Hurricane Michael just roared ashore in the Florida panhandle with sustained winds at 155 MPH. Trump and his droopier-than-usual ‘do held a press availability to demonstrate that he can watch a radar blob cross a screen and utter inanities about it. A reporter asked if Trump would cancel his MAGA circle jerk in PA tonight to monitor the situation in Florida:
A tired-sounding Trump says he's not planning to cancel his campaign rally in Pennsylvania tonight despite the storm because "there are thousands of people already lined up… we have thousands of people going tonight, and many are there already… it's sorta unfair to them." pic.twitter.com/AlsY57t4KG
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 10, 2018
“Not my president” became a popular rallying cry in the days after Trump was sleazed into office. While certainly an understandable sentiment, it’s inaccurate in a sense because, thanks to the slaver vestigial Electoral College, voter suppression and foreign interference, Trump is technically the President of the United States.
But as he’s demonstrated time and time again, Trump considers citizens who don’t support him (the majority!) as enemies, not constituents. He rails against “angry mobs” that are in fact patriotic citizens exercising their right to peaceably assemble and express themselves. And he’d rather go jerk off with a bunch of slack-jawed cultists in Pennsylvania than show respect for the citizens in mortal peril in Florida.
So yeah, not my president.
Rob
I can NOT believe what I just read in the embedded tweet.
(back to lurking).
Mary G
It bypassed Mar-a-Loco, so it has no meaning to him.
schrodingers_cat
He is an acting President who is not presidential. T-partiers who wanted to take their country back, meant they wanted to take it back in time.
Amir Khalid
It’s not as if Trump manning his post for a change would achieve anything, as far as helping Americans in need was concerned. Trump is too lazy to do anything and too incompetent to get it right.
Elizabelle
Oh let him rally in PA. Florida doesnt need two destructive blowhards in eight hours
Besides, I think he reminds the good voters why we must win.
donnah
It’s unfair to his followers that he would cancel his pep rally. I’m sure the thousands of hurricane victims would understand. Gee, why would they expect the president to monitor a national emergency?
He is a disgrace to humankind.
SFAW
Hey BC, I hope you’re nowhere near the storm (I can never remember where you, Adam, and the rest of the Floriduh men and women of BJ reside). So anyway, I hope you’re safe. Badger too, of course, and the rest of Clan Cracker.
I think someone should tell Shithead that Obama NEVER would have traveled anywhere near the center of the storm, because it was too scary/dangerous.
Mary G
Video of unknown origin, but striking:
Gin & Tonic
@donnah: Well, the people planning to go to his rally are expecting to be paid, so if he cancels, they’re out their $50.
Roger Moore
Trump may be the president, but he’s not my president.
Major Major Major Major
‘Tis better to acknowledge him as our president and recognize how urgent that makes the need to be rid of him (or at least curtail his power), than to pretend we live in some mythical country that could never have him as a head of state. It also encourages us to work to better this country, rather than retreat into bubbles.
jl
How about ” Not anybody’s President ” ?
Actions speak louder than words, and say a lot when both point in the same direction.
Maybe 30% of any country’s population is too crazy or too ill-informed to get a clue . Let’s hope to reduce Trump’s support to that irreducible minimum by November.
chopper
yeah, this is gonna make him look good once the damage reports start coming in. of course, his voters won’t give a shit.
dmsilev
Isn’t the panhandle one of the Trumpier parts of Florida? He doesn’t care about anyone, not even his supporters. Just himself.
Edit: to be clear, he doesn’t give a shit about the feelings of the people waiting for his rally either. He wants to do the rally because it feeds his ego, nothing else.
Litlebritdifrnt
According to Cole’s twitter feed Twitler just said that the winds were “200 miles an hour” and it was a Cat 4 storm. Does he have no one on staff to explain, (with crayons if need be) the stupidity of this?
Spanky
@Litlebritdifrnt: Is this a rhetorical question? Because I suspect you know the answer.
Betty Cracker
@Mary G: Scary. I remember peeping through a window back in ’04 watching Hurricane Charley rip off part of a neighbor’s roof. Of course, you’re supposed to stay away from the windows, but it’s hard not to watch. I kept looking out the door during Irma last year, watching shingles, siding and branches tumble down the street. It’s dumb but irresistible.
trollhattan
@Litlebritdifrnt: @Spanky:
In Trump’s world, everything “goes to 11.”
“I have the best storms they’re yuge, believe me!”
mapaghimagsik
Christ, what an asshole
Brachiator
I hate Trump, his rallies, and the people who attend them.
But there is no reason that a competent president would have to sit and monitor an approaching storm. Presumably he or she would have FEMA and other appropriate organizations doing their job.
Juju
Don’t forget Comey’s stupid letter just before the election.
Presedent Cheeto Stain needs to go to Pennsylvania so the MAGAts can scream “lock her up”about another woman who has done absolutely nothing to merit the chant of idiots.
Adam L Silverman
If that storm hadn’t grown up on the South Side of Chicago it wouldn’t be thuggin and dindunuffin all up in Pensacola’s grill right now. Instead it would be in school, not a super predator. And since Pensacola is in Florida, and Florida is a Stand Your Ground state, I’ve told Governor Scott that I’ve launched a nuke at Hurricane Michael to kill it before it kills Pensacola.//
NotMax
Federal aid already in the pipeline, no doubt. For golf courses. //
Non-snark: Be safe, stay dry.
HinTN
@Brachiator:
There’s your problem right there.
JPL
Trump sounds tired because the intelligence service said that Saudi killed an American resident at the Saudi consulate in Turkey. He certainly doesn’t want to punish his benefactor.
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: I’m not here.
JPL
Neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor hail will keep Trump from his hatefest.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: That was a live oak. They have a tendency to do that during hurricanes.
The Moar You Know
If I were in the middle of a widespread emergency, the news that Trump wasn’t involved and didn’t give a shit in any way would be a source of great relief.
Just saying. The guy can and would fuck up a ham sandwich.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: It’s hideously inappropriate to lead a campaign rally while a natural disaster is unfolding in another part of the country. No one should have to tell him that. A decent person would know it.
MelissaM
As a citizen of this nation, he *is* my president, and I both hang my head in shame, and also raise it high in anger at the shithead republicans who allowed him to be elected, and who continue to allow him to run rampant over all this country has stood for for over 200 years. Assholes and morons, the lot of them. (I guess I’m feeling a little angry today.)
Mike in NC
Where in Pennsylvania is the hate rally going to be held tonight? If it’s near Johnstown — where all those angry old white folks were interviewed last year — perhaps the Good Lord can arrange for another flood to wash them away.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Bush campaigned with McCain during Katrina and birthday cake was involved.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: @Betty Cracker: There is no reason that a competent executive would have to sit in the situation room and hand-manage FEMA during a storm; but there are many reasons that a competent politician would want to give the impression that they cared.
Trump, of course, is neither…
Repatriated
@Betty Cracker: If he was decent, or even smart, he’d turn the rally into a call for action – donating to charity, giving blood, praying for the dead and disposessed from the storm, pledging relief, that sort of thing – and drop anything political. You know, acting presidential.
He won’t, of course.
hitchhiker
He delights in pissing me off; I delight in refusing the bait.
Last Sunday a team of us knocked on 3000 doors in just one district of WA 08, where a Democratic woman candidate is tied with her opponent.
I delight in imagining a happy Nov 6th, but whatever happens, I won’t be giving up.
JMG
Someone in the White House will tell Trump there’s no point in having the rally, because not even Fox would give it top billing over cable TV’s favorite event, the big natural disaster.
Betty Cracker
Damn, y’all!
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker: Is the storm predicted to pass anywhere near you? If so, take care. I took a quick peek at the news and it is chilling that the authorities say that it is now too late for anyone to evacuate.
Repatriated
@JMG: Perhaps they hope Fox will do that anyhow?
This still leaves the problem of coming up with airtime filler to hide days and weeks of recovery efforts…
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
On the other hand, to maintain the gravity of the situation, he’ll probably get all the morons to start chanting “lock her up” for DiFi.
ETA: And I wouldn’t put it past him to include Dr. Blasey Ford in that chant.
Catherine D.
Apparently the FLOTUS of the unbearable sh*theads just gave an interview saying women had to have proof of sexual assault. Probably the old “four male witnesses” standard …
Mary G
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Ignorantia ex cathedra.
(Him, not you.)
Apologies in advance to scholars for the rusty Latin.
Hitlesswonder
Perhaps it’s a tired game, but imagine if Obama had gone to a campaign rally while a hurricane hit Florida…..media would be in a tizzy and not just Fox news.
LuciaMia
Yup, he can follow a blob on the screen with the best of ’em! Presidential!
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: Gosh, I hope people living in that area evacuated in time.
FlipYrWhig
@Hitlesswonder: @Catherine D.: “I really don’t care do U“?
eric
@Catherine D.: When you are more revanachist than the Catholic Church, you are doing something. All those kids had no “proof.” Just their collective stories.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: It blew past us already. It’s still a little windy and rainy, but it’s actually more pleasant than it has been since it’s not so hot thanks to the cloud cover. The tides have been scary high, but nothing life or even lawn threatening in my area.
Leto
@Betty Cracker: In ’89, when Hugo ripped through Charleston, we were out on the front porch of my parents house as the hurricane came in. The house is L shaped and the wind was coming from the bottom of the L, at least until the eye passed over. Fast forward to ’05 with Katrina where me and my fellow instructors stood at the glass doors of Jones Hall watching Katrina pound Keesler AFB, while water poured in from the electrical sockets, light switches, and around the door jambs. Watching Mother Nature make short work of everything man does is always morbidly fascinating.
FlipYrWhig
@Adam L Silverman: Do you think he asked what the difference was between a hurricane and a tornado? Like when he asked Michael Flynn if the one he liked was the “strong dollar” or the “weak dollar”?
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Wow..
NotMax
@Mike in NC
Erie, Pennsylvania, the left atrium of the Rust Belt.
Raven
The friends we rent from on 30a we’re down there and got out. The red tide, hurricane and Sarah Sanders sighting sent them running home! We cancelled our trip and booked Edisto instead.
Raven
@Leto: Tyndall is ground zero.
Raven
@Betty Cracker: if it doesn’t rain on the big lake it may help the red tide
prufrock
@Betty Cracker: I have just seen the future of South Tampa.
And it doesn’t even need to be a monster storm like this one. A Cat 2 at the wrong time of day from the wrong direction would do the same.
dmsilev
@Hitlesswonder: Remember that photo of George Bush looking supremely disinterested as AF1 flew over the devastation from Katrina? Imagine a split-screen on the news, one of Florida being hurricaned, and the other of Trump doing his Nuremberg Rally thing. Probably not a good look for him.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: He fails at being a human being forget a President. I have met toddlers with more empathy.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator:
This is all geography driven. Apalachicola and East Point are the west and east sides of the entry to Apalachicola and East Bay and the Apalachicola estuary. They are connected by a bridge. St. Vincent Island, St. George Island, and Dog Island are actually barrier islands reachable by ferry and/or bridge. Panama City/Panama City Beach, Port St. Joe, and Mexico City Beach are all to the north and west, also along a series of bays and an estuary and there are barrier islands in play here too. Basically you can’t get out because there’s no way to get out. I fully expect that at least portions of these barrier islands will be washed away completely and won’t exist after this storm. Other parts of the coast will be permanently reshaped and changed.
Tenar Arha
@schrodingers_cat: If it’s possible to truly hate a word, last year that would have been my pick bc it felt like the media, especially cable showz, reached for it at every fricking “first” in his term. They helped destroy the very sense of the word with their overuse. But in this case it’s absolutely true, by its best sense, Orange Julius is not remotely presidential enough to even act reassuring for the majority of Americans.
Adam L Silverman
@eric: And that’s where this is going to hit them politically. All of the survivors of clerical sexual abuse, or by lay ministers/leaders in non-Catholic denominations, are seeing and hearing what these elected and appointed officials have been saying. It will have an effect politically.
gvg
@Betty Cracker: Heh, talk about no common sense, my sister sat in an rickity old rental house, in the bathroom with her cat, through Charley. The cat was bored with being cooped up, and managed to get the door open a few times and made a bee line to the windows which were vibrating continuously from the storm for hours. Each time my sister snatched the cat away, afraid those windows were about to explode, and retreated to the no window bathroom. But the cat thought those vibrating windows were interesting.
Adam L Silverman
They need to adjust their targeting and fire again!!!
Leto
@Raven: Yeah, I saw that. A positive is that after the clusterfuck that ensued with how the AF handled Katrina with regard to students and evacuation, the AF and Gulf Coast bases revamped their evacuation policies. Of course Tyndal is a fighter training pipeline base so all of those planes were probably relocated to somewhere near Ohio, or maybe Whiteman AFB in Missouri. They would have flown them out a few days ago, and sent all non-essential personnel north/north west. Big difference from Katrina and Keesler.
Turner Hedenkoff
@NotMax: It’s Panama City, so they’ll be miniature golf courses.
Adam L Silverman
@FlipYrWhig: The problem is he saw the meteorological report that referred to the eye of Michael as equivalent to an EF3 tornado. And what stuck was “it’s a tornado”.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
Wow. So, in addition to the regular damage assessments, we may need an evaluation of the geographical reshaping as a result of this storm. And perhaps more of this in the future.
Chyron HR
@Adam L Silverman:
Well, fuck, now he’s ruined another Pink Floyd song for me.
Cacti
@Roger Moore:
This.
Gozer
@Adam L Silverman:
The capabilities of the javelin have been seriously downgraded under this admin.
Leto
@Adam L Silverman: I hope he remembers to hydrate.
#don’tforgettohydrate
Adam L Silverman
@prufrock: Three people sneezing south of Kennedy BLVD on Dale Mabry has the same effect.
Bill Arnold
Appologies if aleeady linked. David Wallace-Wells
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/un-says-climate-genocide-coming-but-its-worse-than-that.html
Another must-read by DWW
Yutsano
@Adam L Silverman: Oh come now Adam. Jim Cantore is a national treasure. If you see him in your neighbourhood that’s your hint to Get. The. Fuck. Out.
Bill Arnold
Title is “UN Says Climate Genocide Is Coming. It’s Actually Worse Than That.” For DWW article linked above. Not used to posting from phone.
Aleta
He and Ivanka etc. only know how to do one kind of “job.” It’s literally all they can do.
Make an entrance. Shake hands, pout lips. Get others to give, invest or loan money.
(Optional action: Cut ribbon, speak at podium, throw paper towels, sit around table, etc.)
Activate PR. If required to secure $, another fake ‘exclusive’ meeting later. Dispatch lawyers.
They’ll never appear at a disaster or a shooting in a timely way. They’re helpless until someone else choreographs the performance, and for some reason it’s always a slow amateurish process, like herding slugs.
So the show must go on in Pennsylvania. There are checks to gather, hats to sell.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: Yep. It’s why they were worried about 2-4 foot storm surge in Tampa Bay, let alone up the coast where the projections got higher. It all has to do with where the storm was tracking – over high 80 degree water just east of the center of the Gulf of Mexico, the size of the storm – over 400 miles across, and the geography of the Florida gulf coast. Almost all of Florida’s gulf coast, from about Sarasota north to Panama City has been on the east side of the storm. This is the pick up the water/push the water/churn the water and then dump the water side of the storm. So as Michael barreled through with its counter clockwise rotation, it was just shoving large amounts of water at the coast, bays, estuaries, and barrier islands. And the barrier islands are, for all intents and purposes, built up sand bars. So all the water being pushed is basically a heavy duty erosion engine.
Adam L Silverman
@Chyron HR: You’re welcome!
Adam L Silverman
@Gozer: Apparently.
Gin & Tonic
While everybody is watching the hurricane in the Gulf, stiff winds on Wall Street as well, with the DJIA down over 3% and the NASDAQ over 4%.
Adam L Silverman
@Leto:
That’s just science!
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
And toddlers with more inate intelligence.
feebog
@Adam L Silverman:
Adam, just wondering if this will have an effect on the election just 27 days away. This is the most conservative area of the state (AFAIK) and there are going to be a lot of folks dislocated a month from now, or so it would seem.
Seanly
@Adam L Silverman:
Umm, it’s not at all like a tornado. Yes, they both involve strong winds, but they are much different things. While the winds in the hurricane can be dangerous and damaging, it is the water surge that does most of the damage. In addition, while a tornado can leave a long & wide path of destruction, it pales in comparison to the width & breadth of damage from a hurricane.
RE: barrier islands & coastlines – while sudden events like this can have a dramatic effect on the landscape, beaches & such are literally rivers of sand – the waves don’t strike perpendicularly to the shore so there is some wave energy to the left or right. The sand often migrates in a certain direction over great distances. For instance, the sand in NJ flows to the south. The state of NJ at one point considered pipelines to move sand from Cape May up to Tom’s River to replace the constant trucking they do. Shores are a very dynamic feature and most of our efforts to establish permanence is a folly.
JPL
@dmsilev: That’s why the news won’t report it that way. They are afraid of the old guy’s tweets.
tobie
@Gin & Tonic: I just heard about the market rout. Any idea what precipitated it? I had no idea that since Trump took office, new homebuilding has contracted. I also found it interesting that the Asian markets did well today, and Canada’s considering opening trade negotiations with China. So much winning…
jl
@Gin & Tonic: I saw in the news last evening that Ford is announcing cut-backs and blaming Trump tariffs. Not sure how much is blame shifting, but some of it must be true. Wonder if other large corporations will be making similar announcements soon.
And UCMCA deal is, as Krugman put, just old NAFTA with some new mistakes. I read an analysis, sorry don’t have link right now, that new USMCA was so rushed there are conflicts between provisions. Might cause so many problems, would give incentive for auto manufacturers with worldwide market (for example, Ford) to avoid North America altogether for new production of parts or anything for their international market. Most of the links on this topic I get from Krugman’s twitter since the new deal was signed, so can look there for links.
The best summary of the USMCA, aka the Village People deal, aka NAFTA with a few new mistakes
@paulkrugman
https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1049622136518836224
Millard Filmore
@Bill Arnold: Not being a climate scientist, I do not understand why there will be such widespread drought over the planet. With 200 feet ocean rise, and more ocean surface area to evaporate water, why won’t the world turn into a humid tropical hell?
Ryan
Not my preznit was also a rallying cry after 2000.
jl
@tobie: Fixed residential investment has been stuttering, It has never recovered to normal levels after the 2007-2009 Great Recession. Big global money has been pulling out of investment. The industry insider view is that, gosh now that the high end market, that few can afford, is saturated, maybe they’ll start investing in middle income housing and give local people a place to live and us industry people some honest work. But that investment money looks at investment for its excess cash as like buying an option with a possible very high return. It’s not interested in some schmucky investment in middle or working class housing.
Business economists and forecasters looking at next recession beginning before 2020, and residential market might be a good place to look for the timing.
Adam L Silverman
@feebog: It could. I think there are three different election related issues here:
1) The news media focus on Gillum and Scott as they perform their official duties this week and over the next several weeks in regards to the storm. Gillum caught a lot of flack for how Hermine was handled, especially in regard to allowing linemen from other cities/states in to assist get Tallahassee’s power back up. Tallahassee has 50% tree cover for a municipal area, which is unusual. So there will be a lot of tree damage, which will result in a lot of power lines down. If he didn’t prepare that this might happen in the run up to the election and he is going to be the center of attention, then he deserves to lose. That said, my impression is he has his shit together.
Scott, of course, is Scott. Nelson’s got ads running hammering him for monetizing and profiting and profiteering – both for himself and his friends – off of Irma. But Scott, as governor, knows how to milk this. And Nelson is making appearances at shelters and emergency services locations to help out, fact find, etc. So he’s doing what he can to mitigate Scott’s advantage of being governor during the storm.
DeSantis is completely fucked by this unless Gillum screws up. He has no official position at all. He can’t show up and state he’s going to get his colleagues in Congress to direct aide to affected areas. Also, someone tumbled to the fact that he wrote a pro-slavery, racist book back during the Obama Administration as a dig on Obama’s 1995 book. So that’s focus of the news reporting about DeSantis as Gillum is doing an on air interview for why he’s ready to go from mayor to governor.
2) Voter registration issues. The online system was, apparently, all kludged up for at least 48 hours before last night’s deadline. And because of the storm, registration had to be shut down in the panhandle. The Florida Democratic Party has filed suit to reopen both once the storm passes. My guess is that request will be granted by the court. Scott’s order was only in regard to supervisor of election offices in areas in the path of the storm.
3) Turnout. Absentee ballots arrived over the weekend. The problem is that we’re now going to have significant numbers of internally displaced Floridians. Voting may not be their primary concerns. Where they’re going to live, how they’re going to pay their bills, what happens with their kids and school, etc are their primary concerns. But beyond that, a lot of the places in Apalachicola, East Bay, Port St. Joe, Panama City and Panama City Beach, Mexico City Beach, the barrier island towns are all going to be completely leveled. People will be displaced for significantly longer than the 3 weeks between now and election day. So even if they want to vote, they won’t be able to go to their polling place because those don’t exist anymore either. I have no idea what they’re going to do, but expect some provision will be made for allowing people to request absentee ballots if they want. I fully expect that one effect of the storm will be severely depressed turnout in the effected parts of the panhandle.
Adam L Silverman
@Seanly: I understand that, but the meteorologists keep making the comparison to the eye and the intensity of the storm around the eye, to an EF3 tornado. I think they’re doing this for people that don’t live anywhere near where there is a hurricane.
chopper
@Seanly:
hurricane winds are relatively linear, tornadic winds are chaotic and twist and turn, and the suction effect is huge. that being said, referring to a powerful hurricane core as “a 50 mile wide tornado” can maybe get through to people who would otherwise shrug it off.
having seen the effects in person of major tornados and major hurricanes i think it’s a good enough comparison.
raven
@Leto: Unass that AO!
raven
@Adam L Silverman: My ophthalmologist thinks I may have had a mini-stroke and, if my vision doesn’t get better, he’ll send me to a nuero-ophthalmologist at Emory,
tobie
@jl: Thanks for the explanation. I glanced at one chart on Bloomberg about new home construction and it seemed that there was a fairly significant rise in the last half of 2016 and then things started to nose-dive in Feb/Mar 2017. I can’t find the chart now. Middle income housing does seem particularly hard hit. The world is also no longer sure if the US is a safe bet. The yield on 30-year US treasuries hit a high today. Who can blame the nay-sayers, dooms-dayers, and skeptics out there. Speaking of which…what ever happened to Nouriel Roubini?
Mary G
@Adam L Silverman:
Is this good news for Gillum?
More scary video:
feebog
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks. One thing in your response puzzles me;
I don’t get how that would be a negative. It’s done all the time after these kind of disasters, no?
TS (the original)
@Brachiator:
President Obama had to sit and monitor approaching storms – and the aftermath – or the media would call him out as a bad president. It’s only lousy RW presidents who can have RWNJ rallies in the midst of disaster & the media shrugs.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@raven: Sorry to hear it, but I wondered about that. At my rehab, we do education once a week and this week they were talking about strokes. If that’s what this is, it’s scary but it’s also a warning so you can take action.
Re Michael, in terms of meteorlogical consequences, does it matter if a storm comes ashore in daylight or at night?
p.a.
@tobie: for housing see Calculated Risk. A good go-to. For today’s stock market, to use Atrios’ term, “WHEEEeeeeee!!!”
raven
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I don’t know what else I can do. I quit smoking in 1969, haven’t had a drink or red meat in 26 years. I walk and swim and stay as active as I can. I think I need to fish more!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman:
Fucking MS-13 got to ’em.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@raven: Yeah, they might want to ream out your carotid arteries.
I hear you though. I’m thin, have worked out 3 times a week for 35 years, never smoked, have no family history of heart disease, and still had a heart attack. I blame the stress of this administration.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman:
Not anymore.
JPL
@raven: Geez I’m so sorry.
raven
@Dorothy A. Winsor: If the thunder don’t get ya the lightning will!
raven
@JPL: Aw it’s cool, it’ll work out.
Brachiator
@TS (the original):
The media was unfair to Obama. About 99% of the shit they blasted him for doing or not doing was done by some previous white president. “Sit and monitor” is stupid. Just as stupid as news stations sending reporters out to be lashed by wind and rain to make sure a storm looks telegenic on the TV screen.
After Bush’s mismanagement of Katrina, I want to know that the president and responsible authorities have planned shit out and are responding to changing events as necessary. I give less than two shits about a president sitting and monitoring or the media’s lame judgments based on trivial nonsense. And on this I am nonpartisan.
Fuck, if Trump sat and monitored, he would be watching Fox news and deciding what to do based on the signals he gets from Hannity and other Fox Stooges. Fuck that and fuck Trump. Or better, one day, let’s lock him up. Otherwise, I don’t care much about what phony reaction he might pretend to demonstrate for the sake of the media.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Major Major Major Major:
I acknowledge he has de jure legitimacy but he does not have de facto legitimacy. He’s not the president because he won the majority of the votes or the EC fairly. He won because the GOP cheated and got a boost from Putin. That doesn’t prelude me from working to get him ousted. If anything it pisses me off more.
realbtl
@raven: Well shit but at least a way forward. Though the process I think the quote goes “is not for sissies.” Good luck.
ETA- And dammit quit going through my record collection. Almost everything you link to is there or should be.
Jay
@Millard Filmore:
“Global climate change affects a variety of factors associated with drought. There is high confidence that increased temperatures will lead to more precipitation falling as rain rather than snow, earlier snow melt, and increased evaporation and transpiration. Thus the risk of hydrological and agricultural drought increases as temperatures rise.”
https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/impacts/causes-of-drought-climate-change-connection.html#.W75j4_RfPv4
Globally important agricultural areas evolved in a period of stable climate and stable weather conditions.
Now they are not.
As an example, Arctic mid winter high temperatures, combined with North Pacific high sea temperatures combine to warp the Northern Jetstream high up over Alaska, then bend it down over Ontario into the US Mid Atlantic.
As a result “my” -30c weather and 6-8 feet of snowpack, that provides “my” summer irrigation, winds up 3600 miles away where it freezes people to death, collapses infrastructure and causes massive spring floods.
It should be instead, in my hills and mountains, growing oats, wheat, apples, cherries, peaches, potatoes, sweet corn and beef.
Jay
@feebog:
Moron’s think that contracting out = lost jobs/cash leaving the State.
Non-morons understand that the losses from power/phone/cable being out for even a day, cause much greater economic losses than contracting out.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: Ugh, I’m sorry to read that. Just shot you an email. We’re keeping good thoughts.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: Possibly. The panhandle tends to be solidly conservative.
Adam L Silverman
@feebog: Apparently he wouldn’t authorize them to come in and help. That’s why he caught heat. I don’t really know the details, so don’t understand whether this was actually his call or what advice he was being given by his emergency manager and emergency management staff, but, regardless, this is seen as an example of poor leadership on his part.
Adam L Silverman
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
The issue has to do with the high tides more than AM or PM.
TS (the original)
@Brachiator:
Sit and monitor is a damn sight better than having a “lock her up” rally in a far away place. He could sit and monitor, watch fox news or simply play with himself – any of these make more sense than a manman rally, but the people who call him out are only being heard by those who call him “not my president”
trollhattan
Eric Holder is shrill and uncivil.
oatler.
@TS (the original): I remember one be-slickered ABC reporter proclaiming she’d tasted a tinge of hurricane salt spray (from inside her glass enclosure).
Mnemosyne
The address bot for Postcards to Voters freaked me out a bit because all of the addresses it sent me started with the exact same number. They’re all valid addresses according to Google Maps, so I’ll just assume it’s a quirk of getting them via bot.
They’re also doing a campaign for Andrew Janz, who is running against Nunes in CA-22, so I may jump into that one once I finish this set for Abrams and Amico.
jl
@tobie: Roubini recently started extra strong dooming and glooming. If you google his name, you’ll find some recent articles.
Treasury yields higher mean people are not rushing to buy safety of bonds. So, this looks like adjusting risk be moving from high PE to low PE stocks, adjusting risk and perceived out-of-whack PEs within stock market. As long as that holds up, I don’t think sell offs like this can be used to start predicting end of recovery, even if we see substantial drops in next few days.
JPL
@raven: Make sure that you have a flashlight handy and charge your phone.. yadda yadda yadda.. You are under a tornado watch until 2 am.
Mnemosyne
@oatler.:
When I was on the Pacific Surfliner train from LA to San Luis Obispo, I could smell the surf from inside the train at the Lompoc station because it was so close to the ocean. (Seriously, the tracks ran within about 100 yards of the beach.) So I actually believe her, especially if the windows weren’t sealed well. Though she was probably smelling it and exaggerated a bit.
ruemara
@Mnemosyne: mrph. Glad it worked for you. I’ll try it again tonight, but I also need to write 5 pages for the writers on the verge or whatever contest this month.
Thanks, Ahmir & Moar. My housemate is busking in public areas and he needs a slight boost in volume for his bluegrass acoustic style. He can do rock and has an amp for that, but he’s in a blues mood lately. I want to get him something portable, battery powered and good enough to be worth the trouble to carry. But there’s a lot of stuff out there. Which are too expensive.
Dan B
@Bill Arnold: Well written, and researched, piece. The most interesting comment about the timeline of Global Warming’s impacts was from a history professor. “Stressors” is the key word for me. She (he?) pointed to an example of agriculture as highly vulnerable to “stressors” and the shock that ripples through the system with global impacts. The media’s focus on sea level, storms, and fires blinds us to the catastrophic blow to civilization that crop failure poses. Syria times 100, or 1,000. Refugees and far right responses times 10 would dismantle most of world stability.
We need to discuss this to have any hope of leadership emerging.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
It was a multi-step process to get all of the approvals from PostcardsToVoters.com and took a day or two, but now I appear to be in their system. I can always share addresses with you if you want to email me, but they can be a little anal about exactly what you write on the card.
Doug R
@tobie: Jacking up the price of Canadian softwood will do that to the housing market.
Jacking up the price of steel and aluminum will help depress the commercial market as well.
Origuy
@Jay: As an example, California gets very little rain from May to October. While we get some the rest of the year, it’s still a semi-arid climate except in the far northwest. Most of our fresh water falls as snow in the Sierra Nevada and is banked there until spring. If the Sierra gets rain in the winter, the snowpack depletes and the water flows out to sea. Along the way it sometimes floods the Central Valley.
Doug R
@feebog: Yeah, how is it bad to get help from other cities?
After Calgary’s massive snowstorm, they got equipment sent from Lethbridge, Red Deer and OF COURSE Edmonton.
lamh36
UGH!!!
Jay
@Origuy:
Yup.
https://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&source=web&rct=j&url=https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/11/us-glacier-national-park-is-losing-its-glaciers-with-just-26-of-150-left&ved=2ahUKEwiW9N3n8PzdAhUtHDQIHZMaCxcQFjABegQICRAB&psig=AOvVaw03iVs9VxnNXnFStliMbGNc&ust=1539295522961432&cf=1
The Glacier Park glaciers once watered 70% of North America’s grain crops.
No more.
Brachiator
@TS (the original):
People here are simply indulging their Trump hatred, and that’s fine because I hate him, too. But sit and monitor is stupid.
Again, fuck media framing. The earlier mention of Obama is useful here. Despite media bullshit, as far as I am concerned, Obama could have flown to Hawaii for a vacation while a hurricane was happening in Florida, and I would have full confidence in him, and would have no doubt that he had the right people in place and could respond in exactly the right way if the need arose. BTW, I would feel the same about Hillary Clinton.
On the other hand, Trump could be in Florida right now, rope himself to a pole and have his orange rag of hair flopping in gale force winds, and he would still be a clueless unfit dipshit.
Trump’s presence at one of his rallies is dumb, dangerous and divisive, but irrelevant to the goddam hurricane.
I live in California. I have been around brush fires and mud slides and had my home damaged in a strong earthquake. Never once did I think that the president had to be personally monitoring events in real time in order to be on top of anything.
I guess we will have, what, two more hurricane seasons while Trump is president? Let’s see if he or any of his people get smarter about climate change. And let’s vote him out. And maybe lock him up for his fraud, theft and treason.
Doug R
@Mnemosyne: You can smell the ocean from pretty much anywhere in Victoria, BC as long as the wind’s right.
Fleeting Expletive
Next week I and my son’s family will take a long train trip to Austin for my daughter’s wedding. Seems it will be large but informal and all inclusive of people, she’s marrying a lovely woman and I’m looking forward to the trip and hanging out with interesting people. It’s a big major trip for the 5 of us, three of us using canes. We’re debating taking our old folding wheelchair (it’s okay with the train) just in case one of us has more than our ordinary problems. I’m old and decrepit but gotta stick around for this and for the election too!
J R in WV
@raven:
Wow, that’s interesting, from here. Moreso there at your house!! I’ve had friends with strokes large and small, and they all recovered with time, even the worst case.
Do take care and obey your doctors! Best of luck, also, too.
And fuck LBJ for ole time’s sake!
Brachiator
@Fleeting Expletive:
This might be a wise precaution to make sure you can have an enjoyable time without worries. Good luck and congratulations!!
Dan B
@Millard Filmore: There are good pieces on this “drought” topic. Try searching for Jet Stream disruption.
In a nutshell: The world has two jet streams in the northern hemisphere where most land and people reside. One bounds the tropics, the other is the divide between the temperate region and the arctic. Think of them as wavy belts. They operate like the air barriers at large store entrances. They keep arctic air from moving south into temperate zones and tropical air from moving north. (sorta…) Just north of the tropics is the, you guessed it, subtropical region. It encircles the globe from the Sahara through tge middle east, Pakistan, northern India, and round to Mexico and the SW USA. It’s arid. Tropical moist air occasionally moves into the subtropics – monsoon in India and summer T storms in Arizona.
As the atmosphere warms the tropics heat and expand pushing the equatorisl tropical zone further north in the northern hemisphere and similarly south in the south. This pushes the arid sub t further into the temperate zone where the world’s breadbasket is located. So the zone where most if humanity lives becomes more influenced by arid subtropical climate patterns.
Other crazy things are starting to make all jet streams wavier and slower and allow weather from the poles and from the tropics to a lesser extent (poles are warming much faster than the equatorial regions so wackier sooner). Its the same ckinate mechanism that allowed arctic air into the eastern US and made the arctic warm above freezing in mid winter. The jet strem provided stability like a high speed air curtain keeps warm air inside the mall and cold air outside. If the air curtain slows it can stop functioning as a barrier.
So, the world won’t be drier but the places most of us live will be. Farther north will be far wetter. Its distribution not total precip.
danielx
Trump NEEDS to go to that rally. He feeds on adulation in an almost physical way. The more he gets, the more he needs…and it will never be enough for him.
AliceBlue
@lamh36: Vapid, soulless, C-list Slovenian “model” says what???
Fuck you Melanie.
Dan B
@Jay: Mt. Rainier has as much volume of glacial ice as all the Rocky Mountain range in the US. If I remember correctly. We’ve also got a couple other volcanoes covered with glacial ice that have had devastating eruptions. And the rotten, acid corroded, rock is held together by virtue of being frozen solid year round. The millions of tons of ice and frozen rock act a bit like a cork in a Champagne bottle. It exerts pressure on the magma chamber It’s starting to thaw and the glaciers have been receding since the 50s. If we don’t get an eruption we may have to settle for massive walls of mud, rock, and water covering lowland cities and farms. They’ve reached 70 miles all the way to Puget Sound in the past. So irrigation, dying salmon, and starving Orcas aside we got us some issues in the PNW!
There must be a curse that says, ‘May you live in exciting times!’
Dan B
@Doug R: Is that “ocean” you’re smelling?
PNW inside joke about Victoria…
TS (the original)
@Brachiator:
I didn’t say it wasn’t stupid – I said it was 100% better than what he is doing. Doesn’t mean he has to say and do anything. I don’t need your lectures to know he is a dipshit with not a clue. The media gives him so many breaks – we were lectured about the repair or lack thereof in New Jersey for 2 years – we hear nothing about the disasters that have occurred in the past 2 years under trump – how many people are still displaced, deaths, injuries, homelessness – what the govt has/has not done. It’s like everything miraculously disappeared into trump wonder fix.
Jay
@Dan B:
Yeah, they’ve found chunks of past slides as far up as Nanaimo, tsnunami effects all the way up Johnson Straight.
BTW, not sure Millard’s “question” was a real question. More an attempt to bring a snowball onto the Senate floor, to “own” the Libtards.