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.

Are Trump and Musk a Threat That "All Christians" Should Oppose?

A friend of mine keeps posting these almost hysterical posts claiming that President Trump and Elon Musk are trying to create an authoritarian dictatorship. A true Christians, he and his progressive Christian friends say, should oppose Trump's efforts to clean up the government. It's an evil trick, he says. It continually amazes me that so many "Christians" are so opposed to the dismantling of the corrupt progressive deep state; a state that has robbed taxpayers to pay for its insidious power grab. They accuse those dismantling the machinery of power of trying to create some kind of autocracy. And further confusing me, they actually believe that giving power to a pro-socialist government that is so in the pocket of the real corporate wealthy "oligarchs" is a Christian thing to do. Instead, they accuse the tiny handful of wealthy people who are actually trying to defang the oligarchy of wanting to be dictators.

If you want to be a dictator the first thing you do is enlarge the government, make it more powerful, limit criticism of what you are doing by curbing free speech, and bleed off as much money as possible from the rabble so they are so poor that you can control them easily. And you keep promising them a worker's paradise and try to convince them you will give them positions of authority in the new world order. And among Christian religions, it's no accident that the head of the church that wants us all to come back under the "mother" church's authority is a socialist pope.

Of the 40 richest men in the world who could be called oligarchs only 4 that I know of could even remotely be called conservatives. It's not accidental that so few truly wealthy men are in favor of a smaller, less powerful, less intrusive government and more freedom. All four are thoroughly despised by the progressive left. 

And why in the name of all that's holy do "Christians" believe that progressive socialism and more powerful government will give us the man-made Utopia they promise us. "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" and a large majority of us sinners have no interest in letting God make us better human beings. It's all about power and control in the end. That's what Satan said was wrong with the way God made Earth. All that free will, he argued, needed to be controlled. They needed a ruler....oh, I don't know. Someone like SATAN? Inevitably, kingdoms, empires or People's Democratic Socialist Republics are neither democratic, nor of the people, nor are they republics.They're almost never free.

Notice who sets up the loudest howl when you threaten to throw light on the corruption of any system of government. Who threatens real violence (hint - read the comments of Democrats and progressives objecting to DOGE)? Why do you think they tried to assassinate Trump two or three times already? Especially when they couldn't find a way to put him in jail. Kick over a rat's nest and watch the rats squeal and scatter. How is any of what's been revealed by Musk and Trump's teams in any way Christian? A couple of million dollars worth of condoms for Somalia or Yemen - someplace like that. . An LGBQT opera for Cuba? More millions for transgender surgery in Guatemala?.Anti-disinformation training millions for Kazakhstan to aid its authoritarian government in controlling what is said about it. How about more millions for DEI training in Middle Eastern countries? And tens of millions to terrorist supporting organizations around the world.

Meanwhile American disaster victims are left high and dry, relying on the goodness of their Christian neighbors to survive while FEMA doles out a pittance and claims to be helping. Really? We Christians should be supporting all that corruption because you say we should hate Donald Trump and Elon Musk? I far more trust those guys. They are wealthy and immune to bribes and manipulation. So, you say, we should support what - rich progressive oligarchs like George Soros and the majority of corporate CEOs who wear the progressive badge? Guys who buy corrupt district attorneys who protect them from the consequences of their actions and punish anyone who opposes them are to be our heroes? That's what you're telling me? Robber Barons who wage lawfare against elected officials. Justice Department lawyers they keep on their under the table payrolls to do their dirty work for them. Wealthy donors who buy huge tax breaks for themselves by pouring money into the coffers of pliant politicians? These are who we should trust and follow?

I remember that Jesus once turned over some tables when He found corruption in the Temple. He scattered the corrupt moneychangers with a whip! Can you say USAID? I suppose not, if you're a unrepentant Marxist progressive.

I'm not under any delusion that we'll ultimately win this fight. The Bible does not describe any such period of lasting peace at the world's end. On the contrary, we are promised that they shall cry peace peace and then sudden destruction comes upon them. "Progressives" will ultimately win their shot at Utopia and I suspect anyone who stands against them at that time will be the first (but not the last) up against the wall.

God may be sending those angels for a time to hold back the winds of strife long enough for us to complete the Great Commission and preach the gospel to the ends of the Earth. But once that's done, the rebellious choirmaster will rise in apparent victory and turn loose the armies of hell against God's children. At that time Michael shall stand up, Jesus our Savior, and He will come in the clouds to take us and the righteous dead Home with Him. As we leave the wicked remnants of Earth will destroy themselves in a frenzy of fury leaving the planet desolate for a thousand years, until the resurrection of the wicked, the final judgment and the second death of those who would be miserable living in the presence of God. And then the Earth will be made new and Christ will give our beautiful world back to us and we will live forever in peace and abundant joy.

Should Christians then attack Elon and Donald because they are upsetting progressive plans to seize more power and to create a human Utopia by fiat?

I don't think so, Skippy. Been tried too many times and left too many hundreds of millions of dead behind. Someone is coming to save us and our reward is with Him.

© 2025 by Tom King

Somebody's AI Can't Imagine Jesus

But the same AI will imagine Molech to whom some 20,00 plus
children were sacrificed annually in what is now Palestine.

If you've tried the picture-making AI of a certain social media site, try this. Ask for a picture of Jesus or Christ and see what it says. "Can't do it!" Then ask for Buddha, Confucius, or Zeus or Aphrodite or "the Egyptian God Ra" or Baphomet the Goat God. To be fair they won't do Satan or Lucifer either, but try Baal or Molech or Dagon and the AI will give you all three of the pagan gods of that region of the world we now call Palestine. Ask it to imagine Quetzalcoatl blood-thirsty creator god of the Aztecs or Viracocha creator god of the Incas. They are all there if you want them.

You have to wonder what went into the algorithm that prevents the primary deity of the Christian church while allowing gods from dozens of pagan religions. They won't draw Mohammed either, but even an AI probably has enough self-preservation code written into it that it doesn't want to be blown up for drawing a picture.

And in an interesting facet of the algorithm, it won't do the god of socialism, Karl Marx for some reason. Guess it's not afraid of leftists either. Won't do Trump or Ronald Reagan either.

Hmmmm. I find the AI picture-making utility handy for illustrating my blogs, just so I don't want a picture of the guy who told the world to "treat others the way you want to be treated." Ironic that the religious figure who never burned children alive, gutted virgins or made them serve as temple prostitutes, cannot be imaged.

© 2024 by Tom King