In the downstairs thread, we were discussing an absurd thing that happened earlier today: Trump hosted a “hurricane update” in the Oval Office, seemingly for the sole purpose of whipping out a days-old National Hurricane Center map that one of the low-quality hires altered by crudely extending the “cone of concern” with a Sharpie to include part of Alabama.
Why would anyone do something so idiotic, especially since the actual hurricane has since killed probably lots of people and threatens many more thousands right now? To make it look like Trump wasn’t wrong on Twitter last week when he said Alabama was in the path of Dorian. (Narrator: It wasn’t!)
So, the press got a hold of it this afternoon, and Trump doubled down:
REPORTER: That map you showed us today, it looked like it almost had like a Sharpie on it.
TRUMP: I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. pic.twitter.com/d2oZemOshh
— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) September 4, 2019
More lies and a promise that “better maps” will be “presented later.” Someone should tell him the National Hurricane Center archives forecast maps, and they are available to anyone with an internet connection. Jesus Christ, y’all. I knew a Trump presidency would be non-stop stupid and mind-bogglingly incompetent, but…damn.
Open thread?
Urza
They really are as stupid as we thought in 2016. Which makes it all the sadder that they have power and not a pacifier and a nap.
zhena gogolia
God, I thought congratulating Poland on being invaded by the Nazis was as low as he could go.
rikyrah
Absolutely pathetic.
PATHETIC
Raven
Report from the first day of retirement. I got 2/3 of the way through rebuilding a garden cart. It’s metal and wood and the wood has rotted out on the floor. I went to buy replacement hardware at my local joint and they said they sold them for more than$100 20 years ago! Ca-Ching!
patrick II
40% will believe him. They’ll lose their farms, their overtime, their unions, and maybe their healthcare, but will continue to have faith. Donald someday will make us all rich in a white, hurricane cleansed, America.
germy
Yarrow
“No Sharpie! No Sharpie! You’re the Sharpie!”
patrick II
@germy:
We’ll add that to the stack.
Jeffro
The World’s Mostest Innocent Man strikes again!
Don’t know anything about:
– how that Sharpie circle got on that map
– where those payoffs to my former mistresses came from
– how Pence decided to stay at my resort in Ireland
– how those kids ended up in cages…wait, THAT one I do know…it was OBAMA!
– where all that Inauguration Money went
– why these tariffs are taking such a long time to win my trad…er…scratch that…
Technically, he’s correct: he Doesn’t. Know. ANYTHING.
Which is also the thing that used to set me off the most back in 2016: childish, lying, tax evading, hostile-foreign-power loving…but most of all, Jesus, just so fucking STUPID.
He’ll still be tweeting BS about it for the next 48 hours (when he isnt’ playing yet ANOTHER round of golf)
patrick II
This is just a new level of stupid. I am trying to decide at what level people would think they would get away with this type of excuse for making a mistake on their homework. I am deciding between second and third grade, but leaning towards second. Or between Kilmeade and Doocy.
germy
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Okay, it’s between you and Baud from below (I’ll repost it if modesty forbids him)
TaMara (HFG)
Meanwhile, they are raiding military for the damn, fucking wall. Yes, righties really LOVE the military don’t they?
Brachiator
But those people were in the Bahamas. Not America or any place Trump cares about.
He’s a sad, pathetic man, surrounded by lackeys, toadies and lickspittles.
Betty Cracker
I’m kind of surprised the press is latching onto this ridiculous lie. Why this? Also, the Pence emoluments tour of Ireland seems to have legs. Why that? Oh well. I’ll take it.
germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Those other maps came to him with tears in their eyes. “Sir?” they said, “There was a 95% chance Alabama would be destroyed by Dorian.”
Betty Cracker
@germy: Big, burly maps that probably didn’t even cry when they were babies!
Also, LMAO!
PeakVT
A completely hollow human being. Fame, wealth, power, wives, kids, mistresses – nothing will ever fill the void.
And I don’t feel the least bit sorry for him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
to today’s other scandal
boy, I wonder if Mother will hear the bus coming in time to spread rumors about a family health issue or something
My spidey-sense still tells me Nikki Haley doesn’t want to get that close, and I can’t think of anyone else who 1) would help trump and 2) is short-sighted enough to board the ship at this point, but I can easily imagine trump pushing Pence out in a tantrum and bringing on Acting VP… Vicki Hartzel (sp? birther Congresscritter from MO)? Ken Blackwell? Michelle Bachmann?
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: It’s the absurdity. Kids in cages is sad, but far away and you can feel overwhelmed. This is just so fucking absurd that it’s easy to pick on, and if there’s one thing the press wants, it’s a story that’s easy.
PeakVT
@germy: Finally, an impeachable offense!
germy
@Betty Cracker: This one’s funny, too:
Gin & Tonic
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Jake Tapper thought it was disgusting because he was lying and people are dying. Nicole said that it was unfair to parents who might have been trying to go to the beach. Paraphrasing both, but they were valid points. I think the NWS out of Birmingham corrected trump quickly because it would have be harmful to the tourist industry.
CNN is showing the destruction in Freeport The airport is in dire condition and not sure how long it will take to get operational enough for planes to land in order to bring supplies.
MattF
I think you have to assume Trump did it himself and no one on his staff dared to tell him it was crazy/stupid/pathetic.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Brill!
trollhattan
Did Boris pay Trump to win the news cycle and take Boris’ epic crash and burn off the front pages?
If so, good ROI.
Gin & Tonic
Looks like BoJo has gone bagel on the day in the Commons.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: : applause :
Bex
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Sarah Palin 2.0? She’s tanned, rested and ready.
Another Scott
Who is it that ostentatiously signs official documents with a black Sharpie?
Who is it that thinks he’s a genius about everything but knows nothing about hurricane forecasts?
Who is it that thinks that the “cone of uncertainty” in a hurricane forecast suddenly gets [klaxon][blink]smaller[/blink][/klaxon] on day 6 of a forecast after being huge on day 5?
Donald John Trump.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
gvg
I do not have enough experience with stupid people. I knew in 2016 he was stupid, but I was not capable of imagining this or a lot of other things he has done. I just can’t.
Most stupid people are smart enough to shut up. Most people would accept all the expert help he could get.
Mnemosyne
@germy:
He’ll just blame it on an underling and deny all responsibility. It’s what he does.
BC in Illinois
@TaMara (HFG):
(That’s not e x a c t l y the way I remember it.)
prostratedragon
@Gin & Tonic: Snap election. Seems this was much anticipated, and citizens, especially younger ones, were already getting prepared.
Yarrow
@Gin & Tonic: Not just the day:
Winning!
prostratedragon
@Yarrow: Wow! Events moving faster than refresh!
Martin
What does the worlds largest game of prisoners dilemma look like?
Should be entertaining in a ‘why the fuck is this dipshit running the country’ kind of way.
JoyceH
@Betty Cracker:
Why? Because it’s DERANGED, that’s why! When they write the history of this misbegotten reign of error, this will be a turning point. A six year old CHILD wouldn’t try something this bone-headed, and this is the WHITE HOUSE. A seven or eight year old child might do this, but as a JOKE, drawing the cone extension right in front of you, and then grinning and going, “There! See?”
This is clear and convincing evidence of mental impairment, performed in public, with a complicit staff. It matters. A lot.
catclub
@BC in Illinois: I posted this bit I saw in an email. I immediately jumped to my own conclusion.
Military families indeed.
catclub
@JoyceH:
Not the crowd that is likely to invoke the 25th Amendment.
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
Can you dig it?
mrmoshpotato
Everyone in this bastard administration deserves to be punched in the throat.
East coasters might want to consider moving to southern Alabama. Apparently hurricanes are so afraid of it, that part of the storm just fucking disappears.
Gin & Tonic
@mrmoshpotato:
Yeah, um, no. I’ll take my chances.
HinTN
@Bex:
Fixed
Another Scott
@trollhattan: rofl.
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@Gin & Tonic: But don’t you see how part of the storm shit its pants and ran away?!
JDM
@JoyceH:
This is like Lex Luthor’s henchman in the first Superman movie trying to slip “Otisburg” onto the map. Only not so well or cleverly done.
AliceBlue
And then you’ve got three clowns sitting in there with him with straight faces.
Dave
Do the staffers that do things like this hate him? Are they totally lost in the cult bubble? Or are the remaining staffers such natural and practiced toadies and suckups that they don’t even notice crap like this anymore? Or have they just given up and hit the screw it stage while drinking heavily?
No sympathy for any of them they chose this but I am morbidly curious.
Bill Arnold
@mrmoshpotato:
Michael, 2018, touched the SE corner of Alabama.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dave: I suspect a lot of his staff, though maybe fewer than there were a year ago, two years ago, are in the same club as most elected Rs. They dream of waking up to find that trump has stroked out on the crapper and the more pliable and quiet Pence will be signing the bills they put in front of him. Melania is president of that club.
JPL
@Another Scott: Your damn right.
schrodingers_cat
He is play acting. Like children do. Unfortunately for us he is the real President.
BK in NC
So Stable Genius blew off a trip to Poland so he could “monitor” the hurricane and that monitoring involved looking at ONE map of projected storm path and declaring Alabama in mortal danger THREE DAYS LATER!?! He couldn’t be bothered checking more recent forecasts that were running on a loop on every news station?
Not buying it. My bet is his geographic knowledge of the U.S. Is on a par with his knowledge of every other subject in the universe and he just thought Alabama was one of those damn shithole states on the Atlantic coast that he flies over on the way to Mar A Lago.
Chief Oshkosh
@Betty Cracker:
Because the national press is lazy and thinks it’s selling eyeballs of the even lazier and even stupider populace to advertisers. They think that we only understand extremely simple things. They might be right.
Separately, this isn’t the type of stuff that would seriously be used to unseat a president. Thus, it’s safe. The press knows that it can be poked at through at least two cycles with no fear that anyone will take it seriously. Indeed, the rightwing freaks will use it to say that the press and leftists are always going on and on about silly things like this. See? It’s all silliness. Trump hasn’t REALLY done anything wrong…
trollhattan
@Bill Arnold:
“Show us on the doll, Alabama, where Michael touched you.”
What year was it we ran through the alphabet naming storms? I’m not necessarily enjoying the new normal.
kindness
The National clean up from the Trump presidency is going to take a generation.
jl
Dorian is midway through its predicted turn to the northeast, following Atlantic coastline.
If it did, or does, lurch out its predicted pathway, and by some one weird trick manage to stay a serious storm all the way to Alabama, that would be proof to the fundamentalist Trumpsters that he is truly the new Cyrus and Saul, both wrapped into one.
But looks like not.
On the other hand, some famous fundamentalist preacher (Pat Robertson?) used a similar situation to claim he prevented a hurricane from destroying a city. So, Trump is a miracle worker either way.
mrmoshpotato
@Bill Arnold: This isn’t 2018 Alabama. Apparently 2019 Alabama scares the crap out of hurricanes. ?
debit
@Chief Oshkosh: Something something Clinton Christmas card list.
debbie
Okay, this is clearly worse than the Tan Suit Incident. //
Yarrow
@prostratedragon: Looks like Corbyn is going to make Johnson and the Tories stew in their own mess.
That’s the hardball politics I like to see!
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
His only success has come when no one is around. //
mrmoshpotato
@Yarrow:
Good! Fuck ’em!
TS (the original)
@Yarrow: Bringing in fixed term parliaments was the start of the demise of democracy under the Westminster system of government. Prior to this the PM could call an election any time he/she wanted to do so. Former PM did it so they could NOT be ousted by a vote of no confidence. It has not worked so well in this instance
Barney
@Betty Cracker: Have you seen the reaction by the Irish to what Pence said?
How Mike Pence shat on the new carpet in Ireland’s spare room
That’s the Irish Times, held to be the ‘Newspaper of Record’.
brantl
@Bex: She’d have to get an iron girdle, to keep Trump off her. Shapely female raccoons have been known to run from him…..
debbie
@Yarrow:
Isn’t it that he won’t agree to an election unless the No-Deal is taken off the table? I’m wondering whether BoJo will cave, like Trump does.
Llelldorin
@Betty Cracker: I think it’s that this meets two key requirements for the press:
(1) It’s deeply, hilariously, self-evidently stupid. You can’t even make it not stupid through the usual “let’s redefine all the words in his sentence to nonstandard meanings—see, it now makes sense!” game.
(2) It’s apolitically stupid. The press is terrified to call the Republicans on obvious political lies, because they’re afraid they’ll lose the Trump fans in their audience. There’s no political vested interest in either side on having the hurricane threaten Alabama; this is entirely a matter of Trump’s ego
sp98
Open thread?
Sorry if this has been discussed already, but is anyone else finding that BJ pages load very slowly? Might this be related to the site rebuild?
(using Firefox on a MacBook Pro – I know, so 2015!)
Miss Bianca
@zhena gogolia:
Fucking really? I had heard that, but figured that it *had* to have been the Onion putting acid in the punch bowl. I figured not even Trump could be that clueless. But this wouldn’t be the first time I’d figured wrong.
Barney
@TS (the original): Nah, it was needed to stop a coalition government just having a new election the first time the major partner thought it could get an absolute majority of seats. It has just meant that Johnson couldn’t end the parliament to stop the extension bill going through, which is a Good Thing.
The only annoying thing about it now is that it means 7 weeks from a vote of no confidence to the election, which turned out to be not enough time from the end of the summer recess before the EU exit date. The timing of the Tory leadership election may have been carefully calculated to give Johnson just a day or two in power before the recess, so that a vote of no confidence would look premature to all Tories wondering about rebelling.
Anne Laurie
Mike in NC
For the past 2-1/2 years, Washington DC has been enveloped by a Cone of Stupidity.
Sherparick
@Llelldorin: But supporting Trump’s ego is now the defining characteristic of being a good Republican. The Emperor knows he is buck naked, but he is not naked if all his supporters are loyal enough to admire his beautiful clothes. He discovers his enemies when they point out his nakedness.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@sp98: Site rebuild is separate from the production site(different servers, IIRC).
Brachiator
@Barney:
Trump’s errand boy certainly stayed on message.
Quinerly
@JoyceH: nailed it!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Anne Laurie: OMG, that’s funny.
NotMax
@sp98
It’s the creeping decrepitude of the current site structure and its appurtenances (looking at you, cdnstackpath), plus the finicky nature of FYWP’s hiccups, which necessitated the upcoming rebuild. Nothing to do with the ongoing rebuild itself, which is on another server entirely.
Miss Bianca
@Mike in NC: “Chief, I *insist* on the Cone of Stupidity!”
@Anne Laurie: OK, that is fuckin’ funny.
Quinerly
@Barney: read this this morning. Great piece.
NotMax
“Luckily, Alabama can move out of the path of the storm. Look right here on the map – it is clearly marked ‘Mobile.'” //
Another Scott
@Yarrow: Horse’s mouth.
Dunno if that Tweet was before or after the BBC tweet that had no qualification about Corbyn’s opposition to an election before October 31.
I’d be very skeptical of Boris’s before October 31 as well, myself. But the main thing is to keep the UK from crashing out on October 31.
Cheers,
Scott.
TS (the original)
@Barney:
Which was a right the PM had – I will always think/believe that fixed term parliaments cause many more problems than they solve. IMO Boris is the PM (whether he should be is a trump like question) so he should be able to call an election whenever.
ljdramone
@trollhattan:
2005. Twenty-eight named tropical storms. Fifteen of them became hurricanes. The last six were named with Greek letters. Tropical Storm Zeta was still going in January 2006, months after the normal end of the hurricane season.
TS (the original)
@Sherparick:
Main evidence on display – gutting the defense budget to build a wall
They gave away family values, they gave away economic management, they gave away legislating & now they have given away the military.
m.j.
Blaming the weather service by saying they were 95% certain and then saying, “and it turns out that that was wrong,” must make our weather service people very happy.
And just now after having written that a question occurs to me.
Aren’t business master-minds supposed to understand probabilities and risk assessment?
prostratedragon
@Yarrow: Just saw. In addition to recent posts from Tony Jay and others, there’s a set of FAQs at Guardian that makes some of the thinking a bit more clear. I’m sure Mr. Jay will be along sometime.
VOR
I wonder if the US Navy will deploy a hospital ship to the Bahamas. USNS Comfort is on a planned trip to Central and South America. Currently at Trinidad and Tobago. As far as I can tell, USNS Mercy is in port in San Diego. I suppose the Bahamas is close enough to the US we could airlift to Miami.
Bill Arnold
@m.j.:
Some of them have pretty good intuitive understanding of probabilities and sprays of possibilities.
The POTUS is purely intuitive, recklessly sloppy, willfully ignorant, mentally lazy, and there are underlying brain issues. DJT thinks he has some control over luck, and has been seduced (he’s easy that way) into the abstract idea of being god-chosen by a Mammonite-gospel god. (Narrator: Pathetic Weakling! and Not :-) This is why the quirky path that Dorian (and the forecasts) took, unexpectedly missing Puerto Rico, bulls eye/cone center on Mar-a-Lago for a few forecast cycles, very rare stall of a Cat 5 over the Bahamas and etc, were noticed with alarm and suspicion of hostile-to-Trump agency (if I’m reading tells right), particularly the Mar-a-Lago bit.
Tehanu
Uh, shouldn’t that be “Moron #SharpieGate”?
Ken
@m.j.:
Probably, but what has that got to do with Trump?
p_story
Re. Stupid:
The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity
1. Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
2. The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any
circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
Prof. Carlo Cipolla
hotshoe
Something says that Trump committed a federal crime by displaying the altered map.
18 U.S.C. §2074
“Whoever knowingly issues or publishes any counterfeit weather forecast or warning of weather conditions falsely representing such forecast or warning to have been issued or published by the Weather Bureau, United States Signal Service, or other branch of the Government service, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ninety days, or both.”
sp98
@NotMax: Thanks for the insight. I wasn’t sure if I missed the announcement of the rebuild going on line, as it seemed like a few visual differences on the site today, and the slowdown onset was so abrupt.
Taobhan
Trump was day-dreaming about that chip shot to the green when he was getting briefed on Hurricane Dorian. Almost certainly Alabama wasn’t mentioned in the briefing but Trump wanted to impress with his knowledge of Southern geography and blurted out “Alabama is in the path of Dorian!” in his tweet. Alas, he couldn’t admit sleeping through the briefings. So, he doubled/tripled/quadrupled down on his earlier statement and even embellished it with a citation of “95% accuracy” of the forecast he heard only in his mind. The weather service representative in Alabama who rebutted Trump’s claim after the first tweet has probably already been cashiered from the federal service. Can’t allow any “lese majeste” on Trump’s watch.
hotshoe
@germy:
Oops, sorry, germy, I’m an idiot. I did a search for “crime” in this thread, and missed where you had early on posted this tweet about “law”.
Well, it’s obviously not a crime, anyways, if the Dumpster does it. :(
Alan Barney
“If I had lost Alabama, I would have said, “Sorry folks.”. Obama lost Ukraine and never said, “Sorry.” But, I was ready. If I had lost Alabama I would have told the American people, “Sorry.”.
J R in WV
@Betty Cracker:
Well, if you squeezed Trump until he was as slender as Obama, THEN he might be as tall as Obama. But all the squeezing and stretching would probably be really bad for him.
Think we could talk him into trying it as a new medical therapy for heightness enhancement?