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The Morning Report 2/21/23

Good morning kids. So, Ohio got rocked again when an explosion at a factory in the town of Bedford caused molten metal to go flying in all directions. You gotta wonder.

In any case, at the tail end of yesterday’s comments, after I had railed against what I felt was incompetence and gross negligence in the handling of the derailment, one commenter shed some light as to why the first responders did what they did (Note: Do not comment on old threads as you risk accidentally banning yourself):

Your retired engineer doesn’t seem to have much experience with certain chemicals. What he envisions happens to these railcars is not what happens. I was a chemical engineer for Dow Chemical for nearly 10 years, and in a plant that handled vinyl chloride and other similar chemicals in pressurized tanks. First, there was a fire at the derailment. Not sure what it was, but reports were that there was already a fire. As the tank cars holding certain chemicals like vinyl chloride heat, they pressurize because the liquid starts to boil. These tank cars are not vented because of the type of chemical they carry. If the fire around these cars can’t be contained, the danger is that these tank cars will BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion). Look it up. These are explosions that look like those failed NASA rocket launches of the 1950’s and 1960’s. If that had happened to the railcars, it would have wiped the town off the map. It really would have been like a small nuclear explosion, just without the radioactivity. 

I suspect the emergency responders were trying to prevent that by burning off the chemicals more gradually and without the overpressurization of the tank cars. 

Posted by: ruralcounsel at February 20, 2023 09:39 AM (96wFa)

While this of course does, to a certain extent, make me reconsider my initial reaction, at least insofar as those individuals closest to the action on the ground who no doubt live in or near the area, I responded thusly:

Your points are well taken and thank you. My concern is, given who is running this government and the level of competency now that DEI rules the day in hiring practices, as well as the railroad itself, how can we be sure that the situation was as they claimed it to be? 

Recall that there was an actual reporter on site close enough to witness what was going on and he was arrested. For his own protection because he was a pain in the ass? Could be. Because he would have seen things that painted the responders and government in a less than favorable light? Ditto. 

Either way, thanks to COVID and the election thievery and the blatant persecution of the DOJ/FBI/CIA, we can no longer trust people and institutions that we often rely on in life and death situations like this one. 

All around a shitty position to be in.

While normally I would say that we won’t really know what happened until there is a full investigation from the DOT, NTSB and other agencies, given what I stated in response to that commenter, will we really know what happened with either any degree of accuracy or, worse, because they know what happened and are intentionally withholding or otherwise obfuscating the facts to protect or advance a preferred narrative? Further on up the food chain, of course are state and federal officials up to and including the figurehead vegetable occupying the Oval Office.

So, while East Palestine and the surrounding area was not, as the commenter feared, “wiped . . . off the map. . . [in what] would have been like a small nuclear explosion, just without the radioactivity,” the dumping and subsequent torching of thousands of gallons of vinyl chloride and whatever else was in those tank cars might very well turn the area into another uninhabitable wasteland like Love Canal. 

Worse by orders of magnitude is FEMA’s response in leaving the area to rot, mostly because they made the fateful mistake of overwhelmingly voting for Donald Trump in the past two national elections. That was the stab in the back. The follow-on stomping of the gonads was Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants jetting off to Ukraine for a photo-op with Zelensky to hand him more hundreds of millions of dollars while pushing for World War 3.

[East Palestine, Ohio Mayor Trent] Conaway stated that during their meeting, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw “seemed sincere. He seemed like he cared. And right now that’s the only thing — is it comforting? No. But we have to trust him right now. As soon as he does anything that we feel that we can’t trust, then I’ll have to go back to media or government officials that are higher than me to make him do what he said he’s going to do.”

Later, East Palestine resident Lenny Glavin asked, on behalf of host Jesse Watters, “[W]ith the President being in Ukraine today, did that surprise you?”

Conaway answered, “Absolutely. That was the biggest slap in the face. That tells you right now he doesn’t care about us. So, he can send every agency he wants to, but I found that out this morning in one of the briefings that he was in…Ukraine giving millions of dollars away to people over there, and not to us, and I’m furious.”

You may be furious, but the junta in power – and worse, an alarmingly large percentage of your erstwhile, putative fellow citizens – could care fuck all if you, your family, friends and neighbors were to drop dead tomorrow. Save them the trouble of rounding you up and putting you on trains. Meh, they’d probably derail just like this one did. But of course, the setting on fire thing would still happen, but it wouldn’t be toxic chemicals that go up in smoke, IYKWIMAITYD:

In a newly signed executive order designed to use federal agencies to forcibly guarantee equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity for Americans, President Joe Biden tacitly admitted his administration is collaborating with a prominent leftist group to advance neo-Marxism throughout the U.S. government.

Signed on Thursday, the order, titled “Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through The Federal Government,” seeks to expand the administration’s so-called “equity-advancing requirements for agencies.” Equity is a term regularly employed by leftists to cover up their true goal of dismissing merit and real equality in favor of discrimination on the basis of skin color. . . 

. . . Buried within the order, however, is a directive for federal agencies to implement what’s called the “Justice40 Initiative.” While the document doesn’t specify what the mission of Justice40 is, a quick trip to the group’s website reveals it to be nothing more than an effort by left-wing activists to advance neo-Marxist policies under the guise of “environmental justice.”

. . . Back in July 2021, Biden officially adopted Justice40’s stated goal of providing at least 40 percent of federal investments “in climate and clean energy” to these so-called “disadvantaged communities.” In other words, the administration is distributing taxpayer money to certain jurisdictions based on racial demographics.

The policy is eerily similar to Covid-related guidance the administration released in December 2021, in which health-care providers were advised to prioritize racial and ethnic minorities in the dissemination of Covid treatments such as monoclonal antibodies.

This kind of sheds a bit of light as to why FEMA declared East Palestine and its environs “ineligible” for immediate disaster relief funds. It took two weeks of arm-twisting and pretty bad optics but supposedly FEMA has released the funds. One wonders to what extent the situation might have been ameliorated had the funds been available immediately. Do you think my implying that this junta and its supporters would go so far as to wish its enemies dead, or worse, actually abrogate their legal duty as elected official and moreover their moral duty as human beings, and do nothing while watching them die, is over the top?

Look to the scores of innocent people still rotting in jail, sentenced to federal prison or otherwise were destroyed in the wake of January 6th, 2021. Now look at the reaction from scum like Bennie Thompson when a massive archive of video footage from that day was made available to Tucker Carlson:

The chairman of the n0w-defunct January 6 Committee warned of the “potential security risks” of U.S. Capitol security footage being released to the media . . . 

. . . “When the Select Committee obtained access to U.S. Capitol Police video footage, it was treated with great sensitivity given concerns about the security of lawmakers, staff, and the Capitol complex,” Thompson said.

“Access was limited to members and a small handful of investigators and senior staff, and the public use of any footage was coordinated in advance with Capitol Police. It’s hard to overstate the potential security risks if this material were to be used irresponsibly,” he added. . . 

. . . Claiming that Carlson is a purveyor of misinformation, Thompson said McCarthy “owes the American people an explanation of why” he shared the footage with the Fox News host and “what steps he has taken to address the significant security concerns at stake.”

The only “security concerns” is that the American people will have concrete confirmation that what we all more or less believe happened on January 6th, 2021; that a Democrat/RINO-approved false flag operation carried out by agents of the DOJ/FBI entrapped unarmed and unsuspecting peaceful protesters and was used as a propaganda and legal weapon to persecute and prosecute all perceived enemies to further advance the fiction of a legitimate presidential election, and of a vast white supremacist conspiracy that threatens “our precious democracy” (*vomit). 

National treasure and real journalist in every sense of the word Julie Kelly:

Releasing the video never should have been a political fight; after all, the footage was recorded on a taxpayer-paid closed circuit television system installed on public property to monitor public employees. Contrary to arguments by Capitol Police and the Justice Department, the video belongs to the public, not federal agencies.

But both entities, with the help of D.C. District Court judges, have successfully kept the trove largely under wraps for more than two years. Even the FBI and D.C. Metropolitan Police departments signed agreements a few days after the Capitol protest to acknowledge that the tapes technically belonged to Capitol Police. . . 

. . . The Justice Department subsequently designated the tapes as “highly sensitive” government material subject to protective orders in January 6 prosecutions. It’s been a major battle for defendants and their attorneys to properly access all of the video tied to their cases; defendants cannot watch any clips without the presence of a legal authority and none of the footage can be shared or downloaded.

Imagine the universal outrage in any other situation had crucial video of what the government considered a terror attack been kept away from the public for more than two years. Influential opinion pages would have banged the drum incessantly for its release, insisting some sort of cover up was unfolding. Progressive activist groups and elected officials would demand a full accounting of what happened before, during, and after the “attack,” including all government-produced evidence. Influential lawyers and legal defense funds would lament the deprivation of due process for those involved in the allegedly heinous act.

Instead, the usual defenders of accountability, transparency, and constitutional rights have been completely AWOL. The fight has been waged by outmatched defense attorneys in the rigged legal and judicial system in the nation’s capital. And a handful of influencers like Carlson. . . 

. . . One can only guess what the videos will reveal. It’s possible, even likely, the never-before-seen footage will show the elements of a preplanned attack engineered by the same political and government forces that attempted to destroy Donald Trump for the better part of six years. Will the tapes finally answer the questions that top law enforcement officials such as FBI Director Christopher Wray refuse to answer and the January 6 select committee buried—not the least of which was the role of the FBI?

Psaki-psircling back to Ohio, with everything we know about the bureaucracy at perhaps its most important level, those who are charged with keeping us safe from enemies foreign and domestic but instead are openly coddling, funding and supporting the former while painting those among us who oppose them as the latter, is it any wonder that my first instinct in the wake of the train wreck and subsequent dumping and incineration of the contents was to claim gross negligence and incompetence? And now, the Junta is weaponizing every department in every bureaucracy to be completely and stridently Marxist-Leninist in all its considerations and actions going forward.

As I said, it’s a shitty situation to be in to trust no one in government. At some point, that might extend to neighbors and family if it hasn’t already.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY

  • Michael Walsh: “Contrary to the Washington Post, democracy does not ‘die in darkness.’ It dies in chaos, brought on by fear, engendered by uncertainty and  birthed of instability —an instability that, in the case of the United States of America, has been deliberately cultivated and fanned by the nation’s political leadership and other “elite” big chiefs by a decades-long policy of institutional and moral destabilization. And on this Presidents Day, chaos is exactly where we’re heading.” State of Fear
  • “Often criticized, risk-management tools remain the best defense from panic, superstition, and the politicization of public policy.” How to Hedge Life
  • Julie Kelly: “Like all good political scandals, the path to the truth begins with the tapes.”Anatomy of a Cover-up: The January 6 Tapes

OHIO DERAILMENT, TOXIC CHEMICAL DISASTER

* * * * *

CIVIL WAR 2.0: J-6 FBI FALSE FLAG “RIOT” & AFTERMATH, LEFTIST PERSECUTIONS, DEMOCRAT PUTSCH, AMERICAN DISSOLUTION 

FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUES, CENSORSHIP, FAKE NEWS, MEDIA, BIG BROTHER TECH

RED-GREENS, CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX, DEMOCRAT-LEFT WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS, JUNK SCIENCE, LYSENKOISM

BIDEN CRIME FAMILY REVELATIONS

THE ECONOMY, STUPID

AMNESTY, IMMIGRATION, BORDER SECURITY

CRIME & PUNISHMENT, NON-DOSTOYEVSKY

EDUCATION, AND WHAT PASSES FOR IT

ABORTION

THE 2020 AND 2022ELECTION HEISTS & AFTERMATH

DEMOCRAT/LEFTIST AND RINO SCANDALS, MESHUGAS, CHUTZPOCRISY 

POLITICS 

THE UKRAINIAN “FRONT”

FOREIGN AFFAIRS, INTERNATIONAL

DEFENSE, MILITARY, SECURITY AFFAIRS

DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, THE COURTS, WASTE/FRAUD/ABUSE

HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE

ACTUAL SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY 

FEMINAZISM, TRANSGENDER PSYCHOSIS, HOMOSEXUALIZATION, WAR ON MASCULINITY/NORMALCY

CULTURE WARS, NATIONAL SUICIDE

HITHER & YON 

NOTE: The opinions expressed in the links may or may not reflect my own. I include them because of their relevance to the discussion of a particular issue.