Sigh.
Barack Obama wasn't president during Katrina which means Michelle Obama wasn't First Lady then.
Also, that's a pic of Condoleezza Rice. https://t.co/VdDDY6W4dI— Laurie Crosswell ? (@lauriecrosswell) August 30, 2017
But now that you bring it up, what was Obama doing during Katrina?
What was Obama doing during Katrina? He was actually at the Astrodome helping out and wasn't even goddamn president yet. pic.twitter.com/UFZoGfgxuo
— Talia (@2020fight) August 30, 2017
Oh. He actually went to Houston to visit with displaced Katrina victims, too.
Having the best President of my lifetime (and I am including anyone who comes after him) followed by the worst is just awful.
mai naem mobile
Some left wing pundit tweeted early on in the Harvey coverage that Obama was Not the president during Katrina. Not that Bush was president but that Obama wasn’t.
Also there’s a clip of Dubbya at some football event today making a very appropiate statement. Never ever thought I would say Dubbya comes across as decent and presidential. The depths that Dolt45 has brought us to.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
There’s a high possibility that these guys are bots, but…
BlueDWarrior
@mai naem mobile: Bush had enough given sense to play-act the role even if he was horrendously out of his depth when it came to executing it. We are seeing in Trump someone that struggles to even play-act the role competently.
efgoldman
John you’re giving Henna Hairball much too much credit. You’re a fairly young man. He’s the worst US preznIt of ALL time, all 250 years or so, very much including Jackson, Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Harding. Tricksie Dicksie and W. Not even a contest.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@mai naem mobile:
I saw Bush speak, too. He has the capacity for empathy, understanding that people are suffering. Trump, instead, marvels at the crowd size: “What a crowd, what a turnout!”
Obama was the man! We’ll be lucky to see his type again in our lifetimes.
Jerzy Russian
Stupidity has to become very painful if we are to survive as a nation.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@efgoldman:
But JFK also very nearly got us all killed, and he was basically a psychiatrics-fueled zombie, so…BOFF SIDES!!!111!!!!!!111!!!!rikyrah
@mai naem mobile:
I shook my head listening to Shrub.
Before Dolt45, I would have sneered at Shrub. But, damn, he sounded coherent…which is scary
dmsilev
@efgoldman: I think Buchanan has a reasonable claim even against Trump. Letting the Civil War start and also aiding and abetting the rebels (not doing very much at all to prevent the, from seizing federal property such as weaponry) has got to count for something.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: He has achieved that, and he isn’t even a year in. And for the people who want to chime in and say that Bush started at least one unjustifiable war – I will say yes, but the damage that Trump is doing to the US will play out over a long, long time.
efgoldman
@rikyrah:
W knew how to fake sincerity.
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
So far, at least, he’s not getting thousands of people killed. But there are many different kinds of damage.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
She’s really asking here, where was Obama? Jesús Marimba, it must be an awful lot of work to be that stupid.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: James Buchanan didn’t start a war during his presidency.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
there have been polls over the years that show considerable percentages of Republicans, I don’t remember the exact numbers but I think it was around 30, blamed Obama for the gov’t response to Katrina
@West of the Rockies (been a while): if we had a different system, Dubya might have made a perfectly adequate ceremonial figurehead, a bicycle prince regnant or grand duke. Flipping through the channels I just found Helen Mirren’s The Queen, and during the scene when E2R is giving her statement on Diana, they show the Queen Mother watching on TV and sipping on a glass of gin that would knock me over and I weigh over 200 pounds. I believe that’s both historically accurate and now makes me think of Big Bad Bar watching her powerless crowned son cut ribbons and open state dinners on TV
Roger Moore
@mai naem mobile:
My feeling is that the biggest difference between W and Trump is that W had a sold grasp of what the job entailed, while Trump has no fucking clue. W may have been dishonest, incompetent, and had terrible policy ideas, but he was at least trying to do the job that was expected of him. Trump thinks his job as head of state is to bask in his subjects’ adoration, and he’s uninterested in doing the work of head of government unless there’s some personal benefit. He’s an unpresidentedly bad person for the job because he isn’t even making a good faith effort to do it.
Davebo
I’m grumpy tonight already! Don’t get me started. I’ve already griped out people posting videos of them hauling ass through residential areas on boats and vehicles creating wakes that flood houses. They seem to think I’m ungrateful for their service but I’m not. Just don’t be dicks about it. Some homes are 3″ away from flooding and your 4′ wake just swamped them!
eclare
@rikyrah: W at least mentioned victims….and I hated W with the heat of one thousand suns. Oh how naive I was….
Chet Murthy
And looking a little more closely, who do I see with SenBHO & GHWB ? Why, The Big Dog, WJC!
Adam L Silverman
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): The documentation I’ve seen shows this is a Russian backed bot driven meme in an attempt to push it into actual alt-right and alternative right wing media circles (InfoWars, Posobiec, Cernovich, Rage Furby, Hoft) and from there have it driven both into the Fox News and Breitbart and talk radio circles and from there to the President.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus: History will have to judge. Dub dropped some long fuse time bombs along with his more quick acting disasters. North Korea first thing that comes to mind.
Ir we are unlucky, Dub can yet end up fighting with Andrew Johnson, Hoover, and Buchanan for the spot just above Trump in terms of disastrous presidencies. Bub will end up being remembered as much better in many ways than Trump,. But in terms of consequences of his failed administration, what Dub wrought may not be over yet. And as Hoover demonstrated, you can be a very non-disastrous person but still manage to produce a disastrous administration.
We have to hope now that a certain disastrous person is lucky and doesn’t get the administration he deserves.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
I’ve said a couple of times here that GWB should be grateful because while he should be considered to be one of the 5 worst, he can’t be now. drumpf has captured all 5 spots on the worst 5 presidents list. And some of those guys on the list prior had to wait years and even decades to make that list, and drumpf has kicked them all off. Not much of an achievement but hey, for someone with none up till now……..
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: If 9-11 hadn’t happen he most likely would have been an unremarkable, but also not to destructive president.
efgoldman
@Davebo:
I’m not within 1000 miles of there, and I don’t own a boat, I think it’s likely that the adrenaline is pumping so goddamned hard in the direction of saving as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, that considerations like excessive wakes simply aren’t part of the mental equation.
ETA: And yes, you are being a dick.
Roger Moore
@efgoldman:
I think W is actually empathetic; the stuff he did with AIDS in Africa isn’t the work of a man who’s incapable of real empathy. But like many conservatives he has too little imagination to extend that empathy unless he has personal experience with the people or situation. If he can get in and talk to people, he will be sincerely interested in their well being and often able to generalize it to the whole disaster he’s dealing with. Trump, OTOH, is incapable of thinking beyond himself and possibly his family and friends, but only to the extent he sees them as extensions of himself.
rachel
@West of the Rockies (been a while): W’s essential laziness, lack of curiosity and untreated emotional issues made him a poor president, but he never was a hater.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Adam L Silverman: Why would Russia want to put shit like this into the mouths of their willing idiots here? It seems to me that it would only make them (the idiots) look stupid. Why would they want their own useful idiots to look like idiots?
jl
@Ruckus: Trump’s complete incompetence may save him from himself. Even if no patent and overt disasters during his administration, just his Trumpiness we get him very close to the bottom.
Being president is one of those jobs where seems like many more ways to mess it up than to do it well.
Edit: though, I am sure there are at least a million or two people in the US who could do a better job than Trump. Maybe someone should try to estimate the percent of the adult population who could do better. Maybe throw in teenagers too.
Cheryl Rofer
I’ve seen comments today on Twitter that the “whatabout Obama and Katrina” tweets are largely coming from bots.
mai naem mobile
This might sound really stupid but why has Texas not built multiple dams or whatever you need for this water to go into and go towards Austin. I remember listening to a piece on NPR a year or two ago about how Austin doesn’t have water to serve it’s exploding population and that the farms/ranches that were outside Austin were closing down because of water. I also talked to somebody who has lived in Houston and he says it floods all the time. I don’t know crap aboutthe geography or engineering. Is it because it’s salt water?
Mike in NC
Where can I buy a Trump “2017 Red State Hate Rally” t-shirt before they all sell out?
efgoldman
@rachel:
That he said out loud.
Zelma
I know people want to help the folks of Houston. I also know that many are leery of the Red Cross. While there are many worthwhile organizations, might I suggest that you consider donating via the Disaster Relief Program of the ELCA? (The Lutherans) They have a stellar record in this area and can work with local churches to get the help where it is needed. (Everyone in Texas is not a Baptist or a loco. There are some ordinary Christians there.) And 100% of your donation will go to relief efforts. You can donate via the ELCA website.
I don’t watch television much (except for sports) but I found myself glued to the TV today watching what is going on in disbelief. (I did turn the TV off when Trump was on.) This is devastating. And mind-boggling. I can’t begin to imagine the impact it’s going to have on the economy. Houston has more Fortune 500 companies than any city except NY, and they are all out of operation. The ripple effect is going to be serious. Not to say what will happen to the price of gasoline.
Adam L Silverman
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Take advantage of the opportunity. The social media data analytics indicate they’ve gone all in on pushing the liberal civil war meme into the alt-right and then more mainstream conservative social media realm. From there it jumped into actual reporting. The more atomized they can get the US citizenry the easier it is for them to level the global playing field.
And it is important to remember that it looks like they are using Zapad to either cover an invasion into the Baltics and other eastern European NATO member states or they’re hoping that this causes someone in NATO to do something stupid under pressure that gives them the excuse and cover to switch from military exercise to actual military operation. All while claiming to be the aggrieved party.
efgoldman
@mai naem mobile:
The same reason that they have no zoning laws and no regulations of plants that produce dangerous chemicals. They’re a bunch of faux glibertarian assholes. Except for voting and women, of course
jl
That Condichelle Ribema time traveler must be trolling. I mean.. really. I just can’t imagine someone that…
Well, it’s Trumpsters, so, who knows?
Edit: but if it is bots, who is dumb enough to fall for it?
Besides Fox and Friends?
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: See my comment at #20.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: I see him as an asshole, but not 100% a dick. He just wasn’t capable of recovering from it.
different-church-lady
@Adam L Silverman: But what would be the point? To discredit Trump? Make him look even more like a fool?
Is their point to merely disrupt as much as possible, as opposed to propping up this failure of a human being? Are they just screwing with us now?
Cheryl Rofer
@mai naem mobile: The biggest reason is that it is uphill to Austin. Houston is about 50 feet above sea level, and Austin is 489 feet above sea level. You would need pumps to get the water there.
BlueDWarrior
@different-church-lady: The best way Russia sees to defeat the West is to make the West so paranoid and fractured they are basically incapable of acting in any coordinated fashion. So you poison their media with trolls and bots, making it so that everyone loathes everyone else, and you sit back and skim territory and grey markets while everyone’s too busy beating each other with virtual canes.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chet Murthy: according to the story I saw earlier, Dubya asked Poppy and Bubba to lead the fund-raising effort, a detail I had forgotten
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: Yup. That’s how they do it. But smart people are beginning to have ways to out them.
Adam L Silverman
@different-church-lady: The point is to disrupt and make it more difficult for the US to wield its national power. Russia has a GDP just below Brazils, the sanctions have caused significant and deep economic pain within Russia, and despite his efforts to modernize and update it, the Russian military is a pale shadow of the Soviet military at the height of its power. The only thing it really has going for it is that it is a nuclear power, it has
a seat on the UN Security Council, and it has developed this very effective cyber and hybrid warfare program. So the only way for Russia to compete globally in the manner that Putin believes it should is to lower everyone else. Starting with the US. And the more it can discredit the US and its political system, the more it can argue domestically that real democracy is a stupid idea in Russia. Just look at the chaos in the US.
different-church-lady
@BlueDWarrior: But a meme so blatantly ridiculous that it immediately discredits anyone dumb enough to repeat it? What purpose would that serve? Laughter isn’t good for starting cockfights.
Roger Moore
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Because it’s divisive. They want to drive a wedge between liberals and conservatives, and spreading BS stories about how bad Obama is fulfills that purpose.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: Yep.
Chet Murthy
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Why do gang initiations consist in the novice committing some heinous crime? In order to cement the novice’s allegiance to the gang, and to show the gang that the novice is thus committed. I think similarly, putting out insane propaganda, is a way to discern which of the “faithful” are actually on your side, and which are …. soft on the movement. B/c the truly committed are going to buy into the bullshit, no matter how smelly it is. Once your base has really bought into manifest falsehooods, I’d think it would be much easier to peddle even more falsehoods to them, be they for political ends, or plain old grifting (see Viguerie, Richard et al).
[But I’m not an expert — this just seems to make sense, and explains the madness that seems to have infected the R base.]
different-church-lady
@Adam L Silverman: See my comment at #45 — yes, I understand why bot disinformation is useful, I just can’t figure out the utility of pushing this particular meme when it’s so patently ridiculous. Why would they want to embarrass the very people they’ve spent so long elevating?
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: It exists. Please apply your cynicism.
Chet Murthy
@different-church-lady:
Uh, like “Obama was born in Kenya”? A meme as ridic as that? *grin*
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
First, yes, yes they are.
Second, this is not new. On patrol in the North Atlantic we’d frequently be followed by USSR ships, they’d sit off about 1/2 mile and just follow us around. Just to let us know they were there, and just to fuck with us. Hour after hour.
Adam L Silverman
@different-church-lady: Because they’ve determined that their target audience will believe anything at this point. And that there are specific individuals within that audience that seem to be able to push this stuff in a way as to get the President to respond to it on social media. It is a further degradation of facts and truth and empirical reality. If no one can agree on what the facts are, than nothing has any meaning.
Sab
@efgoldman: They have built dams etc. 50 inches is a lot of rainfall. My town, which is very hilly with a valley and river at the bottom of the valley, has a lot of problems with a six inch rainfall. These guys are dealing with fifty inches in less than a week.
Omnes Omnibus
I am gone.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Which is the kind of think a halfway competent President would know to do. A malignant narcissist like Trump, though, would never ask somebody else to do something good because he wouldn’t want to share the praise. It’s the same reason he’s having a lot of trouble working with Congress; he wants to take credit for anything they pass while giving them the blame if things don’t work out. No politician worth his salt would be willing to take that deal.
different-church-lady
@Adam L Silverman:
Yes, and that was the overlooked central premise of 1984: the point of Minitrue was not to lie, it was to destroy objective truth altogether.
However, I think this meme is counter-productive: it highlights objective truth, rather than obscuring it.
Redshift
I realize Trump has lowered the bar to way below ground level, but I think people are giving W way too much credit.
My opinion when W was elected was that he didn’t want to do the job of president, he just wanted to be president. Yeah, he may have had more of an idea of what the job was, but he didn’t give much of an impression he wanted to do most of it. Trump is worse in this respect because he doesn’t want to do any of it except the parts that get him adoring crowds, and he won’t do the minimum that will let other people do the work, which W obviously did. And yeah, W did grow into it somewhat, which Trump also isn’t doing and won’t do.
The damage from W lying us into war is still playing out fifteen years later, and it’s nowhere near over.
ummm… I’m not sure where the line should be drawn between frequently being an asshole to virtually everyone who wasn’t useful to him and being a hater, but…
I’m just saying, all the stuff we were horrified about at the time hasn’t magically become okay just because they’ve found someone even worse.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
I have to admit, Shrub had the best summary of Trump’s inauguration:
Mike in NC
At the drugstore today I picked up the latest issue of TIME magazine with a cover story on “Hate in America”. Hoping it will explain the economic anxiety of the typical Trump supporter, OK?
scav
@different-church-lady: What it also does is expose those that swallow it and get called on it to what they will interpret as unfair ridicule — so they’ll likely harden in their hatred of those damn sneering eeee-leeetes with all that fake hsitory. Hardens the internal divide.
wuzzat
@efgoldman: Dubya was a stereotypical frat boy made executive director because his daddy was on the board. He was terrible at being president, and surrounded himself with people terrible people. But the reason that people have been on a Dubya nostalgia trip lately is that at least he had some idea of what a president was supposed to do even if he personally sucked at it. And also, of course, because minus some fried brain cells from his party days, Dubya was relatively mentally sound. Yeah, that’s a low bar, but that’s where we as a country are at right now. Terrible politics or no, stick someone without an obvious cluster b personality disorder at the helm and it’s a big step up.
Chet Murthy
@different-church-lady:
“We have always been at war with Eastasia”
“The chocolate ration has been raised to X grams a week”
I’d claim to you that these are both objectively false and obviously so to any and all rational citizens. And yet in 1984 the idea was that citizens would parrot these talking points to each other. And fealty to the Party was measured partly in hewing to this line, right? I think Adam’s right, that it’s about degrading the meaning of truth entirely. To do that well, you have to force — FORCE — your partisans to believe and repeat and tout statements that are *demonstrably false*. It’s not enough to get them to tout things that are false but only after some careful thought or investigation. You gotta get ’em to say “up is down”. If you can get ’em to say and believe that, then you can get ’em to do anything. Anything.
Mnemosyne
@Redshift:
As with so many other things in this world, there is a passage by PG Wodehouse that covers this situation (from one of my favorite stories of his, “Unpleasantness at Bludleigh Court”):
Substitute “Nixon,” “Shrub,” and “Trump” for the above names and you pretty much have it.
Adam L Silverman
This is just funny. Well played Mossad, well played indeed:
Enhanced Voting Techniques
OMG the comments…
Didn’t you know that Obama was President when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor? Being from Hawaii he should’ve stopped it!
Obama broke up The Beatles, too. ?
He also killed Julius Caesar. Phrase was actually “et tu Barack?” Shakespeare didn’t use his name since he had already killed the dinosaurs
Jack the Cold Warrior
@mai naem mobile:
The flooding is much from the fresh rainwater, rather than the salty storm surge at the coast.
And your idea about channeling water to the drier parts of Texas should be studied- Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio all can have downpour Thunderstorms in summer that cause localized flooding. But is it often enough to be cost effective to build the infrastructure ?
Chet Murthy
@Jack the Cold Warrior: Uh, also, having grown up in Texas, I can attest to the fact that there are, like, 2 real lakes in all of north and central Texas. And a gazillion dams. As we used to say, “everybody drinks somebody else’s reprocessed pee.” You’d be shocked at how many lakes there are — really. Just …. well, to create a lake, you need a valley to dam up. And Harris county is … *flat*. *flat*. Look at those rivers — they meander around, b/c the land’s so flat.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Personal hatred of Obama. Remember the picture of Obama looming over Putin and making Putin looking small.
CaseyL
Dubya launched an invasion of Iraq that shattered the entire Arab world to pieces, ignited the Syrian civil war, and Daesh, and thus one wave after another of “lone wolf” terrorist attacks all over the world. That is all at Bush-Cheney’s door.
He, or Cheney, are also the ones who allowed the mad dog Eric Prince to enter our national house.
The damage Trump is doing is awful, but not yet as…. significant, globally, as that Dubya unleashed.
Villago Delenda Est
Speaking of stupid people.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Cheryl Rofer: We do that here in California.
AxelFoley
Indeed.
Frankensteinbeck
Trump is the worst president in history, in terms of being fit for the job.
There are other presidents who have done more damage. That could yet change.
It’s a semantic issue of how you define ‘worst.’
Patricia Kayden
@Adam L Silverman: Any Rightwing entity which repeats any nonsense about President Obama being in power during Hurricane Katrina would be mocked relentlessly.
ThresherK
@Mike in NC: The timeless claim “I read it for the articles, I swear!” works better on Play-boy*. Or Furries’ Digest.
(*Does the common spelling put a post into moderation?)
AxelFoley
@Redshift: This. All this.
Central Planning
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
That’s ridiculous. Obama can’t be 6000 years old!
Bruce K
I hope we all live long enough to say that Obama was followed by an even better president, after the country spent a while retreating to the Dark Ages.
Lurking Canadian
@jl: I think it’s way more than one million. Any fundamentally decent citizen who graduated from a degree-granting institution would be better than Trump.
Actually, I’m not sure you even need to limit it to those with post-secondary education. Trump’s ignorance extends to things kids ought to learn in high school history class, or elementary grade civics.
He’s appalling: a toxic blend of ignorance, incuriousity, lack of human decency, solipsism, vindictiveness, spite, racism and misogyny. As I have said before, history has provided examples of political figures who are worse than Trump in specific areas, but I think he has a good shot at the all-around. He’s not just the worst president you’ve had. He’s the global extremum: the worst president you could possibly have.
Amir Khalid
@ThresherK:
Let’s see:
ETA: I conclude that mentioning the name of Hugh Hefner’s magazine does not get a comment put into moderation.
Dave
@different-church-lady: That and unlike almost all the more effective ones it takes no more time to refute than it does to propagate. So it fits in their gneral strategy but is an example of a poor effort within that strategy.
Aimai
@Cheryl Rofer: aqueducts. The fucking romans managed it.
fancycwabs
As it happens, Trump DID issue a statement several days after Katrina hit:
J R in WV
@mai naem mobile:
It is partly because the flood water is poisoned by chemicals and sewage, but mostly because Austin is uphill from Houston, there is no way to pump the volume of water involved, and there is no where to put the water if you could pump it to Austin.
Unfortunately, waiting for the water to slowly move out to sea, rolling downhill towards creeks and bayous and then leaving the area is all that can be done. In a more perfect world, Houston would designate low-lying areas as flood plains, build dikes around higher-land for residential areas and require industrial facilities to be built elevated above any possible flood.
There are obviously places in Houston high enough to be safe from many flood situations, while others flood every time there’s a heavy rain storm. But in Texas, telling people where they can build what, how to use their precious private property, licensing contractors, all that is un-American leftist Communism.
Zoning, flood plain use as parks, making contractors prove they are qualified and honest, all that is un-Texan and not approved of. So strange! A roofer friend of mine went to Florida to fix the hurricane-damaged roofs of a couple of relatives.
He planned to work fixing roofs until the weather became intolerable, but in Florida having a business license as a contractor in WV won’t get you on a ladder, unless you are a relative of the home owner. He wasn’t going to get rich, just do a job and make the same money he would have made at home. They wanted him to pay a big fee to take the Florida test too!