;)
The Commentariat -- September 10, 2017
Afternoon Update:
Henry Fountain of the New York Times: "Engineers stopped releasing water from Lake Okeechobee on Saturday, confident that they had lowered levels enough to keep the dike and the towns around it safe as Hurricane Irma swept into southern Florida. But the dike, built seven decades ago and named for Herbert Hoover, was not the only major piece of Florida infrastructure that had officials concerned as the hurricane approached. Airports, sewage treatment plants, flood control systems and other facilities could be overrun by heavy rains or flooding from storm surge, as Irma's winds amass ocean water and push it ashore. The impacts of climate change -- especially sea level rise, which is already bringing more tidal flooding in Miami Beach -- could make matters worse, as any storm surge from Irma would be on top of an already higher baseline. And Florida, like every state in an era of tightening budgets, has deferred costly maintenance on much of its infrastructure, said Addie Javed, a former president of the Florida section of the American Society of Civil Engineers.... As South Florida's population has swelled in recent decades, its roads, water and sewage treatment plants and other facilities have struggled to keep pace. Much of the state’s infrastructure is now nearing the end of its useful life...." ...
... Brent Griffiths of Politico: "... Donald Trump said on Saturday that his administration continues to monitor Irma as the Category 3 hurricane heads for a projected collision with southern Florida on Sunday. 'We're as prepared as you can be for such an event,' Trump said during a meeting with members of his cabinet at Camp David, the Maryland presidential retreat. 'This is a storm of enormous destructive power and I ask everyone in the storm's path to heed all instructions, get out of its way.'... The White House said the president and his team also received a briefing on Hurricane Jose, a Category 4 storm that is projected to move away from the Caribbean Islands, but could still cause flooding in certain areas. Trump also commended federal agencies for 'remaining focused on Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts in Texas and Louisiana,' according to a White House readout from the summit." ...
... Katie Paris of Shareblue: "At [Saturday's] cabinet meeting, Trump made sure every cabinet member present knew that the hurricane means a 'speed up' in delivering on his 'tax reform' agenda. Despite the populist rhetoric, the reality of Trump's push for tax cuts could not be more clear: massive tax breaks for corporations and the nation's millionaires and billionaires.... 'To create prosperity at home we'll be discussing our plan for dramatic tax cuts and tax reform. And I think now with what's happened with the hurricane, I'm gonna ask for a speed up. I wanted a speed up any way, but now we need it even more so. So we need to simplify the tax code, reduce taxes very substantially on the middle class. And make our business tax more globally competitive. We're the highest anywhere in the world right now.' As PolitiFact has noted repeatedly, 'By all metrics we looked at, the United States is far from the most taxed nation overall and for businesses.'" Emphasis original. ...
... Brandon Carter of the Hill: "A Florida sheriff is warning citizens not to shoot guns at Hurricane Irma as the monster storm approaches Florida. 'To clarify, DO NOT shoot weapons @ #Irma,' the Pasco County, Fla. sheriff tweeted. 'You won't make it turn around & it will have very dangerous side effects.'" Mrs. McC: Apparently the sheriff is aware that what goes up must come down. See related story linked below. ...
... Cruel People Tricks. Merris Badcock of WPTV West Palm Beach: "As Hurricane Irma's outer bands inch closer to Palm Beach County, animal control officers say they are hustling to rescue abandoned animals. And these aren't pets who are just being left inside, Director of Animal Care Diane Suave said. 'They are left in a yard, in a pen they cannot escape from or tethered to trees or poles,' she said. Palm Beach County Animal Care reports animal control officers have rescued 49 dogs and two cats in the last 48 hours. This latest update comes just one day after local animal officials reported finding dozens of dogs chained to trees and parked cars."
Julia Manchester of the Hill: "... Hillary Clinton said in an interview broadcast Sunday that while she is 'done' being a candidate, she is not leaving politics. 'Is your political career over?' Jane Pauley asked Clinton on 'CBS Sunday Morning.' 'Yes,' Clinton responded. 'As an active politician, it's over. I am done with being a candidate,' she added. 'But I am not done with politics, because I literally believe that our country's future is at stake.'"
Say What? Ruth Eglash of the Washington Post: "Israeli leaders and political commentators reacted with anger and bewilderment Sunday after Yair Netanyahu, son of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, posted a classic anti-Semitic meme on his Facebook page. Neo-Nazi groups in the United States and Holocaust denier David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, liked the post, however. 'Yair Netanyahu is a total bro,' wrote Andrew Anglin in the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer. 'Next he's going to call for gassings.'... The image posted over the weekend by the younger Netanyahu, who goes by the name 'Yair Hun' on Facebook, appears to be a local take on a classic anti-Semitic meme suggesting that Jews control the United States. It has appeared widely on extreme alt-right websites. In this instance, it depicts his father's perceived foes: American Jewish billionaire philanthropist and investor George Soros, outspoken former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, activist Eldad Yaniv and Meni Naftali, a former housekeeper for the Netanyahu's who successfully sued them for mistreatment. Netanyahu captioned the meme 'the food chain.'"
*****
** Ta-Nehisi Coates, of the Atlantic, in an essay adapted from his new book We Were Eight Years in Power: "It is insufficient to state the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact. With one immediate exception, Trump's predecessors made their way to high office through the passive power of whiteness.... It is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true his ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: If you don't have time to read anything else this week, carve out 20 minutes to read Coates' essay. His takedown of white, liberal politicians & pundits is particularly effective.
David Smiley of the Miami Herald: "Miami's Republican mayor called on ... Donald Trump and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency Friday to acknowledge that climate change is playing a role in the extreme weather that has slammed his city and the continental U.S. this summer. Speaking from Miami's Emergency Operations Center in downtown, where the city's senior public safety and political authorities will ride out Category 4 Hurricane Irma this weekend, Mayor Tomás Regalado told the Miami Herald that he believes warming and rising seas are threatening South Florida's immediate and long-term future. 'This is the time to talk about climate change. This is the time that the president and the EPA and whoever makes decisions needs to talk about climate change,' said Regalado.... 'If this isn't climate change, I don't know what is. This is a truly, truly poster child for what is to come.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: If you read yesterday's Commentariat, then you know Scott Pruitt said just the opposite -- that it's wrong to talk about climate change when you should be out rescuing people. This is about as cogent an argument as telling the cop who stopped you for speeding that s/he should be out "catching the real criminals." ...
... Paul Krugman: "Lots of people are having fun with Rush Limbaugh's insistence that warnings about Irma were a liberal plot.... (He evacuated his Palm Beach mansion soon afterwards.)... Crazy conspiracy theorizing about climate change isn't an aberration on the right, it's the norm. Almost every senior figure in energy and environmental policy within the Trump administration is a climate change denier, with most of them having expressed the view that the science is a hoax. And in this case Trump isn't bypassing the GOP establishment: these people are the party's establishment.... The paranoid style in policy debates is pretty much universal on the modern right."
Bryan Bender of Politico: "The Trump administration is considering proposing smaller, more tactical nuclear weapons that would cause less damage than traditional thermonuclear bombs.... A high-level panel created by ... Donald Trump to evaluate the nuclear arsenal is reviewing various options for adding a more modern 'low-yield' bomb, according to sources involved in the review, to further deter Russia, North Korea or other potential nuclear adversaries. Approval of such weapons -- whether designed to be delivered by missile, aircraft or special forces -- would mark a major reversal from the Obama administration, which sought to limit reliance on nuclear arms and prohibited any new weapons or military capabilities. And critics say it would only make the actual use of atomic arms more likely."
Ashley Parker & Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "In agreeing to tie Harvey aid to a three-month extension of the debt ceiling and government funding [proposed by Democratic leaders], Trump burned the people who are ostensibly his allies. The president was an unpredictable -- and, some would say, untrustworthy -- negotiating partner with not only congressional Republicans but also with his Cabinet members and top aides. Trump saw a deal that he thought was good for him -- and he seized it. The move should come as no surprise to students of Trump's long history of broken alliances and agreements. In business, his personal life, his campaign and now his presidency, Trump has sprung surprises on his allies with gusto. His dealings are frequently defined by freewheeling spontaneity, impulsive decisions and a desire to keep everyone guessing -- especially those who assume they can control him. He also repeatedly demonstrates that, while he demands absolutely loyalty from others, he is ultimately loyal to no one but himself." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: You might want to read about Mnuchin's "contributions" to the meeting. Unless he was giving a lecture for Trump's benefit, his lecture was an insult to the long-serving Congressional leaders in the room. They all know a helluva a lot more about the history & effects of the debt limit than he does. Although the leaders didn't boo him the way Congressional confederates did, his approach was probably as welcome as his pitch to the confederates: "Do it for me." And it didn't work on Trump, anyway; he thought Chuck & Nancy were more fun & "energetic" than his "subdued" Cabinet members.
Mike Allen of Axios: "A Trump adviser says that after a tumultuous seven months in office, it had finally dawned on the president: 'People really f[uck]ing hate me.' For someone who has spent his life lapping up adulation, however fake, it was a harsh realization. This is a man with an especially acute need for affirmation. This week's bear hug of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer opened Trump's eyes to one solution: Stop doing things that people hate, and start striking deals. Who knows if this will stick. But there's reason to think it might, according to Trump's friends and aides."
Washington Post Editors: "Unfortunately but predictably, an effort that would have forced release of Mr. Trump's tax information was shut down last week by House Republicans. In a party-line vote Thursday, the House Ways and Means Committee rejected a resolution that would have directed the Treasury Department to turn over the tax returns of Mr. Trump and his many businesses. A law enacted in 1924 after the Teapot Dome scandal allows the Way and Means Committee, along with the Senate Committee on Finance and the Joint Committee on Taxation, to request tax information for review in a closed session with possible public disclosure.... 'How can we debate tax reform proposals without seeing the president's tax returns?' asked Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.), who sponsored the resolution.... It appears Republicans ... need to be reminded that Congress's job is not to provide slavish political cover for the executive, but rather independent oversight."
AND if you think about this preacher's amazing theory -- adapted from the Bible -- you'll realize that God is a big fan of the Electoral College. On the other hand, couldn't God be punishing us for being so stupid? Medlar & I don't suppose any heavenly beings are paying attention to U.S. politics, but for believers in supernatural interference in worldly matters, Theory B sounds as likely as Theory A. -- Mrs. McCrabbie ...
... THIS TOO. Some 46,000 Floridians have found a brilliant way to confront Hurricane Irma. They plan to shoot at it. ...
... Some of The Hurricane Shootists Probably Voted for These Two Guys. Kristine Phillips of the Washington Post: "As Irma churned toward the Florida coast, two Republican lawmakers from the state voted against a $15 billion hurricane relief bill, saying that although they want aid to storm victims, they have concerns about other provisions of the measure.GOP Reps. Matt Gaetz and Ted Yoho ... stuck to their principles of fiscal conservatism despite calls from fellow Florida lawmakers to support the bill. The two, who are among the 90 House Republicans who voted against the bill, do not represent parts of the state that are likely to feel Irma's immediate impact as the massive storm makes landfall on mainland United States this weekend.... Both lawmakers had voted for a stand-alone bill that would provide nearly $8 billion in hurricane relief for FEMA.... 'I have a pretty strident view that I will only vote to raise the debt limit if that vote is accompanied with reductions in entitlement spending,' Gaetz said, according to the Miami Herald." Mrs. McC: And I have a pretty strident view that Gaetz doesn't have a clue what the debt limit is about. It doesn't raise spending AT ALL, nor does it in any way justify "entitlement" cuts. Yahoo Yoho says he still expects FEMA to be there for residents of his district.
Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times on the Equifax breach: "We really have no good way, in public policy, to exact some existential punishment on companies that fail to safeguard our data.... Experts said it was highly unlikely that any regulatory body would shut Equifax down over this breach.... Consumers also have piddling rights over how Equifax may continue to use their credit data. 'There's nothing in any statute or anything else that allows you to ask Equifax to remove your data or have all your data disappear if you say you no longer trust it,' said John Ulzheimer, a consumer credit expert who worked at Equifax in the 1990s. But wait, it gets worse. You also can't prevent Equifax from getting any more of your data."
News Ledes
Washington Post: "The extremely dangerous Category 4 Irma crashed into the Florida Keys on Sunday morning, unleashing violent wind gusts and storm-surge flooding. Florida's western coast next faces Irma's wrath, and forecasters fear this storm will go down as one of the worst in the state's history.... Coastal waters could rise 10 to 15 feet above normally dry land, inundating homes, businesses and roads, an 'imminent danger,' according to the National Hurricane Center. 'The Keys through Tampa will likely experience the worst storm surge event that area has seen in generations,' said Bill Read, a former Hurricane Center director." ...
... Here are the WashPo's live updates. ...
... Washington Post: "... Hurricane Irma is so strong and its pressure is so low, it's sucking water from its surroundings into the core of the storm." ...
... Marie: My neighbor just sent a photo of his riverside yard & wrote that I have 100 feet of beach beyond my seawall right now where there is normally river. Our houses are several miles in from the coast, but the temporary "beach" will send all that water back to haunt us in the surge. ...
... Miami Herald: "Irma's fierce eyewall battered the Lower Keys early Sunday as the record-breaking hurricane descended on the low-lying chain of islands curling off South Florida. The north side of Irma's eye, about 23 miles wide, began brushing Key West at daybreak, hammering the islands with waves and gusty winds. Landfall, which is not officially declared until half the eye comes ashore, is expected any time. Social media posts showed white-topped waves rushing across streets and trees whipping in the wind. At 8 a.m., Irma was located 20 miles southeast of Key West, with sustained winds still reaching 130 mph, National Hurricane Center forecasters said. Irma's eye should move over the Lower Keys shortly, forecasters said, before the storm rolls up Florida's Gulf Coast. Hurricane-force winds extend 80 miles, likely guaranteeing widespread damage. Tropical storm force winds reach another 220 miles from Irma's center." ...
... CNN: "Hurricane Jose is moving away from a string of Caribbean islands -- a welcome reprieve to the area, which was already pummeled earlier this week by Hurricane Irma."
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Reader Comments (12)
From AP: BREAKING: Florida asks another 700,000 to leave ahead of Hurricane Irma; nearly 7 million total urged to evacuate multiple states.
What a terrifying experience, fleeing to safety and not knowing what will be left behind. Reminds me of refugees all over the world, without the weapons, persecution and safe places to run to and no hope of going home.
@Diane: And, like most refugees from political oppression or upheaval, these hurricane victims don't know where "safety" is or if they can get to it. I'm lucky in that I got to my refuge months before the deluge. But over the next couple of days, I'll find out if the weather has wiped out my retirement nest egg, which is in a big ole house on the Caloosahatchie in Fort Myers. If so, I have enough to get by on, but I won't be doing the things I had hoped to do. The house is definitely going to flood; the question is just "how high?" My neighbor planned to pump out the basement with a generator I gave him, but there's a high probability that the generator will end up under water, too, and who knows how long it will be before he can get another one?
I've been able to contact some of my friends in Fort Myers, & they've found what looks like safe grounds, but I'm still worried about them & about everyone else who is endangered by this weather/climate event.
Also, too -- Thanks, Trump, Pruitt, Rick Scott & Texas governors present & past for all your climate-change denial. In this way & in so many others, right-wing politics is an existential threat to all of us.
Marie
Coates' essay reminds me of a NYT comment I made back when I was the Constant Weader & a fairly nice person. It was right after the 2016 election, & I wrote that I suspected every white person I passed on the street of being a Trump voter. The person was incensed & said I was a racist.
At the time, I thought the writer's response was ignorant, inasmuch as Trump got the majority of the white vote, but Clinton got the vast majority of votes from people of other ethnicities.
Coates reconfirms, enhances & deepens my view of white American racial prejudice. Some of you will probably find his assertions jarring; many will say, "Well, he's cherry-picking facts to fit his argument. Look at all the nice white people!" Or "But Hillary won the popular vote!" Those things are true, but the liberal apologists for white racism -- as Coates points out -- are simply promoting/ignoring/forgiving white racism. That racism imperils not just minorities but every one of us.
Marie
Another good read that works with Bea McC's recommendation of Ta-hisi Coates new book...It is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true—his ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power." ...seems to fall in line with this:
Suzy Hansen Washington Post piece is titled: "Nobody knows what Trump is doing. Not even Trump." ...but goes on to say, he is making Americans see the U.S. "the way the rest of the world already did..."
Many Americans have long accepted this idea of our superiority and goodness as if it were a self-evident truth, not postwar propaganda created to justify imperial intervention. Without these beliefs, who would Americans be? That ours is the most successful and evolved country in the world is the basis of most Americans’ sense of reality.
"America is an imperialist country." That statement sparked a debate around the table at a London restaurant back in the late seventies. I didn't participate, but it left a long and questioning gap in my mind for years. It was an eye-opening remark coming from a Brit whose own country was once known for the phrase, '...the sun never sets on British soil." Looking back, as it relates to Hansen's commentary, it was that charge made about the U.S. policies and international activities that made me begin to reassess '...what I/we/d always been told about how great and good our nation is and the rationale for our 'helping' other countries.' In retrospect, it has made for strange alliances and even stranger military involvements—tho' easier to grasp, especially when oil is a factor.
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As for what's happening in Florida today (and its impending aftermath) has all of us concerned for family and friends and everyone living in its path who may not have been able to escape ahead of the hurricane's drift in direction that perhaps may spare much of the east coast. Where does one go to escape? One friend's daughter and family left their home in Miami to head to the 'safer' west coast. She must be frantic with worry.
In so many ways, the world misses the obvious.
Trump is not a Republican. He is a Trump!
Trump is not a white supremacist. He is a Trump supremacist who happens to be white.
Wake up America! This is not politics. It's mental illness!!
Apropos of how God communicates thoughts to the satraps on earth, Tom Toles the WaPo cartoonist has an appropriate view today.
I have often wondered how folks like Pat Robertson can read God's disaster-writing against gay marriage etc., but can't discern that She must be really beating up on the Bible Belt, year in year out, for some reason. None are so blind as those who will not see, I suppose.
Trump on Irma: 'We've never seen anything like this'. Just a coincidence number two.
Some personal coincidences:
We visit our daughter in Portland OR every summer. Always bring an umbrella just in case. Not this year. Hot and dry as hell.
For more than 40 years I water my lawn typically twice a week. This year, once the entire summer.
And of course, with my examples there are entire countries than can tell similar stories.
I've been mostly disconnected from RC as of late, but this piece from Mother Jones (apologies if it was already linked) ties in perfectly with the Ta-Nahisi Coates piece:
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2017/09/fighting-white-supremacists/
Not only is the climate change denialism on the Right an existential threat, as Marie suggests, the sneering intransigence of Confederates, for decades now, to allocating funds for infrastructure replacement, repair, and maintenance has dramatically increased the life threatening force of the natural disasters their willful arrogance toward global warming has helped to create. And why has infrastructure concern earned such scorn?
Racism. Again. Many crumbling infrastructure sites are located in or connected to cities. And who lives in cities?
Nuff said.
So here's how it goes. Admitting that climate change is a problem about which something can be done is anti-business, as are appropriate measures that can and should be taken to moderate the effects of monster storms. Spending money on infrastructure is pro-blah moochers. Neither mesh with the Right's unquestioning support of Money Over People and Racial Hatred Over All, foundational pillars of the Modern Republican Party.
In so many ways right wing ideology is hateful, dangerous, deadly, unAmerican, misanthropic, and inhuman.
If you're unsure of that conclusion, check out who's living in the White House. If you're looking for two words (besides narcissism and ignorance, that is) that best describe Donald Trump, greed and racism will do quite nicely.
@Safari. THX for the Mother Jones link. More, more, more of this kind of writing. Coates article is going to make a lot of folks uncomfortable, but its brilliant. I've been disgusted with the "Hillbilly Elegy" and the rest of that genre for awhile. This is great reality push back.
Ironically, the white supremacists are likely as aware of current circumstances as well as its historical path as Coates and are using it to their advantage.
Liked the Motherjones article. Similar to one, "So you want to fight White Supremacy" in The Establishment which contained a statement which resonates with me.
"The system of white supremacy does not care about your intentions, it does not care if you do or do not hold hatred for people of colour in your heart. It only cares that you participate in the system."
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0183356
apropos to the discussion of racism is this survey of discrimination
as experienced by almost 15,000 Americans. I frankly find it difficult to believe.