Hurricane Could Make a Mess of Republican Convention 503
Hugh Pickens writes "ABC News reports that Hurricane Isaac, currently a tropical storm brewing southeast of Puerto Rico, is on track to hit Florida the same day that Mitt Romney and 50,000 Republican delegates, journalists, protestors and guests descend on Tampa for the Republican National Convention but whether it will skim the east coast near Miami or crash head-on into Tampa, is still up in the air. The worst possible scenario is that Hurricane Isaac stays on the western track, skating over the Caribbean Sea south of Haiti, crossing the primarily flat landscape of western Cuba into the Gulf of Mexico then curving east and hitting Tampa dead-on. 'Tampa is just as vulnerable as New Orleans was in the sense that the water will funnel into the bay area and from the storm surge which will flood completely the whole entire city of Tampa,' says meteorologist Max Golembo. 'It would be a disaster in the Tampa area.' If a hurricane or tropical storm is bearing down on Tampa, the priority of law enforcement is to evacuate residents, leaving GOP officials to make the decision of when to evacuate delegates says Hillsborough County Emergency Management spokeswoman Holly Wade. 'We have to look at a lot of factors, like timing and landfall,' says Wade. 'We provide the weather information, then we take that to the host committee, which decides if the event goes on or if the event gets altered.' A Category 2 hurricane could disrupt convention activities because the Tampa Bay Times Forum, site of the festivities, is within a mandatory evacuation zone for storms of that magnitude."
Re:"Gat Back"? When did you start? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Gat Back"? When did you start? (Score:5, Informative)
Can't let the lies go unanswered, sorry pal. The Democrats did have a majority in the Senate, but they did not have a fillibuster proof majority in the Senate. The Republican minority was therefore able to stop most bills from even coming to the floor of the Senate for a vote. This included not only budget items, like a bill the House passed which would reward companies that bring jobs back here with tax breaks instead of rewarding outsourcing, as well as most judicial appointments and financial accountability and re-regulation of some parts of Wall Street. This is the Republican party whose current Senate minority leader said that his NUMBER ONE goal was to make Obama a one term president. Not fix the economy, not bring jobs back, not fix unemployment, sure as hell not punish the banksters who caused all this, but his number one goal was politics.
BTW, among other things tht make them lying hypocrites is that this is the party of "Let's have a straight up or down vote" on judicial nominees in years past when the tables were reversed. Go look it up. Since facts matter little to Republican voters, they have an easy time getting away with being two faced.
Now, I'm about to do what no Republican will ever do: admit the other side has a point. Sometimes politicians do things they know won't pass to say they did them. So would the House have passed progressive legislation if they knew the other side in the Senate wouldn't be able to stop it? Admittedly unknown. The Republican leaders are batshit crazy, but the Democrats are also beholden to large corporations. But that's what if games. The House passed stuff, the MINORITY party prevented it from being voted on in the Senate a record number of times, and nothing got done, just like was planned because of politics. Meanwhile,we all pay for it.
Re:"Gat Back"? When did you start? (Score:5, Informative)
And the reason nothing passed was the Democrats were attempting to be bi-partisan. You can see how well that worked out for them.
GOP, the party of NO!
GOP became the party of Filibuster in the Senate. Just because you had a majority, doesn't mean you get things all your own way, a party needs 2/3rds support to end a filibuster. Democrats didn't have that and the GOP effectively stonewalled things, particularly nominations for cabinet and other federal posts.
Re:"Gat Back"? When did you start? (Score:1, Informative)
That works both ways you know. Around 2003-4 the Republicans became aware that the mortgage lending market was "too hot" and they needed to act to slowdown the exuberance. But that time it was the Democrats who filibustered and stopped mortgage/banking laws from being rewritten & made tougher. The Democrats wanted mortgages to be easy to get, even for people too poor to pay them back.
Re:"Gat Back"? When did you start? (Score:4, Informative)
>> Around 2003-4 the Republicans became aware that the mortgage lending market was "too hot" and they needed to act to slowdown the exuberance. But that time it was the Democrats who filibustered and stopped mortgage/banking laws from being rewritten & made tougher.
Republicans had the Presidency, the House, and the Senate from 2003 to 2007 -- a ridiculously convenient opportunity to address the mortgage lending market problems. Democrats can't filibuster for four solid years!
http://uspolitics.about.com/od/usgovernment/l/bl_party_division_2.htm
Re:"Gat Back"? When did you start? (Score:5, Informative)
For noncontroversial issues the Democrat majority didn't have any problem ramming-through TARP in two weeks.
Signed by Bush, voted for by Sen. McCain. At the time it was voted on, TARP was bipartisan.
Re:"Gat Back"? When did you start? (Score:2, Informative)
Tell me you've really never heard of the filibuster. It's very possible for the minority to obstruct the majority.
Go crack open an American Government textbook while the adults are talking.
Re:"Gat Back"? When did you start? (Score:5, Informative)
We could maybe get back to actually governing this country.
The Democrats had solid majorities in every branch of government for two full years.
During that time, not a single budget was passed. Nothing changed from when Bush was president except that spending skyrocketed and energy production in America was subdued or stopped whenever possible.
So exactly what are we all to look forward to when you get "back" to governing? Drone strikes on any Republicans that survived the storm?
Just another liberal happy to kill for the cause I suppose. There sure are a disturbing number of you around these days, unwilling to debate and only to destroy.
Osama Bin Laden was killed.
The recession is over.
General Motors and Chrysler, and the industrial heartland of the country, were saved from a catastrophe that would make the dust bowl look like nothing.
An end has come to the era of people being condemned to death by for-profit insurance companies using the excuse of "pre-existing conditions" to deny people their basic human right to health care coverage.
Colonel Gadaffi was ousted from power without a single American soldier being deployed on the ground, and without adding countless billions to the deficit.
That god-awful war in Iraq, the biggest foreign policy blunder since Napoleon invaded Russia, has ended.
Since Obama took office, oil imports have dropped by an average of 1.1 million barrels per day and in 2010 domestic crude oil production reached its highest level since 2003.
How you got an "insightful" mod I do not know.
Re:And if a hurricane wipes out the GOP... (Score:5, Informative)
There is no one true dictionary any more than there is one true god. If you consult definitions in other dictionaries you'll see that there is no standard definition of Zionism that excludes gentiles from it.
Re:Just watch... (Score:3, Informative)
Rick Santorum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Santorum#National_Weather_Service_Duties_Act
Facts. They're a thing now.
Re:And if a hurricane wipes out the GOP... (Score:4, Informative)
The poster may be referring to the repeated statements by GOP celebrity favorites (Fallwell, Graham, B-list megachurch pastors, etc) who claim that disasters like Katrina and 9/11 are the fault of America's fall from the grace of the Christian God.
So, it would be quite ironic to see a hurricane battering the place where they are trying to hold a convention.
Re:"Gat Back"? When did you start? (Score:5, Informative)
Without a filibuster-proof majority, the "majority" can't do anything. Thus the OP's claim that they had a "solid majority" implying they could have gotten work done (but didn't) was disingenuous.
Re:"Gat Back"? When did you start? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Twisted logic (Score:4, Informative)
Close, but not quite [chron.com].