Literary Corner: Bird Graveyard

Wind farm off the Aberdeenshire coastline, visible from the Trump International Golf Links in Balmedie. Photo by Nigel Mowat via BBC.

By somewhat popular demand:

Tremendous Fumes

by Donald J. Trump

We’ll have an economy based on wind. I never
understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much.
I’ve studied it better than anybody I know. It’s very expensive.
They’re made in China and Germany mostly — very few made here,

almost none. But they’ve manufactured tremendous —
if you’re into this — tremendous fumes. Gases
are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have
a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe.

So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything.
You talk about the carbon footprint — fumes are spewing into the air.
Right? Spewing. Whether it’s in China, Germany, it’s going
into the air.  It’s our air, their air, everything — right?

So they make these things and then they put them up.
And if you own a house within vision of some
of these monsters, your house is worth 50 percent
of the price. They’re noisy. They kill the birds.

You want to see a bird graveyard? You just go.
Take a look. A bird graveyard. Go under a windmill someday.
You’ll see more birds than you’ve ever seen ever in your life.
You know, in California, they were killing the bald eagle.

If you shoot a bald eagle, they want to put you in jail
for 10 years. A windmill will kill many bald eagles.
It’s true. And you know what? After a certain
number, they make you turn the windmill off.

That’s true, by the way. This is — they make you turn it off
after you — and yet, if you killed one they put you in jail.
That’s okay. But why is it okay for these windmills
to destroy the bird population? And that’s what they’re doing.

My maintenance squadron went to Scotland, and all I got was this lousy invoice

The future Prestwick Spaceport, via South Ayrshire Council.

The important part of this remarkable Politico article by Natasha Bertrand and Bryan Bender, no doubt, is that it looks as if the US armed forces have been used to funnel money into the Trump Organization's coffers, but I want to start someplace a little different.

10) Oh and as always - there's a tweet. pic.twitter.com/3uoZcRjtod

— David Frum (@davidfrum) September 7, 2019

So Prestwick Airport is the one that serves Glasgow, in western Scotland, and also Trump Turnberry, the Luxury Collection Resort on the Firth of Clyde that the Trump Organization acquired in 2014, so the way Trump expected to make the airport successful would be presumably by bringing it a lot of golfer traffic. Which would be nice for the Scottish government, maybe, because they own it, since 2013, and it's a money loser.

He did not mean, I imagine, that the Pentagon would be spending $11 million on fuel there between October 2017 and June 2019 but that's a thing that happened, according to Bertrand and Bender, though they could have bought it a lot cheaper 360 miles away at Lakenheath, Suffolk, home to the 48th Fighter Wing of the United States Air Forces Europe–Air Forces Africa, or better still Mildenhall, also in Suffolk, home of the 100th Air Refueling Wing, if they were in the neighborhood. And they were apparently in the neighborhood pretty often: 629 separate purchase orders, says a letter from Elijah Cummings and Jamie Raskin of the House Oversight Committee to acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan (dated 21 June, just three days, as it happened, before Shanahan quit the post to spend more time with his problematic family).

Annals of Derp: McMegan on Scotland

McArdle delighted by the English revolt against the "elites" in the "remote capital" and their burdensome regulation of the struggling and oppressed capitalist class.

Not so pleased, on the other hand, by the prospect of Scots revolting against English imperialism, or what you and I would call elite rule from a remote capital, where they extract profits out of the land and leave the people in need, when Scotland wants to keep enjoying some of that Brussels regulation and the open borders that go along with it. McArdle thinks the economic sufferings Brexit will bring to the UK are a trivial matter, but issues dark warnings on the economic dangers for the Scots if they separate from UK to be a member of the EU on their own. Which are totally wrong, of course. At least as far as I know; she hasn't replied to my last Tweet yet.

.@asymmetricinfo @RameshPonnuru In fact almost certainly not. https://t.co/uRJGMDk1cu Google is your friend you know.

— (((Yastreblyansky))) (@Yastreblyansky) June 25, 2016

.@asymmetricinfo @RameshPonnuru But they win oil and gas revenues just as prices begin to rise https://t.co/0el7T9F8J3

— (((Yastreblyansky))) (@Yastreblyansky) June 25, 2016

I told her about Google, too!

England hath need of ye

Updated 9/19

Eilean Dornan Castle, Skye. Via.

Dear Scotland,

You know what? England sucks. England doesn't deserve you. England has disrespected you, insulted you, discriminated against you for centuries. It's pretty awful.

And I understand the reasons for voting yes. Because the worst people in the world are urging you to vote no, as Edroso says. Because you can punish those people—Cameron and Osborne—