29 dead, 100+ missing, and all he can do is spread lies about a blue state he hates.
Donald Trump: “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”
Does he even know his federal government controls 60% of forests in CA, another third in private hands, only 4% under state control.
for a little background, this from last march in wildfiretoday:
Amid reports of widespread sexual harassment and misconduct within the Forest Service, and especially among firefighters, a woman will now lead the agency. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has selected Victoria (Vicki) Christiansen to be the interim Chief of the Forest Service. She replaces Tony Tooke who suddenly resigned March 7 after allegations of sexual misconduct were aired on the PBS program NewsHour.
[…]
Ms. Christiansen has experience in wildland fire suppression. After obtaining a degree in forestry at the University of Washington in 1983 she accrued firefighting experience with the Washington Department of Natural Resources. There is one report that she was qualified to use fireline explosives. Thirteen years after graduating she was the Washington State Forester. Between 2006 and 2012 she served in five different positions with the Washington DNR, Arizona Division of Forestry, and the U.S. Forest Service. Her last job before becoming interim USFS Chief was Deputy Chief, State and Private Forestry with the USFS.
In a Senate committee hearing August 3, 2017 Ms. Christiansen talked about budget issues and logging. She was also asked about water scooping air tankers by Senator Maria Cantwell. Here is the official transcript at 52:50, which was compiled from uncorrected Closed Captioning.
Here is the official transcript at 52:50, which was compiled from uncorrected Closed Captioning.
[…continues…]
and from an interview with the interim chief by evergreen magazine earlier this year:
EVERGREEN: Turning to more routine matters involving the Forest Service, the so called “fire-funding fix” doesn’t kick in for two more fire seasons. Does this mean that forest restoration work that would reduce the risk of wildfire will be shelved for another two years?
CHRISTIANSEN: I am very appreciative of Congress’s efforts to address this issue. I know that it came through after the tireless efforts of many members and a broad coalition of partner groups who recognized that solving fire borrowing was critical to our ability to actively manage our National forests to improve conditions on our forests.
In addition to fixing fire borrowing, Omnibus budget legislation provides nearly $6 billion to the Forest Service, of which, $1.37 billion will go toward activities that directly improve forest conditions and decrease the risk of wildland fire. Fiscal year 2018 funding levels, combined with forest management reform efforts undertaken internally and via the fire funding fix, will only increase our efforts to address our landscape management goals.
Fiscal year 2019 is in the early stages of deliberation in Congress. In the coming weeks, I will have the opportunity to testify on behalf of the agency’s budget and articulate the value of our work to the American public and share examples of how our work influences outcomes across the landscape. We are grateful for the investments of new tools and support for our work. We are now working and planning to deliver.
[….]
EVERGREEN: Give us a reality check. The Forest Service looks to us to be about 8,000 people short, and the losses appear to be mainly through attrition and retirements. This comes at a time when the “fire culture” in the Forest Service is growing rapidly, and the “forest management culture” is shrinking rapidly, meaning we are facing a shortage of people who know how to manage forests. Do we have this about right, and how will you, as Chief, work to reverse it?
CHRISTIANSEN: Our workforce rises and falls with changes in budget. Currently, our total permanent workforce totals roughly 27,100 employees. Within this total, however, our fire workforce has increased with a subsequent loss of personnel in all the non-fire program areas.
Frankly, forest management has decreased less than some other programs because of two things: First the relationship between managing fuels and managing forests and the steady increase in the fuels budget has enabled us to keep more forest management skills within the workforce.
Second, our ability to retain receipts from timber sales has helped fund forest management work. Programs like mining, grazing, recreation, special uses, among others, haven’t experienced these same mitigating factors.
And the future is not about getting to the funding and staffing levels of the past. We have reached a place now where innovation and news tools also play an integral role. We have so many new tools in the box, such as Good Neighbor Authority, expanded authority for Stewardship Contracting and new categories for streamlined NEPA.
We are forging many more partnerships than in the past. All of these contribute as force multipliers for our performance. We don’t need to be the planner, the funder, and the actual doer of every task that needs to be done to maintain the health, resiliency and productivity of national forests. What we need to be are skilled collaborators, innovators, and adopters to ensure we can convene, develop allocate and anticipate tools and resources we need in the right places at the right time.
so the twit should look in the mirror with regard to his “…gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!” maybe start with nominating a permanent head of forest service? ask congress to provide required funding so forest service can do their job adequately? give moral support to the folks out there risking their lives?
SFB isn’t low information in this instance, he is no information.
My family in CA are not in harm’s way (yet), but they say the air quality is terrible.
Like I said, I doubt he’s been to a forest.
trump thinks the only things that live in the forest are Bambi, Thumper, and stupid people.
and oh yeah…. he thinks mostly hippies and Hollywood types live in California… moron.
Looking to hear from our CA contingent today and I hope all are as well. I’ve been checking with various friends and relatives to make sure they are safe. Pretty much the same report that they can smell and taste the fires as the air quality is so poor.
.
meanwhile, that European trip was really a fiasco wasn’t it? even by his standards
this pretty much covers it …
Rep. Eric Swalwell
@RepSwalwell
Trump’s European Vacation was as bad as the movie. He wimped out of honoring our fallen troops because of a misting. He moped around in his hotel room and insulted fire victims. And he was scorched by the French President. This is not winning. This is a national embarrassment.
the atlantic “An Open-and-Shut Violation of Campaign-Finance Law”
It is a strange turn of events when a president famous for denouncing “fake news” is discovered to have entered into an agreement with a media organization to finance the concealment of very real but politically unfavorable newsworthy information. The Wall Street Journal reports that Donald Trump entered into an explicit agreement with the chairman of American Media (AMI), David Pecker, to help his campaign by buying off women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump. AMI came through: It paid Karen McDougal $150,000 to “catch and kill” her account of an affair with Trump. She did not know at the time that the background agreement between AMI and Trump existed, but was instead told that in addition to compensation for the exclusive rights to her story and an option for columns on fitness and health, she would be the featured model on two magazine covers.
The deal that Trump reached and executed with AMI violates federal campaign-finance laws. AMI made an illegal corporate in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign, and the campaign and Trump share in the liability by accepting this illegal support. As open-and-shut cases go, this one is high on the list. But this is only part of what makes this a remarkable episode in the history of presidential-campaign lawbreaking.
[…continues…]
such an idiot? an understatement
wapo:
TALLAHASSE — President Trump on Monday called for halting the just-launched recounts in the Florida races for Senate and governor, alleging without evidence that many ballots were missing and forged and that a valid tally was no longer possible.
In a morning tweet, Trump suggested the results from the night of the election should stand, handing victories to fellow Republicans Rick Scott in the Senate race and Ron DeSantis in the gubernatorial race.
“The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged,” Trump said in a tweet that misstated what Florida officials have concluded. “An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!”
Ballots from overseas and military voters have until Friday to arrive to be counted.
Trump’s tweet came as Florida officials conducted recounts in three statewide races amid accusations of fraud by Republicans but no evidence of criminal conduct, according to the Florida secretary of state’s office, which is led by a Scott appointee.
The recounts are occurring in accordance with Florida law because of the tight margins in the vote count.
[…continues…]
It’s looking more and more likely that Kyrsten Sinema will be the next Senator from Arizona. Senator McCain’s people have started coming forward to call BS on Republican attacks on the vote counting. Cindy McCain has spoken out repeatedly and vehemently to defend the process.
One suspects that Ms McCain may throw her hat in the ring for her father’s open seat coming up for special election in 2020. If so, she’s laying a decent foundation and she will be very electable.
There are two main causes of fire in California sadly arson (stupid humans) and the electric utilities. It seems a PGE wind related sparking caused the Camp Fire
Trump is an idiot we deserve better
AZ goes blue– stuff that fat ass the golfing president.
KGC – I’d say Arizona is decidedly purple at this point. Another key race is for SoS between Katy Hobbs (D) and Steve Gaynor (R). It’s a dead heat as the counting continues.
Thanks Travis
Nice to know it’s not just because McSalley is a lying sack of shit
There is rain the forecast but not for 8 days. Right now it is cold and we aren’t lighting our source of heat -wood stove.
So we are huddled on the couch with the dogs under about 8 blankets brrrrr a lot less smokey today.
I cannot emphasize enough that what is going on in California is due to climate change hotter and drier.
To call trump an idiot does a disservice to idiots everywhere. Staying in his hotel room to tweet and watch cable news. What an absolute embarrassment!
TravisC,
Nice to see the count in AZ going Sinema’s way. Hoping republicans there have to choke on the result.
There are times when SFB outputs, or rather repeats, garbage. Like from the white nationalists. Other times the output looks like it is from a staffer, usually following some outrage the senile old freak put to the world. This past weekend was all of those. The Macron attack before landing was SFB. The tweets following the failure to travel to the cemetery were staff. The absolute bat shit crazy stuff about the fires and elections was his deep chocolate pudding brain putting out the stuff floating around in his little world, quite separate from our world. He should be in a padded room.
excerpt from wapo op ed by
Thomas A. Daschle and
William Frist
November 11 at 1:34 PM
[…]
We served together in the Senate for a decade, and for a time we served together as leaders of our respective caucuses — sometimes allies, often adversaries, but never enemies. The growing partisan divide then greatly foreshadowed the politics of today.
As it does now, an investigation into the president of the United States split Congress. We disagreed about the merits of that investigation, and whether it should lead to a House impeachment and Senate trial of President Bill Clinton. But when we look back, one issue on which we vigorously agree is this: A rare moment of bipartisanship allowed Congress and the American public to wrestle with the full implications of the investigation and its findings. In 1998, independent counsel Kenneth Starr sent a report to Congress on his investigation, which began as an examination of an Arkansas land deal decades before, and Congress voted 363 to 63 to release those findings to the public that September. This bipartisan act gave the American people a seat at the table.
We don’t know where the Mueller investigation will lead, but it is absolutely essential, especially in the current environment of headline tweets and spin, for the American people to have a seat at the table again. All 535 members of Congress will be better off if their constituents have access to the same set of facts. We believe it is critical that Mueller’s eventual report be made public, not censored as some administration officials have suggested. Only transparency will help the country move on, no matter what the facts might be.
[…]
But today, the stakes of the Mueller investigation are higher. At its heart is a question about national security. Russia attacked our democracy, as confirmed by the heads of 17 national intelligence agencies. The special counsel has worked to unravel the Russian plot, and every American of any political party should be able to read his findings and decide for themselves what happened. President Trump has embraced an open approach of communicating directly with the American people, putting trust in those who elected him. That same trust warrants a public release of the report so Americans can read the facts themselves instead of relying on the muddied filter of press and politicians.
It pains us to see how deeply divided America is today. If the Mueller report is suppressed or otherwise gutted, Americans will lose even more faith in their government. It will not help the Trump administration, which would look like it has something to hide, and it will make Congress, at least to many, appear complicit in a coverup. It will tell Americans that their elected officials do not trust them to understand the facts or give informed input. That’s not how you govern, and that’s certainly not how you heal a country.
We do not know what Mueller will find in the end. We believe he’s a good man who will follow the facts and call it like it is. Certainly, that’s the man the two of us knew so well when he led the FBI after 9/11, and when the Senate itself a few months later was attacked with anthrax. We trust Mueller to proceed with professionalism when the adversary is Russia, just as he did when the enemy was terrorists. Only a full and public accounting of the Mueller investigation will give Americans the opportunity to reestablish confidence in institutions that should be of and for the people — and transparent in their pursuit of justice.
I am surprised by how many house races are still yet to call. If they break for dems and some of them will the gain in the house could be at or near 40 seats. Only in an alternate universe could those results be spun as anything other than a complete GOP wipe out.
Stan Lee has passed. He was 95.
Does the oaf just let them have his phone or do they steal it……and what else do they do with it?
Is this the period (day) before all hell breaks loose? There seems to be a lot of quiet on the WH front. SFB refusing to visit the dead. SFB refusing to visit the living, save for a certain KGB agent in his life (how I hate to interfere with late life unions). SFB locked up in his safe room. Faux snooze going quiet (sort of). Ol’ traitor McConnell visiting to add comfort to the Rainman. Something is going on and we can only guess until Mueller drops a shoe or two on the situation.
What a great thread today. Sorry I’ve been absent, but I had a colonoscopy this morning and came home and caught up on some of the sleep lost from last night as I was getting up and crapping my brains out.
So IMPOTUS believes we should just go with what the vote totals in Florida were last Tuesday. What an idiot. Calling on a state to ignore it selection clause because he doesn’t like the outcome. What a FUCKING idiot.
Congrats to Krysten Sinema. And congratulations to the McCain family for calling out the pugns who are falsely calling foul.
SFB bragged about retiring Jeff Flake. Will he Bragg about getting a Democrat elected in his place?
Brilliant move Tiny.
Hans Johnson
19 hrs ·
Before she was a SENATOR-elect: Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema co-chaired very 1st statewide campaign to defeat a constitutional amendment to deny marriage to committed LGBT couples. In Arizona. In 2006. Six years before anywhere else. She wowed Rea Carey & me & Kristina Wilfore & so many others with her insight, work ethic, discipline & sense of humor. She did the hardest thing in politics: Have difficult conversations with friends. Powerhouse! Now set to join, & wage change, in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. NEVER bet against her. https://www.azcentral.com/…/arizona-u-s-senate-…/1931573002/
Ms Sinema definitely made it easy to vote for her instead of just against her opponent. I’m hearing that about so many of the Democrats who ran for office and won, or came close to winning. That bodes well for the future of the country.
turns out the dems do have a deep bench
Democrats winning more state wide offices in AZ Secretary of State and superintendent of public instruction seem to be going dems way. A nice change after years of republican control.
that should give the goopers something to think about over Thanksgiving
Couldn’t get out of the White House to attend ceremonies at Arlington
What a loser.
Travis, who do we have that lives in AZ these days? We have someone in CA who calls Col McSalley a whore and a lying sack of shit. Surely she must have some redeeming factor. Perhaps she could fly fire supression missions into California.
I said she was a lying sack of shit and she was during the campaign and she choose Trump
Flatus – Not sure there are other Trail hands in AZ besides me.
I won’t resort to that kind of language to describe what I think about McSally, but I will say that I resent the campaign she ran. It was needlessly ugly, filled with lies and out-of-context sound bites designed only to cause fear. I feel that she dishonored her service and I’m embarrassed for her.
In her favor, she did post a decent concession video. Doesn’t erase the fact that she’s in lockstep with the garbage currently occupying the White House, but she’s got a lovely dog.
I did not call her a whore
Jace, he was all tuckered out from avoiding events to honor our WWI dead in France over the weekend. Poor baby.
And our military personnel are not all that stupid. According to Lawrence ODonnell his approval in the military is evenly split, which is horrid for a pugn who increased military spending. It may be the beginning of the end – his approval in today’s Rasmussen poll is at 46%, which is a monumental 6 point drop over the past week.
I apologize, KGC. You didn’t call Col McSally a whore; it was this other woman:
“Katherine Graham Cracker says:
November 8, 2018 at 12:36 pm
They are truly deplorable people
Suckabee Slanders just a whore– she will do anything for $$$$$ the evidence is all around us”
Here’s a link to an article from Mercury News about the potential source of the Camp wildfire mentioned by KC.
I stand by that comment
Pogo
He was afraid he would melt in France and was too tired out from doing nothing but tweeting to go to Arlington
God forbid the outcry had Obama ever have done such a thing
If you didn’t catch Colbert’s cold open showing the French weather girl laughing hysterically at trump missing the cemetery event because of rain you’ve got to go find it.