L.A. Fires Give Trump Fuel For His Revenge Agenda

 

The following is part of a post written by former Republican Steve Schmidt:

Like the Great Fire of London in 1666, the Great Fire of Los Angeles will be recalled for 500 years.

The scale of the conflagration is biblical. These epochal fires will join Chicago and San Francisco atop an infamous registry of American destruction.

The fires are still spreading, still growing. There is no precedent, and no similar event by scale, cost or damage that has ever occurred in America. None.

The “Big One” came, but it wasn’t an earthquake that triggered the inferno, it was January winds that brought with it a storm surge of fire.

Donald Trump has talked at length about his revenge.

It has begun. It is underway. It is happening. Right now. It’s not in my head, and not in my imagination.

During the greatest crisis in the history of California en route to becoming the costliest natural disaster in American history, Donald Trump has offered snarling insults, veiled threats, misinformation and unrestrained malice.

He has used the disaster to attack the California governor, and has said nothing that matters of any consequence to the multitudes who are terrified and have lost everything.

Instead, like always, he has debased, inflamed and manipulated when he should have done the exact opposite. He seeks to gain from suffering, and incredibly, he doesn’t even bother to hide it anymore. More than anything else, it is this revelation from his chaotic transition that is most bone-chilling.

Our president is Arthur Fleck deep down.

Somehow he has concluded that a firestorm that has devoured a geography larger than Manhattan, and is only six per cent contained, is good for him. Donald has decided it proves him right about something — if only any of us could know what that might be. It certainly has nothing to do with his idiocies around the Delta smelt, a small fish that is the subject of controversy hundreds of miles away, as it has been for more than 30 years.

The capitulant Wall Street media should cover the dishonesty and incoherence of Trump’s inanity and insanity like the evil it is. Have no doubt, malice masks predation, and it is premeditated and purposeful. Trump looks at this disaster, and he sees one thing, and one thing only.

Opportunity.

He sees an opportunity to attack and weaken the enemy, which in his sick mind, is California.

The enemy is us.

Trump is happy today. Do you doubt it?

Over and over again, he has made clear what he wants to happen.

Trump despises California. He has made that clear enough.

Ten days from now, he will take command. What better way to pay back “Shifty Schiff” than by making his constituents suffer?

Why would anyone think anything else would happen?

In fact, just when California needs a mass deportation least, it’s going to get one.

It’s going to get it because common sense is in short supply around Donald Trump. Up in the thin air, where the stupid never takes a break, there will be no let up.

Delivering on this promise — long discounted by the media, which constantly asserts that he doesn’t really mean it and can’t possibly do it — he has been playing like Lucy does Charlie Brown for the last 10 years.

A Memorial Will Honor The 146 Victims Of The Triangle Fire

This post is part of an article by David Von Drehle in The Washington Post: 

The challenge when writing history is to break the glass that separates us from the past. To connect somehow with those who lived before us and turn them back into people — not flat abstractions in funny clothes.

The glass-breaking moment for me, when I set out long ago to write a history of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire — the 1911 industrial disaster that shaped the politics of New York and later the entire nation — came when I learned that some of the victims, moments from death yet cheerfully unawares, were singing at the end of their workday. “Every Little Movement,” a hit Broadway show tune, was their equivalent of the latest from Taylor Swift. Some joke or passing remark or reference to a boyfriend had reminded one of them of the lyrics, and when she launched in, others joined her, as happy humans often do.

They were flesh and blood, as real as you and I. And then they were gone — incinerated in their ninth-floor death trap or smashed on the Greenwich Village pavement where they plunged. No publication even bothered to record all their names.

Now, New Yorkers and visitors to the city will be able to have their own glass-breaking moments at the site of the historic fire, which was the deadliest workplace disaster in city history until the day known as 9/11. The Triangle Fire Memorial, a project years in the making, will be dedicated on Wednesday at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street near Washington Square in the heart of Manhattan.

The 146 fire victims — most of them immigrant women from Italy and Eastern Europe — will be restored as actual names of actual people, at the very spot where they passed into history. Their names are cut into the flowing steel of the monument, which — when all the pieces are installed this winter — will stretch like ribbon to ninth-floor windows, then tumble back toward street level, where it will spread its arms to embrace the building where history happened. Light shining through the incised names will reflect on a polished surface, where they will appear as if glowing.

Americans learned to build high-rise buildings before they figured out entirely the dangers that height posed. Thus, an energetic young researcher named Frances Perkins had just begun a job looking into fire risks in factory lofts when she visited a friend for tea on March 25, 1911. Her visit was interrupted by the clanging of fire bells. Looking outside, she saw smoke rising from a nearby 10-story tower.

It was about 4:45 p.m. on a warm, bright Saturday. As the workday ended at the city’s busiest blouse factory, an ash or ember — probably from a cigarette — fell into a bin of cotton scraps, which exploded into flames. Quickly consuming the eighth floor, the fire spread rapidly to the ninth, where it trapped scores of workers.

Along with thousands of New Yorkers weary of winter and enjoying the day, Perkins came running to the scene just as dozens of trapped workers leaped and fell from the windows above.

For the shocked city, the question of fire danger was settled. New Yorkers also knew that the same factory that burned had also been the center of a great labor uprising of female workers. The energy of a young century — labor energy, feminist energy, progressive energy — poured into the frame of this catastrophe. Perkins switched gears to study the question of what to do about unsafe workplaces, and from there she studied the needs of American workers more generally. In 1933, she became the first woman to serve in a president’s Cabinet, as secretary of labor to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The Triangle fire, she said, was “the day the New Deal was born.”. . .

History becomes irresistible when sympathy connects us with the past. People lost behind glass come back to life in our minds and hearts, pull us into their stories.

We see ourselves in them. We draw strength from wraiths. We learn courage from ghosts.

Burning Of Notre Dame Is A French (And World) Tragedy

(These pictures of the Notre Dame fire are from CNN.com.)

The burning of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is not just a tragedy for catholics. It is a tragedy for the people of France, and for people all around the world.

The cathedral was nearly 1,000 years old -- having been started in 1160 and completed about 1260. It was beautiful, but even more important, it was a part of the world's history. No one has to be catholic, or even religious, to be affected by this tragedy.

It seems that part of the cathedral has been saved (the towers at the front), and President Macron has said the cathedral will be rebuilt. I hope so. But the loss from this fire is immense.

The World Is Laughing At Donald Trump -- Again!

(Photo of Finland's President Sauli Niinisto and Donald Trump, from Politico.com, is by Chip Somodevilla/Getty images.)

Once again, Donald Trump showed he is either the most ignorant world leader or he just makes things up to make himself look good -- perhaps both. While it is becoming obvious to most people that global warming is causing more disasters, Trump is still in denial.

He exhibited this when he announced that the cause of the devastating fires in California were caused by a failure to rake the leaves and small brush from the forest floor. He even went so far as to say that Finland's President Sauli Niinisto told him that there are fewer fires in Finland because they rake their forests.

"I was with the president of Finland, and he said, ‘We have a much different — we’re a forest nation.’ He called it a forest nation. And they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don’t have any problem. And when it is, it’s a very small problem."

Of course, that was a lie. The Finnish president was quick to point out that he did not say that to Trump. He simply said that Finland has a good monitoring system and network. That's something the U.S. also has (although it has been made more difficult by Trump cuts to the budget).

The idea of raking millions of acres for Forest is a ridiculous idea, and the people of Finland know that. They have taken to Twitter and social media to laugh at Trump silly idea. Here's a sample of the Finnish people have fun at Trump's expense:

Arson At FW Democrat's Office

Is this what the state of politics is devolving into in Texas these days? If you can't vote someone out of office, you try to burn them out? The picture above shows the front door of the office of State Senator Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth). About 4:00pm on Tuesday, someone set fire to the outside door of the Democrat's office, probably with a Molotov cocktail. The senator called it a "homemade explosive device".

It could have been even worse if the fire hadn't been quickly discovered. Instead of just arson, it could have resulted in arson and murder -- because there were two workers in the office when the fire was set. Fortunately, they heard the device hit and one of them quickly put the fire out with a fire extinguisher.

The arson is being investigated by the Fort Worth Fire and Police Departments, and they are being aided in that investigation by the Texas Department of Public Safety (State Troopers -- who investigate any attack on a state official). I hope they are able to quickly apprehend this criminal (or criminals) and deal out a severe punishment.This is not a political act, but a criminal act.

But it may well have been a criminal act based on some political beliefs. Davis has been a thorn in the side of right-wing Republicans since being elected. She opposed their deep cuts to Texas' already poorly funded schools, and she has strongly defended women's health and Planned Parenthood. She also took the state to court when the Republican legislature tried to gerrymander her district to prevent her re-election (and she won).

I don't think Republican officials had anything to do with this crime, but their over-the-top political rhetoric could well have persuaded some right-wing teabagging nut-job to do it. This is the kind of thing that can happen when you label political opponents as "enemies" of the state or country.

While Fires Rage, Republicans Want To Cut Firefighting Funds

If any more evidence was needed to show the ridiculous nature of the budget cuts being proposed by the Republican-controlled Texas legislature, this could be it. As you may know, the past couple of weeks has seen wildfires raging across large sections of the state (see above map for currently affected areas). And these are just the latest fires -- a few weeks ago the Panhandle area was also hit by fires and more than 50 homes were burned down near Amarillo.

The reason these fires have been so devastating can be traced to the incredibly dry conditions in the state and high winds -- two conditions that are not uncommon in Texas in most years.
And since drought conditions and windy days are pretty commonplace, one would expect the legislature to adequately fund fire prevention and firefighting measures throughout the state -- especially in rural areas where these fires can quickly cover large areas. Sadly, that is not the case.

In fact, while these fires are still raging, both houses of the state legislature have proposed budgets that would cut funds for the firefighting efforts by the Texas Forest Service (TFS) by nearly 40%. TFS currently has a budget for this of $42 million. The legislature wants to cut that budget down to only $25.8 million (61.4% of the current budget).

Texas relies heavily on volunteer fire departments to fight fires in rural areas, and lacking their own revenue sources, these volunteer departments rely heavily on state funds for new equipment purchases and fire prevention programs. The cuts to the TFS would eliminate much of the funding for this, leaving these departments ill-equipped and unprepared to fight the rural fires. And when these volunteer departments can handle the job, the TFS must ask for firefighting help from other states -- which costs four times as much money and delays the firefighting effort.

These cuts seem even more insane when compared to the budget deficit. Texas currently faces a budget deficit of about $27 billion for the next biennium (and the legislature is refusing to raise taxes or broaden the sales tax base). But the cuts to the firefighting efforts of TFS would amount to only 0.0006% of that budget deficit -- just a tiny drop in a large bucket. Considering the disastrous consequences the cuts will probably have, this legislative move just makes no sense at all.

But this is the kind of thing that happens when a political party puts teabagger politics ahead of common sense budgeting.