No one could have predicted it. No one saw it coming. It’s a hundred-year storm, one proclaimed. Others claimed they were let down, that incoming data was shaky at best. One beat his chest, and in a true grandstanding moment, proclaimed that an investigation needed to be started. It all made for great theater.
This folks, is the aftermath of flooding that struck Texas. A flood that claimed so many lives, that I dare not put a figure here. For if I do, the figure would most likely updated before the completion of this sentence. And if the results hadn’t been so brutally tragic, this would feel like we were living a farce.
However, to understand the underlining tragedy of what happened in Central Texas and at Camp Mystic, we just have to turn back the clock to a few months ago. DOGE, led by Elon Musk and has band of evil Dick Graysons slashed the budgets of many agencies, including NOAA. NOAA stands for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In sort, this is the agency tasked with helping your local weather person accurately predict the weather. This is the agency that helps determine how strong a hurricane born over the Atlantic is going to be. Or how brutal an incoming winter storm is going to be. Or even how rains could affect an area by, for example, causing flooding. They accomplish this by launching weather balloons. They are also launching planes that document storms and their patterns. In short, all of the information your local weather forecaster needs to do their job and keep you safe, comes from NOAA. Not exactly an agency you want running on an overly lean budget.
Ted Cruz, natures answer to what would an enema would like in human form, called what happened “Every parent’s nightmare.” Gov. Greg Abbott proclaimed they’d never give up the search. Not to be outdone, Lt. Gov Dan Patrick, who once demanded that Americans save the economy by “Sacrificing grandma.” Said that relentless rains caused the flooding and that there were 700 children at the camp. There’s something all three of these men (and I use that term loosely) have in common. All cheered the budget cuts at NOAA. Patrick has in the past gone further, demanding FEMA, the agency that comes in after a disaster and helps rebuild, be disbanded altogether and that the states and the states alone handle recovery.
I want to stress at this point that I’m doing all I can to keep calm as I compose this blog. I have great anger at those men, and the MAGA movement as a whole. Because they need to accept the blame on this one. Donald Trump, who spoke with no emotion over the loss of life, just seemed to shrug it off, as if he was searching his barely functioning brain for a reason to blame Biden for what happened in Texas. Trump’s first response wasn’t to reach out to anyone in Texas. It was to retire to the White House, and continue his fake social media war with Elon Musk. And to use some of that time to post another edict on social media regarding tariffs. Trump isn’t clueless about what happened in Texas, he just doesn’t care. He is pledging help from FEMA, the very agency he called wasteful and unneeded a few weeks ago.
Many of us predicted that something, if not this exact event, would happen. Which led to the MAGA megaphones on Twitter to poke fun of, and declare that people needed help for their Trump Derangement Syndrome. The area of Texas that was affected is known as “Flash Flood Alley”. Now, had NOAA’s budget not been cut, perhaps leadership in Texas would have been armed with the information that could have saved lives.
It makes it worse that this area was a known flood risk. It makes it worse that the notion of evacuating people was considered, and then dismissed. Cruz asks if there are tools in place that could have helped. Well, for one, there are, but you cut funding to the agency that uses them. Second, the flood area saw water rise way too fast. So, the inaction of the leadership in Texas, has again cost lives, the lives of children.
You know Trump is going to offer praise to Gov. Abbott and Ted Cruz for their efforts in helping the citizens of Texas. Even though it was their ineptness that helped cause all of this. And it was Trump and MAGA and DOGE that played a huge role as well.
Look, if you’re expecting a cheerful ending, the notion that this could serve as a lesson, you’re sadly mistaken. Though I’ve always found it interesting how little as a species we try and head off danger. We just let tragedy strike and figure it has taught us a lesson. None of the men I mentioned above learn lessons. They just blame others for their shortcomings and move on. And the season is still young. There’s another tragedy out there, waiting to happen. And we’ll be having these same conversations all over again.
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