In the past 96 hours, we had a crucial midterm election, the president replaced his racist, bootlicking AG with a griftier one, a guy shot up a bar, killing 12, the GOP started claiming that counting ballots is fraud and half of California caught on fire.
— Joshua Holland ? (@JoshuaHol) November 9, 2018
Oval Office Occupant sez, Hold my Diet Coke!
It is not said enough just what a horrible person the President is (we often focus on the lying, the gaslighting, the bigotry). But his cruelty at every turn doesn’t get highlighted enough. Strange to want to be President for a third of the country—and screw the rest. https://t.co/0ZygpgUuWa
— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) November 10, 2018
Nearly half of the forest land in California is managed by … wait for it … the federal government. https://t.co/U4iwgJeJvJ
— Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) November 10, 2018
If Obama had attacked a state suffering a massive natural disaster while in France Republicans would have revoked his passport and denied him readmission. https://t.co/EDQdwIUWm7
— Seth Masket (@smotus) November 10, 2018
As @KPCC @LAist journalists continue to report on #CaliforniaFires, I wanted to share out some links.
What we've confirmed ? https://t.co/kBjKCiG3dk
How to help those affected ? https://t.co/bTFUO5U0u5
FAQ and how to ask more questions ? https://t.co/MpzCtoF4Kx pic.twitter.com/6dB8mITRKT
— Ashley Alvarado (@AshleyAlvarado) November 10, 2018
SFAW
Oh, bullshit. That’s not even close to plausible.
They would have sent “Seal Team Six” (or whatever the real name is of a special forces kidnap-the-terrists team) to France, put him in a sack, and sent him to Egypt to be tortured. After that, they would return him to the USA to be executed for treason, followed by a fair trial which would find him guilty.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
Jerzy Russian
Christ, what an asshole! Beyond that, I am speechless at the moment.
rikyrah
NYDN Politics (@NYDNPolitics) Tweeted:
Phillips: Stacey Abrams understands African-Americans have to be twice as good to get half what others get in this country
https://t.co/moVIDH4Q0s https://t.co/OsyKOBjFyC https://twitter.com/NYDNPolitics/status/1060955534810079233?s=17
Schlemazel
I got good news in the mail today. I have been accepted at the Mayo clinic. I have a day of tests on the 26th & we’ll go from there.
Still relatively pleased with Tuesdays results here on the tundra. We swept the State offices (even Ellison managed to get by) defeated two scumbag GOPper Congressmen but lost two D open seats including the one our new Gov willingly abandoned to primary our nominated candidate. I am finding this is a sin I will not forget. the last 2 open races the DFL has nominated smart, capable, progressive women & both times men with questionable credentials have won the primaries. Dayton stumbled badly his first couple of years but then did not do as badly as I feared. Walz was an NRA favorite until last year when he decided to run for Gov. He has no experience in state government so how he will turn out is TBD
Kay
Low quality hires. They never get better, always worse. He and his administration behave much, much worse then they did during the campaign. It’s just 24/7 screaming at people and insulting them now. Sarah Sanders ALONE has gotten much worse. I don’t think she would have set up that ridiculous scheme at the press conference a year ago.
Is anyone going to rescue those poor soldiers at the border now that the midterms are over? My God, let them go home. They may be down there forever now that the media coverage disappeared.
JPL
Next week has been exhausting. I can’t remember where I saw that but it is so true.
@Schlemazel: Good for you!!!!
Yarrow
From the Soledad O’Brien tweet:
It’s not “strange.” It’s completely predictable. He’s a narcissist and a racist. He does what they do. He has behaved this way his whole life and it was obvious what he’d do before he was ever elected. This sort of comment is disingenuous at best.
Aziz, light!
I work for the federal agency that manages all those federal forests. I think what the chief executive means is that he would like us to clearcut those forests and pave them over so that there will be nothing left to burn, then transfer the land to its rightful owners, the Bundy family. The money in our budget is being wasted because we have not carried out this highly effective remedy.
Actually he is simply passing on the usual noise from the Cato Institute or similar anti-government source that there should be no public lands and the government should play no role whatsoever in environmental protection.
Kay
What do they have the soldiers at the border doing, anyway? They can’t even pose for photographs- all the media people left the morning of election day. We all know this was a scam. No reason they should have to miss Thanksgiving just to save face for Donald Trump and media. Jig’s up. Let them go.
Elizabelle
The cruelty and ugliness of threatening to cut Federal funding in the face of a national disaster genuinely surprised me. It’s a new low, even for Trump.
Anyway, we won, and we are still winning. Count those votes, dammit. Heard an NPR recap at 9 last night with the jeering Republicans in the background. Sounded like they want to pull off a
Brooks BrothersRed MAGA Hats Riot. Ain’t gonna work this time.Yarrow
@Aziz, light!: He’s live tweeting Fox News, most likely. If they say it, he’ll say it.
Kay
California Republicans really got creamed. He’s angry. He wants to punish the people there.
JPL
@Aziz, light!: At this point he is going to rid us of the CDC and HHS also. Elections matter.
Miss Bianca
@Aziz, light!: So, it’s not simply that the orange fuckwit doesn’t grok that it’s the federal government that actually controls federal lands in CA, not the latte-sipping libtards who live there?
ruemara
@Schlemazel: Sending good vibes. I’m aghast at our dictator, but not surprised. It’s SDCC ticket time, so I’m waiting… to wait… to see if maybe I can buy a couple of tickets
feebog
There are no “forests” in Thousand Oaks. It is a suburban extension of LA with a lot of dry brushy areas that go up like kindling because we have not had any rain for months. Our President is a moron. And yes, I realize I am preaching to the choir.
SFAW
@Elizabelle:
To which Lying Littledick responds “Hold my beer.”
Just as there is no such thing as Peak Wingnut, there is no Trump Nader.
NB: To the pedants: yes, I know how it’s spelled. Try to think outside the box.
Elizabelle
From the LA Times. Gustavo Arellano: An obituary for old Orange County, dead at age 129
Wapiti
Anecdotally, when we went across the Washington Cascades this year, we saw a huge amount of standing dead timber. Pine beetles that eat though the inner bark will eventually girdle a tree, cutting off nutrient flow from the roots. Pine beetles get killed off in long cold winters. Mild winters mean more dry dead trees subject to fire. Climate change effects come in different forms and flavors.
Anne Laurie
@Aziz, light!: I’m so old, I remember Ronald Reagan assuring us that trees cause air pollution.
Repubs are the Death Party; they hate anything not deceased & corrupting.
rikyrah
PragmaticObotsUnite (@PragObots) Tweeted:
RT @LiberalPhenom: This is why trump took shots at black women yesterday. Black women doing the GOTV work, getting elected at all levels and leading in Congress with tough Sisters like Maxine Waters leading the charge to take Trump down
https://twitter.com/LiberalPhenom/status/1061253901079506944?s=17
danielx
Horrible end to the week, but last night was much better. Saw and heard Joe Bonamassa burning it up and then got video of my man Boris (the large tabby) reaching up and hooking a locked door by the door handle and opening it to get out to the garage. He’s a lot smarter than I thought.
Platonailedit
sukabi
Zinke has made a similar statement regarding California’s fires / forest management. Look for a move to open the National Forests up logging and mining, and or selling them off as a “solution” , that’s what they’re working toward.
kindness
I know a bunch of people around Paradise. Chico alums. The forest surrounding that is all BLM land. Trump’s threats to pull funding from California is just a chew toy for him.
For so long many of us have been wondering what it was going to take for honorable Republicans to stand up to the worst impulses of the president and party. All we ever hear is crickets or Sarah trying to claim Trump is the victim here. Are there any honorable Republicans left? We’ll know if we ever find one. This is all going to get a lot worse before it gets better. When charges start coming down Trump will make Nixon look like a piker.
Donate to a disaster relief fund of your choosing please. Those folks are gonna need it.
Flanders Other Neighbor
I commute by motorcycle across the Bay Bridge. The office in SF stunk of smoke in the morning (until I either stopped noticing or the HVAC cleared things a bit), the sun and sky were a weird reddish-orange on the way home, and I can’t do my usual weekend mountain biking until the air clears. But, nothing is on fire here, and my friend in Chico still has his home at the moment.
germy
@Anne Laurie:
The only value they see a tree having is as lumber.
normal human: “Global warming is causing forest fires!”
republican: “Cut down all the trees. Problem solved.”
Kelly
@Wapiti: Beetles, drought and fire season keeps getting longer. Some of the fires in southern Oregon this summer burnt areas that burnt in the Silver fire in 1987, burnt again in the Biscuit fire of 2002. The fire suppression and reduced logging explanations don’t explain that.
Cheryl Rofer
Lapassionara
@Anne Laurie: I remember “you’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all.”
mapaghimagsik
Christ, what an asshole
AndoChronic
Does anyone have any CA animal rescue donation sites/ tips they’d like to share with a focus on these particular fires? All of mine are cat centric, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’d like to share some that are more inclusive. Thanks in advance.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Cheryl Rofer
Ohio Mom
@Schlemazel: Good luck at the Mayo Clinic. They solved the mystery of an old friend’s mother’s symptoms after many others (including the Cleveland Clinic), over a period of years, couldn’t.
I have a medical quandary (admittedly minor) of my own. Anyone have experience with a trigger finger that won’t respond to cortisone? Not really excited sbout prospect of surgery (though I will probably change my mind about that).
Platonailedit
Anonymous At Work
I know the Acosta thing is a bunch of navel-gazing but has anyone tried to confront Fox with this story from 2009?
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/23/white-houses-fox-news-boy_n_331437.html
Anyone wanna take bets on whether Fox will return the solidarity the rest of the press corps gave them?
Anyone wanna make the analogy of a battered spouse, that the press corps won’t hold Fox accountable when it takes Trump’s side?
Cheryl Rofer
Platonailedit
chris
Someone in the last thread asked if the vote counting would continue over the weekend. At least some of it will, Arizona for instance, and you can follow along with these pages from Politico. Scroll down to the maps and mouse over. Updates are automatic. Never imagined saying this but, well done, Politico.
Schlemazel
a little bitter comic relief
GOP Jesus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ2L-R8NgrA
patrick II
I thought I noticed a tear in Jeff Sessions eye when he shook Whitaker’s hand as he left the Justice Department. It is good to know that, like his boss, he is heartfelt in his hatred and his abuse of the law to harm people of color. I would hate to think wasn’t sincere considering all of the harmful acts he has been responsible for. I hate phonies.
Just to put a final exclamation point on his tour America’s top legal officer, good ol’ boy Jeff limited consent degrees to stop police abuse as he walked out the door. One last shot straight from the heart, Jeff.
Juice Box
@Ohio Mom: I’m a retired GP, it’s a pretty minor piece of surgery and very effective. I’ve never seen one go bad.
@Elizabelle: All of the districts along the entire coast from Mexico to Canada except one in Washington are now blue. That Washington district was a close loss too.
Schlemazel
@Ohio Mom:
Yeah, I know what is wrong with me but the story of what to do about it changes regularly. this will be the 8th new doctor in 11 years. They are all excited when I first walk in because my condition is so weird but then seem to lose interesting. There are only 2 places (UofMN and Mayo) that have the experience required to trust them with the surgery & they are the two I am dealing with now.
Mrs. had to break down & have the surgery for her trigger finger & is now sorry she put it off. Good luck with whatever choice works for you.
Mike R
@Ohio Mom: had same problem, surgery was no big deal. You can take this for what is is worth, the surgeon told me if any other fingers start to stick that taping them to a splint at night would help eliminate the inflammation and help prevent further problems in other fingers. In my case it has seemed to help. Good luck with whatever you try, it really is a bit disconcerting when a finger locks up.
Mike in NC
Trump truly is the biggest scumbag who ever drew a breath. Stalin could have given him empathy lessons, with no success.
Platonailedit
Another Scott
‘Morning everyone.
Something on the lighter (?) side – You Be The Referee bait
:-/ :-) :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
West of the Rockies
@kindness:
I’m pretty sure our 1st District Congressman, Do Nothing Doug Lamalfa, won’t have jack to say against Trump. It’s hard to speak out when your lips are surgically tethered to Trump’s massive pink ass.
Another Scott
@Schlemazel: Excellent news! Here’s hoping they get you fixed up quickly and permanently. You’ve had a long road with your medical issues, it’s great that things are looking up!!
Cheers,
Scott.
West of the Rockies
@Ohio Mom:
Rest the hell out of it. Can you immobilize it for a couple of days?
sdhays
@Platonailedit:
To be fair, this White House can’t even be bothered to vet people for important positions like Supreme Court Justice or Attorney General, so it’s no surprise that other types of planning are beyond their capabilities. Heck, this White House can’t even decide if Spankee knows anything about his nominees or not.
Another Scott
@Aziz, light!: +1
Hang in there.
Cheers,
Scott.
A Ghost To Most
@Elizabelle:
Where do we go to piss on OCs grave?
sdhays
@West of the Rockies: Being surgically tethered is critical because it gets confusing which is his rectum and which is his mouth.
A Ghost To Most
@Wapiti:
Sorry to hear that. On the plus side, dead timber means news growth. Colorado is seeing that in places now.
Platonailedit
Brent Wilson
@Yarrow: she’s saying its strange for anyone to want that not that it’s surprising that he does.
Platonailedit
West of the Rockies
@Platonailedit:
Fake facts! Burn the witch (warlock)!
Amir Khalid
@Platonailedit:
When you get right down to it, Trump doesn’t even want to be president to that one-third of the country: they are not really constituents to him, they are marks. The only American whom Donald Trump really cares about being president for is Donald Trump.
The Dangerman
First sips of caffeine reaction…
…fuck Trump (imaginative, I know). FUCK him.
Maybe it’s time for CA to go CalExit (I know it won’t happen, by a Guy can dream early on a Saturday). Wanna threaten to withhold federal Funds,which disproportionately come from us? Watch us go and then withhold our taxes. Then, goodluck to those shithole Red States (ya know, Trump’s basest of bases) we keep running through our tax dollars (so, fuck them, too).
Maybe when we threaten to withhold our money, they’ll start kissing our ass. We have two butt cheeks, so the lines form to the left and the right.
Yeah, I’m a bit pissed.
Achrachno
@A Ghost To Most: Unfortunately with the changing climate regime it may be signaling the end of the forest in some cases. If conditions are wrong trees won’t grow any more.
Platonailedit
Another Scott
@Ohio Mom: No experience with finger surgery. But I’m reminded of an issue my MIL had. The tendon would slip off the first hand joint of her middle finger, and she’d grimace and mess around with it to try to get it back into place. We had visions of her having to have some sort of surgery to get it back into place and stabilize it. It didn’t happen very often but was always disconcerting. I eventually figured out that I could slide it back into place by pushing it up with the tip of my thumb. She was always so relieved when I was able to “fix” it.
She lived to be 92, and never had the surgery.
Not really applicable in your case, but it reminded me of how amazingly complex our hands are and how we take them for granted!
Here’s hoping you get fixed up quickly and permanently as well. Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
West of the Rockies
@The Dangerman:
Trump can kiss our collective ass, not on the right, and not on the left, but right in the middle!
Schlemazel
@The Dangerman:
If CA I would consider moving there. That is after I failed to get canada’s American cousin to return to the mother country. We love hockey & supply most of the players to the US so we would fit right in
Fair Economist
@Achrachno: That is part of it. I saw an estimate that the climate change that has already happened has raised the altitude forests survive in CA by 1000 feet. That is a lot of doomed forest and eventually it will all burn.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t know anything about UK backbenchers, so this guy may be a dick in his own right, but he’s also (I’m pretty sure) Winston Churchill’s grandson. You know that stupid constipated face trump makes when he thinks he’s being resolute? He’s trying to look like Churchill
Another Scott
Browsing my other regular tabs, I see that the Russian Troll Bots are going after ddale8. He’s getting to them…
Such a horrible, unfair smack-down of Donnie!!11 Posting what he said!!11
(groucho-roll-eyes.gif)
The battle against nonsense and lies is never-ending. I’m glad we have allies like Daniel Dale.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Of course, maybe Trump4Hope is really a double-reverse fake Russian Troll Bot and I missed the satire??!!ONE Twitter is a horrible medium for actually enabling understanding…”)
raven
@Ohio Mom: I almost cut my pinky off a few years back and damaged the ulnar nerve. They fixed it.
Chyron HR
@Another Scott:
“I wanted to be a farmer but what with one thing and the other I spent 70 years as a racist mobster instead.”
Nelle
I had surgery to fix a ruptured sagital band – that bit that goes across the knuckles to hold the tendons in place. Not too bad except that my brace had my middle finger permanently rigid and in the FU position to the world. But, actually, for the six weeks it was in place, it saved me the effort of raising it whenever aggravated. It was always on the job and ready to go. I’m glad I had the surgery – I really had little control over that finger and I do a lot of embroidery and crochet, which was impossible. My hand is still weak, but that is because I was to use my cane in that hand to protect my hip and I reinjured the hand itself. Damn, I sound old today.
My impression of Paradise is that it is pretty much totally red in votes. My BIL, who inherited the retirement home of the parents there, cut off communication years ago since my husband (Naval Academy grad, three tours in Vietnam) was insufficiently patriotic in the way instructed by Rush Limbaugh (BIL, of prime age during Vietnam, found deferments worked as well for him as they did for Cheney and Trump). I have made the effort to find out that he did get out and is waiting in an evacuation center until he can go back and see if anything is left. From the maps, I doubt if more than the chimney of that fine home is there. (He barred us from every going there anyway, so it doesn’t change our lives in any way.) I asked my husband if he would help his brother if asked. My husband just looked startled, as if to say, “I have a brother?” Anyway, I wonder how Trump is playing among those in his base sitting in the evacuation centers. They likely don’t have much news. Or they think it is fake news.
Frankensteinbeck
I think it’s important to keep in mind that Trump believes a lot of the bullshit that comes out of his mouth. Racists believe, and have long believed, that California is a Hellhole of violent crime (all those brown people!), poverty, regulations that force the average person to fill out forms and then be refused the right to paint their own car, and absolutely everything the government touches failing. These things have to be true, otherwise white people aren’t right about everything.
@Kay:
I thought they never went in the first place, that he canceled the plans before anyone was moved. Threatening to do things and then sitting on his ass IS Trump’s MO.
@Yarrow:
And it is the specific mandate from the voters who elected him. They want a government by themselves, of themselves, for themselves, and for everyone else to suffer and die.
FlipYrWhig
@Another Scott: yeah that sounds like it’s right up his alley, what with the constant physical labor, dirt, and self-reliant problem-solving. :/
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yes, that’s Miriam Adelson as in “Mrs Sheldon”…
Skepticat
@Elizabelle:
If only this were the bottom.
raven
@Nelle: I made contact from my buddy who lives there and he’s ok but he doesn’t know about his house. He’s a Nam and VVAW Vet and I don’t know about the town but he’s a no-nonsense progressive!
sukabi
If it hasn’t been linked already, Winston Churchill’s grandson laid waste to Trump’s failure to appear
Wapiti
On a impulse I went to Google Maps, looked at Paradise, CA in the satellite view, then did the street side view. Holy heck there was a lot of foliage throughout the city, and none of it is National Forest/State Forest land. From my time in California, I’d suggest that the Central Valley is unpleasant if you don’t have shade, and the shade probably keeps the AC bill a little lower, but the fire had a path right up to their doors.
Jay
@Frankensteinbeck:
Nope, the first deployments arrive a week ago and new troops are continuing to arrive.
The Show Must Go On and the money must be wasted.
sukabi
@FlipYrWhig: No, what he meant by his delusion of “being a farmer” is owning a plantation with all that implies and
walkingriding around with a whip making sure everything is in order.StringOnAStick
@danielx: Boris looks like he’s making a clever if perhaps a bit snarky comment.
I’m a tabby lover of those expressive, well made up eyes; we’ve got two longer haired tabby sisters that are just past a year old, and one of them appears to still be growing at a good pace, she might end up being close to Steve sized.
dr. luba
@SFAW:
I’m guessing you meant “nadir,” but Nader works well, too. A nice pair of homonyms/synonyms ;)
Ohio Mom
Thanks everyone for the advice and thoughts on trigger fingers. I see my Rheumatologist (again) tomorrow — I think she has been biding her time until I agree to let her send me to a hand surgeon.
I feel a little braver after reading your stories. If I go missing for a while, it will be because my right hand is healing.
SFAW
@dr. luba:
I’m guessing you didn’t read my “NB” in that same comment, which would provide an answer to your “guessing.”
Sloane Ranger
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yep, he is Winston Churchill’s grandson. He’s a Tory but a Remainer. He recently backed calls for a 2nd Referendum. So, while I’d never vote for him, he’s OK.
Middlelee
I’m so grateful Trump and Melania did not attend the armistice ceremony. Their crude, classless behavior would have been a much worse embarrassment than them not appearing.
J R in WV
@Nelle:
This reminds me of my brother… I was about to be drafted in 1970 when I enlisted in the Navy. My brother never needed to serve, yet he’s the patriot Republican, and I’m the unAmerican hippy. We speak to one another on our birthdays. I called him last August, I expect him to call me next month, if he remembers. We don’t talk about politics.
opiejeanne
@Elizabelle: I was going to point out that Nixon was born in Whittier, which is not in Orange County but I was wrong. Born in Yorba LInda. I thought he moved to YL as a child.
Fun article.
Ruckus
@sukabi:
He wouldn’t even make sure that one of his racist flunkies was ridding around whipping things moving and keeping order. That would be too much like work for him.
Ruckus
To those who think that drumpf wants to be a dictator, he doesn’t. He want’s to be king. Not moving, not worrying, having people attend to his every whim and desire. All the crappy food and diet soda he wants, lovely females to do things to him, not a worry in the world, everyone everywhere calling his name in awe, while hoping for a few scraps, or even one crumb falling from his tiny hands as he stuffs his face, even someone to wipe his ass….. You know a real king, the guy who owns everything and everyone.
sukabi
@Ruckus: You’re probably right about that, however I’m sure he’d want to be kept up to date on the beatings…