We play this game every four years. New President, new crisis, new media cycle of people screaming “This is only happening because you voted for the Other Guy!” Congress and the White House change hands, and then we do it all again.
Nobody seems to want to confront the fact that these kids were camped in the middle of a fucking flood plain at the start of Hurricane Season. Or that the constant cuts to state agencies and monitoring services - cuts that have been ongoing since the Nixon Era, under virtually every administration - have degraded our ability to prevent these kinds of tragedies well past the point of a single administration tinkering around the edges of policy.
We all just want to screw our eyes shut and say “Your kids deserved to die because you voted wrong”, which is an fucking insane thing to believe and exactly the kind of magical thinking that got us to this point.
We play this game every four years. New President, new crisis, new media cycle
If you really believe that all this (waves hand around) is business as usual you’ve been living under a bigger rock and/or are in deeper denial than OOP.
Identical unitary executive. Identical look-the-other-way SCOTUS. Identical pliant media. Torture of dissidents. Police disappearing people. Purges of opposition from the bureaucracy. Right wing militias doing domestic terrorism. Ecological disasters going unreported. Leftists getting blamed for making things worse. Liberals passively green lighting fascism. Bubble economy with jobless growth. People on the Internet telling you this is totally different than Reagan.
We all just want to screw our eyes shut and say “Your kids deserved to die because you voted wrong”, which is an fucking insane thing to believe and exactly the kind of magical thinking that got us to this point.
That’s the worst part of it all. It is the kids who die, who had no say in the matter, no those who voted.
The kids died because they (their Republican parents) voted wrong. The kids died because they didn’t want to spend the money Biden gave them for an alert system on an actual alert system, and instead gave it to the sheriff. The kids died because of Republican cuts to FEMA call centers. The kids died because of profit-seeking psychopaths put the bare minimum (of even that) of cell service in that area. They died because we’ve spent the last 30 years shooting down any kind of climate action legislation.
Those kids died because of Republicans. Full stop.
The idea that somehow voting for republicans at the federal, state and local level for the last 30 years would insulate you from the harm they have done to the country is the actual worst kind of magical thinking.
Edit : but yeah, if Harris has won, FEMA wouldn’t have been gutted, the NWS wouldn’t have been gutted. These people would have gotten better weather data, and gotten it earlier, and our emergency services would have been on site faster and with more resources, which directly would have saved lives. Nothing fucking magical about that.
The Biden administration has stopped helping states rebuild from past disasters with money from the federal government’s main emergency fund, which is nearing depletion from dozens of storms and wildfires this year.
This has been an ongoing budgetary fight between deficit hawks (of which Biden proudly counted himself a member going back 40 fucking years) and social welfare advocates. Trump took the next big leap in a parade march of staffing reductions and funding cuts. But this has been an ongoing mismanagement since the privatization and downsizing wave that Reagan imposed in the 1980s.
If Harris had won an election that she lost in a landslide, she’d still have to contend with a Congress stuffed with deficit reactionaries on both sides of the aisle. She’d have whined about liberals not handing her Senate Supermajority and then signed whatever John Thune and Mike Johnson put on her desk, just like Biden did.
Singling out scapegoats for a systemic nationwide ideological failure - particularly when they are the weakest and most vulnerable members of society - is the exact same brainworms bullshit that gets people like Trump elected President to begin with.
Might as well blame the flooding on illegal immigration next.
Complaining about Biden’s handling of FEMA and comparing it to Trump’s is like equating a dumpster fire to an atomic weapon because they both burn stuff. The fact you are even presenting that as an argument shows how disingenuous your position is.
This has been a degradation of service spanning half a dozen administrations over the course of decades. It is being driven by corporate mass media’s fixation on domestic fiscal austerity.
This decline in public service is not unique to Biden or even to the United States.
The fact you are even presenting that
You need to put down your Great Man view of history and recognize the tidal social currents that got us here.
That article was written just a few weeks before those Texas floods.
You need to put down your Great Man view of history and recognize the tidal social currents that got us here.
I don’t need to do shit. You need to re-read my comments and understand that there is a huge scale of difference between “not getting any more funding because of Republican legislators” and “actively cutting and shutting down a department that millions of Americans rely on every year to keep them from starving or becoming homeless”.
Their Republican governor and their Republican president gutted their flood warning staff, recently. If they’d received a flood warning they might have left the flat land next to the river and they might not be dead.
So no, Harris wouldn’t have stopped the flood, but she wouldn’t have stopped the flood warning either.
(Also extreme weather events are significantly more frequent due to climate change, and resisting efforts to reduce climate change has been Republican policy for decades.)
So no, Harris wouldn’t have stopped the flood, but she wouldn’t have stopped the flood warning either.
This woman changing her vote would have had no effect on the outcome. Hell, the entire state flipping blue would not have changed the results.
Also extreme weather events are significantly more frequent due to climate change
Climate Change doesn’t stop and start with the changing of the US white house. Neither have individual administrations - even the “best” ones - curbed emissions sufficient to keep us under the 1.5C mark.
You’d be more reasonable blaming the flooding on Bush or Obama than Trump or Biden. Hell, you’d be more reasonable blaming Saudi Arabia or China. Even then, you’re getting into “Gays Caused Katrina” territory when you try to blame individual natural disasters on long term environmental trends.
Also, your logic of “one vote wouldn’t change the outcome” doesn’t excuse her for voting for the shitpants nastiest, stupidest, most deceitful, blazen rapist daughter-lusting racist fraudster you could possibly imagine.
He’s a complete piece of shit who shits all over the constitution and shits all over the American people, and there aren’t any good excuses for her allowing him in the Whitehouse again. She is part of the decision to enable this demolition of everything helpful or useful in the USA. Stop excusing it.
Also, your logic of “one vote wouldn’t change the outcome” doesn’t excuse her
“Your kid deserves to die because you voted wrong” is biblically delusional. At this point, you’re no better than the freaks doing selfies in front of Alligator Alcatraz.
Her kid didn’t die and I wouldn’t wish that on her, but it’s another straw man and another attempt by you to excuse bad voters from the bad consequences of their bad actions.
Sorry, but this is ambiguous and I need clarification: Dead Texan kids or dead Palestinian ones? Which dead kids are you exchanging for this putative “fascist-free” vision where your cost to entry is an adjustment to your personal empathy dial?
Texan kids: See Gov. Abbott denying funds for the systems. And now trying to dodge blame. Not to mention, Texas routinely is anti children.
Palestinian kids: See Abandon Harris and the leftists that either voted Jill Stein or sat out in protests.
And also when I mean if dead kids leads to removal of fascists, I mean a sweeping removal of Trump and down. That included Vance, Massey, MTG, blowjob Boebert, Desantis, Huckabee, Abbott, Bondi, Noem, and so on. If this eventually makes America wake up and remove them ALL then the deaths were not in vain.
We play this game every four years. New President, new crisis, new media cycle of people screaming “This is only happening because you voted for the Other Guy!” Congress and the White House change hands, and then we do it all again.
Nobody seems to want to confront the fact that these kids were camped in the middle of a fucking flood plain at the start of Hurricane Season. Or that the constant cuts to state agencies and monitoring services - cuts that have been ongoing since the Nixon Era, under virtually every administration - have degraded our ability to prevent these kinds of tragedies well past the point of a single administration tinkering around the edges of policy.
We all just want to screw our eyes shut and say “Your kids deserved to die because you voted wrong”, which is an fucking insane thing to believe and exactly the kind of magical thinking that got us to this point.
Despite the cuts and everything, they were still warned of the potential of floods. The camp chose to ignore it.
If you really believe that all this (waves hand around) is business as usual you’ve been living under a bigger rock and/or are in deeper denial than OOP.
Not a rock. Iraq.
Identical unitary executive. Identical look-the-other-way SCOTUS. Identical pliant media. Torture of dissidents. Police disappearing people. Purges of opposition from the bureaucracy. Right wing militias doing domestic terrorism. Ecological disasters going unreported. Leftists getting blamed for making things worse. Liberals passively green lighting fascism. Bubble economy with jobless growth. People on the Internet telling you this is totally different than Reagan.
It’s happening again.
This isn’t the same game y’all have been playing every four years.
That’s the worst part of it all. It is the kids who die, who had no say in the matter, no those who voted.
The kids died because they (their Republican parents) voted wrong. The kids died because they didn’t want to spend the money Biden gave them for an alert system on an actual alert system, and instead gave it to the sheriff. The kids died because of Republican cuts to FEMA call centers. The kids died because of profit-seeking psychopaths put the bare minimum (of even that) of cell service in that area. They died because we’ve spent the last 30 years shooting down any kind of climate action legislation.
Those kids died because of Republicans. Full stop.
The idea that voting Harris in 2024 somehow insulated you from a natural disaster is the worst kind of magical thinking.
The idea that somehow voting for republicans at the federal, state and local level for the last 30 years would insulate you from the harm they have done to the country is the actual worst kind of magical thinking.
Edit : but yeah, if Harris has won, FEMA wouldn’t have been gutted, the NWS wouldn’t have been gutted. These people would have gotten better weather data, and gotten it earlier, and our emergency services would have been on site faster and with more resources, which directly would have saved lives. Nothing fucking magical about that.
FEMA forced to restrict disaster spending because of low funds
~ 08/30/2023
This has been an ongoing budgetary fight between deficit hawks (of which Biden proudly counted himself a member going back 40 fucking years) and social welfare advocates. Trump took the next big leap in a parade march of staffing reductions and funding cuts. But this has been an ongoing mismanagement since the privatization and downsizing wave that Reagan imposed in the 1980s.
If Harris had won an election that she lost in a landslide, she’d still have to contend with a Congress stuffed with deficit reactionaries on both sides of the aisle. She’d have whined about liberals not handing her Senate Supermajority and then signed whatever John Thune and Mike Johnson put on her desk, just like Biden did.
Singling out scapegoats for a systemic nationwide ideological failure - particularly when they are the weakest and most vulnerable members of society - is the exact same brainworms bullshit that gets people like Trump elected President to begin with.
Might as well blame the flooding on illegal immigration next.
Complaining about Biden’s handling of FEMA and comparing it to Trump’s is like equating a dumpster fire to an atomic weapon because they both burn stuff. The fact you are even presenting that as an argument shows how disingenuous your position is.
This has been a degradation of service spanning half a dozen administrations over the course of decades. It is being driven by corporate mass media’s fixation on domestic fiscal austerity.
This decline in public service is not unique to Biden or even to the United States.
You need to put down your Great Man view of history and recognize the tidal social currents that got us here.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5430469/faq-fema-elimination
That article was written just a few weeks before those Texas floods.
I don’t need to do shit. You need to re-read my comments and understand that there is a huge scale of difference between “not getting any more funding because of Republican legislators” and “actively cutting and shutting down a department that millions of Americans rely on every year to keep them from starving or becoming homeless”.
Their Republican governor and their Republican president gutted their flood warning staff, recently. If they’d received a flood warning they might have left the flat land next to the river and they might not be dead.
So no, Harris wouldn’t have stopped the flood, but she wouldn’t have stopped the flood warning either.
(Also extreme weather events are significantly more frequent due to climate change, and resisting efforts to reduce climate change has been Republican policy for decades.)
This woman changing her vote would have had no effect on the outcome. Hell, the entire state flipping blue would not have changed the results.
Climate Change doesn’t stop and start with the changing of the US white house. Neither have individual administrations - even the “best” ones - curbed emissions sufficient to keep us under the 1.5C mark.
You’d be more reasonable blaming the flooding on Bush or Obama than Trump or Biden. Hell, you’d be more reasonable blaming Saudi Arabia or China. Even then, you’re getting into “Gays Caused Katrina” territory when you try to blame individual natural disasters on long term environmental trends.
Dude, I put it in brackets for a reason.
Also, your logic of “one vote wouldn’t change the outcome” doesn’t excuse her for voting for the shitpants nastiest, stupidest, most deceitful, blazen rapist daughter-lusting racist fraudster you could possibly imagine.
He’s a complete piece of shit who shits all over the constitution and shits all over the American people, and there aren’t any good excuses for her allowing him in the Whitehouse again. She is part of the decision to enable this demolition of everything helpful or useful in the USA. Stop excusing it.
“Your kid deserves to die because you voted wrong” is biblically delusional. At this point, you’re no better than the freaks doing selfies in front of Alligator Alcatraz.
Her kid didn’t die and I wouldn’t wish that on her, but it’s another straw man and another attempt by you to excuse bad voters from the bad consequences of their bad actions.
Stop virtue signaling. If dead kids remove fascists, then their deaths weren’t in vain. Otherwise, zero. Fucks. Given.
Sorry, but this is ambiguous and I need clarification: Dead Texan kids or dead Palestinian ones? Which dead kids are you exchanging for this putative “fascist-free” vision where your cost to entry is an adjustment to your personal empathy dial?
Both.
Texan kids: See Gov. Abbott denying funds for the systems. And now trying to dodge blame. Not to mention, Texas routinely is anti children.
Palestinian kids: See Abandon Harris and the leftists that either voted Jill Stein or sat out in protests.
And also when I mean if dead kids leads to removal of fascists, I mean a sweeping removal of Trump and down. That included Vance, Massey, MTG, blowjob Boebert, Desantis, Huckabee, Abbott, Bondi, Noem, and so on. If this eventually makes America wake up and remove them ALL then the deaths were not in vain.
So to answer your question, both.
Tough bargain, but at least it’s not playing favorites, and is at least a sober, realistic take.