OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
10d ago
I was unfavorably compared to Kamala Harris on a customer call. (I was typing and talking at the same time and started to say word-salad.) I think people mostly avoid talking about politics when out in groups, but it is on people's minds.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
13d ago
I thought the same as you but today I heard a recording of him talking in 2014. I think his vocal pattern is just like that, regardless of cognitive decline.
The figure that I'm most interested in would be something like, "What is the least amount of money someone needs to live a respectable life this year?" Something like the poverty line, except instead of just looking at basic needs it looks at how much someone would need to spend to live according to the regulations and societal expectations we are subject to. This number would be widely different between someone who bought their house before 2010 vs someone who is renting or bought a house more recently. There are a few categories that could be evaluated separately, like lifestyle to be a respectable DINK in a big city, lifestyle to be a family of four in a suburb, etc. The interesting thing would be to pick a lifestyle and stick with it for a decade, seeing what the minimum amount a family could spend to stay in that lifestyle over time. That is what people think inflation is tracking, or wish inflation was tracking, based on how people reference inflation in arguments.
Someone has been tracking "Average Household Expenditures" which seems like an ok, if imperfect proxy for what I have in mind. https://www.bls.gov/cex/tables/top-line-means.htm.
| Year | Average Household Expenditure | Percent Increase |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | $57,311 | - |
| 2017 | $60,060 | 4.79% |
| 2018 | $61,224 | 1.93% |
| 2019 | $63,036 | 2.95% |
| 2020 | $61,334 | -2.70% |
| 2021 | $66,928 | 9.12% |
| 2022 | $72,967 | 9.02% |
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
21d ago
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
22d ago
I have seen many reports of more dead bodies that have not made it into the official statistics yet. I predict the number will be around Katrina levels, and have put my money where my mouth is, for what it's worth.
This video is one of several that, when I add things together, present this picture: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ag-hb45J6MQ?si=PBOIVJo6TvLyLZir
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
23d ago
Update: The North Carolina National Guard has taken credit for the Rotor Wash incident. https://x.com/NCNationalGuard/status/1843780336616124896
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
23d ago
Would you like to use https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/index.php?season=2024&basin=atl when the report becomes available?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
23d ago
Then why don't you vote for a third party that aligns further with your preferences? People like to be a part of a movement, they want to have a good chance of winning instead of "throwing their vote away."
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
23d ago
I wasn't clear enough on what my complaint was. It bothers me that there were helicopters that were not being used. Not being serviced, not being loaded, not in the air, nothing. In a situation like this, helicopters are too valuable to waste on a runway.
We are lead by accountants who will say, "I diverted X helicopters to the crisis," but never give a thought to how they are used to accomplish a goal.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
24d ago
Sounds good. As far as bets go, it sounds like I win either way. Either I win the dubious honor of being able to read the tea leaves Twitter vibes, or I win fewer people dying in reality.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
24d ago
Army/US Military instead of FEMA.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
24d ago
Agreed, but it's kind of like how the Secret Service was viewed up until two months ago. This is Butler, PA happening to another honored USA institution.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
24d ago
Any single "kid without parents" story has not been credible, just like any single "I saw a truck full of dead bodies" story is not credible. Dozens of seemingly independent stories make it more credible. I'm not 100% convinced that there is a naked kid survivor still tied to a tree, or what the maximal claim might be. I am pretty sure it is confirmed that this event has created some orphans, potentially stranding kids without any adult supervision entirely for hours, days, who knows if there's still a kid out there all alone? We wouldn't know, because they'd be alone. With communications down for so long, and people spread out in remote communities, no one can say they have the full grasp of the tragedy yet.
I am pretty convinced at this point that the death toll is in the thousands, and give 50% odds that this final death toll will not be on the official news until after the election. There are just too many reports of people saying they personally saw dead bodies, spread out across a wide geographical region.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
24d ago
This report from a lineman mentions kids walking around naked looking for parents. Other reports of naked kids: https://x.com/MrsMcGeek/status/1843003502047707335.
Trying to find the video with the rope thing but it's hard to find the exact video when I have watched hundreds over the last week and X doesn't make it easy.
Correct. The complaint is that the helicopters aren't moving. They're not being loaded. They aren't going anywhere.
Edit: It's like someone said, "We need helicopters" and brought helicopters over, but hasn't decided how to use them yet. Just bringing helicopters over doesn't win any brownie points.
"4 Reefer Trucks" in one county from here: https://tiktok.com/@glutenfreebreadwinner/video/7421950512544697642
No running water at a hospital:
Mission Hospital still has not regained running water. It’s expected to take weeks for access to water to be restored region-wide, due to widespread damage to the water system.
Healthcare workers typically use running water in abundance for tasks ranging from handwashing to sterilization. They’re getting creative in its absence.
The local population is understandably filthy:
The sewage system was so backed up after the storm, Drummond said, that it wasn’t possible to flush toilets.
“We were pooping in bags and buckets,” she said.
Access to clean water was also wiped out. Patients were showing up at the hospital drenched in floodwater saturated with gasoline, chemicals and other unknown toxins.
Those people would normally be placed in showers to clean off, Drummond said. Not so after Helene barreled through, knocking out the basics of hygiene.
“It’s been really difficult to do decontamination,” Drummond said. Her team, she said, was forced to fill trash cans with whatever clean water it could find to dump over patients in an effort to rinse them.
This is from the group of people who have made it to a hospital. How many thousands are still trapped without a road in these conditions? How many dehydrated people are drinking dirty water in desperation? How long does it take before these conditions lead to disease outbreaks and deaths?
Edit: More witnesses of mass deaths: https://x.com/KristyTallman/status/1842032303637463274
People asking for more body bag donations: https://x.com/TheThe1776/status/1842120280229158963
Over 100 bodies marked in a six mile stretch of river: https://x.com/Bubblebathgirl/status/1842908549795512354
Someone seeing bodies left in trees, thought they were Halloween decorations at first: https://x.com/KellyJo_Rn/status/1841284842085880279/photo/2
Edit 2: Going to keep links to the most credible videos here so that I can reference them as people (rightfully) ask for receipts:
https://x.com/SaltyGoat17/status/1842944529172734286 - Woman saying she needs 500 body bags. County Sheriff kicked FEMA out of the county.
https://x.com/sarahsansoni/status/1842129974888644801 - Account of bodies floating in river. Similar language as some other reports, where they thought they were Halloween Costumes, then saw the faces and realized they were real bodies.
Not directly related to body count, but interesting in itself - https://x.com/ImMeme0/status/1842648530436911554 Volunteer reporting that her organization has told her to flee any FEMA agents she encounters, because they will confiscate everything she has, including her search and rescue dogs (???). Also her volunteer organization has tracked that a lot of the items confiscated from their organization have been sent to migrants (at the border?) instead of citizens. She says that when she was in the Coast Guard, the Coast Guard stopped working with FEMA because they would do similar things to them.
And in response to that video, Ryan McBeth who I also vaguely trust and respect (or at least I knew of him well before this disaster which is more than I can say for most of these) said that that this is misinformation that is killing people. He was on the phone with the National Guard (all of them at once? ha, I know what he means, but not saying who exactly he spoke to or what their position is annoys me.) National Guard is declaring that people are putting themselves in danger to avoid FEMA.
I think I trust Ryan that this is what the Nat Guard is saying, I don't trust that the National Guard has it all under control. I do not believe that if all private citizens just stopped working around the government's lack of help that it would all have turned out better.
On the more credible side: Gen. Flynn asking for donations to a Rescue/Recovery team that is normally tasked by FEMA for situations like this but, "No tasking to date (not surprising)." https://x.com/GenFlynn/status/1841822490730910109
People on the ground saying that they haven't seen FEMA or didn't see any FEMA until more than 5 days after the Hurricane: https://x.com/ImMeme0/status/1842977547103219797
Lastly, most professional video of the infamous Fire Chief directly preventing the rescue of a couple: https://youtube.com/watch?v=s8ICG0iaHqw
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
24d ago
Sorry, I edited it right after I noticed my mistake. It's a Blackhawk, probably Nat. Guard.
Helene will probably be a weekly topic until every last American is rescued or buried, so I will start the conversation now with the latest updates I am aware of:
Biden has ordered "500 active-duty troops with advanced technological assets to move into Western North Carolina." I'm not sure what "advanced technological assets" they are deploying, hopefully it's something like helicopters, bridges, and drones.
There are many people asking why did he wait over a week to deploy these troops. This question is somewhat unfair in itself. In the same document Biden reminds the American people that there are already 1,000 troops on the ground (though it's not clear to me if that is across the affected region or specifically in North Carolina. The numbers he gives for National Guard is the number across Florida to Tennessee.)
I think the real complaint is not that the Federal response has been unusually slow, but that it is insufficient for the "Biblical" levels of destruction. Thousands of dead bodies, "4 Reefer Trucks" full in one county, everyone who is asking for donations asks for more body bags because they keep running out. Young kids naked and crying for their parents, ropes still wrapped around their arms from where their parents desperately tied them to trees above water. People without a roof over their heads or potable water, sewers flooded, hornets unhoused, prime matter for disease and misery. Roads and bridges gone, and no easy path to rebuilding them in the same places due to the banks and cliffs they occupied being washed out.
My husband insists that if things were as bad as I think, the US Army could get everyone out of Western North Carolina in a day. He knows more about the military than I do - he never made it past basic training due to being underweight but has two siblings in the military, one of which who has made it pretty far across 20 years of service. My husband has a very high opinion of our military's capabilities, but I wonder if his model is outdated.
In Greenville, SC, FEMA has taken over a runway with 10 helicopters that loitered all Sunday. For the past week, that runway was being utilized by private charities who were sending materials into the disaster area. Yesterday, it was out of commission for no visible or communicated reason.
Meanwhile, a Blackhawk helicopter just wrecked a distribution center in Pine Spruce (Spruce Pine?), North Carolina. Was it intentional? I hope not. But it displays a level of incompetence that boggles the mind.
All the details indicate to me that the Feds think they can just say, "X number of troops, time to deploy" and solve the problem. But there's no real leadership. No one making a plan to actually help people. The Military and National Guard is too slow and cumbersome. Private charities are able to respond quickly in a crisis, because they have a shorter chain of command and fewer rules. This might be a weakness, in that they will make more mistakes, possibly put their own people's lives at risk. But in the face of the disaster, maybe that is what is needed.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
25d ago
These rebuttals only move the problem one layer back. Why did Congress earmark these funds for non-citizen migrants instead of leave this funding open to American citizens who are displaced and need shelter and services?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
26d ago
I should restate, National Guard isn't sending lots of helicopters. Outside states are sending 1-3, North Carolina has 7 deployed: https://abc11.com/post/national-guard-appreciative-helene-recovery-help-fort-liberty/15390130/. Is it enough?
In North Carolina, Hollenack said, the National Guard has over 1,100 soldiers and airmen on active duty, and is making use of nearly 400 vehicles, including 26 aircraft.
"We have support from 10 different states," he said. "[There is] a lot of appreciation to our other state partners who have provided equipment and people to help us."
So 26 helicopters, compared to the hundreds being provided by charities like Operation Air Drop, Aerial Recovery, and other private citizens.
Meanwhile, rescues performed by individuals acting on their own are being attributed to the National Guard. https://instagram.com/reel/DAl8mr-PPsH/
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
27d ago
I expect that Ashville, which has a working road into it, would see the most support from FEMA and will be the happiest with how aid goes. This does not mean that everyone who lives in a town with less than 10,000 people is receiving adequate aid.
The people who would have the most to complain about are the ones without power, gas, internet, water, or a road to anywhere.
The problem with FEMA stopping other people from helping is that FEMA cannot help everyone. They are only able to help those reachable by road. FEMA sets up in major hubs in areas their trucks can reach and expects people to reach them. https://x.com/glennbeck/status/1842293685834416174
National guard can do search and rescue, but they don't have many helicopters. Civilian helicopters outnumber them by an order of magnitude and are flying a lot of the aid. https://instagram.com/reel/DArJyuevDTK/
The federal government might be employing a strategy that saves the most lives in a major costal city. It might not do so well here.
If they are confiscating resources from private charities that are air dropping resources to those who need them, this is a death sentence for those who cannot be reached by road for weeks.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
29d ago
I kind of unironically agree with what he said. Don't know if Controls was ironic or not, but I have seen pro-life women who often argue this way.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
29d ago
This article is relevant: PROJECT 2025 WILL KILL YOUR DOG
Choice quotes:
Project 2025 is a plan by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, for how the next Republican administration ought to govern. You can read it at project2025.org/policy. They found a bunch of conservatives to propose reforms to different parts of the federal government. Like, they got Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Elections Commission, to write about how conservatives should reform the FEC, and Roger Severino, a former high-level official at Health & Human Services, to write about reforms to HHS. In some cases, there’s clear division in the conservative movement, so they got two writers to write cases pro- and con-, like where they got Veronique de Rugy, who hates the Export-Import Bank more than anyone alive, to write “The Case Against the Export-Import Bank” and Jennifer Hazleton to write “The Case For the Export Import-Bank.”
...
However, that leaves Democrats with a second problem: Project 2025 is mostly pretty technical. It’s a hit for conservative audiences, but you can’t put a quotation like:
Congress should: Modernize the definition of commodity (which is now largely a laundry list of agricultural commodities) and clarify the treatment of digital assets. (Project 2025, p833)
…in an attack ad. Voters don’t care. And lines like that appear to be 99% of Project 2025.
Meanwhile, even on its more controversial points, Project 2025 appears to have been written by eggheads with at least a little bit of an ear to the ground, politically speaking, because they are usually pretty careful to avoid suggesting policies that are actually unpopular. So how can the Democrats get attack ads out of a mixture of overly-technical and not-particularly-unpopular policies?
Oldest trick in the political book: they make crap up.
I mean, there was a video of a precinct pulling out a box of ballots that had been covered by a table cloth after sending away all observers. A month later, a reporter reviewed the video footage and insists that the box was legitimate and that there is "no evidence of any wrongdoing."
I think even with the official story there is obvious wrong doing - particularly sending away all observers and then deciding to continue counting without waiting for the observers to return. But is that wrong doing significant enough to sway the election? Probably not this specific instance. But how many specific instances are needed before it might sway the election?
Of course, no one was so kind as to leave a genuine smoking gun, a video confession in the midst of the act. There were a great number of times poll workers violated local election rules, and these instances are as proven as it can be outside a court of law. But without being able to investigate these, it is impossible to know if these actually turned the election.
Your assumption that the "public" would rally around any given evidence of fraud is laughable. This is a close election. Everyone either voted for the other guy or didn't vote at all. Everyone is either motivated against accepting evidence their guy actually lost, or politically disengaged.
I'm assuming you voted for Biden? Imagine if you saw a video of someone "cleaning up unclear ballots" to favor Biden. Instances where neither candidate was selected or both candidates were selected by accident, and every time the poll worker filled in the Biden bubble and erased the Trump bubble. Do you think that the average Biden voter, upon seeing this, would say, "That's F'd up! I'm going to share this with everyone I know and protest that Trump should be the rightful president?"
Of course not! They would justify it to themselves as just a lone wolf that couldn't affect much, or that "they voted for a Democrat for senator, of course they meant to vote Biden!" They certainly wouldn't amplify the video.
What about those who don't have a horse in the game? Well, they were too focused on whatever it is that people who don't vote focus on. Imagine not caring about politics. Crazy stuff.
Trump voters really were convinced by the videos and accounts going around, so much so that upwards of 70% of Republicans still believe the election was stolen. Having this group of the public on his side did pretty much nothing for Trump besides get him into even more trouble once they decided to try a riot for themselves.
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