We recorded this on Tuesday morning, and by the time you see this even the remotest chance of rescue will have passed, and the five people aboard the Titan lost. Scott asks a critical question, namely: what can or should be expected of us when it comes to rescuing five strangers who knew full well that this was a very dangerous dive?
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60 replies on “A Forlorn Hope”
And the latest news concerning this tragedy is that a bunch of Karens (Should a grouping of karens be called a ‘shrew’?) -but I digress.
A shrew of Karens are butt-hurt that NetFlix is airing “Titanic” starting July 1st. And it’s insensitive to the people who died touristing around in a submersible near the wreck.
What does anyone want to bet that none of these Karens have anything to do with the families of the deceased? That they are just mouthing off for the sake of mouthing off?
It’s a movie. Deal.
Fact is, the decision to place it in rotation was most likely made months ago, and has nothing to do with any of that other than fortuitous timing.
We, ie the Pentagon via ATLSUBCom knew within minutes of the implosion but didn’t want to risk world knowing how sensitive our ocean ears are. So US doesn’t tell Coast Guard or any other country the sub imploded and just wasted hundreds of millions $, exposed hundreds of seaman to harms way to search for what they knew was entirely futile. Ah what the hell, US is rich we can just print/borrow another billion.
What all 3 of you miss is this is 600mi outside of US in int’l waters by an non US for profit company with no ties to US. It is different, as Scott suggests, if it occurs in US mts or lakes, or wells for us to do all possible to save US lives. But are the US taxpayer obligated to spend hundreds of millions $ to rush to the aid of people who knew the risk they were taking? Where is the UK, France, Norway, Sweden, Russia, China, Australia all with Navies and capabilities or even funds to assist in rescue. Is the US obligated to rush to Mt Everest with Army helo, and AF airlift to the tune of hundreds of millions. It is sad that people die of stupidity on Mt Ev by not being in shape or mentally prepared. So you 3 want to obligate US taxpaye to save them. Or cave divers in Cent Am, or bungee jumpers in Africa. I’m tired of US being the money pit to bail the world out while all the others sit and golf clap. Perhaps a world fund by ALL nations to the tune of billions to finance these costly rescues in int’l or expensive rescues in individual countries. Don’t want to contribute then rescue you own damn stupid people. Just another NATO where the US pays all or 90% and spills most of the blood for those that expect freebies. More of damokkkrats open borders welcome to the free shit by get nothing in return.
I am so grateful for this episode and the comments below. I read an article in Daily Wire on the search for the sub, and it was absolutely appalling how many commenters voiced all the reasons why these people, in effect, should have been abandoned from the start, either because it was too foolhardy of a thing to go down in a mini sub, or because it was too much money to spend when our economy is struggling or because they were too rich and the rest of us shouldn’t lift a finger to help. Or that this event was not as important as the other ‘weighty’ issues we face in this country, and no one should waste the reader’s valuable time for something as trivial as the lives of 5 rich people trapped in the deep ocean.
It is worrisome that these kinds of attitudes are posted on what is a conservative platform, either as ‘hot takes’ meant to be witty, or as some kind of fiscal concern that we can’t waste precious resources on people who are too arrogant or too stupid to know they shouldn’t get involved in something so risky. These comments seem to get very little pushback. It seems that cynicism and moralizing have replaced, for way too many people, the virtues of compassion, nobility and risk taking in behalf of our fellow-man that were so brilliantly stated in this episode or Right Angle. I really worry about the fate of our most lovely nation, when these kinds of frankly immoral attitudes are voiced by people who supposedly support our conservative values on a site like DW.
We are the Good Guys. We have to act like Good Guys if we want to claim to be Good Guys. We do not do this for foolish rich people who get themselves in trouble, we do this for our own sakes.
The benefits both tangible and intangible we accrue from being the Good Guys far outweighs any financial liability that being the Good Guys incurs.
When we stop acting like the Good Guys we will no longer be the Good Guys. That might not make us the Bad Guys but it will certainly make us something other, or less than, the Good Guys.
There are certainly people, even people on our political side, who think otherwise. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, even if their opinion is miserly, miserable, short sighted, wrong headed and dark hearted. Until those opinions reach enough of a majority to sway political power …
We will continue to be the Good Guys and do what Good Guys do.
The urge to search for the lost seems endemic to Western culture – I don’t know about the rest of the world – and people have volunteered to search/rescue/recover the lost since the earliest days of our nation. I think Bill and Steve have nailed it. As someone who has participated in Search and Rescue operations alongside civilian volunteers as well as paid personnel, it’s done out of a sense of duty to one’s fellow men. And we’ve been doing it, under all sorts of circumstances, since the founding of our nation.
I totally agree. Coming to the aid of the imperiled is the correct, humane, compassionate thing to do. The reason it’s endemic to Western culture is because it is a foundational Judeo-Christian value.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” is the way that sort of thing has been phrased by a much more authoritative source than me.
The One who first spoke those words didn’t put any qualifiers about merit or wealth or anything else on that command. He did not say “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you unless they’re wealthy, vain or you just don’t happen to like them for some reason.”
People who understand their duty to their fellow man are becoming rarer in our society. Because our society is sick and that’s a symptom of social illness. Egocentrism, only caring about oneself and thinking that oneself is the center of the universe, is the neotinic root cause of that attitude.
It’s a sad thing that such behavior is even seen on the political Right and demonstrating that behavior is a failure in character and comprehension far more suitable to our political adversaries.
People who claim to be on our side and act that way are not our philosophical peers. They may vote for conservatives but if so they do so out of selfish motivations rather than a firm grasp of what’s right. It’s still good that they vote for conservatives but we must be on guard against allowing that kind of untethered person to sway the ideological foundation that makes us not only on the Right but in the right.
So sorry you don’t realize that while I grant your right to your own opinion, no matter how miserly, miserable, short sighted, wrong headed and dark hearted it may be — That I have a right to have MY opinion about YOUR opinion too. Just because you have an opinion doesn’t magically make your opinion valid and does not require everyone else to agree with you. That’s just DUMB.
So now you bring into the conversation your own absurd assumptions about what I think of issues not under discussion. You accuse me of things you have no way of knowing are so or not. You have no idea what I think, or do about the tangential things you accuse me of. You do this because you cannot attack what I actually said so you have to invent something to attack me for. This is called a “straw man argument”. It’s called that because you build your own straw man so you can burn it down.
Doing this allows you to seem to have valid criticisms of me and my opinions so you can distract and deflect from the things I actually did say. You’re hoping I’ll abandon my position and chase the straw man you’ve built. Too bad for you I’m on to your sort.
Yours is a transparent, puerile effort to ‘win’ an argument rather than participate like an adult in a discussion. An effort that doesn’t work at all on grown ups because it’s obvious what you’re doing.
And that tells me all I need to know about you, your opinions and the lack of even paltry intellect you bring to the discussion.
Do you have a mouse in your pocket? Because if so that’s the only “we” you are speaking for. Though there are still men of integrity, of good faith and good will clearly you do not count yourself among them with your “we” proclamations.
That’s nothing but more straw man nonsense. It’s also an ad hominem attack, which is the last resort of a scoundrel. You have no argument, you cannot present thoughtful reasoning to support your position, so all you have left is to call me names that don’t apply to me.
Which makes you nothing but an angry, vituperate old stump rotting away in a swamp of his own creation.
I’m happy to let everyone see our exchange and judge which of us is right. I’m laughing at you. By all means, keep this up. I find your ineffective, weak bile amusing.
This situation was caused by wokness. The CEO publicly addmited he was cutting corners, saving costs and REFUSED to contract experieced submariners. This was not the type of situation most americans run to help no-matter-what. This was a, calculated dare and turned horribly wrong. I would call it a suicide/murder act.
Love all of you and your input … but I’m gonna say, Scott’s level-headedness proves right again:
Top Secret U.S. Navy System Detected Titan Sub Implosion Days Ago | The Daily Wire
So our government knew something we didn’t when they refused the help from the British company (though I did wonder … why did they need our permission? Is this not international waters?)
So now I’m wondering. We looked. We found debris. What did we look with? Is it manned? Is it not manned? What kind of craft is it? Is it also “top secret”? Is THIS why we declined the help?
Very likely, yes that’s why but I seriously doubt your questions about what and how will be answered …
You’ll see people saying that we knew about the implosion in minutes after it happened. No, we knew about the sound of the implosion minutes after the sound had travelled to whatever monitoring device picked it up and transmitted it to the people who run that gear.
It is highly doubtful that the people who actually heard that sound knew it was the implosion of a mini-sub at depth. I really, really have my doubts that we have a lot of acoustical signature graphs of mini-subs imploding to compare that sound to. The people who heard it knew they’d heard something unusual but likely did not immediately know what it was.
Until reports that the mini-sub had lost contact with the surface started popping up. Then it was just a simple matter to compare times and locations to confirm that’s what they picked up on their listening gear.
Then it probably became a matter of letting time elapse to a certain window wherein the nature and capabilities of our top secret listening gear tech would not be compromised to the point where our enemies could devise measures to defeat it.
People are saying “we knew in minutes but we let the search commence and proceed anyway”. Well, that’s not really the case and it seems to me that keeping the Chinese from finding out details of our secret tech so they can’t take out U.S. Submarines if there’s a conflict, or knowing of enemy submarines that are operating in range of the CONUS or not — Was worth the effort.
Sometimes there just aren’t any real good, clear cut choices.
So all of this is a lot less simple than many people are saying it is.
Most of the spouting off I’m seeing is nothing more than a rather anemic form of conservative virtue signalling.
Life is a risk. Getting out of bed is a risk. Backing the car out of the garage is a risk. Crossing the street is a risk. Going to school or the bank is a risk. We take precautions to avoid the risk. The precautions work most of the time. But when they don’t we expect the first responders, police, firefighters, Coast Guard, etc. to show up.
Sometimes we push the limit, knowing that help will show up if we get in trouble. That’s how humans work.
Then hope you are the first to give thousands $ to rescue Mt Ev out of shape rich guys climbing to 29K. Or cave divers who get trapped in underwater foreign caves they opted to dive in. Or better yet why don’t you go search for them and put your life on the line.
Yeah, I’ve read enough of your stinky crap. Someone on this page said they were surprised at the lack of pushback to people like you. This is me, pushing back hard.
If that’s the way you see things then I hope you or someone you care deeply about ends up in mortal peril, in need of rescue, in a place where they don’t rescue Americans, or don’t think your loved one’s life is worth the price of rescue, or any other scenario where the shoe is on the other foot and you get the same thing you’re advocating for.
Not that I want anyone to die so that you can learn the same lesson Ebenezer Scrooge had to. Going by your bilious attitude spewing clouds of anger that would be the only way you would learn.
Even that might not change your mind about how you think about these things but at least you’ll know how it feels to have done unto you as you would do unto others. Yours is the dark side of the Golden Rule.
You’re entitled to your miserly, mean spirited, selfish opinion. I just hope you get to reap what you sow if that’s the way you’re going to see things.
It would also help if you actually knew what you’re talking about. Helicopter rescue from “Mt. Ev” costs around $4,000 to $6,000 and anyone attempting to climb any mountains in that area is required by the jurisdictional local government to have emergency medical evacuation insurance to cover the cost of a rescue if it should become necessary. So the people doing the climbing, not you, are providing the funds for their OWN rescue if they should need it. You have nothing to do with it and those people don’t need your useless approval or equally useless disapproval.
(I said elsewhere on this page that MOST ‘adventurers’ have or are required to have some sort of insurance to offset emergency costs. You must have missed that.)
It is not possible to rescue “out of shape rich guys” or anyone else at any elevation above Camp 2 on Everest, which is just short of 21,000 feet ASL. Which is 1&3/4ths miles lower elevation than the summit. If they made it that far, odds are really really high they’re in pretty good shape. In fact, I’d be willing to wager that no “out of shape rich guys” have EVER summited Mt. Everest. That’s just you spewing, not a real thing.
No helicopters are rescuing anyone at “29K”. That is simply not possible with the aircraft and lack of landing sites that currently exist.
Too, there are no American taxpayer dollars being spent on rescue services on Mt. Everest. That’s just dumb.
Likewise, climbers and hikers in the U.S. National Park System requiring rescue by helicopter do not get funds from tax payers. The funding for rescue services comes from park entrance fees, donations and private funding.
So you can relax Mr. Scrooge, not a penny of your money goes to plucking anyone off Mt. Everest or Mt. Rainier or anywhere like that.
As for the rescuers “putting their lives on the line”, that’s what they do gladly and they’re all volunteers. I volunteered for the United States Marine Corps and put my life on the line many times for Scrooges like you. I’ve been in no-shit-for-real ground combat operations including the rescue of Americans and Allied civilians who probably should have known better than to be where they got themselves in trouble. The thought that they didn’t deserve to be rescued never once entered my mind.
I and the people I was with were EAGER to do this. No one needs an old maid crying about the risks when you’re not the one facing them. That’s not your call, not yours to wring your hands over. That’s not a reason, it’s a pathetic excuse.
If everyone thought like you do, the world would be a lesser place.
Well, leatherneck, glad you got that off your chest. Last I knew we all have a right to have our voice heard in this country even myself as much as you don’t like it. Will keep my rebuttal to less than a novel, like yours. I too volunteered to put my life on the line for God & country in case you missed that. I too pay a shit load of tax dollars to be squandered and wasted on bull shit projects and outright criminal enterprises. I’m sick and tired of it. You can continue to look the other way but ‘Rome is burning’ while you fiddle. So while crime is rampant in blue states and equal justice is no more. While children are shot down in the streets of Chicago and our military surplus’ are squandered in UKN while China laughs at our ineptness you can keep ignoring your own house burning.
Yeah, you have a right to have your voice heard … I also have a right to have my voice heard and a right to have an opinion about what you say with your voice. Just because you have a right to say something doesn’t mean everyone has to agree with you or let your stinky crap slide by unchallenged.
If you don’t like being challenged then the solution is for you not to say things that will be challenged. However, if you do use your voice in public, you have no complaint when someone disagrees with you.
All those other things you tangentially bring into a conversation, a conversation about whether we should render aid to the imperilled is so but even so irrelevant to this discussion.
At this point I’ll note that I have demonstrated that you have shown you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Just because those things may be true does not automatically mean we should leave our fellow man to die through inaction. That’s a slippery slope. Even an angry old stump like you needs help from his fellow man on occasion. Lucky for you the people who render police, fire and medical assistance to someone like you doesn’t get to decide if you merit it or not.
I don’t “look the other way” about any of those things you cite. I also do not use those other things as an excuse to clutch inhumanity to my chest like an old woman and her pearl necklace.
If you object to the length of my replies to you that is simply because it takes a lot fewer words for you to spew your bile than it does for me to point out that all you’re doing is spewing bile. So sue me.
Scot: Your question surprises me. Not that you asked it, but that you then objected to the responses as “getting ahead of the facts.” Your show is not news. It is commentary. Your question called for commentary and you reacted like a Facebook fact checker when the narrative runs counter to the one you expect. I was a sailor for over 60 years. I had several opportunities to respond to calls for help and answered every one, even when risk was involved. I also responded to false calls for help, such as some drunk shooting off flares like Fourth of July firecrackers. FYI, when you radio the Coast Guard that you observed a flare, they take command of the situation. You are instructed to observe the height and direction of the sighting. (The height, such as two fingers about the horizon, provides a clue as to distance.) Then you are instructed to sail in the direction of the sighting, and you’d better have a damn good reason for refusing. The Coast Guard then issues a Notice to Mariners of the location and nature of the sighting and other vessels are asked to respond. They too will join in the search and, if the call for help is false, the perpetrator is in serious trouble if found. As Bill pointed out, it is the nature of civilized people to help those in danger and, sadly, there are uncivilized people who won’t heed the call. Now, if you want a real problem, study The Custom of the Sea…
Jeremie from The Quartering posted a video last night, showing the CEO of the company that offers this mini-sub excursion, saying that they deliberately do not hire the most qualified people for their operation. He claims that they would all be 50 year old white guys, and he refuses to do that. Instead, he says they hire younger, less experienced people because it is more “inspiring” – whatever that means.
Death by Wokeism.
The construction of their submersible is also suspect. Sounds like they shopped at Home Depot and Best Buy for the parts. It was not certified by any maritime organization.
I was a ski patrolman at a Utah ski resort for a number of years and one of our primary responsibilities was avalanche control and rescue within the boundaries of the resort. Consequently, virtually all avalanche rescues occurred outside those boundaries. One of the first things that must be done is assessing the risk of going into those areas for more avalanches and determining the safest routes. This adds time that the people buried may not have. While we all had great concern for those people caught in the avalanche, you can’t help anyone if you are buried on the way in. The best analogy I can come up with is, when flying, during the the preflight safety announcements they always tell you to that when the oxygen masks drop from the ceiling “put your mask on first!” You can’t help anyone if you are dead!
A couple of weeks ago, while watching one of the candidates being interviewed and doing a poor job (not going to say which as I think most of them are terrible interviewees, and interviewers for that matter) I thought to myself if I were ever to run for office, I would hire Scott as part of my campaign to do interview prep.
He is quite good at posing tough questions to evoke tough answers. And he is prepared for both sides (all sides) of an argument.
You don’t know what his real position is until you get to his commentary at the end.
The other thing he does is listen to the answers and follow up and challenge the answer. Would that we had actual journalists like this.
If you can do a good job at a Scott interview, you could handle most of the talking heads on TV.
As to the particulars of this. Given the location, why is it the purview of the US Gov’t to say yea or nay to any type of assistance. The wreck of the Titanic is much closer to Canada, in fact many of the victims that were identified were buried in Canada. So I don’t understand why anyone was waiting on a go signal from US anything.
Scott is good at playing the ‘devil’s advocate’, as a real journalist should be. Makes for interesting conversation.
Amen on the Scott Ott thing. All this Scott bashing gets enormously tedious.
It’s very clear what Scott is doing, if people are actually listening to what’s being said. Instead of going off half cocked when they hear something they think they don’t like.
I fear this may be a result of truncated attention spans due to the effects of Twitter mentality. Whether that’s the case or not, it’s certainly a symptom of cancel culture and its attitudes. To wit:
“You said some small thing I don’t like 100% so you are damned to hell for eternity.”
It’s shameful that even here where people should know better that kind of BS still manages to rear its ugly head. We’re very fortunate to have Scott on our team and failing to appreciate that is no failure on Scott’s part. I just hope he doesn’t get discouraged by that kind of mental midgetry.
I think Scott has much thicker skin than the average bear.
It’s not that the Coast Guard is a free rescue service for anyone who gets in trouble in their jurisdiction. If the Coast Guard determines that the situation is an emergency and the people involved are ‘in distress’ they will mobilize immediately to execute a rescue. But …
If you’re just tooling around on your boat and you run out of gas or blow out a sail the Coast Guard does not leap to your assistance. They just call a maritime towing service for you and you have to pay whatever bill that service charges for their efforts on your behalf.
According to the Coast Guard’s Maritime Search and Rescue Assistance Policy (MSAP) …
“If a commercial provider is available and can be on the scene within a reasonable time (usually one hour or less), no further action by the Coast Guard, beyond monitoring the incident, will be taken. Otherwise, a Coast Guard Auxiliary unit or a Coast Guard resource may be used, and in those cases the vessel being assisted will normally be taken to the nearest safe haven.”
The point I’m making is that the Coast Guard is not some kind of sea nanny that will save you from your own folly at taxpayer expense no matter what. If you do something dumb like running out of fuel there’s a price for that and you’ll end up paying it out of your own pocket.
I keep towing insurance on my boat year round. If I run out of gas (never going to happen) or for some reason my engine dies I can just get on the radio and call the maritime towing company for assistance. If I can’t reach the towing company by radio but I can reach the Coast Guard, they’ll call the towing company for me.
This is as it should be, I’m responsible for the costs incurred by my recreational boating.
If I were ‘in distress’ and immediately in mortal peril the Coast Guard would send a helicopter to lift me off my boat (or out of the water) and bring me back to shore. I’d probably lose my boat in that case. The Coast Guard will happily save my life but it won’t save my boat for me.
Now all of that said, I personally know of at least one instance where a boat went down and everyone on that boat was in the water. There was a Navy helicopter in the immediate vicinity that could easily have accomplished a rescue and the Coast Guard forbade the Navy from doing that.
My son was flying that helicopter and was on the scene in just a couple minutes. He orbited the area keeping a close eye on the people in the water because if it looked like any of the people were in immediate danger of dying (I.E. there were sharks visible in the area) he was going to rescue them anyway, Coast Guard permission or not.
A half an hour after he got there the Coast Guard helicopter showed up and pulled them out of the water.
Clearly if the Coast Guard were concerned about its financial and material resources they would have let the Navy do the rescue and foot the bill.
That the Coast Guard denied the Navy the rescue even though the Navy was right there and the people had to stay in the water a significant amount of time waiting for Coast Guard rescue makes me wonder about Coast Guard priorities.
It might be a similar situation to when a local police officer is on the freeway and sees a driver speeding through traffic. The local LEO has the ability and tacit authority to write the ticket, but the Highway Patrol prefers they don’t. I heard this from an off-duty policeman who moonlighted as a security guard in a clothing store. He said that for the most part he refrained from writing tickets on the freeway, always hoping that the mere presence of his patrol car in the lane behind the speeding culprit would get them to slow down. That did usually work, and only rarely did he have to pull anyone over on the freeway, in what the HIghway Patrol considered ‘their own private jurisdiction.’
Hmm, well that might be true but in my mind there’s a big difference between who writes a speeding ticket and making people wait for rescue when the only thing keeping them alive is a life jacket that’s probably been moldering in an onboard storage locker for years.
I keep my life jackets in as good a shape as possible but …
Once you’re in the water miles from land without a boat under you life jacket or not, you’re in mortal peril. The life jacket can fail, there are things in that water that might be hungry or aggressive, there may be other well meaning boaters that might not see you because you’re very hard to see below the bow of a moving boat, commercial maritime vessels that are very hard to turn on short notice, health issues of the wreck victims like cardiac and pulmonary problems, etc.
It’s not just that you went for an unanticipated swim and oh well, stuff happens.
I also doubt that a State Trooper would get on his radio and tell a local cop NOT to write a ticket if he saw that the LEO had someone pulled over …
If this is a jurisdictional issue, it needs to be changed. The idea of postponing a rescue at sea over who gets credit for it is to my thinking asking for someone to die over very petty reasons.
Big difference rescuing humans floating in water waving for help and a tanker that explodes leaving no trace of anyone or anything fron another loosely regulated country that knew the vessel was not sea worthy & didn’t have their own rescue navy for their own ships.
I was talking about a known instance where the Coast Guard forbade the Navy to pull humans to safety who were “floating in the water waving for help”. You’re shoehorning something else into this discussion but that’s OK. I’ll bite …
Nah, you still have to go look at the tanker wreck site to SEE if anyone survived or not. Because if anyone is in the water waving for help and you don’t do that, you killed them every bit as much as the tanker wreck and loosie-goosey regs did.
The difference being that you can’t undo the tanker wreck, and you can’t force tighter regs on lesser nations, but you can pull someone waving for help out of the water. No matter how they got there.
“Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.” ― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. [1904?] Well, then maybe we can get by being a little less civilized??
While searching for the source of this quote, one view I saw was that a really civilized civilization would be supported entirely by charitable contributions and taxation would thus not be needed. But human nature and the free rider problem work against this option.
And speaking of human nature: courage, nobility, virtue are positive attributes that some people exhibit some of the time. I suppose this is the idea behind the phrase “man is made in God’s image”? As the phrase is rather nonsensical in a literal sense otherwise.
I have never been in combat, so I ask this respectfully: are young men more willing to take risks than older soldiers (any branch military personnel or first responders), possibly from an evolved sense of invulnerability while young adults; but that as they age they acquire greater respect for the risks they face and are more hesitant to take them?
And related, only because they have potentially faced such risks as younger men, do the older NCO’s/officers then (grudgingly and necessarily) accept their role in sending others into harms way, with the prospect of them dying as a possibility??
“We see people as our people” because we are those people, maybe more so than in most countries, as the diversity of our settlers and immigrants do come from the 150+ other countries out there.
“We are spending millions of dollars …” except that money is mostly already spent, committed, or allocated. We would hope if a totally new venture was needed for a situation like this, that the funds would be readily forthcoming, as they often are for various GoFundMe or GoSaveMe type solicitations.
From a quick search, but I had not heard of any but #5:
The 6 Best Crowdfunding Platforms of 2023
Everyone or every company should post a bond to cover costs and compensate the families of the rescuers who are lost.
That is a good idea/ suggestion, but I suspect some ventures are so risky that the cost of the bond is prohibitive. Is such a bond supposed to cover the total cost of rescue and recovery, or is it normally done more as part of an insurance pool where other bonds have also been bought and in total they provide a decently larger funding pool?
They generally do have some sort of insurance in play. It may not be enough to cover a multimillion dollar rescue but it’s not nothing either.
Every country contribute to a massive rescue fund and commit their responders and experts to put their lives on the line so it is shared by all. Kind of like insurance for countries. Don’t contribute rescue them yourselves. I for one am tired for being parent, police, chef, farmer, doctor to the world at my expense in $ & blood.
Bill is spot on, as usual. Scott is typically too eager to excuse evil by giving it the “benefit of the doubt!”
Scott is entirely too good in his role as ‘Devil’s Advocate’.
Sometimes he makes me so furious at his prevaricating, but I have to back off and realize that he’s doing it to set up Bill and Steve for the point.
Believe that it’s always his role of Devil’s Advocate if you want to. I caught on to Scott a long time ago. Some if it is his “role” and some it isn’t. He is a never Trumper. That kind of nixed him and his opinions when I kept hearing his snark about President Trump. If you haven’t figured that out then you haven’t been paying attention.
That phrase “never Trumper” does not mean what you seem to think it does. It means someone who will not under any circumstances support in any way nor vote for Donald John Trump.
The clue is right there in the first word of the phrase, maybe you noticed it? “Never” means “not ever”.
Many of us whom you have called “never Trumpers”, Scott Ott included, do not fit that description. Scott openly admits he voted for Donald Trump. Twice. Me too. Thus it is impossible for either of us to be a “never Trumper”.
That makes your accusation a LIE. A false witness born against your fellow Conservatives for no better reason than that they do not enthusiastically share your blind, unqualified, unrestrained, puerile, fatuous, slobbering adulatory adoration of Donald Trump.
You are slandering the people on your own side AND you refuse to engage in discussion with those people, including ME. You are not being wise or discerning or politically savvy, you are perpetuating falsehoods against innocent people.
Shame on you.
Apparently you prefer lies and slander to adult discussion and debate. Because you do not hesitate to fling lies and slander while refusing completely to engage with the people you are slandering and lying about.
You and others absurdly apply that ad hominem “never Trumper” attack to anyone who fails to worship Donald Trump as the Infallible Incarnation of the Second Coming. Anyone who happens to notice that Donald Trump is a fallible human being, who can and has made mistakes, anyone who in any other way does not overlook every single fault of Trump’s and has the unmitigated gall to even mention those things in passing — Who does not bow down to worship him as some sort of infallible, incorruptible golden calf of a political messiah — You then insult with the lie that they are “never Trumpers”.
I’m sick and tired of that kind of ludicrous crap from people like you and if you had the good sense God gave a grasshopper you should be ashamed of yourself. Scott Ott has to let your slander go because he’s an employee of this enterprise. Contrariwise, I am not even a little bit hindered in this regard.
This obviously ridiculous bias you display means that people should not take anything you say as meritable simply because it’s coming from a slanderer and false accuser. There’s something wrong with you, or at least with your worldview.
Trump has made his share of mistakes whether you like it or not, whether you will admit it or not. If you want to discuss those mistakes like an adult I’ll be happy to point them out to you. AGAIN. If you want to act like some kind of child, lay on the ground, bang your head on the floor and kick your feet with your little “never Trumper” temper tantrums then don’t bother.
But keep it up, go ahead and keep lying and slandering good people on our side if you must. Just know that when you do that next time I see it I’ll take off the gloves and let you know what I really think of you and your ilk.
Have YOU been hired to comment on almost every post here? I wonder. 15 comments. by you. Are you Scott’s private poster-guard? Thus isn’t the first time I’ve seen or read your sycophantic Scott-guard. I just pass on by most of your comments. Your opinion is worthless to me.
Have YOU been hired to attack anyone who doesn’t worship Donald Trump as some sort of infallible demi-god? Calling people “never Trumpers” who don’t come close to fitting the definition of the term makes your opinions worthless to everyone.
Except another Trump worshipper. Nice cult you have going there.
Scott didn’t “excuse evil”, he was merely holding up his end of the conversation. Watch his final remarks and tell me where he “excused evil”.
A mistake I see a lot of people make regarding Scott’s commentary is that they assume he’s advocating something he is not if you take him in context.
I don’t want to watch sycophant cheerleaders all spouting “Rah, rah rah!”. Scott does what he does to ask the questions that Bill and Steven can then answer. If you want to know what Scott thinks himself, it’s in his final remarks.
A good journalist is good at playing the ‘devil’s advocate’.
Yes, Scott draws out the meat of the topic and lets Steve and Bill serve it up. Which is something we should all be grateful for.
Accusing Scott of “excusing evil” is itself inexcusable and I won’t let that kind of thing pass without taking a shot at it. It’s a stupid, mean thing to say and shows an undeniable lack of grasp in the situation.
The risk/reward involved in saving lives in medicine poses similar quandaries. Remember not that long ago when the British Healthcare System declined to try an operation on a newborn with a deadly defect and American hospitals offered to treat the baby free of charge (but were declined)? Those financial and manpower resources could be used more efficiently elsewhere. But we didn’t hesitate.
Scott is technically correct that we are not obligated to rescue these next-level rich folks with beyond next-level risk taking addictions. But if you had the Coast Guard only rescue people who were good at decision-making and avoided risk they’d be nearly useless.
As far as this failed dive into the deep, it would be more intellectually defensible and reasonable to say what Tonto said to the Lone Ranger when told what it would take to save him from a snake bite on his you-know-what. “You gonna die, Kimosabe.”
Yet, we don’t do that. At some point, though, being noble and heroic has its limits. It’s too cold, it’s too dark, it’s too deep, and, in reality, it was too late from the moment that they lost communications and the “seven failsafe devices” didn’t activate.
Too, if the criteria of whether someone ‘deserved’ rescue or not were the driving factor, then a moral decision has to be made on their condition of ‘deservedness’ or not.
There’s no bottom to that hole.
That would be like you as a doctor deciding not to treat a gunshot wound of a gangbanger because “he deserved what he got”. I despise those people and I might even agree with a decision like that. But I’m not a Doctor and I never swore the Hippocratic Oath. Even so, and as much as I dislike that sort of person if he were bleeding out in front of me I would do what I could to save him until help arrived and relieved me of my moral responsibility.
Then the next doctor might make the call not to treat an elderly person “because they’re just going to die in a few years anyway”.
As human beings subject to the Golden Rule we’re obligated to do our very best, not something less and call it good enough.
Your last sentence says it all.
I’ve been in an urban trauma center working on a shot gangbanger when someone came in to finish the job. I’ve been there, covered in blood at the height of the AIDS epidemic. You’d have been impressed how few medical professionals at the time stopped to ask any questions.
When I saw the submersible & heard about the construction issues, being a retired USN Submariner, I knew they were lost, probably from the point where contact was lost two hours into their trip.
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep,
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea!
O Christ! Whose voice the waters heard
And hushed their raging at thy word,
Who walkedst on the foaming deep,
And calm amidst its rage didst sleep,
O hear us when we cry to thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
Most Holy Spirit! Who didst brood
Upon the chaos dark and rude,
And bid its angry tumult cease,
And give, for wild confusion, peace,
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea!
Eternal Father, grant, we pray,
To all Marines, both night and day,
The courage, honor, strength, and skill
Their land to serve, thy law fulfill;
Be thou the shield forevermore
From every peril to the Corps.
Lord, guard and guide the ones who fly
Through the great spaces in the sky.
Be with them always in the air,
In darkening storms or sunlight fair.
Amen, brother.
I remember singing that exact hymn during during chapel services in the Marines. It always choked me up a little.
Beautiful hymn!
I heard this hymn each Sunday in the Navy chapel when my dad was stationed at Great Lakes. It brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. Thank you so much for sharing it here.
I had a chance to spend about ten minutes inside that very mini-sub when it was at the URI campus for a weekend, two summers ago. Ten minutes was just about all I could take – claustrophobia anyone? And that wasn’t thirteen thousand feet below the surface of the water. No way would I ever consent to spend the fourteen or so hours in that sardine can just to view the Titanic in situ. I’ll happily watch the movie, thank you.
I’m not going to volunteer to to be a colonist on the moon, or Mars, either.
I’m not an adventurer, but I understand that some of you out there are; and while I am not prepared “to go where no man has gone before,” I am perfectly capable of getting myself into scrapes without traveling further than five miles from my home. I’m glad, and feel very blessed to live in a society which still values the individual enough to to come to my rescue.
You said it Bill. What, and how much do we do in such a situation as this to try to rescue five people? Everything!
Well said. Just how will we react when one of the Mars colonization vehicles is floating disabled and 50 brave souls are doomed?
Hell, I’m not claustrophobic and I am an adventurer but even I would never do those things. They do not fall within my personal scale of ‘acceptable risk’.
Bingo. Well, maybe not the “adventurer” part. I never did quite buy into the idea of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane with a parachute on my back, but for those who do, bully for you. And I sure as hell am not going to pony up $250K for the privilege of riding down to see what’s left of the Titanic. That’s what film and video are for.
The question seems to be, is it more “humane” to move heaven and earth to rescue people who have signed onto a risky enterprise, fully knowing those risks, if the so-called “7 failsafes” fail? I doubt any of us would turn a cold shoulder to helping people who display stupidity of this magnitude (which is considerable), but at the same time, at which point does Darwin enter the equation and issue those “awards?”
Darwin enters the equation after all reasonable efforts to save the idiot have failed.
Me too on the skydiving thing. I’ve jumped but never for fun or pleasure. Always because that was the only way to get where I needed to be.
That doesn’t mean I ridicule people who jump out of airplanes for entertainment, it’s their life to lose as they will. It’s just not something I’d ever consider doing to amuse myself.
Of course, I don’t think very highly of making a choice like that either. But I certainly would not demand that someone injured in a skydiving accident be denied aid either.
Nor would I, but most of the time, that person injured in a skydiving accident won’t need aid. He’ll need a casket.
Snark aside, there are simply some things that override common sense and as long as those people in the submersible entered into that risky behavior knowing the risks, and did it anyway, moving heaven and earth to rescue those people from their own decisions seems rather pointless. Idle musings include how much money was spent in searching for that vessel? And who pays? Answer – the U.S. taxpayer. A reasonable effort should be expended, I’ll grant you that. But at some point you just have to cut bait. And that’s where the “recovery” mission comes in, which is probably where we’re at now.
If it’s true those people went down in that vessel with zero likelihood that they could be rescued if they were hung up on a propeller (as it’s been reported on a separate voyage), well, they rolled the dice and lost. Sorry to have to say this, but as Ron White often says, “You can’t fix stupid.”
People should not be shielded from the consequences of their risk-taking.