We're Gonna Nuke a Hurricane This Time, Aren't We?

 

So, last night I posted, then pulled, a blogpost about Rep. Andy Ogles' proposed Amendment to have Trump serve a second term.

That man's brains are going to be banana pudding with no vanilla wafers by then, but ok. https://t.co/XzTnGe2lts

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) January 24, 2025

I was expanding a little on the idea that Trump is very old, actually, and manifestly not as competent as he was even during his incompetent first term. So, what the hell would be left to re-elect?  When I got up the next morning, I realized how ill-conceived that idea might be. Trumpism is juche. It is revolutionary and divorced from typical Republicanism and seeks independence from reliance on other nations by just like, taking whatever it is they have we rely on. You know, capitalist juche. No allies, just a little bit of taking hints from Russia and China. And constant propaganda. 

It wouldn't matter if Trump's mentis was compost.  The GOP has gotten used to ignoring that Trump is, in fact an idiot. Only a really bad fuck up might save us. 

The problem is--how bad? And tonight, the GOP confirmed Pete Hegseth, a white knuckle black out drunk and possible rapist and spousal abuser, with nowhere near the experience he ought to have, for Secretary of Defense. 

Because what could go wrong? What have we got to lose? 

The Cruelty is *Almost* the Point

 

NEWSMAX: Why should other states be bailing out California for choosing the wrong people to run their state?

TUBERVILLE: We shouldn't be ... they don't deserve anything to be honest with you unless they show us they're gonna make some changes. pic.twitter.com/SUvVPRDgKm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 13, 2025

There's some good conversation in the comments in the last post regarding MAGA attacks on sign language interpreters--it's about punching down and divisiveness. I recall during the pandemic, the Trump administration pit blue states vs red states for access to resources.  Also, some conservatives fairly openly wanted to sacrifice elderly and disabled people for the sake of the economy (even though that would have been a box of horrors--and we have alternative ways of thinking). We should by now understand the America First problem.

In TrumpWorld, there are only things that serve Trump's (MAGA) needs. If there is a crisis, people just have to figure out how to serve Trump's needs with it. Maybe that means "punishing" a blue state in the hopes the fed-up citizens will just elect Republicans next time around. If Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security have to get cut for Trump's budget to make sense--so be it. 

Who thinks they deserve their promised benefits, anyway? (They have deluded some folks into thinking it's all a Ponzi scheme.)

TWGB: This Polished Coprolite

 

So, Monday I found myself thinking about Trump wanting and accepting Purple Hearts even though his probably fake bone spurs prevented him from actually serving our country when young when Trump stood in front of a backdrop of ruin and disaster and human tragedy--and accepted a french fry pin for doing a dopey photo op in a swing state from someone who for some reason decided that the way to handle Trump is to go the "Dear Leader" juche approach. Trump, while there, having disrupted relief efforts, defended his lies about FEMA that already resulted in the arrest of a man who threatened violence. 

It's really, really hard to imagine a shittier human being--but just watch! He gets shittier!

He since went on to say, in all sincerity to a person asking about what he would do regarding education that he would end the gender re-assignment surgeries that absolutely are not happening in schools. You can't get Tylenol in a public school without a permission slip. Teachers are buying crayons and construction paper out of pocket. And this deeply disturbed person thinks hours-long surgeries are being given out for free to minors? With no parental consent? And he said it all to demonize schools, teachers, trans kids. To spread hate as fertilizer for his own benefit.

It's beneath contempt to think that anyone takes this seriously. It's "children who identify as cats use litter boxes at school" level stupid. Anyone with a modicum of critical thought would understand why you don't say something that weird and wrong out loud where thinking people could hear--

This is Not Helping Anyone

There is quite a lot of stupidity on the internet, these days and there's just something about a human tragedy--like a hurricane, to bring out both the best--and the goddamn worst in some people. I guess pictures like the above might seem harmless enough (this was apparently made in response to some AI slop accompanying plaintive disinformation trying to outrage farm folks into believing and possibly acting on the idea that no one is getting assistance after Hurricane Helene). 

It would be great if people had any common sense and just--didn't do that. The same goes for pick-me pygmies who insist that their wife's cousin's ex-husband, a retired brigadier general from the Idaho Coast Guard, went down in his crop duster to deliver a pallet of Diet Mountain Dew but was called a racist and sent home--who knows what motivates people like this?

But when agencies like FEMA, local officials, and the American Red Cross have to fight misinformation as well as do their jobs--that isn't helping anybody.

When elected officials share this kind of thing--it's embarrassing for them, for the most part. When absolute weirdoes like Marjorie Taylor Greene insist there's a mysterious "them" with a weather machine attempting a land grab or election interference, or whatever she's on about, it is dangerous and unfit. It certainly doesn't help that the billionaire owner of a certain social media outfit is happy to distribute false talking points. 

United States of Disaster

For the first time ever, all fifty states are under a declaration of major disaster. Even if the spread of the deadly virus has not afflicted all states equally, all states have been seeded with the germ and are negotiating mitigating practices with the predictable effects such limitations have on regular economic commerce. We have reached milestones unparalleled in other nations: a half million infected, 20 thousand dead. We have outpaced the toll of Italy and Spain, and despite the successes in California, Washington, and the plateau appearing in New York's numbers, it is reasonable to assume that the struggle is far from over, especially as testing remains sporadic and local approaches to social distancing nationwide are indifferently followed. 

It's probably just a reflex of the pedant to point out that whenever Trump says "no one saw this coming", that of course everyone did. FEMA did.  Military intelligence did. The previous administration was aware this could happen:

But really, what does that have to do with the Trump Administration, except an awful lot?  Trump could have seen what was coming, but was too far up his own behind, and had advisors too keen to please him to bother with telling him terrible things. And even when he was told terrible things would take place, he didn't understand them. And you can really tell, because he goes off and talks about the wily invisible genius germ, that won't be tamed by mere antibiotics, which is so wrong as to the science of anything as to exist in it's own universe of wrong.

Actually, whenever Trump opens his mouth he seems to do more harm than good. He blames others, he casts about for conspiracy theories, he berates the media, he blames the victims, he shows no compassion or sympathy, and spreads misinformation. And people echo his more dangerous offerings, like his desire to reopen the economy at the signs that social distancing is for now succeeding, as if unaware that this could be disastrous for both human lives and the economy in the longer run if such measures are ended too soon, or his paean to unproven pharmaceutical protocols (which he obviously doesn't have the "common sense" to talk about, at all, because actual common sense would require knowing he is not, in fact, a doctor, but a reality show con artist who bankrupted casinos).

The remarkable thing in all of this, is that Trump will even ask you to show some measure of concern for himself! The most put-upon human to ever be in office! To have endured all this. And even get impeached, and have a media who never says anything good about him, besides!

Like a person who kills his parents and wants mercy for being an orphan (or would have let the virus wash over this country like a refiner's fire, assuming some part of it was dispensable dross).  The whole country is a disaster area. Let's never forget under whose watch that happened.  Let's not forget who made everything worse. He has. With the determination and zest and wrongness that almost (?) seem deliberate, as if no mere mortal could be that wrong, by sheer chance.  And he owns this, and no arrow-in-flight prediction of "acceptable" deaths should really suffice. The damage is well underway. We're just enduring it. And whenever we pull out, however well things might eventually go--nothing ever erases the faults that are Trump's.

Those successes will be the result of the people we actually saw doing the work, regardless of what comes out of Trump's lying mouth.

California is Burning

(Via ABC7.)

Perhaps because of all the hurricane activity this season, the story of 2017 as one of the worst wildfire seasons has not really received as much coverage as it really should. And as you might expect to hear from me--this is climate change at work. Despite heavy rains in California and snows in the Rockies, a brutally hot summer dried out vegetation, making these fires more likely to start and more likely to spread.

There's the toll to human life--like the 10 souls dead in the wildfire spreading through the Napa and Sonoma region. And there's substantial damage to homes, businesses, crops and livestock.  Maybe I'm just peculiarly sentimental about America's wine barrel, but there's a lot of labor, sweat and tears put into those grapes.

Thankfully, FEMA is coming through with some aid for these fire-ravaged regions. But the potential for further devastation and loss of life from the unfolding fire events as they encroach on residential/farm areas can't be underestimated. My thoughts are with Californians and other fire-affected areas.

Puerto Rico Is Incognito on FEMA's Website

There's something to be said for the Trump Administration's response to the devastation in Puerto Rico as a result of Hurricane Maria, but FEMA's website does not care to say it. 

FEMA spokesman William Booher noted that both measures are still being reported on a website maintained by the office of Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, www.status.pr. According to that website, which is in Spanish, 9.2 percent of the island now has power and 54.2 percent of residents have access to drinking water. Booher said that these measures are also shared in news conferences and media calls that happen twice a day, but he didn't elaborate on why they are no longer on the main FEMA page.

“Our mission is to support the governor and his response priorities through the unified command structure to help Puerto Ricans recover and return to routines. Information on the stats you are specifically looking for are readily available” on the website maintained by the governor's office, Booher said.

Maybe it's just me, but that sort of seems like the Trump Administration would prefer not to make notice of how slow things are going. See, in Trump's photo op the other day, he was in a place that wasn't as terrifically impacted by the storm, and wasn't really directly confronted with the full extent of the privations these folks were experiencing. I can't 100% say why Trump's response to Puerto Rico's situation was different from how he responded to Hurricane Harvey in TX or Hurricane Irma in FL, but there seems to be a difference. And if there was measurable good being done there by FEMA and other US agencies in the aid effort, I know, that I know, that I know, that Trump would be ready to witness their good deeds, and would be happy to spread that word.

But that is not what is happening. It is almost like FEMA already knows this story is not going to be a great success story regarding government effort, just like Oxfam knows that they need to step in to make sure pressure is put on to ensure government effort is coordinating with NGO relief agencies to do all they can.

I just feel like doing right by Puerto Rico in the first place would have been the best play if the Trump folks were so concerned with appearances. But there I am, giving shits.

Letting Trump Be Trump in Action

Every now and again, someone makes the funny/sad recommendation that everyone should just "Let Trump be Trump". It's part tarnished lining, part resignation. On one hand, something about Trump being himself must have worked thus far for him to be where he is. On the other hand, no really, try and stop him. Correct him--see what happens. Tell him he's wrong or not to do something. My bet is, this tactic is so useless that people are trying to tell themselves they've given up strategically.

I mean--take today as your example of Trump just being Trump. He went to Puerto Rico because, you know, they had the Category Five Hurricane that no one has ever seen before (except of course, they have). They, according to him, haven't had a real catastrophe, like Katrina, because they luckily only had 16 people die (a toll revised upward to officially 34, but with the difficulties in reporting and the scope of the accumulated problems of failed communications, power, and health care access, this figure will doubtless rise as the raw ability to even assess the extent of fatalities goes up).

His performance was appallingly tone-deaf in staggering ways.   He made the privations of other people about how he was so great to come along and fake-alleviate them. With things like flashlights, that they might still need, even while he pretends they don't really.  He goofed up who was representing the Coast Guard (nope, he was Air Force). He touted the invisible F-35, which is very expensive, kind of like Puerto Rico's recovery, haha, right? And invisible. Like the help Trump was being, haha, right?

It was almost bad enough to make everyone forget that he just beforehand suggested that what happened in Las Vegas was "a miracle".  Not me, of course. But he could have made people forget that! He was even gonna not waive the food stamp rule that they can't be used for prepared food (like fast foods) until people starting giving him that look--you know, the these people don't have houses and kitchens and power to even do cooking with, what are you, nuts? look.

This is Trump. When he is him, it is kind of really bad, and he tells people who lost everything to "have a good time."  (No, this is not the first time he did that one. ) He's, and I'm trying to be delicate, here, kind of fucked in the head about needing cookies and pats on the head for showing the barest kind of human warmth and also kind of failing at it.

This is who he is. This is the guy who will be selecting the best people and making the best deals (hasn't and won't, respectively) according to his campaign boasts.  I already had a miserable opinion of him, but I lose respect for anyone who saw anything good in him a little every day.