The Mayor of Philadelphia is an Idiot

I have a dream!  No, it’s not that big a dream, but it’s sincere.

I picture a politician who goes to the scene of a disaster and says:

"Hey, I don’t know shit about how trains wreck.  We’ll have to wait until the fire, EMS, police and rescue services get done, then let the investigators look into it.  Now, let’s get out of here, we’re just a distraction while the people who know what they are doing work."

Look, it’s a DREAM, ok?  

There are so many “experts” who don’t know anything about fire, EMS, police work, rescue services, emergency management, investigating anything or anything but aggrandizing themselves.  Oh, they are good at THAT.  Ridiculous, ill-informed, illogical, but good.

The mayor of Philadelphia, the “lawmakers” who have reacted, and every [insert epithet] who have commented about the Philadelphia Amtrac wreck are full of hot and destructive air.  They have reasoned that the train was going over 100 miles an hour accordingly to a black box that they have never seen and that they wouldn’t have a clue how to interpret, and that therefore, the engineer was criminally negligent.

Well, q.e.d.

Now, he may have been.  Beats me, I wasn’t there.  Also, I don’t know shit about how trains wreck.  Personally, I think I’ll wait to find what the NTSB opinion is.  THEY know how trains wreck.

It turns out that the investigators are looking at reports that something - a bullet?  a rock? - hit the train and also other trains.  Here again, I wasn’t there.  If I saw the windshield, I STILL couldn’t tell what if anything struck the train.  Still, it may be unlikely that something struck the train but didn't  have anything to do with the wreck.  But I'm not sure.

And if something did strike the train, and the train did speed up, what caused it?  Beats me.  Never driven a train.

And I sincerely doubt that anyone public official weighing in  has driven a train.  They would like to posture that they know all and see all.  They want everyone to know that they CARE and that they will SO SOMETHING so it never ... blah, blah, blah.

In the meantime, the incident commander has to put up with a useless person at their scene.

Most reports say that the engineer has been cooperative - 
BUT he brought a LAWYER with him.  Doesn’t that tend to indicate he’s guilty of something.  

Nah - the mayor had already indicted him based on just a tiny bit of information.  If an investigation is trying to find out what happened, their may not be an necessity to bring a lawyer.  But this was not even a “rush to judgment.”  This was a half-ass-wild-guess by someone who didn’t have any idea what they were talking about.

We will never know for sure what caused the train wreck.  God knows.  He is unlikely to tell us.  Even if we know "beyond a reasonable doubt" what happened, that's still short of being absolutely sure.

The First Amendment says that we have a right to know.  Reason tells us to wait to draw conclusions when you know the facts.  

Facts are such inconvenient things.  But that doesn't stop politicians.