Aint No Right

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... directive/

Trump aides look into U.S. purchasing Greenland after directives from president
By Damian Paletta August 15 at 8:55 PM

President Trump has pushed top aides to investigate whether the U.S. government can purchase the giant, ice-smothered island of Greenland, two people with direct knowledge of the directive said.

The presidential request has bewildered aides, some of whom continue to believe it isn’t serious, but Trump has mentioned it for weeks. The two people with knowledge of the presidential demand spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to reveal such White House planning.

As with many of Trump’s internal musings, aides are waiting for more direction before they decide how seriously they should look into it.

Among the things that have been discussed is whether it is even legal, what the process would be for acquiring an island that has its own government and population, and where any money to purchase a giant landmass would originate.

Trump’s interest in acquiring Greenland was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook, Greenland is 2.2 million square kilometers, with 1.7 million of that covered in ice. It has considerable natural resources, such as coal and uranium, but only 0.6 percent of the land is used for agriculture. It has around 58,000 residents, making it one of the world’s smallest countries by population.

It is a self-governing country that is part of the kingdom of Denmark. Trump is scheduled to visit Denmark in two weeks.

Trump has touted his career as a real estate developer during the 2016 presidential campaign and made clear that he has retained an eye for real estate opportunities during his tenure in the White House. For example, he has said that North Korea could build famous hotels and resorts along its oceanfront properties, even though many foreigners are afraid to visit the country out of fear for their lives.

Typically, Congress must appropriate money before the White House can use it, but Trump has already shown a willingness to get around those restrictions.

Some on Thursday night responded to the news with incredulity; others, with support.

“This idea isn't as crazy as the headline makes it seem,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) said in a tweet. “This a smart geopolitical move. The United States has a compelling strategic interest in Greenland, and this should absolutely be on the table.”

Most, however, responded with mockery.

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) shared a news story about Trump’s idea and mused: “A Great place for his ‘presidential’ library.”

And Jonah Goldberg, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, tweeted that MAGA — the acronym for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan — is “an an anagram of Make Greenland American Already.”

Hype wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 02, 2019 7:35 pm

As soon as I saw that, I wondered if he was restating some bad reporting he saw on Fox. Anyone know if they had a news broadcast that made that same mistake seconds prior to that tweet?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... w-terrain/

Trump’s war on reality enters bizarre new terrain
Specifically: A not-exactly-hurricane-ravaged Alabama.

By Philip Bump
September 4 at 3:46 PM

Hurricane Dorian seemed poised to slam directly into Florida as recently as last Thursday. Projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed a track for the storm passing north of the Bahamas and pointing straight into the middle of the state.
...
Happily for Florida — though not the Bahamas — the storm’s track shifted, with more recent projections showing that it was expected to brush against the coast and then follow it past North Carolina. Still a risk to the southeastern United States but not as much to Florida itself.

And certainly not to Alabama. The most that Alabama was included in the NOAA’s projections was late Friday, when the cone of possible directions briefly brushed against the most extreme southeastern part of the state. That cone, of course, doesn’t indicate that the hurricane would swell to a size greater than the state of Georgia; instead, it shows a range of possible places where Dorian might end up. Maybe — maybe! — it would be brushing against Alabama by 2 p.m. Wednesday.
...
That’s not what was happening at 2 p.m. Wednesday. Instead, social media at that time was roiling over an apparent alteration to a NOAA hurricane map shared by Trump during a briefing in the Oval Office. That map was a version of the first map shown in this article but with an addition: a weird little drawn-in spur covering parts of Alabama.


President Trump talks with reporters Wednesday in the Oval Office after receiving a briefing on Hurricane Dorian. The forecast he is displaying appears to have been altered. (Evan Vucci/AP)

Why? The answer is probably a simple one: Someone was trying to preserve Trump’s pride.

You see, on Sunday morning Trump had tweeted a warning to Alabamians that the hurricane was threatening their state.
...
In short order, a National Weather Service office in that state rejected the idea.
...
After all, the most recent public NOAA projection when Trump tweeted was this one, showing very clearly that Alabama was at that point facing no risk — and that, in fact, the likelihood it might was decreasing as the storm shifted away.


A NOAA forecast displays the projected path of Hurricane Dorian on Sunday, shortly before President Trump tweeted that Alabama was threatened by the storm. (NOAA)

When ABC News’s Jonathan Karl noted that Trump had been wrong in saying the storm threatened Alabama, Trump raged about it on Twitter.
...
This was Monday evening. By midday Wednesday, when Trump was briefing reporters in the Oval Office, the little spur over Alabama had appeared.

It’s not clear that Trump is the one who drew that little loop, though it wouldn’t be terribly surprising. His affinity for marking up documents with black marker is well-known.
...
It’s important to note that Trump appeared to refer to that little spur when displaying the map Wednesday, saying that it showed Dorian “going toward the Gulf.”

“Our original chart showed that it was going to be hitting Florida directly,” Trump said when displaying the altered map. “It was going to be hitting directly, and that would have affected a lot of other states. But that was the original chart. And you see it was going to hit not only Florida but Georgia. It could have — it was going toward the Gulf; that was what was originally projected.”

All of this backstory is important because it reveals just how obviously ridiculous Trump’s charade actually was. It’s trivial to check historic hurricane maps against what Trump was showing. It’s obvious that the original image didn’t include the marker-sketched loop, and Trump made no comment suggesting that the addition was erroneous or a mistake. It’s hard to argue, then, that the loop was made for any other reason than allowing Trump to talk about where the storm was headed — toward the Gulf of Mexico and Alabama.

It has been well documented by now that Trump hyperactively tries to create his own reality. The Washington Post’s exhaustive database of Trump’s falsehoods, misrepresentations and lies are largely a compendium of times Trump has tried to make himself seem more important, his work more exceptional and his enemies more toxic than they actually are. Maintaining that house of cards means constantly working to bolster its foundation: the idea, constantly fostered by Trump, that his assertions are unassailable.

Any other president — or, really, nearly any other person — might have simply admitted a mistake in the original tweet and deleted it. Trump can’t do that: Admitting one error means admitting that more might exist out there. Trump’s strategy, mirrored by his allies, is generally to insist that he’s never wrong and has never done the negative things of which he stands accused, whipping up a fog of doubt around everything he does, however minor.
...
Someday, perhaps in one of the voluminous history books detailing the internal machinations of the Trump presidency, we will learn how the marker addition to the hurricane map came to be. We will learn who suggested it be there and why. We will learn what Trump said as it was being added, and we will learn how the White House decided on its reaction after the fact.

For now, though, this seems like a fairly uncomplicated situation. Trump said something untrue. A map showed the truth. Suddenly, once in Trump’s hands, the map showed something somewhere in between.

However clumsily.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-orders ... 32223.html

Trump 'orders Coast Guard admiral' to take blame for his false Alabama hurricane claims
Tom Embury-Dennis The Independent 3 hours ago

Donald Trump reportedly ordered a Coast Guard rear admiral to give a statement in which he effectively took the blame for the US president’s misleading claims about the chances of a hurricane striking Alabama.

Mr Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed he was right to say Alabama would “most likely” be struck by the record-breaking storm, which has already devastated much of the Bahamas.

He even went so far as showing reporters on Wednesday a doctored weather map, which featured the projected path of Dorian with an additional sharpie-drawn line around a corner of the southern state.

On Thursday, Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor, Rear Admiral Peter Brown, issued a statement through the White House saying he briefed Mr Trump on Sunday over the possibility of Hurricane Dorian striking Alabama.

“I showed the President the official National Hurricane Center forecast, which included the 'cone' that projects the potential path of the eye of the storm," Mr Brown said, in apparent reference to the map which was later altered.

...

chaos wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 09, 2019 1:38 pm

The weathergate saga continues . . .

chaos wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 30, 2019 5:48 pm

I thought someone hacked DJT's account and pinned this tweet, but apparently he posted it himself.