Let them eat ashes
Sen. Jeff Merkley said he expects Pres. Donald Trump to approve Oregon’s request for emergency federal assistance for the wildfires e soon, perhaps as early as Thursday afternoon or Friday.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown made the formal request for support Wednesday, and Oregon’s congressional delegation issued a letter of support the same afternoon.
On Thursday, as fires continued to ravage the state, Brown told reporters she was still waiting on a response to the request from the White House. About 900,000 acres of Oregon have burned, she said.
We hate to rush him and everything but…
Brown and state officials said they are working to get more firefighters on the ground. A strike team is coming in from Utah, Brown said, and she requested a battalion of active duty military members from the U.S. Department of Defense and has asked Oregon colleges and universities to be flexible with students who are fighting the wildfires.
It’s not on Trump’s radar though.
Over the past 24 hours on his Twitter feed, President Trump has attacked Democrats and racial injustice protesters nearly a dozen times, mentioned law and order, and made false claims about mail voting.
But on the increasingly deadly, catastrophic wildfires in California and Oregon that have displaced 500,000 people, caused fire tornadoes, killed a 1-year-old in Washington state, and blotted out the sun in one of America’s largest metropolitan areas, he has been silent.
A search of the president’s Twitter feed and his public comments from Factba.se, plus a search of recent White House news briefings, finds no mention by him or his press secretary of one of the worst natural disasters to hit the West in modern times.
Can you imagine any other president doing this? Even the worst of them? Bush was woefully inadequate on Katrina but at least he didn’t ignore it entirely.
These two states are running out of money and manpower to fight the blazes eating millions of acres and neighborhoods. One of the only times the president has talked about this was in late August at a news briefing on the coronavirus, where he announced that he had approved an emergency declaration to open up federal funding for California to fight the wildfires. As the crisis escalated, he approved similar funding for Oregon on Thursday — but the public heard about it from a Democratic congressman, not the president.
…
The president’s relative silence on the West’s wildfire crisis matches up with his relative silence on three other issues: the struggles of Democratic-led states, climate change, and crises that require empathy.
They’re “blue” states so fuck’em, let’em burn and choke. Plus who cares anyway.
Well, you wouldn’t want to panic anyone.
I wonder how many times he has gone golfing since the fires reached emergency levels.
I hear he’s taken up the violin.
Ahh, memories!
When the east coast of Australia was on fire and a billion animals were carbonised, when citizens of a supposed rich country were standing in the radar zone as a wall of fire approached, our Trumpian light PM was holidaying in Hawaiii then telling sympathetic Shock jocks that he ‘doesn’t hold the hose mate!. Now he isn’t responsible for Covid deaths in aged care, which is his responsibility according to some arcane idea called law. I blame one person, born in Australia, made in the USA. Quite the resume Rupert has.
So far:
7 confirmed dead
60 missing
> 1 million acres burned
Ash falling in Portland
Temperature drops of 15-18 degrees F due to smoke cover blotting out the sun.
Smoke plume reaches 1000 miles out into the Pacific
Nightmare. It’s turning orange here right now, the way San Francisco did – orange but still dark – I have to have a light on next to the desk thus adding to the heat and stuffiness in here.
Stay safe Pliny.
Maybe that’s it. The sky is orange – the same color as the Donald. Maybe he likes it, thinks it is some sort of testament to him.
Seriously, this is such a dereliction of duty…let him play president, but send in some adults to actually do the work. Just don’t tell Donnie, and he can be happy in his pretend world.
Hey, I’ve got it! Send in the person the country actually wanted as president, the person who got the most votes, and let her…(I think she was called, like, Hillary…or something?) sign the appropriate documents to get the appropriate assistance to the appropriate place.