Is “out raking the forest” the new “hiking the Appalachian Trail”?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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The guy is suffering cognitive decline at an alarming rate. Nobody seems to want to say much about it, because he has always been an idiot, and it’s hard to tell where the decline starts and the idiocy stops.
Take one example…refusing to go to Arlington on Veterans Day…that’s not a stupid decision, that’s an old man suffering decline, refusing to get out of his chair.
I’m reminded of an old saying;
A old man goes to his doctor and tells him he is worried about getting dementia, because he keeps forgetting where he put his keys. The doctor explains that that is not dementia, dementia is forgetting what keys are for.
Here are the symptoms, with a description,
a) Memory loss
b)Personality changes and loss of social skills
c)Language problems like forgetting the names of familiar objects
d)Behavioral problems like agitation, delusions and hallucination
e)Flat mood, loss of interest in things previously enjoyed
f)Difficulty solving problems and performing tasks that used to come easily
“Memory loss is a common early symptom, but having it does not necessarily mean one has or will develop dementia. Dementia is only diagnosed when two or more brain functions — like memory, language, perception or cognitive skills like reason and judgement — are severely impaired.”
Who can argue that does not describe Trump?
It’s scary as hell, because he has filled his administration with people with no moral standards at all, except their own blind ambitions, so America will get no help there. The republicans in congress have suffered their own cognitive decline, so no help there.
.
One wag noted there are 45 million acres of forest in Calif and it would cost around $252 billion to clear out the forests there. And the fire where Trump was, started in federal lands. But I’m sure he will get right on that after he builds his wall. Anyway the governor approved an added billion in the budget to help clear the underbrush.
We have all heard that Calif is suffering a severe drought. Most think it is result of climate change but President Bone Spurs has a superior intelligence. He dreamt it up last night.
The man is a disgrace on every level, and he has surely been working on proving that this past week with Veterans Day here and in France. How is it this jerk can’t go to Arlington and France did? What a leader we have here!! If he is not demented, he is working on it for sure.
I remember, during his second term especially, the talk of Reagan being mentally diminished, a nice way of putting it. The examples of Reagan’s diminished mental/intellectual capacity don’t even come close, in kind or frequency, to what we’re seeing in President Dumbledore. At least he had Nancy Reagan to prop him up and provide effective political cover and advice. Dumbledore’s First Lady doesn’t appear to have that much more self-awareness, common sense, concern or empathy than her husband does. And forget command of the issues (not that I agreed with her take on them), like Nancy Reagan had.
Over the last few days though, it does seem like someone/something must have made him aware that his exclusive focus on being president of wingnut world exclusively is not going to wash, if he wants to get reelected. He made a statement in CA that acknowledges the effect of the environment on the fires there. He had previously admitted that he maybe should have went to pay his respects at the cemetery, something he never does. He even said he supports Pelosi as Speaker, although that may just be to keep her there as a GOP favorite villain to rail against. But still…
Forget Russia, every time Trump has to be President, publicly, like he did in France, on Veterans Day, in the wake of Hurricane Maria and his initial response to the fires in CA, in the wake of the massacre at the synagogue in Pittsburgh; when it comes to being President of ALL Americans, Trump shows himself to be intellectually, socially and emotionally incapable. I used to think that his ego was the main thing standing in the way of him actually being an effective President, but now its obvious that he really doesn’t have the mental/intellectual abilities to learn the job, even if he wanted to. The gap in his level of knowledge and understanding of the basics and even interest in learning is such that its just too great to expect to be made up learning on the job.
Maybe this explains that tweet he sent out on Friday or Saturday congratulating Kemp for winning the Governor’s race in Georgia and congratulating Abrams for running a tough/hard fought campaign. That gobbed my smack, since he had been previously at great pains to make clear that she was “unqualified”.
There’s been some remarkable pushback against all of Trump’s remarks about the wildfires. Even rep’s are having a hard time even ignoring him.
And yesterday’s raking comings ‘like Finland does’ brings up the obvious pushback that Finland is one of those nasty socialist countries…
The LA Times and SFGate have been doing great reporting on the tie in to climate change and the Fed’l govt’s hand in all this. Long overdue to see talk of climate change but the topic seems to be reaching across the aisles in Calif.
Bonus, the Trump cartoons on the wildfires are the best ever. ‘raking to make America great again’.
. . . in Calif” is being greatly aided and abetted by the very significant recent shrinkage on the regressive side of those aisles.
Which is a very good thing. And a model for the rest of us.
Actually thinking they’re blending. The victims of the N Calif fires are often Red districts. The midterms showed us that there was movement towards the Dems but then these fires hit afterwards and now the conversations are opening up about climate change and how Trump’s denials are not what they want to hear.
. . . helped soften their anti-Reality shields, thus helping Reality to penetrate into some nooks and crannies where it couldn’t before, though.
I got this link from one of the FB pages that is from the Paradise area and is a good resource for what’s going on on the ground.
Apparently Finland is suffering from multiple wildfires https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/wildfires_rage_in_lapland_more_threaten_finland_from_the_east/103
16400?fbclid=IwAR3g_qlr0ggWU2x0sXN8IPLIhGq_z8qglFD7z5vTiCxviuaiCFlF5a_i9s8
The wildfires in Finland was during this summer. There was even more in Sweden, were many previous heat, sunshine and drought records were shattered (in many places it were the warmest, sunniest and driest summer on record). Finland and Sweden are heavily forested countries were plenty of rainfall is usual in most months (make that snow in the winter).
Firefighters from all over the EU participated in fighting the fires and as far as I know there were no casualties. The rain finally arrived at the end of the summer.
Current temperatures in Finnish Lapland are around freezing and snow is a bigger problem than fires.
Regarding the raking, there are apparently some Finnish folks having a bit of fun posting pictures of themselves with rakes in the forest under hastags such as #rakenews and #RakeAmericaGreatAgain
. . . Who knew so many Finns were so funny (and they pull it off in English! — how many Americans could manage to be funny in Finnish?)! [Hm. Should “Funny in Finnish” be a band?]
That they’re making the Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief the butt of the jokes is the bonus.
I detecting a major sea change in Washington. Republicans have finally woken up from their delusion that they can appease their base and ignore everyone else. Not all Republicans; those in truly safe red districts/states will keep doing what they do. But I don’t think even Cornyn can presume he’s safe.
We’re starting to see some push-back from Republicans when Trump says or does something that’s clearly irresponsible and/or reprehensible. The Pres is now essentially saying our problem is too many trees. Get rid of ’em before they burn. Pay no attention to the unprecedented warming of the planet. In other words, the sort of thing that was from the standard Republican hymnal from circa 2009 through November 6th. Now, at least those with relatively educated voters in their district, realize they can no longer get away with Orwellian messages.
With an assist from Republican propaganda outlets, they can still piss on their own base and convince ’em it’s raining. There is, however, a reality based universe and I believe we’ve seen the beginning of a crack in the crazy. It took a guy like Trump to bring it down and we’re not home free yet. Democrats need to keep being outraged and using the energy from that outrage to drive the political process. But we’re moving in the right direction for the first time in a very long time.
. . . It’s a very limited thing, which could never be done at a scale that would make a significant difference for the circumstances CA’s currently in, and there would be other strong ecological arguments against doing so everywhere (this is clearly a case of Trump picking up on something he heard, without any understanding of what’s involved, and babbling away about it because it conformed to his confirmation bias.
But it is a thing.
Its actual proposal and (I think) extremely limited application is to address the need to protect the biggest, oldest trees — which have ecological value that’s extremely disproportionate to their numbers, including the value of being the most fire-resistant trees. Such trees have the thickest bark, which none but the most intense fire can burn through at their bases; and generally have their lowest branches far above the ground, so they’re less susceptible to their crowns igniting, and thus being killed by crown fire. But they are vulnerable to very hot fire burning in/through accumulated duff (dead needles, etc.) around their bases, which may be many inches thick, and can sustain fire hot and long enough to kill even big, old fire-resistant trees.
Important point: some number or density of big, old trees does not necessarily “old growth” make. The best functional definition of “old growth” is habitat-based, i.e., “old growth forest” is forest used as habitat by “old-growth-dependent” species. Yes, that’s somewhat circular, but it’s the main reason “old growth” is important and why effort goes into defining it, even as disagreement persists. So “managing” “old growth” is compounded by competing definitions of what “old growth” even is.
Protecting big, old trees is a common rationalization for extensive logging (under the rubric of “thinning”) projects. The claim is usually not that the logged forests be “old growth” after such “treatments”, even though the biggest, oldest trees are spared from the logging; but rather that their ability to develop into “old growth” sometime in the future will be preserved, whereas if fire killed those big, old trees, potential for “old growth” structure would be delayed much farther into the future (or possibly precluded altogether).
Finally arriving at the point: a proposed alternative to very extensive thinning in forests with big, old trees worth preserving — i.e., thinning, which initially moves forest further away from “old growth” structure with the hope of it developing into “old growth” sometime in the future — is to literally rake away that accumulated duff from around their bases that threatens those most-ecologically-valuable big, old trees during fire. (The preceding info is from decades of accumulated personal, professional knowledge. Without doing further research, it’s my impression that this has actually been put into practice only on very limited scales, in very limited areas. I don’t know of evidence of its effectiveness — or ineffectiveness — when tested by fire occurrence of varying intensity. But it is a thing.)
That is really the problem at this point. All of the Emperors’ people are expected to show their loyalty, but they are not really loyal at all. Unlike his cult base, these are professional con men and sycophants Trump surrounds himself with, because those are the type of people he feels comfortable around, other con men like him. And all of them are corrupt and soul-twisted and self-serving flatterers.
Turnip keeps a royal court full of toadies to feed his enormous ego, all of them looking for “the main chance”, “the big score” and not at all inclined to “take a bullet” for Trump, especially those who loudly declared they would “take a bullet for Trump”. So, they’re squealing louder than a drove of pigs at slaughter time and Trump is losing his marbles and lashing out. He feels the rats closing in from the walls. And now lashing out in all random directions becomes second nature.
He’s fired Sessions, finally! He couldn’t wait 48 hours after the election to get rid of that bum, and appointed Whittaker, who has proved his loyalty! No recusing nonsense for him!
Only it doesn’t seem to have worked. More indictments are still coming down. Trump can’t seem to find the levers to stop them. If he gives direct orders that will result in resignations and the secrets will come out at once, and cause an immediate firestorm.
Every single thing will leak and he will be guilty of everything, because he tried to suppress the evidence. Evidence you suppress only makes you look more guilty than if he just let it come out, and then shrugged his shoulders and flat denied it all as “Fake News! Lies!”
I’ve always thought “brazen it out” is a far better strategy for him than Constitutional Crisis. But, Trump’s instincts are all the other way.
An old description of Stalin entertaining visiting dignitaries from the UK during WWII as they passed down a long corridor beneath the Kremlin, where armed guards were stationed every couple of hundred feet. “They guard, yes, but who is to watch the guards?” Stalin said peering at them suspiciously.
The nature of authoritarians is that they love nobody, and none of their intimates are anything other than flattering toadies. But, those are not the sort of rats who hesitate before deserting the sinking ship. So, Trump, knowing this, is slowly losing his mind because everybody around him is potentially disloyal. Everybody is under suspicion, because he can be certain of none of them. AS his fear and paranoia grows more extreme we are likely to have a critical incident, where he tries a naked power grab using the US military.
Only the US military is simply not geared up to do that. Not on any sustained basis. He can’t be at all sure they would obey such orders. And there’s a limit how far he can re-shuffle the military commands to ensure loyalists in all key positions. Unlike Hitler, he cannot force all his officers to swear personal loyalty to Donald Trump, in life and in death to obey his orders without question.
Nobody can really imagine that he will ever be pried out of the office of President except with brute force. He will have to be dragged out complaining loudly that his defeat in the election was “Fraud! Fake votes!” If he is defeated.
I think it is a euphemism for clear cutting the 90% of California forest that the Zinke at Interior controls.
this. I read it’s more like 60%, not like Trump knows that. trees exist to be cut and sold.
Don’t rake for me, Argentina….