Re: Pearls Before Swine: TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome)

On 7/10/2025 11:32 AM, Paul S Person wrote:

On Wed, 9 Jul 2025 15:16:18 -0700, Bobbie Sellers
<bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:
 

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On 7/9/25 09:36, Paul S Person wrote:

On Tue, 8 Jul 2025 14:11:03 -0700, Bobbie Sellers
<bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:
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<snippo: Texas floods>
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I think it was 1987 when another flash flood rose higher.  Trump on site
dismissed this as a 100 year flood but it is much more frequent than that.
Due to climate changes which he believes to be a Chinese invention.

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See, that's what I mean by left wing-nuttery: it is sufficient to talk
about State and local governmental unpreparedness /without/ riling
people up by mentioning climate change. Do we want to /solve the
problem/ or just /tweak "their" noses/?
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I /know/ the climate is changing: my maple tree starts budding earlier
in the Spring and leaves stay on longer in the Fall, leaving about a
couple weeks less time for raking -- a period during which the weather
is still nice enough /to/ rake, as opposed to later on.
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But riling people up when there is clearly no need to do so is not a
productive thing to do.
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The two parties are confused on this issue. Democrats like NOAA and
argue that it is valuable, but in this case they want to claim that it
malfunctioned due to cuts. Republicans dislike NOAA and would like to
abolish it as valueless, but in this case they need to say that it
performed well so as not to take blame for the deaths.

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Both are foolish as the real need was for funding for a local
warning system which the local government dismissed as an un-needed
expense.

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As I understand it, the /local/ government -- that is, the County --
wanted to upgrade the system but the /State/ government refused
/twice/ to allocate the /Federal/ funds they had been given for such
projects to that county. Or has that changed since yesterday?

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Yes I have read that it was a state denial that prevented it.

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It appears that the people living in the county expressed a strong
resistance to a warning siren or whistle. I have no idea why.

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A previously idyllic country-side interrupted by loud noises might be
behind that folly but perhaps they will consider the loud noise to be more
positive after this. We can hope  for the sakes of all the lives put at risk
in the last flash flood and many lost who had no idea what was in store.

 Others have reported a certain amount of blase disregard due to
frequent warnings that are never followed by the predicted disaster.
So some of this may circle back to the Feds to see if the criteria for
when to issue a warning can be tightened a bit.
 The problem, of course, is that, as Yoda put it, "always in motion is
the future". And he should know. This makes the ideal (timely warnings
that /always/ are followed by the predicted disaster) hard to reach.
 Part of the improvements denied apparently involved upgraded sensors
and staffing to more closely monitor the situation.
 I should note that one story was about a man who, deciding to take
things seriously, drove into the projected flood zone and evacuated
his trailer park before the flood hit. So some people did the right
thing.
 Also, the problem with whistles/sirens is that, while they are loud,
obnoxious, and hard to ignore, if the residents don't know what it
means when they go off (that is, what action they are supposed to
take), they aren't going to work very well.

If you live with such a system, you very soon find out what its for.
In my small MA town, we have a volunteer fire department, and though
the firemen have beepers and phones, the final backup is a siren that
sounds through the center of town. They test it at noon every Sunday.
One of the towns in the flood area *did* have a system (it cost
around 75k), They tested it every day at noon, and apparently it
helped a lot when the flood was coming.
pt