Since the Democrats supposedly caused the Florida hurricanes, it's possible that they miscalculated and the rain they sent to Florida included rain they were meant to send to California. Simple human error.
One picture from a book about the Holocaust sticks with me. It shows a crowd of German citizens standing on a street, mocking and jeering a group of Jews who are being forced by Nazi soldiers to scrub the street on their hands and knees with brushes and buckets of water. Men. Women. Children. The elderly. The thing is, all of those people lived in the same building. They had been neighbours and friends. The caption tells us that one of the women in the background shown spitting on a teenage Jewish girl lived next door to that Jewish girl, and had employed her many times as a babysitter. Now that girl was "the enemy" and the woman was enjoying watching her being abused and humiliated. How did this happen? How did the most civilized country on earth at the time (Weimar Germany) descend in a few short years into barbarism? When and how did cruelty and oppression become official government policy? I don't know, but it seems to be happening in today's conservatives worldwide. Conservatives (for the most part) are not asking, "How can I help?" as they would have in the past, instead they are asking, "How can I make this worse? I know! I'll mock and ridicule the victims, and blame "liberal policies" for a drought and 100mph winds! That'll show those libs! Ah, how great it is to be a conservative!" Is this where we are now? Is this what we've become?
This post was edited by Slartibartfast at January 16, 2025 4:59 PM MST
They are being blamed for actions that are within human/gov control.
Failure to fill reservoirs. Failure to create NEW reservoirs for the growing population and deal with the droughts that are also commonplace there. Failure to ensure infrastructure was in working order. Failure to keep trucks in working order. Failure to stage the working trucks ahead of time. Knowing the winds were coming. Failure to hire more people rather than accumulate the overtime in their budget. Failure to do proper forest maintenance. Failure to do proper residential maintenance over things like a wild herb. So cannot clear that area of brush and debris. Allowing gum trees every where from the forests to the coastal areas...these are a extreme fire hazard and are an evasive species. Purposely diverting needed water to the ocean.
As a MAGA person, I hate no one. I pray for the victims of these fires. But the fires will continue to come. And if they do not fix these failures, sadly these type as disasters will continue to happen.
I am 100% sure that we will find some human failings that could have mitigated the situation to a degree. But I also think there are factors that could not have been predicted. For example, having a reservoir off -line for repairs in January when wildfire season is typically over by November. Being unable to use aircraft to drop water or fire retardant for over 24 hours because of hurricane force winds. Hindsight is always 20/20.
There will be investigations and discussions over what was done right or wrong, and I, personally prefer not to rush to judgment prematurely. I am not an expert on forestry, water management, botany, city planning, or firefighting, so any opinions I may have at this point are meaningless. There is usually a lot of bad information circulating in times like this, which makes figuring out fact from fiction difficult.
Ah. So you get my point. It's hard for me to know what's true and what's not. And I consider myself fairly discriminating about where I get my news. But you do you.
I am not arguing about any single piece of information. That point was something I heard from fire officials, not reporters, but now it looks like misinformation. I was making,ing a general point about my own personal choice to to wait to pass judgment. Please have some respect for choices that you don't agree with. And please don't make assumptions about where I get my news. The fact that I acknowledge the amount of conflicting information that is being reported should indicate that I am not getting my information in an echo chamber.
Slartibartfast 