I believe that many of the Bush administration’s worst failures can be attributed to the fact that they staffed the federal bureaucracy with cronies and idiots. A FEMA not led by Michael Brown would have reacted differently to Katrina, a DoD not led by Rummy, Wolfie, DiRita, and the dumbest fucking person on the planet wouldn’t have fucked up the planning of Iraq so badly, an economic team not led by clowns like Chris Cox and John Snow would have done a better job of dealing with the then looming financial crisis.
Of course, the Villagers don’t care about this kind of thing. It involves smart, faceless, unglamorous bureaucrats, not dashing mavericks or Texas cowboys or wise old men from the heartland. But my gut feeling is that DeBushifying the federal bureaucracy is going to be a lot more of a problem than anyone thinks. You’ve probably read about the Bush appointees who burrowed themselves into nonpolitical positions at TPM. But what caught my eye is the hard-on that David Brooks and Mike Gerson have for the Bush Global AIDS Coordinator (Mark Dybul) who was recently let go. Brooks wrote about how great it was that it looked like Obama was keeping him on, Gerson threw a hissy fit when Obama let him go.
Gerson and Brooks are the types you have to keep an eye on. They’re sneaky fuckers; unlike, say, Charles Krauthammer and George Will, who are mostly peddling their own crazy brand of nonsense, Gerson and Brooks are generally working a long con. You can be pretty sure they didn’t get all hot and bothered about Dybul at the same time by accident.
So watch out for a lot of media backlash as Obama starts kicking the Bush lackeys to the curb. Remember Travelgate.
And there’s one other thing here to keep in mind, and I don’t want to push this too far (for fearing of sounding like a nut), but no public Republican that I know of has renounced and rejected (or whatever it was Obama was supposed to do with Jeremiah Wright) Rush Limbaugh’s statements about wanting Obama to fail. I’ll bet that most Bush appointees who remain in Washington want Obama to fail as well, but getting them all out is going to be tricky.
dave
Of course no Pug has renounced or rejected Rush Limbaugh’s statements about wanting Obama to fail. The REALLY sad thing is that, of course, no Dem had the spine to demand it of him.
JGabriel
DougJ:
So, let’s get this straight.
When MoveOn.org takes out an ad calling General Petraus names like General Betrayus, then it’s time for a Congressional Resolution, supported by R’s and D’s, chastising and condemning MoveOn for being uncivil name-callers.
But when Limbaugh says he wants, and all R’s should want, an elected and sitting President of the United States to FAIL, then we get crickets?
.
kommrade reproductive vigor
I hear you, look at how many of Tricky Dick’s nightcrawlers rose to the surface in 2000. How’d that work out for America?
True, but I think actually having to work will cause those who don’t voluntarily leave to get fired because they now have to do more than gobble some presidential knob and declare their hatred of Roe v. Wade and teh ghey.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
First-rate leaders hire first-rate assistants.
Second-rate leaders hire third-rate assistants.
DougJ
@JGabriel
Yes, that’s right.
I don’t support a Congressional resolution condemning Rush Limbaugh. But I think that, realistically, we are in a place where many if not most Republicans in Washington really do want Obama to fail and will take steps to undermine him.
I hope that doesn’t sound paranoid.
Punchy
How do these peeps ackshuly funkshun in da werkplace? talk about pariahs. talk about visceral and wanton disrespect and total indifference to their opinions. who wud werk undy those conditions?
Incertus
Sorry to pull out one statement, but this is a personal deal for me. I’m all for smacking Brownie around for the shitty job he did responding to Katrina, but the person who always gets left out of the criticism, and who actually deserves more for it, is Michael Fucking Chertoff. If I can make it so that his name is forever linked to the catastrofuck that was the Katrina response, then I’ll feel I’ve accomplished something righteous in this world.
And you’re absolutely right about the howling we’re going to hear about Obama kicking burrowers out on their asses. It’ll be louder than the defense that wingnuts raised during the fired US Attorney scandal.
MattF
For the record, the ‘short con’ is when you take all the money the sucker has in his pockets– the ‘long con’ is when you send him home to get the rest.
DougJ
@Incertus
I don’t know the details so well, but I think you’re probably right.
DougJ
Yes, and I think that’s what Brooks and Gerson are doing, metaphorically.
JWW
DougJ,
I see you like to ramble but you aren’t one for thought. Your post could have been several. Your being lost in the woods does not mean anyone will look for you, especially whens you have so many different addresses.
Hell if this is all it takes to blog, I can hire anyone with a "will work for food sign" to get the effort I see from you. They may even have a correct or fresh idea!!
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Incertus: Skeletor always manages to get away, doesn’t he?
kommrade reproductive vigor
And another Irony-o-meter is vaporized.
Rosali
I’m waiting for the
2 wannabe holdover US Attys to be told that their services are no longer needed.
Jay
I don’t know how it actually works, but it seems to me that the burrowers could be "Miltonized" for the duration of the Obama administration.
And I say Rush should be baited at every opportunity, just not by Obama himself. We couldn’t ask for worse Republican "leaders" than Rush, Palin, Cantor, and Michael "Oreo Massacre" Steele.
liberal
@DougJ:
I think Bob Somerby (DailyHowler) made comments about this.
tom p
I have to say doug, that it probably wouldn’t have mattered who was minding things just then… "If everything seems ok, maybe it is?" is the all too common mantra. I mean, being chicken little never got anybody elected.
Sure it’s great, after the sky has fallen, to be able to say, "I told you so." but americans are well known for their capacity to ignore impending doom until it is almost too late. (social security & medicare, sound familiar?)
JWW
Jay,
You say Rush should be baited, only not by President Obama. Is that because President Obama is not capable of handling a radio host and yet he is capable of running a country.
I say the Office of The President should not "get" baited, and should avoid comments for or against any media outlet. Being that the presidents press secretary is totally out of his league, they should shy away from any such confrontation.
TheHatOnMyCat
…. say "Oh yeah? Okay, when you are done taking credit for the fallen sky, get your braggin’ ass to work and clean it up."
JWW
Also DougJ,
How old are you, maybe 22.
Comrade Jake
Sure, but I mean, come on. Most of the ones that are left are the fringe bunch who are from fairly safe red districts. These are the foam-at-the-mouth types. You’re surprised by the non-response?
Polish the Guillotines
Obama has a lot of work cut out for him.
Cleaning the horseshit out of the barn is fifth on the to-do list.
And I’m pretty sure it’ll take more than a day. Are we patient enough?
DougJ
@liberal
Do you have links? I read Bob pretty religiously, but I’ve been spotty with reading him the last few weeks. I’d be curious to hear his take.
DougJ
Not surprised, no. But do you think that Bush appointees in the federal bureaucracy are so different? That’s all I’m saying — I bet they’re not.
Paul L.
The Shoe is on the other foot. Nice to see B.H. Obama is keeping the White House warm enough to grow orchids while 1 Million people are freezing.
tom p
Not sure exactly what you mean by this THOMC…
My point was only that those who saw this coming were either ridiculed, or quietly made a bunch of money on short selling. Nobody wanted to here it then, and now that it is here, we all seem to have real short memories. I mean, remember Larry Summers? Where is he now? Playing a large part in rescuing us from the catastrophe that he had no small part in creating?
And where are the people who said, "The sky is falling"?
[delurk]...[/delurk]
@Incertus:
New Orleans, the blue cancer eating into the vitals of the reddest of red states? Nobody will ever convince me that New Orleans wasn’t deliberately killed so that the RNC could control who moved back where, and when. Incompetence had nothing to do with it.
JWW
Paul,
Your begging for FEMA, how about a state having a plan. We want to have independent states rights, statehood, but we want to blame the federal government when the state government fails to respond. The state should be able to recover from a storm.
DougJ
@tom p
Larry Summers was not in the government from 2001 til now. Yeah, there weren’t enough people saying “the sky is falling”. I agree. But Summers was dealing with other shit, i.e. getting his ass fired from Harvard.
My point isn’t that Snow et al. were complete morons or that anyone with a brain could have figured out what was going on with minimal effort. My point is that it’s not unlikely that a smart group could have seen some of this coming and taken steps to mitigate it (if not avoid it).
Ditto for 9/11 itself by the way. I’m not convinced that it would have happened under a more competent administration.
At some point all the “unforeseen” events pile up, no? If enough shit happens on your watch, it’s a bit of a coiny-dinky at a certain point, isn’t it?
Good God, you people.
demimondian
Well, it’s good to see that our prayers for moar bettur trollz have been answered — I mean, at least tom p’s sentences are grammatically correct.
gwangung
@Paul L.: Idiot.
A non idiot Republican would know exactly when to make that remark, for maximum effect.
If you’re going to troll, be competent about it.
Fencedude
@Paul L.:
Instapundit? Really? Thats the best you can do?
kay
@Paul L.:
“Local officials grew angrier at what they said was a lack of help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
Hey Paul? I followed the link to the story. That quote doesn’t appear in that news story.
Instead, the story is about the largest National Guard call-up in Kentucky history.
I wondered, because I had read that the governor praised the federal response.
SGEW
Paul L., why are you quoting Glenn Reynolds at us? You’re stinking up the place.
Polish the Guillotines
@Paul L.:
Let’s see…. Why are they freezing? Oh, yeah. All that ice is causing tree limbs to fall and sever above-ground power lines.
What, pray tell, would prevent such an eeeevil thing from happening? Oh, shit yeah! Undergrounding all the power lines.
But how?
Wait for it… wait for it…
Massive spending on infrastructure. With the dastardly side-effect of gainfully employing hundreds of thousands to bury said power lines across the fruited plain.
Now just who in the hell would come up with such a craaazzzeee idear?
kay
@Polish the Guillotines:
The sentence Paul put in quotes simply isn’t in the AP story they’re linking to.
Follow the link. See if you can find it. I can’t.
TheHatOnMyCat
My spell is working …..
mwuhahahahahhaaaa
Ripley
Was this mistakenly cross-posted at Red State? Seems to have drawn some, er, interest from the All Caps Strike Force. Inevitable, I guess, whens you have so many different addresses. To coins a phrases.
Snail Darter
FEMA was a cabinet level org. and well funded with a direct line to the president, then Herr Bushies stuck it in the mammoth clusterfuck DHS, appointed a washed up horse jockey attorney to run it, and shrank it’s budget to where it could be drowned in the Ninth Ward.
Republicans invited the sky to fall, then told us the problem was nothing anybody could have predicted.
DougJ
Buy the sky and sell the sky and bleed the sky and tell the sky “don’t fall on me.”
Fencedude
You know, its weird, I google “Local officials grew angrier at what they said was a lack of help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” and get hits, but I can’t actually find the phrase on the pages it brings up.
The AP story mentions delays due to close roads and, shockingly, icy conditions, but that FEMA is there and getting stuff in as fast as possible.
There’s also a pretty significant difference between a hurricane and an ice-storm…
kay
“Local officials grew angrier at what they said was a lack of help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
It even sounds made up. "grew angrier"? I can see "grew angry", but "grew angrier"?
In any event, it isn’t in the story.
Polish the Guillotines
kay:
Oh, I know. But PaulL is a well-known troll and I was a martini and a half into my post, so I just let it fly.
Still, I’m not kidding about the undergrounding thing. It’s good for employment now, and it’s great for preventing this kind of crap in the future (kids & grandkids). Works out well for hurricanes and tornadoes too.
Oh, and it’s wonderful relief from "eye-pollution".
tom p
DougJ: No he wasn’t. However he was in the Clinton Administration playing a very large part in all of the deregulation frenzy… Wasn’t he? And I don’t recall him ever talking about the impending doom about to befall all of us (or is that what he got fired from Harvard for?)(rhetorical question, I know what he got fired for)
So you are not saying that Summers and Geithner are brain dead. So what were they? Because I heard nothing out of those 2.(Maybe I don’t read enuf, always possible)
There were a # of people who were screaming from the top of their lungs… but nobody was listening. One guy on Fox Business said repeatedly that this was coming (I saw him on a link, I don’t even have tv) and he was laughed off the stage. Another guy who saw it coming and made millions, then put out a very public letter telling his investors that he was bowing out of the market because "all the low hanging fruit had been picked" (help me out here guys… I cleaned out my links just the other day, surely a couple of you know the 2 I am speaking of). I am sure there are others.
As to 9/11… did I even mention that?
Doug, I give absolutely ZERO excuses for the mistakes of the Bush Admin… But I wonder why you ignore the willfull ignorance of the Democrats over the same years?
Good god, indeed. It takes 2 to tango, and I was even more digusted with the Dems over the past 6-8 yrs than I ever was with the GOP (I expect incompetence and gutlessness from the GOP) I am going to eat dinner now. If you want to continue this in the morning, I will be more than happy to. tom
tom p
D: I try not to be a troll…. It is just that I have a life.
ps: thanx for the compliment, about my grammar that is. I am sure you can find fault with my latest post.
Snail Darter
Duh?
kay
@Polish the Guillotines:
I was curious, because as I said I had read that the governor was happy with the fed response. He’s a Democrat, though, so completely unreliable, as a source.
I live in a rural area that is on the far edge of huge, single owner power company. We have a lot of ice storms. We started a municipal power company, rather than wait 3 days for the trucks. It’s sort of nifty.
DougJ
I’m going to say this again, slowly: REPUBLICANS WERE IN THE WHITE HOUSE FROM 2001 TIL 2009.
Do you not know this? Were you dropped as baby? Do you suffer from a neurological disorder? Are you on oxycontin?
slip
Has anyone mentioned the resemblance between Michael Steele and the guy from Digital Underground who did the Humpty Hump dance? For real…
jcricket
Josh Marshall is practicing wingnut welfare by giviing loyal bushies staff jobs?
Kidding, but that’s the way the sentence could be read (esp. with the link the way it is).
At any rate, the great thing about Bush fucking EVERYTHING up so spectacularly is that there are a million ways Obama can improve things. And thus a million success stories to report. I predict years of meta stories like "Obama’s changes, big and small, reverberate through government, creating opportunity and success…"
Just gotta keep our eyes on the prize.
DougJ
@slip
You are so right. I knew he reminded me of someone.
jcricket
And controlled Congress from 1994 until 2006.
And even from 2006 to 2008 they still had Bush in the WH, and Dems with no "real" majority in the Senate.
So while I’m not one to believe the president is all powerful in creating/killing the economy, pretty much all the current fucked-up-edness can be laid on the shoulders of Republicans, with a small assist from lazy Broder-esque wussified Democrats.
DougJ
So you’re saying that even with leftover loyal Bushies fucking up as many things as they can, the Obama administration will still run better than the Bush one did. Whoop dee doo.
And if you think Broder and Fineman will notice, you haven’t been paying attention
Brick Oven Bill
@Polish the Guillotines:
Since you offer the Hercules example, it should be noted that Hercules loses to Cerberus in step twelve.
Michael D.
?? ?? ?? ??
YA THINK?? ?? ?? ??
Polish the Guillotines
Brick Oven Bill:
Hmmm… Not so fast, there, BOB… Take note.
DougJ
@Michael D
It seems obvious to me too. But it’s certainly not the dominant narrative in the media.
TenguPhule
*Ahem*
Were you hired by the Bush Admin?
You’re fired.
DougJ
Brick Oven Bill: Off-topic, how much does a brick oven cost? Can I do nearly as well at home with a pizza stone and hot oven. Those pizzas look good.
TenguPhule
TheHatOnMyCat
There’s no topping him now.
TheHatOnMyCat
Questions we all ask ourselves every day.
TheHatOnMyCat
Yes, but BOB is using his for glassblowing.
Person of Choler
DougJ,
This was perhaps not the best time to have a flare up of BDS and start ragging on federal response to a natural disaster:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/winter_storm_outages
A Democrat governor might be happy with the non-response of a Democrat administration, but it does sound as though many people need help and nothing much is actually being done about to provide some.
But maybe the problem will go away once global warming really kicks in.
DougJ
You’re right — ten days in and Obama still hasn’t turned FEMA around. Let’s start the impeachment hearings.
Person of Choler
DougJ, It would not be necessary to turn FEMA around. Obama or someone in his administration could at least pretend to give a rip about the storm victims.
I will say this, Obama’s campaign message has gotten through to those in the storm area: they are hoping for a change in their situation.
kay
@Person of Choler:
That’s from Friday. It’s about one rural county.
The Saturday story Paul L linked to is the later story. I suppose he meant to link to the Friday story.
Today, they discuss how they are moving from populated areas out to the rural counties.
You can trash the Obama response, but you can’t cherry-pick days and news reports.
gopher2b
Just a thought: George Will is a smart guy. You are not.
Brick Oven Bill
I don’t know Polish T.G. I’m learning Greek mythology on the fly, but Hercules did not have an act thirteen, and he was sent in to get Cerberus (ancient text references this time) without weapons. Here’s Cerberus:
"Typhaon . . . was joined in love to her [Ekhidna] . . . And next again she bore the unspeakable, unmanageable Kerberos, the savage, the bronze-barking dog of Haides, fifty-headed, and powerful, and without pity."
The first Wiki link you posted indicated that there is a school of thought that the final three acts were about mortality. I’m not going to pretend to understand the Greek mumbo-jumbo in the link. But if I would have been Hercules, and beaten Cerberus, I would have thrown a party, and recorded it for history.
It is creepy that there is a company, with a few ex-government leaders, that calls itself Cerberus. These guys bought GMAC before it was granted bank holding company status and began collecting TARP money. They bought Chrysler before the bailout. Who are the other 47 heads?
This is why I am a fan of the 2nd Amendment. We had a very good set of men set up this Country.
TheHatOnMyCat
Signed, George Will
Brick Oven Bill
DougJ; If you get a contractor to build you one, they can go for tens of thousands of dollars. My materials cost me $500 and the oven works great. My leader Rado gives a materials price of “150 bucks” for a practice oven to “750 bucks” for a proper oven. But he’s an Aussie, so who knows what a buck is.
But Rado will lead you through the process. The only thing I can add to his fine work is the picture that describes how to form the hole through the lower arch upon which the chimney is then placed. Check out the pictures of brick ovens on Rado’s web-site. Some people go nuts.
Person of Choler
And why couldn’t our newly compassionate and competent federal government make a better showing of helping out "one rural county"?
I like the "rural" qualifier, by the way.
Wile E. Quixote
It’s really too bad that Paul’s mother did such a bad job trying to abort him. I mean if she had just gone down to the clinic and had a scrape job little fetal Paul L. would have been sent to a medical waste incinerator and the world would be a better, cleaner, smarter place. But instead Mrs. Paul Ls Mommy tried to do it the old-fashioned way, she drank three quarts of Monarch gin and smoked a carton of Camels every day (the same method that Barbara Bush attempted to use to abort G.W.) and despite these heroic efforts on her part Paul L. was born. The diet of lead based paint chips mixed with high fructose corn syrup that Paul was fed as a child didn’t help either.
Did anyone else notice the "Professional Praise" section of Feith’s entry on Wikipedia? It’s a prolonged neo-con blowjob. I think I’ll go over there and delete that section from the page. I mean it’s kind of disgusting how much the neocons adore Feith, instead of shooting their sticky neocon spooge all over Wikipedia they should get a room, or a bathroom stall at the local airport.
Brick Oven Bill
Is it better than a pizza stone?
Yes. Here is a explanation from many moons ago. This is another area where I can perhaps add to Rado’s excellent work.
Person of Choler
Perhaps I did expect too much of Obama in getting quickly up to speed about FEMA. He first needs to master concepts like finding the doors on his new house.
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/01/school-for-the-gifted.html
Wile E. Quixote
Oh, and don’t you love how the wingnuts and human garbage of the right wing such as Paul L. are all pissed off because Obama hasn’t fixed the problems caused by the ice storms in Kentucky. Guys like Paul L. were down on their knees begging to suck their own shit off the cocks of Bush and Cheney for eight years. Eight years in which Paul L. and his Republitard buddies were saying "Me so horny Mistah Bush, me love you long time. Me go all three holes. No condom. Ohh, Mistah Cheney, you so beeeeeeg!" Eight years in which they watched these morons fuck up everything in sight and didn’t say a word, but let Obama go, what, not even two weeks as president and they apparently expect him to fly down to Kentucky and repair those broken power lines by welding them back together with the heat of his X-ray vision.
To me this shows that Paul L. knew that Bush and Cheney were total fuckups and didn’t expect anything from them, other than the occasional photo-op in a flight suit. You know, the whole "tyranny of low-expectations" thing. Now that Paul L. knows that we don’t have a couple of useless, drunken, Republican fuckups in the White House he expects the government to actually earn its money and get things done.
kay
@Person of Choler:
Oh, it’s just not the same as Katrina, although I’m aware you’ll try to make it the same.
Western Kentucky just beat Texas, in Bowling Green. I mean, the stadium is open, and not for use as a shelter.
kay
@Person of Choler:
I’m rural, you nitwit, and have been all my life. You think I’m somehow dissing rural people? Use your head.
It takes forever to get the power back on after an ice storm because they service the cities first: that’s where the customers are. I live 70 miles out. That County is out 90. I sometimes wait 3 days.
Fencedude
@Person of Choler:
Is this a competition to find the most blatantly false dichotomy ever?
OriGuy
Is it FEMA’s job to fix the power lines? The articles I’ve seen talk about supplying food, generators, etc. and running shelters. I’ve always heard about the power company actually fixing the lines. They’re bringing in contractors from all over the Midwest.
Polish the Guillotines has the right idea; I was thinking the same thing this afternoon. Bury the lines and this doesn’t happen.
Zuzu's Petals
@DougJ:
And controlled Congress from 1994 to 2006.
(With the exception of the one+ year – 2001-2002 – the Dems had the Senate,)
Brick Oven Bill
It kind of makes me feel marginalized when I answer a question in an active discussion, and my answer is ‘moderated’ for over an hour. But that is just me.
Zuzu's Petals
The best part of the Gerson piece is the comments section, where about 90% of the commenters slap him upside the head for his hypocrisy.
(BTW, despite what Gerson claims, Dybul was not universally loved.)
Mnemosyne
I love how a slow response by FEMA is totally Obama’s fault 10 days after his inauguration, but Bush was totally not at fault for either 9/11, which happened more than 200 days after his election, or the response to Hurricane Katrina, which happened more than 1,700 days after his election.
I appreciate that you’re finally admitting that Bush was such a major fuckup that he couldn’t manage an emergency response after being in office for five years, but it’s overcompensating to turn around and castigate Obama for not being able to do something within 10 days that Bush couldn’t do with 5 years of experience as president under his belt, don’t you think?
hamletta
The Swingline corporation would probably be v. happy if we sent red staplers to all the slackers and dumb-asses who’ve burrowed in.
It would be like an ’80s horror movie: “Look, dude, you got a present!”
“Oooh, let me open it up!” rip-rip-rip….
“Aw, man! You got the red stapler! You know what that means!”
Cue the Undead G-14 of Death: RRAWWRRRGGHH! Braaaaains!
Dude, it would be so righteous.
The Silent Fiddle of Nero
@JWW:
I know I shouldn’t feed the troll, but:
JWW, Katrina was not just "a storm" – and if you think it was, the next time we have a Katrina like storm, I want you to go stand out in the middle of it (don’t hide around the corners of buildings) for the duration and then come back here and tell me if you survived. Please be sure to document the number of times flying metal came by and sliced at your face, arms, back and legs.
GTFO!
Paul Crowley
I’ve just skimmed the the comments section here from beginning to end, because I was hoping to read some discussion of what the Obama administration can do about the problem discussed here. Instead, with a few notable exceptions, all I could find was (1) Bush-supporter trolls/kooks, and (2) people feeding them.
We have to stop arguing with these people, not just here but in general. Only 22% of the country still approve of Bush, and frankly they’re off the deep end – there’s no arguing with those people. We should be making our argument with the 78% who know that Bush was a disaster, but who may or may not be convinced about what the Obama administration chooses to do next. We’ve got to move on to the post-wingnut era, and leave these people to their demographic and regional death spiral.
Michael D.
@Brick Oven Bill: For all of you who, like BOB, feel marginalized and (wah wah wah) victimized whenever your comment goes into moderation…
GET OVER IT.
John is using one of the best spam filters out there. Now, he could EASILY turn it off – and then listen to each and every fucking one of you bitch and moan about all the cialis and viagra shit you have to pore through to get to the meat.
OR
You could just fucking deal with the fact that, every now and then, one of YOUR comments might, inexplicably, get caught up in moderation.
It’s not perfect, but it fucking works for the most part.
Stop. Your. Bitching.
The alternative is thumbscrews compared to what you might go through now.
And seriously, you’re comment is not so important that it can’t wait an hour or 4.
Jesus Christ on a fucking bike!
Brian Griffin
Polish:
putting the power lines underground is a terrible idea. If trees fall on them there, it’s much more work to dig them up to repair them.
slightly_peeved
My exchange rates; let me show you them.
Idiot.
Rick Taylor
Cronies, idiots, and ideologues.
tom p
Ahhh yes. Thanx for the reminder Doug. How could I be so forgetful? What I wonder about tho, is why you give the Dems a complete pass on everything that has happened in the past 8 (actually should be 16) yrs? When even if they couldn’t stop them all, they certainly could have mitigated some of the worst disasters? As ZuZu is so kind to point out:
Like, let’s see… a certain vote at 12:50 a.m. EDT on October 11, 2002? Probably the most important vote of their lives, affecting millions (B?) of people, for sure to cost American lives and untold Billions of US $… and some of them didn’t even bother to read the joke of an NIE that had been prepared just 2 weeks previous.
The Dems had a 51-49 majority in the Senate, and the Iraq War Resolution passed 77-23, 29 Dems voted for it… They could have stopped it. They didn’t. They were too gutless. All they could think about was the upcoming election. Getting re-elected was more important than a soldiers life. (not to mention all the other negatives)
Temper, temper, Doug.
Pasquinade
Help from Washington
Gov. Steve Beshear said Thursday during a tour of Western Kentucky that Obama called him about 9 p.m. Wednesday and they spoke for about 10 minutes.
"I talked with him about the various trouble spots we had, the lack of drinking water in some places, having to get heat to many of our shelters and nursing homes, and the widespread power outages," Beshear said. "He expressed his concern for the folks of Kentucky and wanted to let everyone know his thoughts and prayers were with us all."
Obama completed the disaster emergency paperwork in less than an hour, Beshear said. Obama signed the declaration after 10:30 p.m. Wednesday. The disaster declaration will bring federal resources and staff to the state.
Federal officials are hauling truckloads of water, ready-to-eat meals and the large generators to a staging area at Fort Campbell in southwestern Kentucky, said Mary Hudak, a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s southeast region.
The water trucks will help in some 55 water districts that don’t have power. About 93,000 people statewide were without access to water by midday Thursday, said Monica French, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management.
Beshear said the federal government approved the state’s request for FEMA to conduct damage assessments immediately, rather than the normal process of waiting for local officials to make the estimates first.
"It will move the federal reimbursement process along faster than it normally would," Beshear said.
http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/story/675914.html
kay
@OriGuy:
Is it FEMA’s job to fix the power lines? The articles I’ve seen talk about supplying food, generators, etc. and running shelters. I’ve always heard about the power company actually fixing the lines. They’re bringing in contractors from all over the Midwest.
Rural outages are always a problem. The further you live out from the utility provider the longer you wait for the big trucks. I live 70 miles out, and we used see the long line of utility trucks coming up I-80, but, it took three days. They power the cities first. It makes sense too. That’s where the people are.
We fixed it here. We formed a municipal power co-op. We have our own trucks now, and the jobs stay local. We buy power from the big company and the rest is handled local.
Comrade grumpy realist
Yet another reason for the US to go to a distributed power system….emergency tanks of natural gas/hydrogen and co-gen systems wouldn’t be that bad an idea for places that really need back-up electricity, like hospitals. And I’d think that if you were rural you’d have a huge stack of wood piled up for the fireplace, anyway. (Or maybe I’m being too New England here, what with our old farmhouses with chimneys littering the landscape.)
One thing to remember: if you’re using something like a kerosene heater, for god’s sake make sure you’ve got enough ventilation. One side danger of such heaters is carbon monoxide poisoning. And make sure you have one of those little sensors around.
DougJ
You didn’t answer my questions.
Polish the Guillotines
@Brian Griffin: Win.
Polish the Guillotines
@kay:
And here’s where things could (and should) change if Obama gets the infrastructure plan he’s talking about. If you’re going to roll out broadband to rural areas (one of his big talking-points), you’ll be digging lots of trenches and dropping in lots of conduit. That’s a perfect opportunity to bury power lines.
I’m sure there are going to be areas that are too remote or on terrain too difficult for undergrounding, but the more we can do, the better.
Oh, and I think your muni-controlled power co-op is another of those great ideas that should be applied wherever useful.
kay
@Comrade grumpy realist:
We love the power co-op. They expanded to cable and internet provider service, and it’s cheaper than the national provider they compete with. Several communities that are really far out refused to sign on. They still rely on the regional power provider for line repair. I see those people lining up at the YMCA, 4 or 5 days after a storm, to take showers.
kay
@Polish the Guillotines:
There is a newer rural development here, dead-end streets, big trees, way out in the country. It’s pretty. It had to be pointed out to me that they buried the power lines when they built it. It’s subtle. I almost SEE power lines that aren’t there.
I imagine the objection is up-front cost, right? Anytime you’re moving dirt it’s expensive?
kay
@Comrade grumpy realist:
I’m flat-out amazed they don’t have chain saws in rural Kentucky. They are saying they have 25 National Guard without chain saws. I have a chain saw, and I don’t even know why. I think I got it at an auction, with a pile of other stuff. Everyone I know has a chain saw. It’s like having a lawn mower. Maybe they don’t have gas?
Polish the Guillotines
@kay:
I remember driving through my old neighborhood one day and had this feeling things were different. Then it hit me: No power lines! I could actually see sky. It is subtle, but really nice. It cleans up lines of sight remarkably.
Well, not if you’re building a new development. You’re already trenching for water and sewer, so it’s just another trench or just a wider trench. I can’t say for sure, but I suspect undergrounding of power lines has been the standard operating procedure for a decade now.
It’s the retro-active undergrounding that’s expensive. You’ve got to tear up existing roads and sidewalks, lay in the new lines, re-surface the roads, and remove the old poles. Not to mention getting the power from the street to the houses from the ground up. Oh, and the inevitable disruption to traffic patterns during the process.
And that’s where massive infrastructure spending is essential. I really see this as one of the slickest ways to get people working while also making a lasting improvement that’ll more than earn back the money through ease of maintenance and lower rates of weather-related outages.
JWW
Silent Fiddle of Nero,
First off, your response is a statement only an ass could come up with. Katrina is not the only "storm" to utterly destroy the area that it hit. I guess Andrew was a small shower. When Andrew hit I don’t recall that FEMA existed.
I see that Florida gets their fair share of storms, but I don’t recall all the whining. They do their best with what they have and except any helping hand.
I say the states have the first level of responsibilty. Unless of course the state is so ill prepared and disfunctional that it makes it easy to blame FEMA. Which used to be called "state of emergency and emergency funding". Know you want FEMA to be wholly responsible!!
Ann Lawn
Interesting.
Times are a changing.
I remember when you could still buy a Lawn Boy 2 cycle that made a cloud of blue smoke.
Thanks for posting.