I know you’re a last word freak, but seriously, you need to learn the difference between facts and opinions. I have little faith in your ability to do so, but please give it the old college try.

Here are some hints:

The first ‘fact’ you blockquoted by Jay C. is little more than unsubstantiated opinion, the second is an opinion that only covers the primary legal responsibility of evacuation and the third is merely snark.

Likewise, of the three ‘gotcha’ questions you pose, the answer to the first would merely be an opinion, the response to the second would likewise be an opinion – particularly on the morality issue – and the third leads way to an awful lot of conjecture as to the usage of syntax coupled with a great deal of parsing. Not one of them involves the inerjection of factual responses, although facts may be used to bolster one’s argument as to the validity of the opinions they formulate.

Examples of Jay C s reasoning or facts: ZERO

Gosh, this took a whole 30 seconds…

The harshest the host of this site has ever been is to say that the locals  weren t perfect.
[...]
The fact of the matter is, preparedness is a state and local responsibility. It is not up to the federal government to make sure citizens are evacuated.
[...]
the difference between topped and breached is like the difference between a gidget softball player and Albert Pujols

Wrong again, John!
You could redeem yourself by spending some time following up with rebuttal in the following areas:
1) Has Oliver been more critical of state and local officials than Jay C claims?
2) Does the federal government have any legal or moral responsibilities to evacuate people before a hurricane?
3) Is there really any important difference between overtopping and breaching?

Or maybe you could spend some time brushing up on logical fallacies before you challenge someone else for not knowing what an ad hominem argument is.
Good luck.

Unfortunately, this message board does not constitute any type of forum where any of the logic you have discovered has been applied. Jay hadn’t really made any such argument that I could attempt to brand as fallacious. Rather, he mostly snarked about commenters being in second grade or being an ingnorant yokel.

Examples of Jay C s reasoning or facts: ZERO

Anyway, to go to such lengths to defend another commenter…like I said, you have a lot of time on your hands there.

You need to learn what an ad hominem attack is.

For education’s sake, let me be a little more specific.

Ad Hominem Circumstantial
Ad hominem circumstantial involves pointing out that someone is in circumstances such that he is disposed to take a particular position. Essentially, circumstantial ad hominem constitutes an attack on the bias of a person. The reason that this is fallacious is that it simply does not make one’s opponent’s arguments, from a logical point of view, any less credible to point out that one’s opponent is disposed to argue that way. Such arguments are not necessarily irrational, but are not correct in strict logic. This illustrates one of the differences between rationality and logic.

Too bad we can t build levees out of Jay Caruso.

His tireless – and successful – efforts to to hold back the flood waters of reality

he is made of such inpenetrable stuff

the densest AND most indestructible material known to the universe: Political Ideology

Examples of Jay C’s errors in reasoning or fact: ZERO
In other words, all you did was provide comments attacking Jay C’s perceptions and ideology. You provided nothing to challenge the comments he made about definitions and responsibility of state vs federal agencies.

I am not attempting to discredit or refute Jay s comments with a personal attack

I see. Claiming he is unable to view “reality” correctly without explaining what he “misunderstands” is not an attack against the person rather than the specifics of his argument. Interesting view of “reality” you have.

You need to learn what an ad hominem attack is. Calling a female dog a bitch does not rise to task, and since I am not attempting to discredit or refute Jay’s comments with a personal attack, your bleating on the matter is rather desultory.

But, the meme is already out there. Somebody say  topped , Bush says  breached and yokels ask,  What s the difference?!?!?

Too bad we can’t build levees out of Jay Caruso.

His tireless – and successful – efforts to to hold back the flood waters of reality and public opinion that threaten to overwhelm the President prove that he is made of such inpenetrable stuff that can neither be breached nor topped.

In fact, I think if the National Academy of Sciences rounded up the 35% that would support Bush – even if if he were taped robbing a bank while having sex with a minor – they would find the secret to the densest AND most indestructible material known to the universe: Political Ideology.

Looks like we ve caught JK lying again.

Looks like Jadegold is burned again…twice.
1) You quoted me, JWG. (Reading comprehension…remember?)
2) From the NYTimes:

No one expected that weak spot to be on a canal that, if anything, had received more attention and shoring up than many other spots in the region. It did not have broad berms, but it did have strong concrete walls.

Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said that was particularly surprising because the break was “along a section that was just upgraded.”

Ouch.

Looks like we’ve caught JK lying again.

From Editor&Publisher:

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security — coming at the same time as federal tax cuts — was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

……..

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

………

One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.

My emphasis added.

It’s not like it’s one single moment, or event. Each day reveals a new depth to Bush’s ignorance on an issue, or topic of importance.

The Bush administration’s incompetence has indirectly or directly contributed to, or caused the deaths of at least 3,000 people. (2,000 of them in uniform who sacrificed their lives in Iraq.)

But you guys keep defending him. It’s like you’re not human anymore. Just words on a screen. Buttons to be pushed in defense of the indefensible. You have lost your humanity.

What the heck is your deal? We keep hearing the word “cult-like.” I don’t think that’s far off.

JK

Then, we tackled the tricky issue of sorting through all the back and forth bickering that’s going on between conservative and liberal bloggers over the issue. It’s getting really petty at times.

Jay, did he not?

He did not underfund the levees that failed. Those levees had recently been upgraded. You can’t blame Bush for that one.

the agency has run out of money for the next round of lifts

1) Care to guess where a lot of that money went?
2) The breached areas had been recently upgraded, so more funding would not have solved this particular problem.

BEHOLD THE POWER OF THE CLENIS

Oops
There’s plenty of criticism to go around. While the response to the disaster should have been better, there is a lot of evidence that the bureaucratic processes in place before the hurricane did not help prevent much of the disaster from occurring.
Politicians rarely design systems to run efficiently or quickly.