Trump Country May Be Waking UP

[Thirties Child]

Burying Their Cattle, Ranchers Call Wildfires ‘Our Hurricane Katrina’

By JACK HEALY MARCH 20, 2017

Ranching families across this countryside are now facing an existential threat to a way of life that has sustained them since homesteading days: years of cleanup and crippling losses after wind-driven wildfires across Kansas, Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle killed seven people and devoured homes, miles of fences and as much as 80 percent of some families’ cattle herds.

“This is the country that elected Donald Trump,” said Garth Gardiner, driving a pickup across the 48,000-acre Angus beef ranch he runs with his two brothers. They lost about 500 cows in the fires. “I think he’d be doing himself a favor to come out and visit us.”

Mr. Gardiner voted for Mr. Trump, and said he just wanted to hear a presidential mention of the fires amid Mr. Trump’s tweets about the rapper Snoop Dogg, the East Coast blizzard and the rudeness of the press corps.

“Two sentences would go a long way,” Mr. Gardiner said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/us/burying-their-cattle-ranchers-call-wildfires-our-hurricane-katrina.html?_r=0

[BSdetect]

1. Its enough to make us all vegans.

[Warpy]

2. Probably not, but it should be enough to make us realize

that there has got to be a better way to organize grasslands and herds than fencing them in so that they can't escape wildfires that will reoccur as long as there are dry lightning storms and smokers.

[Thirties Child]

18. I'm not sure what started the fires. We can probably thank Global Warming.

I know the fires were fueled by 55 mph winds that gusted up to 70 mph. As it gets drier and hotter, wildfires are going to be a constant threat. I love the plains but can't live there because of the wind and the politics.

[winstars]

3. I wouldn't bet on it, them waking up that is...

[CanonRay]

4. He can't. He's busy at a big campaign rally in Kentucky tonight.

You know. The campaign that's over.

[stillcool]

8. he's campaigning..

for 2020. Lights, Camera, Action..what the Donald loves the most!

[Buns_of_Fire]

5. Here's an idea, Mr. Gardiner: Rephrase your message.

Bemoaning the fool's lack of response is a sign of weakness. Instead, insult him. Say that if he doesn't even care about his own supporters, he's a tiny-dicked wimp or something like that.

You'll get your two sentences. Or 140 characters, whichever comes first.

[Grins]

6. The fires?

“I think he’d be doing himself a favor to come out and visit us.” ...Mr. Gardiner voted for Mr. Trump, and said he just wanted to hear a presidential mention of the fires.."

The fires. Sure. That's important. You want a climate change denier to whisper sweet nothings in your ear about raging fires across your state. You effing snowflake. Suck it up!!

There is one political party that would have given you some kind of help, but you voted overwhelmingly for the other party, the party that wants to kill a program that, for decades, provided meals to the sick and elderly. Not effing cows; sick and elderly citizens. And never blinked at doing that horror.

You should know this one comrade: Sow. Reap.

[Luz]

15. +1

[spanone]

7. trump doesn't give a shit about anyone.

he uses folks

[tblue37]

9. That they feel that 2 sentences "would go a long way" shows how cheaply the GOP

can get those voters.

[Kimchijeon]

13. "So sorry 'bout yer cows. Vote TRUMP 2020!"

There, done.

[dalton99a]

19. Trump doesn't apologize.

[Kimchijeon]

20. Oh You're right. Trump never wants to be seen as apologizing

And he sucks at empathy/sympathy, so maybe something incomprehensible like

"Horrible Obama did that! Vote TRUMP 2020!"

[Thrill]

10. PBO told you idiots Trump wasn't going to be your Champion

clowns

[NewRedDawn]

11. Have a Barbeque with all your dead cattle

says Trumpski. Climate change is made up by the Chinese, & keep voting publican. Make you feel better now idiot.

[gratuitous]

12. That might get President Trump's attention

After all, the cattle have been prepared to his liking. Don't forget to bring the ketchup!

If these folks are beginning to come around to just how little regard their Republican overlords have for them, wouldn't now be a really good time to have a nationally-recognized Democrat make a little PR appearance there, along with some local Democratic politicians? Generate some local excitement and media coverage? Give the folks of Kansas and Oklahoma something to think about besides whatever bullshit Fox is pumping out?

[JudyM]

14. We could be like evangelists and hit em with "this is retribution for your voting for Satan."

[OliverQ]

16. No they aren't. Look at his Kentucky rally tonight

Plenty of deplorables there to worship him.

[Thirties Child]

17. I know these people. I was born among them, raised among them, raised by them.

In 1968 I was visiting in my small hometown at the top of the Texas Panhandle and, because several of us who had moved away were also back, we had an impromptu class reunion. One woman said she'd let a three-year-old starve to death before she'd give the parents welfare. She got lots of welfare herself, oil depletion allowance, money for not planting wheat, etc. I've never forgotten that party, still cringe when I think about it. I'd just been through the trauma of Martin Luther King's assassination and his funeral in Atlanta. I took my two oldest children to walk in the funeral march and my emotions were raw. At the class party it was me against the class. It's been almost 50 years and my emotions are still raw. However--and this is a big however--I still have feelings for the people of the plains, still understand them, and feel so sad for them, not just for what they lost in the fires, but most of all for what they don't know and don't understand.

I was as conservative as any of them when I went away to college in 1953. I ask myself--ask myself over and over because I don't know the answer--what would I be like if I had stayed, if rock-hard conservatism was the only exposure I had. Sometimes it seems to me that an awful lot of it all comes down to exposure.