Jump to content

Francisco 2.0

Certifiably Surly
  • Posts

    14649
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    14

Posts posted by Francisco 2.0

  1. Lulz.  

    In 2019, who exactly will believe this?  The faithful doesn't count, because they don't care.  That leaves everyone else, and no one's buying this shit.

    https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/09/trump-financial-information-1486965

     

    Quote

    President Donald Trump on Monday claimed he plans on releasing an "extremely complete" report of his financial record, but he offered no specifics and a murky timeline.

    Speaking to reporters as he departed the White House, Trump suggested that the promised release would dispel the notion that his real estate empire is in need of the taxpayer money and business driven there throughout his presidency.

     

    Quote

    “I own a lot of different places,” he told reporters. “Soon, you will find that out because I will be, at some point prior to the election, I will be giving out a financial report of me. And it will be extremely complete. I'm going to give out my financial condition.”

     

  2. 2 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

    From the linked article:

     

    At Liberty, Falwell is “very, very vocal” about his “sex life,” in the words of one Liberty official—a characterization multiple current and former university officials and employees interviewed for this story support. In a car ride about a decade ago with a senior university official who has since left Liberty, “all he wanted to talk about was how he would nail his wife, how she couldn’t handle [his penis size], and stuff of that sort,” this former official recalled. Falwell did not respond to questions about this incident.

    That's code for "I'm a cuck who loves to watch my wife get reamed out any chance I get".

     

     

  3. 2 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

    I guess I don't see what the NWS does as competition as much as public service. I mean fire stations started out as private entities, but it soon became obvious that there was a public good in making them part of local government. I view the NWS much the same way. I'm not sure that Accuweather could coordinate with the same rapid response that the NWS can (well as long as idiots don't keep getting in the NWS' way)

    It's only competition in a sense that the NWS gives away something that Accuweather wants to charge for.

     

    The private wx companies want their cake (the satellite and radar data, among other things) the government provides, but want the ability to charge the public for forecasts.

    That's oversimplifying it, and Burt can chime in as well, but that's the deal.  

     

    Also, check this out.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Service_Duties_Act_of_2005

     

     

    • Like 1
  4. 20 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

     

    But aren't the forecasts and models by those private weather businesses based on the NWS materials? The thing with privatizing certain government functions especially in the case of weather is that the profit margin would seem to frequently over-ride the goals and objectives of the function. If an entity can make money by telling people to evacuate or stock up on supplies or whatever, they will do that regardless of the duty to the public. Because when people are harmed, literally or otherwise, the two entities (private sector and government) point at each other in blame and the public has no chain of command with which to find remedy.

    Yes.

     

    However, the Accuweathers of the world do not want competition from the NWS.  They want access to the raw data and other information, but want the ability to put out the forecasts without non-profit (the government) competition.

     

     

  5. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/09/climate/hurrican-dorian-trump-tweet.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

     

    Quote

    The Secretary of Commerce threatened to fire top employees at NOAA on Friday after the agency’s Birmingham office contradicted President Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama, according to three people familiar with the discussion.

    That threat led to an unusual, unsigned statement later that Friday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration disavowing the office’s own position that Alabama was not at risk. The reversal caused widespread anger within the agency and drew criticism from the scientific community that NOAA, a division of the Commerce Department, had been bent to political purposes.

    Officials at the White House and the Commerce Department declined to comment.

    Quote

    The actions by the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur L. Ross Jr., are the latest developments in a political imbroglio that began more than a week ago, when Dorian was bearing down on the Bahamas and Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter that Alabama would be hit “harder than anticipated.” A few minutes later, the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Ala., posted on Twitter that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane Dorian will be felt across Alabama.”

    Mr. Trump persisted in saying that Alabama was at risk and a few days later, on Sept. 4, he displayed a NOAA map that appeared to have been altered with a black sharpie to include Alabama in the area potentially affected by Dorian.

     

    Quote

    Mr. Ross, the Commerce Secretary, intervened two days later, early last Friday, according to the three people familiar with his actions. Mr. Ross phoned Neil Jacobs, the acting administrator of NOAA, from Greece where the secretary was traveling for meetings and instructed Dr. Jacobs to fix the agency’s perceived contradiction of the president.

    Dr. Jacobs objected to the demand and was told that the political staff at NOAA would be fired if the situation was not fixed, according to the three individuals, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the episode. Unlike career government employees, political staff are appointed by the administration. They usually include a handful of top officials, such as Dr. Jacobs, and their aides.

     

     

    Quote

    However, a senior administration official who asked not to be identified when discussing internal deliberations said that the Birmingham office had been wrong and that NOAA had simply done the responsible thing and corrected the record.

    That official suggested the Twitter post by the Birmingham forecasters had been motivated by a desire to embarrass the president more than concern for the safety of people in Alabama. The official provided no evidence to support that conclusion.

    On Monday, Craig N. McLean, NOAA’s acting chief scientist, sent an email to staff members notifying the agency that he was looking into “potential violations” in the agency’s decision to ultimately back Mr. Trump’s statements rather than those of its own scientists. He called the agency’s action “a danger to public health and safety.”

    Dr. Jacobs is scheduled to speak Tuesday at a weather industry conference in Huntsville, Ala.

    On Monday, the National Weather Service director, Louis W. Uccellini, got a standing ovation from conference attendees when he praised the work of the Birmingham office and said staff members there had acted “with one thing in mind, public safety” when they contradicted Mr. Trump’s claim that Alabama was at risk.

     

  6. 39 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

    spacer.png

    Keeping score here.

    Attacked a black musician, a black reporter, and the musician's wife.

    Oh, and this from a bit ago.  

    This coming from a man who signed off on the checks he paid out to silence a porn star he raw-dogged while his 3rd wife was at home with their newborn.

     


     

     

     

  7. 2 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    Curious to find out what airline the Taliban was planning to fly in on. 

    Probably under orders to fly in on a C-130 or some such.

     

    EDIT: or on Emirates in First Class, paid for by the State Department.

    • Like 1
  8. So, if the NWS issues a tornado warning for the Dallas metroplex, and the President says that it isn't true, the NOAA and NWS can't speak out against the President, I reckon.  

    This is what it has come to.  An apolitical federal government organization, that only works with data and to best protect the interests and lives of people, can't be trusted any longer if the President feels threatened.

    Great job, you fucking shitstains who support Trump.  You deserve to be flogged in public.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/noaa-staff-warned-in-sept-1-directive-against-contradicting-trump/2019/09/07/12a52d1a-d18f-11e9-87fa-8501a456c003_story.html

     

    Quote

    Nearly a week before the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration publicly backed President Trump over its own scientists, a top NOAA official warned its staff against contradicting the president.

    In an agencywide directive sent Sept. 1 to National Weather Service personnel, hours after Trump asserted, with no evidence, that Alabama “would most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated,” staff was told to “only stick with official National Hurricane Center forecasts if questions arise from some national level social media posts which hit the news this afternoon.”

     

    Quote

    They were also told not to “provide any opinion,” according to a copy of the email obtained by The Washington Post.

    A NOAA meteorologist who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution said the note, understood internally to be referring to Trump, came after the National Weather Service office in Birmingham contradicted Trump by tweeting Alabama would “NOT see any impacts from the hurricane.”

     

    Quote

    The Birmingham office sent the tweet after receiving a flurry of phone calls from concerned residents following Trump’s message.

    The agency sent a similar message warning scientists and meteorologists not to speak out on Sept. 4, after Trump showed a hurricane map from Aug. 29 modified with a hand-drawn, half-circle in black Sharpie around Alabama.

     

    Quote

    “This is the first time I’ve felt pressure from above to not say what truly is the forecast,” the meteorologist said. “It’s hard for me to wrap my head around. One of the things we train on is to dispel inaccurate rumors and ultimately that is what was occurring — ultimately what the Alabama office did is provide a forecast with their tweet, that is what they get paid to do.”

    An NWS spokesperson said, “NWS leadership sent this guidance to field staff so they (and the entire agency) could maintain operational focus on Dorian and other severe weather hazards without distraction.”

     

    Quote

    Late Friday afternoon, NOAA officials further angered scientists within and beyond the agency by releasing a statement, attributed to an unnamed agency spokesperson, supporting Trump’s claims on Alabama and chastising the agency’s Birmingham meteorologists for speaking in absolutes.

    That statement set off a firestorm among scientists, who attacked NOAA officials for bending to Trump’s will.

     

    Spoiler

    “This looks like classic politically motivated obfuscation to justify inaccurate statements made by the boss. It is truly sad to see political appointees undermining the superb, lifesaving work of NOAA’s talented and dedicated career servant,” said Jane Lubchenco, who served as NOAA administrator under President Barack Obama.

    NOAA, which oversees the National Weather Service, isn’t the first agency in the Trump administration to publicly side with the president after he has doubled down on a widely disputed claim.

    But the firestorm surrounding the president’s hurricane statements is unprecedented in the organization’s history, and threatens to politicize something that most Americans take for granted as an objective, if flawed, part of daily life: the weather forecast.

    A NOAA official familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, disputed the suggestion that the statement took sides, saying there was “no political motivation” behind it.

    The official said agency leadership had considered making a statement for “a day or two” to clear up confusion. Acting NOAA administrator Neil Jacobs was involved in drawing up the statement as was the NOAA director of public affairs, Julie Kay Roberts, who has experience in emergency management and worked on the president’s campaign.

    The leadership of the Commerce Department, headed by Secretary Wilbur Ross, also approved the release, though Ross was out of the country at the time.

    The official said the statement called out Birmingham’s tweet because one NOAA hurricane forecast product showed a 5 to 20 percent chance of tropical-storm-force winds in a small part of Alabama.

    “It was nothing against Birmingham, we needed to make sure forecast products reflect probabilistic guidance,” the official said, referencing the extremely low odds for tropical storm-force winds.

    Such wind speeds, between 39 and 74 mph, rarely cause much damage or require the advance preparation.

    The NOAA statement made no reference of the fact that when Trump tweeted that Alabama was at risk, the state was not in the National Hurricane Center’s “cone of uncertainty,” which forecasters use to determine where the storm is most likely to hit. Alabama also had not appeared in the cone in the days before that.

    The acting NOAA director briefed the president on Hurricane Dorian on Aug. 29, using the forecast cone that the White House later adapted via Sharpie marker.

    The director of the National Hurricane Center briefed the president on the storm’s likely track again on Sept. 1, shortly after his tweet about the threat to Alabama.

    At other times, Trump was briefed by individuals, including the White House homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, who lacked the meteorological expertise to interpret what they were showing.

    “If the president had been briefed by someone who understands the forecast, he never would’ve mentioned Alabama,” the NOAA official said.

    NOAA’s Friday statement infuriated scientists, who worry the Trump administration is corroding faith in research and data.

    “It makes me speechless that the leadership would put [Trump’s] feelings and ego ahead of putting out weather information accurately,” said Michael Halpern, a deputy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “If we’re politicizing the weather what is there left to politicize? We’re seeing this kind of clamp down of scientists across the government, and it’s been an escalating trend.”

    In 2018, a survey of scientists at 16 federal agencies found a culture of fear and self-censorship in an administration that has sidelined scientific evidence, especially as it related to climate change, in favor of political expediency.

    Keith Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society, said in a statement that “the criticism of the Birmingham forecast office is unwarranted; rather they should have been commended for their quick action based on science in clearly communicating the lack of threat to the citizens of Alabama.”

    One of the strongest reactions to the NOAA statement came from David Titley, an atmospheric scientist who served as the chief operating officer of NOAA under Obama.

    “Perhaps the darkest day ever for leadership. Don’t know how they will ever look their workforce in the eye again. Moral cowardice,” he tweeted.

    Others who weighed in on social media were also scathing in their response to NOAA’s decision to publicly defend Trump.

    “I have never been so embarrassed by NOAA. What they did is just disgusting,” Dan Sobien, president of the National Weather Service’s labor union, wrote on Twitter Friday. “Let me assure you the hard working employees of the NWS had nothing to do with the utterly disgusting and disingenuous tweet sent out by NOAA management tonight.”

    A popular television broadcast meteorologist in Birmingham also came to the defense of his city’s National Weather Service team.

    “The tweet from NWS Birmingham was spot on and accurate,” James Spann tweeted. “If they are coming after them, they might as well come after me. How in the world has it come to this?”

    On Saturday, the National Weather Service leadership seemingly tried to address the outcry in an all-hands letter to its employees to thank them for their hard work during the hurricane. The letter, obtained by The Washington Post, assured employees they were valued.

    “We want to assure you that we stand behind our entire workforce and the integrity of the forecast process, including the incredible scientific, technical and engineering skill you demonstrated for this event,” the NWS leadership wrote. “We saw first hand that our integrated forecast process works, and we continue to embrace and uphold the essential integrity of the entire forecast process as it was applied by ALL NWS offices to ensure public safety first and foremost.”

     

    • Like 6
  9. 2 minutes ago, Mojo Hand said:

    Giving the Taliban the honor of a Camp David visit is an even bigger disgrace than usual for the worst president in history. 

    Maybe they hid all the silverware first.

  10. 6 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    Obama’s big mistake was not having a secret meeting with the Taliban at Camp David.

    [MAGA] Trump's a real president!  He's actually meeting with the Taliban in our country! What a leader! [/MAGA]

     

  11. 2 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

    Patterson is really, like holy shit bad. You'd think UM could recruit a decent QB.

    Jim only has time to have sleepovers with kickers and defensive ends.  

     

     

    • Like 1
  12. Totally normal to involve the military on routine flights to divert to the President's properties, and possibly make the airmen stay at a Trump property in an attempt to boost the bottom line.

     But her emails.

    Here's a general fuck you to all you lurking Gary Johnson voters.  You all know who you are.

    https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/06/air-force-trump-scottish-retreat-1484337

     

    Quote

    In early Spring of this year, an Air National Guard crew made a routine trip from the U.S. to Kuwait to deliver supplies.

    What wasn’t routine was where the crew stopped along the way: President Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort, about 50 miles outside Glasgow, Scotland.

    Since April, the House Oversight Committee has been investigating why the crew on the C-17 military transport plane made the unusual stay — both en route to the Middle East and on the way back — at the luxury waterside resort, according to several people familiar with the incident. But they have yet to receive any answers from the Pentagon.

     

    Quote

    The inquiry is part of a broader, previously unreported probe into U.S. military expenditures at and around the Trump property in Scotland. According to a letterthe panel sent to the Pentagon in June, the military has spent $11 million on fuel at the Prestwick Airport — the closest airport to Trump Turnberry — since October 2017, fuel that would be cheaper if purchased at a U.S. military base. The letter also cites a Guardian report that the airport provided cut-rate rooms and free rounds of golf at Turnberry for U.S. military members.

    Taken together, the incidents raise the possibility that the military has helped keep Trump’s Turnberry resort afloat — the property lost $4.5 million in 2017, but revenue went up $3 million in 2018.

    Quote

    “The Defense Department has not produced a single document in this investigation,” said a senior Democratic aide on the oversight panel. “The committee will be forced to consider alternative steps if the Pentagon does not begin complying voluntarily in the coming days.”

    The Pentagon, Air Force and White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

     

    Spoiler

    On previous trips to the Middle East, the C-17 had landed at U.S. air bases such as Ramstein Air Base in Germany or Naval Station Rota in Spain to refuel, according to one person familiar with the trips. Occasionally the plane stopped in the Azores and once in Sigonella, Italy, both of which have U.S. military sites, the person added.

    But on this particular trip, the plane landed in Glasgow — a pitstop the five-man crew had never experienced in their dozens of trips to the Middle East. The location lacked a U.S. base and was dozens of miles away from the crew’s overnight lodging at the Turnberry resort.

    Had the crew needed to make a stop in the U.K., Lakenheath Air Base is situated nearby in England. The layover might have been cheaper, too: the military gets billed at a higher rate for fuel at commercial airports.

    One crew member was so struck by the choice of hotel — markedly different than the Marriotts and Hiltons the 176th maintenance squadron is used to — that he texted someone close to him and told him about the stay, sending a photo and noting that the crew’s per diem allowance wasn’t enough to cover food and drinks at the ritzy resort.

    The revelation that an Air Force mission may have helped line the president’s pockets comes days after Vice President Mike Pence was pressed about his decision to stay at Trump’s property in Doonbeg, Ireland, despite its location hundreds of miles away from his meetings in Dublin. The Oversight Committee is also investigating Pence’s stay at the resort. 

    Accusations that Trump’s properties are unfairly profiting off of his administration have dogged the president since entering office. Ethics officials and lawmakers have raised concerns about foreign officials staying at Trump hotels, and noted that Trump supporters and industry groups regularly throw bashes at Trump-owned locations. Trump is also considering hosting next year’s Group of Seven gathering of world leaders at his Doral resort in Florida, a potential financial boon for the property, and has previously stayed at the Turnberry property.

    But the potential involvement of the military takes the issue to a different level.

    A senior Air Force official who was previously stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska — where the C-17 crew was based — said choosing to refuel in Glasgow and stay at a posh property a half hour away would be unusual for such a mission. Typically, the official said, air crews stay on a military base while in transit or at nearby lodgings “unless all the hotels are booked or there is a Scottish sheep festival going on.”

    The official, who was not aware of the specific allegations, also said that the mid-level officers or senior enlisted airmen commonly responsible for identifying lodging for the personnel are notoriously frugal and try to stay where their government allowance covers the costs. 

    “Master sergeants are cheap,” he said.

     

    • Like 3
  13. All of you lurking Gary Johnson voters.  You own this and every other incident:

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/09/precious-hours-were-wasted-trumps-doctored-map-affected-hurricane-forecasters/

     

    Quote

    On Wednesday, when President Donald Trump was showing off a doctored hurricane forecast in the White House Oval Office, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center were mortified.

    It was a critical moment for the federal tropical cyclone experts because Hurricane Dorian had begun to show signs of re-intensifying—it would later become a major hurricane again—and its track appeared increasingly likely to bring the storm's center ashore somewhere in the Carolinas. Two sources in the Miami-based hurricane center told Ars that Trump's "update" on Hurricane Dorian effectively paralyzed operations.

     

     

    Quote

    After Trump spoke, the forecasters' cell phones buzzed with incessant distractions. Media briefings were stopped for the afternoon. "Precious hours were wasted," one official at the center told me. "We aren’t going to put out bad forecasts, but we need to keep the eye on the ball here."

    Instead of warning residents of the Southeastern United States about a re-strengthening Dorian just as it posed its greatest threat to the nation, the media subsequently pivoted to cover Trump's preposterous attempt to re-write the history of Dorian's forecast. As an American, I felt embarrassed. As a meteorologist, I was livid.

     

    Quote

    There are two whopping problems with these kinds of justification tweets from the president. First of all, the majority of model plots on this graphic were initialized at 8pm ET on Tuesday, August 27. The plot itself was published at 8:06am ET on Wednesday. This was four days before the president's tweet about Alabama being threatened. (Four days in a hurricane track forecast might as well be an eternity.)

    The second problem with Trump's use of this plot is that it doesn't actually show the storm going anywhere near Alabama. The gray lines that bring a storm to Alabama are, in fact, ensemble members of the US GFS model, not the "best track solution" of the global model. So four days before Trump tweeted that Dorian threatened Alabama, the state appeared to be at little risk of even a tangential hurricane strike.

     

     

    Quote

    Trump, of course, has continued to defend himself on Twitter since Sharpie-gate, tweeting more dated plots, wind forecasts, and other maps in his own defense. His re-election campaign has even sought to capitalize on all of this by selling Trump markers, which the campaign manager says are guaranteed to drive the "fake news media" crazy. It now appears likely that Trump himself drew the "extended forecast" on the National Hurricane Center map and then sought cover from a rear admiral.

    Predictably, Trump has since blamed the media. But in making this odd defense of his Alabama hurricane warning, Trump is not only implicating the media, but also some of the finest hurricane forecasters in the world—his own employees, by the way—who are busting their butts to help Americans make important decisions as severe weather threatens.

     

    • Like 3
  14. 1 hour ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

     

    Pshaw.  Been there, already tried that:

     

    https://jalopnik.com/the-flying-crowbar-the-insane-doomsday-weapon-america-1435286216

     

    Quote

    The Cold War had plenty of disadvantages for the world as a whole, true, but there was never a better time to be a mad scientist with crazy doomsday devices. No longer limited to freelance work delivering threats to the UN, the Cold War meant governments would actually hire you to make things. Things like Project Pluto.

    Now, I’m not saying the scientists who came up with Project Pluto were mad scientists, but there was a pretty high degree of mad science going on in this thing. In some ways, it was the perfect embodiment of Cold War era thinking taken to its utmost extreme. Project Pluto, also known as “the Flying Crowbar,” would have been an incredibly potent weapon. Potent, and also cruel, terrifying, and ultimately uncontrollable.

     

    Quote

    At its core, Project Pluto was just a cruise missile. Well, not “just” a cruise missile. It was a cruise missile designed around a nuclear ramjet engine, and the acronym for it should give another big clue about the pants-filling nature of it: SLAM, for Supersonic Low Altitude Missile. That means that this giant, nuclear-powered beast would be screaming around at oh, treetop level or so.

    The nuclear ramjet engine at the heart of Project Pluto is key to what made this weapon so horrific. A ramjet is a very simple engine design, with essentially no moving parts. Once the missile was launched with conventional rocket boosters, the air velocity going into the ramjet’s intake would be fast enough to let the engine function, and an essentially unshielded nuclear reactor would heat the air as it entered, where it would expand and be expelled out of the engine’s nozzle, providing both lots of thrust and plenty of radioactive material.

    Quote

    Thanks to the nuclear reactor, the missile could stay aloft almost indefinitely. That means after flying across the Earth to its targets in the Soviet Union, where it would dump its payload of 16+ hydrogen bombs, the missile itself was still good to keep flying. Which allowed for all kinds of extra terror-fun:

     

     

  15. Just now, Fozzz said:

    Let's see - Trump is smarter, funnier, and much better at twitter than Messing.  Messing may have slightly better opinions in some areas, but I don't think it's enough to make up for those aforementioned deficiencies.  

    And this is where you lose all credibility.

    Saying the President is smarter than anyone is beyond belief.

    • Like 7
Ă—
Ă—
  • Create New...