Straining at Gnats - The Left Criticizes the Texas Flood Response

Straining at Gnats - The Left Criticizes the Texas Flood Response
Because Trump..... 

• Say what you will about Texas - but when the rivers rise, so do we.

  Not with blame. Not with bitterness.

  But with boots on the ground, arms around strangers, and hearts wide open.

  That’s the Texas I know. And that’s the America I believe in.
                                                                                                                   - Bex Hale

I mean, before the day was over on July 4, while Texans from all over including "Texans" from other states were pulling kids out of trees and off rooftops, the left was already blaming Texas governor Abbott, Donald Trump and Texans themselves for the disaster and the so-called "poor response." It's ironic that their biggest criticism was that we didn't have enough government in place to stop the floods. As if the lumbering ox-like bureaucrats of government would have been able, in a timely manner, to drag their ample behinds out of their chairs and commence throwing ring buoys to campers floating by on cabin roofs in the raging waters of the Guadalupe.

The word disingenuous applies here, since the things they are complaining about are endemic to a natural disaster. Besides, we didn't hear a squeak about it from them all during the Biden administration's pathetic response to Hurricane Helene's bludgeoning of the southeast last year. Oh, we heard a lot about tempest-in-a-teapot heroics by FEMA clerks, hard-pressed to get all the appropriate paperwork filled out, though. Six months later, there were thousands in North Carolina red counties who had yet to receive other than a pittance in disaster relief funds from Biden's FEMA. In Texas, grocery stores like HEB and Brookshire's, churches, ranchers with horse trailers packed with supplies rolled along the highways to Kerrville. Trying to lay blame for the Guadalupe flooding and loss of life on Trump is not only disingenuous, but petty. 

The flood wasn't Trump's fault!

Well maybe the flood wasn’t, but the response after the fact is lacking, so says a Democrat friend of mine.

It seems it took 3 days for FEMA to show up in Kerrville with their forms and folding tables. That's what my buddy was whining about. To paraphrase a senile former president, "Oh, come on!"  It took weeks for the feds at FEMA to blunder onto the scene after Helene. In stark contrast, Texans (actual rescuers) showed up the same day in full rescue mode. People all over the country weren't far behind. Unlike the Democrat mayor of New Orleans after Katrina, local officials didn't block rescuers from coming into the area in order to make sure the federal government did the relief effort. Texans didn't sit around and wait for the proper government agencies to save them. People in the flood were rescuing each other. Eagle scouts rescued every kid in the boy's camp. The Cajun Navy showed up with boats just like they did in New Orleans, except the Texas authorities didn't stop them from launching their boats like the Democrat mayor of New Orleans did in the wake of Katrina. The response in Texas was fast and effective. Within hours, boats were buzzing up and down the swollen Guadalupe, plucking kids out of trees, off rooftops and from cars washed off the roads. When Trump and Melania showed up on the scene, someone got a video of rescue workers doffing their hard hats to the first lady (hey, it's Texas our grandmothers taught us respect for a lady). So, the left jumped on the guy that posted the video because he didn't say anything about the Mexican first responders that came up to help. Says we conservatives didn't mention them (because racism evidently). Well this below came off Fox News, so there!

Mexican firefighters from report on Fox News

If there was any delay by FEMA, it was probably an artifact left over from the Biden administration's unwieldy FEMA policy. Following Hurricane Helene, it took FEMA more than a week to get a handful of clerks with boxes of paper forms and folding tables there to start the interminable paperwork process that FEMA considers critical to starting disaster relief efforts. People were still struggling with FEMA six months later. Three days to deploy to Kerrville is blinding speed for a federal bureaucracy, and FEMA would have only gotten in the way of the rescue efforts had they shown up sooner. In Texas, we didn't forbid civilian rescue teams to enter the area like local officials did with Katrina and Helene because the Democrat local officials were waiting for FEMA to tell them what to do. The reason FEMA said it was slow getting there was that they had to get the paperwork set up first. Meanwhile people were lost, hungry and lying about the ruins of their homes dead. Contingents of Texan rescuers were on the scene in North Carolina before FEMA bureaucrats finished scratching their behinds wondering what was the appropriate political protocol. At the same time, FEMA officials were skipping over hurricane victims in Florida that had "Trump for President" signs in their yards.

I think Kristi Noem did the right thing by coordinating with Governor Abbott and local emergency agencies, fire departments, the Coast Guard with helicopters, and civilian groups like Salvation Army, Adventist Disaster Services, The Cajun Navy, The Community Foundation of the Hill Country, Mercy Chefs, The Cajun Army, Team Rubicon, Austin Pets Alive, first responders from Mexico, and others before sending in FEMA to gum up the works. Delaying the still-unpurged Biden-era FEMA bureaucracy from wading in and turning loose an army of bureaucrats to throw their weight around and get in the way of people saving lives was inspired on the part of Secretary Noem, if you ask me.

Good job, Kristi.

 

It's complex emergencies, disasters and such that provide opportunity for politicians, bureaucrats and their cronies to loot the treasury for taxpayer money and give us such memorable things like $2000 toilet seats, tens of thousands of 120+ year-old social security recipients and millions for emotional support programs for gender queer Venezuelan coffee pickers. Thank God Ms. Noem is there to bring a little sanity to one government bureaucracy that's been out of control for way too long.