Video: The Nashville Flood You’ve Heard So Little About

Some of the text from the video was taken from this post at Section 303:

Allow me a moment to step away from the usual voice of this website.

What I am about to write has absolutely nothing to do with hockey.

If you live outside of Nashville, you may not be aware, but our city was hit by a 500-year flood over the last few days. The national news coverage gave us 15 minutes, but went back to focusing on a failed car bomb and an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While both are clearly important stories, was that any reason to ignore our story? It may not be as terror-sexy as a failed car bomb or as eco-sexy as an oil spill, but that’s no reason to be ignored.

The Cumberland River crested at its highest level in over 80 years. Nashville had its highest rainfall totals since records began. People drowned. Billions of dollars in damage occurred. It is the single largest disaster to hit Middle Tennessee since the Civil War. And yet…no one knows about it.

Does it really matter? Eventually, it will…as I mentioned, there are billions of dollars in damage. It seems bizarre that no one seems to be aware that we just experienced what is quite possibly the costliest non-hurricane disaster in American history. The funds to rebuild will have to come from somewhere, which is why people need to know. It’s hard to believe that we will receive much relief if there isn’t a perception that we need it.

But let’s look at the other side of the coin for a moment. A large part of the reason that we are being ignored is because of who we are. Think about that for just a second. Did you hear about looting? Did you hear about crime sprees? No…you didn’t. You heard about people pulling their neighbors off of rooftops. You saw a group of people trying to move two horses to higher ground. No…we didn’t loot. Our biggest warning was, “Don’t play in the floodwater.” When you think about it…that speaks a lot for our city. A large portion of why we were being ignored was that we weren’t doing anything to draw attention to ourselves. We were handling it on our own.

Some will be quick to find fault in the way rescue operations were handled, but the fact of the matter is that the catastrophe could not have been prevented and it is simply ignorant beyond all reason to suggest otherwise. It is a flood. It was caused by rain. You can try to find a face to stick this tragedy to, but you’ll be wrong.

Parts of Nashville that could never even conceivably be underwater were underwater. Some of them still are. Opry Mills and the Opryland Hotel are, for all intents and purposes, destroyed. People died sitting in standstill traffic on the Interstate. We saw boats going down West End. And, of course, we all saw the surreal image of the portable building from Lighthouse Christian floating into traffic and being destroyed when cars were knocked into it. I’m still having trouble comprehending all of it.

And yet…life will go on. We’ll go back to work, to school, to our lives…and we’ll carry on. In a little over a month, I’ll be on this website talking about the draft. In October, we’ll be discussing the new Predators’ season with nary a thought of these past few days. But in a way, they changed everyone in this town. We now know that that it can happen to us…but also know that we can handle it.

Because we are Nashville.

Michelle Malkin has some good links for you if you’d like to help.

Republicans Now Have An Edge On New Media And Hope To Maintain It

PBS  reports (with some familiar faces) on the Republican edge on “social media”.

Did you catch what Gingrich said? They’re advising candidates to have as big a budget for new media as they do for radio and tv. I hope GOP candidates are are paying attention.

On The Job Training: Obama Getting Weekly “Tutorials” On Terrorism

Nice to know.

Call it the terrorism tutorial.

Almost every week, often on a Tuesday, Obama heads into the White House Situation Room for a meeting that explores terrorism-related subjects in depth. Rarely discussed in public, the hour-long briefings have become one of the most significant gatherings in the West Wing, bringing together Cabinet-level intelligence and security officials “to make sure everybody hears the same information and is updated on the threats,” one participant said.

I think that’s just awesome.

One thing though…have his tutors gotten to the importance of monitoring suspected terrorists, yet? Because that would seem to be one of the keys to stopping terrorist attacks.

Shutting down terrorist investigations + opportunistic enemies = a bad outcome.

AJ Strata, again connecting the dots finds More Evidence Team Obama Stopped Shahzad Monitoring Begun Under Bush-Clinton:

JTTF’s (Joint Terrorism Task Force) typically surveillance an individual – especially a US Citizen – under the FIS Court authorization. These authorizations have to be renewed every 90 days or so by the US Attorney General. As has been noted before (see here, here and here for details) the Obama administration began shutting down Bush-era terrorists investigations last year as they debated how to reduce our nation’s surveillance of terrorists threats. The person who killed 14 people at Ft Hood last fall was one such suspect whose JTTF investigation was suspiciously shut down around this time last year.

There is more evidence which seems to point at changes made by the Obama administration in terms of their monitoring Mr. Shahzad. For example, after being on the terrorist watch list for almost a decade, Shahzad was removed from that list sometime after 2008, according to CBS News:

Sources tell CBS News that would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad appeared on a Department of Homeland Security travel lookout list – Traveler Enforcement Compliance System (TECS) – between 1999 and 2008 because he brought approximately $80,000 cash or cash instruments.

Quite Rightly from Potluck:

It looks like the Times Square car bomber was dropped from the terrorist watch list shortly before he got his citizenship in 2009–at just about the same time that surveillance of the Fort Hood shooter and the Christmas Day bomber also stopped.

Ann Coulter, in the meantime, notes: OBAMA NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY: HOPE THEIR BOMBS DON’T WORK:

If our only defense to terrorism is counting on alert civilians, how about not bothering them before they board airplanes, instead of harassing them with useless airport “security” procedures?

Both of the attempted bombers who sailed through airport security, I note, were young males of the Islamic faith. I wonder if we could develop a security plan based on that information?

Could they maybe increase the tutorials to twice a week…?

Introducing BlackisWhite Imperial Consigliere

Longtime commenter, and fellow blogger, BlackisWhite Imperial Consigliere of  Taxes, Stupidity and Death has been recruited by ND  management to assist with blogging duties such as writing posts, and keeping trolls in line. He joins Geoff, of Uncommon Misconceptions, and Innocent Bystanders, an ND administrator who has been more active on the troll busting front, (although he’s welcome to write posts, too, especially if they involve charts).

Both can be seen sharing their wisdom in the comment sections at Innocent Bystanders, and H2, as well . BiWIC is also a regular commenter at Nice Doggie, aka Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler (language warning!), and the Rutherford Lawson Blog. He  posts occasionally at Big Dick’s Place – (um…language and content warning on that one, too!).

So thank-you BiWIC for the assistance, and belated thanks to Geoff, as well, for keeping an eye on things, here. You guys are the best.

Patriotic Tee-Shirts Deemed “Incendiary” On Cinco De Mayo At CA High School

This is just so, sooo wrong…Five students, one of them Hispanic,   were forced to leave a California school and then face disciplinary action yesterday for the crime of wearing clothing printed with American flag designs.

Zombie has the story:

According to local TV stations KTVU and NBC Bay Area, this bewildering and deeply unsettling incident happened at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, a suburban town south of San Jose. As KTVU reported,

Five students at a South Bay high school stirred up some controversy Wednesday for wearing t-shirts depicting red, white and blue American flags on Cinco de Mayo.

School officials at Live Oak High in Morgan Hill told the students they had to go home if they wouldn’t turn the shirts inside out.

One of the students said it appeared school administrators were worried the patriotic shirts could trigger fights.

Some students at Live Oak High in Morgan Hill said others were planning to come to school Thursday wearing red, white and blue.

Four of the five students who wore American flags or patriotic colors on campus walked into a meeting with the superintendent of the Morgan Hill unified school district Wednesday night.

They were facing unexcused absences because they chose to go home early rather than take off what they were wearing.

“We knew it was Cinco de Mayo. But we just came to show our flag,” said student Dominic Maciel. “We didn’t mean anything by it. We didn’t want to start anything. Nothing like that.”

Student Anthony Caravalho was also sent home for not turning his shirt inside out.

“They said we had to wear our t-shirts inside out and then we could go back to class and we said no,” said Caravalho. “It would be disrespectful to the flag by hiding it.”

Daniel Galli, another student who was reprimanded for wearing a US flag, described what he was told by school administration.

“He said ‘If you wear it on any other day, it’s fine; but just because it’s today you can’t wear it,’” Galli said.

Aren’t we all Americans? Why would anyone, especially immigrants to our country, object to fellow citizens wearing patriotic clothing? I don’t understand the mindset… and why would the school enable such wrong headed thinking? The American flag shouldn’t be objectionable on any day of the year.

Zombie analyzes the situation:

Let’s pause for a moment and peel back the layers. It seems that many of the Hispanic students at Live Oak High (and probably innumerable other high schools across the country) have been so inculcated with an “identity politics” curriculum that, under the rubric of instilling pride and self-esteem, they have been convinced that they are somehow distinct from and separate from the other American students; that “we” feel disrespected when forced to perceive an American flag.

The school administration then stirs in their own toxic contribution: An assumption (typical of the “soft racism” of leftist ideology) that Hispanic students will respond with violence when they feel disrespected (“the patriotic shirts could trigger fights” is the euphemism they used). Even worse, fearing violence from Hispanic students, the adminstrators solve the crisis by banishing the “offensive” items, rather than warning students that any violence will be severely punished. In other words, the racist administrators insultingly assumed that their Hispanic students would erupt in violence at the sight of an American flag, and the only way to prevent this is to cower at the presumptive violence and preemptively cave in to the mob’s demands that American flags be banned from campus.

Are the United States and Mexico at war? Is May 5 some kind of “Hate America Day”? What the hell is going on here? Aren’t the U.S. and Mexico allies? Aren’t we friendly neighbors? What is the source of the friction? Isn’t the United States a melting pot where people of every ethnic heritage all live together in harmony as Americans — rather than being a collection of self-segregated ethnic enclaves seething with mutual hostility?

But this is what the left has specialized in for the past fifty years: identity politics, pitting whole segments of society against each other on the basis of race, color, and creed under the guise of multiculturalism. Somehow, it always seems to benefit Democrats when a group can be made to feel victimized, and in need of government intervention.

When I was in school, we learned about our “melting pot”,  where people from many different ethnicities and cultures could come and eventually blend into this wonderful stew known as America. And this was taught as something we should be proud of. It was a good thing.

But not anymore. People are no longer encouraged to become proud Americans and adopt our culture and traditions, (while hanging on to their own). That’s considered insensitive and bigoted.

And what has this lead to? It’s a crime to wear patriotic clothing, now,  in some  schools on a minor Mexican holiday.

SEE ALSO:

Hot Air: Video: “Cinco de Mayo not the day for patriotism”; Update: Laura Ingraham interviews the parents

Hat tip: Hot Air Headlines

Linked by Michelle Malkin, in Buzzworthy, Pirates Cove, and Bent Notes,   thanks!

Not Just “No”, But “HELL NO!”

So I saw in the AP this morning that Freddie Mac, is seeking another $10.6 BILLION from taxpayers.  This would bring the total amount “borrowed” from the taxpayers to $61.3 BILLION ($126 BILLION if you add the money we gave to Fannie Mae, as well).

It’s nice to know that our money has been used to pay for the government buying homes for people who could not afford them.  I only wish we had held out for at least dinner and some fooling around before getting violated like this.  But in light of this continuing, I found this part of the article to be the spike in blood pressure I didn’t need this morning:

With the housing market still on shaky ground, Obama administration officials argue that it is still too early to draft any proposals to reform the two companies or the broader housing finance system.

At least not everyone in Washington has completely lost their minds:

But Republicans argue that the sweeping financial overhaul currently before Congress is incomplete without a plan for Fannie and Freddie. Senate Republicans propose transforming Fannie and Freddie into private companies with no government subsidies, or to shut them down completely.

I think the deadbeats got the hope, and we’re left with a little bit of change.