This Florida resident parked his Smart car in his kitchen so Dorian wouldn't blow it awayhttps://t.co/q3bddJAgGo pic.twitter.com/2SUGtSPjhS
— David S. Joachim (@davidjoachim) September 5, 2019
Holding good thoughts for those still in Dorian’s shadow! Per the Washington Post:
Hurricane Dorian spawned damaging tornadoes and flooded low-lying communities in the Carolinas on Thursday, in what officials hope will be the closing chapter of a storm that devastated the Bahamas and has panicked East Coast residents for the past 10 days.
The center of the storm, which weakened to a Category 2 on Thursday, crept northward just offshore for most of the day, sticking largely to its forecast track, as it delivered heavy rain and hurricane-force wind gusts to Charleston and Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. Ocean water poured over sand dunes in some communities, but officials cautioned it could take until Friday to assess the damage.
As it whipped up the coast, Dorian’s final blow was still aimed at North Carolina, and forecasters warned it could make landfall Friday near the Outer Banks. The trajectory was expected to produce what the National Hurricane Center called life-threatening storm surge in the Outer Banks, where four to seven feet of water could wash across the barrier island from two directions…
Even as officials warily eyed the possible effects of Dorian in the United States, federal officials announced Thursday that they are marshaling additional resources for the Bahamas, where the death toll continues to climb. The U.S. Agency for International Development announced it will send “shelter materials” for 35,000 people there…
Regarding a certain metaphorical disaster, this actually is the most plausible explanation I’ve seen so far…
It seems so clear to me that he read a bulletin that said “All Bahamas” & thought it said “Alabama.” And now we have to live through this ridiculousness. Sending love to everyone who is being affected by this hurricane while this goober tries to spin & save orange face.
— Caissie St.Onge (@Caissie) September 5, 2019
***********
You and me against the world,
Sometimes it seems like you and me against the world,
When all the others turn their backs and walked away,
You can count on me to stay. pic.twitter.com/TLmUVhPVHg— Schooley (@Rschooley) September 5, 2019
He just chooses not to. https://t.co/9suU6T6b1n
— Schooley (@Rschooley) September 5, 2019
.
OzarkHillbilly
Blech.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
Juju
It’s been very windy, 29-30 mph, with gusts up to 55, and very rainy. My dogs are not happy. So far it hasn’t been that bad inland. The wind is truly howling from time to time. That’s the part the dogs aren’t crazy about. My curly dog looks like she’s just had a bad perm done.
I haven’t heard anything from my sister who lives in the Atlantic Beach area. The storm seems to have picked up speed and should be out to sea by 1:00-2:00.
Raven
@Juju: Where are you please?
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: ?
@rikyrah: @Juju: @Raven: @Baud: Good morning all. Juju, hope it passes and your sister checks in soon!
Immanentize
Good morning All. Batten down the hatches and keep the pets inside!
Betty Cracker
This photo caption is so PERFECT!
Juju
@Raven: I live in eastern N.C. The storm has been blowing since around 7:00pm last night. As far as things go, it hasn’t been so bad here. I haven’t lost power so far. I have some friends who live on Hatteras island and did not evacuate. They said they’d text if it got really bad there. I haven’t heard anything yet.
TS (the original)
Good morning all, stay safe & dry amid the storms.
satby
@Betty Cracker: I never thought there’d be two such ugly, vapid people put in charge of government in two major nations. He really resembles our idiot-in-chief in that photo.
Nightmare fodder.
Betty Cracker
@Juju: Hope your power stays on and everyone stays safe, including the wild mustangs on the Outer Banks (was just reading about them yesterday).
FelonyGovt
Good morning! Can’t sleep. Hope everyone in the path of Dorian stays safe. Think we’re in for another day of #sharpiegate?
Juju
@Betty Cracker: So far so good. We made it through Florence last year without losing power. Things have been pretty stable, but I still consider the whole house generator from time to time.
Gin & Tonic
Robert Mugabe has finally died. You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, so I won’t.
Spanky
@Gin & Tonic: He left. The world a better place.
Matt McIrvin
Here in Massachusetts I’m well outside the cone but probably in for some gusty and rainy weather as Dorian passes offshore. Going to go on a solo road trip tomorrow (cousin getting married in Pennsylvania) but I think it’ll be well after any disturbance has passed.
Phylllis
@Gin & Tonic: I think the line is “He’s dead? Good.”
Also, why couldn’t Orange Shitgibbon be a Marks-A-Lot fan? My love of Sharpies is being put to the test.
OzarkHillbilly
@Gin & Tonic:
If I followed that maxim all the time I’d be speechless half the time. Of course, some people would find that a blessing. Not that it would do them any good. I’m not waiting until they’re dead to speak ill of them.
Baud
@satby:
Good morning.
Betty Cracker
@Juju: We’ve got a guy coming out to install a generator next month. It’s expensive, but we live so far out in the woods. We’ve only lost power for a few hours once since we’ve lived here, but if we’re ever hit by a serious storm, I could easily see how our area would be among the last to be reconnected. There are so many trees to take out the lines and so few customers to complain about it!
Kay
The children of people in the military are paying for the wall.
WereBear
I could fit a bicycle in my kitchen. Maybe two.
JWR
Good!
eta linky: https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/06/politics/howard-schultz-presidential-campaign-2020/index.html
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
I may not be the most fastidious when it comes to my appearance, but can’t he just once fucking comb his hair?
WereBear
@satby: We actually live in a Vonnegut novel. When I feared dystopia, I never thought it would be a satiric one.
wv blondie
Re Sharpiegate: My own thought is that the Big Orange Blob (I call him BOB! in a minions voice) is lying because he had just one briefing last week on Dorian, where they showed him an early “spaghetti map” with all the various projections, which included one or two tracks – out of dozens – that touched the SE corner of Alabama. He then blew off all the later briefings, over the holiday weekend, so he could concentrate on his golf game. So that’s the only map he ever actually saw. But he can’t admit that.
schrodingers_cat
@debbie: Also, can you imagine a female politician from any country with such messy uncombed hair and a disheveled appearance being taken seriously. We will have achieved true equality when women politicians can look like they just rolled out of bed.
satby
@WereBear: you ain’t lying.
Have you ever had a cat just go off canned food? Porch kitty #2 enjoyed it before, but now just turns up his nose, and I’ve tried different varieties. He eats kibble and drinks water, but I thought it was odd.
He’s going to be joining our next TNR run, and then probably come inside here, because he’s quite the friendly little guy once he trusts you.
And I swear it’s the last one.
rikyrah
@Juju:
Sending you and everyone in the path of Dorian positive thoughts ??
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
Exactly!
I can’t remember his name or title, but wouldn’t it be great if the man who is constantly bellowing “Order!” in Parliament would add, “And could the Prime Minister please bring his own hair to order?”
waratah
@Betty Cracker: Lol must be tough being a politician at this time of history.
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
Not always true.
NotMax
FYI (emphasis added):
(Obviously for those with celiac disease or wheat allergy, the positives of a GFD are self-evident but also do not preclude developing awareness of other ingredients.)
debbie
@Kay:
My favorite meme from SharpieGate is the scribbled check from Mexico paying for the wall.
schrodingers_cat
@satby: You should join instagram and photograph all your critters and post them on there.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Of course, they are. And, the House should drag the Defense Secretary up to explain.
The Democrats also need to be running ads in every phucking district that is losing money.
Amir Khalid
@satby:
It’s scary to think that that’s BoJo’s normal face.
Betty Cracker
@debbie: I recently saw a clip of Johnson preparing to do a television spot, and before the first take, he paused to mess up his hair. It’s an affectation that he apparently believes is eccentric in a Churchillian manner?
rikyrah
@Gin & Tonic:
These are the times when I strongly need to believe in heaven and hell.
daveNYC
@debbie: It’s part of his look. There’s multiple stories about how he’ll actually muss up his hair a bit before going on camera. His entire schtick is doing the bumbling good natured English eccentric thing.
I also wouldn’t be to quick to be mocking him as a loser. It’s right and proper to do so, but the poll numbers for a general election are very much in the Conservative’s favor at the moment. Although I don’t think there’s been any numbers posted since they started purging everyone who wasn’t a complete nutter. The UK is very much not out of the woods yet.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
The answer is no.
Absolutely not.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
Good grief. Like Trump thinking, “The orangier, the better.”
Amir Khalid
@daveNYC:
Even after his PMship turned to shit so quickly?
Kayla Rudbek
Blech. I have to replace/fix fallen shelves with integrated clothes hanging in my closet this weekend. Not what I wanted to do. The spouse’s reaction was “we can fix this” but I think that I would rather replace the wire shelves with something that has actual rods that the hangers can slide on. And preferably something that I can arrange to actually have space to hang dresses. So I’m looking at the elfa closet system from the Container Store (expensive and I’m not sure how much I can tweak the layout of the rods to what I want), or a Closetmaid system (Home Despot and Target have systems available for immediate pickup, but I like the layout of the Closetmaid systems on Amazon better)
And I should probably go through the clothes that were in the closet and get rid of about half of them.
Kay
@debbie:
They’re not going to actually divert the funds. This is an accounting trick. They’re deliberately picking projects that weren’t due to start until 2020-21 because they plan to “backfill” funding.
It’s another huge lie. He’s getting his wall funding by using funding that was allocated for later projects- those projects will be back in as soon as they steal the wall funding. They’re corrupting another process. They’re spending 2020-21 money now, ahead of schedule.
Congress has to step up though- they’re the only people who can stop him. This is actually their area- their job. They really can’t let him get away with it or they have no real power left.
Brachiator
@debbie:
John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons. Colbert recently had a great bit that mentioned him.
https://youtu.be/pqWasYaIxlI
NotMax
Won’t be info streaming on it for several hours yet, however for any interested in seeing the Indian lunar lander touchdown, here’s a link to the live feed channel on YouTube.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Yep, we are 2nd from last on our very long utility line with not many people on it. I got one (portable, I wish we could afford a real one) just before a major ice storm our first year here. Only had to fire it up once when we lost our power for 6 days.
Kay
@debbie:
He’s doing what Republican governors do. Kasich moved numbers from road funding to create his “surplus” on the books. He was counting (entering) outlays that weren’t due to happen until years later and counting those in the current year. It was an accounting fiction. When DeWine came in he moved the numbers back over, “surplus” disappeared, and they raised taxes to fill the hole. Except Trump doesn’t have to fill the hole- he can just borrow it.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby:
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA….. Yeah… Sure… And Amir is done buying guitars.
daveNYC
@Brachiator: The UK has been damn lucky to have him in that role for this whole mess. Someone more hidebound or more Brexity might have already seen the UK out of the EU by now.
Betty Cracker
Speaking of politicians and appearance, I think it’s interesting — and refreshing! — that so little attention is paid to Senator Warren’s defiance of fashion conventions. I suspect she’s the type of woman who doesn’t want to spend a lot of time thinking about what to wear or what to do with her hair, so she’s adopted a simple sort of uniform and a no-fuss hairstyle, and she sticks with it.
rikyrah
CNN (@CNN) Tweeted:
“If people want to rebuild in an area which will be devastated by the next storm, they’re certainly not going to get federal assistance from my administration.” -Sen. Sanders on changing FEMA rules to spur a retreat from properties suffering repeated losses. #ClimateTownHall https://t.co/BC47QBZupm https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1169427665780125697?s=17
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
Hey! I resemble that remark.
Gin & Tonic
@satby:
I see OH beat me to the inevitable.
Ken
@debbie: @Betty Cracker: @daveNYC:
So the consensus is that it is in fact his hair? It looks fake. Maybe it’s just a bad dye job – it certainly doesn’t match his eyebrows.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: :-)
Juju
I heard from sister in Morehead City, and friends on Hatteras Island and all are doing well so far. We are very lucky the storm lost strength. I’m waiting to see where I can send money to help out people in the Bahamas. Has anyone heard anything?
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
Best response to this nonsense
Kay
@rikyrah:
We do have to think about it though- if these storms get more frequent and more powerful. They’ve evacuated four times in the last four years. I just think Bernie should think about that some more, because “coastal areas” aren’t just barrier islands. If this gets worse he’ll be talking about large chunks of the eastern US, and not just in the south. How many people does he want to relocate? How many people are w/in 30 miles of the east coast?
Sister Golden Bear
Good Morning/Evening fellow jackals.
My plans to visit the night market yesterday were thwarted by a monsoon rainstorm. Nothing like Dorian, thankfully, but still impressive (video link).
Tonight looks potentially iffy as well, but hopefully Saturday. Last trip I didn’t have the stamina do it post-op, so it would be nice to be able to visit this time.
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
I for one am more inclined to take a person seriously when they don’t make a big deal of their appearance. People who, in any setting outside show business, dress/groom to draw attention make me wonder what they’re trying to distract me from.
daveNYC
@Ken: Yeah, it’s his hair. He’s been rocking the unkempt mop look for years, and you can compare him to pictures of his brother Jo (who recently resigned from his government) and sister. Might not even be a dye job since fair hair like that can keep looking blonde even if there’s a good chunk of grey in there. It’s basically the flip side of Trump’s hair situation. Instead of using a toupee and combover to try and look as businesslike* as possible, Boris is mussing up his natural hair in order to look like a likable oaf. It’s a ploy that has allowed him to fail upwards into the Prime Minister’s seat.
*YMMV
NotMax
@Juju
One place; excellent reputation and track record.
Chyron HR
@daveNYC:
“No, you fools, he’s obese and physically repulsive as part of a brilliant plan that you’ve fallen right into!”
Okay, Dave.
rikyrah
@satby:
Oh satby… nobody believes you ???
Chyron HR
@Kay:
“Liquidate.”
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Kayla Rudbek: I love elfa. They’re so easy to reconfigure.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: He’s not altogether wrong, though. It’s insane for the US government to help rebuild and subsidize the insurance of waterfront vacation mansions for rich “libertarians” like Fox News personality John Stossel. It’s arguably good policy for the government to address the realities of climate change by structuring aid in such a way that it encourages folks to move out of harm’s way.
Amir Khalid
@Ken:
It has to be BoJo’s real hair. I mean, who would sell a wig like that, other than a joke shop?
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: A “libertarian” like Stossel should just let the free market decide this. Property/casualty insurance companies will be happy to insure the risks at a proper price point. Just cancel the Federal flood insurance program, and the problem will solve itself.
Kay
@Chyron HR:
I don’t know- he wants to make this about stubborn people hanging onto vacation homes on barrier islands but if storms come more frequently and with greater intensity it’s hundreds of millions of people affected, at least by flooding. They can’t all move. So who do we help? 30 miles in? 10? Only if it’s your primary residence? If the predictions are correct this is going to be insanely expensive. Insurance companies will go belly-up. One huge flooding event in a large eastern urban area could put them out of business. Cutting off the houses by the beach will be the least of our problems.
OzarkHillbilly
@Brachiator: There was a time I sympathized with people who faced rising rivers every 5 years. I went out on the dykes and worked day and night to hold back the flood waters. Sometimes we won. All too often we lost. Did they ever say, “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t be living here”? Some did, and got the fuck out of there. Others refused to move, clinging to the life on the river their Pappy had, and their grandpappy, and their great grandpappy…
And that’s fine, but if they want to live in a flood plain where they are guaranteed to get run out and lose half their shit every 5-10 years, they can damn well do it without my help.
Kayla Rudbek
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: one of my colleagues went with elfa for his closets, and he recommended that to me yesterday.
My ideal configuration would have a long space for the dresses and at least two spaces for suits and blazers (higher up) and skirts/trousers (lower rod).
Sister Golden Bear
@Betty Cracker: Obviously it’s unpopular with the homeowners, but Pacifica, CA (and other coastal locales) has been dealing with “managed retreat” in the face of coastal erosion that’s already swallowed a large apartment complex.
If I had my way, there’s other areas that routinely have wildfires, such as the Santa Monica mountains in LA, where rebuilding shouldn’t be subsidized. But Hollywood celebrities in the hills overlooking Malibu undoubted have more say over that than me.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: @Gin & Tonic: @rikyrah: oh, I know you guys… But cats can potentially live a pretty long time and adding these two younger porch foundlings moves the timeline out to the middle of my 81st year. The hardest thing to do is find homes for senior animals after their senior owner has died or gone into a care home. So I don’t want to do that either to my kids or any animals that could survive me.
RAVEN
@Juju: A lady on the news just said there were hundreds and hundreds dead.
Ken
@Amir Khalid: BoJo in a BoZo wig, you mean?
BTW I am disappointed in the term “SharpieGate”. I would have preferred “WeatherGate”, both for the similarity to Watergate, and as a reminder that publishing altered weather maps is a crime.
Kay
You have to hand it to UK conservatives. They at least showed some spine. US conservatives handed the whole thing to Trump, gift-wrapped. There is ONE GOP House member who bucked him. One.
Just pathetic. They got the authoritarian leader they always wanted. All those think tanks and conventions and anguished op-eds and stern scoldings they delivered to liberals over 50 years and a reality tv show scammer beat every last one of them into submission, with his TWEETS. All that strutting around in Wal Mart with their AR-15 and this CLOWN took the whole thing without a shot fired.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kayla Rudbek: Why don’t you just do like I do and throw your clean clothes into the bay window? Saves me a lot of time folding them and putting them away and then digging them out of the drawers in another day or 3 when I wear them again. ;-)
Cameron
BoJo: Savile Road suit, Skid Row hair?
daveNYC
@Chyron HR: Just because it doesn’t work on you doesn’t mean that it isn’t a look that Boris is purposefully cultivating, nor does it mean that it doesn’t work on people in the UK. John Oliver had a good segment on Boris’ career and his amazing ability to get away with virtually anything simply by looking a bit disheveled, being able to poke fun at himself, and not taking no for an answer when offering reporters a cuppa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXyO_MC9g3k
satby
@Kay:
And predictable events aren’t always predictable.
I’m reminded of this when I remember how upset I was that my friends didn’t evacuate from their house a mile from the beach in Mississippi to their father-in-law’s house several miles inland during Katrina. His house was inundated because the storm surge came up the channel, and his sister was killed. My friend’s house flooded, but they were otherwise ok. Anecdotal to be sure, and they abandoned the Gulf Coast completely after that for IL. But this level of climate effects hasn’t ever happened, and a lot of predictions are (very) educated guesses.
Bex
@satby: My kitty never liked canned food. She got very sick when she was young and I tried giving her canned food (she’d never had it before) hoping it would kick-start her appetite. Nothing doing. When I finally gave her a bowl of kibble, she wobbled over and ate like a champ. She is about fifteen now and still won’t have anything to do with wet food.
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: It’s a huge topic in Florida, as I’m sure you can imagine. When we sold our old house last year, we were hoping the state wouldn’t upend the subsidies before we found a buyer (they didn’t — whew). We weren’t directly on the beach but close enough that hurricane storm surge would obliterate the house.
Ending subsidies for rich assholes like Stossel is the low-hanging fruit, but as Kay rightly points out at #73, if climate change predictions bear out, this is going to be a gigantic problem for everyone.
satby
@RAVEN: looking at that destruction, how can there not be. And like Katrina, they’ll never know the full total considering how many may have just been swept out to sea.
David Evans
@Kay:
I worry about people sometimes. Do you not believe the sea-level rise projections, or do you think we will somehow get our act together in time to stop them? It seems to me that for millions of people on the coasts the choice will be move or die.
bemused
@Amir Khalid:
I saw BoJo’s brother, JoJo?, resigned and started laughing. Apparently, hair with a mind of it’s own runs in the family.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: When asked something slightly out of his comfort zone, he flubs the answer. This is not the first time he has done it.
Another Scott
@debbie: It runs in the family.
It’s his brand. I’m “meh” about it, myself.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
This may become quite a challenge. Are we talking about specific properties, neighborhoods, cities? Will we (obviously not just the US) have to consider relocating all the people who currently live in the islands in the Caribbean? If hurricanes regularly scrape the coast from Florida to the Carolinas (including Alabama), do we move everyone miles away from the coast? Snowstorms may intensify in, maybe Vermont. Bernie may need to find a new place to live.
We may get to this point, but for now, Sanders’ remarks are too broad and unthinking to be useful.
He reminds me of people who say that people in California should not build or rebuild homes in areas where there have been fires even though their own homes are right on top of a major earthquake fault.
Amir Khalid
@satby:
Not to alarm you, but domestic cats are the longest-lived feline species, and the world record holder lived to be 38.
Another Scott
@daveNYC: Yup. Labour is down 10 points in the latest polls (though there is a slight uptick on the last data point).
Corbyn is smart to try to damage Boris as much as possible before allowing a snap election. Here’s hoping that it’s enough…
Cheers,
Scott.
chopper
@Kay:
to be fair, sea level rise is going to force lots of these people inland eventually whether they like it or not.
satby
@Amir Khalid: yeah, I was only calculating a 17 year life span for them ?. I’m 64. Yikes!!
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Seems like we (as a species) are going to have to make some hard choices for sure.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
A long time friend of mine has family property on Isle of Palms in SC near Charleston. The house is a simple concrete block bungalow close to the “back creek”. It has weathered storms since the 20s including one hurricane his father went thru in the 30s during which their place was inundated by several feet of water and the winds were enough to take his father off his feet. One of the things that always kept their place from being utterly destroyed was the dunes.
The dunes are gone, knocked down so rich fucks with million dollar beachfront properties with muti-million dollar mansions can have an unobstructed view of the ocean. Hurricane swells now have an unobstructed path to their houses.
Next time I see him I’m gonna have to ask for an update.
joel hanes
@Kay:
They can’t all move.
To a first approximation, they’re going to have to, will we or nil we, sooner or later.
People read about climate change and always assume it will be “later”, but the effects seem to be outrunning the “worst case” scenarios, so I’m thinking it’s “sooner”.
satby
@Bex: yes, I had one that way too. But he started by liking the canned food, or he was just too starved at the time to be picky. He loves cheese, but I only give him a little at a time. He’d eat that full time of I let him.
Quinerly
@Juju: ?
I was supposed to be at Pine Knoll Shores and Grifton, NC for 6 weeks starting last weekend. Delayed my trip. Think I’ll just wait until the end of hurricane season now.
Another Scott
@Juju: TheTweetofGod pointed us to https://www.bahamas.com/relief a few days ago (I don’t see that tweet up any more).
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@Quinerly
If ever there was a place name ripe for hosting Republican conventions….
:)
Betty Cracker
It was Trump himself who drew the fake extension of the “cone of concern” on the NHC map because of course it was (Le Post):
Looks like Trump has moved on to other topics today, after getting an admiral to humiliate himself in public yesterday to prop up the Alabama lie. Now he’s moved on to using Fox News talking points to tell the Fed how to do its job and advise SCOTUS on how it should rule on DACA, a directive which five of the nine justices will almost surely obey.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Kayla Rudbek: Do you have a Container Store nearby? They will design exactly what you want.
I believe their web site also has a design app. I have a store locally, so I’ve never used the site app.
Kay
@joel hanes:
Me too. The intensity of the rainfall has changed here. It’s a dump of water and my in-town property can’t absorb/reroute fast enough – it’s getting a kind of topography- a flash flood streampath out to the storm sewer. I got a new roof and put in better gutters but they’re regularly overwhelmed. I pictured broiling with climate change- I didn’t picture drowning. Wet, wet, wet and the water just sits there.
Butter emails!!!
@Brachiator:
It’s a tough issue and St. Bernard may be one of the people least well equipped to discuss it. Still, there’s some obvious candidates even now. We shouldn’t be subsidizing the restoration of multi million dollar homes and their lawns on barrier islands.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker:
And it’s the low hanging fruit that needs to be picked. There will always be disasters and victims there of, some quite unpredictable, but that doesn’t mean we need to underwrite blatant stupidity.
And no, that doesn’t mean abandoning our cities on the coasts. It does mean revising building codes to take into account inevitable storm surges and rising seas. It doesn’t mean sticking our collective heads in the sand like N Carolina has done relative to climate change.
daveNYC
@Another Scott: Last numbers are from the 4th, so hopefully they don’t have the fallout from the purge baked in. My big worry is that the Brexit Party will get out of the way of the Conservatives, while the Lib-Dems and Labour won’t and will end up splitting the vote. I believe in the last election the Greens stepped aside in contested seats, so I’m not super worried about them being spoilers.
It’s depressingly possible that Parliament might finally have managed to try and actually do something about this Brexit mess only to have the next GE produce enough of a Tory majority to make it all for naught.
Fair Economist
@NotMax: A good rule for quacky diets – like glutenfree for nonceliacs – is that they do help but the mechanism is just that you eat less junk food. Diet-targeted junk food wipes the benefit.
Just One More Canuck
@JWR: Schultzmentum!!
Jeffro
Lots of good reading today…
1) I saw Kay already cited the article about how several states’ GOPs are canceling (or at least trying to cancel) their primaries, in order to clear the way for trumpov. Surely, this is the sign of a STRONG candidate and UNITED party, eh? LOLOL
2) I also see that Betty mentioned the article about trumpov himself drawing the blessed ‘Alabama Salient’ on the weather map. Please keep in mind that 73% of the country is not at all surprised, while 27% feel that it’s just another reason their guy is a JEENYUS!!!1! Also LOLOL
A couple other articles of note:
3) Catherine Rampell’s column today in the Post notes (as she has previously) that an incredible number of trumpov policies are deliberately designed to hurt children (some immigrant children, some just children in general). Not a bad ‘framing’, Dems
4) MIchelle Goldberg in the Paper That Shall Not Be Named discusses Stanley Greenberg’s upcoming book re: the 2020 election (spoiler: he’s predicting at least as big of a blue wave as we had in 2018). Hey even a stopped clock can see the writing on the wall for trumpov and co, but let’s organize, dream big, and fight hard as hell anyway.
5) Finally, Brooksie is getting ROASTED on the twitters for today’s column, in which he displays a shall we say Stephens-like thinness of skin towards any and all criticism. How dare the plebes challenge such a ‘thought leader’? (Barf). But I’m glad he’s upset enough to quit pushing GOP narratives for once.
Happy Friday, peeps!
Quinerly
@NotMax: Town of less than 500 pre 1958. Then Dupont built the first Dacron/Polyester plant in the world and it became “the fastest growing town in the state.” 70 miles from the coast in Pitt County. Now a dying little town since the plant downsized. Where I grew up until coming to St. Louis in 1982 for law school. If I’m not mistaken still leans Democrat. I know Greenville NC (just a few miles away) went for Clinton. That’s why I was so appalled by Trump’s rally there a few weeks back. The “send them back” rally.
And I caught the “Grifton” joke. ?
Ian R.
@daveNYC: There’s a reason the opposition parties want to prevent a general election before mid-November. If they can do so, that leads to two possibilities:
1) If Bojo ignores the bill that was just passed, and goes out with No Deal, that’s enough time for the suffering and shortages to hit (at least according to the Yellowhammer report), and the Tories had better hope they’re not hanging from lamp posts, forget winning the GE.
2) Bojo fails to deliver their precious Brexit, and the Leavers turn on him
Michael Cain
@debbie:
It’s not like John Bercow’s own hair doesn’t get pretty sloppy sometimes while he’s working. His is a better length for that look than Boris’s, though.
Betty Cracker
@Jeffro: I didn’t read Brooks’ column but saw enough excerpts to conclude he IS still pushing GOP narratives, just in the usual both-sides manner. Is that incorrect? Regardless, I hope the widespread mockery of the columnists’ embarrassing obsession with their own extra-dainty feelings prompts some genius over there to clean house, then turn the hose on the Beltway group. Won’t happen but it needs to.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Jeffro:
The Russians and the Chinese will have their fingers in the election up to the elbows, and it’s impossible to predict how effective they’ll be.
But yes, let’s do that. So far elections I’ve seen that smell fishy tend to be where there’s a margin of a few percentage points. We need yuuuge margins.
I haven’t forgotten Karl Rove’s 2012 Ohio meltdown. I’m convinced there was a fiddle going on, but the voters managed to overcome in.
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: It’s a laundry list of the things he imagines are wrong with, well, everyone but David Brooks. He’s so above-it-all, so big picture, so worldly, and has so much to offer. Meanwhile, everyone else is an online fanatic psycho blowhard infantile loner. OBVIOUSLY, right David?
I just think that if God wanted someone to have ‘the’ evenhanded, just, and insightful take on everything, the last person she would grant with that gift would be David Brooks.
Jeffro
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I agree with you about Ohio back then and Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in 2016. Whether carried out online or bit by bit w/ corrupt local officials (as in NC-09), the GOP is clearly not above finding ways to pad/add/alter vote totals (in addition to all the other voter suppression measures). Pad it by just enough to ‘win’ and hope no one catches on (especially with electronic voting machines and/or no paper trail).
But yeah, let’s really run up the score this time, absolutely!
James E Powell
@Jeffro:
It’s also just another reason that nearly 100% of the press/media thinks, “This is guy the best president evah! We’ve got to keep him in the White House.”
mrmoshpotato
@WereBear: That kitchen is massive.
schrodingers_cat
@Jeffro: I have stopped watching Snooze Hour on Friday. I can’t stand either Jowls of Concern or Humble Brooks.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m having computer problems this morning. Mr DAW thinks he has it under control, but I’m always a little startled by how panicked I am at the thought of losing my online connection.
rikyrah
@RAVEN:
I feared as much :( :(
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: And what about all those idiots in CA who live in earthquake-prone areas?
Oh Wilmer….just drop out already.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: Me too. The photos coming out of there are absolutely horrific. I sent a few quid to Jose Andres’ outfit, who are on the ground. Wish there was more I could do. :(
rikyrah
@Kay:
You are on point, Kay
mrmoshpotato
@Brachiator:
Great way to sum up his presidential campaigns.
Kayla Rudbek
@OzarkHillbilly: clothes catchment area? that’s what the box of bedsheets and blankets is for :)
Sab
@mrmoshpotato: When I lived in CA I worried a lot more about fires than earthquakes, and I was in SF in 1989 for the Loma Prieta quake.
mrmoshpotato
@Jeffro:
So the usual bile that Brooks is paid handsomely to vomit up. Awesome.
rikyrah
@Jeffro:
it’s true, and should be in Democratic Ads.
Dorothy A. Winsor
The imbecile in the WH is still tweeting about Alabama. This man is crazy.
mrmoshpotato
@Sab: Oh I’m sure Senator Everyone-Should-Get-A-Pony has a grand idea for the wildfires too.
Sab
@mrmoshpotato: At least it won’t be Finns with rakes.
Spanky
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: You and I are thinking exactly alike on a couple of points. Specifically:
The Russians will want to keep Trump, the Chinese definitely want him gone. Mostly because the US election system is a mish-mash of different voting systems, each country’s cyber actions will have varying degrees of success. Also, I’m wondering if China will actively impact the election or “merely” neutralize the Russians. And of course the US Federal posture is strictly hands off, leaving the states to fend for themselves. Which the blue states will do, and the red states have already signaled that they’re unconcerned, assuming that things will break in their favor.
Yeah, it’s weird talking about the US election system as a cyber battleground for two other powers, with us sidelined. That’s our reality now.
And
Yeah, that looked really weird in real time, but when you game it out with him knowing there was a fix in in certain states it makes perfect sense. I wonder if non-US cyber actors were already at work against the GOP?
No, I don’t wonder, actually.
Betty Cracker
@Dorothy A. Winsor: OMFG. He’s never going to stop, is he?
Spanky
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Hard to believe that it may be an edit with a Sharpie that finally gets the MSM to drive that home, but here we are.
Yarrow
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Still? Seriously? That is just beyond pathetic.
You know, all the Democrats have to do is play “Sweet Home, Alabama” over and over at campaign events and it’ll drive him nuts.
mrmoshpotato
@Sab: True. But maybe he’ll come up with something crazier.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: He has no self control and no sense of proportion, so no.
artem1s
@wv blondie:
I think you’re being far too generous. My theory is he was told he couldn’t golf at M-A-L over this weekend so some grifter, staffer, idiot son, suggested he try out a course in Alabama, and that was later rejected as not sufficiently well stocked with ketchup or as not producing enough side action for the idiot children. When some grifter, staffer, idiot son, told Dumbass in Chief he wasn’t going to Alabama after all, he assumed it was because of Dorian. the end.
There is no PR fuckup by this administration that doesn’t involve or isn’t a result the Dolt Family grifting and general stupidity and ignorance.
Betty Cracker
@Yarrow: I love that idea. Someone on Twitter said it would be hilarious if Obama randomly decided to hold a rally in Alabama just to piss him off.
Spanky
I assume most New England Jackals are aware, but just in case, here’s the current WaPo headline:
ETA: Nova Scotia too, for more than one jackal up there.
Kent
I teach the impact of climate change on coastal communities. Although no one really knows how this will all play out, I expect change to happen slowly, then suddenly when a tipping point is reached. Already we are seeing the effects of sea level rise in the most vulnerable communities like Miami, New Orleans and tideland Virginia. I expect things to slowly get worse in those sorts of coastal areas over the next couple of decades until we see a devastating direct hit by a new climate-fueled storm and the tipping point will have been reached. People and businesses will start abandoning the coast in waves.
What is the point of rebuilding if what you are rebuilding is already underwater? Sure you can rebuild your own little house but if the power grid is gone and the water and sewer service are washed away and the street in front of your house is gone how will is that going to work?
If I was young again, I’d be seriously looking at a career in civil engineering with a specialty in climate change mitigation. The Dutch are the only ones really serious about this today. American civil engineering programs are still building freeways and bridges. But there will be some interesting careers in the future for engineering experts who can go from city to city around the world advising on climate mitigation priorities and techniques.
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: @Yarrow: Trump and his staff could just be testing how much he can lie and yet still be supported by his followers and FOX news?
Yarrow
So American “chlorinated chicken” is a huge talking point in the UK among people who want to remain in the EU. If they leave they’ll have to make separate trade deals with countries, which will probably mean they’ll have to lower their food standards and accept importing our “chlorinated chicken.” That’s the backstory. Here’s today’s latest:
That’ll solve it.
Kay
I agree. The 2009 crash hit here first, too. You could tell it was going south by 2007. It wasn’t housing so much as it was auto loans that were the first to fail. Housing doesn’t go up and down here that much and it’s affordable but it was the auto loans. They just had no connection to reality and they have even less of a connection to reality now. They’re bigger and longer- 60 months!- and they’re lending to people who will not be able to make that payment without overtime.
Jeffro
@mrmoshpotato: It was kind of funny how first Stephens and now Brooks are whining so openly. If everyone else would just SHUT UP A MINUTE and let them spout their wisdom without all these CONSTANT CHALLENGES to their authority…
Yarrow
@Immanentize: Maybe. But he’s also a narcissistic petulant toddler who WILL have his way. He’s going to tweet what he wants or get someone to do it for him. Although I can’t understand anyone choosing to work for him there are people who do it. Since they are there I kind of understand how they’ll just tweet it for him because dealing with his wrath must be awful.
mrmoshpotato
@artem1s:
Does he own any POS courses in Alabama, or would he have had to pay someone else with our tax dollars?
Jeffro
@wv blondie: @artem1s: I still think he thought he was gonna score big points with “his people” in Alabama by warning them about ol’ Dorian (OH THANK YOU MR TRUMPOV, ‘SIR’) which in turn would somehow pay dividends/votes next year and get Doug Jones out of office. Had to be part of his ‘thinking’ ‘process’.
@Yarrow: @Betty Cracker: play the song WHILE waving Sharpies around ;)
trollhattan
@Kent:
In our area we’re happy when a neighborhood transitions from 99-year to a 100-year flood zone while the Dutch strive for 10,000-year protection. Yeah, we’re not mentally up to the challenge yet.
Parts of the Bahamas are still under feet of water. The only explanation I can think of is the ocean surface is so high there’s nowhere for the inland water to go. And the storm is long gone.
Yarrow
@Jeffro: Wave Sharpies at the convention!
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
I respected the EU for not allowing the poisons that proliferate our food industry, upon their shores.
rikyrah
@Jeffro:
complete WATB
rp
@Spanky: The title of this Jimmy Kimmel clip about sharpiegate gets to the heart of the matter IMO: “Trump Thinks We Are All Idiots”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3-tEyW56jM&t=638s
The media will accept lies, but not such hamfisted, obvious ones that insult their intelligence.
Duane
@Kay: Sums up the spineless, cowardly Republican party perfectly. They take it lying down and ask for more. You can’t hear it but I applaud this.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: People make fun of British food but I’ll tell you that the underlying food itself tastes so much better. I always notice when I go to the UK. You can get better quality food here–buying organic, farmer’s markets, pastured organic chicken, etc. but it can be very expensive. In the UK the starting level of quality of ingredients is higher and you get it at any supermarket. That’s the EU regulations at work.
Just One More Canuck
@Quinerly: just a few miles down the road from Tick Bite?
Immanentize
@Spanky: Word is Dorian is going way off the coast, here in Mass. But that the Cape and Islands still have a high wind and tides warning tonight. This, luckily, is no Sandy.
mrmoshpotato
@Jeffro: …then we’d be much worse off allowing these two idiots to be our brain rust? (deliberate)
Spanky
@rp: Ummm, actually that was a Kimmel piece with Fred Willard playing a guy who found 15 kilos of cocaine on the beach.
But I liked it!
JPL
@rp: Someone needs to ask trump, if he was getting updates every hour while he was playing golf, why he didn’t know AL was not in the path of the storm. Maybe he needs to fire the person providing the updates.
rikyrah
@Quinerly:
Morning to Poco and the tribe :)
The Moar You Know
@Betty Cracker: Wish I could remember where I read this. It’s very deliberate. He puts on a schtick everywhere he goes so that people won’t take him seriously – kind of like putting a teddy bear costume on a cobra. He’s now running Britain.
ETA: John Oliver also did a segment on it. It’s a must-watch to understand the guy.
The Lodger
@Yarrow: Sweet Home Alabama
Play that dead band’s song
Turn the speakers up full blast
Play it all night long
JPL
@Spanky: You have to go back to the beginning.
The Moar You Know
@Sab: So was I (actually down in Santa Cruz, but nobody here knows where that is). Wasn’t that fun?
mrmoshpotato
@The Moar You Know:
I wish to attend your Bear-a-Cobra workshop.
Shana
@Kayla Rudbek: we have Elfa in several closets. Easy to customize and adjust. Also adjusted when kids got bigger and could reach higher.
rp
@Spanky: It’s later in the clip.
Eunicecycle
@Kay: I know I was feeling it then, and maybe even a little earlier. I was raising funds for a small nature center and my business sponsors started halving their previous years’ contributions around 2006-07. And it was downhill from there.
bemused
@Eunicecycle:
We sold our smallish auto-related business in 2007 knowing there was economic meltdown looming. What I remember from that time was this was barely talked about on cable news/msm business segments and/or dismissed with derision. After the crash, friends said, wow, you got out just in time. Hell, it was the liberal media sources I was reading/watching that were right on.
Jay C
@Immanentize:
And unfortunately, that’s likely to end up being “a lot”.
And of course, Trump isn’t going to let Sharpiegate go: not as long as long as there is even the least opportunity to rile up the “base” by changing (tortuously twisting) the media narrative away from the “real reality” (i.e. Trump’s initial gaffe, and/or stupid attempts to excuse it away and/or lie about it) to “Trump reality”, i.e.
HATER LOSER FAKE MEDIA HATES THE GREATEST PRESIDENT EVAH FOR TRYING TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AND PUSHES FAKE HATER LOSER STORIES AND WHY ISN’T THIS THE REAL SCANDAL???!!11!!???
And the sad thing is, it usually works – for a while – even if only in the sycophant RW media
Kent
@trollhattan: The Bahamas are also quite flat. So all that water is going to drain really slowly. It is the double whammy from both salt water storm surge and 3 FEET of rainfall. Yes, 3 FEET. On top of that, there is debris everywhere so all the normal drainage ditches, storm sewers, and swales are all completely full of debris. The normal paths for water to drain after an ordinary rainfall are all blocked or destroyed.
StringOnAStick
@Kay: A friend who is a vet in Detroit saw the 2008 downturn early, because once the auto companies stopped paying OT, people cut back on what they would spend on their pets, including putting them down rather than pay for lifesaving surgery. He acquired a lot of nice pets that way, fixed them up and then got them homes. That was also when he turned from your typical small business right winger into a hard core D.
We’re going to see him at a wedding in 2 weeks, and I certainly plan to ask him about the local MI economy then.
J R in WV
@Betty Cracker:
Strongly recommend a Generac back up generator. I saw my next door neighbor having one put in, it inspired me to have one put in. Ours is the largest air-cooled model, won’t run the whole house A/C but everything else is good. 15 seconds after the grid drops, it fires up, runs on the natural gas, which since they replaced their distribution lines some years ago has never failed.
It auto-starts once a week for a few minutes. They visit once a year to do an oil change and see that everything is OK. There’s a computer monitor that controls and records conditions. The guys who did the install and do the maintenance used to be mine electricians, but that work went away … Dennis started his own company to install generators, they’re great workers! Glad not to be underground, not to be unemployed.
We once had power loss for over 2 weeks when the derecho blew through. There were crews in from AL, MS, SC, TN, NC, GA and VA. WE bought them pecan rolls and they were delighted. They were saving us !! We were so grateful for their work!
J R in WV
Regarding the Dorian hurricane warning for Sweet Home Alabama…
Somewhere I saw a surmise that someone showed trump a set of hurricane warnings that included “All Bahamas” which of course was right on… but trump read that as Alabama… very believable, as we know he can’t see well nor read well at all.
Simple and believable answer to all this hokum.
Betty, selling a near-the-beach house with a Tiki Garden bar… must have sold like hotcakes in the morning, huh? But wise to go to an extreme elevation like 47 feet, in Florida. ;-)
Betty Cracker
@The Moar You Know: It was a Josh Marshall piece where I read it.
@J R in WV: Sounds wonderful but too pricey for the likes of us! ;-)
Robert Sneddon
@Yarrow: The deal with the “Chlorinated chicken” news is that American poultry farming is rife with salmonella while the EU’s farming regulations are more strict requiring regular testing and destruction of flocks found to be infected. The result is that the EU, with fifty percent more population than the US has a tenth the number of human salmonella cases annually.
The FDA’s “solution” to the problem is to require treatment of processed poultry carcasses with chlorine to kill off any salmonella present in the meat. It doesn’t always work but it’s better than the alternative of sickening and killing a lot more people by not treating the meat this way. The other other alternative is government regulation of poultry producers to vastly reduce salmonella in poultry flocks before processing but that’s, well, government regulation.