Clear and Present Danger

By first world standards, the American rail system, like much of our other infrastructure, is totally antiquated. That makes it inherently dangerous.

Why you ask? There are two main reasons. FIRST, the railroad industry is making big profits from their obsolete systems thank you very much, and has no incentive too improve anything that might diminish those profits. Cleaning up derailments is a cost of doing business and its far cheaper than upgrading the system. SECOND, and here is the main point that is being missed, the Obama regulation that Trump abandoned was so tiny as to be almost meaningless. Its main purpose was an attempt to keep Bakken oil unit trains (100 to 120 cars all carrying that single cargo) from burning down another town such as the 2013 disaster in Lac Megantic, Quebec which killed 47 people. It would have had no effect on other trains. That rule mandated improved braking systems in one class of train while leaving the vast majority of obsolescent trains unaffected.

The entire rail system is obsolescent from top to bottom.

• Many rail beds are in poor repair from being pounded by ever heavier trains (the same is true for interstate highways). Weakened road beds force reduced speeds and cause trains to shimmy and rock unnecessarily making derails more likely.
• We are still using creosoted wood ties, an environmental nightmare in themselves, which have to be replaced periodically. As those ties deteriorate trains again become less safe. The rest of the first world systems went to concrete ties years ago.
• Significant parts of traffic control systems are also obsolete. The vast majority of our rail lines are single track which puts an especially high demand on control systems. Most first class systems are double track. Double track lines can carry more freight, more efficiently, with greater safety.
• A large percentage of rail cars are old and obsolescent. Many should be replaced a.s.a.p. A contributing factor to many of the destructive Bakken oil fires was that the tank cars were of single walled construction. At least for those specific cargoes, those old tankers have been replaced by double walled tankers that are much less prone to rupture. As far as I could tell, all of the hazardous chemical tankers involved in the Ohio derail were single walled. Improved braking on a few unit trains is meaningless until every car on every train is upgraded or replaced with new cars incorporating the newer systems.
• Finally, in the interest of maximizing profits, many of the railroads have eliminated employees that were tasked with watching for hazardous situations and preventing accidents before they happen. Companies have not built enough automated sensors to replace those employees.
• Oh, and BTW, maybe we could create a passenger rail system efficient and fast enough (not to mention more comfortable), to compete with air travel. All of these changes could help to reduce our carbon footprint.

I have tried to point out how large the problems of railroad safety are. As I have said, there are no real incentives for the railroads to change. A few tweaks to regulations, no matter how well intended, are not going to cure the problems. Too bad we don’t have a Congress that is interested in governing. Congress could mandate that all of these safety problems must be comprehensively addressed. The problems really are more extensive than what the industry can address on its own.

A massive Railroad Investment Infrastructure bill, spent over decades, budgeting funds for everything from right-of-way acquisition, total rebuilt of the old lines, replacement of obsolescent equipment, especially the electrification of the entire fleet of locomotives to replace dirty diesel units, and hiring of more personnel, would be required to do the job. Not only would that bill be a creator of a vast number of new jobs, it would be and investment in the future of the country in an ever more competitive world.

A federal judge has ruled that Donald Trump, the ex-president, and FBI Director Chris Wray can both be deposed in sworn testimony in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by former senior FBI official Peter Strzok and a case alleging unlawful release of personal text messages, filed by Lisa Page. A noted legal expert is applauding the decision.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson Thursday afternoon ordered Trump and Wray to be questioned in a case alleging the two former FBI agents were “targeted for retribution,” according to The Washington Post. There’s one caveat: President Joe Biden must agree to not invoke executive privilege. He has one month to weigh in.

“Strzok seeks reinstatement and back pay over what he alleges was his unfair termination for criticizing then-president Trump,” The Post reports. “Page alleges officials unlawfully released a trove of politically charged text messages she exchanged with Strzok, with whom she was having an affair.”

Judge Jackson “was right to rule that ex-POTUS Donald Trump and sitting FBI Director Christopher Wray may both be questioned in the lawsuits by ex-FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page,” constitutional law expert and University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University Laurence Tribe tweeted. Tribe is also the co-founder of the American Constitution Society.

“It’s called the rule of law, guys,” he added.

Earlier this month, as Politico’s Josh Gerstein suggested at the time, Trump brought this on himself when he “boasted” about getting Strzok and others fired:

As the court filing from Strzok on Feb. 3 noted, one day earlier Trump told Hugh Hewitt: “Don’t forget, these guys, before I even got in, they were spying on my campaign, long before I got in. This didn’t just happen. And if I didn’t fire Comey, and if I didn’t fire McCabe and Strzok and Page and all of that scum that was in there, you would have had, they were trying to do an overthrow. And they, just think of it. They spied on my campaign from the time I came down the escalator. And here I am, innocently running to do something great, and I have this garbage that’s in there headed up by Comey and the group. They spied on my campaign, and I got rid of them all. I got rid of them all. But it was more than them. It was more than them, and you know that. And you know that’s coming again.”

Trump’s next utterance will be:  “It’s so unfair.  Why am I being treated this way?”

The high profile case of Ashli Babbitt, whose death on Jan. 6 became a rallying point for conservatives, has since lost the limelight and her wrongful death lawsuit is still up in the air.

A new report by local news outlet ABC8 San Diego detailed a battle that has erupted over money that was intended to be used to file a wrongful death lawsuit.

The lawsuit was supposed to be funded by an online crowdfunding campaign that raised nearly a half million dollars, $462,735 to be exact. The goal was $500,000.

Gerhardt Fox spearheaded the fundraising campaign. But a disagreement between Fox and one of the other campaign organizers led to a separation, which has led to the case stalling.

According to Fox, other organizers were seeing the opportunity as a money grab and didn’t have Babbitt’s memory as their top priority.

It has been exactly a year since the law firm behind the successful crowdfunding campaign withdrew itself from the case, according to state court records. The law firm is Roberts and Wood.

The prior communication between the law firm and Babbitt’s widower has been publicly documented.

Two months after Roberts and Wood withdrew their firm from the case, firm owner Terry Roberts wrote a letter to her widower, Aaron Babbitt, stating, “if you have not retained a lawyer by May 30, 2022, I will take for granted that a lawsuit is not going to (be) filed, and I will refund the crowd-funding money back to the donors.”

Aaron Babbitt then hired a new attorney and filed a petition to transfer the money to Ashli Babbitt’s estate in May 2022. However, in June 2022, a probate judge denied the petition, leaving the half million dollars in a state of uncertainty.

Babbitt was shot after being on the scene of the Jan. 6 insurrection as she broke through a window, in the US Capitol in an attempt to attack members of Congress.

President Jimmy Carter created more jobs per year than Ronald Reagan & George W. Bush combined. 

James O’Keefe — all-around piece of shit and lying dirtbag — was fired from “Project Veritas” (which should be named “Project Bullshit”).

On Monday, right-wing dirtbag James O’Keefe announced he was resigning from his position leading Project Veritas. This move comes after weeks of obvious internal power struggles going on between staff, O’Keefe, and the board members of the nonprofit outlet he helped found. Project Veritas Executive Director Daniel Strack reportedly told people within the company that O’Keefe had issued an “ultimatum demanding that the board of directors resign for him to stay.”

No problem — he’ll land a spot on Faux or OANN or Newsmax — there is always a place for a lying piece of shit in the rightwing propaganda machine.

While THE ONLY President of the US showed us what courage really is, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) explicitly called for dividing the nation. She tweeted: “We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this.”  Interesting that elite southern enslavers in the 1850s made this same argument because they resented the majority rule that threatened their ability to impose their will on their Black neighbors.

Former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) helpfully reviewed “some of the governing principles of America” for Greene, tweeting: “Our country is governed by the Constitution. You swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Secession is unconstitutional. No member of Congress should advocate secession, Marjorie.”

What Greene had to say next is of more interest in this moment. The Munich Security Conference, the world’s largest gathering for international security discussions, has just reported that the Russian war on Ukraine is a war of authoritarianism on a rules-based international order. At that conference, Vice President Kamala Harris said the U.S. had determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity and noted that the bipartisan U.S. delegation to the conference was the largest we have ever sent. The U.S. president has just entered a war zone to declare U.S. support for democracy and is now in Poland, where he will speak with the leaders of the nine countries that make up NATO’s eastern flank and will deliver a speech that Blinken has described as “very significant.”

In contrast, Greene echoed authoritarian leaders Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Putin himself when she called for splitting the nation over “the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats” and “the Democrat’s [sic] traitorous America Last policies.” Authoritarian leaders insist that the equality that underpins liberal democracy threatens traditional society because it means that LGBTQ people, women, and minorities should have the same rights as white men. Greene is taking the same position. 

Meanwhile, Fox News Channel personalities, including Tucker Carlson, are trying to spin Biden’s visit to Ukraine as proof that he doesn’t care about the train derailment in Ohio. Scholar of disinformation behavior Caroline Orr Bueno noted: “There’s a narrative being planted here; watch how support for Ukraine is framed as incompatible with US national interests.” She notes that a similar narrative in Canada argues that support for Ukraine hurts Canadian veterans.

A filing in Dominion Voter Systems’ lawsuit against FNC for defamation revealed last week that FNC personalities knowingly lied to their viewers about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, acting as a propaganda outlet for Trump. This information is a handy backdrop for the news reported today by Mike Allen of Axios, who says that House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has given to FNC host Carlson—who figured prominently in the election fraud lies—exclusive access to 41,000 hours of footage from the U.S. Capitol of the January 6, 2021, attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. According to Allen, Carlson’s producers have already begun going through it to see what they can use on his show.

Putin is scheduled to address the Russian Federal Assembly tomorrow. Billboards in Russia proclaim: “Russia’s border ends nowhere,” but observers believe that he was hoping for a major victory on a battlefield in Ukraine before the speech. Instead, Russian forces have taken severe losses in their recent stalled offensive in eastern Ukraine near Bakhmut.

Biden’s speech in Poland will follow later in the day.

They don’t want their grandchildren to know that grandma was shouting curses and spitting at a teenaged girl trying to go to school.

They don’t want their kids to learn why US marshals had to escort this 6-yr-old to school.

Notice this is THE President of the USofA . . . not the old blubbering fool living in a motel on a golf course in Florida.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, called on Saturday for President Joe Biden to be impeached over sending aid to Ukraine.

The GOP lawmaker retweeted a video clip from April 2022 of Biden vowing to support Ukrainian citizens amid the Eastern European country’s ongoing war with Russia.

“Joe Biden will be impeached. Ukraine is NOT the 51st state!!! We are in over $34 TRILLION in debt, borders invaded daily by the thousands, and Americans have been poisoned in East Palestine. ENOUGH!!! IMPEACH BIDEN!!!” Greene wrote on Twitter on Saturday.

No details were provided on whether or not Greene has a proposal in place or is considering a plan that would lead to impeaching the president.