Airports in 1775, Hurricane Dorian and Alabama, all the lies…

When you Google the definition of stupidity here’s what you get:

behavior that shows a lack of good sense or judgment.”I can’t believe my own stupidity”

When you listen to trump’s July 4th speech, you hear stupidity that sounds like this, from the BBC news:

“Trump claims army ‘took over airports’ in 1775.”

A speech delivered by President Trump at Independence Day celebrations contained historical errors. At the event in Washington DC, for the 4th of July “Salute to America”, he referred to airports existing in 1775. The mistake was attributed by some US media outlets to difficulty reading the teleprompter.

The US president also mixed up the War of 1812 with the War of Independence.”

Okay, we had airports in 1775 and Washington’s luggage got lost in transit and eventually had to be delivered by horseback. Don’t believe it? The You Tube video is at the top.

More recently,  there’s trump’s infamous: Dorian is going to hit Alabama. and the exhibit of his sharpie-altered weather map. This was quickly followed by a statement from the Alabama center that trump’s statement was incorrect. Now its being reported that Wilbur Ross head of the commerce department that oversees the weather services, threatened to fire the meteorologists at NOAA unless they backed up trump’s statement.

So, just to unravel the facts here: the head of the commerce department ordered meteorologists at NOAA – the National Oceanic and  Atmospheric Administration – to forget science so trump could save face. These people are the ones who forecast weather based on SCIENCE, not politics. Their forecasts, especially during times of violent weather, save lives. Wilbur Ross, one more trump sycophant, should resign.

But the bigger picture is even more disturbing. When science becomes a tool of politics, we enter really dangerous terrain. And we’ve been there for some time. Trump is a climate  change denier, as are many of the people in his administration. But the widespread obliteration in the Abacos  is just more proof that we are in the midst of what these deniers are claiming.

If this category 5 storm had stalled over the South Florida area for two days as it did over the Bahamas, the peninsula would look like the Abacos, a junkyard. I doubt that much of anything in South Florida can withstand a two-day assault by winds of 185 mph, with gusts up to 220 mph, storm surges of 30 feet, and two-feet of rain. The east coast of the peninsula would be underwater, including Mar-a Lago. In addition, it’s likely that an assault like that would bring Lake Okeechobee surging over its dikes – or breaking them altogether, flooding the entire western part of the county until it merged with the Everglades.

Today, trump declared that a  ferry  with Bahamian refugees on board couldn’t enter the U.S. without visas. He cited the presence of gang members, murderers, very bad people,” all his usual diatribes against immigrants. But there’s one very significant difference here: 70,000 Bahamians were left homeless by Dorian. They’ve lost everything. To deny them entry to the U.S. is inhumane, a travesty, and for any christians who still support this mad man, such an act goes against the fundamental tenets of christianity. Ask yourselves: would Christ turn away the needy? The desperate? The ones who have lost everything?

Whenever I read something about the state of things on the Abacos – the stench of death in the air, the bodies found in heaps of rubble, the utter devastation – I think, This could have been us. With the slilghtest job to the west, Dorian’s eye would have come on shore in Florida. So I give what I can to relief and rescue organizations I trust. I wish I had some skill that I could contribute on the ground – medical skills, zillions of bucks to bring in food, to rebuild homes and lives.