California Nightmare

Well, California is finally getting some rain . . . 

. . . though not exactly what the state's forty million residents hoped for.

One major rainstorm after another has been hitting the state for the past couple of weeks thanks to an "atmospheric river" of moisture in the air that keeps coming off the Pacific Ocean,  These storms have produced as much rain as four, six, even twelve inches in one fell swoop.  The result?  Lots and lots of floods.

It never rains in California but girl, don't they warn ya, it pours . . . man, it pours!

But at least the drought has been alleviated, right?  Time to add insult to injury, boys and girls!  Parts of California has been so dry for so long that not even a foot of rain can saturate the ground enough - in fact, the rain has mostly rolled off the ground on its way to the rivers.  And even where it does saturate the ground well, it's still not enough to replenish the groundwater.  However, many of the reservoirs are a lot more full than they used to be, so that must count for something.

And, in spite of all this, there continue to be many people who deny climate change.

And one of them is from California.

How The West Was Lost

In the early spring of 1987, as Gary Hart was making plans to announce his ill-fated candidacy for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, he surveyed the rugged terrain near his home in Colorado where he planned to make the announcement - perhaps, not coincidentally, on April 13, the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson, the President who sent Lewis and Clark on their expedition to the Pacific.  He wanted to emphasize that, as a resident of a Western state, he believed that the West was the future.

Uh, not exactly.  And not because Hart's campaign bit the dust soon thereafter (you know the story; I won't repeat it), and not because it wasn't until 2020 that Kamala Harris became the first Democrat from the West to be nominated for and win national office (which was the least of her firsts). 

It's because the West has no future.

That became apparent as the drought in the West, which had been worsening for years, led to horrendous wildfires in California.  More wildfires have burned in Colorado and New Mexico.  There have been unprecedented heat waves in Washington and Oregon.  The Colorado River, a major source of water for numerous states, is drying up and causing water shortages in Nevada and Arizona.  The Great Salt Lake is drying up so fast in the Mormon homeland of Utah that another miracle will be needed to save Salt Lake City from being suffocated by toxic alkaline dust blown from the lake bed.  And in Montana and Wyoming, the problem is actually too much rain.

Look what happened to this building in Montana along the flooded Yellowstone River.

Climate change is obviously affecting the West in ways any idiot could have seen coming simply because water has been an issue in the region from the moment the first white settlers arrived.  It's just plain dry out there.  Los Angeles and Las Vegas rely on river water just to survive.  Phoenix was so named because it was founded on the remains of a Native American city that disappeared for the same reason Arizona is in trouble now - lack of water. Too many arid areas are being overpopulated - Las Vegas is literally in the middle of a freakin' desert - and too many famers are growing heavily water-dependent crops in these same areas.  The West is actually more urbanized than the East despite its more limited water resources.  I mean, didn't those folks out there get it?  Seems it never rains in southern California, and there's a reason for that. 

The only way the West survives is if fewer people populate it.  And though most people in the region have no intention of leaving - except for many California residents, who are feeling the state's high taxes and high cost of living - Mother Nature, God's bratty kid sister, may eventually force them to leave.

See this?

This is the infamous "bathtub ring" on Lake Mead, created by the Hoover Dam.  The white deposits on the cliffs are from the minerals left by the water that once rose higher, before the drought.  This is Mother Nature's way of telling Westerners, "Take a hint!" 

The Michigan Rag

With floods ravaging the central area of Michigan's Lower Peninsula - centered around the Midland, the headquarters of Dow Chemical - Trump has tried to use federal funding to deal with the flood damage, caused mainly by failing dams, to get Governor Gretchen Whitmer to stop distributing applications for mail-in ballots.  He confused the applications with actual ballots, saying that what Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, below, was doing was illegal (it's not) and threatening to withhold funding to help with the Midland disaster if Benson persisted.

Benson fired back, explaining that what she did was perfectly legal and perfectly bipartisan.  "In November of 2018," she told MSNBC's Chris Hayes, "citizens voted overwhelmingly to give themselves this right to vote by mail. It was supported by citizens on both sides of the political spectrum, and it's something citizens on both sides of the political spectrum have done."  Indeed; other states, such was Republican-dominated West Virginia, have pursued voting by mail.  Trump himself votes by mail.  But he is trying to deny voters in Democratic states, and in swing states like Michigan, the opportunity to do so in a presidential election where Trump is behind in the polls but in which Democrats are reluctant to vote in person in the middle of an interminable pandemic.

Trump clearly has Michigan in his sights, as he visited the state this past week and toured a Ford factory making ventilators to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak.  He reportedly did not violate the policy requiring to wear a mask at first, but only wore it briefly.  Later - unmasked - Trump, who has long since bene unmasked for the rotten leader he is, praised the Ford Motor Company for its contributions to American economy and praised company founder Henry Ford for his good bloodlines.  Henry Ford was a vicious anti-Semite who believed there was a Jewish conspiracy aiming to take over America and the world.

So who won this round?  Apparently, Michigan's mostly female Democratic leadership.  This past Thursday, Trump approved Governor Whitmer's request for federal aid to deal with the flooding in Midland this past Thursday despite his threats to cut off aid.  The Federal Emergency Management Association is now authorized to direct all equipment and resources necessary to handle the flooding, with emergency protective measures to be provided at 75 percent federal funding.  And the ballot applications got sent out.

Meanwhile, as Ford continues to make ventilators in the Ypsilanti, Michigan plant that Trump visited, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused two Ford factories - one of which was making Ford F-150 pickup trucks - to temporarily shut down when workers tested positive for the disease.  Sort of appropriate karma for a car company that, while no longer promoting anti-Semitism, now promotes the purchase of gas-guzzling pickups and truck-based monster wagons.