The goddamn Trump Administration (Part 2)

He’s already claiming fake.

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Yes and.
Some folks I know don’t even have a radio (some don’t even listen to the one in their cars if they have cars), let alone a weather radio.

This informal sample of mine includes multi-gender peeps between 25-60. Even if they had weather radios, NOAA’s been kneecapped so mightily that tuning in on a purpose-made weather radio may be… unhelpful…

I hate to say it, but since we know a significant number of U.S.ians get their “news” from Fb, it’s hardly even a leap to see that Fb is their channel for weather info.

Yeah that 2024 column crosses the “over 50%” line if you lump “sometimes” and “often” together.

The added “benefit” is the near-zero cost to the budgets of EMS and municipal entities that fund secondary services during emergencies, etc. No money to set up a series of sirens on towers or poles, as emergency warning system infrastructure is not cheap to buy and maintain?

Use Fb.

Live in the Texas Hill Country, where sounds from such odd flatlander devices perform variably?

Use Fb.

Need to reach people who are extremely wary of signing up for their home county’s gummint emergency alert SMS system?

Use Fb.

I mean, heck, there hasn’t been an emergency “around here” in 30 years (or whatever) so why should The Public pay for all this dumb emergency budget item stuff anyway? Nothing bad ever happens around here. Telling people to pay in for a seldom-used service is a very hard sell. (See also “Who could have possibly predicted–”)

In poor or poorly administrated counties in the U.S. that have no independent newspaper, no network news affiliate, no local radio station, patchy or corrupt LEO, and no conducive conditions to make positive change, a cell tower network and the general assumption that people have cell phones is enough acceptable plausible deniability for the magical thinking gummint types to claim Fb is the best they can do.

One news report I heard said that cell towers were not providing proper service in the hours leading up to the flooding in Texas, which just proves that overdependence on residents’ cell phones + SMS-blasts is an unreliable early warning system in an emergency.

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Republicans have been pulling this stunt since Reagan talked about welfare queens. The tactic is so successful that I bet if you ask a random Republican voter, most of them will tell you a story about personally witnessing a panhandler leaving their corner and getting into a Mercedes or some other expensive car, or about someone they know on welfare benefits or SNAP who is actually a millionaire, or some other such nonsense. My own brother, who is not a Trumper, has been telling me the same damn story about seeing some panhandler in our hometown getting into a super fancy, brand new lifted pickup truck for 40 years. That’s what’s frustrating about all this to me. It’s all propaganda. And it works. Shockingly well.

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We take a belt-and-suspenders approach. We have a weather radio, but living in a valley, and (I think, anyway) having a metal roof makes reception a serious problem. Even using a powered antenna, I cannot find a location that gives reliable reception. We have weather alert apps on our phones (we each have a different one, just trying to not put all our eggs etc) as well. And we habitually look at the sky, knowing our badness tends to come from the south and west. Still got caught by surprise when lightning took out our electric service, and when a freak wind storm crushed her van. Nothing is perfect…

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Oh, I understand that. But at least welfare, etc actually pays for normal living expenses.

I just don’t understand how even the most die-hard Republican can hear that kind of story about medical care and say “yep, that checks out, those greedy people are totally living large the moment their health insurance is paid for!”

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Well yeah, because then they don’t get themselves into thousands of dollars of debt like every good, red-blooded American should be!

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This spring, the president appointed a council of Cabinet members, governors and emergency management experts, tasked with recommending changes to FEMA. Gov. Abbott and the top emergency official in Texas, W. Nim Kidd, are both on that council.
“FEMA is slow and clunky and doesn’t solve the needs of those who need it the most,” Abbott said at the first meeting of the FEMA Review Council in May. “States have proven that we can move more nimbly, more swiftly, more effectively.”

Assholes. Just fucking assholes. Their issue is that the aid goes to everyone. Even the Black and brown folks, even the poor and the Democrats. Goddamn, I hate this fucking timeline!

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My new rumor:

Elon Musk and his DOGE minions made copies of the real Epstein files.

They’ll release them once the figure out how to do so without getting legal charges.

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One third of adults say they get their news misinformation from Facebook.

Legal charges?
But, but, but … but he’s a billionaire!!! That ain’t right!
/s?

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image

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All I’m saying is that Donnie should be really angry and scared.

Maybe have Elon investigated.

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You seem unaware of the GQP’s definition of “proven”.

You should do your own research! :wink:

(I mean, RFKJr does, after all, and look at all the things he says are proven.)

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“Describe him to us. What was he wearing? How tall was he? What color were his eyes?” /Gowron

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If they ever do the right thing, it will be by accident.

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These kinds of gotcha stories send me! I mean I saw two panhandlers get dropped off out of a decent looking SUV but… It also doesn’t mean anything. You can have situations were 8 people live in a friend of a friend’s rent house and one of them can make a car payment but not rent etc so they all kind of pool resources like that. Like I guess to me you can still be poor and have a car. You can be homeless and have a car. The worst thing you could do if you are poor and have a car is sell that car and be poor with no car and possibly still in debt. I think what makes that kind of propaganda effective is that it uses real things people might even actually notice then tells them what to conclude from it without further reflection.

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Under Kennedy, to qualify to be on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s nationally influential and historically apolitical ACIP, candidates had to be registered as a Republican or independent and could not have any history of publicly criticizing President Trump or Kennedy, the lawsuit claims.

Not exactly shocking, given the deeply assholish nature of the current admin, but the utter lack of shame about it is a little bit shocking:

When Ars reached out to the US Department of Health and Human Services about the alleged political vetting, spokesperson Andrew Nixon did not explicitly confirm or deny the vetting, saying only that “the Secretary stands by his CDC reforms.”

Then next few years, man. Holy forking shirtballs…

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I expect the Trump Administration to at least look into a way to declare the Democratic Party illegal at some point.

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Another “let’s save this for a book, rather than release it when it happened” moment.

Oh and:

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