Possibly More Americans Killed in Haiti Than 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan
This is an interesting observation from a blogger who follows naval affairs.
Another relevant number, 2,973 victims were killed in the 9/11 attacks, though those were not all Americans -- victims came from 90 different countries. And more than 1,800 people died in Hurricane Katrina.
With this blogger's comments in mind, consider Glenn Beck's statement last week:
I suppose the President could have reacted like the recent Republican administration did when New Orleans was destroyed...
Haiti is still chaotic, nobody knows how many people have died or will die as supplies are delayed, and we don't know how many Americans will have been lost in the earthquake. That number will almost certainly be large.
The State Department told NBC news on Tuesday that there are still 5,500 missing Americans in Haiti. What the article does not mention is that no Americans have been pulled out of rubble alive in 2 days, and the odds of finding more survivors is very low.
Missing does not mean dead.
There are still no fixed estimates how many people were killed in the earthquake, but the UN is now saying they have already buried 50,000 bodies. That does not count the many thousands who died and are buried inside collapsed buildings.
I have not seen any estimates of how many of the estimated 250,000 wounded in Haiti were American, but there were an estimated 45,000 Americans in Haiti at the time of the earthquake.
For context, there have been 4,373 American citizens killed in the Iraq war, and 962 Americans kill in the Afghanistan War.
With such an incredible loss of life, is anyone still curious why I have believed from the beginning this will be an enormous political challenge for the Obama administration? They are doing a great job, but cannot afford at any point to appear politically distracted from an event that potentially might represent the largest loss of American life in decades. Haiti Earthquake Impact on America in Context
Another relevant number, 2,973 victims were killed in the 9/11 attacks, though those were not all Americans -- victims came from 90 different countries. And more than 1,800 people died in Hurricane Katrina.
With this blogger's comments in mind, consider Glenn Beck's statement last week:
I also believe this is dividing the nation…to where the nation sees him react so rapidly on Haiti and yet he couldn’t react rapidly on Afghanistan. Beck: Obama is ‘dividing the nation’ by reacting ‘so rapidly to Haiti.
I suppose the President could have reacted like the recent Republican administration did when New Orleans was destroyed...
Haiti is still chaotic, nobody knows how many people have died or will die as supplies are delayed, and we don't know how many Americans will have been lost in the earthquake. That number will almost certainly be large.
posted by JimK at 9:34 AM
28 Comments:
I would add that dead Americans also include missionaries and relief workers killed by the mobs
many of these are young people
Tim Tebow, the most successful homeschooled athlete of all time, and arguably the best college quartereback of all time, may be running for something in twenty years or so:
"While the most popular point of debate regarding this year's NFL draft will be how Florida star quarterback Tim Tebow projects for pro football, come Sunday, Feb. 7, Tebow will already be on the Super Bowl telecast. That's because Tebow and a faith group, Focus on the Family, will be debuting a 30-second commercial that utilizes Tebow's own life story to make the case that abortion is wrong.
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past four college football seasons, you know that Tebow is an evangelical Christian who sees football as a platform that allows him to spread his Christianity. For most of his four years that message has resounded throughout the South, and I've argued Tebow's passionate Christianity is one reason that he became popular not just with Florida fans but with many other Southern football fans.
In many ways, Tebow's ascent in college football is unique. Thanks to his 48-7 career record, including three 13-1 seasons, two national titles, a Heisman Trophy, and consistent exposure on ESPN and CBS national telecasts, there are few, if any, college athletes in the country who have ever received more attention during their careers. The result is that before he even takes a single snap, Tebow is already more popular than at least half the starting quarterbacks in the NFL.
Tebow's on- and off-field popularity has been firmly focused on his own personal biography, his mission trips, his family's faith and even what is likely to be the focus of the television ad during the Super Bowl, the fact that Tebow's mother was told to have an abortion rather than carry her fifth child to term. Pam Tebow became sick during a mission trip and rejected doctor's advice that she have an abortion. Ultimately she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Tebow.
Now the 30-second Super Bowl ad, which will cost around $2.5 million, is being paid for by Focus on the Family, a religious organization that opposes abortion. In a release the organization stated as follows:
"Tim and Pam share our respect for life and our passion for helping families thrive. Focus on the Family is about ... strengthening families by empowering them with the tools they need to live lives rooted in morals and values."
The Super Bowl ad will just be the latest surge of attention for the most famous college athlete ... ever. Indeed, in the annals of American sporting culture, it's hard to find a player who has received more positive publicity in comparison to negative publicity.
In fact, I dare you, find me an entire article about Tim Tebow that has been written by anyone, anywhere that has a negative tone.
Those stories don't exist."
he may be clueless but he's showing integrity, and in the final analysis, that's more important:
"President Obama warned Democrats in Congress today not to "jam" a health care reform bill through now that they've lost their commanding majority in the Senate, and said they must wait for newly elected Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown to be sworn into office."
Barry, you just need to realize that we wanted to focus on reducing costs not increasing coverage.
Long-term, the former will result in the later.
We can't afford the proposals your friends in Congress have made and they won't listen to us.
Read this, Barry:
"He’s misjudged the character of the country in his whole approach. He didn’t get it. He was determined somehow or other to adopt a whole new agenda. He didn’t address the main issue.
This health-care plan is going to be a fiscal disaster for the country. Most of the country wanted to deal with costs, not expansion of coverage. This is going to raise costs dramatically.
In the campaign, he said he would change politics as usual. He did change them. It’s now worse than it was. I’ve now seen the kind of buying off of politicians that I’ve never seen before. It’s politically corrupt and it’s starting at the top. It’s revolting.
Five states got deals on health care—one of them was Harry Reid’s. It is disgusting, just disgusting. I’ve never seen anything like it. The unions just got them to drop the tax on Cadillac plans in the health-care bill. It was pure union politics. They just went along with it. It’s a bizarre form of political corruption. It’s bribery. I suppose they could say, that’s the system. He was supposed to change it or try to change it."
examples of incompetence are starting to pile up:
"The nation's intelligence chief said Wednesday that the Christmas Day airline bombing suspect should have been treated as a terrorism detainee when the plane landed. That would have meant having special interrogators question him before deciding whether to place him in the civilian court system.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was interviewed by FBI agents when Northwest Flight 253 landed in Detroit after he allegedly tried to detonate a homemade bomb sneaked through airport security in Nigeria and Amsterdam. Abdulmutallab is being held in a prison about 50 miles outside of Detroit.
Critics assert that the government should have at least considered whether to delay placing him in the civilian court system in order to press him for any useful intelligence before he gained the legal protections of a lawyer.
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that he was not consulted on whether Abdulmutallab should be questioned by the recently created High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG, and charged in federal court.
"That unit was created exactly for this purpose," Blair said. "We did not invoke the HIG in this case. We should have.""
it's like deja vu, all over again:
"LONDON (Jan. 20) – It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood disaster movie: Central and Southern Asia are hit by biblical floods when the Himalayan glaciers suddenly melt. After that cataclysm, water no longer flows from the mountains, leaving rivers like the Mekong and Ganges dry and millions facing permanent drought. That was the picture painted by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report, which said there was a "very high" chance that these glaciers would disappear by 2035 if the world kept warming.
But the IPCC, the U.N. body charged with investigating climate change, has retracted that claim after it emerged that its predictions of a sudden melt weren't based on peer-reviewed evidence, but instead on an article that appeared in the popular science magazine New Scientist in 1999.
While the Khumbu Glacier near Mount Everest is shrinking, the United Nations admits it overstated the threat of a total glacial meltdown in the Himalayas.
Climate change skeptics have lapped up the scandal, which they've already dubbed "Glaciergate," saying that it further erodes the credibility of climate science already damaged by last year's Climategate e-mail scandal. Global warming expert Peter Foster, writing in Canada's National Post, said the error showed how the "IPCC's task has always been not objectively to examine science but to make the case for man-made climate change by any means available."
The argument over the IPCC's melt date went public last November, when a paper written by Indian geologist Vijay Kumar Raina revealed that there was little consistency in the behavior of the Himalayan glaciers. Some were shrinking, he found, some expanding, and others were stable. If global warming were to blame, he asked, why weren't they all following the same pattern? "A glacier ... does not necessarily respond to the immediate climatic changes," he wrote. "For if it be so then all glaciers within the same climatic zone should have been advancing or retreating at the same time."
India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, endorsed the paper and accused the IPCC of being "alarmist" in its predictions.
Embarrassingly, the IPCC now stands accused of sloppy science, as a rigorous system of fact checks would have kept the controversial assertion out of the 2007 report."
let's play Notice the Quote
Barry O, yesterday:
"We were so busy just getting stuff done that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are"
uh, Barry, what stuff were you getting done?
a couple from George Will:
"By promising to cast the decisive 41st vote against the president's health-care legislation, the Republican candidate forced all congressional Democrats to contemplate this: Not even frenzied national mobilization of Democratic manpower and millions of dollars could rescue one of the safest Democratic seats in the national legislature from national dismay about the incontinent government expansion, of which that legislation is symptomatic."
"The 2008 elections gave liberals the curse of opportunity, and they have used it to reveal themselves ruinously. The protracted health-care debacle has highlighted this fact: Some liberals consider the legislation's unpopularity a reason to redouble their efforts to inflict it on Americans who, such liberals think, are too benighted to understand that their betters know best. The essence of contemporary liberalism is the illiberal conviction that Americans, in their comprehensive incompetence, need minute supervision by government, which liberals believe exists to spare citizens the torture of thinking and choosing."
79 campaign promises kept by President Obama during his first year in office
No. 6: Create an Advanced Manufacturing Fund to invest in peer-reviewed manufacturing processes
No. 15: Create a foreclosure prevention fund for homeowners
No. 16: Increase minority access to capital
No. 33: Establish a credit card bill of rights
No. 36: Expand loan programs for small businesses
No. 40: Extend and index the 2007 Alternative Minimum Tax patch
No. 50: Expand the Senior Corps volunteer program
No. 58: Expand eligibility for State Children’s Health Insurance Fund (SCHIP)
No. 76: Expand funding to train primary care providers and public health practitioners
No. 77: Increase funding to expand community based prevention programs
No. 88: Sign the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
No. 110: Assure that the Veterans Administration budget is prepared as ‘must-pass’ legislation
No. 119: Appoint a special adviser to the president on violence against women
No. 125: Direct military leaders to end war in Iraq
No. 132: No permanent bases in Iraq
No. 134: Send two additional brigades to Afghanistan
No. 154: Strengthen and expand military exchange programs with other countries
No. 167: Make U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional on anti-terror efforts
No. 174: Give a speech at a major Islamic forum in the first 100 days of his administration
No. 182: Allocate Homeland Security funding according to risk
No. 184: Create a real National Infrastructure Protection Plan
No. 200: Appoint a White House Coordinator for Nuclear Security
No. 208: Improve relations with Turkey, and its relations with Iraqi Kurds
No. 212: Launch an international Add Value to Agriculture Initiative (AVTA)
No. 215: Create a rapid response fund for emerging democracies
No. 222: Grant Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send money to Cuba
No. 224: Restore funding for the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (Byrne/JAG) program
No. 225: Establish an Energy Partnership for the Americas
No. 239: Release presidential records
No. 241: Require new hires to sign a form affirming their hiring was not due to political affiliation or contributions.
No. 247: Recruit math and science degree graduates to the teaching profession
No. 266: Encourage water-conservation efforts in the West
No. 269: Increase funding for national parks and forests
No. 270: Increase funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund
No. 272: Encourage farmers to use more renewable energy and be more energy efficient
No. 277: Pursue a wildfire prevention and management plan
No. 278: Remove more brush, small trees and vegetation that fuel wildfires
No. 284: Expand access to places to hunt and fish
No. 290: Push for enactment of Matthew Shepard Act, which expands hate crime law to include sexual orientation and other factors
No. 300: Reform mandatory minimum sentences
No. 307: Create a White House Office on Urban Policy
No. 325: Create an artist corps for schools
No. 326: Champion the importance of arts education
No. 327: Support increased funding for the NEA
No. 332: Add another Space Shuttle flight
No. 334: Use the private sector to improve spaceflight
No. 336: Partner to enhance the potential of the International Space Station
No. 337: Use the International Space Station for fundamental biological and physical research
No. 338: Explore whether International Space Station can operate after 2016
No. 342: Work toward deploying a global climate change research and monitoring system
No. 345: Enhance earth mapping
No. 346: Appoint an assistant to the president for science and technology policy
No. 356: Establish special crime programs for the New Orleans area
No. 359: Rebuild schools in New Orleans
No. 371: Fund a major expansion of AmeriCorps
No. 380: Bolster the military’s ability to speak different languages
No. 391: Appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer
No. 394: Provide grants to early-career researchers
No. 411: Work to overturn Ledbetter vs. Goodyear
No. 420: Create a national declassification center
No. 421: Appoint an American Indian policy adviser
No. 427: Ban lobbyist gifts to executive employees
No. 435: Create new criminal penalties for mortgage fraud
No. 452: Weatherize 1 million homes per year
No. 458: Invest in all types of alternative energy
No. 459: Enact tax credit for consumers for plug-in hybrid cars
No. 460: Ask people and businesses to conserve electricity
No. 475: Require states to provide incentives for utilities to reduce energy consumption
No. 480: Unprecedented expansion of funding for regional high-speed rail
No. 483: Invest in public transportation
No. 484: Equalize tax breaks for driving and public transit
No. 494: Share enviromental technology with other countries
No. 498: Provide grants to encourage energy-efficient building codes
No. 500: Increase funding for the Environmental Protection Agency
No. 502: Get his daughters a puppy
No. 503: Appoint at least one Republican to the cabinet
No. 506: Raise the small business investment expensing limit to $250,000 through the end of 2009
No. 507: Extend unemployment insurance benefits and temporarily suspend taxes on these benefits
No. 513: Reverse restrictions on stem cell research
wow, I guess Barry's right
he was doing a lot of other "stuff" when he should have been focused on 17% of American adults who can't find paying jobs
you forgot about the moment when his fall began:
when he invited a radical Harvard professor to the White House to join him and Joe Biden in lecturing a hard-working Massachusetts policeman over beer in the Rose Garden
I guess that was doing "stuff"
oh yeah, there was all the frequent flier miles racked up on a dozen overseas trips to do things like waste time pushing a ridiculous bid for a Chicago Olympics or pick up an completely uncalled-for Nobel prize or wrap up a failed climate change summit or bow to the son of the Japanese emperor who bombed Pearl Harbor
I know I'm just one voter but I'd be willing to have a couple hundred bucks of my tax money go to sending Barry to a time management seminar
btw, what's with all the gaps in the numbers on anon-B's list?
does that mean he's only hitting 79 out of 513 pitches?
a .153 average isn't alright in the big leagues
hey, look who decided to come clean when the news would get lost in the swirl:
"In a statement given to NBC News, former Democratic senator John Edwards admitted Thursday that he fathered a child with a campaign videographer during his 2008 presidential run. Edwards had previously denied paternity of Quinn Hunter, now 22 months old.
"I am Quinn's father," Edwards said in his statement.
Edwards had denied each detail of his affair with Rielle Hunter as it came out in the press, starting with the National Enquirer's first scoop in October 2007. Edwards dismissed the story as "tabloid trash," and would not admit to lying about it until nearly a year later. When he finally made his confession in August 2008, it was only partial: he still denied offering Hunter hush money, and even more strenuously denied paternity of her child. He also insisted that his transgression did not occur while his wife, Elizabeth, was being treated for breast cancer. Recently, he was rumored to be facing a paternity suit, and a federal investigation is examining the possible use of campaign funds to keep Hunter quiet about the affair."
once a Dem, always a Dem
With all of your bellyaching and gripes (and possibly, discomfort with his heritage), Anon, why don't you just write your "ideas" and "criticisms" directly to the President instead of taking up valuable space on this blog site?
(And your rants will have even less credibility there than they do here.)
We grow weary of your ego trips here.
let's not be petty
you lost
get over it
this one's for David:
"WASHINGTON (Jan. 21) -- The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations may spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on their participation in federal campaigns.
By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for their own campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states."
next up:
free speech for religious organizations too
things look real bleak for liberals now but there may be a silver lining for Democrats
usually, a new majority party gets a wake up call at the two year mark
events conspired to give Dems an early jump on making adjustmenst with only one loss instead of dozens
the truth is, we need two parties in America to keep Washington honest
if Dems can free themselves from the lunatic fringe and take themselves back to the John Kennedy era
if, like JFK, they cut taxes on capital gains to spur growth
if, like JFK, they stare down the Russians rather than unilaterally surrender our best advantage to them in Central Europe
if, like JFK, they commit to destroying the enemies of freedom rather than provide them with free legal assistance
then, for Dems, there is hope
they can change
there is hope
look at Connecticut
Chris Dodd announces retirement and now the Dems are leading in the polls
Dems need to persuade Pelosi, Reid, Baucus, Hoyer, Murtha, and the rest of the gang to do likewise
there is hope
let me quote Emily Dickinson at this point:
"Hope is that thing with feathers
that perches in the soul
and sings the tune without the words
and never stops at all;
and sweetest in the gale is heard
and sore must be the storm
that could abash a little bird
that kept so many warm;
I've heard it in the strangest land
and on the chillest sea
yet never
in extremity
did it ask a crumb of me"
with Nevada Senator Harry Reid sagging badly in the polls, the White House announced today that the President will travel to Las Vegas to campaign for him
I have an idea how Reid can avoid the infamous Barack "kiss of death":
give him the direction to Las Vegas, NM instead
before you dismiss the idea as ridiculous, remember that the White House is now saying that the reason the Christmas bomber was allowed on the plane is because his name was spelled wrong
that's a reasonable explanation, right?
never fear Harry
here comes Barry
Hurray for my people:
Lesbian couple and homeless man rescue disabled woman from Red Line tracks
On another note, I will point out to our bombastic anonymous friend that religious speech in this country is not free: it is subsidized by American taxpayers.
what are you, robert, a lesbian or a homeless man?
maybe you should be tested
no, religious speech is not free, it's harassed and persecuted
but we are moving to a new era with the final dismantling of the supervising state coming
Americans have made it clear that we believe in freedom of speech, religion and association
we don't need government to judge when and where and how we can express our views
our constitution is still a radical document after all these years and it has now resisted and withstood the assaults of the politically correct nabobs
the arc of history is bending toward freedom
soon we will say: free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last
anon, you are even more fucked up than i thought you were.
spoken like a true lunatic
it really is quite a quandary for the Dems
they can do a lot of fancy tricks or go back to the drawing board to save some kind of health care reform but the problem with all that is it will take a lot of time and the American people will perceive that Dems are ignoring the unemployment problem if they keep obsessing about health care
on the other hand, if they drop the whole thing and focus on jobs, they will have to admit at every debate next fall that they wasted a year spinning arpound various health care proposals without any result
doesn't it seem like every time you control the political structure of a country, that some twisted individual presents you with a sick choice?
life's like that
Anonymous is one of those folks who thinks that straight, white, middle class, Christian, American males are the only truly oppressed people in this world.
Robbie the Robot is one of those folks who makes statements without any basis
of course, for all we know, his therapist is working with him on this problem
let's see your basis for this statement, Robbie
Yesterday Scott Brown took the 7 a.m. shuttle from Boston to Washington for his first trip to the Capitol. On the plane, after they took off, the pilot came on and said, "Senator Brown is on board, on his way to Washington." The plane erupted in applause.
It feels like another era. Because America keeps moving, the plates keep shifting, and execution is everything. Everything.
"They've spent a year working on health care. People who have jobs, if they spent a year working on a project and didn't finish, most of them would be fired," said Steve Rosenthal, a leading Democratic field organizer and former political director of the AFL-CIO.
It's a political nightmare for Democrats, replete with the ghosts of majorities past. Democrats flirted briefly with periods of majority rule under Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, all to no great success. The yearlong push for health care reform, capping a half century of effort, has vacuumed President Obama's political capital.
Well, darling, you're on record about the evil lgbt people oppressing the poor straight people with their intransigent claims for equal protection, and you just made a screed about how religious speech is harassed in this country.
My point is that you are incredibly privileged among all the people in this world (as am I), and what you mostly seem to do is complain about how people are being unfair to people like you. It reminds me of my millionaire friend who complains about how people who receive food stamps are stealing from him by taking his taxes. Whose shoes would you rather be in?
Jesus spent a lot of time talking about charity, love and respect for those less fortunate than we. I think his is a good lesson upon which to reflect.
Ooh, I just got the Robbie the Robot reference. Are you a fan of Asimov?
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