AWRM
10/31/2024 04:58 PM Be Ready for Chaos During and After Election [by airforce]
Burning ballot boxes in Oregon and Washington is only the start.

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It's not alarmist to say there are some bad actors out there who are, at this very moment, planning on disrupting next week's elections. The radical left would like nothing more than to prevent you from voting, and, failing that, will actually take the steps necessary to see that your vote goes up in flames.

For proof of that, we need not look any further than the exploding drop-off ballot boxes in Oregon and Washington. RedState reported this past Monday that three ballot boxes, and the votes held within them, had been deliberately set afire within the past few weeks. There were some early clues as to what might be behind the incidents:

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On Monday morning, a drop-off ballot box located in Vancouver, Washington, home to the state's 3rd Congressional District, went up in flames after an incendiary device attached to it exploded, destroying an unknown number of ballots. This is an important district for Democrats in their quest to retake control of the House of Representatives; incumbent Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is once again facing Republican Joe Kent, whom she beat two years ago by a narrow margin. The Cook Political Report has classified the race as a toss-up.


Being that it's the Pacific Northwest (PNW) we're talking about here, it was likely that it was an unhinged leftist (or leftists) responsible for the arsons. Law enforcement officials almost immediately connected the three incidences – one in Portland, Oregon, and two in Vancouver, Washington – and had some information on the suspect:

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Police said Monday that a “suspect vehicle” has been identified in connection with incendiary devices that set fires to ballot drop boxes in Oregon and Washington state.

Surveillance images captured a Volvo stopping at a drop box in Portland, Oregon, just before security personnel nearby discovered a fire inside the box on Monday, Portland Police Bureau spokesman Mike Benner told a news conference.


Well, some additional information has been released by local officials that sheds further light on who's responsible and what axe they are feloniously grinding:

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Investigators found incendiary devices adorned with the message, “Free Gaza,” at the sites of two ballot boxes that were set on fire in Oregon and Washington on Monday, suggesting the arsons may have been committed by an anti-Israel protester.


Not surprising in the least. While a suspect hasn't been named or apprehended, his or her intention is quite clear: to cause as much chaos around the election as possible. All of this was anticipated by the Department of Homeland Security, who back in July "warned Americans about “incendiary and explosive materials” being dropped into ballot boxes leading up to the November election. The intelligence report said an unidentified informant received multiple messages online about how to attack ballot boxes. Cherry bombs, lighting gel, gasoline, and other tools were suggested as possible incendiaries.

Ah, yes, the toolkit of the radical American left.

The mistake we must not make here is thinking that these are just some isolated incidences perpetrated by some leftist wackadoodle, or that the chaos will only be seen at drop-off ballot boxes in the PNW. We have more than a full year's worth of proof that the pro-Hamas crowd is rage-filled, violent and intent on silencing and punishing those they see as their enemies.

And there some is pretty solid evidence that they count Kamala Harris as one of their own. Although she pays lip service to Israel and Jewish Americans, her supporters apparently didn't get the memo.

If they're behaving this way after a so-called "unifying" speech, imagine what they'll do if Kamala Harris doesn't win. For that matter, imagine what they'll do if she does win. Let's face it, we have to be prepared for violence or chaos no matter who wins the election.

This crowd, and the paid agitators within, will use any reason to set American cities alight, and it would be dangerously misguided of us to believe otherwise. They've shown us many times who they are, so let's believe them.


Chaos is brewing, friends, so be sure you're prepared for any and all eventualities.


Onward and upward,
airforce
11 132 Read More
10/11/2024 07:54 PM What Happens When FEMA Buys Your House? [by airforce]
The government is buying, and sometimes seizing, homes in flood-prone areas.

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It's been a rough hurricane season. Between them, Hurricanes Helene and Milton have devastated many communities throughout the southeast. Rebuilding what was lost will take years.

But as devastating as these storms have been, they are sadly not unique. Property damage from storms and flooding is on the rise. Storms resulting in over a billion dollars in damages have become more frequent in recent years.

The prospect of repeatedly having to rebuild properties in storm-prone areas has led some governments to pursue an unusual solution to the problem: buy the properties themselves. Some local governments, in partnership with federal agencies such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), have developed programs that use disaster relief funds to purchase homes in flood- or storm-prone areas. This isn't the only way, or even the best way, to reduce the destruction from increasingly severe natural catastrophes. But the idea is that keeping such vulnerable properties vacant will save money in the long run because they won't need to be continually rebuilt after storms.

Such buyouts are hardly ideal and can lead to some perverse situations. In 2021, an NPR investigation revealed that HUD was selling homes in flood-prone areas to unsuspecting buyers even as it was buying out homes in the same neighborhoods under a flood mitigation program. While not ideal, in a world where government disaster relief is a given, a voluntary buyout program could make fiscal sense in some circumstances. Voluntary buyout programs have been implemented in over a thousand counties and have been used to relocate almost 50,000 households throughout the country.

The situation is very different when the buyout ceases to be voluntary. A little-known provision in the Hazard Mitigation and Relocation Assistance Act of 1993 authorizes local governments to implement a mandatory buyout program for flood-prone areas. So far, just three localities—Cedar Rapids in Iowa, Minot in North Dakota, and Harris County in Texas—have adopted a mandatory buyout program. The Harris County program is the largest of the three and is expected to forcibly purchase 585 households and 390 businesses by 2026 and turn the land into green space.

Most local governments have been wary of taking advantage of mandatory buyout authority, and for good reason. While states have the power of eminent domain and may use federal funds for this purpose under the law, the process is always fraught and ripe for abuse. With a voluntary buyout, governments must offer a purchase price high enough to entice homeowners to sell. But when the buyout is mandatory, governments have the incentive to low-ball their payments. Such programs can also raise other issues. Harris County faced accusations of discrimination since its mandatory buyout program had operated chiefly in majority-Hispanic neighborhoods while majority-white neighborhoods with similar flood risk profiles were offered voluntary buyouts or other flood mitigation options.

Instead of taking people's homes, the government should be looking for other ways to reduce flood risk. Both the federal and state governments have long encouraged development in storm-prone areas by offering below-market-rate flood insurance and other forms of assistance. These subsidies should stop, and the government should do more to make people aware of the risks faced by homeowners in vulnerable areas. Governments could also focus on increasing efforts to make vulnerable areas more resilient to storms. Research suggests that a dollar spent on resilience saves as much as $13 in avoided future losses.

Beyond these matters of dollars and cents, there is a question of values. America is a nation founded by risk-takers, where liberty and property rights are given priority. The desire to protect the lives of American citizens—as well as the public purse—is commendable, and the government should, of course, not subsidize risky behavior. But the desire for safety cannot become an excuse to force people out of their own homes.


Onward and upward,
airforce
5 171 Read More
10/05/2024 03:00 AM Government incompetance [by ConSigCor]


12 272 Read More
10/05/2024 02:44 AM Helene [by ConSigCor]
I live 1/2 mile from this dam. It is 114 years old and it held. When the river crested, 1.2 million gallons of water per second was coming over the dam.





This bridge is 65 feet above the normal water level.





More to come.
10 305 Read More
10/04/2024 06:34 PM Campus Pro-Hamas Events on Oct. 7 [by airforce]
What should we do about them? Nothing. They're telling us they're goal, and that's important information to have.

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At various universities around the country, Students for Justice in Palestine and other pro-Hamas groups are holding events on October 7. Some of these events celebrate Palestinian "resistance," while others, throwing in a blood libel for good measure, commemorate a non-existent genocide of Palestinians by Israel since the war in Gaza began.

Let's recall what happened on October 7, 2023. Thousands of Hamas terrorists, followed by "civilian" hangers-on, attacked border towns in southern Israel along with a music festival. The perpetrators recorded themselves gleefully murdering innocent people–peacenik kibbutznik and party-goers, children in front of their parents (there is one harrowing video you can find online of an eight-year-old girl asking, in vain, that the terrorists murder her), not the elderly, just everyone in their path. The murders were often undertaken in the most gruesome ways, including burning people alive. They also undertook an orgy of rape and torture, and kidnapped a few hundred Israelis, from a baby to an eighty-five year-old.

Let's also recall that on October 7, woefully underprepared Israeli forces struggled to repel the invasion. Not a single Israel soldier entered Gaza that day.

This tells us two things. First, those who see October 7 as anything but a day that should be devoted to the memory of the innocents brutally murdered, raped, tortured, and kidnapped that day at the very least are indifferent to that suffering, and at worst applaud the worst violence against Jews since the Holocaust. Unfortunately, many are in the latter category. As Seth Mandel writes, "American universities are full of psychopaths both in the student body and often in the professoriate (and sometimes administration)."

Second, there is no reason for anyone protesting the Israeli response in Gaza to the war Hamas started to use October 7 as a commemorative date, except to intentionally intrude on Jewish memory and commemorations of the atrocities of that day. To again quote Mandel, they choose October 7 "not despite the pain it causes Jews on campus but because of that pain." It's a form of emotional and political warfare, as if on September 11, 2002 students held events about a purported genocide by US forces fighting the Taliban.


So what should be done about morally repugnant university events to be held on October 7? If, as at Wake Forest, such events are sponsored by university academic departments, a university is well within its rights to shut them down, as Wake Forest did. Academic departments are subdivisions of the university, and the university may tell these departments that it refuses to allow its subdivisions, speaking as agents of the university, to sponsor events using October 7 for pro-Hamas propaganda.

For student events, however, the answer is that nothing should be done by university officials. At public universities, students have a First Amendment right to be as openly morally repugnant as they choose. Thus, a Maryland judge was correct in rebuffing the University of Maryland's attempt to stifle a pro-Hamas October 7 event. At private universities, if the university has a policy of not censoring student political events, it should not make an exception for these.

Yes, it's true that at many universities there would be a far stronger administrative reaction to an event celebrating the lynching of black people, or gay-bashing, or atrocities against Native Americans, and so on. And if students can prove that the university treats Jewish students' complaints and concerns differently than other groups', that is valid grounds for a lawsuit or Title VI complaint. And university officials certainly have no excuse not to denounce October 7 celebrations if (and only if) they regularly denounce other student events they find morally repugnant. (And of course, counter-demonstrations must also be permitted.)

Part of me wishes that I could make a principled argument for shutting these events down, but part of me does not. The groups holding these events are quite openly and publicly telling you who they are and what they believe in. To quote Mandel once more, their "leaders don't want to wait a day to hold the rally because while any other day could mark the war, no other day could mark the murder and mayhem of Oct. 7. The day is important to them because the massacre of Jews is important to them." And that's important information to have.


Onward and upward,
airforce
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