Fuck you Abbot.
“Prayer matters,” Abbott said. Prayers “could have been the reason why water stopped rising”.
I always greet this line of reasoning with: “Dear God, please spare us from these Acts of God.”
Texas officials appeared to blame the Weather Service for issuing forecasts on Wednesday that underestimated how much rain was coming. But former Weather Service officials said the forecasts were as good as could be expected, given the enormous levels of rainfall and the storm’s unusually abrupt escalation.
The staffing shortages suggested a separate problem, those former officials said — the loss of experienced people who would typically have helped communicate with local authorities in the hours after flash flood warnings were issued overnight.
The shortages are among the factors likely to be scrutinized as the death toll climbs from the floods. Separate questions have emerged about the preparedness of local communities, including Kerr County’s apparent lack of a local flood warning system. The county, roughly 50 miles northwest of San Antonio, is where many of the deaths occurred.
In an interview, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, said the county did not have a warning system because such systems are expensive, and local residents are resistant to new spending.
“Taxpayers won’t pay for it,” Mr. Kelly said. Asked if people might reconsider in light of the catastrophe, he said, “I don’t know.”
I really fucking hope some of the parents of the kids who were lost are watching this shit and call his office and give him a fucking earful.
They are okay with brown people being deported… but now that it’s his wife…
Tony Blair’s staff took part in ‘Gaza Riviera’ project with BCG
Former UK prime minister’s institute participated in meetings on plan to turn shattered enclave into trading hub
Concept for postwar Gaza from the ‘Great Trust’ slide deck
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current progress 54%
Stephen Foley in New York and Jim Pickard in London
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The Tony Blair Institute participated in a project to develop a postwar Gaza plan that envisaged kick-starting the enclave’s economy with a “Trump Riviera” and an “Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone”.
The plan outlined in a slide deck, seen by the Financial Times, was led by Israeli businessmen and used financial models developed inside Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to reimagine Gaza as a thriving trading hub.
Titled the “Great Trust” and shared with the Trump administration, it proposed paying half a million Palestinians to leave the area and attracting private investors to develop Gaza.
Fine. Do that, and let the Palestinians live there.
The AI image sold as “concept art” is the cherry on top. This isn’t a serious project, at best it’s a grift, at worst an attempt at ethnic cleansing
@RAvery not a chance the Palestinians would be allowed live there once Israel had redeveloped it (demolition already done) and moved colonists in.
““On July 3, there was a lot of gunfire going on outside, but fireworks as well … I didn’t really think anything of it, because in this area there’s always a lot of gunfire going on,” Lyons said. “The next morning, when I woke up, my son, my 4-year-old, came into my room and said, ‘Mommy, what is this?’ And in his hand was a bullet.”
Lyons found the bullet hole in her son’s ceiling right above his Paw Patrol wall stickers.
“I’m just looking around, and I see a hole in the roof … I could see the chips of the paint from off the wall,” she said. “It just broke me. Like, how could a bullet come into my home?””
Responsible gun ownership.
I’m bothered by the seeming mental disconnect between this and “All my neighbors blast their guns into the air like Yosemite Sam year round and I think nothing of it.”
this part got my attention the most. had to check the notes again… Durham, North Carolina. not Gaza, not Ukraine, not South Sudan or Port-au-Prince…
“there’s always a lot of gunfire going on”.
fucking hillbillies … goddamn idiots with their guns.
i just can’t…
@Hanglyman , diet or regular coke?
In all honesty, in my part of Durham there’s a game I play on July 4th that I call “fireworks or gunfire?” I never do find out an answer, which is probably lucky.
This year the county assessed the value of my property at like $450,000 for tax purposes.
I lived for about 9 months in a part of Raleigh where there were lots of “fireworks” going off at night (damn near every night), this was the late 90’s mind.
Yeah, Durham is nothing like it was in the 90s in that respect (though I didn’t live here back then). It’s a lot safer and generally more mellow than it was even in the 20-aughts. But the occasional armed robbery or spate of gunfire still captures the attention of the neighborhood gossip channels, and stories about celebratory gunfire fallout still show up in the N&O and on WRAL on July 5 every year.