All the government funding in the world won’t trump physics.
May 14, 2015 at 11:29 pm
Guitanguran
Not even Trump can trump physics…or the reality of government-sponsored entities. At some $41+ an hour, you’d expect someone to know when to slow down. It’s like forgetting you donated 75 Gs to your old boss’s money laundering operation b4 hammering the guy exposing your old boss’s money laundering operation. Tip your waitresses.
May 15, 2015 at 12:30 am
finebammer
prob did know when to slow down just couldn’t do it in his sleep.
May 15, 2015 at 1:55 am
Ming the Merciless
Was probably texting dirty gay ditties…
May 15, 2015 at 11:24 pm
Robert I. Eachus
Don’t be in a rush to bury the survivors. Recent indications are that the engineer may have been hit by a rock–at least one seems to have broken a front window on the engine.
From experience the engineers tend to speed up out of North Philadelphia station, then lay off the accelerator so the train slows for the curve. After the curve, they speed up until they are passing traffic on I-95. Pneumatic braking, as opposed to engine drag is rare. (The ’emergency’ brake could have been pulled by any member of the crew. But my guess is that no one jumped fast enough. The stop cord will normally result in injuries so normally the crew would try to contact the engineer first.)
May 14, 2015 at 11:32 pm
WayneM
Only a prog like Skye could warp an act of criminal negligence into a whine about money…
May 15, 2015 at 12:03 am
SteveInCO
Why not? They wave the bloody shirt whenever there’s a mass shooting, neglecting to mention they happen in gun free zones.
May 14, 2015 at 11:33 pm
JTC
Mo’ Money is always the gov answer…talk about your runaway trains.
May 15, 2015 at 8:43 am
Paladin
Mo of your money!
May 15, 2015 at 8:46 am
JTC
Amtrak Runaway Train; it’s the perfect quasi-gov analogy…moneysucking, underperforming, ineptly managed, dangerous as hell.
May 14, 2015 at 11:43 pm
B Woodman
And O’Bozo had already gotten his “shovel ready” infrastructure money. . . . . which was promptly used to rebuild his political donor base infrastructure, not bridges, not roads nor tracks.
May 15, 2015 at 12:33 am
finebammer
as Coach Bryant used to say, “Bingo! that’s a goodie!”
May 15, 2015 at 12:08 am
Ryk E Lee
Isn’t there some LEO Skye should be servicing?
May 15, 2015 at 2:47 pm
B Woodman
I think the sheriff has more discernment then to be “serviced” by Skye.
May 15, 2015 at 12:14 am
Jeffersonian
Just wait until they dig into the conductor’s background. This seems intentional. Like the Germanwings crash. I hope I’m wrong.
May 15, 2015 at 12:32 am
Ryk E Lee
The train driver is a pro Gay Marriage protester, he’ll get some leniency and support just from that. George Zim was in the clear with Law Enforcement until the media announced he was White/Hispanic. Branding, it seems, carries a lot of weight nowadays.
given a choice between funding Amtrac and funding the F-35 ($400 billion squander’d so far, and it still won’t fly) I’d fund Amtrac. But better neither
The engineer was NOT using his cell phone, but he had just held the throttle Wide Open for a full minute, gaining 81 mph, right before the restricting curve. Instead of going Big Hole to recover, he barely touched the brake.
Sudden Jihad Syndrome, anyone?
May 15, 2015 at 12:54 am
Alaska Paul
There is an unwritten covenant in this and other countries that we maintain our present public infrastructure and build new infrastructure for ourselves and our descendants.
Unfortunately, during the last 40 years or so, we have not lived up to the terms of that covenant, have spent much of our national wealth on frivolous projects and tons of entitlements, and pitifully little on basic infrastructure.
Now we are trying to play catch-up, except now we are broke, in more ways than just money.
May 15, 2015 at 1:41 am
Ed
Some folks don’t seem to get that the railroads are private industries. The only thing the government needs to do to help the railroads improve their infrastructure is let them keep more of their money. The people should not be taxed to pay for railroad improvements.
People also need to get the facts straight. Left or right, there is a lot of hooey going on about this wreck. Let’s get some facts, people. One thing I have noticed, the left media like Huffpo jumped all over the engineer at first. The instant the “gay activist” thing came out they completely changed the tenor of their comments.
May 15, 2015 at 5:33 am
Bill G
Infrastructure upkeep/improvement funding somehow gets siphoned off.
Like the levees in New Orleans.
May 15, 2015 at 6:23 am
OpenTheDoor
Everybody knows, gay men pull trains, they don’t drive them.
Wait, is Zed saying: When repubs won’t pay for infrastructure …. We get your standard gummint employee??
May 15, 2015 at 10:24 am
KenH
NO…
notice the ‘or’ there
The thing didn’t derail because of fake cut funding
It likely derailed because some suddenly amnesiac asshole was running at over 2X the goddamned posted safe limit
At some point, somebody is going to pull the public records laying out the maintenance status on that track line, when it was last inspected and the results. It’ll take some time because all that stuff isn’t readily available. In the Internet age, it should be. Passengers contemplating tickets should be able to access an intelligent agent that reviews the records for all the track before they buy tickets. Computers can do that kind of thing in a second or two. We’re just not set up for it.
Big government intrudes where it shouldn’t but it also doesn’t focus and do what it should.
May 15, 2015 at 2:55 pm
B Woodman
Maybe, AT THE SAME TIME, the passenger contemplating purchasing buying a ticket to ride the train — could ALSO ACCESS the physical and mental health records, the last psych eval, the political, sexual orientation of the engineer DRIVING the train that they will be riding in.
Ya think?
May 15, 2015 at 11:49 pm
Robert I. Eachus
Sorry Charlie, the track is not an issue. AFAIK all the main line track in this area is heavyweight continuous welded rail. This track is also used by the Acela trains from Boston to Washington, DC.
May 15, 2015 at 8:23 am
Chris in N.Va.
Let’s see….
Speed limit for hairpin turn is 30 mph.
Irresponsible bus driver takes turn driving over 60 mph and accident kills and injures many when the bus flies off the road and wraps around a tree.
Libs want more money for “infrastructure.”
Leaves one wondering how infrastructure improvements would alleviate the problem of drivers speeding.
OH! I have it!
Cut down the trees and replace them with bubble wrap so at least there is a nice soft area for vehicles to land in when they fly off the road.
Or something…
May 15, 2015 at 9:15 am
Pamela
Wonder if the engineer was listening to Dead Man’s Curve by Jan and Dean thinking I can make it unlike the Jag at the turn. Or did he zone out.
Supposedly he is not being asked questions on what the hell happened until he recovers from his injuries since allegedly he hit his head and has no memory of the accident.
Too many times there is funding for maintenance, repairs and upgrades in the budget which gets reallocated to other projects (slush funds.)
Or maybe there was the yearly bonus incentive of what you don’t spend, you get a percentage of the remaining.
There was a local post office branch manager that actually limited the bathroom supplies, turned off lights and hot water to reduce his expenses to increase his year end bonus. That did not go over well with the health and safety folks.
May 15, 2015 at 1:45 pm
RegT
Same at the VA. The director gets a cash bonus for money “saved”. At our Med Center in Roseburg, OR, our director routinely got $30K+ for not filling staff vacancies caused by retirements, staff resignations, etc., for depriving the vets of needed supplies, and of not having enough staff to meet the appointment needs/times of the vets. (Staff who “went along” with this program got promoted into low-effort/no-effort positions, yet they were not replaced, making less staff do the same amount of work with fewer bodies.)
May 15, 2015 at 9:56 am
writeby
The federal government killed commercial passenger train service (no, it wasn’t commercial jet service, as goes the myth); then, it offered government operated commercial passenger train service.
Trains wreck and people die.
But at least we don’t have rich capitalist train “robber barons” making “obscene” profits by transporting rich folks to their destinations.
Everyone is equal and must travel the government train.
In the name of the common good, uniformity and the holy collective. Amen.
I think the responsible action for the authorities in this case is to determine an appropriate penalty for such a train-driving violation. Since it caused multiple deaths and massive property damage, I’m thinking capital punishment, preceded by a fair trial, of course.
May 15, 2015 at 3:54 pm
JTC
Hey! You snuck in a two-fer! I guess it’s apropos in the sense of train wrecks, this one of the Hollywood PC variety. I don’t give a rat’s ass about the movie but you got a couple good quips in there, not to mention a couple fine nips, so I’m good.
May 15, 2015 at 4:18 pm
Grunt GI
Quips, tips, and nips…what’s not to like!
May 15, 2015 at 4:47 pm
B Woodman
YAYYYY! Thanks for the two-fer, Chris, in more ways than one!
Now give me a minute or three to come up with a good retort on the second one.
May 15, 2015 at 5:08 pm
Pamela
For the top panel… rumor has it that the equipment to slow down the trains on the north bound run was installed. The FCC was holding up releasing the GPS bandwidth to make it happen so to speak.
For the second panel… did Tom Hardy use case hardened nails when doing the job? Was he wearing the proper PPE in the nailing the cave in question?
May 15, 2015 at 5:56 pm
B Woodman
Pam,
From something I just read (American Thinker?), the FCC had JUST released the BW (which was “owned” by someone else), and AMTRACK had negotiated the purchase from the owner (after 2 years), everything was ready to go two-three days prior, just that no one had flipped that final switch.
The ultimate example for Murphy’s Law, “Anything that can go wrong, will, and at the worst possible time.”
And that includes Libtards (attempting to blame the Republitards)
May 15, 2015 at 9:01 pm
Pamela
So if idiot activist boy would have waited a week to self-destruct this travesty might have been stopped and his raggedy ass fired…
Someone needs to follow the money as to who gains what from all of this…
Sorry about that. I was being a grammar nazi. My bad …
May 15, 2015 at 6:04 pm
Bill M
Train Wrecks all around.
This one; Obamacare; Hillary; Obama; DOJ;ICE; VA; etc. What one thing do they all have in common? (Answer should be obvious for even the most casual observer.)
May 16, 2015 at 10:33 pm
Indiana Mike
Ming the Merciless; you don’t know a thing about trains and brakes. Air brake pressure keeps the brakes OPEN, it doesn’t close them. Westinghouse stole that ingenious system well over a Century ago. If a train looses the air pressure keeping them off, the brakes clamp on automatically. That’s why if an air hose is broken, the train line dumps pressure and clamps down into emergency. Essentially, you need air pressure to keep the train moving, NOT to stop it.
May 17, 2015 at 2:32 pm
Jason Thorn
I’m not exactly sure which movie Aaron was seeing, but a lot of things made sense in that movie.
Maybe Furiosa’s confident and “doing most of the butt-kicking herself?” The character of Max was always as a rogue element, and it made sense in context.
“When sheep have to deal with wolves, they either grow claws or become lamb chops.”
Besides, to echo Bill Denbrough’s lament from the novel IT, “Can’t you just let a STORY be a STORY?”
45 Comments
All the government funding in the world won’t trump physics.
Not even Trump can trump physics…or the reality of government-sponsored entities. At some $41+ an hour, you’d expect someone to know when to slow down. It’s like forgetting you donated 75 Gs to your old boss’s money laundering operation b4 hammering the guy exposing your old boss’s money laundering operation. Tip your waitresses.
prob did know when to slow down just couldn’t do it in his sleep.
Was probably texting dirty gay ditties…
Don’t be in a rush to bury the survivors. Recent indications are that the engineer may have been hit by a rock–at least one seems to have broken a front window on the engine.
From experience the engineers tend to speed up out of North Philadelphia station, then lay off the accelerator so the train slows for the curve. After the curve, they speed up until they are passing traffic on I-95. Pneumatic braking, as opposed to engine drag is rare. (The ’emergency’ brake could have been pulled by any member of the crew. But my guess is that no one jumped fast enough. The stop cord will normally result in injuries so normally the crew would try to contact the engineer first.)
Only a prog like Skye could warp an act of criminal negligence into a whine about money…
Why not? They wave the bloody shirt whenever there’s a mass shooting, neglecting to mention they happen in gun free zones.
Mo’ Money is always the gov answer…talk about your runaway trains.
Mo of your money!
Amtrak Runaway Train; it’s the perfect quasi-gov analogy…moneysucking, underperforming, ineptly managed, dangerous as hell.
And O’Bozo had already gotten his “shovel ready” infrastructure money. . . . . which was promptly used to rebuild his political donor base infrastructure, not bridges, not roads nor tracks.
as Coach Bryant used to say, “Bingo! that’s a goodie!”
Isn’t there some LEO Skye should be servicing?
I think the sheriff has more discernment then to be “serviced” by Skye.
Just wait until they dig into the conductor’s background. This seems intentional. Like the Germanwings crash. I hope I’m wrong.
The train driver is a pro Gay Marriage protester, he’ll get some leniency and support just from that. George Zim was in the clear with Law Enforcement until the media announced he was White/Hispanic. Branding, it seems, carries a lot of weight nowadays.
It’s like in the Lac Mégantic explosion, the train driver should have said he was gay, then the media would have recalled that it was a local fire department that shut down the engines(dumping brake pressure) and did not apply the mechanical brakes(the big wheels at the end of each wagon)thus sending thousands of tons of fuel downhill to crash and blow up downtown…
given a choice between funding Amtrac and funding the F-35 ($400 billion squander’d so far, and it still won’t fly) I’d fund Amtrac. But better neither
The engineer was NOT using his cell phone, but he had just held the throttle Wide Open for a full minute, gaining 81 mph, right before the restricting curve. Instead of going Big Hole to recover, he barely touched the brake.
Sudden Jihad Syndrome, anyone?
There is an unwritten covenant in this and other countries that we maintain our present public infrastructure and build new infrastructure for ourselves and our descendants.
Unfortunately, during the last 40 years or so, we have not lived up to the terms of that covenant, have spent much of our national wealth on frivolous projects and tons of entitlements, and pitifully little on basic infrastructure.
Now we are trying to play catch-up, except now we are broke, in more ways than just money.
Some folks don’t seem to get that the railroads are private industries. The only thing the government needs to do to help the railroads improve their infrastructure is let them keep more of their money. The people should not be taxed to pay for railroad improvements.
People also need to get the facts straight. Left or right, there is a lot of hooey going on about this wreck. Let’s get some facts, people. One thing I have noticed, the left media like Huffpo jumped all over the engineer at first. The instant the “gay activist” thing came out they completely changed the tenor of their comments.
Infrastructure upkeep/improvement funding somehow gets siphoned off.
Like the levees in New Orleans.
Everybody knows, gay men pull trains, they don’t drive them.
Best train song ever…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBP15lRprPs
Wait, is Zed saying: When repubs won’t pay for infrastructure …. We get your standard gummint employee??
NO…
notice the ‘or’ there
The thing didn’t derail because of fake cut funding
It likely derailed because some suddenly amnesiac asshole was running at over 2X the goddamned posted safe limit
At some point, somebody is going to pull the public records laying out the maintenance status on that track line, when it was last inspected and the results. It’ll take some time because all that stuff isn’t readily available. In the Internet age, it should be. Passengers contemplating tickets should be able to access an intelligent agent that reviews the records for all the track before they buy tickets. Computers can do that kind of thing in a second or two. We’re just not set up for it.
Big government intrudes where it shouldn’t but it also doesn’t focus and do what it should.
Maybe, AT THE SAME TIME, the passenger contemplating purchasing buying a ticket to ride the train — could ALSO ACCESS the physical and mental health records, the last psych eval, the political, sexual orientation of the engineer DRIVING the train that they will be riding in.
Ya think?
Sorry Charlie, the track is not an issue. AFAIK all the main line track in this area is heavyweight continuous welded rail. This track is also used by the Acela trains from Boston to Washington, DC.
Let’s see….
Speed limit for hairpin turn is 30 mph.
Irresponsible bus driver takes turn driving over 60 mph and accident kills and injures many when the bus flies off the road and wraps around a tree.
Libs want more money for “infrastructure.”
Leaves one wondering how infrastructure improvements would alleviate the problem of drivers speeding.
OH! I have it!
Cut down the trees and replace them with bubble wrap so at least there is a nice soft area for vehicles to land in when they fly off the road.
Or something…
Wonder if the engineer was listening to Dead Man’s Curve by Jan and Dean thinking I can make it unlike the Jag at the turn. Or did he zone out.
Supposedly he is not being asked questions on what the hell happened until he recovers from his injuries since allegedly he hit his head and has no memory of the accident.
Too many times there is funding for maintenance, repairs and upgrades in the budget which gets reallocated to other projects (slush funds.)
Or maybe there was the yearly bonus incentive of what you don’t spend, you get a percentage of the remaining.
There was a local post office branch manager that actually limited the bathroom supplies, turned off lights and hot water to reduce his expenses to increase his year end bonus. That did not go over well with the health and safety folks.
Same at the VA. The director gets a cash bonus for money “saved”. At our Med Center in Roseburg, OR, our director routinely got $30K+ for not filling staff vacancies caused by retirements, staff resignations, etc., for depriving the vets of needed supplies, and of not having enough staff to meet the appointment needs/times of the vets. (Staff who “went along” with this program got promoted into low-effort/no-effort positions, yet they were not replaced, making less staff do the same amount of work with fewer bodies.)
The federal government killed commercial passenger train service (no, it wasn’t commercial jet service, as goes the myth); then, it offered government operated commercial passenger train service.
Trains wreck and people die.
But at least we don’t have rich capitalist train “robber barons” making “obscene” profits by transporting rich folks to their destinations.
Everyone is equal and must travel the government train.
In the name of the common good, uniformity and the holy collective. Amen.
I think the responsible action for the authorities in this case is to determine an appropriate penalty for such a train-driving violation. Since it caused multiple deaths and massive property damage, I’m thinking capital punishment, preceded by a fair trial, of course.
Hey! You snuck in a two-fer! I guess it’s apropos in the sense of train wrecks, this one of the Hollywood PC variety. I don’t give a rat’s ass about the movie but you got a couple good quips in there, not to mention a couple fine nips, so I’m good.
Quips, tips, and nips…what’s not to like!
YAYYYY! Thanks for the two-fer, Chris, in more ways than one!
Now give me a minute or three to come up with a good retort on the second one.
For the top panel… rumor has it that the equipment to slow down the trains on the north bound run was installed. The FCC was holding up releasing the GPS bandwidth to make it happen so to speak.
For the second panel… did Tom Hardy use case hardened nails when doing the job? Was he wearing the proper PPE in the nailing the cave in question?
Pam,
From something I just read (American Thinker?), the FCC had JUST released the BW (which was “owned” by someone else), and AMTRACK had negotiated the purchase from the owner (after 2 years), everything was ready to go two-three days prior, just that no one had flipped that final switch.
The ultimate example for Murphy’s Law, “Anything that can go wrong, will, and at the worst possible time.”
And that includes Libtards (attempting to blame the Republitards)
So if idiot activist boy would have waited a week to self-destruct this travesty might have been stopped and his raggedy ass fired…
Someone needs to follow the money as to who gains what from all of this…
Just a minor quibble, Chris: Shouldn’t it be “Who played with Ensler’s vagina? 🙂
EWWWWWW. .. . PASS THE MIND BLEACH, STAT!
Sorry about that. I was being a grammar nazi. My bad …
Train Wrecks all around.
This one; Obamacare; Hillary; Obama; DOJ;ICE; VA; etc. What one thing do they all have in common? (Answer should be obvious for even the most casual observer.)
Ming the Merciless; you don’t know a thing about trains and brakes. Air brake pressure keeps the brakes OPEN, it doesn’t close them. Westinghouse stole that ingenious system well over a Century ago. If a train looses the air pressure keeping them off, the brakes clamp on automatically. That’s why if an air hose is broken, the train line dumps pressure and clamps down into emergency. Essentially, you need air pressure to keep the train moving, NOT to stop it.
I’m not exactly sure which movie Aaron was seeing, but a lot of things made sense in that movie.
Maybe Furiosa’s confident and “doing most of the butt-kicking herself?” The character of Max was always as a rogue element, and it made sense in context.
“When sheep have to deal with wolves, they either grow claws or become lamb chops.”
Besides, to echo Bill Denbrough’s lament from the novel IT, “Can’t you just let a STORY be a STORY?”