Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. FEMA
2. SpaceX
3. LGBT
4. Vance
5. Bribes
6. USAF
7. Welds
1. FEMA. We are approaching two weeks following Hurricane Helene’s passage over Appalachia, and the stories are coming out early and often. I have been a bit reluctant to address most of the awfulness as we are still in the Fog of War phase of disaster response. Some of the stories are awful. I do expect most of the good news not to be reported. But everything needs to be put in a DEI perspective, as DEI guarantees incompetence, because hiring and firing are done on qualifications other than competence.
- FEMA’s 2022 – 2026 Strategic Plan installs equity as the very first goal of the agency. The goal is listed as follows: Instill Equity as a Foundation of Emergency Management. Note that not a word is said about excellence or competence. Note also that equity by definition means equal outcomes, which is generally defined as whites go to the back of the line. Objectives under this Goal are: Objective 1.1 – Cultivate a FEMA that prioritizes and harnesses a diverse workforce. Objective 1.2 – Remove barriers to FEMA programs through a “people first” approach. Objective 1.3 – Achieve equitable outcomes for those we serve. Difficult to concentrate on the right things when your number one goal and everything that supports it are the wrong things.
- Much was made of FEMA’s operation in Ashville, NC. As an aside, it appears that western NC is the hardest hit region of this storm. More help poured in than officials were ready for or willing to work with. Instead of figuring it out, or allowing the aviation community to figure it out, the incompetent authoritarians from FEMA and the FAA decided to flex their command-and-control muscles rather than their get this stuff to the people muscles. At least one FAA NOTAM was issued grounding civilian helo flights due to the sheer numbers. National Guard helo flights were likewise grounded because higher HQ refused to issue orders to fly. Note that in NC, Governor Roy Cooper, a democrat, could have issued such orders and chose not to do so.
- One of the things FEMA has been accused of in previous hurricanes is seizing inbound food, clothing, and support material and warehousing it, doling it out at their discretion. Read a report following Irma’s impact on the Florida Keys Sept 2017 that described FEMA under Trump (all O’Bama leftovers). Writer concluded that their insistence to only accept materiel from their list of preferred contractors led the writer to conclude that it was all about money. Is such a thing going on in NC? Likely, though unproven.
- Starlink became an issue for a couple reasons. First, a reminder that Biden’s FCC revoked a $866 million grant to Starlink to provide coverage in rural areas. Musk pointed out last week that had that grant remained in place, NC would have had 19,500 Starlink terminals in the region. I think this is overblown, as there would certainly been more terminals in place, 19,500+ is a bit of a stretch. Suffice it to say, there would have been more coverage independent of local utilities, something that the Biden FCC’s breathtakingly awful political decision guaranteed would not happen. Sometimes, political decisions are deadly to the very people the politicians making them pretend to care about.
- Musk also got involved with ongoing Starlink deployment following a complaint by one of his engineers that FEMA was seizing equipment intended to be deployed into the disaster area. Mayor Pete got himself involved publicly, always a problematic move when Musk is personally involved. They eventually got together with Pete discovering his people were doing things he didn’t know about and apparently responded positively. Deployment is now proceeding.
- There are upwards of 360 flooded electric substations in the region. Unknown how many of those involved destroyed transformers. This is important because there is a backlog of requests for replacement parts. They take years to manufacture, and reportedly Harris – Biden gave the current inventory to Ukraine to use to rebuild their electric grid. If true, this foolish decision by Our Political Betters may delay restoration of electric service in the region by years, though perhaps not, as I have been unable to find verification of the claim. The first reason electric service could be restored quickly would be importation of portable electric generators. The second would be a question about the amount of damage actually done to the substations. Hurricane Harvey came ashore in the Houston area Aug 2017 as a Cat 4. It quickly ran out of steering currents and sat in place for a week or two, raining out. It dropped 50 – 70” of rain in places. Houston is flat and water doesn’t flow anywhere quickly, as there is no downstream. Yet they managed to restore service reasonably quickly. What did the electric utilities do in Houston that they didn’t do in Appalachia? One difference would be the terrain, where the substations are likely sited in local valley bottoms where runoff is channelized.
- Final discussion would be FEMA funding. The two stories are that FEMA donated around a billion from its disaster response pot of money for care and feeding of the Harris – Biden illegal resettlement program. Finger pointing on this one has been vigorous and loud in both directions. I think we need more verification before joining in the fun.
2. SpaceX. A couple SpaceX stories this week. First was a wishful thinking head fake that the FAA was going to relent and issue a launch license for Starship test flight 5 on Oct 12. This was due to a notice to the Coast Guard that they needed to start planning for a launch. The FAA quickly followed up with a vehement denial that was happily carried by the San Antonio Express News. Not a surprise that a liberal paper in a liberal city would happily report any government interference with SpaceX. SpaceX experienced its second upper stage anomaly last week with the launch of their Crew-9 Dragon to ISS. The Dragon carried a crew of two along with two open seats that will be used to transport the Starliner crew back to earth in February. Orbital insertion for ISS is pretty high, so the upper stage needs to do a deorbit burn. This one was successful, though did not reenter the stage in the planned area. While the upper stage did splash down, it didn’t do so where it should have. SpaceX stood down launches for the remaining week. Their ever helpful mini-me at the FAA chimed in, grounding future launches until the investigation and solution resolved the issue. It must have been successful, as SpaceX launched the ESA Hera probe to Didymos this morning. Hera will investigate the results of the successful DART spacecraft to asteroid collision Sept 2022. With that launch, SpaceX ties the record set last year of most launches by a private company in a year at 96. We have 10 weeks left in the year. Note that the second stage problem is the third difficulty this year, joining a second stage LOX leak and a first stage landing leg collapse. Space continues to be hard, even when you are pretty good at it.
3. LGBT. The creeping infestation of leftism into academia continues apace, showing up at all manner of unexpected places. One of these is Texas A&M, an ostensibly conservative university, though a huge one. The School of Engineering tends to be more conservative. The liberal arts tends to be much less so. Last week, A&M announced they were inactivating, removing low-enrollment programs, if they do not meet certain enrollment thresholds. A&M proposed to remove 52 minors and certificates. Their LGBT minor was included in the list of minors to remove from the curriculum. In order to remain on the curriculum, a minor must graduate ten students in the last two years or have a current enrollment of five students. Certificates must have six graduates or a minimum enrollment of three students in the same time periods. The program has been proposed to removal, though no decision has been made. This recommendation triggered a loud reaction from the liberal arts faculty, protesting the decision, usual suspects acting like usual suspects.
4. Vance. One of the reasons you have advance teams is to prepare campaign events so the locals aren’t surprised. Senator Vance showed up at a popular sandwich shop in North Versailles, PA last week and was denied entrance because the employees didn’t want a campaign event. Apparently, the plan was to buy lunches for his supporters, proving there is indeed such a thing as a free lunch. Vance held an impromptu Q&A in the parking lot. The group eventually got in and all was forgiven at least for a while, though local media did have a field day with the kerfuffle.
Contrast this with a similar Harris – Walz campaign stop at another Pittsburgh area restaurant, where they asked all people in the restaurant to leave when the campaign showed up. The Harris campaign busses showed up, along with their hired diners. The media ignored this event.
5. Bribes. Harris – Biden are offering $153 million in bribes to state and local governments who adopt red flag laws. Merrick Garland’s Department of (In)Justice announced over $135 million in grants under the Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program (Byrne SCIP) to pass red flag legislation and establish the legal framework. The WH did not discuss the failure of existing red flag laws to end mass shootings in the states that have implemented them. Cali passed a red flag law in 2016, Florida in 2018. Neither law prevented subsequent mass shootings after passage. Harris supports pre-crime gun confiscation laws.
6. USAF. When you put a racist in charge of a military service, you will invariably get racial discrimination, generally aimed against white men. Today’s example is newly ensconced JSC Chairman, General Charles, CQ Brown, who while USAF Chief of Staff 2020 – 2023 determined that there were too many white men in the USAF and put plans into place to fix the perceived problem. This is not a new approach, as having too many white men in the military services was an identified problem as far back under the O’Bama regime in 2011. Brown’s career as a General Officer took off under O’Bama. I expect he is not the only one elevated, which will make identification and cleanup more difficult. The Daily Caller received a trove of documents on USAF efforts to reduce the number of white male applicants for ROTC. The same thing is going on at Space Force, and with Brown and his fellow travelers now in charge of DoD, putting their collective thumbs on promotion board results, Officer Effectiveness Reports, and choice assignments, their kind of people will be promoted while others will not. As we discussed earlier with FEMA, DEI = incompetence every single time it is tried. Can we afford this sort of incompetence in DoD?
7. Welds. Finally, as if there weren’t enough else to worry about, we have the bubbling story about bad welds on submarines and aircraft carriers coming out of Newport News Shipbuilding. This has been going on since low quality welds were discovered earlier this year. The investigation is underway to determine how many ships under construction and currently in service are impacted. Worst, the shipbuilder is claiming that the mistakes may have been intentional, a backside covering story if I’ve ever heard one. It is a completely get out of jail claim, as any single anti-American group can make the claim, the manufacturer can make the claim, and the actual welders can deny everything forever or until proven otherwise. I am somewhat skeptical that Bad Actors can insert themselves into any part of the military supply and support chain. I am not skeptical at all that simple incompetence (DEI, once again) can account for all of it. Yet something else to worry about.
More later –
- AG