…as you will be when you watch this video.
Basically, when government cannot or will not do its job, ordinary Americans will just step in and do it.
Then of course when government tries to stop them (by threatening arrests and what have you), the ordinary Americans tell them to go pound sand and do the job anyway.
I wish I could go there to help out, but I can’t — I’d just be adding to the problem — so the best I can do is post pieces and links like this.
Which is probably the best way to view this inexcusable behavior in the storm-struck western Carolinas:
I should also say, when I flew here on Sunday, they actually stopped us from going in, the sheriff’s department. And it was because of a bunch of politics that they were claiming was the Speaker of the House of North Carolina that was preventing us from even going in and trying to kick us out, which I have clarified today with North Carolina politicians that reached out to me — good on them — and they were like, “That’s complete bullshit. Speaker of the House has nothing. He wants you guys there.”
But this is the kind of political BS that is happening here right now. Like, everyone’s trying to be in charge without taking any type of action. Nobody wants to coordinate with anybody. Everybody wants to pretend like they’re being a hero while these people are literally fucking dying in the mountains. And these people, like I’m saying, these people are on limited medication. They’re running out of oxygen, and there’s no one going to get them.
And:
Howard pointed out that some of his colleagues are funding their rescue missions out of their own pockets. At the same time, Air Force helicopters are grounded and personnel aren’t working because they’re awaiting Title 10 orders that aren’t coming from above.
“There’s military helicopters all over here sitting on the ground, and they can’t do nothing,” he vented. “Even my JSOC boys in Fayetteville, they can’t get orders if they’re not here. It is just the most disgusting thing, and they’re killing these people. And I don’t know why they’re doing it.”
Howard said that he doesn’t “know what kind of conspiracy” is behind this bureaucratic nightmare. In my more cynical moments, I can’t help but wonder if Gov. Roy Cooper (D-N.C.) and the Biden-Harris administration are willing to let Republican voters in a reliably red part of the state fend for themselves — and die. I don’t want to believe that, but it’s hard to shake that gut feeling.”
I know, I know: it’s usually easier to ascribe bad outcomes to inefficiency than to a malevolent conspiracy. But I just can’t shake off the memorable words of former SecState James Baker III, “Fuck ’em. They’re not gonna vote for us, anyway.”
It’s a common flaw in society to think that because someone is a success in one specific area that that success can be applied with equal weight in other areas. The classic example is that of Albert Einstein: brilliant mathematician, but political idiot.
How much credence, then, are we to give to this asshole?
Bill Gates forecasts another global pandemic ‘likely’ within next 25 years in ominous health warning.
Even worse, he conflates two unrelated scenarios:
War or another global pandemic, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates is cautioning that, if the world manages to avoid the former, the latter is a very real possibility within the next 25 years.
“A lot of unrest” in today’s age could spark a major war.
“If we avoid a big war … then, yes, there will be another pandemic, most likely in the next 25 years,” he continued.
And if we do have a big war, does that mean there won’t be a pandemic, you moron?
I should like to remind everyone that back in the early 1980s, Gates completely missed the oncoming tidal wave of personal computing, and in fact pooh-poohed the entire concept, saying that he saw that there’d be fewer than half a dozen PCs in existence, and that all humanity’s computing needs could be addressed by mainframe computers — to be fair, quite a common thought among Big Iron believers of the time.
So if he could be that spectacularly wrong in his own field, why should we believe anything he says about pandemics?
As they say, to ask the question is to answer it.
From Dubai-on-Thames:
The tallest skyscraper in London that will rival the Shard is set to begin construction next week.
Planning for 1 Undershaft began eight years ago but today City Corporation planning officers have finally recommended it for approval ahead of a committee meeting next Tuesday.
Towering at 74 floors, the architectural masterpiece would be built between other east London landmarks, the Cheesegrater and the Gherkin.
Apparently it’s not quite a done deal:
It will still need final sign off from Mayor Sadiq Khan and the next Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Secretary.
“Levelling Up”? What kind of fucking title is that?
Never a radical Muslim asshole with a stolen airliner when you actually need one, is there?
…or in this case, the ground may be moving:
An underwater fault line along the US West Coast could trigger a megaquake that would be more devastating than California’s ‘Big One,’ a new study suggests.
Using underwater mapping techniques, scientists have mapped the Cascadia Subduction Zone — a 600-mile fault line extending from southern Canada to northern California — in never-before seen detail.
It has revealed that the fault splits into four segments instead of being one continuous strip like most fault lines. The discovery could prove more catastrophic because the tectonic plates can slide under each other, creating more pressure and more severe earthquakes.
The researchers concluded the Cascadia Subduction Zone has the potential to unleash a nine-plus magnitude quake.
I know: Chicken Little, sky falling, “studies suggest” etc. etc. That doesn’t mean that catastrophe isn’t going to strike at some point in the near future — the law of averages says it must — and I’m sure my Readers will all join me in expressing support for the citizens of Seattle, Portland, Vancouver and San Francisco, the cities most likely to be horribly damaged by this earth shift, with the concomitant massive loss of life.
Steve Green gets upset about rebuilding something which could basically be rebuilt exactly the same as it was, but won’t.
Could it really take twice as long and four times as much money to replace the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge than it did to build it in the first place?
The Key Bridge was built at a cost (adjusted for inflation) of about $200 million. Replacing it could take a decade and cost $400 million to $800 million dollars, according to experts in what has become a dismal field.
“To actually recreate that whole transportation network” could take a decade or more, structural engineer Ben Schafer told USA Today on Wednesday. Huge projects, Schafer said, now take “rarely less than 10 years.”
Steve gets upset; I don’t. Why not?
Because this boondoggle is located in Baltimore, a Democrat-run shithole which has become a festering boil on the face of civilization, largely due to the fact that it has been run by liberal Democrats and socialists for decades and decades.
Yeah, I know: traffic will be affected badly because the old FSK Bridge carried I-695 traffic around (as opposed to through) Baltimore.
Don’t care. The more it fucks up Baltimore, the better I like it. The longer it takes, the longer the pain will last. The more expensive it gets… well, I don’t care about that either.
Maybe the federal government will spend a little less on foreign aid to (say) Gaza or Gambia or [insert shithole of choice here] instead of on one of our own domestic shitholes. (But they won’t; they’ll just print more money to pay for it.)
I’m sure someone will produce some study or other which will show how wrong my attitude is, that the rebuild will Create Jobs And Feed Pore Starvin Kiddies or some such nonsense; or that the cumulative traffic detours made necessary by this calamity will cost some putative number of billions of dollars etc. etc.
Still don’t care.
The plain fact is that whatever the cost, it will be exacerbated by the over-large and inflated union salaries paid to the workers (Baltimore, duh), and the inevitable delays before the construction ever begins will be because the Greens will have issues about endangering some fucking minuscule / unimportant insect or sea-creature and therefore endless fucking studies will have to be made, and addressed, before the first load of concrete is poured or the first steel girder is welded together.
Did I say steel? Oh yeah, because our steel manufacturing industry has been largely exported to fucking China or somewhere, we’ll have to buy it and ship it all across an ocean or two rather than simply trucking it down from just-up-the-road Allentown or Pittsburgh.
And if those unionized construction workers decide to strike because of [insert stupid reason to strike here] the delay will grow still longer and so on.
Let me reiterate: I just don’t fucking care.
All the unnecessary cost overruns and delays will have been caused by our own sclerotic and self-inflicted regulatory clots in the infrastructure bloodstream, instituted by people who have no idea of consequence other than Harm Done To Mother Gaia (who is a total bitch in any case, ask anyone whose relative was killed during an earthquake).
As a society, we have sown the wind, and now it’s time for that whirlwind to come and blow the whole edifice of bullshit over — or not, in which case the bridge will never be rebuilt.
And I still won’t care.
Fuck ’em all.