So, as of 1:00 pm yesterday, our low-lying seaside neighborhood has been under a “mandatory” evacuation order. They say “mandatory” because the lawyers tell them to. No one is going to come poking around to physically remove you. But after they utter the word “mandatory” the authorities can absolve themselves of responsibility if anything happens to you (and, more to the point, they can absolve themselves of liability if they fail to act).
We had been planning to go even before the order came down. A few hearty souls in our neighborhood of about 100 houses have stayed behind. They tended to be the ones with the generators and plywood — and also the ones whose houses enjoyed that extra two or three above sea level that builds confidence among marine home owners during a tidal surge.
We decamped inland to higher ground, but are getting regular bulletins. So far, the report is very windy, no water in the streets or over the sea walls. Did you know that tides describe an irresistible sine wave — irresistible, I mean, to those on the receiving end. As it happens, this is one of the highest tides of the month (“higher than normal astronomical tides” is how the weather service puts it). With the new moon, the arc is swinging from about -.3 feet, which happened around 5:30 this morning, to a big tide of more than 8 feet around 11:30 this morning. That should be about the moment that Irene starts hitting her stride there with winds of about 75 mph pushing water into the Sound, over our sea walls, and into the waiting houses.
The water is bad enough. But another thing to worry about is all the debris Irene will be chucking up on shore: wooden beams, buoys, rugged bits of stuff that used to belong to, or used to be, boats, even a park bench has been known to be vomited forth from the sea. So we are waiting on tenterhooks for the morning high tide to pass. As Irene pass, the wind direction from the cyclone will shift from an easterly to a westerly orientation, i.e., from a direction pushing water at us to pushing it away from us. At the moment, we do not know when that will happen.
A friend with a sense of humor sent me this reassuring story: “Obama Takes Charge at Hurricane Center.” “Now you can sleep well tonight,” he said. Hardly that. I mean really: does he look like a man who has a clue about what to do? Ponder the official NOAA name plate emblazoned with “Barack Obama President of the United States.” Why does that seem ridiculous? After all, he is the President of the United States. Maybe it’s because it put me in mind of that iconic image of Mike Dukakis in his tank. Anyway, if it failed to be reassuring, it did introduce a welcome moment of levity.
Obama: But you said there would be no math!!??
Good thing that FEMA rated Irene as “unclassified”…Otherwise we would not have heard about it for years, or until the NY Times leaked it!
If he micro manges FEMA during this naturally occuring weather realted event, millions will die and I fear they will rise and start the zombie apacolypse. I’d feel safer if he would just head out west and give some speeches.
This was not the moment the oceans began to recede. That happens later when the wind stops coming from across the Atlantic and starts coming from the heartland.
Look out kid
Don’t matter what you did
Walk on your tip toes
Don’t try, ‘No Doz’
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don’t need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows.
What…no Greek columns?
Maybe they were blown out to sea by the storm?
The look of determination settled on his face. Fevered thoughts raced madly through his nicotine-pumped brain as he rapidly formed a strategy that would save his nation from the howling hurricane and return the raging seas once more to their natural beds, for he is BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!
Yea verily, even as the raindrops fell savagely o’re the East coast and the vicious 30 MPH winds buffeted the sagging hopes of the populace all eyes turned to their savior. “Oh Whisker-kitty they implored, save us, oh save us!”
Message to the People of North Carolina: You are not important enough to interrupt my golf game.
Clark AB in the Philippines was my fourth tour in Asia, so I had seen many typhoons. In the summer of 1977, weather was tracking a monster storm headed directly at us with winds in excess of 150 mph. A local TV channel had a Philippine air force general addressing the public. He announced that the typhoon was approaching the “Philippine area of responsibility.” The diminutive officer outlined his “plan” to seed the storm clouds before the typhoon made landfall. The general also told everyone that he had renamed the storm. I couldn’t help laughing.
Saturday it started raining lightly as the outer bands reached the base. That night the wind picked up and so did the rain. Our house, built on stilts in 1906, had seen more typhoons than I had, so I was not overly concerned. Sunday it poured; we got 24″ of rain in 24 hours. It was as if a severe thunderstorm had parked overhead. When the eye passed, we sent out 8 year old son outside to walk my wife’s dog. They ran back inside just before the eye wall hit. Monday afternoon the rain tapered off. Tuesday we cleaned up.
Manila was a disaster. Imelda Marcos owned the company that sold the government the pumps in the capital’s new flood control system. No one had bothered to waterproof the electric switches or the motors. Who knew? About an hour into the typhoon the entire city was flooded. The plains north of the base were under water for a week.
Humans can take responsibility for many things. Typhoons and hurricanes are not on the list.
At the risk of sounding like I have ODS, and that I’d find fault with anything the President does, I have a hard time believing that the best place for the President is sitting in an Op Center. It’s never been my experience that having the senior officer sitting for any length of time enhances the operations of a Command Center. One, the tendency to over- or under-report because of the seniority is there (either providing a stream of trivia that the Watch Officer would either be aware of or screen out, or hesitating to report data they don’t think is important enough. Basically it just undermines the Watch Officer). Not saying it’s not his right to be there… just that I hope he doesn’t spend much time. Two, this focuses the President on a single problem… while there is really a whole country and world out there, most of which is not involved in the slow-motion unrolling of a 16 mph-moving hurricane.
Striking that balance between aloof and involved is always going to dissapoint some people. But having spent some time in Op erations and Command Centers, the senior guy should (IMHO) poke his head in, get a photo op being briefed, and get out. There are usually only two states of existence there: too slow and static to justify the putative most powerful man in the world sitting there doing nothing, and too hectic and stressful for somebody with absolutely no practical training or experience to contribute meaningfully and likely slowing things down by injecting themselves into the process.
Now, it probably WAS simply a photo op, briefing, and rapid departure… but I agree that it comes off (to me), as more Dukakis on the tank than Bush trapping on a carrier. Either one can be criticized as a publicity stunt, but only Dukakis looked like a clown doing it.
(as a side note, it would have been MUCH less cheesy, and this is a quibble, for the Op Center to just have had a “President of the United States” placard, and left the name off of it… would anybody have been confused without the name?)
@MDC you are spot on with the undermining comment. As the manager of a team of highly skilled professionals, I’m constantly aware of the message being sent by my presence and absence in their meetings. Too little, and they’re unimportant. Too much, and I’ve cast a vote of little or no confidence. Wonder what message Obama intended to send, and which one was actually received both by the public and in the Op Center?
My guess is that President Obama was just there for the photo op, as you suggest. In this he is unlike former president Jimmy Carter, who used to get up to his eyeballs in the minutia of these things.
So Barry took charge. Honestly, did anyone really notice?
Message: I care.
Maybe they had to put his name on there in case he had to say who he was without a telepromter….???
My mind reader hat is not entirely reliable but the photo put me in mind of someone who has missed most of the lectures and has just received his final exam test packet.
Nailed it on the look on Obama’s face! Spot on.
With such ostentatious displays of privilege and standing, Obama is better suited for leadership in a 3rd world banana republic, rather than the US, where he is the subject of merciless ridicule.
Which member of the Ivy-League educated brain trust had the unbelievable idea of manufacturing that placard with his name on it? Plouffe? Axelrod? Jarrett? Carney? Michelle?
Doesn’t look like the vacation did him much good. Perhaps going from the Cat 5 hurricane Michelle to the Cat 1 hurricane Irene might just be his vacation.
My first thought when I saw the picture wasn’t Dukakis, but a scene in Patricia Heaton’s TV show “The Middle.” Mike Heck, her character’s husband, goes to his brother’s house, only to find it had burned down. “You should have called me,” he tells his brother. To which the brother (played by Norm MacDonald) replies, “You a fireman?”
That’s what I was thinking: “You a meteorologist?”
Not to mention, the inane quote, “the biggest concern I’m having right now …” Is what? That the photographer catches you looking important?!
Barry as Weatherman? I thought he barely knew Bill Ayers and Bernadine…
Leftism is the hurricane of politics.
(Technically caused by a bunch of hot air producing the vapors and a ton of spin….which pretty much describes leftism at its roots)
Obama, being the Leftist In Chief does not want a Katrina comparison on his rice paper thin resume.
So he becomes one big bag of wind trying to overcome the other.
The time period leading up to the national election is “political hurricane season”. Hot air, spin and vapors are rampant.
Obama controls the hot air, David Plouffe (the Magic’s Draggin’) controls the spin and Debbie Downer exhibits the vapors. (now that Little Anthony is gone).
Batten down the hatches.
Obama goes lipless! Notice the lipless look whenever BO is doing something he does not want to do – or being somewhere he does not want to be.
In my 7:25 AM comment (#8) I referred to a Philippine Air Force general remarking that a Typhoon was entering the “Philippine area of responsibility.” Well, at about 11:00 AM Big Sis had a dog & pony show. The FEMA toad who followed her said Irene had just entered his “area of responsibility.” You can’t make this stuff up.
Good thing they put “POTUS” on his name tag, so we didn’t confuse him with the other Barry Obama, the professional golfer!
“Maybe it’s because it put me in mind of that iconic image of Mike Dukakis in his tank.”
It’s the stench of incompetence. They can try scrubbing it off, posing for pictures in front of computers and/or tanks and have their paid shills in the moribund media assault you verbally for smelling it…. but they can’t get rid of it.
I see Obama found Bush’s hurricane machine
True leadership on the issue means swapping the teleprompter for the green screen weather map:
Obama: “And over here, we see some scary swirly stuff coming this way. Umm..could be bad. But I have hope it will change. For more on the conditions on the ground, we go to Vice president Joe Biden.”
Biden: “Thank you Mr. President. As you can see by the water up to my neck, this a big effin’ deal!”
What will Obama want to do next before his summer vacation is over,take control of a predator drone?
(now referred to as Obamers)
Good to see that Soros’ post turtle is at his post.
Wily FEMA Guy knows that this is just what Krugman has been calling for. Short of those unreliable aliens destroying the earth to promote growth, the big surge was just what Obo needed for his Sept 3 speech. Even politico is on board
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=6D8CD13D-DB67-4B7A-9F0D-F885BF49457B
The water recedes and Happy Days Are Here again. The economic growth from the wise FEMA spending will cause the US to leave China in the dust.
Order me another Hurricane!
Seems these guys would have done as much good as Barry would have in a FEMA command post:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY4gJoKwtAQ&feature=youtu.be&has_verified=1
I hope your house was OK Roger?
I only read roger today – honest! Hey two days ago I tweeted: President Obama at the Hurricane command center: Does any one remember Senator Dukakis driving a tank?
29 Aug Favorite Reply Delete
But I only have four followers! Waah, I wanna be a pundit too!
Another similarity to Dukakis is Obama’s rather narrow shoulders. As someone afflicted with this, I can sort of sympathize.