Well he got a lunatic elected and then tried to become the face of the party.. Which republicans soon realized was not a good idea, the Wisconsin race was probably a turning point. What Elon got in return was tariffs on his supply chain and a tarnished brand.
Well, he did get his South African friends to the front of the line. New sales team incoming at a Tesla dealer near you.
Meanwhile CNN and dumb democrats reporting 66m SNAP benefits cut, and tens of thousands of people are at risk of dying of starvation on American streets.
so according to these two stooges, accurate weather forecasting is not that important Recent catastrophic flooding in Texas has raised questions about the role of federal budget cuts initiated by DOGE during Trump 2.0. Reports indicate that significant staffing reductions occurred at the National Weather Service (NWS), which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Specifically, the NWS lost approximately 560 to 600 employees, reducing its workforce by nearly 20% due to DOGE cuts (source-1). These cuts have been linked to impaired forecasting abilities, which some Texas officials claim contributed to the high death toll during the recent flood
basso is confused / all mixed up. it’d behoove basso to differentiate “advance warning/alert” from “during the storm”
Having more people on staff the night of doesn't make up for the loss of personnel and experience from the budget cuts. The post of 'Warning Coordination Meteorologist' for NWS Austin/SA was vacated in April after the meteorologist took early retirement. Then the post remains empty due to hiring freeze at NOAA. https://www.kxan.com/weather/weathe...takes-early-retirement-as-noaa-cuts-continue/ No one will ever know if having someone with experience in that post could have prevented that tragedy, but it's certainly worth probing. According to Travis Herzog's post, the Flash Flood Warning was issued at 1AM and a Flash Flood Emergency Warning (that triggers an emergency text) was issued at 4AM. That's really not enough time for people to react, especially for middle of the night. If the community warning coordinator post was not empty, maybe the alert would have been sent out earlier or more properly conveyed sense of urgency to the city officials? Who knows. https://www.facebook.com/TravisABC1...sking-with-broken-hearts-as/1278872920273979/ The timing is extremely unfortunate. If this weather event had happened during the day, it likely wouldn't have been nearly as bad. EDIT: Also, I wonder how many people turned off their phone alerts after the 'Blue Alert' debacle woke up millions of Texans last year at 5am. Personally I left 'Severe Threats' on and 'Extreme Threats' on. I wonder if that's enough to get weather messages or if I need to leave 'Public Safety Messages' on too.
The whole excerpt is true yet it is presented in a way that belies the problems. During a big weather event, the local NWS forecast office will call in meteorologists who were not scheduled to work that shift. However, that's not so much "extra staffing" as emergency staffing. Those folks are still expected to cover their own scheduled shifts when the crisis is over. A fully staffed office can handle that because the rotation is set up so that you get a shift or two each week for training, research, product development, and office maintenance stuff. That shift is typically 8 AM-4:30 PM. You call those folks in and the ones working night shift and swing shift are able to stay home and rest before their duty. However, if you call in those scheduled for other shifts on the meteorology desks, you are creating both physical and mental fatigue. Those are cumulative and will eventually start to affect decision-making and communication--we know this from numerous academic studies as well as lots of anecdotal experience. The further away you are from optimal office staffing numbers, the greater the stress and the greater the degradation of service. Again, this plays out over time. If a forecast office is without a number of meteorologists, that absolutely creates stress on the ones working to cover all the shifts and to respond when destructive weather events occur.
$14.8B one time SSA payments were disbursed to 2.2 million people due to passage of Social Security Fairness Act that was passed in January 2025. https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/releases/2025/#2025-04-29 https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/social-security-fairness-act.html So the big dip is most likely due to big jumps in payment from the one time disbursements. It's now back to normal payment amounts.
I'm not suggesting understaffing doesn't cause stress. I'm highlighting the office was not understaffed for this event. and attempting to blame the trump admin for the deaths from this storm is abhorrent.
But they were understaffed in that they were missing the key position of warning coordinator. They were understaffed in that they didn't have a full complement of meteorologists. As for blaming Trump, he's the one who gave Musk carte blanche, so yeah, some of this falls on him just as some falls on local and state folks.
