in this storm.
We have been told that we might be able to get on a flight for Tuesday but it does not look promising. Indeed, it was not even raining last night in D.C. with low winds. Tuesday looks like it will be pouring with strong winds. We love New Orleans (where I used to live) but we are increasingly anxious to be with the kids.
There may be an interruption in my posting on Tuesday in light of our effort to drive back. I will try to tweet on our status.
I hope everyone is safe during the storm. I would not travel if we were not separated from our kids. I strongly recommend that people stay indoors and of course continually on this blog.
nick,
“I respect Mother Nature but I’m not a hand wringer or neurotic worrier like some of the folks here.”
Who are those that you have judged to be hand wringers and neurotic worriers–and what evidence do you have that these people are what you have judged them to be?
*****
You wrote the following to Mike S:
“What the f@ck have you done? You’re pawn of the media that’s intent is not to save you but to scare you and sell you soap.”
What proof do you have that Mike is a pawn of the media? You imply that Mike has done nothing to help people. How do you know that?
*****
“All I said was this was overblown and based on the reports I was correct.”
What reports have you been reading? Can you provide links to them?
How does trying to link Nick’s awful/thoughtless/callous statements with media influence in society help anything, id707? How do those two very different things have anything at all to do with one another?
Does anyone know where the Professor and his wife are now? Are they home. Someone said that they hoped so, eating moon pies and drinking hot chocolate. No word lately?
No sense telling adults what to do. It is their choice. So what is your kick in kicking NickS?
NickS is NickS. And GeneH is GeneH. Do we have to spend our mental powers on heaping abuse on each other?
Do as you please. It is your heartbeats you are spending.
Here we were united following our blog leader on his homeward journey. And now we are monday-morning quartebacking each other’s plays on Sandy. Hmmmmm!
Nick,
I was thinking the same thing after Rafflaw gave his 39 dead stat and thumbs up to MikeS. Wasn’t there a “savings” in the number of traffic deaths, etc. Ironic, of course. Not to be used as a regular practice (HUMOR HA HA)
Now I am a worrier, if folks I know and love are in possible danger, then I am worried. I call, etc. So include me there.
My weather esperiences are nothing compared to yours. Sitting through the eye of a 105 mph one in a brick Army armory behind steel-reinforced windows is a piece of cake.
So why am I writing? Because I want to support you fully in the idea that we are manipulated by the media. And that is an old fact that is far more important than your or others’ attitudes to storm dangers
As Dredd said, dragging science in as he is want to do, we have a systemic problem. And thank God Bill Clinton told the folks that Obama knows it is there and is doing, against great lobbying by anti-climate change corps, as much as is politically possible with this damn Congress.
Media is bought, and will stay bought. And the psychologists will give them more and more effective control techniques to control us.
I would make a prediction and maybe our psychologists can confirm. The tension of this hurricane week has tired us out. It has been near cathartic for some. This may lessen the voter turnout.
As to how they are steering the voters by various techniques is a subject only the pros know, and CIA maybe.
A straw man is materially misrepresenting the words of another so you can attack it, nick. We’re using your actual words to attack you. There is a difference. Why make things up when you gave us plenty of substantive ammo to start with? That doesn’t make sense. Your actual words show exactly what a callous putz you are, so we’ve been going with that theme.
Buttercup.
You folks are creating a straw man..hypocrite Gene’s meme. I respect Mother Nature but I’m not a hand wringer or neurotic worrier like some of the folks here. I’ve been through tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes. I take common sense precautions. Now, tornadoes can be a mofo particularly when they hit in the middle of the night. Shortly after I moved to Wi. an F5 hit the town of Barneveld @ 2am. It literally wiped that town off the map and killed 13 people. As w/ Hurricane Agnes I volunteered and helped those folks cleanup. I damn near got killed in the flash flood in Kansas City in 1977. I didn’t heed the warnings and went to a Royals baseball game. Our car was swept away and we slept in a southside police station. That was on me and I accepted responsibility. I didn’t respect Mother Nature like I was taught by my parents. I will never make that mistake again.
MikeS, save your lectures. I help people who need it. I was a Vista volunteer and I volunteer tutoring kids after school. All I said was this was overblown and based on the reports I was correct. More people are killed on a hot Summer weekend on the southside of Chicago than during this storm. Words are cheap and you folks are all talk. What the f@ck have you done? You’re pawn of the media that’s intent is not to save you but to scare you and sell you soap. Obviously they have a wide eyed audience here..scared, panicky lemmings.
Nick you tout your bona fides as a wonderful person for whom helping others is just part of your natural wonderfulness.Your nastness, name calling undermines any of these that might or might not be true (it just seems odd that someone who helps those in need so often would also be as nasty as you can be, and are now)
I rarely respond to snarkiness here but nothing was overblown. People died, lives and businesses, homes, towns ruined.
Yes people die in Chicago, they die in Iraq, and elsewhere. That does not negate what has happened in the last few days as a result of mother nature (and some stupidity from people like yourself, in your Kansas anecdote, who were willing to potentially risk the lives and health of first responders by your actions)
I anticipated big winds and rain here. The rain is happening but fairly normal in amount but long duration. Very little wind. I haven’t gone out looking but the road that usually floods and gets closed is still open, so I’m guessing that there is little flooding. I’m grateful that it’s as gentle as it is.
It’s amazing that my trip was as uneventful as it was. I drove north on rte 220 from Greensboro to Roanoke, then I81 to NYS. My intent was to beat the hurricane from the east and the snow from the west, somewhat expecting that the snow would stay in the mountains. If I were driving from NO, I’d have gone closer to Atlanta, then north, then east for the same reasons I thought I could make it on the route I chose. Speed limits were 45 mph in MD and PA, but not enforced. Tractor trailers, RVs, and motorcycles were banned from the highway. Slower speeds were a good idea b/c of the night and rain and construction but not too slow b/c so many chose to stay home that the traffic was very light.
Hope the Turley’s are home safely now celebrating with hot chocolate and moon pies.
Well said Mike S. 39 “buttercups” have died due to this over-hyped storm.
Wheee! You folks have been having fun while I slept.
Taking it inversely, with joke and digs only, no real snarks, kindly, kindly please——
Nick S. You now know whatit is like when ElaineM takes your own workds and gives you two black eyes. Bur you gored the bull. Not bad. When folks here say crap, you ask what color.
ElaineM., It was a good article. We know here who digs them up faster than we can digest and think about them.
And next time you can have your football party without my disturbing you. Now will you get off my butt. Are you moving to a farm? And close to the baby. It must be big now.
SwM, The odd thing in NC is that one of the leading Repug organizers is a black man, grandfather a doctor ca 1900, whose name I forgot, but Wikied because he was handling Kochs’ money in the school board fight in Wake County.
That is a problem because he certainly can fight the blacks who made “the” difference in 2008 in NC for Obama.
Millionaire “black chain store” owner. How’s your damage? Haven’t seen you comment.
Blouise, how is it on Lake EEEEERIE. Any tips on Ohio outcome? How are Romney’s Diebold voting machines doing with the latest software changes.
Gene, I hope you left the keys in the abandoned car so a poor thief could take it and run an evacuation service for the blacks that Brownie left to their fate. What color do you paint a failure as FEMA director?
And most of all, where is the Professor and his wife?
http://www.thenation.com/article/170894/we-are-all-new-orleans-now-climate-change-hurricanes-and-fate-americas-coastal-cities#
“Our parents generation survived the great flu pandemic of 1918, the Great Depression and WW2. You’re all a bunch of babies. Ooooh, I think I saw a wind gust and my maple tree was bending!!! You’re parents and grandparents are just shaking their sensible heads from above. Buck up buttercups!”
Yeah, nick. How’s that tough guy thing working out for you? I didn’t mischaracterize your statements one damn bit. Just because you said “don’t panic” doesn’t mean you weren’t trying to minimize those expressing perfectly legitimate concerns in the face of a bad storm that could have been much worse. Buttercup. You put your foot in your mouth again. There was fallout. So suck it up, you big baby.
David Harris Gershon, writing as “The Troubador” covers the Romney campaign event they tried to disguise as “disaster relief.” Instead of the billions of dollars needed, they donated canned goods the Red Cross could not accept.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/30/1152670/-BREAKING-Reporters-Shoot-Straight-Destroy-Romney-s-Fake-Storm-Relief-Event
My good friend Cap’n Zach reacted to the “event.”
Elaine, No wonder Chris Christie does not want Romney and these clowns like Brownie coming to New Jersey.
nick,
What was your prediction for the storm? Why call people worried about hurricane Sandy and concerned about storm preparations “buttercups” and “scared lemmings?”
Swarthmore mom,
Here’s a story for you:
Bush’s FEMA Director During Katrina Criticizes Obama For Responding To Sandy Too Quickly
By Hayes Brown on Oct 30, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/10/30/1110901/bush-fema-director-katrina-hits-obama-sandy/
Former FEMA Director Michael Brown offered criticism of President Obama’s early responses to Hurricane Sandy yesterday, including a dig at the administration’s response to last month’s attack in Libya.
Yesterday, ahead of the storm’s pummeling of the eastern seaboard, Brown gave an interview to the local alternative paper, the Denver Westword, on how he believed the Obama administration was responding to Sandy too quickly and that Obama had spoken to the press about Sandy’s potential effect too early.
Brown turned then to a reliable right-wing attack on the President’s response to the attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi that killed four Americans:
“One thing he’s gonna be asked is, why did he jump on [the hurricane] so quickly and go back to D.C. so quickly when in…Benghazi, he went to Las Vegas?” Brown says. “Why was this so quick?… At some point, somebody’s going to ask that question…. This is like the inverse of Benghazi.”
Conservatives have been hitting Obama for weeks on his attendance at a fundraiser in Nevada following the assault in Benghazi, claiming at alternate times that the President either cared more about politics than lives lost or that he was trying to downplay the attack’s significance. Now the critique has mutated into a belief that Obama is currently “playing President” to score points during disaster relief in the run-up to the election, in contrast to his actions in September.
Brown is not the only one making the insinuation that Obama and his administration are responding too quickly to Sandy only for political reasons. He’s joined in his accusations by such prominent right-wing commentators as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and columnist Charles Krauthammer.
However, Brown’s comments carry a special irony due to the role he played during the Hurricane Katrina debacle in 2005. As director of FEMA during the legendarily botched response, Brown, famously dubbed “Brownie” by President Bush, was in the center of criticism from both sides of the aisle that the Bush administration was too slow to respond. An internal review by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector-General following the disaster concluded, “Much of the criticism is warranted.” Brown resigned from his position as director less than two weeks after Katrina hit.
Gene, You committed the sin that you often accuse others of committing. Based on my experiences described previously, and based on my general belief, you NEVER take Mother Nature “lightly” as you incorrectly characterized my assessment. I grew up near the ocean, and have lived in tornado alley. I SAID not to panic. You can drive your large ego between “taking hurricanes lightly” and “not panicking”, leaving room for your pomposity and stubborness to squeeze in also.
“You’re all a bunch of babies. Ooooh, I think I saw a wind gust and my maple tree was bending!!! You’re parents and grandparents are just shaking their sensible heads from above. Buck up buttercups!”
“Prediction: This will not be nearly the disaster hyped by cable tv and news and weather who are trying to scare the shit out of you just so they can sell you soap, soda, autos, etc.”
“You have a pity party for a few days and then you get back to work. People who recover emotionally from a disaster are the people who don’t allow it to define them.”
Seriously Nick,
You really went overboard to downplay the danger and then diminished the feelings of those who will suffer from it. It was a display of callousness that I didn’t expect from you and frankly it surprised me, not in a positive way. My wife and I spent a very tense night worried about our children and grandchildren, who were in storm hit areas and without power. It really is nothing to joke about even if the press does hype many of these weather stories. I know from far too many personal experiences that life and death are a crap-shoot and I’m at least careful not to make fun of peoples fears.
Elaine thanks for that article
Editorial
A Big Storm Requires Big Government
Published: October 29, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/opinion/a-big-storm-requires-big-government.html
Most Americans have never heard of the National Response Coordination Center, but they’re lucky it exists on days of lethal winds and flood tides. The center is the war room of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where officials gather to decide where rescuers should go, where drinking water should be shipped, and how to assist hospitals that have to evacuate.
Disaster coordination is one of the most vital functions of “big government,” which is why Mitt Romney wants to eliminate it. At a Republican primary debate last year, Mr. Romney was asked whether emergency management was a function that should be returned to the states. He not only agreed, he went further.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.” Mr. Romney not only believes that states acting independently can handle the response to a vast East Coast storm better than Washington, but that profit-making companies can do an even better job. He said it was “immoral” for the federal government to do all these things if it means increasing the debt.
It’s an absurd notion, but it’s fully in line with decades of Republican resistance to federal emergency planning. FEMA, created by President Jimmy Carter, was elevated to cabinet rank in the Bill Clinton administration, but was then demoted by President George W. Bush, who neglected it, subsumed it into the Department of Homeland Security, and placed it in the control of political hacks. The disaster of Hurricane Katrina was just waiting to happen.
The agency was put back in working order by President Obama, but ideology still blinds Republicans to its value. Many don’t like the idea of free aid for poor people, or they think people should pay for their bad decisions, which this week includes living on the East Coast.
Over the last two years, Congressional Republicans have forced a 43 percent reduction in the primary FEMA grants that pay for disaster preparedness. Representatives Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and other House Republicans have repeatedly tried to refuse FEMA’s budget requests when disasters are more expensive than predicted, or have demanded that other valuable programs be cut to pay for them. The Ryan budget, which Mr. Romney praised as “an excellent piece of work,” would result in severe cutbacks to the agency, as would the Republican-instigated sequester, which would cut disaster relief by 8.2 percent on top of earlier reductions.
Does Mr. Romney really believe that financially strapped states would do a better job than a properly functioning federal agency? Who would make decisions about where to send federal aid? Or perhaps there would be no federal aid, and every state would bear the burden of billions of dollars in damages. After Mr. Romney’s 2011 remarks recirculated on Monday, his nervous campaign announced that he does not want to abolish FEMA, though he still believes states should be in charge of emergency management. Those in Hurricane Sandy’s path are fortunate that, for now, that ideology has not replaced sound policy.
Elaine, You can’t get too worried about those hurricanes that very well could be produced by climates changes 😉 Then, you might have to spend some government money on infrastructure..