Now as much as this is the same old shit, what I'm noticing is just a near complete void of specificity in how Republicans are "attaching strings" to aid. Like Barasso, Hagerty, and Davidson said nothing in terms of what commitments or targets they would agree to. They might as well be saying people won't get a dime until and unless they elect a Republican mayor and governor in 2026. I mean, tell me if you heard anything else from them.
Not sure how that's going to remain tenable politically. There's only so much instant expertise in hydrology and fire ecology they can draw upon to make it sound like they know what they're talking about, definitely not enough to keep this shit up on the brass tacks.
I rather fear Spartan that American politics, and certainly conservative politics is a domain where expertise doesn't count for much. Remember Trump said he'd stop the war in Ukraine before he was installed or on day one. 20 years ago he'd have been a laughing stock for saying these things. But he got away with it and won the last election.
You're not wrong to be pessimistic about American voters after November 2024, I'm more just gaming out what debate in the House and Senate will actually look like when it comes to paying for aid to help Los Angelenos rebuild.
I won't even predict that they won't hold out indefinitely. They very well could. It will however get extremely difficult to justify it while speaking publicly.
Let us hope that Trump will help with recovery aid. If not, California should put joining Canada on the ballot after checking whether Canada would welcome a state with the 5 largest economy in the world after US, China, Japan and Germany, and a climate like California has. The fact that Canadian MP Elizabeth May said this, even as a response to Trump's calling Canada the 51st State, has led us to see that Blue states should economically stand together. At this point I see secession as something to seriously be considered. Canada is located in a way that it could hold them all together. Let those who do not want to secede, move to other states, like Texas. How about that for getting migrants. The Blue states leaving to join Canada, contiguous or not, would mean that the Red States would have less money to implement their hateful programs or support their military. Perhaps the media can decide whether they want to inform the people that the way Blue states run themselves they have better economies, so that Red State people are aware of this.
I can understand your emotion, but it occurs to me that pre the Civil War Ameican was more divided than it is now and though I wouldn't wish for a moment a 2nd Civil war, America and the World was a better place for it remaining entire. Putin, Xi and the Iranians would be delighted to see the US broken into smaller pieces.
No, I don't care for this way of thinking. Before Trump came along, Montana was very much purple, and we have lots of very progressive residents who don't deserve to be subject to a GOP dictatorship, including the scientists who take care of places like Yellowstone and Glacier national parks and our national forests, and the activists who work to conserve wilderness areas and endangered species. Some of our most magnificent places would be seriously at risk if we just handed them over to some sort of Republican-only kingdom. Their only concern for natural landscapes is how they can profit from them. Montana's not the only red state with open spaces that need protection from these greedy idiots. Also, we need to stop pretending that there aren't people fighting the good fight in all these red states, and no, we all just can't move.
Heidi, you are right about that, but I hope there can be a big resistance. I recommend the movie Number 24 on Netflix and the Norwegian resistance. It is inspiring. A line I like from it is, "I want to live in a free country. Everything else is secondary!"
Wish I could award you triple hearts because you have written exactly what I feel about the menace that the ignorant, willfully uninformed, and those hungry for the love of the "leader" have brought upon this country. We once were thought around the world to be the pinnacle of good government and sane policy. Now disagreement and consensus are out the window unless there is agreement only what is spouted by trump. I shudder for the next 4 years unless his gross actions can lead to another impeachment that would for the 3rd time be a success! Bad enough to have a convicted felon for a president but some felons do self-correct. This one is hopeless.
Just as when Puerto Rico was devastated by the hurricane, the Trump administration will only be concerned with how private equity, donor interests (especially fossil fuels), and rich profit making entities can benefit from the devastation. Follow the money. Trump policies, as always, are designed to enrich the chosen.
Malicious incompetence from Trump and Republicans in the midst of a natural disaster is egregious conduct. I would call this irresponsible leadership, but for the fact that their actions are devoid of leadership. We must build a platform that kicks these assholes to the curb. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/reform-the-democratic-party?r=3m1bs
I didn't expect better of Trump. He has a strong track record of not caring for states or people who won't vote for him. I had a small hope that the Republcan party (and perhaps even the conservative media) wouldn't join him in his depths of immoral posturing. Perhaps it's mainly a desire to curry favour with the new boss. But I fear it will take years of leadership by decent conservatives before the Republican party will be pre-Trump. I rather suspect honourable conservatives (and were there really very many of them?) have left or been driven out of the modern Republican party. I find it hard to believe there's much hope for a moral improvement of the Republican party for a very long time...if ever.
I’ve been trying to figure out why 76 million Americans voted for Trump, why 76 million Americans were able to ignore all the shit he did in his first term that this article reminds us of so well. Then I had to watch a streaming service with advertisements because I did not have the option to upgrade to no ads. As a result, I got just a smidgeon of political ads before the election. After the election, I saw the same ad for Target a billion times. What did I do after I saw the ad for the second time, much less the billionth? I got really irritated. I tried to tune it out. Sometimes I would get up and leave the room. But the limited advertisements I was exposed to were trying to convince me to do something I did not wake up that morning believing I needed to do that day. Shop at Target. Buy drugs whose side effects were worse than the condition they were supposed to treat. Gamble on sports teams. Drink responsibly. Those 76 million Americans had tuned everything out that government and the Biden administration were accomplishing because 1) government does not advertise or run any informative ads a billion times a month so there is no blanket exposure to what government is doing 2) whatever government was doing was not making enough of a difference in people’s lives for them to attribute the change to the government policy changes. Individuals were giving themselves credit for whatever positive changes were made. In other words, the ability to change jobs wasn’t seen as due to Biden’s policies that generated job growth, it was seen as due to individuals taking the initiative to find a(nother) job. At some point though under Trump, when will people who pay federal income taxes on wages and salaries realize that their taxes are going to pay for building a wall, building detention centers for immigrants and deporting them, not for helping out all the states that will suffer natural disasters at an every increasing frequency? Will there be a tax revolt? Will we divert all our taxes to gofundme accounts for national disasters instead? Because that might be the only thing we as Americans can do to stop Trump and Musk and Steven Miller. The ultimate question is where and how will Trump spend federal income taxes that Americans pay? Some Trump supporters are stupid enough to believe that tariffs will eliminate the need for federal income taxes. Why? Because the information they’re exposed to (advertisements paid for by corporations to persuade you to buy things you do not need or worse, will do you harm) do not inform them about how ANYTHING RELATED TO GOVERNMENT works. As a result, government is invisible to most Americans so to them, it doesn’t matter who’s running it. Millions of Americans are about to get a huge dose of FAFO, that it does matter. Question is, what will they do when they realize this? Capitulate? Accept? Ignore? Overdose? Self-destruct? Or lash out and become more violent and hateful. Only time will tell if Americans will be able to recover from the conflagration we have unleashed on the world.
A thought just occurred to me that if trump throws paper towels again...they should be thrown back at him and tell him to go wipe his poopy butt with them! 47-34!
I wish I could comment what I’m thinking but I am so sickened by all this. Unfathomable that Americans haven’t collectively risen and united and rejected all this.
This needs to be stated in major media.. this is an example, like the ones described in the recent past, about how Trump will not govern for all the people. We can go on citing examples that will follow and, truth be told, we have to because we cannot just be silent and depend on the MSM, go on and hope this will pass soon. Trump is one way or another (whatever comes up) punishing those who he designates his enemies, en masse. Revenge and retribution. And he does this in his usual way with disinformation, misinformation and meanspirited divisiveness. This is not lost on the rest of us, those other than the dupes that support him.
🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️, and he is not yet in office! This is really so scary, hard to imagine what US and the World will look like 4 years from now. A sober and honest - albeit depressing article by Noah Berlatsky and Public Notice, as always very well written. 🤗
“America will miss having a normal president.” Trump is beyond “normal” … unless the base for normality is a rich, overweight eight year-old bully. A crass and craven taunter who thinks he’s right about everything. Read his misspelled tweets—they are incomprehensible, delusional and not the product of normalcy.
Now as much as this is the same old shit, what I'm noticing is just a near complete void of specificity in how Republicans are "attaching strings" to aid. Like Barasso, Hagerty, and Davidson said nothing in terms of what commitments or targets they would agree to. They might as well be saying people won't get a dime until and unless they elect a Republican mayor and governor in 2026. I mean, tell me if you heard anything else from them.
Not sure how that's going to remain tenable politically. There's only so much instant expertise in hydrology and fire ecology they can draw upon to make it sound like they know what they're talking about, definitely not enough to keep this shit up on the brass tacks.
I rather fear Spartan that American politics, and certainly conservative politics is a domain where expertise doesn't count for much. Remember Trump said he'd stop the war in Ukraine before he was installed or on day one. 20 years ago he'd have been a laughing stock for saying these things. But he got away with it and won the last election.
You're not wrong to be pessimistic about American voters after November 2024, I'm more just gaming out what debate in the House and Senate will actually look like when it comes to paying for aid to help Los Angelenos rebuild.
I won't even predict that they won't hold out indefinitely. They very well could. It will however get extremely difficult to justify it while speaking publicly.
Let us hope that Trump will help with recovery aid. If not, California should put joining Canada on the ballot after checking whether Canada would welcome a state with the 5 largest economy in the world after US, China, Japan and Germany, and a climate like California has. The fact that Canadian MP Elizabeth May said this, even as a response to Trump's calling Canada the 51st State, has led us to see that Blue states should economically stand together. At this point I see secession as something to seriously be considered. Canada is located in a way that it could hold them all together. Let those who do not want to secede, move to other states, like Texas. How about that for getting migrants. The Blue states leaving to join Canada, contiguous or not, would mean that the Red States would have less money to implement their hateful programs or support their military. Perhaps the media can decide whether they want to inform the people that the way Blue states run themselves they have better economies, so that Red State people are aware of this.
I can understand your emotion, but it occurs to me that pre the Civil War Ameican was more divided than it is now and though I wouldn't wish for a moment a 2nd Civil war, America and the World was a better place for it remaining entire. Putin, Xi and the Iranians would be delighted to see the US broken into smaller pieces.
No, I don't care for this way of thinking. Before Trump came along, Montana was very much purple, and we have lots of very progressive residents who don't deserve to be subject to a GOP dictatorship, including the scientists who take care of places like Yellowstone and Glacier national parks and our national forests, and the activists who work to conserve wilderness areas and endangered species. Some of our most magnificent places would be seriously at risk if we just handed them over to some sort of Republican-only kingdom. Their only concern for natural landscapes is how they can profit from them. Montana's not the only red state with open spaces that need protection from these greedy idiots. Also, we need to stop pretending that there aren't people fighting the good fight in all these red states, and no, we all just can't move.
Heidi, you are right about that, but I hope there can be a big resistance. I recommend the movie Number 24 on Netflix and the Norwegian resistance. It is inspiring. A line I like from it is, "I want to live in a free country. Everything else is secondary!"
Wish I could award you triple hearts because you have written exactly what I feel about the menace that the ignorant, willfully uninformed, and those hungry for the love of the "leader" have brought upon this country. We once were thought around the world to be the pinnacle of good government and sane policy. Now disagreement and consensus are out the window unless there is agreement only what is spouted by trump. I shudder for the next 4 years unless his gross actions can lead to another impeachment that would for the 3rd time be a success! Bad enough to have a convicted felon for a president but some felons do self-correct. This one is hopeless.
My enthusiasm for impeaching Trump is definitely dampened when I contemplate a President Vance, or for that matter Johnson.
Just as when Puerto Rico was devastated by the hurricane, the Trump administration will only be concerned with how private equity, donor interests (especially fossil fuels), and rich profit making entities can benefit from the devastation. Follow the money. Trump policies, as always, are designed to enrich the chosen.
Malicious incompetence from Trump and Republicans in the midst of a natural disaster is egregious conduct. I would call this irresponsible leadership, but for the fact that their actions are devoid of leadership. We must build a platform that kicks these assholes to the curb. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/reform-the-democratic-party?r=3m1bs
I didn't expect better of Trump. He has a strong track record of not caring for states or people who won't vote for him. I had a small hope that the Republcan party (and perhaps even the conservative media) wouldn't join him in his depths of immoral posturing. Perhaps it's mainly a desire to curry favour with the new boss. But I fear it will take years of leadership by decent conservatives before the Republican party will be pre-Trump. I rather suspect honourable conservatives (and were there really very many of them?) have left or been driven out of the modern Republican party. I find it hard to believe there's much hope for a moral improvement of the Republican party for a very long time...if ever.
Completely agree with everything here. But I just gotta say, bad omen wildly understates the case. We are light years beyond bad omens.
I’ve been trying to figure out why 76 million Americans voted for Trump, why 76 million Americans were able to ignore all the shit he did in his first term that this article reminds us of so well. Then I had to watch a streaming service with advertisements because I did not have the option to upgrade to no ads. As a result, I got just a smidgeon of political ads before the election. After the election, I saw the same ad for Target a billion times. What did I do after I saw the ad for the second time, much less the billionth? I got really irritated. I tried to tune it out. Sometimes I would get up and leave the room. But the limited advertisements I was exposed to were trying to convince me to do something I did not wake up that morning believing I needed to do that day. Shop at Target. Buy drugs whose side effects were worse than the condition they were supposed to treat. Gamble on sports teams. Drink responsibly. Those 76 million Americans had tuned everything out that government and the Biden administration were accomplishing because 1) government does not advertise or run any informative ads a billion times a month so there is no blanket exposure to what government is doing 2) whatever government was doing was not making enough of a difference in people’s lives for them to attribute the change to the government policy changes. Individuals were giving themselves credit for whatever positive changes were made. In other words, the ability to change jobs wasn’t seen as due to Biden’s policies that generated job growth, it was seen as due to individuals taking the initiative to find a(nother) job. At some point though under Trump, when will people who pay federal income taxes on wages and salaries realize that their taxes are going to pay for building a wall, building detention centers for immigrants and deporting them, not for helping out all the states that will suffer natural disasters at an every increasing frequency? Will there be a tax revolt? Will we divert all our taxes to gofundme accounts for national disasters instead? Because that might be the only thing we as Americans can do to stop Trump and Musk and Steven Miller. The ultimate question is where and how will Trump spend federal income taxes that Americans pay? Some Trump supporters are stupid enough to believe that tariffs will eliminate the need for federal income taxes. Why? Because the information they’re exposed to (advertisements paid for by corporations to persuade you to buy things you do not need or worse, will do you harm) do not inform them about how ANYTHING RELATED TO GOVERNMENT works. As a result, government is invisible to most Americans so to them, it doesn’t matter who’s running it. Millions of Americans are about to get a huge dose of FAFO, that it does matter. Question is, what will they do when they realize this? Capitulate? Accept? Ignore? Overdose? Self-destruct? Or lash out and become more violent and hateful. Only time will tell if Americans will be able to recover from the conflagration we have unleashed on the world.
A thought just occurred to me that if trump throws paper towels again...they should be thrown back at him and tell him to go wipe his poopy butt with them! 47-34!
I wish I could comment what I’m thinking but I am so sickened by all this. Unfathomable that Americans haven’t collectively risen and united and rejected all this.
Trump, Musk — insupportable behavior that’s somehow supported by Republicans. Have we lost our minds as a country? Is shame forever vanquished?
This needs to be stated in major media.. this is an example, like the ones described in the recent past, about how Trump will not govern for all the people. We can go on citing examples that will follow and, truth be told, we have to because we cannot just be silent and depend on the MSM, go on and hope this will pass soon. Trump is one way or another (whatever comes up) punishing those who he designates his enemies, en masse. Revenge and retribution. And he does this in his usual way with disinformation, misinformation and meanspirited divisiveness. This is not lost on the rest of us, those other than the dupes that support him.
🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️, and he is not yet in office! This is really so scary, hard to imagine what US and the World will look like 4 years from now. A sober and honest - albeit depressing article by Noah Berlatsky and Public Notice, as always very well written. 🤗
The same with deportations: they will target blue states and cities. Huckabee and Abbott don't have to worry
“America will miss having a normal president.” Trump is beyond “normal” … unless the base for normality is a rich, overweight eight year-old bully. A crass and craven taunter who thinks he’s right about everything. Read his misspelled tweets—they are incomprehensible, delusional and not the product of normalcy.
He needs to be in hell with the devil, oh wait, he is the devil on earth!