John Drake

Yes, the self-serving press releases that authorities are releasing are designed to dodge and shift and avoid responsibility. But they are especially dandy for reporters. Can you just imagine: Beverly at CBS: Hello, FEMA? This is Beverly with CBS news here in NYC. Is it true that people aren't getting relief and being stranded without food, water, and medicine? I'm sure it's all just those lying populists. But I just wanna confirm with you. FEMA: You, bet, Beverly. All lies. I can confirm that from my big office here in Washington, DC. Beverly: Thanks. I knew I was right. We'll put out your press release and call it investigative journalism. That ought to get'em to shutup.

Authorities are turning away trucks, banning civilian helicopters, and confiscating goods meant for relief because of FEMA's Preferred Vendors List. FEMA tries to operate from that list. Getting on the vendor list is quite lucrative of course and subject to all the usual DEI and set asides afflicting other federal agencies. There is a lot of money to be had by keeping to the vendor list. That's why volunteers need to go around the government in order to save their fellow citizens.

There are many on university campuses, including faculty in the most censor likely disciplines, who oppose the Mao-like imposition of thought/speech control. But not only do those just joining faculty need to fear the effects of their true feelings and thoughts on tenure but also on academic promotion and, yes, salary increases. Not to mention, the lockdown that comes on restricted research and analyses in the area of academic publications. The latter is the most important of all. It's how you get hired, get tenure, and get promoted. And the gatekeepers (peer reviewers) at the top tier publications are exceptional at sniffing out unorthodoxy and keeping it off their pages.

You're right. I should. I used to make gallons of it back in the US. And homemade salsa is better. I should really motivate myself to go out and buy a blender for it.

The biggest ongoing failure is the absence of journalism to cover these events. The people on here who know nothing about the region simply take as true any FEMA press release, or comments from governors, the white house, congressmen, or other politicians. It seems that journalism these days amounts to calling up someone from the safety of your hotel room, asking for a self serving comment from the "authorities" in charge, and then putting it out for publication. Used to be that journalists didn't take the word of agencies and politicians. They went into the area on their own. Here that requires hiking through flood ravaged forests or following along with mule trains. Smartphone journalism doesn't bother with that.

They've been flying them in for several years. You know what is ironic about this? You're so ignorant about the area, you don't even realize that Asheville, where UNC-Ashville is, is a mini-Austin, a micro-San Francisco. It's a liberal Harris leaning hotbed. Have you ever even been to the US?

Completely true. George W. Bush was taken apart because of FEMA's failure on his watch. Deservedly so. This is where leaders are supposed to lead. You have one senile man in the White House who is inoperative and then Harris/Walz are nowhere to be found. Bottom line: housing from taxpayer money being poured in like Niagra Falls to pay for "migrants" housing, transportation, and medical care, while topping them off with $2700 debit cards, all while American citizens are left to rot and "prove" they're eligible for the $750 emergency one time payment.

Big <deleted> deal. Hundreds dead, starving, and dying and you come up with that utterly useless <deleted>.

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Fiasco. Clear failure on the part of the administration and FEMA. Redirecting FEMA funds to settling "paroled" migrants and so-called asylum seekers should result in people going to jail.

Brain transplants are tricky things. Just look at Walz, where the procedure obviously failed.

A penny stock. Literally.

Is it true that there is very little FEMA response because the agency was retrofitted to settle and service incoming migrants? Is it true the FEMA budget is busted because the money was given to non-profits to get priority housing for incoming migrants and loading up their credit cards with $13,000. Need to find out.

Becoming more like China and India every day.

It feels like this guy is being set up as the fall guy, and everybody else above him is going to walk.

Youth Mobility Scheme sounds like a way for France and Germany to unload their migrants on to the UK

Harris' fanatical supporters seem to hang on this point just as desperately as Trump's fanatical supporters do in the other direction. At this stage, however, it's a non-issue for the majority of the voters worried about illegal immigration, inflation, and housing shortages.

Obviously, that was Walz misspeaking. He isn't friends with them, and he does not have some subconscious desire to be their friends. OTOH it does display that Walz is a lumbering slow thinker, unprepared, and doubtlessly panicking in his response.

Obviously, there is a an IQ gap of somewhere around 30 points or more between Vance and Harris/Vance/Trump.

I am referring more broadly to Walz's so-called Chinese connections over the years. Unless we see evidence he is advancing CCP interests, I don't think he should be put on the rack for going there as a teacher or taking students there on study abroad trips. Look, Walz is a really, really stupid guy. He's inauthentic, likes to brag, and exaggerate his past. Between Harris and Walz, I don't know who is the more inauthentic. It is terrifying to think the US could be led by the pair next year. It's also terrifying that it could have Trump presiding over things. I just don't understand how things got to this level of bad.

One thing I do think is unfair is to hit Walz with all the China stuff. He didn't do anything that the entire political, educational, and business establishment wasn't doing. Walz was a tadpole in comparison to the damage done by the likes of the Bushes, Clintons, and Obama as well as the Gateses, Cooks, and Jim Rogers who led the sellout of America.

These sorts of things work beneath the immediate surface. Watch over the next few weeks for sound bites, images, memes, and clips to emerge that will wear down the immediate responses. In the end, a fixed image will emerge.

A similar topic seems to run just about every seven or eighth month in this forum. Tiresome.

Yep.

Of the four people running on the presidential/vice presidential ticket, Walz is clearly the worst. Vance showed an enormous gap between himself and Walz. Walz simply looks terrible. BTW, I remember forty or fifty years ago political consultants saying we would never get a bald man running for the top two offices again after Eisenhower, because they look so old and uninspiring. (Joe Biden got hair transplants back in the 80s.) Humphrey and McGovern had partial hair covering. That leaves, I think, just Ford and now Walz as the baldest candidates since Ike and Adlai Stevenson.