Quelle Surprise

Well, well, well.  Turns out that the massive fire in Hawaii which caused all those deaths has absolutely nothing to do with Global Cooling Climate Warming Change©, but instead has the grimy fingerprints of incompetent officialdom all over the place:

The Maui fire is proving to be the worst wildfire in American history, having taken over 100 lives and likely many more by the time the count is complete. The fire itself was started by downed power lines, which was poorly fought (it was declared contained before it raged out of control), was made deadly by an incompetent Emergency Management official (Karen wrote about this in her VIP column earlier today), and to cap it all off was made difficult to fight by a government official who refused to approve the use of water to fight the fire.

That’s a trifecta of terrible, right there.  But it gets worse:

It turns out that nine years ago, a report by Hawaiian fire researchers sounded the alarm that the area was at extremely high risk of burning. Many key recommendations were ignored.

Where have we heard this before?  Oh yeah, in California.

And needless to say, one of the gummint lackeys is not only incompetent, but a woketard:

During the inferno that devastated part of the island of Maui, wiping entire towns off the map and possibly killing more than a thousand people (once a full assessment can be made), people on Maui begged state officials to allow West Maui stream water to be diverted to fill up reservoirs for firefighting. That request went to M. Kaleo Manuel, Deputy Director of Hawaii’s Commission on Water Resource Management, and he delayed approval of that water for five hours – five hours in which the once-contained fire exploded. By the time the approval was received, workers were unable to reach the siphon release so that the water could be diverted. Now we’re learning that Manuel, an Obama Foundation Leader for the Asia Pacific Region, is a climate change activist and DEI devotee who’s said, “Like, we can share [water], but it requires true conversations about equity.”

Yeah, having more than a hundred people die unnecessarily sounds pretty equitable to me.  And the highlighted part  of the above goes without saying because of course this stupid tit is an Obama lickspittle.

3 Bad Things

…about Titanic 5:

  • if they ever find the thing and bring it to the surface, what are the odds that there will be ONE guy alive — who killed all the others right at the beginning so there’d be lots of oxygen left to breathe
  • when you go on an already-dangerous trip in a vessel built by the lowest bidder

…and finally, from MasterCard*:


*okay, maybe not.

Northern Invasion

Not content with sending us Neil Young and Jim Carrey, the Canuckis are now poisoning our air as well:

New York City topped the list of the world’s worst air pollution for parts of Tuesday as harmful smoke wafted south from more than a hundred wildfires burning in Quebec.

Smoke from Canada’s fires has periodically engulfed the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic for more than a week, raising concerns over the harms of persistent poor air quality.

My suggestion would be to use CanuckPM Justin Castro Trudeau to beat out the flames, but no doubt this solution may upset some people.

I have no doubt too that the reasons for all these wildfires are similar to those of California’s runaway blazes, i.e. stupid Green policies [redundancy alert].

But at least New Yorkers can now see what it’s really like to live in Beijing.


Update:  Oh, lookee here.

Apologia

I had every intention of attending the WWII shoot up in Kansas last Saturday — I was even bringing New Wife along to meet people — when somewhere along the interstate north I managed to drive over a discarded 18-wheeler’s tire tread, and I mean the entire tread, lying on its side and looking for all the world like a tire.  No time to avoid it — I was looking back for oncoming traffic as I came onto the highway* — and only saw the fucking thing when it was about twenty feet away.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMPETY-THUMP-THUMP FUCKING HELL

Bloody thing did a number on the underside of the Tiguan (fortunately, not the engine, at least, I don’t think so as no warning lights came on), and tore off parts of both front-wheel wells.

So much for that car trip.  Ignoring the horrible scraping sound from underneath, I limped off the interstate and managed to get to a mechanic shop.  They cut off most of the draggy parts, but then recommended I not drive the thing.

And here I sit, waiting for the insurance guy to look at it and write me a check.

My apologies to all for my non-attendance, but there it is.


*Texas drivers will not yield to nor even slow down for cars entering the freeway in case they lose their God-given place in the traffic, so it’s vital to look back to see that someone isn’t coming up on you at speed.

Storm Front: Ian, You Bastard

Amidst all the tales of woe emanating from storm-battered Florida at the moment, few can be more tragic than this one:

Brand new McLaren hypercar worth over $1 MILLION is washed from Florida garage by floodwater from Hurricane Ian

Before:

After:

I mean, the poor guy’s going to be left with only his Rolls to fetch groceries… talk about suffering.

(Afterthought:  his insurance agent is probably going to commit suicide — I bet that when he included a “we’ll pay if your McLaren is washed away in a storm” rider in the coverage, he thought he was onto a sure thing.)

Weimar Redux

Annnnnd the Germans are in deep shit:

According to release statistics from the German economic ministry, energy prices in August were more than double the same period last year, up 139%. The monthly increase was more than 20.4% higher than July. Additionally, producer prices for electricity rose 174.9% compared with August 2021 and by 26.4% in a single month.

This jaw-dropping increase in energy cost has resulted in German manufacturing prices for industrial goods jumping 7.9% in August alone, with a year-over-year increase in the cost to manufacture goods at 45.8%. That is the highest rate of price increase since Germany began recording their statistics in 1939.

It’s a pity they didn’t start in 1919, because then we could have compared today (and tomorrow, from the looks of things) to the numbers from the Weimar Republic.  Nonetheless, Germany’s in for a rough ride.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of watermelons.