Many times on Sunday mornings I’ve had to apologize that the columns filling the opinion page of those fat weekend editions didn’t address the most important issue in the news. That happens when someone has been booted from the White House on a Friday afternoon, or when Donald Trump has decided the weekend is a fine time to eat chocolate cake, threaten nuclear war, and cheer for Nazis — all at once.
But sometimes you hit a morning when the Big Story is also an ongoing story, and that’s where we are today. While I’m scanning (and discarding) Ruth Marcus’ optimistic take on Betsy DeVos, Hurricane Irma is plowing across the Florida Straits, drawing ever nearer to the Keys. A fortunate turn on Saturday meant that Irma stayed over land longer than expected, and some 50 mph of it’s fierce winds were scrubbed off on Cuban hills. Which is something that Floridians are going to appreciate, even if it doesn’t seem like such a blessing to the people around Juan Francisco.
Still, packing 120 mph winds and possible storm surges that will drown some heavily populated islands and towns along the Florida coast, Irma is the story this morning, more so than anything that any pundit had to say. So don’t be surprised if this APR is both briefer and odder than normal.
Also, while I’m just starting to chew on editorial page contents, I’m saving some space right after this paragraph for the the last bit of Irma news I get before APR is put to bed. By the time this pops up in the morning, it will be out of date — but look to the side of the page. There’s a lot of people over there doing terrific work keeping this community updated. A tip of the hat to them all.
The 3 AM EST update from the National Hurricane Center puts Irma 65 miles southeast of Key West, moving northwest at 6 mph. At that speed, Irma won’t actually cross over the Keys until after noon on Sunday.
The bad news is, not only is Irma now moving very slowly over very warm water, it’s recovered some of the wind speed lost in its slow pass across the northern edge of Cuba. In the last hour, sustained winds have increased from 120 mph to 130 mph, meaning that Irma has moved back to Category 4.
Earlier hopes that Irma, which seemed to be going through an eyewall collapse as it moved away from Cuba, might weaken, seem to be dashed. As has proven true over and over, this storm seems incredibly persistent—and enormous. Bands of rain and wind from the storm are already lashing the Keys. Here it comes.
While we want to see what happens, come on in. There are pundits below the line.
Yes. And … yes. Not every year, thank goodness. Maybe not every decade. But warmer water makes stronger storms and the odds of terrible storm seasons goes up with every degree.
Heh. And also ha.
Dana Milbank on how conservatives dismiss climate change, but have other reasons for hurricanes.
The storm surge has already washed up Jim Bakker, whose televangelism never quite recovered from his sex scandal and prison sentence for fraud. After Hurricane Harvey, he declared that “this flood is from God,” punishment for the former mayor of Houston attempting to subpoena ministers’ sermons.
Bakker said this while promoting his “Tasty Pantry,” a bucket of dehydrated food to help survive the apocalypse, and while sharing his set with Pastor Rick Joyner, who agreed storms don’t “happen by accident.”
Come on. Who is really going to trust Jim Bakker Rations in the post-Trumpocalyptic future? You just know this guy would sell you food with ingredients that conveniently knocked you off and left more of the glowing wasteland for himself.
Likewise, Pastor Kevin Swanson has said the path of Hurricane Irma would be altered by God if the Supreme Court quickly made abortion and gay marriage illegal, “before Irma does her damage,” as Right Wing Watch noted.
Radio preacher Rick Wiles, likewise, said Houston is underwater because it “boasted of its LGBT devotion.” And Ann Coulter — bless her — suggested it might have something to do with the city’s former mayor being a lesbian. “I don’t believe Hurricane Harvey is God’s punishment for Houston electing a lesbian mayor,” she tweeted. “But that is more credible than ‘climate change.’ ”
This brings up the interesting possibility of hurricane steering. Congress enacts an abortion ban … Irma moves east. But funds Planned Parenthood. It swings west! Now a ban on gay cakes. East again. Time it right and, pow! We plow Irma right into those godless Canadians.
Darlena Cuhna on the lack of options for those still in Florida.
My phone beeps again. It’s another well-meaning friend demanding I leave my small home in Florida with my kids and dog in tow. “Stop being stubborn! Get out now; who cares about your stuff!” they type angrily. Hurricane Irma is coming. She’s here.
And I’m not leaving my home in Gainesville, in north-central Florida. I can’t. …
Florida has only two main roads: interstates 95 and 75. They are parking lots, and have been for days. People are sitting in their vehicles, completely stopped on four-lane highways, running out of gas. There are no exits on these roads for scores of miles at a time. Once you get on a Florida highway, you are not getting off. You’re stuck. So, my family’s choices are: We stay here in our flimsily built house, made of sheet rock and plywood; or we hop on an unmoving highway and risk running out of gas closer to the coast, with only our car for protection.
Those are miserable options. Worse, it’s hard to see how you make it a lot better. It’s a long, narrow state filled with a lot of people. Add to that the amply displayed inability of even the best models to accurately determine the path of a storm beyond 1-2 days out, and it’s a recipe for repeat disaster.
The New York Times reminds us that Trump’s not just a climate change denier.
On Aug. 18, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine received an order from the Interior Department that it stop work on what seemed a useful and overdue study of the health risks of mountaintop-removal coal mining.
The $1 million study had been requested by two West Virginia health agencies following multiple studies suggesting increased rates of birth defects, cancer and other health problems among people living near big surface coal-mining operations in Appalachia. The order to shut it down came just hours before the scientists were scheduled to meet with affected residents of Kentucky. ...
From Day 1, the White House and its lackeys in certain federal agencies have been waging what amounts to a war on science, appointing people with few scientific credentials to key positions, defunding programs that could lead to a cleaner and safer environment and a healthier population, and, most ominously, censoring scientific inquiry that could inform the public and government policy.
Donald Trump doesn’t believe in diplomats, scientists, or experts. Trump constantly says he’s “very smart,” and the best way to make that clear is by demeaning all the people who actually are.
Jose Antonio Vargas wants to know where Dreamers go now.
It wasn’t your choice to come to America. But once you realize you’re here illegally, it becomes your choice to figure out who gets to know that.
Can you tell your classmates that you can’t join the overseas choir trip because you don’t have a valid passport? Can you tell your coach that you have to stay in the area and can’t be recruited by an out-of-state college? Can you tell a human resources manager that you can’t get a driver’s license because you don’t have a Social Security number? …
The scariest stranger of all is the United States government. It could deport you from the place you call home. That’s a fear I live with.
Under DACA, Dreamers made the frightening jump …
Applicants paid a $465 fee for processing and gave all their contact information (name, address, phone number) to the government they had grown up fearing. In effect, the Obama administration said, “Trust us.”
And then … Trump. Worse still: Trump voters.
Anne Applebaum and the next act in Brexit.
Seldom does the voting public have the chance to watch their elected politicians confront very specific false promises in real time. Usually campaign promises are either too vague to be contrasted with reality (“Make America Great Again”) or too long term. By the time that “guaranteed growth” either arrives or doesn’t, the person who said it would happen is long out of office.
But in Britain right now, something different is unfolding. During the referendum last year, politicians advocating their country’s departure from the European Union gave some specific assurances. Some derived from ignorance; as it turned out, few of them really understood how the E.U. works. Others were lies, which they knew to be lies at the time.
And guess how the promises of Team Brexit are turning out in the real world.
During the campaign, leading Brexiteers drove around the country in large red buses, emblazoned with a slogan: “We send the EU 350 million pounds a week, let’s fund our NHS [National Health Service] instead.” This was a very influential argument, as the Brexit campaign managers have admitted. It was also an invented number — Britain does not send the E.U. 350 million pounds a week, as fact-checkers showed over and over. Some of those on the winning side admitted as much after the campaign.
But now, instead of receiving “350 million pounds a week,” negotiators are trapped in an argument about how much money Britain owes Europe — for budgetary promises not kept, for agreements signed and not honored. More ominously, the British government is just now realizing that leaving the European single market, which is far more than an ordinary free-trade zone, will cost it in other ways, too.
To get a sense of why Brexit was a fabulously stupid idea, and just how dishonest the pro-Brexit arguments really were, read the rest of this piece.
Gail Collins and the insanity of modern Republican politics.
This week, the Democratic leaders and Donald Trump were besties. He made a big deal with “Chuck and Nancy” to keep the government running and pay for hurricane relief, ignoring the howls from his own alleged party.
Since the frustrated Republicans can’t get rid of Trump, they’re talking about deposing the House speaker, Paul Ryan. ...
That’s just brilliant. Paul Ryan deserves to go. Has deserved to go since before he arrived. The trouble for the Republicans is they literally cannot think of anyone in the entire House of Representatives who could do the job.
The Washington Post has reported that some disgruntled conservatives are floating the idea of recruiting Newt Gingrich or former Senator Rick Santorum for Ryan’s job. It turns out you do not have to be a member of the House of Representatives to be speaker of the House. Who knew? And who better to take command than one of the two most irritating ex-public officials in America? Maybe next they can make Ted Cruz majority leader.
The idea that Newt Gingrich could be installed to run the House, after Newt Gingrich left two decades ago because he was so bad at running the House, is just modern Republican perfection.
Frank Bruni on how great it is to be an ex-Trump adviser.
Upon exiting his job [Sean Spicer] apparently had his pick of posh lecture-circuit agents, one of whom told Mike Allen of Axios that Spicer scoffed at the suggestion that he might be worth only $20,000 to $30,000 per speech, which is what other former press secretaries made. So he’ll presumably be bagging more than that for his first gig, scheduled to take place on Monday in front of an audience of investment bankers in Manhattan.
Oh, the juicy fruit of even an ephemeral fling with our fruitcake in chief. Ask Anthony Scaramucci. He was sent packing after just 10 profane and ignominious days as the White House communications director, and what do you suppose he did? Change his name and enter the political equivalent of witness protection? Retreat to a monastery for prayerful atonement until the shame dissipated?
No. The Mooch did not rechristen himself the Pooch, nor was there any penance. In lieu of a priest he found himself a publicist ...
I just want to say that I had to listen to Sean Spicer and Anthony Scaramucci every day while they were in the White House. Had to. It’s part of my job description. And while I guess I can’t say “you couldn’t pay me to listen to them” when, after all, someone paid me to listen to them, I can’t imagine someone paying them to talk.
The gold rush by some of the refugees from Trumplandia has a quickness and crassness all its own. I suppose that’s fitting. They got no loyalty from Trump, though he demanded it from them. They weren’t idealists in grateful thrall to some coherent vision or exalted principles that he was advancing. They were more or less flunkies for a bully whose top priorities have always been an immense fortune and immeasurable celebrity, though not necessarily in that order. Spicer and Scaramucci are paying their onetime boss the highest of compliments. They’re emulating him.
While I would normally maintain that doctoring history books is wrong, I’d like to think that when Trump is gone, we could just get out the scissors and library paste, attach 2020 directly to 2016, and pretend that nothing happened in between. In fact, maybe we could get the rest of the world to go along with a new calendar. One that just nudged the page back four years so we could all pretend that none of this ever happened. Think of all the do-overs we would get.
Then we could all look at Mooch trying to land a job and say “Who are you again? Trump? I kind of vaguely remember him. Guy who went bankrupt with a casino. That the one?”