After Massive, Deadly Fires, KS Ranchers Surprised President Shitstain Seems Unaware Of Their Losses

[hatrack]

Garth Gardiner in the distance last week, near a row of dead cattle waiting to be buried on his ranch outside Ashland, Kan.

ASHLAND, Kan. — Death comes with raising cattle: coyotes, blizzards and the inevitable trip to the slaughterhouse and dinner plate. But after 30 years of ranching, Mark and Mary Kaltenbach were not ready for what met them after a wildfire charred their land and more than one million acres of rain-starved range this month. Dozens of their Angus cows lay dead on the blackened ground, hooves jutting in the air. Others staggered around like broken toys, unable to see or breathe, their black fur and dark eyes burned, plastic identification tags melted to their ears. Young calves lay dying.

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.

EDIT

Beyond the toll of the fire, a frustration also crops up in conversation after conversation. Ranchers said they felt overlooked amid the tumult in Washington, and were underwhelmed by the response of a new president who had won their support in part by promising to champion America’s “forgotten men and women.” “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.”


Dawn over the charred landscape in the hills outside Ashland, where wildfires destroyed vast stretches of ranch land.

EDIT

Aaron Sawyers, an agriculture extension agent with Kansas State University, got so upset with the delays in and strings attached to getting relief, and what he called a lackluster response from Washington, that he wrote a Facebook post on Tuesday urging friends to barrage lawmakers to loosen up government money for ranchers to replace fences and rebuild their devastated herds. “This is our Hurricane Katrina,” Mr. Sawyers said. The political response to the fires convinced him that Washington, even with an administration supported by 83 percent of Clark County voters in the election, was still “out of touch and didn’t care about us.” “None of them are worth a damn, Republicans or Democrats,” he said.

Ed. - You might want to think twice about that last bit . . .

EDIT

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

[Vinca]

1. Disaster by disaster, big and small, his supporters are realizing the truth: he only cares for Don.

[LisaL]

2. It shouldn't have taken a disaster.

What in Trump's background made these people believe Trump cared about the poor?

[Vinca]

3. They were (and are) members of the Obama-haters Club.

Only now, as tragedy hits and healthcare/meals/education/clean air/clean water/Sesame Street are taken away, are they realizing the error of their ways. They joined a cult and the deprogramming is going to hurt.

[LisaL]

4. They screwed themselves up, but unfortunately they also screwed us up.

How do they like Trump's new budget? 21% cut to the department of agriculture?
If they don't think they are getting help now, wait till cuts take effect.

[AllaN01Bear]

11. not only does dpt of ag administer to ag , it also administers hud

hud administers a lot of low income hosin, which i am a member of.

[Orrex]

7. Because he's such a fucking disaster that they thought he'd inherently sympathize

They were deceived not simply because they let themselves deceived, but rather because they were desperate to be deceived.

[Saviolo]

21. There are a large number of poor people who don't believe they're poor

They believe that OTHER poor people are poor, they believe that they themselves are just temporarily disadvantaged, and will be rich very soon. They don't need to worry about poor people, because they're not poor and they'll fix it by pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, and why can't those really poor people just do that?

[Hortensis]

5. Sawyers should ask HIMSELF if he's worth his own spit

as a citizen. Perfect example of the self indulgent stupidity that got us in this mess.

Here's Robert Mercer, the single man probably most responsible for setting Rump and his pack of hyenas on the nation, per the New Yorker:

...Patterson recalled, Mercer insisted at a staff luncheon that Clinton had participated in a secret drug-running scheme with the C.I.A. The plot supposedly operated out of an airport in Mena, Arkansas. “Bob told me he believed that the Clintons were involved in murders connected to it,” Patterson said.

Two other sources told me that, in recent years, they had heard Mercer claim that the Clintons have had opponents murdered.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-hedge-fund-tycoon-behind-the-trump-presidency

Hedge fund billionaire politically dumb as two bags of broken hammers. But he's going to help decide Mr. Sawyers' future, big time.

[Lucky Luciano]

13. It is so bizarre because Mercer is brilliant at some things.

Before he was recruited to Renaissance, he was a superstar in computational linguistics at ibm. His research is directly responsible for speech recognition technology and google translate etc. his work has been cited thousands of times....and then he buys into the crazy conspiracies. So weird.


https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Mercer4/publications

Some of the papers here reference Peter Brown -who is now co-CEO with Mercer. The whole ibm speech recognition team was recruited to Renaissance by Jim Simons. It was simons' brilliant insight that such technical skills could apply to quant trading.

[Hortensis]

26. It really is, thinking the same thing all the time

I was cutting and pasting. There may be different types of intelligences interacting with personality and other factors differently. Or maybe it's just 90% self indulgence, perfectly able to accept hard facts where they have to, i.e.,see it as in their personal interest. This is, of course, also the one funding that creepy, unlikely anti-aging "research" with urine.

One thing I've noticed, the more someone is politically extreme, out of the "normal" range, the more likely to be both dishonest with self and delusional. And unethical and immoral by my notions, but they of course tend to have different definitions.

[Lucky Luciano]

27. He is also Aspergers I have been told.

Could explain some of his highly focused tunnel vision way of doing things.

[Hortensis]

28. Oh, interesting. I hadn't heard that.

Would help explain why he prefers the company of cats to people, not that I don't myself depending on the people.

[jeffreyi]

29. There's smart, even brilliant, and then there's

emotional intelligence. The two often do not occur together.
How it seems to me, anyway.

[rgbecker]

6. Funny how the free enterprise market based Trump supporters turn to gov bailout

as soon as the first trouble strikes. What, they didn't buy fire insurance? What are hedge funds for?

[tanyev]

8. Unless they've got a Trump-owned golf course and resort, he's not going to come out and visit.

[George II]

9. To paraphrase Mulvaney on Friday, the Federal government will only help....

....if by helping them it shows a profit. That's it.

[Friend or Foe]

10. I hate to sound crass and cruel but

Isn't this the time of personal responsibility. These Kansans are not struggling folk. They are the rich. What about insurance for such catastrophes? What about propping up state government to weather these harsh times instead of electing a sh!tstain like Brownback (redundant?).

You wanted Trump. Now live with it.

[Duppers]

12. K & R

[IronLionZion]

14. Even W Bush cared about white people during wildfires

Don T. Rump is completely dead inside to ignore the people who put him in office. He has equal opportunity hate for all Americans.

His answer to this is tax cuts, cut funding for whatever agency or program would help these farmers, then blame it on immigrants and poor people.

The fact that he eats his steaks well done with ketchup like an idiot should have tipped them off that he's not a friend to cattle ranchers and is not even a decent human being. We should have deported him back to Scotland or Germany long ago.

[Motley13]

15. they should tweet him, that is all he reads

He started at 7am this morn.

[Initech]

16. If President Clown Shoes does away with FEMA, we're fucked.

And I live in California. If a major earthquake hit, I'm convinced the republicans would let us die.

[zentrum]

17. They only care...

...when it hits them. Then they wonder where is the collectivity that together pays taxes so we can all be helped when needed?

[world wide wally]

18. Moral of the story:

Oil speaks louder than food

[TheBlackAdder]

19. Libertarian mindset: Any social program I can't plug into and milk, is a tax on me.

[mountain grammy]

20. Don't you be dissing Democrats, there, you Kansas people

who have gone all in with Republicans.. you should be living in free market paradise and need nothing from the evil government.. isn't that what we hear from the great state of Republican policies?

[DK504]

22. This is what they voted for, this is what they should have expected.

This is truly horrifying, tragic and a true national disaster.

“This is our Hurricane Katrina,” Mr. Sawyers said. "

As shocked and stunned I am for never hearing one peep about this, Mr. Sawyer's please don't be so quick to call this a Katrina level event. That term has been bandied about for 10 years, it is incorrect and an insult to us New Orleans and Gulf Coast residents who still have no way to rebuild our homes.

I don't want to be an asshole here, this is something I haven't seen in 50 years and it is shocking, it is a scary proposition to see so many effected and this is very scary.

[NewRedDawn]

23. Democrats?

Just what do you want them to do? Thanks to scumbags like you by voting for Putin Publicans they no longer control Local, State, or Federal Govt. Ass wipes. This is what you voted for. This is what you got. Get used to it.

[brooklynite]

24. That's a pretty dry golf course...

If you want him to come out for a visit, better invest in some sprinklers.

[dembotoz]

25. trump not aware...it does not fit in the fox newscycle

[Ilsa]

30. Are there any Democrats representing KS in DC?

I'm thinking "No", at least for the rural areas and their senators.

Do they really think 45 wants to come out and see burnt angus, unless he has a steak knife, fork, and a bottle of his stupid trump wine?

[hatrack]

32. Not one . . .

Every statewide official is Republican, both Senators, all Representatives.

[Blue_true]

31. Yeah. Socialize losses, take all profit. What is new?

I can't wait for Trump to give it to most of the people that avidly voted for him. Maybe those dunces should try electing Democrats to state government and Congress before they say Democrats have abandoned them.