RW Talking Point: Topping is not Breaching

[Caoimhe]

I can't believe these idiots. Because Bush was warned that the storm might cause water to TOP the levees, they are saying that Bush's quote 6 days later about not being able to anticipate the levees being breached was NO LIE. This reeks of "what the meaning of IS IS" type crap. We all know Bush acted surprised by the devastation of NOLA, we all know now that he was warned beforehand, and failed to care.

[skooooo]

1. This reeks of "what the meaning of IS IS" type crap.

Exactly my response. They (defenders of the admin's actions) are fighting a losing symantic battle, imo.

[liveoaktx]

32. VIDEO-that's what Reagan said on Hardball

What IS IS

[benburch]

2. Motherfuckers.

Thats all.

[Ediacara]

3. Surely Bush has seen cartoons....

When dams get overtopped, they generally crumble in cartoons. This isn't entirely unrealistic, and he should have gone off that hunch that maybe overtopping will lead to something worse.....

[kentuck]

4. Sounds like they are breaching the truth?

So, if the floodwater simply came over the tops, FEMA has no responsibility to rescue the people ?

[Caoimhe]

9. The end result being the same... a flooded city..

so I don't understand why topping and breaching are any different.

[patcox2]

35. The end result would not be the same.

Sorry to defend the idiots, but the fact is topping is a temporary situation and it ends as soon as the storm abates and the tidal surge goes away, a matter of hours. Thus only a limited amount of water would enter the City if the levees were merely topped.

Once the levees are breached, however, much much more water would enter the city, because the city is always below water level and therefore water would continue to flow in even at low water until the level inside the levee equals the level outside the level.

I distinctly recall watching every report I could get my hands on that morning and the initial reports were that the levees had not been breached, and there was like a sigh of relief, then there was some surprise at the breaches when they were reported.

Its still absurd to say that noone foresaw it.

[AllegroRondo]

5. And sexual relations are not intercourse

riiiiight.

[distantearlywarning]

6. Oh my God. This is ridiculous.

Whatever, morons. These idiots need to get a grip. I hated Clinton for that stupid "definition of 'is'" crap, and this is just as bad. There comes a time when you just need to accept that you screwed up, admit it, and move on. When you get to the point where you are arguing the semantic definitions of words, well, that's just beyond pathetic, and you need to accept that you are in the wrong.

[alarcojon]

27. You're right, of course

But Bush is incapable of accepting that he is wrong; he has proved that over and over again, like in the debate where he couldn't come up with a single mistake he had made. Further, even if His Chimperial Highness were capable of admitting he was wrong, Rove would never let him say it, since it would cause freeper heads to explode all across the land, and FEMA wouldn't be able to handle the mess.

[BOSSHOG]

7. No doubt the folks who lost their homes near the levy

are now totally relieved at that awesome revelation. The right wing spin on this issue stinks of desperation and is totally fucking irrelevant. bush is an idiot and his supporters are way too proud to admit it.

I sure didn't anticipate bush being TOPPED by brownie this week, but sure enough, brownie is toppping the fuck out of dubya all week long.

[ClassWarrior]

8. So if he was told the car's gonna catch on fire, he'd say no one could...

...have anticipated that it'd blow up?

Sheesh. :eyes:

Is that all you got, FReepies?

16+5=2006

NGU.

[DoBotherMe]

10. My town was devastated during the great

midwest flood of '93. As soon as earthen levies are 'topped' (the Corps of Engineers calls it 'breach') they crumble and washout. D ; )

[nonconformist]

11. My response to that talking point

"So, what you're saying is that Bush is really ignorant and incompetent?"

[Tab]

12. For more years than I care to count

residents of New Orleans have known that since they were below sea level that should they have the bad luck to have a hurricane come squarely at them, they were in for serious trouble - the levees would go and the city would flood.

Even if Bush thought (and I don't believe he did) the levees would hold, they should have prepared for the case that they might not, because unlike other cities, NOLA would be in for a world of hurt if they didn't, and since they hadn't been tested in god knows how long with a Cat 5 hurricane coming squarely at them, they had no way of knowing they wouldn't go, and the prudent thing to assume they very well could fail, plan for the worst, and hope it doesn't come to that.

[CTyankee]

13. This is a desperate action by the RW

They can't really believe what they're are saying. Given the context of the discussion, there is no way to say this.

So what then IS the difference between the two words (in the RWers demented world)?

[SeattleRob]

14. Very pathetic

on and on it goes parsing and qualifying

Remember:


Bush never said Saddam was an "imminent threat."

and when he pranced around the aircraft carrier, with his stuff codpiece, he said it was the end of "major combat operations."

and so on and so on...

Seriously, it's got to be quite a task for these repuke spinners to continually come up with all this shit.

[mark11727]

21. I remember something similar some years ago...

A jetliner had been circling for some time, and was running out of fuel, and had indicated as much to the control tower. After the crash, the tower's defense of their NOT granting the jetliner priority status to land was that the crew (foreign) had never used the word "EMERGENCY" to describe their situation.

Jeebus, if running out of fuel doesn't constitute an emergency, then what the hell DOES?

[Fovea]

15. Well, that shows you how stupid

Karl Rove thinks we are.

[Pirate Smile]

16. Dean answered this question pretty good on MSNBC from Norah

O'Donnell.

He said they are really almost the same thing BECAUSE the topping can cause a breach. The water flows over the top, it erodes the ground on the other side, weakening the support for the levee and causing the levee to breach, break, whatever you want to call it.

I remember explanations right after Katrina hit showing how a topping is what leads to a breach or is one of the many ways a breach can happen.

[Ediacara]

19. Also

Levies and earthen dams are forced to deal with a much greater mass of water (from the Missisippi or Lake Ponchertrain or whatever) when they are even just close to being overtopped, which increases the likelihood of failure. Add that to the erosion of the top of the levies from the water spilling over almost guarentees a failure somewhere.

[Pirate Smile]

22. I found a diagram - "how overtopping caused levee breaches"

Above: Diagram showing how overtopping caused levee breaches. The levee in the diagram is composed of concrete surrounding a corrugated steel "sheetpile," so called because it serves as a piling when driven into the underlying earthen embankment. Water overtopping the floodwall eroded the soil embankment on the landward side, undermining the wall and causing it to fail. In other areas, water seeped below the sheetpile and weakened the embankment, causing failure even at water levels below the height of the floodwall. Modified from a Wall Street Journal graphic based on the 17 MB PDF NSF-ASCE report available at URL http://hsgac.senate.gov/_files/Katrina/Preliminary_Report.pdf.

http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2006/01/

[Igel]

26. That was the thinking in early-mid November.

In early December they looked. The floodwalls weren't overtopped.

Then they all changed their minds: The entire levee lifted up slightly and slid back, collapsing and crumbling as it went. Ah, but why?

There was the business about the sheet steel not being sunk to the proper depth. They sounded the depth of the steel, and they were found to be too short by several feet. Then they pulled some up; the tests were contradicted by the tape measure. The steel was as long as the design specs called for.

Last I heard, they were looking at soil samples, and the suspicion was that soil sampling wasn't included in the design analysis and led to too weak a design. By that time, the public and news reporters were so confused that they decided to go out for linguine.

Science is a process.

[TahitiNut]

38. That's the key point. Overtopping EQUALS Breaching.

I've never understood how anyone could isolate "overtopping" as somehow a lesser problem when it's clear that the predominant levee construction method relies on the soil embankments. From the very outset, I regarded overtopping as very highly probable to result in a complete failure. I have no idea how it could be regarded otherwise. Insane.

[Jack from Charlotte]

34. He should have added...."Does anyone really think this President really...

knows the difference between topping and breaching? Additionally, what difference does it make how the water gets past the levy? Breahing or topping, if you're on the other side..... you drown."

[sinkingfeeling]

17. And 'sexual relations' usually means 'intercourse'. So what, Chimp?

NOLA was underwater and I don't think the people that drowned care if the levees burst or were topped.

[BlueEyedSon]

18. Yeah and "drowning" is not "dying".......

[Kierkegaard]

20. Whatever allows you to sleep at night, huh?

:eyes:

In what way does 'topping' not equate to 'breeching' as it applies to this situation? Was the water any more or less damaging to the residents and property of New Orleans because of this grammatical difference? Maybe Commander Codpiece's limited vocabulary prevented him from understanding the meaning of 'topping,' thinking the word was reserved for pizzas and ice cream. Or maybe he just plain didn't give a shit...

Anyone desperate enough to use this silliness to excuse the complacency, incompetence and apathy of this lousy would-be dictator and cannot see their own partisan stupidity for what it is, sets a sad precedent for the state of education in this country.

[bullimiami]

23. you know what happens when a levee gets overtopped?

it starts to erode and become undermined, then it fails.

no matter what they call it bush helped kill those people in NO.

[madrchsod]

24. in the real world this bullshit doesn`t fly

most people would never accept this as a excuse for something you did or didn`t do.. try this with your boss,friends,family,or customers and see how far you`d get...i thought the grown-ups were in charge...

[Orangepeel]

25. good. let them say that.

everybody in the country, with the possible exception of the 18% that still approve of Dick Cheney, will see that for the ridiculous, hairsplitting nonsense that it is. it will only make them look foolish.

[LisaLynne]

28. That's all they've got?

That's just pathetic. They are really running out of ways to defend that guy.

[mandyky]

29. Miles O'Brien : "That's like what the meaning of is is, isn't it?"

Topeed or breached, it still implied flooding.

[skooooo]

31. Except no one died from Clinton's "lie."

[Dr Fate]

30. Like topping from the bottom? Can we get Michelle Malkin in on this?

I've always wanted to see her in a Nazi She Wolf outfit.

[DinahMoeHum]

33. Bottom line: the levees couldn't hold back the water. Period.

End of discussion.

[Norquist Nemesis]

36. Tomatoes, Tomahtoes. Result is the same. n/t

[Beelzebud]

37. Ignorance is Strength

Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
War is Peace

[myrna minx]

39. Kind of like "finding" versus "looting" right? n/t

:eyes: