#SharpieGate

[rejectingrepublicans]

[tomorrowusa]

Part of Trump's plan to fire competent specialists in the federal government and replace them with MAGA hacks includes NOAA - the agency which forecasts hurricanes and monitors climate change.

If NOAA isn't around to report temperatures and compile data on tropical weather, then climate change doesn't exist – at least in the feeble minds of MAGA zombies. And with climate change not a factor in US decision making, then fossil fuel companies which lavishly fund the Trump campaign can "drill drill drill" unhindered and do irreparable damage to the planet.

Remember when Trump tried to change the forecast for Hurricane Dorian with a Sharpie marker? Imagine what storm predictions would be like if MAGA political quacks were completely running weather predictions.

Bill McKibben is an outspoken critic of climate wreckers. In the video above he has praise for Joe Biden's willingness to stand up to dirty energy. He contrasts Biden with convicted felon Donald Trump who would turn the planet over to fossil fuel oligarchs for a $1 billion campaign contribution so they can complete their destruction of Planet Earth. McKibben says that the difference between Biden and Trump on climate change "could not be clearer".

Monica Medina, President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society who served in the Obama and Clinton administrations, said in the same video that Trump will "weaponize weather against his political enemies" in a second term.

Here's a peek at what hurricane forecasts would look like in a Trump second term...

[meteorologistaustenlonek]

Meanwhile, five years ago this month... "Trump’s insistence that he was right — and SharpieGate — should have been a 5-minute story. But it wasn’t. CNN and other media outlets kept it going. They know Trump is watching, and they like an interactive Trump feud." "CNN’s executives have not been shy about their feuds with Trump being good for business. In 2017, CNN International chief Tony Maddox said the outlet’s performance “has been enhanced during this news period and how we’ve chosen to cover it.”

In other words, CNN’s animosity toward Trump is making it money."

[mrbizmonk]

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[weatherlawyer]

Sharpiegate

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is a false flag rag of the USA’s deepstate (Redirected from Hurricane Dorian-Alabama controversy) Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump In addition to Florida – South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated. Looking like one of the largest hurricanes ever. Already category 5. BE CAREFUL! GOD BLESS…

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

TOPLINE

Former President Donald Trump repeatedly asked national security officials about whether China had produced technology to spawn hurricanes and fire them at the United States during his first year in office, according to Rolling Stone, adding to a growing list of recent reports alleging Trump regularly broached outlandish ideas to top officials.

KEY FACTS

• Trump would also ask advisors whether use of such a weapon would be considered an act of war, and if the U.S. should respond with military strikes, according to Rolling Stone, citing two unnamed Trump Administration senior officials and another unnamed source with knowledge of the matter.

• China has attempted to manipulate weather in the past, and claimed to successfully keep rain from falling during the 2008 Summer Olympics, but there's no evidence China or any other country has the technology to somehow create and guide enormous storms on the other side of the planet.

• Trump's questioning about a Chinese "hurricane gun," as officials called it, continued until 2018 before he seemed to dismiss the idea and eventually started joking about it, according to Rolling Stone.

• Two major hurricanes struck the U.S. mainland during Trump's first year as president, Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in Florida, while Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico.

• A Trump spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Forbes.

CRUCIAL QUOTE

“It was almost too stupid for words,” a former White House official told Rolling Stone. “I did not get the sense he was joking at all.”

KEY BACKGROUND

Trump's term coincided with a historic uptick in hurricane activity across the Atlantic basin, which led to some of the ex-president's most bizarre comments and controversies during his time in office. In 2019, it was reported Trump told national security officials they should look into dropping nuclear bombs on developing tropical systems—an idea that's long been rejected by meteorologists as ineffective and incredibly dangerous. Trump in 2019 also presented to reporters an altered National Hurricane Center forecast track including Alabama in the projected path of Hurricane Dorian. Trump, according to reports, personally doctored the map using a Sharpie marker, in an incident that became popularly known as Sharpiegate. The fake storm track was apparently an effort from Trump to fire back at criticism over a September 1, 2019, tweet where he said "South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated," even though Alabama was not included in the official National Hurricane Center forecast.

TANGENT

The New York Times reported last week Trump approached former Defense Secretary Mark Esper in 2020 to suggest shooting missiles into Mexico to "destroy the drug labs." He also reportedly suggested deploying thousands of troops to respond to Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd’s death.

[sarcasticcynic]

More blatant lies from Donald Trump:

"The Arizona Senate hearing 'showed 168,000 fraudulent ballots printed on illegal paper (unofficial ballots).'"

"In Maricopa County there were '74,000 mail in ballots received that were never mailed (magically appearing ballots).'"

"'All the access logs to the machines were wiped, and the election server was hacked during the election. ... the voting system was breached or hacked (by who?).'"

Every one of these claims is false. #SharpieGate has been debunked repeatedly. The 74,000 figure is based on data that ignores all requests for ballots made less than eleven days before the election; in reality, Maricopa County received 2,364,426 requests for mail-in ballots, of which 1,918,024 were returned. No access logs were wiped, and although there was a data breach it was completely unrelated to the county's Election Management System, which isn't even connected to the Internet.

Even Doug Logan--fervent Trump supporter and CEO of the firm Cyber Ninjas, which the GOP hired to conduct this audit even though it had absolutely no prior experience auditing elections (and lied about it)--couldn't point to one single instance of actual voter fraud, but only speculated about things that he claimed "could" have happened and demanded further auditing.

Trump also screamed: "11,000 voters were added to the voter rolls AFTER the election and still voted." This is true. It is also perfectly legal and happens in literally every election: voters cast provisional ballots that get counted only if their eligibility is verified. If they registered after the deadline, then their votes are not counted, but they are still added to the voter rolls.

"In Maricopa County, for example, thousands of provisional ballots were not counted because the person had not registered to vote or had not registered before the deadline."

[teeteepeedee]

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs puts “Sharpiegate” and rumors of improperly cancelled ballots to rest on Twitter

[Text: IMPORTANT: If you voted a regular ballot in-person, your ballot will be counted, no matter what kind of pen you used (even a Sharpie)!

Voters who received an early ballot in the mail but chose to instead vote in-person will see their early ballot status as “Canceled” on their Ballot-by-Mail/Early Ballot Status update. This is because the early ballot is canceled so the ballot cast-in person can be counted.

Seeing a “Canceled” early ballot status does not mean the in-person ballot you cast was not counted.

If you voted a provisional ballot, your ballot will be counted once the county confirms your registration status and that you did not cast another ballot.]

[bretzkysbs]

Some of the funniest responses on Twitter (so far) to Trump’s use of a Sharpie to alter the NOAA’s Hurricane Warning Map so it appeared to include Alabama

(here he is showing the doctored map which kicked off the fun)

[dragoni]

Forensic Test Reveals Sharpie Spurs NOT Bone Spurs

[stereofeathers]

The Trump Sharpiegate thing is pretty blown up by the media rn and a lot of people are annoyed by such a trivial event getting so much attention, but to be fair, the US president totally did just say something completely untrue and then edit an actual real life hurricane map to make it look like what he'd said was actually right all along (illegal, btw). I dont know, but I'm hoping this cements in in some people's heads (if the bigotry hasnt) that he's totally willing to adjust the facts and lie about real-world info if it keeps himself from looking bad (or, god forbid, wrong)

But hey, dont worry. He'll accept our apologies for our fake news on the event.

(By the way, that's a spaghetti plot. They arent used to forecast the weather.)

[tomorrowusa]

Major Hurricane Ian has started impacting Florida after knocking out power in Cuba. It’s going to make landfall soon – probably south of Bradenton and north of Naples.

I’ve been through half a dozen tropical cyclones in the past 11 years including Hurricane Sandy. There are two things that stand out from observing and experiencing them.

While wind gets the most attention in the media, it’s coastal storm surge and flooding which kill the most people in such storms.

The tracks on maps which show the path of a storm do not mean that only locations directly along that track will be affected. Sandy made landfall in the south of New Jersey but still created a disaster in NYC.

From the information currently available about Ian, there could be a storm surge in some places of as much as 16 feet/4.87 meters. Anyone less than 20 feet/6.1 meters above sea level along the coast should quickly move to higher ground. Because rain is a major feature of many such storms, leave areas which are prone to flash floods. 

Just so it’s handy, here’s the National Hurricane Center site.

HURRICANE IAN

The rainfall estimates map currently shows a swath of 10 to 15 inches of rain extending from Tampa Bay northeast to the Atlantic coast.

Here are several Twitter accounts I just shared with a Florida mutual. They are meteorologists (including an advanced grad student) who I’ve found particularly helpful and accurate in the past.

@burgwx

@BMcNoldy  

@EricBlake12

Stick to real scientists. Pay no attention to Trump Republicans with Sharpies.

[foreverlogical]

Donald Trump came to the presidency a complete novice to government and often found his corrupt, authoritarian impulses frustrated by its bureaucracy. But he is slowly learning how to control the machine that has stymied him. This is the story of 2019, as Trump has replaced institutionalists attempting to curtail his grossest instincts with loyalists happy to indulge them. It is playing out across multiple dimensions. This is the through-line between several seemingly disconnected episodes from the last several days.

The pattern played out in its most absurd form via Trump’s manic insistence on justifying his inaccurate warning that Alabama “likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” from Hurricane Dorian, at a time when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was forecasting the state faced no risk. At first, Trump attempted to justify his lie by brandishing a chart he crudely doctored.

More ominously, on Friday, the NOAA issued an official statement backing up Trump’s original false claim. And the Washington Post reported the agency had instructed its staff not to contradict Trump’s claims. “This is the first time I’ve felt pressure from above to not say what truly is the forecast,” an NOAA meteorologist told the Post. “It’s hard for me to wrap my head around. One of the things we train on is to dispel inaccurate rumors and ultimately that is what was occurring.”

The controversy might appear absurd and contentless. But Trump views the stakes as high, not without reason. Among his supporters, Trump has created a cultlike devotion to his competence and honesty, both of which are threatened by acknowledging his falsehood about the hurricane.

Also on Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported the Department of Justice is launching an antitrust investigation of automakers who had agreed with California to raise their emissions standards. Trump is driven by a desire to overturn an Obama-era rule increasing mileage standards out of an obsession with destroying his predecessor’s legacy and an automatic rejection of any policy to limit climate change. Trump took the agreement as a personal affront, raging publicly at the automakers for dealing with California and undercutting his leverage to loosen emissions standards.

The antitrust investigation is a preposterous abuse. The automakers are not conspiring to fix prices. They are negotiating pollution regulations with a state that is legally entitled to set its own air-pollution rules. But the threat of retribution has already dissuaded automakers from dealing with California. “One person with direct knowledge of negotiations said that Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz had indicated an interest in joining, but later abstained due to fears of political fallout,” reports the Journal. The New York Times notes that other auto firms steered clear of dealing with California because they “fear retribution from an unpredictable administration.”

It is not new for firms to tiptoe around a temperamental president. What’s novel is the Department of Justice being used as Trump’s legal muscle. The threat of a nasty tweet is now bolstered with the threat of massively expensive litigation.

Also on Friday, the Washington Post editorial page reported an explosive new development in Trump’s Ukraine scandal. The president has sent Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to pressure its government to supply evidence of misconduct by Joe Biden – even though there isn’t any sign Biden has done anything wrong. Here is another field where, by conscripting foreign countries to rough up domestic political rivals, Trump has broken new ground.

But Trump is not relying solely on Giuliani’s efforts at persuasion. Trump has refused to allow Ukraine’s president a White House visit, and suspended $250 million in military aid, to pressure its government into complying. To be sure, weakening Ukraine’s military dovetails neatly with Trump’s pro-Russian stance. But the Post reports that Trump is using the aid, which enjoys bipartisan support, as an extortion device.

Finally, the New York Times supplied more details on the ongoing scandal of Trump profiting from his office. During the presidential campaign, Trump waved away concerns about the unprecedented conflicts of interest that would arise from him running a business at the same time he wields enormous power. Republicans in Congress have evinced no concern whatsoever about Trump’s corruption, refusing to take even modest steps like compelling the release of his tax returns.

Increasingly, Republicans are dispensing with the fig leaf and flaunting their complicity. Putting money in Trump’s pocket by booking his properties has become a symbol of partisan solidarity. It is a signal of support both to the president and to fellow Republicans or business clients that you are on the ins with the boss. “President Trump has really been on the side of the Evangelicals and we want to do everything we can to make him successful,” one Evangelical leader tells the Times. “And if that means having dinner or staying in his hotel, we are going to do so.” Aggressive lack of curiosity has given way to open boasting of the quid pro quo arrangement.

None of these stories by itself has the singular drama of a Teapot Dome or a Watergate. Indeed, the mere fact that there is so much corruption prevents any single episode from capturing the imagination of the media and the public. But it is the totality of dynamic that matters. A corrupt miasma has slowly enveloped Washington. For generations, both parties generally upheld an assumption that the government would abide rules and norms dividing its proper functioning from the president’s personal and political interests.

The norm of bureaucratic professionalism and fairness is a pillar of the political legitimacy and economic strength of the American system, the thing that separates countries like the U.S. from countries like Russia. The decay of that culture is difficult to quantify, but the signs are everywhere. Trump’s stench is slowly seeping into every corner of government.

VISIT WEBSITE

[awesomevines]

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I didn't know Bob Ross was working for Trump

https://twitter.com/Stop_Trump20/status/1170006874311315456

[porterdavis]

This is why defeating him at the polls in 2020 isn’t sufficient. He has to be accused and convicted of the crimes he has committed to prevent the corruption he has generated from spreading even further through the government. Show them they can’t get away with it.

Trump and his enablers need to be extricated root and branch. Named and shamed.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Credit: Trump Villain Cards (@MAGAsMostWanted)