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Presidential Alerts

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Re: Presidential Alerts

#101

Post by throwaway5250 »

kibwen wrote: post #51

Not sure why these need to be billed as "Presidential alerts" if they're for national emergencies, which is already the domain of FEMA. Call them "National emergency alerts". Presidential addresses (which the name suggests these are in the age of cord-cutters and smartphones) are for sympathy and calls for unity in the aftermath of disaster; if there's a hurricane or tornado bearing down on me, all I want is info str…

Could it be because the message is literally from the President, in their ex officio role as the President?

Re: Presidential Alerts

#102

Post by umvi »

kibwen wrote: post #70
gbrayut wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://twitter.com/dmelvin3737/status/1047557154729840646 The "Presidential" alert is the level of alert. It's been named this for over a decade, but none have ever been sent. The levels are : AMBER alert Severe alerts Extreme alerts Presidential alerts

I'll bikeshed this; I'd rather see the latter ones titled as "Local emergency", "State emergency", "National emergency". What sort of intuition are we supposed to have for the difference between a severe and an extreme emergency?

Same intuition needed for differentiating telescope aperture sizes

(context: https://xkcd.com/1294/)

Re: Presidential Alerts

#103

Post by [deleted] »

gbrayut wrote: post #66
Buttons840 wrote: post #32

"Presidential Alerts" is a terrible name in a time where presidents from either party tend to have about 40% approval or less. The name just automatically angers a significant portion of the population, no matter who the president happens to be. Considering that the presidency is a political position, it's not unreasonable to expect "Presidential Alerts" to be of a political nature, even though that is not how the sy…

From https://twitter.com/dmelvin3737/status/1047557154729840646 The "Presidential" alert is the level of alert. It's been named this for over a decade, but none have ever been sent. The levels are : AMBER alert Severe alerts Extreme alerts Presidential alerts

[deleted]

Re: Presidential Alerts

#104

Post by thoughtexplorer »

Scryptonite wrote: post #86
Buttons840 wrote: post #32

"Presidential Alerts" is a terrible name in a time where presidents from either party tend to have about 40% approval or less. The name just automatically angers a significant portion of the population, no matter who the president happens to be. Considering that the presidency is a political position, it's not unreasonable to expect "Presidential Alerts" to be of a political nature, even though that is not how the sy…

> The name just automatically angers a significant portion of the population, no matter who the president happens to be. I think that pretty much speaks to how shamefully bad politics has gotten here in the US. I see a couple of comments that jump to speculate that it could be used as a tool of politics, or that they would rather opt-out of knowing about an imminent threat to themselves and/or their fellow American's…

Here's a good example. This tweet from a respected Dr. is really unfortunate.

"But it’s called the Presidential Alert because Trump has a huge ego. And he loves his intruding into our lives without consent."

https://twitter.com/eugenegu/status/1047562343503122432

He states it as though it's fact. Now many of his 200,000+ followers also think that, if they didn't already.

I might've also believed that if I didn't do the work to look it up.

Re: Presidential Alerts

#105

Post by sctb »

noncoml wrote: post #40
Buttons840 wrote: post #32

"Presidential Alerts" is a terrible name in a time where presidents from either party tend to have about 40% approval or less. The name just automatically angers a significant portion of the population, no matter who the president happens to be. Considering that the presidency is a political position, it's not unreasonable to expect "Presidential Alerts" to be of a political nature, even though that is not how the sy…

.

Please don't do this. If you're not ready to post, don't.

Re: Presidential Alerts

#106

Post by orev »

bliblah wrote: post #81
mortenjorck wrote: post #27

I still don’t understand the actual point of this, beyond the optics of a vaguely-defined “emergency preparedness.” Emergencies are inherently local. Even if smartphones had been widespread in 2001 and the presidential alert system had been active on 9/11, what purpose would a nationwide alert have served?

The most obvious example is the Hawaii Nuclear Scare that just happened in January [1]. Obviously it was a false alarm but I would like (or should I say dread) to be alerted of a crisis of that magnitude the moment it occurs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_aler...

There are plenty of ways to be notified of breaking news if you so choose to use them. Why should an alert about something that happens in any state have to be broadcast to the whole country with no means of disabling it? What could possibly require every person in the US to need to know about some event immediately?

Re: Presidential Alerts

#107

Post by noncoml »

sctb wrote: post #105
noncoml wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.

Please don't do this. If you're not ready to post, don't.

Meh. Ban me if you don’t like it. The discussion ended up being about politics. Not interest in participating in politics or having my comments be misunderstood as political comments.

Re: Presidential Alerts

#108

Post by plorkyeran »

oh_sigh wrote: post #88
Buttons840 wrote: post #32

"Presidential Alerts" is a terrible name in a time where presidents from either party tend to have about 40% approval or less. The name just automatically angers a significant portion of the population, no matter who the president happens to be. Considering that the presidency is a political position, it's not unreasonable to expect "Presidential Alerts" to be of a political nature, even though that is not how the sy…

Specific presidents generally have low approval rating, but the idea of the office of the president has a high approval rating(which is why people care so much that their person gets put there).

I don't see the connection. Even if everyone hated the idea of having a president and we were in the process of amending the constitution to eliminate the office entirely, we'd still care about who had the position until that happened as they have a great deal of power.

Re: Presidential Alerts

#109

Post by fivefive55 »

orev wrote: post #106
bliblah wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most obvious example is the Hawaii Nuclear Scare that just happened in January [1]. Obviously it was a false alarm but I would like (or should I say dread) to be alerted of a crisis of that magnitude the moment it occurs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_aler...

There are plenty of ways to be notified of breaking news if you so choose to use them. Why should an alert about something that happens in any state have to be broadcast to the whole country with no means of disabling it? What could possibly require every person in the US to need to know about some event immediately?

Nukes? There are such a thing as nationwide emergencies.

Re: Presidential Alerts

#110

Post by krapp »

crispyambulance wrote: post #59
lisper wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hoo boy, I would love to see the raw upvote/downvote tally on that comment.

Sorry, it was a visceral response. That kind of alert brings up, for an instant, a feeling that something awful is happening. And if something really bad was going down, the last thing I would want to hear is dithering idiocy of President Trump.

Well, maybe in the future Americans will consider some quality besides entertainment value when selecting their leader. But that would require Americans to see their government as something worthwhile, and the Presidency as a duty for which competence is a virtue and not a vice.

But in practice Trump wouldn't be directly involved at all, don't worry about it.

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