runrussellrun wrote:Did federal research stop dust bowls prior to the 1930's? Or, did farmers suddenly forget dryland techniques, thought of nearly a century prior by Johann Cornies. Or Hugh Bennet?
Dude. You're playing dumb again. There's no way you don't understand what caused the Dust Bowl. And there's no way you don't know that Federal spending went way up to make sure it never happened again.
You're more of a contrarian than my 4 year old daughter is, my friend. You're arguing settled fact.
What is settled fact? That federal spending has prevented dust bowls?
I dare you, go to fecesbook friends (heard it was closed today, I LIKE) and tell your global gravity deniers that the DUST bowl can't happen today b/c of Federal tax dollars.
Unless they removed the ".....more droughts..." from their daily prayers.
cradleandshoot wrote:This is a horrible event. When the fires are put out and final tally of the cost is known guess who the folks of California will be looking to for aid, comfort and financial support... probably some guy with the initials DJT??
Hey, C&S, here in California we are a big-time maker state. We ship TONS more money to the feds (for them to hand out to the Red state takers) than we get back, no matter how many fires there are.
Want to give us all that money back? We'll handle the fires.
No problem about that from me. If you think the folks that run your state will spend that money in a wise and prudent fashion? What I have observed from the people that run California is if you give them whatever billions they request it will be whizzed away on everything else but what they wanted the money for in the first place. Then they will still want the other 49 states to then bail their asses out. Give us a number as to what you folks need to fight the fires and America will give it to you. If you fail at that task then go figure it out for yourselves. Not to be cold hearted but then I don't give a rats rear end if your entire state burns to the ground. Many folks in California want to be your own free and independent nation. There is a part of me that so very much says please... let them do it. I apologize in advance for my bad attitude. I just spent the last 4 hours raking up and bagging leaves and my back is killing me and I still have to go out and do the back yard. Not a lot of compassion in these old bones right now.
Raking and bagging leaves can indeed leave one cranky and sore, CS.
But here's the thing: California taxpayers really do pay into the federal coffers way more than they take out. The rest of us would need to pay higher taxes if we didn't have their disproportionate contribution.
I don't know about you, but I'm pleased to not have to pay more. (My state of MD, your's of NY, etc are also contributing disproportionately; want to pay even more?)
I just did the back yard so I am more sore and cranky and answering you right now would not go well. I do have friends that live in California and not a one would tell me they are under taxed at the federal and state levels. Sort of like how things work here in my State of New York. In NYS I know we have 2 US Senators that work very hard at bringing home the bacon to as much of the state as they can. It gets to be a convoluted little game. You send x amount of money to the feds then you work your tail off to get as much of that money sent back to your state as possible. I don't know the answer to this but how much of that money comes back to California from the efforts of their US senators to bring home the bacon? It is sort of like the shell game trying to find out where the little ball is. It moves around all over but eventually comes back to where the person moving the shells wants it to be.
Ohhh, I'm sure California's 2 Senators are working every bit as hard as the 2 from Montana to get federal $, same as the 2 from Missouri, the 2 from Missisisipi, the 2 from Wisconsin, the 2 from S. Dakota, the 2 from North Dakota...you get the point.
The bottomline is that California taxpayers (individual and corporate) pay way more dollars to the Federal gov't than they get in return. Which doesn't mean it's a bad deal relative to being on their own (not sure CA wants to stand up its own military, for instance) but there's no doubt that those 'taker' states receive a lot more proportionate to their population than do the 'maker' states. In other words, it's really, really good to be one of those 'taker' states.
That's not arguing that Cal state gov't is any better (or worse) than anywhere else.
But anyone who complains that California is getting federal emergency assistance is simply misinformed. Whether that's just because they don't know better, or whether it's willful misinformation is another matter. In Trump's case, he has every capacity to know better. Except that he's a knucklehead.
Pretty interesting article in the THE NEW YORKER, by John Cassidy.
"Just four days after the midterm elections, the political news cycle has already moved on. Saturday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal contained two scoops unrelated to Tuesday’s vote. The lead story revealed that federal prosecutors in New York have found evidence that, in the run-up to the 2016 election, Donald Trump “intervened directly to suppress stories about his alleged sexual encounters with women,” including the adult film actress Stormy Daniels and the former Playboy model Karen McDougal, contradicting his claims that he didn’t know anything about the payoffs the women received. According to the Journal story, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, has told the Feds that, shortly before the election, he conferred with the President about payments to Daniels, and Trump told him to “get it done.” The Journal story also reveals that, in 2015, Trump asked David Pecker, the chief executive of the company that owns the National Enquirer, what he could do to help his campaign, and that Pecker offered to use the Enquirer “to buy the silence of women if they tried to publicize alleged sexual encounters with Trump.” This allegation raises the possibility that Trump may have committed campaign-finance violations, although the story makes clear that such a case would not be a slam dunk. One law professor told the Journal that a “criminal conviction would require proof Mr. Trump willfully skirted legal prohibitions on contributions from companies or from individuals in excess of $2,700.”
Of course, there is little chance of the Justice Department bringing any charges against the President, especially now that it is in the hands of a Trump loyalist, Matthew Whitaker, who was the chief of staff to the previous Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, until Trump fired him on Wednesday, the day after the midterms. Whitaker’s appointment as the acting Attorney General has produced a firestorm of criticism, and the Journal’s second scoop will only add to the controversy. The paper reported that the F.B.I. is investigating a Florida company, World Patent Marketing, that is accused of bilking customers of millions of dollars during a period in which Whitaker served on the firm’s advisory board and vouched for its honesty. World Patent Marketing shut down last year after the Federal Trade Commission claimed it “charged would-be inventors thousands of dollars to patent and promote their inventions, but provided almost no real services and threatened those who complained,” the Journal story said. As well as serving on the firm’s advisory board, Whitaker appeared in at least two of its promotional videos, and said in a press release, “As a former U.S. Attorney, I would only align myself with a first class organization.”
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department told the Journal that Whitaker “has said he is not aware of any fraudulent activity. Any stories suggesting otherwise are false.” But that won’t stem the controversy surrounding the acting Attorney General, which, until this latest story, had centered on whether his appointment was legal, and whether he should be forced to recuse himself from supervising the investigation being carried out by the special counsel, Robert Mueller. Before he took the job as chief of staff to Sessions, Whitaker publicly criticized some aspects of the Mueller investigation. He also stated badly that there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Critics, myself included, have suggested that Whitaker’s appointment appears to be a blatant effort by Trump to influence the end game of the Mueller probe. In an effort to dismiss this line of criticism, Trump on Friday claimed, “I don’t know Matt Whitaker.” But that’s not what he told his pals at Fox News just a month ago. As the Times reported, he said then, “I can tell you Matt Whitaker’s a great guy. I mean, I know Matt Whitaker.”
The pressure on Whitaker appears to be building. On Saturday, the Washington Post ran an editorial headlined “There is no way this man should be running the Justice Department.” In addition to referring Whitaker’s comments about Mueller and his ties to the deeply dubious Florida company, the Post article pointed out that the acting Attorney General has expounded some crackpot views about the Constitution, including calling into question Justice John Marshall’s famous ruling in the 1803 Marbury v. Madison case, which asserted that the Supreme Court has the ultimate power to interpret the Constitution. “If the Senate were consulted, it is impossible to imagine Mr. Whitaker getting close to the attorney general’s office,” the editorial concluded. “He should not be there now.”
Meanwhile, the counting of votes from the midterms continues in a number of key races, including the Senate races in Arizona and Florida, and the governors’ races in Florida and Georgia. Right now, the final outcome of these contests is far from clear. In Arizona, on Friday night, election officials said that the Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, who was trailing in the Senate race after Election Night, had now widened her lead over the Republican Martha McSally to more than twenty thousand votes. In the Florida Senate race, the Republican Rick Scott’s lead over the Democratic incumbent, Ben Nelson, has narrowed to fewer than fifteen thousand votes—that’s less than 0.2 per cent—which means a recount is increasingly likely. And, in Georgia, the gubernatorial campaign of the Democrat Stacey Abrams is refusing to concede defeat, even though the Republican Brian Kemp has claimed victory and started holding meetings about his transition.
As the level of acrimony increases, Republicans—with the backing of the President—are accusing Democrats, without any firm basis, of trying to steal elections. Although the details of these hotly contested elections differ from place to place, the common element is that some votes are still being processed, which is not uncommon in American elections. With a lot of early voting, postal voting, and provisional ballots to deal with in some districts, getting all the votes in and tallied is no simple matter. “ ‘Why are these people taking so long to count votes??’ you ask, implying something nefarious,” the Cook Report’s David Wasserman wrote on Twitter on Friday. “Answer: they always take this long to count, you just never GAF b/c it wasn’t a close election.”
In Arizona, for example, hundreds of thousands of votes remained to be counted as the weekend arrived. An analysis by the Arizona Republic revealed that, in Maricopa County alone, which includes the city of Phoenix, these uncounted votes included “150,000 early ballots received before Election Day and 195,000 ballots that were either early ballots dropped off on Election Day, provisional ballots, or out-of-precinct ballots cast on Election Day.” Part of the issue is the large turnout. Experts were expecting about 2.1 million people to vote in the Arizona Senate race, a very high number for a midterm election. But the actual turnout appears to have been about 2.4 million, which is the highest in the state’s history.
The President should be welcoming a high turnout as an indication of the health of American democracy. Instead, he is trying to whip things up. In a tweet on Friday, he wrote, “Just out — in Arizona, signatures don’t match. Electoral corruption - Call for a new Election? We must protect our Democracy!” Of course, Trump didn’t provide any backing to support his claim: so far, there doesn’t appear to be any. In response to the inflammatory tweet, the Republican Senator Jeff Flake, who is vacating the seat that McSally and Sinema are contesting, responded, also on Twitter, “There is no evidence of ‘electoral corruption’ in Arizona, Mr. President. Thousands of dedicated Arizonans work in a non-partisan fashion every election cycle to ensure that every vote is counted. We appreciate their service.”
In Florida, the phony controversy is centered on the counties of Broward and Palm Beach, which both lean Democratic. Scott, the former governor, has accused Nelson and the Democrats of trying to steal the election, which he was leading by a broader margin on Tuesday night., After Scott asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate, his lawyers went to court. So far, these efforts have achieved mixed results. On Friday, a spokesperson for the Department of Law Enforcement rebuffed Scott, saying there had been no credible allegations of voter fraud. However, a state judge did order election officials in Broward and Palm Beach to release some information to Scott's campaign about how the ballots were being counted, the Miami Herald reported.
The irony of all this is that the very election officials whom Scott is attacking may have done him a great service in designing the election ballot for Broward County in a way that indirectly favored him. On the paper ballot, the box for the Senate race was buried below a bunch of instructions in the bottom left-hand corner, which made it hard to see. In a useful primer on what’s going on in Florida, FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich pointed out that this may be the reason why, in Broward, the number of votes cast in the Senate race was 26,060 votes fewer than in the race for governor, the box for which was prominently displayed at the top of the ballot. Since Broward is heavily Democratic, anything that reduced the size of the voter turnout there was helpful to Scott. In an extremely tight race, it’s even conceivable that this “undervote” could have tipped the race in the Republican candidate’s favor.
Whatever happens in Arizona and Florida won’t tip the balance of power in the Senate. The Republicans are guaranteed fifty-one seats, and they will almost certainly add another one by winning a runoff in Mississippi. But, if the Democrats were to pick up Arizona, and maybe even eke out a hold in Florida, it would further qualify the outcome of the Senate contest, which initially looked like a blowout for the Republicans and for Trump, as Democratic incumbents suffered substantial defeats in Indiana, Missouri, and North Dakota. Right now, the Democrats have forty-six seats on the Times electoral map, but they could possibly get up to forty-eight.
On the House side, too, the news for Democrats is getting better as time goes on. Early Wednesday, it looked like the Party had made a net gain of about twenty-five seats, barely more than it needed for a majority. The net-gain number has now risen to thirty-one, and it could well rise a bit further as some tight races in California are finally settled. So far, the Democrats have picked up two seats in the Golden State, which is fewer than they had been hoping for. But they are narrowly ahead in two races that haven’t been called—one in the San Joaquin Valley and the other in Orange County. What’s taking so long? Again, it looks like process rather than perfidy is responsible. In California, most ballots are cast by mail. Many of them aren’t mailed until Election Day, and they don’t arrive at the polling stations until a day or two later. This influx of late votes usually favors the Democrats, the Los Angeles Times’ Mark Barabak explained, because “typically older white Californians who begin mailing their ballots weeks before election day, lean Republican. Democratic voters, many of them young and minority, prefer to vote in person or mail their ballots in later.” Thus their votes get counted later. As they say: it ain’t over until it’s over."
Can the current Congress actually vote on legislation in the next month or so? I am asking b/c I honestly don't know if there are any laws about lame ducks passing legislation. I know the President , even on his way to the ceremony at the US Capitol, can pardon people in the last minutes of their rule.
ILM...Independent Lives Matter
Pronouns: "we" and "suck"
cradleandshoot wrote:This is a horrible event. When the fires are put out and final tally of the cost is known guess who the folks of California will be looking to for aid, comfort and financial support... probably some guy with the initials DJT??
Hey, C&S, here in California we are a big-time maker state. We ship TONS more money to the feds (for them to hand out to the Red state takers) than we get back, no matter how many fires there are.
Want to give us all that money back? We'll handle the fires.
No problem about that from me. If you think the folks that run your state will spend that money in a wise and prudent fashion? What I have observed from the people that run California is if you give them whatever billions they request it will be whizzed away on everything else but what they wanted the money for in the first place. Then they will still want the other 49 states to then bail their asses out. Give us a number as to what you folks need to fight the fires and America will give it to you. If you fail at that task then go figure it out for yourselves. Not to be cold hearted but then I don't give a rats rear end if your entire state burns to the ground. Many folks in California want to be your own free and independent nation. There is a part of me that so very much says please... let them do it. I apologize in advance for my bad attitude. I just spent the last 4 hours raking up and bagging leaves and my back is killing me and I still have to go out and do the back yard. Not a lot of compassion in these old bones right now.
Raking and bagging leaves can indeed leave one cranky and sore, CS.
But here's the thing: California taxpayers really do pay into the federal coffers way more than they take out. The rest of us would need to pay higher taxes if we didn't have their disproportionate contribution.
I don't know about you, but I'm pleased to not have to pay more. (My state of MD, your's of NY, etc are also contributing disproportionately; want to pay even more?)
Is this why California has ZERO budget issues? You are naive to think that California doesn't get more than they give. Remember, I count the discounted aviation fuel that googles climate earths changing warming Exec. hypocrites got.....for years.......as getting. Not giving.
actually basically EVERY state takes more than it gives - that is why we run deficits bang1 .....
STILL somewhere back in the day....
...and waiting/hoping for a tinfoil hat emoji......
Ding ding ding! We have a winner. Everyone is on the Federal dole. Been saying that since day one on the Water Cooler. Everyone gets upset when this is pointed out: you cannot have a 1st world economy without a strong central government. Period.
In the context of the discussion, runrusselrun.....here's the math: can Alaska, for example, survive without Federal dollars? Or compete in the free market without taking money from the lower 48? Nope. How about South Dakota? Or Arkansas? Nope.
How about New York State? No question. Or California? No question.
THAT is what we are discussing. GDP starts in large metropolitan areas, and flows out. So the REAl question is: if you turn off the Federal tap, would NYC survive? You bet. How about Rifle, Colorado. Nope. Or Mississippi? Nope. People in that State would-----and are-----moving to cities where there is work and infrastructure.
It's bogus for Trump to be taking the abuse he's taking for not attending the cemetery ceremony in France.
Marine 1 has hard weather minimums when it does not fly. It's not the President's call. You would not want a President in that decision making loop.
A 50 mile motorcade through rural France is a security nightmare, in addition to being highly disruptive & a big drain on security forces tasked with protecting numerous heads of states, & Trump is the biggest target of them all.
old salt wrote:It's bogus for Trump to be taking the abuse he's taking for not attending the cemetery ceremony in France.
Marine 1 has hard weather minimums when it does not fly. It's not the President's call. You would not want a President in that decision making loop.
A 50 mile motorcade through rural France is a security nightmare, in addition to being highly disruptive & a big drain on security forces tasked with protecting numerous heads of states, & Trump is the biggest target of them all.
Low cloud coverage was an issue. Read it a couple of days ago in main stream media.....
old salt wrote:It's bogus for Trump to be taking the abuse he's taking for not attending the cemetery ceremony in France.
Marine 1 has hard weather minimums when it does not fly. It's not the President's call. You would not want a President in that decision making loop.
A 50 mile motorcade through rural France is a security nightmare, in addition to being highly disruptive & a big drain on security forces tasked with protecting numerous heads of states, & Trump is the biggest target of them all.
Low cloud coverage was an issue. Read it a couple of days ago in main stream media.....
Yes, only Obama is allowed to be given abuse based on expanding a mole hill.
old salt wrote:CU-77 -- this is not the time to evaluate policy, but has there been any serious discussion within CA about how to effectively mitigate & reduce the wildfire risk. It would seem that a large scale, significant near term effort is required, beyond waiting for a reversal of climate change. El Nino & Santa Ana will never go away.
Stay safe. Thoughts & prayers don't put out the fires, but you & your neighbors have mine.
It's not an easy problem, mainly because many people like to live near the wild areas, and quite a few have built expensive homes there. Tell them that they can't do that, and they'll decry gubmint interference in the free market.
I'm no forest-management expert, but I know that plans for controlled burns that would mitigate future wildfires are sometimes derailed by NIMBYs. Who have a point that "controlled" burns can very easily become uncontrolled, despite all best practices.
The perennial fire problem has been greatly exacerbated by the severe droughts of recent years that have turned much of the back country into a giant tinderbox, and the persistence of warm weather later and later into the Fall. In years past, my wife & I would try to see if we could make it to Halloween without turning on the furnace. The past few years, we've been wishing we had air conditioning.
In 1977, I visited a former squadron mate who was working for Columbia Helicopters, flying long line timber extraction in the Sierras.
Their thinning & extraction process was very impressive. They were strictly regulated, in the field, on what trees they could take.
In 2016 the volume of timber harvested in CA's govt owned forests was down to 1/8th of the volume thinned in 1978.
Last edited by old salt on Mon Nov 12, 2018 9:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
old salt wrote:It's bogus for Trump to be taking the abuse he's taking for not attending the cemetery ceremony in France.
Marine 1 has hard weather minimums when it does not fly. It's not the President's call. You would not want a President in that decision making loop.
A 50 mile motorcade through rural France is a security nightmare, in addition to being highly disruptive & a big drain on security forces tasked with protecting numerous heads of states, & Trump is the biggest target of them all.
Low cloud coverage was an issue. Read it a couple of days ago in main stream media.....
This sounds like a great big, huge, really huge, biglier than huge, crock of schit to me. Undoubtedly fabricated by Prez Lyinass, and fed to us by his asskissin crew of cover up crooks. Am not buyin' it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPzMcGMprMs
That's a funny youtube. The Germans don't have to worry about flying their helos in the rain & trying to land them off airport in low ceilings & visibility.
They can't keep enough of them airworthy for their pilots to remained qualified.
They have to rent civilian helos to meet their annual minimums.
The crew of Marine 1 would have made the flight, if it was safe to do so.
There's plenty of stuff to criticize Trump for without making up stuff that calls into question his flight crews.
Rain isn't the limitation. It's the low ceilings & restricted visibility when doing an off airport landing via visual references.
It's not like landing at an airport, with a cleared approach path (no obstacles) on an instrument approach.
Last edited by old salt on Mon Nov 12, 2018 9:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Unless the Commander In Chief told them he didn't want to go stand in the rain, so go ahead and have a croissant and coffee and await further orders.
Aint buyin' it, not for a second.
I wouldn't begin to question you on anything concerning helicopters, old salt, but I'm sure struggling with this one. With all the radar and modern day navigation on the President's helicopter this is really a problem? I've seen helicopters land on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean in a whole lot worse weather than what was happening in France on this day. I'd bet you this, if there were a mission that required you to fly the chopper and me to go with you, we'd get in that female dog and go.
The helos you saw landing on the carrier were doing a CCA (carrier controlled approach), similar to a GCA (ground controlled approac) you see on land, or as the Brits like to call it, a "radar talkdown". They are certified Precision Approaches, down to the same ceiling & vis minimums as the airliners fly, when conducting ILS or Precision GPS approaches. You can do it at sea because you have no obstructions to worry about. To execute an instrument approach on land, it has to be to a certified airport or heliport, with a charted approach path, guaranteed to keep you clear of obstructions. The German helo in your youtube was landing at this large NATO airbase which has an ILS approach.
I'm guessing they were going to land Marine 1 at a visual landing site at or near the cemetery, or at some small nearby airport that did not have an instrument approach with weather minimums below the weather conditions that day.
Sorry, I wouldn't take you or Potus scud running to Belleau Wood (& you wouldn't want me to).
From the AP report : The determination to ground Marine One, the president's helicopter, due to bad weather is made by the Marine Corps and the White House Military Office, which then presents the recommendation to the White House in collaboration with the Secret Service, according to a Secret Service official.
Paris was covered in clouds with drizzling rain through most of Saturday.
On Sunday, Trump attended a scheduled event honoring American war dead at a U.S. cemetery just outside of Paris.
Got to know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em, I guess, so I've gotta fold here.
Planes land on air craft carries in the middle of the night, on a moving and bobbing
landing strip, in the rain, and land with precision enough to grab the arresting cable with the hook
on the back of their jet (better be at full throttle if ya miss ) but the Prez's
helo can't squeeze in this spot in inclimate weather. Cancel the mission.
At ease.
If you cleared out all the buildings & trees around the landing zone & brought in a mobile GCA radar unit & controllers, then got it certified, you could do it.
On the carrier, you've got the best radars & best controllers in the world, the best pilots & autoland systems in the jets.
...& you have no obstructions. They don't fly the jets on & off pierside.
Marine 1 is still just a 1950's design H-3, the same basic aircraft you had on the Intrepid, with analog "steam"gauges, piloted by Marine pilots.
It's got all kinds of comm gear, but nothing special helping the pilots. It's primarily a visual flight rules (VFR) aircraft, which is weather limited.
...lot's off backup motorcades between the WH to Andrews AFB, via Suitland parkway, when ceilings & vis are low. It happens all the time.
The Prez needs to trade this model in, get a new one with TRUMP on the side, and some updated equipment, fer krissakes. Cars will slow down if you're closing in on an object, you'd think the Prez's chopper could fly without hitting something on a foggy and drizzling day.
Despite all the regs and Marines, I'm still telling everyone he didn't go because he didn't want to mess his hair up.
Is this why California has ZERO budget issues? You are naive to think that California doesn't get more than they give. Remember, I count the discounted aviation fuel that googles climate earths changing warming Exec. hypocrites got.....for years.......as getting. Not giving.
) but the Prez's 