Hurricane Melissa Is the First AI Generated Fake Video Disaster

A screenshot of a fake AI-generated view of Hurricane
Melissa from above. Hurricanes don't even look like
this in real life. Hurricane Melissa inspired a 
lot of fake AI videos, confusing and in some
cases endangering the public. 

 A lot of the dramatic videos you saw of Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean were probably AI fakes. 

True, there are many, many, videos that show the true tragedy of what happened on Jamaica in that terrible storm. Those videos shock us, upset us, make us want to help. And they get ton of views. 

There's also a lot of fake AI Hurricane Melissa videos going around. Some of them really look like the real thing. 

But if you look closely, they were generated by whatever AI service the maker used. The motivation? Make a pile of money out of somebody else's tragedy. 

 Though AI videos have exploited disasters and other big events  for awhile now, Melissa
a is arguably the first calamity to get the full AI treatment on social media. 

Per PBS News:

"Experts noted that Melissa is the first big natural disaster since OpenAI launched the latest version of its video generation tool Sora last month. 

'Now, with the rise of easily accessible and powerful tools like Sora, it has become even easier for bad actors to create and distribute highly convincing synthetic videos,' said Sofia Rubinson, a senior editor at NewsGuard, which analyzes online misinformation. 

I supposed the AI videos of Melissa are less harmful than political deep fakes, ones that make leaders really appear to be something they're not, to sway the public based on big lies, to create a political environment detrimental to everyone except a cadre of billionaires and their brown nosing fans.  

Disaster AI videos are just clickbait. Sure, they're scammy. But they're easy and cheap to produce, and if whoever makes any of these gets lucky, they can get hundreds of thousands or even millions of views. A really lucky strike with a fake disaster AI video can rake in a few thousand dollars.  

These fake AI videos can spread heartache, and interfere with storm recovery.  

As CNET reports;

"In times of crisis, like a dangerous and imminent natural disaster these fake videos can create confusion panic and distraction at a time when accuracy can be life-saving."

One of the AI videos going round depicted the main airport in the Jamaican capitol of Kingston completely destroyed. If taken at face value, that video could have affected or delayed relief supplies.

In fact, the airport in Kingston was only lightly damaged. It opened for both relief and commercial flights last Thursday, October 30, just a couple days after the hurricane. 

"I am in so many WhatsApp groups and I see all of these videos coming. Many them are fake....And so we urge you to please listen to the official channels" said Dana Morris Dixon, Jamaica's Education Minister. 

AI videos can also falsely minimize the severity of a disaster. As Forbes noted, one widely circulated Melissa AI video shows Jamaicans partying, boating and swimming, which made the hurricane appear much less dangerous than it really was.  

It's trickier when you're in a disaster zone and trying to find solid information to keep  you safe. Often people in the middle of a disaster look to social media for guidance. An AI video made by someone who is unfamiliar with the area affected and how to respond to disasters can easily lead storm victims into danger, rather than helping them.  

The AI videos are confusing the public so much that people are writing off legitimate videos as AI. One video shows the dramatic views inside the eye of Hurricane Melissa taken from aboard a hurricane hunter plane. The video is legit, but it's so incredible, people tried to flag it as AI.

But yet another video purportedly taken above the eye of Melissa portrays it as sort of a wormhole, with clouds swirling around the eye, and pouring into the "hole."  If you understand meteorology, you would catch the problem right away. 

A hurricane's eye is the storm's "chimney," and the clouds around it are rising, not sinking. 

Though it's still pretty possible to distinguish a real video from AI nonsense, it's getting harder.  

Per PBS News:

"In the past, people could often identify fakes through telltale signs like unnatural motion, distorted text, or missing fingers. But as these systems improve, many of those flaws are disappearing, making it increasingly difficult for the average viewer to distinguish AI-generated content from authentic footage.'"

It's kind of annoying that nowadays, you have to look at everything with a super critical eye to distinguish fact from fantasy. 

But it's still possible. With AI video, as always, check as best you can to determine whether the video is from a reliable source. Check the account's history on social media. If the past is pretty clickbait-y, you are probably looking at more AI clickbait in the video you're watching. 

You can sometimes see a Sora watermark, which shows it is AI.  Apps can get rid of the watermark, but often smudge is left behind where you'd expect a watermark, so that can act as a clue. 

Although scammers are getting better at producing videos, look for strangely shaped objects or blurred commercial signs in the background.  Sometimes one object in the video has odd lighting, is strangely blurred or doesn't seem to have quite the right shape. 

If you still can't tell whether it's real or fake, welcome to the club. I have a good eye for this type of thing and sometimes I'm still not sure whether what I'm seeing is real or AI. In those cases, let's play it safe and don't share the video on social media. 

Credible sources usually end up verifying legit videos. The one you're fascinated with will either be proven true and debunked. Once that happens, then you can share it if you feel safe about it.

Meanwhile our social media feeds are getting more and more clogged with annoying fake AI videos posing a news. 

It's just another example of how we just can't have nice things. 

 

 

Donald Trump's Climate Remarks In UN Speech Were, Um, Something

Trump had some rather, um, interesting things to say
at the UN General Assembly Tuesday, including
some wild assertions regarding 
climate change and clean energy. 

That was quite a speech Donald Trump gave at the United Nations Tuesday. 

I wish I thought to count the number of untruths utter during the speech.  It sure had me reaching for my Tylenol, despite Trump and RFK's distain for the pain medication. 

Since this is a weather and climate blog, I'll ignore for all most of the problematic things Trump said on a wide variety of topics, and stick to the subject at hand here. 

Trump had plenty so say on climate change and clean energy in the rambling, hour long address.  They were things we heard from him before, that climate change is a hoax, that clean energy is bad, yada, yada, yada. 

Still, it's worth exploring just what he said, and doing some fact checking, just for laughs and giggles. 

As always, Trump has a remarkably dark vision of the world.

Climate change, he said, is "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.....The carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions, and they're heading down a path of total destruction."

I suppose we can make a case that we are eventually "heading down a path of total destruction," but that's not because climate change is a hoax. It's more because that climate change is inflicting more and more and worse and worse weather disaster on the world's populace. 

Trump dismissed the often forecasts climate change scientists have made over the years. "All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong....They were made by stupid people."

Never mind that climate prediction models, even those made half a century ago, were more or less accurate. But I guess we have to ignore all that, since scientists with years of education and training are clearly just stupid people.

Trump stuck with the subject: "They said global warming will kill the world, but then it started getting cooler. So now they could just call it climate change, because that way, they can't miss. It's climate change, because if it goes higher or lower whatever the hell happens, there's climate change."

I think Trump is referring to a worn out trope about some publications way back when the Bee Gees were discoing their way to fame and fortune back in the 1970s. 

The world started to warm a bit starting near the turn of the 20th century as our burning of fossil fuels began to have an effect. But then there was a very slight cooling trend from the 1940s to the 1970s.  That cooling trend is now understood to be the result of air pollution that dimmed the sun a little. Plus a natural climate cycle contributed a tiny bit to that cooling. 

By the 1970s, sensationalistic magazines informed us based on that bit of cooling a new ice age was coming. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, most climate scientists were accurately convinced the world was going to warm up. 

They were right, obviously. Air pollution was cleaned up, the sun shone more brightly as a result, the climate cycle ended, and that's when climate change really rocketed up. 

Trump added another overused trope when he made that crack about the terminology regarding global warming changed to climate change.  Calling it climate change is actually more accurate. Sure, the world is warming up.  But that's causing bigger storms, bigger floods, bigger droughts. Saying it's global warming is incomplete since so many other things are going on, too. 

But anyway, Trump plowed on. 

"Immigration and the high cost of so-called green renewable energy is destroying a large part of the free world........Countries that cherish freedom are fading fast because of their policies on those two subjects. You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you are going to be great again."

He had more to say on the topic.   

"(Europe) has a long way to go, with many countries being on the brink of destruction because of their green energy agenda....Both the immigration and their suicidal energy ideas will be the death of Western Europe."

It's probably way too much to get into immigration policy here, but I'm at a loss how clean energy will mean the end of nations. Trump didn't explain it, other than to say countries who have green energy policies allow the nations that emphasize fossil fuel to take all the manufacturing jobs somehow. 

Back in July, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared the world has "passed the point of no return" on the shift to renewable energy and said the fossil fuel era will end soon.  And I haven't seen evidence that nations with stricter green energy policies are doing worse than ones clinging to dependence on fossil fuel.

Trump also said that clean energy is too expensive and "doesn't work."  Which leaves me mystified.

If it doesn't work and is too expensive, why was 80 percent of the growth in electricity generation around the world from renewable and nuclear sources. And why does solar and wind account for 16 percent of U.S. electricity, surpassing coal?

You'd think the U.S. and other nations and international business interests would have long since abandoned renewables if they "didn't work." But whatevs. 

Trump had a wee bit of accuracy when it comes to China. He said China produces most of the world's wind technology, but doesn't use wind technology, Instead, it relies on coal and gas. 

That's partially true. Wind turbines and solar accounts for 20 percent of China's electricity generation, but China is still the world's largest coal consumer. In 2024 China accounted for 58 percent of global coal use.

It seems like much of the coverage of Trump's UN speech centered around a malfunctioning teleprompter and balky escalator at the UN. 

But Trump's climate and clean energy remarks, along with a whole host of other weird things he said. are an embarrassment to the U.S. And puts the world in just a little more danger it certainly does not need.  

Weather Conspiracy Theories Weirdly Gain Traction Over Reality

The tin foil hat crowd is working overtime, with so many
weather conspiracies that GOP politicians to pass
unnecessary law, and put people in unnecessary danger. 

 The weather wackos are out there. And gaining in numbers and power.

They're actually passing ridiculous laws, distracting from the big issues of the day that really need to be addressed.  

These are the people who look at all the storms, floods, wind and other weirdness out there we've had this year, and conclude some nefarious groups are controlling the weather. 

Even perfectly normal weather becomes fodder for these wackadoodle theories.  

Marjorie Taylor Greene in her usual full conspiracy mode said and has been "researching weather modification" (oh boy) and, "We must end the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering."

Never mind that the limited attempts at things like cloud seeding and such and haven't produced any deaths or damage. Mostly because there's no weather modification going on, aside from local, small cloud seeding operations that produce sprinkles of rain.  

Still, Marjorie is  pressing on, introducing a bill that "prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature climate or sunlight intensity. It will be a felony offense."

She's got buddies in this endeavor. "Weather manipulation is real, but in the hands of our enemies or or some overlord, I think it can be a very detrimental thing. I'm big on God and just letting him work his magic and not people trying to play God," said GOP Tim Burchett, who cosponsored Greene's House bill that would ban supposed weather control.

Our friends Marjorie and Tim are  getting mocked for all this, as she always. does. Florida Democrat Care Moskowitz said on social media, "I'm introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release or dispersion of stupidity into Congress."

Yeah, good luck with that.  

CLOUD SEEDING AND TEXAS

Meanwhile retired general Mike Flynn, a former national security advisor in the first Trump administration - and also a right wing batshit conspiracy dude - n reposted another nutcase, who, in all caps of course, screamed "I NEED SOMEONE TO LOOK INTO WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS. WHEN WAS THE LAST CLOUD SEEDING?"

The answer is a few days before the storm. 

Like almost all conspiracy theories, a microscopic nugget of truth begins the story for instance, in the days  before the big Texas flood, there was some cloud seeding aircraft up there, trying to produce a little rain for some places that were actually drought stricken before the flood. 

That produced isolated, small amounts of rain, as cloud seeding never creates much precipitation. Cloud seeding is arguably useful to provide some parched crops a little moisture, but it sure as hell doesn't make it pour, 

As meteorologist Matthew Cappucci explained on X, cloud seeding doesn't "create" moisture to land as rain drops. 

It just helps droplets in clouds bump into each other to form bigger drops that fall. You can't get much moisture from just a collection of clouds. 

In the Texas floods, a gigantic surge of moisture pumped very wet air and dense clouds into central Texas. That air and those clouds needed no help in producing those tragic downpours. 

Cappucci, in full snark mode, also said, "Claiming that enormous regional floods are tied to cloud seeding is like claiming an overweight individual jumping into the Pacific Ocean could cause a tsunami. Such crazy conspiracies exhibit a fundamental lack of any semblance of understanding of scale."

MORE LAWS, CONSPIRACIES

But, despite that dose of reality, it's full speed ahead with the conspiracies. 

Florida just passed through a new law that says public use airports starting in October must submit monthly reports on geoengineering and weather modification activities or lose funding. 

I'm not sure how that's going to work, because nobody at the airports or on planes who use those airports is modifying the weather, at least intentionally, but not matter. 

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier  is really into this, though, because - sigh - he appears to be one of those sad people who think contrails from jets flying overhead is trying to poison the populace for some nefarious reason. Reasons that they really have a hard time explaining, never mind providing any evidence.

Here's Uthmeier's breathless, melodramatic statement on the issue: "From farmlands to our waterways, to the very air we breath - Floridians' health is under attack from toxic particulates being sprayed into our atmosphere, polluting our water, contaminating agriculture, and destroying human health."

Uthmeier included photos of cloud streaks in his post, which were those  jet contrails. Which is water vapor caused by condensation from the exhaust from aircraft.  

Uthmeier of course also invoked Texas and cloud seeding which we've already gone over, and there's no evidence (of course!) there's no toxins from our imaginary weather modification projects in Florida. 

First of all, nobody in Florida has applied for or received a weather modification license since it became a requirement back in 1957, according to PoliFact/Poynter. In 1957 citrus growers in three Florida counties tried cloud seeding for their orchards. But apparently, it didn't work great so they gave up. 

Poynter reached out to Florida environmental officials and Uthmeier to find out whether there were any reports of unlicensed weather modification efforts but didn't hear back. 

It's not just Florida. Missouri lawmakers are considering a proposal to ban all weather modification, including cloud seeding, saying in part that humans should not "play God" with the weather. 

Then there's the fringe group that is threatening to attack and destroy Doppler weather installations around the United States. 

The group, Veterans on Patrol, somehow think that Doppler radar is some sort of "weather weapon" but don't explain how a device that just measures precipitation intensity and direction is some sort of weapon. 

Earlier this month, a man was arrested for destroying the power supply to the weather radar at television  station KWTV in Oklahoma city. 

The dude who was arrested, Anthony Tyler Mitchell, 39, is not known to be a member of Veterans on Patrol, but the crime was inspired by them, officials said. 

But, according to NBC News, the head of that group. Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer (can we add a few more names?) welcomed the Oklahoma attack. 

"When we destroy and eliminate over 15 in a state of Oklahoma, your radar maps are going to change big time, and the weather in just going to be completely different over Oklahoma and the surrounding area," he told NBC. 

Or, in reality, the weather in Oklahoma won't change, except if he succeeds, residents of the state won't know if one of the area's many tornadoes, flash floods and other weather hazards are heading their way. I guess this dude figures Oklahomans love surprises, even if they are supremely unpleasant and deadly. 

He claimed the Texas flood was an effort by the military to murder children (by catching them in a flash flood, I guess), but he offered no motive for this alleged murderous scheme. 

I'm sure Mitchell, our radar vandal, is enjoying the charges of felony malicious injury to property, burglary and damage to critical infrastructure. 

We're all laughing at the stupidity of these whack jobs, except for one thing: It's dangerous. Wired reported the head of the Texas cloud seeding company Rainmaker has received 100 death threats since the Texas flood. 

And the fact that right wind influencers, MAGA politicians and other so-called leaders keep pushing the conspiracy theories means we'll keep seeing ill-considered, waste of time laws,.

MY "CONSPIRACY THEORY"

To appease their followers, the current administration will cater to these influences as yet another convenient distraction from what really matters, and what they are really doing. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, always the good Trump minion, said he would investigate the so-called weather control that "caused" the Texas floods. 

"Americans have questions about geoengineering and contrails, They expect honesty and transparency from the government when seeking answers, For years, people who asked questions in good faith were dismissed, even vilified by the media and and their own government. That ends today," Zeldin sanctimonious declared recently. 

So, they'll find some innocent scapegoat to prosecute, like that cloud seeding company that might have caused a few sprinkles of rain a few days before  and 120 miles away from the Texas flood scene.

There always were and always will be gullible people who get taken in by the wildest stories. And there will be always grifter who take advantage of these gullible people, 

Which is what's going on,

Humans are modifying the weather in one big way: Climate change. As everyone in the real world knows, all that fossil fuel we've been burning for the past century or two has modified the climate and thus the weather. 

Heat waves are hotter, rainstorms are wetter and powerful storms are more powerful. 

As the Washington Post puts it, "....extreme weather events are becoming more intense and frequent because of human-caused climate change. Some long-term deniers of that well-established process have been more likely to blame chemtrails or cloud seeding than to reconsider the climate-altering effects of fossil fuel emissions."

My conspiracy theory - and I actually thing it makes a bit of sense - is that the fossil fuel industry will do anything to protect their business. 

Distract the public with bogus "theories" and they can keep pumping those greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Which worsens the climate, and creates more extreme weather. Rinse and repeat. 

There's more than enough gullible people to keep this scam going.  

Trump Continues To Combat Climate Efforts On Many Fronts

Unsure whether climate change was messing up his hair 
here, but President Trump does not believe that climate
change exists, and is scrubbing away almost all the
work the federal government has done in combating
this threat to the world. 

 We saw how the Trump administration fired hundreds of NOAA workers, harming both weather forecasting and efforts to combat climate change.  

But that's not the only front in Trump's battle against climate change efforts. 

Federal websites have been scrubbed of climate information and data. Government scientists who still have jobs have been banned from collaborating on climate issues with experts in other nations. 

TAKING AWAY THE TOOLS

There is push back, of course. Environmental groups have sued the Department of Agriculture over the removal of climate information from its web sites. 

Per Courthouse News Service

"Filing suit in Manhattan federal court, the groups accused Trump's USDA of abruptly deleting climate-related policies, datasets and resources from its websites in violation of the Paperwork Reduction Act, which requires federal agencies to provide adequate advance public notice when substantially modifying or terminating 'significant information dissemination products.'"

The complaint states:

"In ordering staff to unpublish these webpages, USDA failed to consider how removing these resources would harm farmers, farm advisors, land managers, researchers and other members of the public, and thus failed to engage in reasoned decision-making, in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act."

That's just. Regular folks, the ones Trump falsely claims to champion, need this data to run farms and other enterprises. 

"By wiping critical climate resources from the USDA's website, the Trump administration has deliberately stripped farmers and ranchers of the vital tools they need to confront the escalating extreme weather threats like droughts and floods," Midwest director the Environmental Working Group Anne Schechinger wrote in a statement. 

MAJOR CLIMATE REPORT HOBBLED 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a United Nations body that makes regular assessments about the state of the warming world. The last detailed assessment came out in 2023.

These reports try to synthesize the latest human understanding of climate change and what can be done to stop it. 

Per the Washington Post:

"Katherine Calvin, NASA's chief scientist and senior climate advisor, has been barred from traveling China to meet with colleagues on work related to the next major report from the IPCC......The next report is expected in 2029, and Calvin is leading one of the three major IPCC working groups.

NASA also terminated its contract with a U.S.-based group of scientists and staff who were working closely with Calvin to coordinate global efforts to craft the next assessment, essentially leaving one-third of the IPCCs next report adrift, with no staff assigned to pull it together."

Par for the course, Trump administration won't comment about this to the media, and won't clarify what they're doing, and so far won't tell any IPCC staff what the status of U.S. employees is regarding the report and work on climate change. 

REGULATIONS DISAPPEARING

A key Environmental Protection Agency scientific finding from a decade and a half ago supports the agency's efforts to combat climate change. Apparently, that scientific finding - factual as it is - does not work for the Trump administration. 

Because, I'm sure they're thinking, 'facts are stupid, especially when they get away with our money grubbing grifting political agenda. 

Per the Washington Post:

"The 2009 'endangerment finding' cleared the way for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act by concluding that the planet-warming gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. The Obama and Biden administrations used that determination to set strict limits on emissions from cars and power plants."

WaPo says EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has been urging the White House to get rid of that scientific finding, and I'm sure Trump will agree with Zeldin on that point. 

With the science removed and replaced by pseudo-science, to put it mildly, the nation continues to abandon climate change efforts just when they were starting to have an effect.  

Like I noted when Trump and his at-least-for-now bosom buddy Elon Musk ditched all those NOAA and FEMA workers, Trump and his oligarchs don't really care how many people die in climate-related disasters or other misfortunes created by their stupidity and selfishness.

As we've seen with the health care industry, it's all about making more billions for the existing billionaires and oligarchs. Needless deaths are - to them anyway - the cost of doing business.   

Man Involved In Famous Hurricane "Sharpiegate" Kerfuffle Is Nominated To Lead NOAA

Neil Jacobs, who was unfortunately
involved in the 2019 "Sharpiegate"
scandal has been nominated to lead NOAA

 When somebody takes a leadership role at a science-based organization, you kinda want them to have some scientific integrity. 

But of course, the Trump administration seems to do everything opposed to integrity. Which, of course, is the reason President Donald Trump has hired Neil Jacobs to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

By the way, there's more really bad Trump-related NOAA news I'll have posts on in the near future, Stuff is coming fast and furiously under this administration. 

Any, back to Jacobs. He is probably best known for his role in the Great "Sharpiegate" Scandal of 2019.

Jacobs was acting director of NOAA during Trump's first term when Category 5 Hurricane Dorian threatened Florida. 

At the time, Trump said the storm also threatened the Florida Panhandle and Alabama, which actually wasn't true. 

In at attempt to avoid public panic in Alabama, meteorologists at the National Weather Service office in Birmingham, Alabama dared to contradict Trump, accurately saying Hurricane Dorian was not headed toward that state and everybody there was safe from that dangerous storm. 

We know how much Trump has to be always right, or something like that, so Trump was steamed at those accurate scientists at NWS Birmingham. 

So to "prove" those wascally meteorologists wrong, Trump used a "cone of uncertainty" map that was crudely altered with a Sharpie to include Alabama as a threatened spot.

The cone of uncertainty maps show a range of locations in which a hurricane threatens. Alabama was outside the National Hurricane Center's cone of uncertainty, meaning residents there faced no threat. But the addition of the Sharpie image - viola! - made Alabama "threatened" to Trump's satisfaction. 

As the Washington Post reports:

"The confusion prompted an unusual and unsigned NOAA statement in support of Trump's warnings to Alabama. An investigation found undue political influence in the process of crafting that statement, in violation of NOAA's standards for scientific integrity, but Jacobs defended the statement and admonished the Birmingham meteorologists."

NOAA's scientific integrity policy prohibits political interference with the conduct and communication of the agency's scientific findings.  Jacobs' contradiction of science-based hurricane forecasting violated that policy. 

The famous Sharpitegate photo. Click on image to make
it bigger and easier to see. Trump administration added
a Sharpie line to falsely make it look like Alabama
was threatened by Hurricane Dorian. It wasn't. 

Of course with Trump in office, ethics is out the window, so NOAA's scientific integrity policy is now probably a worthless piece of paper. 

In the new Trump administration, we've already seen his pressure to contradict science on weather and climate change and that will only increase. Which puts us all in danger. 

If Trump decides a storm or other weather danger is inconvenient to his agenda, then he and probably Jacobs will minimize or even lie about the threat. 

It appears "Sharpiegate" was not Jacob's idea. In fact, the Washington Post reported at the time Jacobs initially tried to discourage issuing the false statement that Trump was correct about the hurricane and the meteorologists in Birmingham were wrong. 

In the end, Jacobs caved to pressure from Trump and then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who was Jacob's boss.

Given his apparent loyalty to Trump, Jacobs would follow any whim from the president, up to including rooting any climate science from NOAA's mission. That would gut the agency since climate change is such an important issue regarding anything weather related. 

Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for the Trump administration, called for breaking up NOAA, eliminating references to climate change and privatizing the National Weather Service. I imagine Jacobs might go along with that, too. 

I suppose if you did enough, there are some good things to say about Jacobs. As the Washington Post notes, he did emphasize the importance of improving United States weather forecasting models, which have lagged behind forecasting models in other nations. 

Jacobs will need Senate confirmation, but since the Senate is approving people who actually might be national security risks to head important agencies, somebody like Jacobs, who is a serious scientist but one who kowtows to Trump's whims, should have no trouble being approved.

 

Deliberate Wildfire Lies Just One Part Of MAGA Plan To Punish Blue States For Not Being MAGA Enough

It's going to cost billions to fix California after this 
month's devastating wildfires. Many of the GOP 
want to withhold aid until blue state California
becomes sufficiently MAGA-like. 

You've got to hand it to the more big mendacious wing of the GOP: They certainly know how to set up a scheme to get what they want. 

They provided a master class on how they operate with the past week's tragic California wildfires. This whole post will sound like a wildly conspiratorial rant, but hear me out. 

First, much of the GOP have bombarded us with truckloads of lies and misinformation and red herrings. Their voices of deception are so loud and big that they drown out the facts and the truth. 

Leading a sizable portion of the population believing them. Propaganda works.  

They're good at packaging up in neat little soundbites. Fox host Jeanne Pirro is especially adept at this, offering a fire hose of lies, exaggerations and fiction Monday evening:

 "To have empty fire hydrants and empty reservoir, no water pressure and you know, it's just, it is just a disaster. And,  you know how to lose billions for the homeless, and all kids of money for illegals, but can't manage forestry and you can't take care - take something that's predictable. And the question now is whether Americans in other states should be paying the bill for their policy, which really ignored the fundamental prevention efforts."

See what she did there? She's got the gullible thinking that California taxes residents to death to lavish wealth on the homeless and illegal migrants, as if that's a thing. 

And now, she concluded, we should withhold aid to desperate, distraught fire victims until, I don't know, California Gov. Gavin Newsom says he has brown people and The Gays and tells billionaires they no longer should pay taxes or something?

IN FOR THE KILL

Next step: Go in for the kill:  With the backing of gullible millions of minions across the nation, they go to work trying to change the "enemy" into an image of themselves.

That enemy to them is California. The giant state is not kind enough to billionaires, not cruel enough to the disadvantaged. California's leaders think climate change is a problem, which of course annoys the GOP's fossil fuel company donors. 

California Governor Gavin Newsom is fighting back
against GOP efforts to withhold aid to California
after this month's wildfires. 

So, departing from the way things have always been done, the GOP wants to attach strings to any disaster aid. 

For now, the proposed "strings" are described in, I guess, code words?  MAGA wants better forest management, whatever that entails.  The Los Angeles fires have burned through brush land and of course neighborhoods, and not forests.

 I saw a clip of Sen. Roger Marshall R-Kansas on Fox giving up the jig and suggesting that some of the strings attached to California aid be that the state abandon its climate initiatives.

That led the Tennessee Holler on sarcastically comment on X: "Republicans want to condition aid unless California takes measures to make sure this DEFINITELY happens again"

In any event, it looks most of the GOP Trump fanboys and fangirls are on firmly on board.

Per the Washington Post: 

"House Speaker Mike Johnson, (R-Louisiana) said Monday that 'there should probably be conditions on that aid,' and pointed to disagreements about California's 'resource management' and 'forest management mistakes,'

(There's that like about forests in Los Angeles again!) 

WaPo continues: 

"Sen. John Barrasso (Wyoming), the No. 2 Republican in the upper chamber, also blames the fires' devastating outcome on 'policies of the liberal administration out there' during a Sunday interview on CBS's Face the Nation." 

Barrasso wants strings attached to California aid, too.  Apparently, liberals should have gotten their act together and somehow blocked the 80 mph winds that fanned the flames somehow. 

WIDER AUDIENCE

California isn't the only audience for this GOP stunt.  It's a warning to everyone who might otherwise go their own way to fall in line with what the Trumpers want. It is very mafia. Nice state you got there. Hate to see anything ruin it. 

Some GOP Congress creatures are completely blunt about this plan. Per Washington Post:

"Rep. Zach Nuns (R-Iowa) said California and other Democratic-controlled states would need to atone for 'bad behavior' if they wanted federal assistance.

'We will certainly help those thousands of homes and families who've been devastated, but we also expect you to change bad behavior,' June said Monday on Fox Business. 'We should look at the same for these blue states who have run away with a broken tax policy. We want to help our colleagues in New York, California and New Jersey, but those governors need to change their tune now."

In other words, become MAGA or die. 

 If we're going to play that game, should we withhold hurricane recovery aid for Republican counties in Florida where wrecked buildings were built in areas prone to storm surges?  Or should we punish red counties in western North Carolina because Republican local leaders allowed construction in flood plains? Maybe we can blame Republicans in Florida and North Carolina for not doing enough to get people out of harm's way?

Sane people wouldn't do that. Disaster victims, no matter their political stripes, need help now if not sooner. So just get it to them and shut up about politics already.

Even the talk of adding strings to wildfire aid is costing money and wasting resources that the GOP is claiming they're so keen on saving. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom had to go out of his way to create an entire web page devoted to debunking GOP and MAGA falsehoods regarding the disaster. 

Newsom also worked out a deal to create a $50 million war chest to legally defend the state against Trump administration overreach. That's $50 million that could be spent on better things, but this is the world we live in now. 

On X, formerly Twitter, Johnson slammed Newsom for daring to clap back at the misinformation campaign.   

Newsom's response was: "Mr. Speaker, when Louisiana's need help with hurricanes it's Californians -- many of whom were impacted by these fires -- who foot the bill to help your constituents. And they do it without playing partisan games. 

Millions of your supporters are out here and they need your help, empathy, care, and whatever compassion you are willing to express."

At this point, I'm not holding out any hope for compassion or care from the GOP. Newsom probably was wasting his time trying to make that appeal. But I guess he's gotta try. 

 If Republicans open this can of worms, and Democrats eventually seize power again, are we going to force Oklahoma and Texas to adopt strict climate change measures before providing recovery money in a tornado aftermath? Force Alabama to embrace gay and trans people before we help out after hurricane. 

HOW TO INFLUENCE

Besides, there is a way for Congress to influence what happens in California that's fair to everyone, including the victims and the taxpayers they so fervently claim they're siding with. 

After every disaster, there's an assessment. What went right, what went wrong, what can we do better when there's a next time.

Things did go wrong in California, despite the heroic efforts of thousands of people. 

The firestorm was so explosive, and everybody was using so much water, that the water pressure in hydrants fell to almost nothing, so there was nothing to fight the fire with. There was plenty of water in the reservoirs, but it was being used too fast for the hydrants to keep up. Should there be some sort of redesign of that system?

Should rebuilt houses be required to use fire resistant material, with no vegetation or flammable stuff anywhere near these new buildings?  And what about forest management in parts of California and elsewhere. How can we improve that? 

Did the Los Angeles Fire Department have enough resources? Was their initial response adequate? What could have been done better? 

There's a lot of thing to look at to make the response better next time. And there will be a next time. I know California will do such an assessment, but Congress can mandate that, too, without tying it to aid to disaster victims. 

BACKFIRE?

Republicans might already think they have "won" against those silly DEI liberals in California. But they might well have caused headaches for themselves. After all, not all the fire victims are liberal. Surely some of the people who lost their homes in California  voted for Trump. So you're going to punish them for not convincing their neighbors to vote for Trump, too?

This could backfire big time in other ways, too. California is a "donor" state, pumping more revenue into the federal government than it takes in. Most red states are the opposite, taking in more federal dollars than they contribute.

I'd wonder if California could somehow retaliate against Washington if disaster aid is withheld?

After every big disaster, the community comes together in solidarity, helping each other, defending each other. That's happening in California. 

Will the MAGA types in Congress alienate the Republicans in California who might not like their neighbors' politics, but will still help in a time of need. Will they resent the lack of help from Washington?

Even if Congress doesn't go through with attaching strings to wildfire relief aid, they've already slowed down the process. They'll debate the issue of attaching strings, and that will postpone relief for weeks or months. 

Didn't MAGA bitterly criticize outgoing President Biden for supposedly going too slow with aid to flood victims in North Carolina? (Actually, Biden acted pretty fast, but as we already noted, the truth doesn't matter to much of the GOP). 

MAGA has already sown plenty of mistrust in the government, and government aid. It's all contributing to the seething undercurrent of rage against all the major institutions of American society. 

That anger can't stay contained forever,  Hate to say it, but it's going to blow up in somebody's face. Probably the GOP, when too many people decide the Powers That Be aren't on their side after all. 

This won't end well. 

VIDEO:

The person who explain things much better than I can is somebody known as Politics Girl.  She's all over social media, and I highly recommend subscribing to her YouTube channel and/or wherever else you can find her. 

In this video, she goes over the disinformation regarding California's fires and she puts it into excellent context. Video is more than seven minutes long and worth every second. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that:

 

 

 

Tasteless Trump MAGA Types Jump On California Fire Tragedy To Distract From Real Issues

Aerial view from KTLA of thousands of homes leveled
by this week's firestorm around Los Angeles. The actual
fire was followed by a blaze of gaslighting by
politicians and pundits with a bad agenda.

This was so predictable, yet so infuriating and sad.  

Yes, I'm talking about the Los Angeles firestorm. But also the gaslighting that grew out of it. 

As always, Trump and his legions of fanboys and fangirls have jumped on the horrific California wildfire cataclysm to pick on their usual suspects.

The fire tragedy was apparently caused not be strong winds, dry conditions or even climate change. It was all supposedly the fault of liberals, by DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity hires)  and the gays.

Yes, the gays did it. They always do.  

Here's what's really going on.  America is seething with justifiable anger right now.  Health insurance companies mentally torture and sometimes literally murder medical patients who have become too expensive to maintain their record profits. 

Billionaires take and take and take, while throwing crumbs in the form of inadequate wages and poor working conditions to their workers. Corporations hide behind a cloak of abysmal customer service to maintain their profits.  

Homeowners insurance companies will screw over at least some of the Californians who lost their homes. Some of us are getting wise to the way climate change is creating or worsening these disasters, and making life harder, or at least sadder for so many of us. 

And politicians don't do anything about all this because they're in on it. They get their take. 

The solution? Distract us with bogus bogeymen and ridiculous "villains" who don't always have the means to fight back.  Trump, MAGA and their enablers are terribly good at this sort of thing. And it seems to work. At least for now. 

We're told that the fact a fire chief is a lesbian, the governor of the state is politically liberal, and migrants and gays exist as the supposed reasons Los Angeles burned down. 

So let's take a dive into these distractions and scapegoats and, just for laughs, throw in a little fact checking.    

MAGICAL WATER

Before we go further, I have to - sigh -  get the whataboutisms out of the way. Yes, some on the left have been known to pick on disaster victims in red states. Sometimes even cruelly. But the mean girls and boys on the left have nothing on the lies and and insane accusations coming from MAGA.

Trump, as always, led the way, by essentially saying that California Gov. Gavin Newsom let Los Angeles burn because he was focused on protecting some strange little smelt or something.   

 Said our fearless leader Trump:  

"Governor Gavin Newscum (sic) refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a  virtually apocalyptic way."

Trump went on to say that water that could have been used to fight the wildfires was diverted to "protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt" 

The wildfires are "all his fault!!!!" Trump wrote on a social media screed.

Also, the loathsome Jesse Watters on his Fox News show said Newsom was tearing down dams so, quote "Indians" can fish. Supposedly the fictitious water behind the fictitious now-removed dams could have been used to put out the fires. Or something like that. 

OK, so I know fact checking is passé these days but I'm going to do it anyway, just to get it on the record. 

There is no "water restoration declaration." There is also no magical spigot that Newsom could have turned out to flood the burn zone with neighborhood-saving water. 

As always, Trump's words are based on the most microscopic grains of truth. 

First the smelt issue: Trump holds grudges and he's still probably fuming that Newsom fought a Trump plan to send more water to farmers in the Sacramento/San Joaquin area of northern California in part to protect an endangered smelt.

So yeah, some northern California farmers might have been peeved at Newsom and we can debate whether the governor should have tried so hard to protect the smelt, but this had nothing to do with water in southern California.

There were water problems in the fire zone, which prevented firefighters from having enough to battle the blazes in Pacific Palisades. But its wasn't a water supply problem. Despite the drought, there's still more than adequate water supplies in southern California.

It was a water transport and local supply problem.  

As I noted in a Thursday morning post, big tanks were filled with water in anticipation of the fires.  But the fires were so big, and the firefighters used so much water that the tanks quickly emptied, and couldn't be refilled fast enough. 

That is definitely something that has to be looked at and improve upon to prevent another mega-tragedy like the one this week. 

DEI

In MAGA world, only white men can handle most jobs. 

The accusations are pretty wild. Apparently, the so-called DEI hires, supposedly because all of them are evil, just want to let the fires burn as much as possible, with no efforts to put them out, said Fox contributor Leo Terrell.

The now ever-present Elon Musk informed us that the Los Angeles Fire Department "prioritized DEI over saving lives and homes."   

Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley. If you believe
the Fox News types, the L.A. fires were her fault 
because fire chiefs should be white males. Or
something like that. 

As if the LAFD spent this week holding hiring ceremonies for non-white people instead of heroically fighting the wildfires, which is obviously what they were doing

One thing Donald Trump Jr. does even better than his father is finding ways to be more despicable than anybody else. Junior had this to say on his buddy Elon's X:  

"Can we rename DEI to DIE since that's what seems to happen to people downstream of those who place woke virtue signaling far above competency."

If Junior is holding himself up as one of the white guys who allegedly can do better than any of the black, Hispanic or female firefighters battling the wildfires, God help us all.

Fact check: LAFD is still overwhelming white and male, but the city has been trying to encourage others to join the ranks. With the obvious condition that they be actually qualified to be firefighters. 

 THE GAYS

In addition to the MAGAs bringing up DEI, and the notion that only white men can handle pretty much any job, we have gay people.   

Which, as we all know, are so all-powerful that they cause every disaster known to man. 

Which explains the attacks on Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, who does happen to be a lesbian. 

The ever-entertaining Charlie Kirk, fresh from his vacation with Don Jr to Greenland, had this to say:

"When California, in a couple weeks, comes crawling back for federal assistance, Trump should say, listen, I'm not gonna give you a dime unless you fire the lesbian Kristens (sic)."

The far-right Newsmax also weighed in on Crowley's orientation, with the implication that somehow made her incompetent

"Well isn't that just wonderful," Newsmax host Rob Finnerty said, his voice dripping with contempt. "The first LGBTQ fire chief, something we can all hope to have in our towns one day. The mayor even had her marching in the LA Pride parade in front of the fire engines."

Because, as we all know, marching in a Pride parade automatically disqualifies you from any job, apparently. 

 The reality: It's too soon to say who might have been the hero, and who were the incompetents or villains in this big fire episode.

But there's already evidence that Crowly at least tried to be a hero back in early December, way before Pacific Palisades caught fire.   We have this from NBC4 in Los Angeles:

"The LA Fire Chief warned in the weeks before the devastating Palisades fire that the decision to cut the department''s budget by nearly $18 million would diminish its ability to prepare for and respond to large scale emergencies.

"The reduction... has severely limited the department's capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires,' Chief Kristin Crowley wrote in a memo Dec. 4 2024."

She said the cutbacks would harm federally mandated pilot training and helicopter coordination, and staffing for wildfire suppression. Mayor Karen Bass on Wednesday disagreed with Crowley's assessment, but this should be looked into, for sure. 

By the way, it's not just gays.  Migrants are supposedly doing everything possible to harm the U.S.  Remember how they were eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio?  That false hysteria faded as soon as it was no longer politically useful,

But those damn migrants are a great addition to the MAGA tool case.  Just on Thursday, Maria Bartiromo suggested migrants started the devastating fires.

For the record, we don't know what started most of the fires yet.  Though it appears an arsonist started one of them around Calabasas. Los Angeles fire officials have been a bit too busy actually fighting the fires to spend much time probing their causes.  

THE GAME 

 It was so easy for me to find the actual facts going on with California's fires. So it should have been easy or MAGA to do the same. 

But they've never been interested in what's really going on. It's always been and always will be about brainwashing the base and gaslighting the rest of us. 

 Presidents, no matter what their political stripes, have always stepped up and sent resources to disasters and calamities without politics involved.  Until Trump, any president would send FEMA aid to tornado victims in deep red Oklahoma, or flood victims in deep blue Vermont. 

Which as it should be.

Now, it's different. Trump and MAGA say they are on the side of the average, working American. The diversions and lies have worked for now. And might continue to work indefinitely, who knows?  But if their base and fans eventually realize it has all been a grift, it's going to be a mess.

In any event, while we're distracted by all this, cities will continue to burn, wash away, blow away or melt in extreme heat in this age of climate change. 

And nothing will be done about it. 

Because we're told it's entirely the fault of the liberals, DEI and the gays.  

 

 

NOAA Fact Check Dishearteningly Necessary, Not That Millions Of Wackos Would Believe Actual Facts, Science

NOAA launched a web page meant to debunk lots of
wild conspiracy theories about the weather. 
Great effort, but large portions of the population
chose to believe things that defy basic physics. 

 With all the deeply crazy conspiracy theories about the weather that an alarmingly large number of people believe, NOAA recently had to post a page on its web site debunking the whacko ideas out there.  

The NOAA debunking info is a  mindnumbingly Captain Obvious web page, but I don't blame them. We live in an idiocracy, a society increasingly controlled by stupid people. Or at least willfully ignorant ones. 

I don't know if NOAA's conspiracy debunking page will do much good, because people cling to their out there ideas like their life depended on it. Never mind if what they think is going on defies basic laws of physics. 

 For the record, here's some facts that NOAA provides. The meteorologists there tell us they can't control or steer hurricanes. They don't do cloud seeding, though some private companies do that to produce a little rain in highly local areas.

Also, have you ever seen NOAA Doppler radar installations? They look like a giant white snowball atop a radio tower. This now very commonly used radar is really good at peering inside storms, helping in many ways.  One great example is how Doppler radar finds shifting winds inside a severe thunderstorm to determine whether a tornado is forming so meteorologists can warn us if they do find something suspicious. 

But nope! NOAA has to try and debunk all those who are saying those Doppler radar towers are somehow steering hurricanes and targeting specific communities. As if some random National Weather Service meteorologist decided they had a bad vacation experience in Fort Myers and decided to smite the city with a hurricane as revenge. 

NOAA also sees fit to debunk something called HAARP.  This one is an old classic.

The conspiracy theory behind HAARP has been going for years now. It's supposedly the mechanism in which the evil government controls the weather, or sprays us with mind control chemicals or ensures child trafficking can go on, or gawd knows what else.

Sigh. 

There actually is such a thing as HAARP.  It's a small little National Science Foundation-funded research center in remote Gakona, Alaska that is focusing on the ionosphere, which is 30 to 600 miles above the Earth's surface - and above the Earth's weather.  HAARP is basically a large radio transmitter. 

REACTION

NOAA posted on X a link to their conspiracy debunking page and as you can imagine, the comments on the post were depressing as hell.

I still can't get over how people create entire new realities from thin air. 

There's a ton of breathless responses about how "they" are controlling the weather and NOAA is lying. As if they're some top secret organization that's somehow mustering the energy of 10,000 atomic bombs to steer hurricanes into the United States without a bunch of people noticing it.  

Somehow, a Hurricane Helene or a Hurricane Milton is "proof" of some grand conspiracy, rather than hurricanes just following the laws of physics, like they always do. 

Many of the conspiracy comments conflate cloud seeding, which as I previously noted can produce some rain in very local areas, to this Huge Project to flood out vast sections of the United States. Or something. It's never clear what these conspiracy theorists are getting at. 

I also hardly see any of these people explain why they think the government is steering storms and just making life miserable on purpose. 

Sales of tin hats these days must be at record high levels. 

Other people posted photos of jet contrails and cirrus clouds as somehow "proof" of weather modification. Normal people just note that the photos are just standard issue clouds that you see them all the time.

One response to NOAA on X showed time stamped videos showing how NOAA or the U.S. government "controls" the weather. The videos start at around 7:30 in the morning show a few jet contrails and cirrus clouds. As the morning goes on in this video series, the clouds gradually lower and thicken, until by 2 p.m. it looks like it's going to rain.

You can't get it through this person's head that what they documented was the approach of some type of weather system, probably a run-of-the-mill warm front. 

This same person posted dozens and dozens of photos of various clouds "showing" government weather control. Literally all of the photos show the type of clouds we've all seen hundreds of times in the sky. By the way, the jet contrails she keeps showing consist of either water vapor or more likely ice crystals. 

It all goes on and on. 

What's completely ignored in these theories is that humans are actually controlling the weather in one way. At least sort of.

It's called climate change.  Which of obviously not something that people are directing at any one group. But it is affecting all of us. 

There is plenty of evidence that because of human-caused  climate change, storms are in general getting worse, precipitation is getting heavier in some storms and record heat waves have gotten much more common place. Hell, just this week, dozens if not hundreds of record high temperatures across the United States. 

I've actually got a conspiracy theory of my own.  

The people who make up and embrace these crazy notions of weather control understand they - fairly or not - lead an unremarkable life that maybe is to them a little boring. Not to say my life is a James Bond style thrill every second of my existence. I'm definitely nothing special. But I like to live in reality, thank you. Or at least look for reliable evidence if somebody throws a theory or "fact" out there. 

I wonder if some of these conspiracy theories with pedestrian lives imagine placing  themselves in a made up bad TV drama about some mad scientist bent on destroying the world through weather modification, atmospheric mind control, whatever they come up with. 

Maybe they picture themselves as real-life Columbus or Matlocks, you know the underestimated character who figures out what is really going on and brings the villains to justice. 

All this is encouraged by people - supposed leaders - who are actually trying to gain control.  Many of the people feeding the conspiracy theory this steady diet of nonsense have their own aims. Not to control the weather, they know they can't do that. 

But feeding the conspiracy beast earns them money, power, status, autocracy in some cases  

And people are falling for these distractions hook, line and sinker.  

Campaign And Troll Falsehoods Sow More Fear, Confusion In Southeast Disaster Zone

One thing victims of the extreme Hurricanes Helene and Milton disasters  don't need are more fear and confusion that they already have. 

MAGA lies about FEMA's response to Hurricanes
Helene and Milton are dangerous for many reasons,
but apparently victimizing victims is fine if 
it somehow helps Trump get elected. 

Unlike water, electricity, shelter open roads and cell service, fear and confusion are in plentiful supply, as one would expect in such an extreme calamity. 

It is now the campaign strategy of Donald Trump and his supporters to promote wild stories about the federal response to the twin disasters.  

I guess firing up the "base" to win the White House is more important than the lives of the people coping with these calamities. 

People dealing with hurricanes Helene and Milton have the added misfortune of experiencing these catastrophes in the final weeks of a a nail biter presidential election. 

 FEMA DIVERTING FUNDS TO MIGRANTS?

The Washington Post a week ago delved into one of the the gems in North Carolina's disaster zone that seems to have gotten a lot of traction on social media;

"Former president Donald Trump doubled down on  misinformation about Hurricane Helene in an appearance in this storm-ravaged state Friday, repeating the falsehood that the White House used disaster funds for migrants."

Of course, that's not true. 

White House Spokesman Andrew Bates said flatly. "No disaster relief funding at all was used to support migrants housing and services. None. At. All."

 Republican governors of South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Florida, along with the Democratic governor of North Carolina all say that they have been happy with FEMA's disaster response so far.

Of course, Trump and his followers are having none of that. They'll believe what they want to believe, as to them, the truth is besides the point. How dare those Republican governors contradict Dear Leader! 

ORIGINS OF LIES

Like every wild, false story, it all begins with a grain of truth. FEMA has enough money and personnel to swoop into disaster zones to provide immediate aid in the aftermath of these terrible disasters.  

However, the agency is in fact having trouble funding long term aid for disaster areas, such as reimbursing municipalities and states for road and infrastructure repairs they've done. 

Hurricane Helene destruction in North Carolina. Trump's
lies about the FEMA response could be making things
even worse for these disaster victims. 

Congress has to appropriate more money for that piece of the FEMA pie. A stopgap spending bill that prevented a partial government shutdown omitted additional funding for FEMA. Congress is in a recess now during the campaign season.

However, there have been calls for Congress to reconvene in the coming days to pass a supplemental FEMA money bill.  House Speaker Mike Johnson is against that idea. 

I am certain that there's been FEMA missteps already in North Carolina and in other Helene disaster zones. You get that in an emergency. FEMA aid was probably slow to reach some victims, given how many were stranded in inaccessible mountains and hollows. 

And there's probably bureaucracy frustrating people who intensely needed help last week, never mind right now. 

It's also no secret that FEMA can be an annoying bureaucracy. Vermont Sen. Peter Welch has called for a federal audit of FEMA,  citing administrative bloat and bureaucratic inefficiency.

But as far as FEMA ignoring desperate flood victims in North Carolina to coddle migrants, that's all stupid campaign lies. Most FEMA employees really want to help disaster victims, and are really good at their jobs. 

CONSEQUENCE OF LIES

FEMA is not capping aid to victims at $750.00.  They didn't block helicopters in North Carolina from searching for survivors. They're not diverting disaster aid to migrants. They didn't confiscate all the private aid that went to North Carolina. And the federal government is not withholding aid to areas where a majority of voters support Trump. 

There are also even crazier notions that a surprisingly large segment of the population believe. These include the idea that the government is somehow controlling the strength and path of hurricanes and other disasters. I'm planning an upcoming, separate post on that whackadoodle aspect of all this lies circulating around. 

 Meanwhile, these FEMA lies could have real life consequences. It's not just campaign chatter.   

The White House, its staff and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris keep clapping back hard at the misinformation around the Helene response. They are all warning that they falsehoods could keep hurricane victims from seeking the assistance they critically need.

I also worry about FEMA workers. That kind of MAGA lies about FEMA can encourage the real wackos among them to consider violence and attacks against these workers. They're already reportedly receiving death threats. 

TikTok and X posts, along with other social media, is sadly rife with threats against federal workers just trying to provide some aid to disaster victims. 

Also, talk about wasting resources!  FEMA had to launch a web page to combat false rumors about its activities.  I agree that they had to do it to attempt to make sure accurate information gets out there. But it's a waste of time and resources, when if Trump and his minions hadn't resorted to all these lies, that FEMA rumor-quashing page would not have been necessary. 

Oh, by the way, there has been a case in which a president has diverted funds away from FEMA and steered the money toward his pet project. It wasn't the Biden administration. 

It was none other than Donald Trump, who's now falsely whining about FEMA money being diverted.

As Politico reported, Trump in 2018 initially wanted to refuse disaster aid to California after some destructive wildfires

And talk about a bald faced transactional, corrupt mindset, an aide to Trump talked him into providing the aid by pointing out fire-damaged Orange County, California had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa. 

President Biden responded to this news by saying, "You can't only help those in need if they voted for you."

Which makes me glad Biden was president when deep blue Vermont suffered a series of flood disasters in 2023 and 2024.

WHY WE KNOW LIES AREN'T TRUE 

Anybody can go on social media and make up anything. The more provocative and outrageous, the more clicks and revenue some idiots can make. Truth is besides the point.

Say what you want about journalists - and there's a lot to say - but if FEMA was doing anything like what Trump and MAGA are accusing them of, it would be all over the news.

I was in journalism for decades. I know how they tend to think. Journalists love to get the scoop, of course, and they would shout from the rooftops if FEMA really was blocking aid. Or giving the aid to migrants instead of hurricane victims. 

There's two reasons for that.

One, like anybody else, journalists really want to advance their careers.  If a journalist broke a big story like that, there's potential for advancement, more income,  heck maybe even a Pulitzer Prize.

Also, many journalists have a "comfort the afflicted, afflicted the comfortable" ethos. Many - not all -journalists love to stand up for powerless victims of the powerful. So if FEMA really were victimizing hurricane victims who have lost everything, they would be all over it.

Come to think of it, I guess that's why  you've heard so often on the news Trump's accusations against FEMA described as lies, which they are. It's been all over the news. Because this is a case in many journalists are trying to comfort the hurricane victims being afflicted by Trump's falsehoods.