The Former Guy is Nuts

 

Trump says the Obama Administration “says it in their stats” that Trump built 500 miles of border wall when he was president. pic.twitter.com/hWHLiZax3r

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 1, 2023

He thinks the Biden Administration is a continuation of the Obama Administration and is lying on the wall he never really built. TBH, he's all the way nuts:

Montage of 33 clips of the stupidest, most vile, insane, weirdest, addled dementia-ridden, psychotic statements made by Trump over the past two weeks. pic.twitter.com/iCbt5PtzBX

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 30, 2023

None of this is new. He's been the guy who has been talking about windmill cancer and buying Greenland and stuff like that.  The problem is, no one ever seems to want to call the weird as fuck things he says actually "crazy" even though they objectively are. It's like Trump has been given a safe space, available to celebrities, to be eccentric or stupid as hell, and the media doesn't want to report that thing. The Trump is not just a criminal fascist thing, a rapist and a racist thing. They don't want to report on the fact that he's dumb as hell. Windmill cancer. Windmills killing whales. Electric cars only travelling for twenty minutes. People drinking bleach to stop Covid. 

The weirdo projects his crimes on others, he suggests other people should commit acts of vengeance for him, he wants impeachment of his political "enemy" and a government shutdown because he thinks it will help him (it would not have because federal prosecutions are funded differently). 

He has been an unstable not-genius for a long while. His supporters are by now, just absolutely shithouse rats. How are you supporting the guy who says any of the things this one says? 

We are not saying this enough. Trump is not stable, not a genius, not sane. He's not just a crook, he's bent.  He' s actually stupid, even though the media has been schooled to not call him stupid. 

They have no trouble calling Biden "old". Where is the trouble with pointing out that Trump is a pussy-grabbing fraudulent dumbass with no redeeming qualities? Because that would be the very sad truth of it. 

And he may have bought a gun and regularly threatens violence. Maybe it would be entirely right for the court to put him in a place where we all feel safer about him. Like a situation where he can stop lying and threatening people.  Things candidates for office um--just don't normally do. 

Should This Stand?

This is going to be a pretty short post because it's already the wee hours and I am certain there will be great shades of fuckery to confront on the morrow, but there is something especially weird about the tendency that President Trump has to undermine the various intelligence agencies who actually do the work of gathering information and analyzing it to provide context that should inform Trump's decision-making process. This relationship should not be either adversarial, nor should it be a top-down thing where Trump dictates what "reality" is.

The IC has provided credible information that ISIS is still active, that North Korea has not stepped down its nuclear program, that Iran is still largely abiding by its nuclear agreement, and that while border security is important, the overland threat is sort of not that big a priority. And Trump rubbishes it all, and then posts the above Tweet that tells us not to believe our eyes and ears about what IC professionals who have sworn an oath to protect and defend this country are saying, believe Trump! Trump might trash treaties and hate NATO and not even understand what defending allies is about, and for that matter, believes climate change is a hoax even though the Pentagon takes it seriously now, and has been doing so for years.

Any person with an open and rational mind, being confronted with information from people who have made it their lives' work to provide high-quality information in the service of their country, would try to incorporate at least some of it into their own frame of reference to try and do their own job better.

Not Donald Trump. He seems to find expertise suspect and is intensely uncomfortable with the very idea that he might not be the smartest person in the room. And it seems like he prefers to take his cues from actually stupid people, like the cast (I cannot call them "journalists") of his favorite shows on the Fox News channel.  Could anyone think for an instant that Lou Dobbs knows more than the FBI about law enforcement or counter-terrorism? (Dobbs has the distinction of being an original "birther" and having been dropped by CNN for his especially anti-immigrant views. His only distinguishing quality seems to be his bigotry.) Let alone weighing in on the rare genius of other Fox personalities like Tucker Carlson and Jesse Watters, who do not understand that the sun and wind still can generate electricity even when it is very cold, because they are functionally science illiterate, and who promote racist propaganda because they are...

Well, by any stretch, not persons who should be trusted over the actual people doing national security work, anyhow, regardless of whatever low esteem they should actually be held in. But it nonetheless remains that Trump, despite having qualified professionals that could provide him with good information, prefers his entertainment to inform his world.  Quite possibly because he lacks the attention span for anything other than "the shows".

But there are fewer professionals available to try and amend Trump's odd mental topiary,  owing in part to the thanklessness of the job and Trump's own limited arsedness to replace the brain-drain in his administration with good quality people, if he could even get them. In fact, his recent shut down was explained somewhat anonymously as an opportunity to purge careerists--quite baldly admitting that expertise wasn't really the Trump Administration's thing.  

Long story short, Trump harps on the Deep State because competent people see through his bullshit, and this gives him a lot of discomfort. So how long will anyone want to stay on when words will be put in their mouths, and their genuine assessments will be supplanted with Trump's casual falsehoods? Especially when he prefers, when his lie is called out, to continue not listening. 

And After the Solar Panels Comes Ragnarok!

I will take a moment on Sunday (of course!) to go over the COP21 climate deal, but I saw this story being Tweeted and RT'd today and couldn't quite get over it. A town rejected allowing a solar farm to be built with some fascinating reasoning:

Bobby Mann said he watched communities dry up when I-95 came along and warned that would happen to Woodland because of the solar farms.

“You’re killing your town,” he said. “All the young people are going to move out.”

He said the solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland.

It reminds me of when Rep. Joe Barton cited a study to propose the conclusion that wind turbines could slow the wind down. And possibly use it all up?

Did that citizen think the solar farm would act like, I don't know, a solar dimmer switch?

I just can't even.

Climate Sunday: I've Seen the Future and It's Murder

I'm back with another Pessimist's Club update about the planet and what we're doing to it--and this one is going out to the EPA, who couldn't very well dump bunches of heavy metal-laden mining waste into the Animas River unless it was there to be dumped, not that I'm letting them off the hook. Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper drank that weird yellow water, but then he has guzzled fracking water, too. He might be a little weird. But basically, mining is dirty business for water, and the risk of contamination can continue long after mines have gone defunct.

But anyway, did you know we hit Earth Overshoot Day just recently? We're taking more from the planet then it can afford to give. When we get the bill for the overdraft fees, it's gonna be a headache.

Air pollution in China is determined to be the cause of over 4,000 deaths a day.  That's 1.6 million people a year. That's worse than a war. A lot of that problem is coal--there is no tech that makes burning that stuff 100% clean.

Rolling Stone has a pretty good article on the abundant evidence that global warming is totally a thing, which is a lot of what I've been talking about on this humble surfactant container. The title has the scariest words: The Point of No Return.

If you were wondering, was this July hot enough for ya? Goddamn it was hot enough. The hottest on record. The global heat wave is good for germs. But if you aren't a bacillus, it kind of sucks to be you. Especially if that "you" is in one of those canary in a coal mine countries that is especially hard-hit by climate change.

What do we have to do about this? Change everything. When do we have to do this? Yesterday. But I'll settle for more coalmines going bankrupt, more solar power everywhere, and a drive to treat conservation sort of how people dealt with sweetless, wheatless and meatless days during WWI and the recycling drives of WWII.  We can lick climate change! Win the global war on US with Us-Power! And let's get it done with the help of the Sun!

Climate Sunday: Something in the Water

Former Governor Mike Huckabee, who I don't heart, believes that "most of us would think that a beheading is a far greater threat to an American than a sunburn.”

That's statistically disprovable, I am pretty damn sure. I myself have had +/- 100 sunburns over the course of my red-headed, freckled life, and exactly zero beheadings. A poll of all the people I have ever known personally would result in several sunburns for them and zero beheadings. All the people I know have some kind of SPF product in their medicine cabinets, and exactly zero things to prevent beheadings.

I am calling bullshit.

While it is true that Islamic extremism is very bad I will go out on a limb and say that the way we impact the environment and the way that the environment can impact us is way, way...badder.  Take a look at this pretty picture:

This algal bloom is potentially toxic. It's the result of dumping phosphate-laden fertilizers in the water. This would kill fish. It affects an ecosystem and a way of life.

Oil is spilling into the Yellowstone River. Into the Black Sea.  Fracking wastewater is spilling in North Dakota. We are poisoning water we could use. We are spoiling our ocean ecosystems.  We need to find better ways to do things. If Huckabee doesn't notice all the ways we're doing it wrong, sorry--he simply isn't right for president.

Climate Sunday: Solar for The Sunshine State

 

I think this is a pretty good sign of things to come--a conservative group in Florida is pushing to increase access to solar power via a ballot initiative to allow businesses and property owners to generate and sell solar power. This makes a lot of sense for Florida, which doesn't naturally have a lot of fossil fuel sources to begin with but does get a lot of sun, and uses a lot of electricity for air conditioning, having a special climate that combines the heat of Texas with the humidity of Philadelphia.

 

I like that instead of adding a regulation, the idea involves easing up regulations, and creating choices for consumers in a way that makes a fairer market. Along with recently introduced legislation proposing a state ban on fracking, it shows that there's a local interest in protecting the environment (especially the aquifer, delicate wetlands, and the beaches). I hope they get somewhere with it.

Climate Sunday: If A Billion Red Chinese...

 

I'll just make this one short and sweet:

China Laughed When it Saw How Cheap Solar Can Be.

And if you are completely skeptical, I also want to point out:

Narendra Modi Plans To Bring Solar To 400 Million People, Electrify Rural India

This could, verily, be the start of something big.