We’ve had a couple of bad days here in Minnesota — the smoke from the wildfires up north has made breathing uncomfortable, and for a while Minneapolis was ranked somthing like the third most smoggy city in the world. It’s not too bad today, although more smoke is expected, but fortunately, Donald Trump is lurching into action with a solution. Blame Canada!
President Donald Trump on Friday blasted Canada for wildfires enveloping swaths of the United States in a smoky haze and said he would add the costs of that pollution to existing tariffs.
Calling the situation “totally unacceptable,” Trump accused Ottawa of failing to address what he said were the causes of the fires in Canada, whose smoke has sent air quality to dangerous levels in major U.S. cities in recent days.
The billions of dollars in costs inflicted on the U.S. as a result of the air pollution “must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
I am confident that Canada does not like to see their forests on fire, and that Canadians are as incapable of breathing smoke as Americans are. I don’t see the point in punishing Canada further, but all an authoritarian can see is an excuse to punish. This isn’t going to help at all. What does he think Canada needs a punitive incentive for?
“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air,” Trump wrote.
Oh, right. This is his weird idea that the proper way to maintain a forest is by raking up all the needles and brush.
“You’ve got to take care of the floors. You know the floors of the forests, it’s very important,” Trump said amid the charred ruins of Paradise — his first stop on the tour.
Trump went on to explain that the president of Finland, whom he met on an overseas trip a week earlier, told him about raking the forest floors. “He called it a forest nation,” Trump said, “and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don’t have any problem.”
The president of Finland never said any such thing.
But all you Canadians need to get out in 270 million hectares of wilderness and start raking.
(No, not really. I’m sorry, but our president is a goddamn motherfucking freaking MORON.)
Oceanoxia has a much more thorough post on this idiocy.
Does Cheeto Benito still not understand that it is the importers paying the tariffs?
What Trump “understands” can fit in a VERY thin book. Maybe thinner than the book “Non-lethal Animals of Australia”!
@Snarki, child of Loki
The section on business and tax fraud, and especially the section on various forms of corruption (soliciting and accepting bribes, selling pardons for fun and profit, insider trading based on actions while in office, ad infinitum) stacked up will reach orbit.
Canadians go to the US to fight wildfires (and vice versa). Last Sunday Nicholas Dale a helicopter pilot from Sooke, British Columbia, was killed while fighting a wildfire in Colorado (helicopters are used for collecting water from nearby lakes or reservoirs and dropping them on fires among other things). He is the fourth firefighter in the last month killed in Colorado (three were killed in a burnover on June 27: Emily Barker of Michigan, Nick Hutcherson of Arizona, and Sydney Watson of Alabama).
Nicholas Dale was a contract worker with a US company, but, entire teams have been sent in the past (such as the Palisades fire in 2025). In return US teams have gone to Canada. https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/international-support
Let’s hope his next action isn’t to destroy or damage this cooperation (further).
If Canada’s boreal forests cannot be kept safe from massive fires, then this climate change-driven disaster will ultimately sweep it clean of trees. Trump’s recourse is of course to blame Canada, despite the fact that he and his minions don’t believe in climate change and are largely to blame for their ignorance.
Finnlanders don’t use rakes.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fomsfxsy34fz11.jpg
Trump will say anything that makes him feel good, makes him an expert, makes him stand out or has the potential for him to receive a prize, medal or monument in his honor. Also, he believes belittling or blaming others (people, countries or entire races) for the evils in the world elevates his status. Most of what he spews is to distract from his corruption and put the spotlight on himself. This is the guy who made the Reflecting Pool problem worse by pumping millions of $ into it. The Reflecting Pool debacle is Trump. He is like Godzilla walking through Tokyo, no offense to Godzilla.
Trump lives in his self-created fantasy world and believes the rest of the world should live in there with him. Anyone expecting anything else from Trump at this point is disconnected from reality.
Environmental inanity …
You left out the “s”.
There are wildfires already in the Pacific Northwest and Northern Minnesota, among other places in the USA.
None of which are in Canada.
And, fire season is just getting started. It is far worse in late summer and early fall.
The giant whale in the room is climate change.
We’ve always had wildfires but climate change is making them worse.
There is no chance at present that we will be able to slow down CO2 levels rising and the associated global warming.
Snarki @2
Someone on this blog (sorry, 65 year old brain rejects memory of name) found a quote about BS.
“If they give Jerry Falwell an enema, they can bury him in a matchbox. “
Don’t throw DJT too far. There is some perfectly good buzzard fodder there, once he croaks. We can have a traditional Farsi-religion funeral.
Unless you go with a Hindu funeral, in case we can all roast marshmallows.
.
BTW the executives who since the eighties have hired PR firms and lobbyists to kill legislation that could have saved the world from this are absolutely culpable for “crimes against humanity”, as are the people who took their money.
I have LOTS of ideas for them, but I don’t want DHS to ask Sweden to have me extradited so I will keep them for myself. Just think “Cersei and The Joker has a child”.
@birgerjohansson #10:
I think that was Christopher Hitchens.
I strongly suspect that, when Trump went to inspect the Paradise fire during his first term, he’d been prepped to blame California’s state forest management, particularly insufficient brush removal or something like that. But he couldn’t quite keep the talking point straight, and ended up splicing in his recent chat with Finland’s then-president Sauli Niinistö. And he couldn’t explain brush removal except as “raking the forest floor”.
Apparently, Niinistö had indeed explained him something about Finland’s forest cover and forest management, though details were never brought to public. I think it may have been related to discussions about climate policy – Niinistö occasionally tried to talk sense to Trump on that topic, much like the current president Alexander Stubb has tried to talk to him about Russia and Ukraine. The bit about Finland being a “forest nation” could well be an accurate quote, though the raking thing definitely isn’t.
If Donald Trump, who is a demented narcissistic fuckwit, doesn’t like Canadian smoke, he should build a border wall to keep it out. Perhaps he thought impeding the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge would accomplish the task.
@11 birgerjohansson
I was under the impression that Farsi burial customs require vultures. Buzzards won’t usually feed on carrion that big.
So, who added to their crypto collection on Kalshi?
Wildfire tally grows to 191 in northern Ontario
This is the real human suffering on which a demented narcissistic fuckwit is trying to score political points.
My dad’s father worked as “woods rider” for the turpentine (aka naval stores) industry in the southeast in the 1920s. He and my dad sometimes talked about how “in those days” they kept the pine forest clear of undergrowth to make collecting easier. Of course, they didn’t rake anything or gather the loose stuff. Apparently they used small fires that they monitored. Those were relatively small groves of trees in flat land that were easy to keep in check, not up in the hills and mountains. That said, I could imagine some idiot from the South decrying the state of the forests saying something to Dumpster about this sort of thing, and then he just riffs on it.
Environmental breathtaking inanity.
lasius @15:
Wikipedia – Parsis
Wikipedia – Tower of Silence
Inanity isn’t nearly a strong enough word to describe Cheetos sheer stupidity over these fires.
They aren’t technically forest fires, they are “zombie fires” that are deeply embedded in the extensive (and treeless) peatlands. They burn all winter underground and then flare up into massive surface fires again during the summer.
soil fires that spread underground are harder for firefighters to tame and extinguish, thus demanding more resources for longer periods of time. Firefighters in Alberta, Canada, where carbon-rich peatlands are common, have been dealing with fires smoldering to depths dozens of feet underground in 2023. Because peat fires can make the ground unstable, using heavy equipment to excavate the fire areas also becomes risky.
https://www.arcticfocus.org/stories/zombie-fires-in-the-arctic-canadas-extreme-wildfire-season-offers-a-glimpse-of-new-risks-in-a-warmer-drier-future/
Climate change and drought are real, despite the claims of a despot.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ 20
It’s off! DJT will have so many chemicals in him the detritivores and scavengers will be poisoned.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/07/17/i-do-believe-in-foreign-interference-in-our-elections/comment-page-1/#comment-2306549
He keeps putting dead cats on the table, people are still distracted thereby.
Zombie Lindsey Graham would be a less destructive leader.
Too bad that Binface dude was not born in USA.
23- John Morales – EXACTLY.
Flood the zone with lies and spectacles, the real truth will never find the time it correct it all.
21 – Tethys
Here in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, they use controlled burns to negate the effect of a real fire threat. In the spring during dry weather periods, they set fire to spots with thick undergrowth (using up any potential fuel). They rotate the areas every year. There are fire trails (breaks) throughout the Pine Barrens, These Fire Breaks serve two purposes, one, they can slow a fire down by providing space between the trees and undergrowth, two, they allow access for fire trucks to fight the blaze.
Even though the burns are very closely controlled, the smoke and smoot still linger in the air, especially if you are downwind.
lasius @15: “Buzzard” is often used to refer to vultures in the US, despite being an existing name for an entirely different Old World birds of prey.
stuffin @ #26 — Here in California they call them “prescribed burns”. They do them practically every day during the dry summer. There’s one field near us that they use for training and burn the grass every few weeks.
One biological fix I wonder about is, why not have two parallel fire breaks half a mile apart, with succulents and cacti planted in between? The firebreaks stop the firestorms, and since the succulents are moist inside, the burning embers carried by the wind do not easily start new fires. Plant these green corridors perpendicular to the prevailing wind.
I am mainly thinking of the Santa Ana in California, but regions with random wind directions may require a hexagonal pattern of green, moist belts & firebreaks to stop the firestorms
(I have a lot of respect for forest fires, even if the ones we get in Sweden rarely reach the scale we see on international news).
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-10/90-years-since-prickly-pear-conquered/101222202
Wouldn’t work in Australia birgerjohansson, but I like where your head’s at.
Prickly pear green plague on the off chance the above is geo-blocked
@27 microraptor
New World vultures that would be. Real vultures are actually closer to buzzards than to New World vultures.
Also real buzzards aren’t restricted to the Old World.
lasius @31, microraptor @27: a quick search on the topic for the UK… didn’t help.
@26 stuffin & #28. robro :
We have those here in Oz too here regularly during the cooler months and with a lot of planning done including befroe and after flora surveys which I was lucky enough to be involved in once or thrice as a bushcare volunteer. Such controlled perscribed burns can threatenen species (both floral and faunal) that cannot cope as easily with them and also trigger rapid germination of invasive weed seeds.
They are good but do have their issues including getting out of control, needing the right timing and intensity of fire and noticeably with Glona Overheating getting the right window of conditions fro doing such burns is getting less common.
Australia, of course, has a many tens of thousands of yeras long history of being shaped by Indigenous Peoples “Firestick Farming” and I wish we’d listen to those Indigenous people on the very tricky – and getting ever trickier – art of getting fire regimes done right for Country. I think that’s happening a bit now but wish we’d do so more and better.
@ ^ Typo fix : noticeably with Global Overheating getting the right window of conditions for doing such burns is getting less common.
On our Indigenous Fire-stick farming see wikibasics here :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-stick_farming
Controlled Burns here are generally done in Autumn and Spring – sometiems Winter too for a mixture of reasons including asset protection by reduciong fuel load and restoring biodiversity by using fire as our Indigenous people did and as our native flora often requires wityh many species relying on fire to spread and germinate their seeds but that’s specific fruencies and intensities of burns and specific fire regimes.
As I’m sure Stevo could elaborate being knowledgeable of such things, there are many species in Australia that literally require fire to reproduce. Fire is an indispensable part of the ecosystem.
Oh apparently he just said that, pardon me. X-D
@31. lasius : “@27 microraptor : New World vultures that would be. Real vultures are actually closer to buzzards than to New World vultures. Also real buzzards aren’t restricted to the Old World.
So,wait, not only is the much heralded in song Old Turkey Buzzard (1 min 3 secs long) NOT a Turkey which I figured but it ain’t even a Buzzard neither!?
larpar @6: “Finnlanders don’t use rakes.”
I was going to say that Mango Mussolini would be likely to say that they should use brooms. But then I followed your link, which had a FAR superior response.
birgerjohansson@10:
“If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.”
The corrected quote is shown above, and it came from Christopher Hitchens. That same bloviating, willfully ignorant creationist jackass used to brag that his followers wanted to be told what to think. In that single respect, he was actually quite correct. The perpetually perplexed will ALWAYS readily follow any ignorant professional fool who wants to lead them. That is why there are multiple BILLIONAIRE televangelists showing it is the case. Another observation: the dumber the televangelist, the larger their audience, because more of the impressively stupid will recognize and hence identify with them.
“As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” — H.L. Mencken, in 1920
I remain somewhat surprised that the Orange Shitgobbon has not appointed Herschel Walker to head the EPA air quality division.
https://reportwire.org/herschel-walkers-claim-on-how-chinas-bad-air-would-move-over-to-america-is-grossly-inaccurate.
Snarki, child of Loki@2: “What Trump “understands” can fit in a VERY thin book.”
A BOOK!? Surely you jest, try a thimble stuffed with a double-space typed, large font paper. He is incapable of understanding anything. When in school, his sister did his homework and he paid other students to take his tests, including his SAT. His father bought his way through college. Professor Kelly at Wharton said: “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.” He rarely attended class, and when he did, he was never prepared. That is why he remained at a 3rd or 4th grade level of comprehension. At least prior to the onset of his dementia, now he understands even less. He also has a reading disability, look at the Teleprompter* words that he absolutely mangles. *Which he claims to never use but obviously does. In fact the official WH Teleprompter operator was discovered to be using insider info to enrich himself in the gambling marketplace (Kalshi, but Polymarket is another one pretending to not do gambling***).
https://abcnews.com/US/white-house-teleprompter-operator-made-100k-betting-trumps/story?id=134764573
They are actually correct, there are two types of people using them, insiders and marks, and the marks always lose.
So water does kill magnetism?** The Continental Army really did take over the airports in 1776? Windmills do cause cancer, kill whales, eagles, and mountains of dead birds under the towers “prove” that? COVID-19 was a hoax? China is attacking the US with hurricane guns? There are hundreds if not thousands of totally nonsensical claims from him, and he continually invents more with his verbal diarrhea. He can’t ever tell the truth because he never actually knows it. Cadet Bonespurs claims to know more about the military than generals, more about medicine than doctors, and more about science than scientists, etc. despite knowing absolutely nothing about anything. After meet his royal Orangeness in person, a British reporter proclaimed “He is IMPOSSIBLY STUPID!” A complete list of his insane inanities would fill an encyclopedia set.
**Water is slightly diamagnetic, you can even do experiments at home to show this, and it does not in any sense, kill magnets.
Some of the Orange Führer’s “best words” that he claims to possess (he even pronounced Yosemite as “Yo So Might”):
Stollen for stolen
Honered for honored
Unpresidented for unprecedented
Smocking for smoking
Sole for soul
Frorida for Florida
Melanie for Melania
Capital Hill for Capitol Hill
Infair for unfair
Shoebiz for showbiz
Marine Core for Marine Corps
Boarder for border
Loose for lose
Leightweight for lightweight
Grest for great
Hearby for hereby
hamberders.
MISINFORMATES
DISINFORMATES
Covfefe
Infantroopen
Haroilynn
Susbesdig
Deligitimatize
Transpants
Resaption
Herridje
Benefishers
Protectored
Pivittible
9elective for 911
Humanitaries
Foistered
Championch
Lawmarkers
Supply chern
Bipartiss Solucius
Asbadidizziz
Forsiva
Appliculibulls
Obstuulz
Raydoh
Mini-on-apolis
Bowlje
Slock rocket
Veneswaylass
Venezwelllzso
Venezwhalezz
Oranges for origins
Eastwisemen
Enentheyannoucedtherewasnobyesno
Airmputs
Ranned the ramparts
Duurrrr
Troth Sential
I suspect Trump thinks the best way to stop the fires is to convert all that land to strip mines.
You don’t have to think too hard to know that climate change due to rising CO2 levels is making forest fires worse.
And, the earth is likely heating up even faster than our climate models predict.
It turns out that the earth is getting darker due to various feedback mechanisms like reduced ice cover and lower levels of SO2.
Which means the earth is absorbing more solar radiation and reradiating less solar radiation, the Earth Energy Imbalance, EEI.
There is currently no end in sight to global warming.
Should we blame the government?
Devrions-nous blâmer le gouvernement ?
Or blame society? Ou blâmer la société ?
Or should we blame the images on TV?
Ou devrions-nous blâmer les images à la télévision ?
No, blame Canada, blame Canada
Non, c’est la faute du Canada, c’est la faute du Canada
A conversation I long for.
DJT: I want to make another speech about how everything bad was caused by Biden and Obama before the next election.
Guest in dark robes: YOU NO LONGER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THAT.
“Cross-border fuel reduction?”
My radar is pinging on this one.
“Stop having wildfires or we will send over crews to clear-cut your forests for you.”
When it comes to the current administration, always, always, always watch the money.