President Biden viewed the devastation caused by the fires that ripped through the western part of Maui, seeing the hollowed homes, structures and singed trees left behind by the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. pic.twitter.com/JjyE9IWos0
— The Associated Press (@AP) August 22, 2023
Maui County Mayor Bissen: "I wanted to say how responsive the President has been. He called yesterday. I asked for the help that we needed."
"And within two hours one of his cabinet members called me back to answer my question. So, we've been getting all the help that we need." pic.twitter.com/v8waWEO0qJ
— Andrew Bates (@AndrewJBates46) August 21, 2023
This recovery will be long and challenging.
But we’ll continue to be on the ground, providing support to the people of Hawai’i for as long as it takes. pic.twitter.com/mPJK8P0Sh5
— President Biden (@POTUS) August 21, 2023
Along the Biden motorcade route in Lahaina pic.twitter.com/ZDhNtOA1dS
— Steve Holland (@steveholland1) August 21, 2023
If you don't get distracted by dogs you have a heart of stone.
But more to the point it's a search and rescue dog and he's asking if they have boots because the ground gets hot (which is 100% true), so maybe shut up on this one? https://t.co/5ndgjTfn18
— Numbersmuncher (lol I'm not paying $8 for a check) (@NumbersMuncher) August 22, 2023
President Biden, referencing a nearby historic banyan tree that is still standing, and has become a symbol of hope in rebuilding.
“Fire cannot reach its roots. That’s Maui. That’s America.” pic.twitter.com/cc9lUpHQCE
— Matt Viser (@mviser) August 21, 2023
I’ve never identified with tree more than I do in this moment tbh. https://t.co/FKhg2Auq7o
— Jason Karsh (@jkarsh) August 21, 2023
There are photos and videos being misrepresented on social media to spread conspiracy theories about what caused the wildfires on Maui. This is an AP Fact Check. pic.twitter.com/FRMAQX2Oi7
— The Associated Press (@AP) August 21, 2023
Baud
I wanted to see Biden and the dog but now I regret giving the RNC a click.
ETA: I would have been on the ground giving the dog belly rubs.
JPL
The front page of the AJC has a large picture of Maui with the headline Biden: We’ll help Maui for as long as it takes.
Next to it is a smaller column with the headline Trump to report to jail on Thursday.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
And that’s why I support the Baud! 20XX campaign.
OzarkHillbilly
2 articles sure to piss one off: No OB-GYNs left in town: what came after Idaho’s assault on abortion
US businessman is wannabe ‘warlord’ of secretive far-right men’s network
I managed to read the first. Barely. The 2nd piece I barely made it thru the first paragraph and all I could think was, “Talk about a target rich environment…” So I stopped. I don’t need to spend my Tuesday totally pissed off.
moonbat
@JPL: That’s a front page worth clipping.
Anyone else pissed that suddenly news organizations are concerned about the conditions in the Fulton County Jail because a rich white man will have to step foot inside it’s doors? Where was the reporting when regular, run of the mill people were dying there?!
RevRick
We — collectively— have done this. In 1896, when Svante Arrhenius discovered the greenhouse gas effect of carbon dioxide, he predicted that if we doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we would raise the average global temperature by five degrees.
We have tapped the bounty in the basement, those fossil fuels that we use for producing electricity, powering our vehicles, and heating our homes, heedless of the consequences, and now nature is telling us what is going to happen.
Because of warming temperatures, it has never gotten cold enough to kill off the pine bark beetles, leading to killing off vast areas of forest, creating a tinderbox in Canada. Hence the record wildfires. Because of warming temperatures, soils and grasses dry out, and storms get more intense, and droughts last longer. So, more fires and floods… and can famine be far behind?
The GOP solution is extract more fossil fuels, let the world burn, and screw the kids and grandkids.
bbleh
The degree of destruction is just incredible. 40mph winds turn a wildfire into a blast furnace.
I REEELY hope a big chunk of that tree survives. Glad they have an arborist on it.
And I’m sure that, were this a town in Kentucky or Idaho or someplace, there would already be some country-music artist crooning out some extended whine about the gummint abandoning the town and leaving the residents to die in the rubble, and it would be getting angry airplay all over right-wing media.
J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian)
Distracted by dogs? Wait until these yahoos find out who the real ruler of the White House is (hint: rhymes with “pillow”).
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: IMO The worthy house is preaching the prosperity bible. Feed me and god will reward you.
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: When folks turn over fascist-kook rocks to take a look at the creepy-crawlies beneath, it seems like the Claremont Institute keeps coming up. And they’re fancy-schmancy lawyers and academics! “Think tank” my ass!
cain
@OzarkHillbilly: Let em find out – no better way to teach women’s health I suppose than to realize that all the support network for women will dry up.
Idaho the land of religious cults and exploiters.
JPL
@moonbat: Locally they have covered the conditions of the jail, and Senator Ossoff has been a leader in trying to get improvement. The federal government is also looking into the conditions of the jail. trump is supposedly a germaphobe so he must be very concerned.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: His behavior is absolutely normal and kind. What the fuck is wrong with those people? (Don’t answer.)
Eolirin
@Betty Cracker: We really need to figure out how to dismantle the right’s influence networks. Even things like the book banning wave and the anti trans panic are being orchestrated and executed by a surprisingly small number of people.
Soprano2
I have a picture of hubby in front of that tree. It’s an amazing thing to see. I hope it recovers.
Bill Arnold
@RevRick:
Agriculture depends on predictable weather.
Irrigation can paper over some of the precipitation variability, for a little while.
So yeah, mass famines are in humanity’s near (next several decades) future. Many adaptations to food production/consumption/efficiency are possible, with international will. Moves towards reducing GHG emissions will be far more important, though.
bbleh
@OzarkHillbilly: @Betty Cracker: @Eolirin: It is indeed a small number of very clever, mostly wealthy operators (think Rupert Murdoch), some of whom are True Believers but most of whom are merely sociopathic grifters. But I don’t think it would do much good trying to go after them, since as OzarkHillbilly observes, it’s a target-rich environment. Their audience WANTS to hear and buy and believe this stuff. The operators aren’t convincing people; they’re validating them. And if you take one out, there are a dozen others who will crawl all over each other to get the empty chair because a lot of ’em make bank.
Ken
I’ve heard that telling people with a crazy conspiracy theory “I see you’ve fallen for the coverup — it’s really aliens” sometimes gets them to shut up, but I have no personal experience.
OzarkHillbilly
@cain:
Because the poor and powerless are always the ones to die.
Eolirin
@bbleh: The networks themselves need to be dismantled. I’m not talking about going after people individually. Some of this is policy changes, like higher taxation and enforcement so there’s less money for them to dump into propping up these initiatives. Some is legislative and judicial, reversing the way the first ammendment has been weaponized, limiting politicial spending, etc
And most importantly better transparency laws.
Old School
Japan better have a pretty solid alibi.
RevRick
@Bill Arnold: My post was more in sorrowful recognition than anger. So, you are absolutely right. What matters is what we do going forward.
Betty Cracker
@Eolirin: 100%. Political spending limits probably need to happen first because these fat cats will just buy people off to prevent action on the other items. Sure seems like an impossibly heavy lift though, now that the Leo Court has equated piles of cash with speech. So court reform first?
cain
@OzarkHillbilly: 💔💔💔
dmsilev
@JPL:
Political media: “See, both sides are doing events to attract media attention”
Roger Moore
@bbleh:
They’re also aiming them There is a lot of anger and resentment out there, but without a specific target, it tends to remain incoherent. Without the influence networks, it would mostly be scattershot, aimed at specific local things. With the influence networks, it can be aimed at abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, undocumented immigrants, and other minorities. Or, if the influence networks were flipped, it might be aimed at the ultra-rich and big corporations, who deserve a lot more of it than they’re getting. Finding convenient scapegoats to avoid the anger being aimed at more deserving targets is a major goal of this kind of influence organization.
moonbat
@JPL: I’m very glad to hear it re: local attention being paid to the matter. Seems like the only jails people have been willing to put resources toward in recent decades are the privately-owned ones.
It just chaps my ass when the media tries to reinforce the notion that has become the doom of our time — that the rich are somehow DIFFERENT.
I hope TFG faints dead away walking into that joint.
Eolirin
@Betty Cracker: Court reform is definitely a high priority, but IRS and DoJ enforcement of on the books white collar criming and tax evasion would go a long long way and needs to have been started yesterday.
Geminid
@Eolirin: Yes, wider and more intensive reporting for charitable/political organizations is important. Congress can do that now, or at least the next Congress can once we take back the House, which I think is likely.
Eolirin
@Roger Moore: Yeah, this exactly.
Yarrow
I missed this yesterday. It’s really on brand for TFG. He even muses about sharing a “gold domed suite with Vladimir, never to be seen or heard from again.” He says that like it would be a bad thing. (There’s a screen grab if you click through)
OzarkHillbilly
– Sha’Carri Richardson, after winning her first 100m world title
zhena gogolia
@Yarrow: He’s seriously contemplating it, isn’t he? I’d love to see it!
bbleh
@Roger Moore: yes, and they’re also encouraging them. There’s a feedback loop: the programmers read the mood and the specifics, add a target or two of their own, and then amp it up, their “market” responds, and the cycle begins again. There wouldn’t be the overall level of anger there is without them, not to mention some of the things they aim it at. But at most they’re catalysts. (I feel the same way about TFG, btw.) *IF* one were able to partially or totally dismantle them — through regulation, taxation, court reform, what have you — there would still be a juicy market for the next Murdoch to exploit, and one surely would emerge.
Personally I think the most likely and most cost-effective path is to win elections, and in doing so maintain a reasonable level of counter-propaganda AND keep the crazies out of power. Maybe then we can tackle taxes, court reform etc. And I also think there’s a generational factor at work — I don’t think the next generation of cranky Olds will be nearly as open to bigotry as the present one — so winning elections will also buy us time for the market for that, at least, to shrink.
Jeffro
1)Count me in for much higher progressive tax rates (ETA which you already noted at #20)
2)see #1
Lyrebird
@Baud:
Same here, sorry I gave those ghouls a click, and sorry Numbers Muncher repeated the bullshit “distracted”, distracted my a s s ! Those working dogs are an essential part of the team doing miserable but important work. President Biden would not have left them out of his review.
JML
@zhena gogolia: Well, let’s look at the last GOP nominees for President have related to dogs: Trump, who thinks they’re dirty and disgusting, and then Romney who thought it was appropriate to hose down and put his sick dog on the roof.
Proof of how out of touch their political operations are if they think that Biden being nice to dogs is going to somehow be an effective political attack…
rikyrah
President Biden is the man for these times. I become more convinced of this everyday.
cain
@zhena gogolia: His cult will forgive him and continue feed him money. In fact, he will be the most American patriot ever for fleeing and giving Russia all the Intel because the U.S. is soooo corrupt now.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Thanks
Yarrow
@zhena gogolia: It sure looks like it. I hope he goes to visit his good buddy Vladimir in Russia.
Does he have to surrender his passport when he turns himself in in Georgia? Does a former US President need a passport to go to other countries? What would the Secret Service do if he fled?
Ken
@Yarrow: I’d think such statements would normally be considered as signaling an intent to flee, when setting bail.
Suzanne
One small detail about TFG that just made me hate him even more was how grossed out he was by animals. If you can’t love an animal, I think there’s something fucked up in your personality.
This is to say…. Biden luvvin up the dog is just more indication that he is good people.
JPL
@Yarrow: Rudy is saying take me, take me.
opiejeanne
@Betty Cracker: Last time I checked, the Claremont Institute was in Upland, where the rent is cheaper than in next-door Claremont.
smith
I guess it depends on your definition of “generation.” Just looking at pictures of his rallies, a lot of TFG’s most fervent supporters seem to be 40- and 50-somethings. We may have a while to wait.
Ohio Mom
@bbleh: Not quite what you predict but Senator JD Vance has been complaining that Biden is giving East Plalestine, Ohio short shrift.
Which of course isn’t true at all though there might be an argument that the governor was negligent.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Maui County Mayor Bissen: “I wanted to say how responsive the President has been. He called yesterday. I asked for the help that we needed. And within two hours one of his cabinet members called me back to answer my question. So, we’ve been getting all the help that we need.”
Fox Chyron: Biden administration takes hours to respond to Maui Mayor’s desperate calls for help.
eclare
@J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian):
Hahaha….you are familiar with feline overlords? All of my cats have ruled over the dogs.
cain
@Suzanne: I bet it’s because it steals all the attention and focus off of him.
ETA #50!!!!!!!!
Alison Rose
I love it. Just like we expected. Cleek’s law in action.
eclare
@zhena gogolia:
In 2020 the R’s compared Joe to Mr. Roberts in a bad way, saying it was bad to be like Mr. Roberts.
WTF is wrong with these people times infinity.
eclare
@Bill Arnold:
The mass movements of people to escape famine is going to have a lot of consequences.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
I watched that race over and over. She came out of nowhere and just STUNNED the Jamaicans.
eclare
@Old School:
I blame Gyna.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: He totally is! I haven’t regretted my votes for him at all both during the primaries and the general.
BTW have you started watching Made in Heaven?
eclare
@Yarrow:
I wish that MF would go to Russia and disappear.
trollhattan
@Old School:
Are you telling us the Jewish Space Lasers are actually controlled by {dun-dun-dun-dunnnn} Japan? Crafty buggers.
schrodingers_cat
OT: Are there any Juicers here with WooCommerce experience? I have some questions. You can email me or dm me on the app formerly known as Twitter.
Thanks.
eclare
@OzarkHillbilly:
So glad she won. I hope she makes it to Paris next year.
Scout211
@Yarrow: I don’t believe that Trump wrote that post. First, it’s in lower case, which is a tell. And it uses sarcasm as a way to smear the DA for requiring a bond to prevent his “escape” to Russia. Trump has no sense of humor, even a sarcastic one. Plus, there are not enough spelling and grammatical errors in the post.
If the DA and judge point to posts like this as interference in the case, I assume it won’t make a difference who posted it, though. At least I hope it won’t.
trollhattan
@eclare: TBH if Gyna sashays into Maui pitching Belt and Road there I’m going to be a wee bit suspicious.
opiejeanne
@eclare: That’s what happened in Syria: no water because of a drought, farmers migrated to the city looking for work, desperate to feed their families.
eclare
@rikyrah:
The finish in that race, from the ninth position, was incredible.
eclare
@opiejeanne:
Also caused a big migration to Europe, which has and will have political consequences. Better or worse? We’ll see how far these right wing parties get in elections.
rikyrah
Hope Restored In DFW (@Kennymack1971) posted at 8:18 PM on Mon, Aug 21, 2023:
I tweeted earlier about RW attacks that don’t connect on Joe Biden and here’s another example.
They’re really dunking on President petting a service animal. Pack it up and go home GOP.
(https://twitter.com/Kennymack1971/status/1693794637264134616?t=0L3c3gDIPUD55YIE6scBsw&s=03)
eclare
@trollhattan:
Hahaha…
OzarkHillbilly
@eclare: After everything she’s been through? Damned right.
schrodingers_cat
@opiejeanne: Climate change and divisive politics have made India under Modi is a ticking time bomb. India is not getting enough attention in our media. Worse still some dispatches read like BJP press releases.
Frankensteinbeck
@RevRick:
The developed world is not going to see famine due to global warming, any more than it’s all going to turn into desert. One of the major elements of modern agriculture is learning to get through erratic weather. You may see some movement of what crops are grown where, especially with the increased growing season. There will be failures of some specific crops on some specific years because humanity loves monocultures, but that is same old same old. The Dust Bowl didn’t happen because of drought, it happened because of shitty farming practices.
Poorly developed tropical areas… I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does, because we only have a general ‘more extreme weather’ idea of the changes in weather patterns. Desert-adjacent areas might be in real trouble. Some of the hottest areas are going to creep over the line into uninhabitable by humans, and more into uninhabitable by humans without a serious technological infrastructure.
@Roger Moore:
I don’t think this is true. In much the same way that the base are searching for someone to lie to them, they know what lies they want to hear. The networks can focus on certain targets, but only within a range dictated by their base.
Remember, in the messages exposed in the Dominion law suit, Fox people didn’t want that particular story. They felt they had no choice, because if they didn’t hype it, their viewers would leave for someone who would. This shit is ground-up, and most of the lies come up from the fever swamp until higher ups pick it from the options to magnify. Trump said ‘the election was stolen’ which his base already wanted to believe, and they gave him a million lunatic theories how.
Yarrow
@Scout211: It doesn’t matter who wrote it. It’s under his name, so he owns it.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: If you know anything about a subject or place that’s in the news, it’s shocking how wrong and bad reporting can be. They’re terrible about stuff in their own backyard. Foreign reporting is magnitudes worse. They don’t devote resources to it and mostly Americans don’t care. It’s awful.
rikyrah
NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) tweeted at 4:01 PM on Mon, Aug 21, 2023:
Sha’Carri Richardson and Noah Lyles score a U.S. #WorldAthleticsChamps 100m sweep for the first time since 2017! https://t.co/JSkeFI3rXL
(https://twitter.com/NBCOlympics/status/1693730075710259425?s=02)
rikyrah
UH HUH
Justin J. Pearson (@Justinjpearson) tweeted at 4:19 PM on Mon, Aug 21, 2023:
.@CSexton25 and the @TNGOP are already diminishing democracy before special session even starts. https://t.co/QAuxvESMcY
(https://twitter.com/Justinjpearson/status/1693734474440122488?s=02)
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: BBC is better. They have on-the ground local reporters and not just in English and Hindi.
Their India bureau has always been very good .
eclare
@rikyrah:
Awesome!
eclare
@rikyrah:
I know, I live here. I’m in MEM but Justin is not my rep. A very nice D who lives in my neighborhood is. The state has so gerrymandered the districts there is zero chance of voting out the fuckers.
TN is roughly 60/40 R to D. Neither federal nor state representation reflects this. There is a lawsuit concerning federal representation, I wish someone would take up the cause at the state level.
Geminid
@eclare: A lot of Syrians fled to Turkiye, something like 3.5 million of them. Mr. Kilicdaroglu, the opposition candidate, made it a big issue in the presidential runoff; it was like he changed from Walter Mondale to Pat Buchanon overnight. Erdogan was in the unusual position of being more liberal than his opponent on this issue.
Joe Falco
@Alison Rose:
Considering all the manufactured outrage over the Biden’s pets during Joe’s first year, this is just par for the course.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: BBC will be cutting back significantly as Tories do their best to destroy it.
US news orgs used to have a lot of foreign correspondents and bureaus in various key countries. Not much anymore. Dumbing down of news.
Geminid
@eclare: The Dutch governing coalition broke up recently over refugee asylum policy, and had to call another election.
evodevo
@Bill Arnold: Yep…people think cereal is expensive now…just wait..
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: BBC employs many local journalists. Even with all the cuts they are still far better than coverage from any news outlet in the US for India coverage.
US publications like New Yorker will send some big shot like George Packer who will speak to one or two elite journalists writing in English.
pluky
@bbleh: As someone on the cusp of joining the next set of cranky olds, let me assure you I crank left.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: Many of the socialist meccas of Europe that our progressive betters look up to have extremely xenophobic right wing policies towards immigrants.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: Don’t disagree with you. The US coverage of almost every part of the world is pathetic. BBC does a lot better.
eclare
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s easy to be a socialist mecca with a homogenous population.
Ruckus
@moonbat:
that the rich are somehow DIFFERENT
They are. Different.
They have money to spend, they have money to control, they have money to purchase political power.
Ever read Forbes Magazine’s 400 wealthiest people article? Last time I did, SFB had dropped to somewhere in the 390-400 range. But everyone on the list was a billionaire. I stopped reading Forbes. I really didn’t need to read about people that have so much money that they can buy pretty much anything for sale. And likely a lot of things not for sale. Including lawyers and political recognition and therefore power. Not to be politicians but to be listened to by politicians. In this country money talks and lack of it walks. And sleeps on the streets. We could fix that, maybe not all of it but a not insignificant level of it. With more progressive taxation. But then most of us don’t have the money to buy financial power and freedom from reasonable taxation. The rich would still be rich, just a little less so, and the world wouldn’t stop turning, but would be a better world. This is from a man who had jobs for 60 yrs, physical and somewhat dangerous jobs. Loose body parts jobs. Including Navy jobs, like being over 60 ft up the mast and out 20+ feet from the mast on what is known as a yardarm. With the safety harness being a rope that I tied the knots that held me up. Around my waist. More than once and on both sides of the ship. With a pretty high chance if I fell it would likely be the last time I did anything. Like breathing. The Navy may have been less dangerous than say the Marines, but not always by much. And proper harnesses actually existed but then when ALL life isn’t considered all that important, shit happens.
schrodingers_cat
@eclare: Yep. But you get called names when you point that out.
Kathleen
@Ohio Mom: This whole “Biden didn’t do enough for xyz” is a Russian op. If not Russian, someone else’s op. The media is outdoing its nasty self with these lies. Horrible evil ghouls.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I found the whole Sweden/Nato/Turkiye debate here very enlightening. For one thing, I finally understood what “Orientalism” means by seeing it in practice.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think there’s a lot of existing anger at big corporations and the ultra-rich. For example, it would be pretty easy to whip people in a small town into hating Walmart for moving to town and destroying all the local businesses. There’s even a built-in constituency of the owners of the business that had to shut down. Similarly, I don’t think it would be too hard to whip up resentment of the ultra-rich; there’s a lot to resent there.
If anything, I think the right wing influence operations exist more to steer anger away from people who deserve it than to steer it toward any particular target. That’s why the targets can change regularly. The only things that matter about the targets are that people are willing to hate them and that they aren’t the people the influence operations are trying to defend.
Anyway
@Geminid:
Europe is heavily stressed by large number of migrants/asylum seekers from the Middle East, Africa, South Asia – assimilating so many is no easy task especially with RW parties seizing on the opportunity to demagogue the issue. Scandinavian countries used to be open to asylum seekers but the sheer numbers make it difficult. It’s an issue with no neat answers.
Reason #2342 to hate Dubya’s grand Iraqi adventure.
Roger Moore
@schrodingers_cat:
Bigotry is the biggest threat to liberal policies. Social welfare policies poll very well as long as voters are sure the goodies will only go to people like them; they become much less popular as soon as people think they might be shared with The Other. In the USA, where diversity is already here, that results in bigots rejecting welfare policies. In places that have already implemented those welfare policies, the bigots become even more vociferously against immigration.
Geminid
@Anyway: A lot of Americans like to think the Iraq war ended a decade ago, but nations in the region are still dealing with the consequences.
I think that’s one reason many Turks are very sceptical of the US’s leadership. A lot of Americans and Europeans wanted a new President who would better conform to their wishes. Erdogan won’t, and this was one reason some Turks voted for him.
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: Excellent summation of the problem!
Captain C
@trollhattan:
“Well, actually, the Jews and the Japanese are secretly the same people, and they’re covertly in league to…[700,000 word incoherent ramble]…and that’s why you should subscribe to my Substack at the Gold Member rate of $50/month [catches breath like a just-finished marathoner].”
Bill Arnold
@Scout211:
Hah! You’re right; that’s beyond his writing abilities.
Interesting. It flows like a few tweets on his (old) twitter account.
Anyway
@Geminid: And fallout from the Iraq war while they were still absorbing refugees from the breakup of Yugoslavia. European countries took in a lot of migrants from the former Yugoslavia.
schrodingers_cat
@Anyway: German immigration laws for example were quite discriminatory long before the current refugee crisis and Dubya’s Iraq misadventure.
Please let’s not make excuses for the elephant in the room that starts with an r and end with an m.
MikefromArlington
Heck of a job Biden!
if you read fox, you’d think this is Biden’s Catrina.
The Lodger
@Captain C: The Gold Member rate sounds like something out of a James Bond parody.
Ithink
@OzarkHillbilly: Such is the way of the Earth but for those of us esoteric Christians, things can and should be made ALL right come the after life/Judgement Day. Whichever happens first!