Our river is high — not quite at flood stage, but it’s higher than normal for this time of year and has over-topped a dam located upriver, which happens occasionally and isn’t a cause for alarm, they tell me. The dam acts as a filter, keeping pieces of the flooded swamp from floating past our house. Now that it’s underwater, we see stuff like this go by:
Islands on the move in the flooded river. pic.twitter.com/kFwu9xHvvq
— Betty Cracker (@bettycrackerfl) August 26, 2019
That’s nothing, though: Several of my relatives live on the Suwannee, which is a much more formidable river than our glorified creek. I’ve seen massive TREES float past their houses when the river is high.
I’m not worried about the water level — unless that storm off the Lesser Antilles heads our way. Things could get interesting then, but we should be okay since we’re on stilts. No point worrying about it in any case.
Speaking of climate change, Trump said many awful things in a surreal news conference this morning, including, when asked about his plans to address climate change, that Americans getting rich on oil and gas is more important than “dreams” and “windmills.”
He also bizarrely blamed President Obama for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and pitched his roach and bedbug-infested Doral shithole as the site of the next G7. But since I’ve become accustomed to open corruption, contempt for science and treason, this is my pick for weirdest news item of the day:
The White House had to clarify a baffling statement President Donald Trump made Monday in which he suggested that his wife, Melania, and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un had developed a friendship.
“Kim Jong Un, who I’ve gotten to know extremely well, the first lady has gotten to know, Kim Jong Un — and I think she’d agree with me — he is a man with a country that has tremendous potential,” Trump said during a press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron following the Group of Seven summit in Biarritz, France.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham clarified shortly after that, saying the first lady “hasn’t met” the North Korean leader.
“President Trump confides in his wife on many issues including the detailed elements of his strong relationship with Chairman Kim — and while the first lady hasn’t met him, the president feels like she’s gotten to know him, too,” Grisham said.
Grisham is lying, obviously; that’s her job. So what the fucking fuck? As someone pointed out on Twitter, the only plausible explanation for this is that Trump got the Third Lady mixed up with Ivanka, who, unlike the Third Lady, actually did tag along on the “historic” waddle across the DMZ. Gross!
Open thread!