Opinion
By Dave Scott, 6-16-23
We’re three weeks into the five-month hurricane season and those of us living on hurricane prone Amelia Island understand that we will eventually be whacked again and should take precautions.
Preparedness bulletins I’ve read say that if a hurricane evacuation order is issued residents should anticipate driving 200 miles inland or beyond, depending upon the hurricane’s intensity and its predicted path. The experts say that the 200-mile distance should get you out of the worst winds and away from the coastal storm surge. For those new to the area a storm surge is when the tide comes in and just keeps coming in and absolutely refuses to go back out. When it eventually does leave it takes you and your stuff with it.
If you evacuate northward don’t go much further than 300 miles as that’ll put you close to Atlanta where you’ll escape the storm but risk being shot, robbed, maybe both, and get caught in rush hour traffic which lasts 24 hours a day.
During hurricanes one of the first things to collapse is the electric grid. If you foolishly decide to sit out an evacuation order and don’t have a generator, spare gasoline, and a couple tanks of propane you’re going to get very hot, humid, and hungry if you survive. Windmills and solar panels are useless unless you can figure out how to burn them as cooking fuel.
If you skedaddle in a gasoline-powered vehicle make sure it’s got a full tank and that you have a full container or two in your trunk. In an emergency a gas station’s pumps run on generators.
If you have an electric car as your only mode of transportation you better hope you are on good terms with your neighbors that drive gasoline fueled vehicles, as they’re your only hope of getting out of Dodge. That EV in your garage is a concrete lifeboat on a sinking ship.
Much to the green fanatics chagrin, gasoline and diesel are undisputed winners when natural disasters snuff the electric grid.
Many of the evacuation roads are through remote areas and the countryside, and few if any of them have charging stations. And even if the evacuation road takes you on the highway, expect to get stranded in traffic jams.
Last year , CNBC established that “the U.S. EV charging network isn’t ready for your family road trip” much less an emergency evacuation. An EVs only value to its owners is showing them off to their equally fanatical “Green” pals.
If you do manage to hitch a ride with neighbor you’re still not out of the woods. Even if your house survives the storm it may not survive the EV you leave in the garage. Some Florida homes that escaped south Florida’s Hurricane Ian last year caught fire due to their batteries being corroded by the floods thus burning the houses to the ground.
Florida State Fire Marshal Jim Patronis described homes that caught fire from EV’s sitting in the garage saying: “On October 6th, I joined North Collier Fire Rescue to assess response activities related to Hurricane Ian and saw with my own eyes an EV continuously ignite, and continually reignite, as fireteams doused the vehicle with tens-of-thousands of gallons of water.
“Based on my conversations with area firefighters, this is not an isolated incident. As you can appreciate, I am very concerned that we may have ticking time bombs on our hands,” he warned.
The Biden administration’s war on oil is as dangerous and deranged as it is disingenuous. Electric power blackouts are becoming common because green energy fanatics and environmental extremists want us to believe that wind and solar power are our immediate future. They are not…far from it. Ask the folks in California or Texas who suffer from black outs even when there are no storms.
What will you tell your kids when you’re stranded on the Interstate because your silly little EV wasn’t fully charged and there’s not a functioning charging station within 500 miles? And even if there was, the grid is down, and a charge takes several hours. So you’re toast as 90-110+ mph winds are bearing down on you. Oh, and there’s not an emergency container of electricity in your trunk and the only open Kangaroo convenience store just sold its last 10,000-pack of AA batteries.
Joe Biden’s pledge to put America’s oil and gas industry out of business because of his mindless advisor’s ( e.g. Lurch look-a-like John Kerry, etc.) fire and brimstone predictions is a dire prediction for those stupid enough to believe that claptrap. Why would anyone listen to these people? They’re the same ones that came up with the nutty ideas of transgendered bathrooms, racist highways, open borders, reparations, student debt forgiveness, free social service benefits for illegal aliens, etc.
H.L Mencken summed it up years ago when he said: “Their whole aim is to keep the American public alarmed and clamoring to be led to safety with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” If the problem doesn’t exist neither does their funding or their power.
I’d lay odds that those folks stranded, injured, and hit hardest by violent storms this year will mostly be registered Democrats.
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Here’s An Idea: How about a TV reality show where Marxist college students are sent to a country that most closely resembles their desired political beliefs and left to survive for a couple of months? I’d watch.
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Here Are Some More Ideas: A local pal suggested to me the other day that if Fernandina Beach wants to change its image and appear more caring and helpful to its residents it might start with a simple name change for one of its more controversial functions – Code Enforcement.
“Change the name to Code Assistance,” he said. ”That way it’ll appear that they’re there to actually help and not just shake residents down for impact fees.” OK, it’s a start but the behavior is going to have to compliment the name and so far I haven’t heard about any vocal bouquets being tossed in city hall’s direction.
Or how about at budget time the politicians stop referring to increased government expenditures as “investments” and call it what it is – “spending your money.” And stop using the term “revenue” and admit that they’re “tax increases.”
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Celebrate Us Or Else: The third Fernandina Beach Pride Parade and Festival took place last Saturday, June 10, without incident or protests. I didn’t attend but from what I’ve heard and reports I’ve read those that were there enjoyed themselves, were polite, orderly and tidy.
However, I’m still confused as to what exactly this group is celebrating and why they are insisting that others join in.
When Americans die in battle serving their country, they are recognized for one day, Memorial Day, which occurred this past May 29. If you are homosexual, transexual, bisexual, lesbian, etc. you demand to be applauded for an entire month.
We have reached a point in our society where we spend more time and taxpayer money on a minuscule percent of our society than we do on our military veterans. For example, statistics say the transgendered population of the U.S. alone is less than .03 percent and the others in this ABC crowd not much higher.
Every company, every professional sports team, every Democratic politician, even the armed forces are expected to celebrate Pride Month, Pride Night, and cheer year-round for this LGBTQQIAAP2S+ alphabet soup crowd. Military recruitment is plummeting due to the emphasis on its rainbow nonsense instead of preparedness. Pride members were invited to join the president this week and expressed their gratitude with some of them bouncing around naked on the White House lawn.
What exactly are these folks so proud of? What accomplishments are involved in being gay, lesbian, trans, bisexual, etc.? If, as these folks claim, no choice is involved in a person’s sexuality — what’s the point?
Apparently tolerance and acceptance aren’t enough for them. A commentary in the Washington Times said this week: “Join us in celebrating every sexual deviancy known to man, or we will cancel you, shun you, shame you, and punish you, for your intolerable intolerance.” In other words celebrate us or else.
The movement does everything possible to bludgeon folks into celebrating Pride Nights, Days, Weeks, and Months. It’s not enough for people to tolerate or even show respect to this group. They demand we celebrate lesbianism, male homosexuality, the transgendered, bisexuals, etc. Those that question it and don’t salute their rainbow flag are haters, immoral, transphobic, homophobic, bigots, etc. But what exactly have they done to be so proud?
Is blasphemously mocking Christians at professional baseball games like the L.A. Dodgers something to be proud about? Is being a potbellied mustachioed guy in a dress at Disneyland pretending to be a princess and scaring little girls something to be proud of? Is mutilating children for life with irreversible surgeries and puberty blocking chemicals something to take pride in? Are they proud of male athletes who say they are females unfairly winning competitive events against weaker female opponents thereby destroying the real females’ chances for athletic scholarships and a deserved place in the record book? According to this group real women have no rights now. Only fake ones do.
How many men do you know that have given birth or new born children that chose their own sex? And can anyone out there explain to me what a + or a 2 is?
If some boys like boys and some girls like girls, I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t care. If a potbellied mustachioed guy wants to wear a dress, that’s fine with me – just don’t tell me I should celebrate him, call him ma’am, or miss or expose my grandkids to him. Oh, and if that person is anatomically designed to use a urinal, stay out of the women’s restroom, particularly when my wife, daughter or granddaughter are in it.
Gay Pride month is palmed off on the entire country. And if you don’t buy into it you will be punished, cancelled, ridiculed. I’m all for “to each his own” but don’t tell me men are women and women are men. They are not. It is impossible to change sexes. If a guy wants to dress like a woman and pretend he is a woman, that is his right in a free and tolerant society, but there is no obligation for me or any entity that requires we pretend with him.
Gender change can possibly be accomplished mentally but never physically. No matter the surgery or drugs, a biological man will never menstruate, become pregnant, or carry an unborn child in a uterus. A male cannot and will never become a female and vice versa. How nutty has it become? A California university recently failed one of its students for using the term “biological female” in a term paper, that’s how nutty.
A public park with a children’s playground or any other “family friendly” venue is no place for hyper sexualized caricatures of women. There is a time and place for everything and everyone and a drag show time and place is far away from kids and family friendly events and places. Just like I would not want heterosexual women dressed as stripper’s at these types of places and events.
The local pride group did the right thing by conducting their drag show at a private venue away from the public park. The local chapters of Big Brothers/Big Sisters and Take Stock in Children wisely pulled out of the event. However, rather than coming to their senses on their own, it was reported that fear of losing state funding caused them to fold their tents in Central Park. I’m sure their state HQs reprimand was mixed with some local parental and societal backlash. The fact that these two children’s organizations would even consider being a part of the event should have their national and state organizations questioning the judgement of their local leadership.
Based on the anti-DeSantis signs the local pride folks carried in their parade Florida’s governor is not their choice for the next president, far from it. They hate the governor because of his “Child Protection in Public Schools” legislation that clarifies the term “Sex” in Florida statutes based on chromosomes.
It bans the use of preferred pronouns in the classroom that do not correspond to the “Sex” based on their chromosomes of the child. It also expands the ban on gender identity and sexual identity instruction from Pre-K through 8th. This bill will help with the removal of sexually explicit materials from schools. This bill will also make sure no child is compelled to say something they don’t agree with.
Most folks have no idea what the LGBTQQIAAP2S+ alphabet soup of letters and numerals that continue to grow even stand for except some bizarre code for liberalism/progressiveness/Marxism gone even more insane than it already is.
The continuing over-the-top outrageousness of the movement is turning Americans off according to just released polls by Pew Research.
Boycotts of Bud Light and Target are taking hold and displaying to corporate America the price it will pay for peddling LGBTQQIAAP2S+ instead of their products and services. Even the suits at far-left Starbucks got nervous this week and notified their stores to get rid of the rainbow decorations, an indication that they’ll now welcome anyone who’s foolish enough to pay for their outrageously over-priced coffee.
The ABC+ crowd should stop twerking in our faces and exercise the same tolerance and respect they demand of others?
Republished with the author’s permission. Read The Dave Scott Blog– subscribe Free
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
