Clockwise
Trump is going to California to turn the water on.
It will be Trump’s first presidential trip since his return to office, and it will be to a state with Democratic leaders he has repeatedly blamed for persistent blazes, arguing that wildlife protections have impeded access to water.
Speaking to reporters before departing the White House on Friday, Trump said the fires “could have been put out,” but “they still haven’t for whatever reason.”
“It would be fine if they turned the water on,” Trump said.
Those California hippies are so silly, not turning the water on. Maybe they’re too stoned to find the tap.
Trump spent much of an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Wednesday railing against a response that he said makes the country look “helpless” and “weak.”
He suggested federal aid to California could be withheld over state efforts to protect the Delta smelt, a small fish that has become a fixation of Trump’s and even the subject of a Day One memorandum. The directive, which calls for “putting people over fish,” would upend the state’s water policy.
Trump has blamed water shortages in the Los Angeles region on policies meant to preserve the endangered fish, arguing more water needs to flow from Northern California to Southern California.
Very true, and more water needs to flow from the oceans to the deserts, because the oceans have way more than they need and the deserts have hardly any. Once we get that imbalance straightened out everything will be fine. You’ll have your golf condos stretching to the horizon north south east and west.
“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let the water run down,” he said in the Fox News interview.
Damn right. Let it burn.
What the hell, the California Golden Bear has been extinct for a hundred years. What’s a few more species? I won’t be surprised if Trump tries to repeal the Endangered Species Act altogether. Gotta keep exploiting those resources until the bitter end, and yes, eventually there will be a bitter end. Politics won’t save us.
I wonder how he’s going to blame WNC’s problems on the Democrats, surely it’s their fault somehow.
I’m sure one of his aides will keep whispering “Righty tighty, lefty loosie” to hm.
So sayeth Mad King Donald, knower of all, seer of all, doer of nothing useful.
Give him a rake and some bottled water to throw, and parachute him into one of the fire zones so he can show everyone exactly how it’s done.
When is he going to rename Kīlauea? (speaking of places he should parachute into)…
Isn’t, y’know, industrial farming a big reason the water “doesn’t run down”? Kind of an important industry for California (and Oregon) and one that benefits the nation as a whole in terms of buying less produce from Mexico. There are loads of environmental concerns from that practice in of itself (and arguments about out of season produce) but it’s a stupid thing for even an extremely stupid Republican to complain about.
It gets worse (because of course it does, this is Trump). He’s talking about abolishing FEMA and leaving emergency response to the states, and he also wants to tie aid to California to having them pass voter ID legislation. (Remember when Biden refused to help North Carolina until they passed gun control legislation? No?)
Nothing wrong with Voter ID but it’s unconscionable to tie it to federal aid and well, federalism is a thing. I’d hope even the Republicans could see the flaw in leaving emergency response to the states (flyover country not being able to afford it and Texas/Florida have frequent disasters). Then again, mostly he just has to frown these days to get whatever he wants out of them, future consequences be damned.
There’s quite a lot wrong with voter ID laws, at least as they’re implemented in the US. They’re effectively voter suppression laws. But in any case, as far as I know no president of either party has made federal emergency aid contingent on any state policy. It’s one of the few areas where government transcends partisan politics. But of course Trump doesn’t care.
I know there were a lot of yahoos suggesting that they just pump water out of the ocean to put out the fires–never mind that ‘salting the earth’ is literally ancient slang for making sure nothing will ever grow there again.
If I Google ” Water Bombers LA fires” I get a lot of hits.
Here is one that mentions that they are scooping the water out of the ocean, and why it has major downsides but may be the least bad option.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/planes-are-dumping-ocean-water-to-fight-the-los-angeles-fires-heres-why-using-saltwater-is-typically-a-last-resort
@WaM #7:
As I understand it, voter ID laws are much less effective at voter suppression than detractors or proponents think it is. If you know the rules ahead of time you can get IDs for people. The hardest people to reach would be homeless people, but they generally don’t vote anyways.
Here’s one study that suggests that voter ID laws suppress turnout. Now I’m not going to fall into the trap of taking the results of one study as the gods’ honest truth, especially since I am far from an expert in this field, but it seems clear to me that these laws are presented as a solution to a problem that barely exists (voter fraud), with the unspoken intention of making it more difficult for certain classes of people to vote.
BKiSA, the things I’ve heard (and I know of people who fit in these classifications) are that for some people, it is restrictive to try to get to a place where you can get a government ID, and it isn’t completely free.
I think some of the worst problems are that you need ID to get ID…and the sorts of ID you need include not just your birth certificate (which a lot of people have, and assume everyone does, but no, they don’t) but often also require a utility bill or something to verify you live where you say you do.
When I went to get a new ID in Maine, I was required to provide not just my birth certificate, but both of my marriage licenses, and my divorce decree showing my name change back to my maiden name. The last turned out to be impossible to obtain, due to the fact that the divorce was in 1992, it wasn’t digital, and apparently wasn’t one of the ones they’ve gotten digitized since then. They told me they had to go search all the records in the basement; I didn’t have the case number, although I could give them dates, and I had a flood in my basement during my move that caused the ruination of a number of things in boxes.
When I went back, they were fine with the documentation I had, but then I had to bring something else in, something that was not obtainable. I never managed to get a photo ID. I was kidding my husband that soon they were going to ask for a DNA sample. Since my husband couldn’t stand Maine in the end (isolation too extreme; not a single operating theatre near us, no decent movies, etc) we are now back in Nebraska, and I have a government issued ID – the same one I had when I left, because it hadn’t expired yet. (I did insist I would only live in Lincoln if I had to live in Nebraska).
In short, there are a lot of ways to make voter ID prohibitive. We got the birth certificate, both my marriage certificates, the utility bill, all the other things they asked for…and it still wasn’t enough. I am a singularly determined person; I don’t give up without a fight. But I gave up. What is someone else going to do?
Sorry it didn’t work out for you in Maine, iknklast, but Nebraska needs more reasonable people.