Devine on East Palestine

Ben Weingarten — he who wrote the book on her — alerts me to the story on Ilhan Omar in our newspaper of record: “Ilhan Omar Withdraws Support For East Palestine After Learning It’s In America.” The Bee reported yesterday:

Representative Ilhan Omar has canceled a planned rally to support the victims of the East Palestine chemical spill after learning East Palestine is actually in America.

“Oh… East Palestine is just a small town in Ohio? Is that where all the white people live?” said a disappointed Omar to her brother while they were out on a Valentine’s Day date. “Who cares about Ohio? Some trains did something. Who cares?”

Okay, the part about the date with her brother and former husband is a joke. When last seen, Omar’s brother and former husband was in Africa working for Omar’s big sister.

Miranda Devine takes up the East Palestine catastrophe for readers of her New York Post Devine Online newsletter this morning. I can’t find these comments online. Devine writes in the newsletter (links omitted):

I’m sure the residents of East Palestine, Ohio, appreciate that the company that detonated a trainload of toxic chemicals in their town is committed to reducing its carbon footprint and ensuring its board of directors is “diverse.”

Norfolk Southern Corporation has been working so hard to achieve “a 42% reduction in… greenhouse gas emissions,” and expand “our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives,” that it forgot to make sure its trains didn’t derail in the middle of the night in Ohio.

You have to get your priorities right, or all those asset managers hellbent on imposing woke policies on American companies will defund you.

Who cares if a few thousand working class Trump-voters in a tidy rural town in Ohio get sick? It’s “Yokel Central,” as one Twitter charmer called East Palestine.

Norfolk Southern pulled out of a community town hall Wednesday night citing concerns for “the growing physical threat to our employees.” It did not provide evidence of any “threat” and the hundreds of townsfolk who showed up at the high school gym were understandably upset but perfectly well behaved and orderly, so that is just another insult to add to the rest of the sneering putdowns and disregard.

That’s pretty much been the attitude of political leaders and lethargic media in the two weeks since a toxic plume of burning carcinogens settled over the town, killing at least 3,500 fish downstream. Pet cats and chickens have been dropping dead.

Among the chemicals intentionally detonated to clear the tracks, after Norfolk Southern’s train derailed, was vinyl chloride which, when it burns, turns into acidic phosgene gas, which used to be a WWI bioweapon. East Palestinians are reporting nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, headaches and rashes.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg took ten days even to acknowledge the disaster and then only on Twitter after he was mocked for complaining that too many construction workers are white.

You can’t help but think that if East Palestine weren’t 97 percent composed of that disfavored demographic, you’d have Buttigieg claiming “systemic racism” caused the derailment and pledging all kinds of reparations. Instead, the town has been left to fend for itself, with unanswered questions about the health consequences.

So, next time someone from the Biden administration tries to take away your gas stove and tells you to eat bugs, feel free to ignore [him].

Climate alarmists don’t care about the actual environment. They are too busy plunging us into energy poverty to worry about real pollution that harms humans.

I was thinking that Buttigieg may be beyond satire, but I see that our newspaper of record is on his case as well. The Bee also reported yesterday: “Pete Buttigieg Celebrates 24 Hours Without A Train Derailment.”