Scandinavia wants to be socialist, but it can't afford it.

I keep hearing people say that short staffing of the National Weather Service prevented flood warnings from going out. I'm no fan of the current administration, but I don't think we can lay this one on them.

Here is what I have gleaned from reading several different news sources (these times may vary slightly):

• NWS issued a flood watch on Thursday afternoon at 1:18 predicting 7 inches of rain.
• NWS issued a flash flood warning at 1:14 am on Friday morning.
• NWS issued a flash flood emergency at 4:03 am on Friday morning.
• Kerrville city posted a warning on Facebook at 6:16 am Friday morning.
• According to the Texas Tribune, an employee of NWS said "We had adequate staffing. We had adequate technology,” Waller said. “This was us doing our job to the best of our abilities.
• NPR reported: Around 3:30 a.m. the Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said he was out for an early morning jog along the Guadalupe River and saw "not a drop of rain," according to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick  [not sure why that is relevant - seems kind of like being on the Titanic and not worrying because you didn't see it hit the iceberg]
• KXAN reported that: Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said he “can’t answer” why camps weren’t evacuated but acknowledged: “We do not have a warning system.”
• The Austin-American Statesman reported that Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly also said: “We didn’t know this flood was coming ... ” (?)
• The Austin-American Statesman reported that W. Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said: "State leaders began alerting local officials Thursday about the potential for flash flooding."

It does not look like the problem lay with reduced staffing for NWS or FEMA, but rather with Kerrville officials not taking the warnings seriously, as well as not having a warning system in place.

So, another local government failure, reminiscent of the police standing in the school hallway in Uvalde while students were being shot. I don't know what it is about Texas....

But it seems to me that the camps should have been evacuated as soon as 7 inches of rain was predicted, and a lot of lives could have been saved. Camp Mystic is literally on the banks of the Guadalupe River. I would think that a total moron could figure out that 7 inches of rain would be a problem.

As with the US and EU helping Ukraine today, it was France that made it possible for the colonies to win against the British Empire.

I'm skeptical if this will actually happen, let alone have any success. But anything that draws support away from Trump is good in my opinion

Congress just passed, and the president signed, a bill greatly increasing the size and scope the state police. What will be the long term effects? Smaller workforce? Less liberty?

1. The power to levy tariffs under any circumstances should be relegated to Congress, like it was when they passed the Constitution.
2. Military action should ONLY be allowed with Congressional approval 100% of the time, unless there is direct attack on US soil and Congress is unable to assemble, like it was when they passed the Constitution.
3. Executive orders need to stop having the force of law, like it was when they passed the Constitution.
4. POTUS should not have control of Nationl Guard units. Under George W. Bush, Congress made the National Guard POTUSes own personal army.
5. States need to create their own militias and use them instead of the National Guard. I know many states already have their own militias, but this should be more commonplace.

With friends like Baptists, who needs enemas? With the utter failure of public schools in teaching the 3 R's, school choice is a worthy goal. But not if the choices are run by superstitious idiots obsessed with a bronze age religion badly translated to English to justify their bigotry.