Originally Posted By Labuda Woot! Watching last night's episode and had to pause so I could get here on LP and make this post. There's a super tanker named the Cambria leaking oil into the coast off Florida after it got hammered by a hurricane. 100,000 gallons so far and it makes the Exxon Valdez look like a small boat... anyhow, the President's Chief of Staff comes over to her (she's reading a book to a group of small children in a hurricane shelter), tells her what's going on and she IMMEDIATELY hands the book to the kids asking who wants to finish it so she can go deal with this national emergency! Now THAT is how a President behaves - a Predient doesn't sit there and continue reading a child's book when the nation is in jeopardy.
Originally Posted By woody Hindsight is 20-20, but reality isn't the a lame liberal television show. It's funny how liberals accuse conservatives of not being original when nothing about liberals is original.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper I was proud of the President on September 11th. Imagine the trauma to the children in the room if he would have bolted or caused a commotion. There was nothing he could have done at that moment. Secret Service was likely making plans to get him out of there, get the plane ready and so forth. There are plenty of reasons to attack Bush right now. This isn't one of them.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer I think I can speak for both Road Trip and myself in saying that the title of this thread is false advertising in regards to the content of it. I had strong desire to watch the show until I realized it was still about politics.
Originally Posted By MrToadWildRider What exactlly could the President have done at that time? The two situations are both very different as well. An oil tanker off the coast of Florida is a much more controllable situation that a sudden terrorist attack in the form that has never been experienced before. I saw a part of that episode and she had to make a very fast decision between 2 CLEAR options regarding bringing the ship into port or sinking it off the coast. The disaster hadn't happened yet on the show but in the Bush situation it already had. Those few moments between the time he stayed with the kids and then excused himself were meaningless to the situation and his options were stay calm and keep everyone at the school calm or run out of there causing panic and for what? It's like those people who speed up and cut you off only to get stopped at the same red light as you a block ahead.
Originally Posted By danyoung >Imagine the trauma to the children in the room if he would have bolted or caused a commotion. There was nothing he could have done at that moment.< Yeah, an adult getting up, saying goodbye, and leaving is a pretty traumatic event! No one said that Bush should have grabbed his head and screamed "OH MY GOD WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!!!" as he charged out the door. But just sitting there when something this big was coming down? I have a hard time with it.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper I don't have a hard time with it. His advisor was telling him what was happening, there was nothing he could have done about it at that moment and the kids, young ones at that, were involved in a moment with the President of the United States. To attack him for that is to say that you don't care about the President whatsoever and he can do nothing right. That's fine as an opinion but it is a shallow one.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>There are plenty of reasons to attack Bush right now. This isn't one of them.<< I agree. At that moment, I'm sure the Secret Service wanted the president to stay right where he was so that they could assess where he should be moved to next. There were still planes in the air across the country. Turned out 4 of them held terrorists, but it could have been more. Honestly, as the events in NYC unfolded before our eyes, who among us knew exactly what we should do next? Remember the feeling you had that day as the reports of a plane, now it's two planes, hitting the WTC and oh my God, a plane has struck the Pentagon, and another has crashed in Pennsylvania? The whole country by and large was frozen in place. The President's security team are the ones in control of him moving from point A to point B, and at that moment, point B was being determined. Be mad at the president for all sorts of stuff, but let's lose this fantasy that he could have done anything in thoise few moments that would have changed much of anything.
Originally Posted By danyoung >To attack him for that is to say that you don't care about the President whatsoever and he can do nothing right.< No it isn't, and the above comment is why political discussions so easily get out of hand. All I said is that I had a bit of a problem with the president doing nothing during those minutes, when it seems as if he should have at least been on the phone with his top advisors, beginning to get the picture of what was going on. Could he have prevented any of the disasters? No. But a leader needs to lead, and it sure was a bad sign when our leader took a major event like this seemingly in stride. I don't think we know what was said to him, if he was made aware of how drastic the situation was. But if he was told that we were under attack, I'd sure want him using his phone to sling some orders around, or at least start getting plugged in to the events of the day. It's not a big issue for me either way, just an interesting one for discussion.
Originally Posted By wonderingalice Anybody besides me love the Comedy Central show, "That's My Bush!"? Heh heh heh... Funnier than all get-out!
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 First of all I love how The West Wing and Commander in Chief actually think they're real shows about real Presidents. They're no more fiction than Lost or Desperate Housewives. And second like 2ooney said how many of us were frozen solid when that happened.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper When the second plane hit the second tower I remember walking into my bosses office and saying, "I think we are under attack." He looked at me like I had 3 heads.
Originally Posted By danyoung >They're no more fiction than Lost or Desperate Housewives.< Or maybe you meant to say "they're no LESS fiction than Lost or Desperate Housewives" ?
Originally Posted By StillThePassHolder "When the second plane hit the second tower I remember walking into my bosses office and saying, "I think we are under attack." He looked at me like I had 3 heads" I remember thinking that there was no way in the world the fire department was going to be able to put out those fires so high up and in two places. Never even thinking the towers actually would collapse, I thought once everybody evacuates, they'd be better off if they did fall though because rehabbing them that far up wouldn't have been too practical either.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer When I heard that a second plane hit, I went in to get the hospital incident command center set up and to open the communicaton lines with other area hospitals. It was all set by the time the hospital called an internal alert about ten minutes after the second hit. Then I started calling all of the security officers to put them on alert. Within 20 minutes of the time the second plane hit, the hospital was in full internal alert mode and we were getting reports on inventory levels, staffing levels and patient census.
