A Flood of Stupidity
Common sense for a golden age brought to you by the firm of Dunning and Kruger.
There has been such torrent of disturbing stupidity and truly damaging “policy” choices being made that I have honestly been semi-paralyzed as to how to where to start. How about with water in California?
Via Politico: Trump says he opened California’s water. Local officials say he nearly flooded them.
“Today, 1.6 billion gallons and, in 3 days, it will be 5.2 billion gallons. Everybody should be happy about this long fought Victory! I only wish they listened to me six years ago — There would have been no fire!” he said in a poston his social media site.
Local officials had to get the Corps to back down its plan as it would have caused flooding.
While releasing water from reservoirs before a big storm, like the one expected to hit Northern California this weekend, is standard flood-control procedure to avoid overflowing dams, Hernandez said the Army Corps’ Thursday plan would have released far more water than needed. He said releasing the water at the capacity the Corps had planned to would have flooded both the Kaweah and Tule rivers, where the Corps’ reservoirs are located.
[…]
Hernandez said that after he resisted the decision, Fromm told him the Corps would release the water at a third of the original planned speed, rather than at maximum capacity. Aaron Fukuda, the general manager of the Tulare Irrigation District, also confirmed the Army Corps reduced flood releases after local officials pushed back.
And to add a little farce to all of this, the DOGE Dudes showed up.
Officials from his Department of Government Efficiency visited a federal water-pumping station in Northern California on Monday, after which Trump posted on Truth Social that “The United States Military just entered the Great State of California and, under Emergency Powers, TURNED ON THE WATER.” California officials clarified Monday that the federal pumps had been down due to electrical maintenance.
What is the world DOGE has to do with water flow in California is beyond me.
“Something really bad could happen because of their nonsensical approach,” the former official, who was granted anonymity because of the issue’s political sensitivity, said. “Floods are real. This isn’t playing around with a software company.”
Indeed.
Of course, all of this is performative stupidity and has little, if anything, to do with fires in Los Angeles.
Firefighters had almost completely contained the Palisades and Eaton fires as of early Friday. The Army Corps did not respond to a question about how the water would reach Los Angeles, about 200 miles away. Hernandez said the water would go to Tulare Lake, a dry lakebed that last filled up during record-high rainfall in 2023.
Other water experts said it would have been nearly impossible to divert the water to Los Angeles at the speed the Corps originally planned to release it. There is a rarely used state valve that can redirect Tulare Lake floodwaters into the aqueduct that carries water further south into Los Angeles, but neither state nor federal officials responded to a question asking if they would turn it on.
Hernandez said he thinks the current releases are still too much because, he said, the reservoir has enough capacity to absorb any coming storm and would not overflow.
The story does note that draining too much water from the reservoirs could jeopardize irrigation needs later in the year.
More from SJV Water: Trump’s emergency water order responsible for water dump from Tulare County lakes.
Tulare County water managers were perplexed and frustrated, noting both physical and legal barriers that make it virtually impossible for Tulare County river water to be used for southern California fires.
First, it would have to be pumped at great expense across the San Joaquin Valley to get to the California Aqueduct and then travel hundreds of miles south.
Second, this isn’t “loose” water free for the taking.
“Every drop belongs to someone,” said Kaweah River Watermaster Victor Hernandez. “The reservoir may belong to the federal government, but the water is ours. If someone’s playing political games with this water, it’s wrong.”
[…]
“A decision to take summer water from local farmers and dump it out of these reservoirs shows a complete lack of understanding of how the system works and sets a very dangerous precedent,” said Dan Vink, a longtime Tulare County water manager and principal partner at Six-33 Solutions, a water and natural resource firm in Visalia.
“This decision was clearly made by someone with no understanding of the system or the impacts that come from knee-jerk political actions.”
Sadly, we are currently being governed in exactly that manner.
The NYT headline sums it up: Trump Officials Release Water in California That Experts Say Will Serve Little Use.
But, of course who needs experts when you have common sense?
The releases, as ordered, have sent water toward low-lying land in the Central Valley, and none of it will reach Southern California, water experts said. Nonetheless, President Trump said on Friday that the same action would have prevented the Los Angeles wildfires on the other side of mountain ranges over which that water has no way of traveling.
[…]
Experts expressed dismay on Friday that releasing so much water now served little use for farmers, who typically have higher irrigation needs in the spring and summer months when agricultural fields are abundant.
By the way: a great way to help grocery prices is to make sure the farms in California have less water than they need during growing season!
And this cannot be stressed enough:
Water supplies from Northern California played no part in the ability of firefighters to combat the flames in Los Angeles County. Hydrants in Pacific Palisades went dry because the municipal water system was not designed to fight so many fires simultaneously. A reservoir that fed the neighborhood was empty because of maintenance issues, not because of a lack of supply to Southern California.
The scope of the disaster was the culprit, not the lack of water supply.
But hey, we are in the Golden Age!
More reading on the water issue.
Looking forward to NYT reporting: “Brawndo has the electrolytes that plants crave!!”
The Trump Administration is basically ‘Beavis and Butthead’ with a Project 2025 Road Map.
It’s an interesting and perhaps exploitable feature of Trump’s ‘mind’ that even when he has no direct involvement, and indeed no reason to become involved, he pokes his snout in, regardless, making everything good, but also everything bad, his.
@Crusty Dem:
It’s got electrolytes!
Plus, the fire chief was a DEI hire, obviously.
Go woke, go smoke!
(sarcasm)
Brought to you to voters who care deeply about merit-based hiring /s
Here’s another instance of stupidity.
https://cubaminrex.cu/en/cuba-rejects-us-decision-incarcerate-migrants-guantanamo-naval-base
I’m wondering if there’s any way Trump can fail upward even more than he has.
Have the Rolling Stones Killed
Stupid is as stupid does.
Pounding away on how stupid his “bold action” is seems a good political line to me.
It’s time to put names to the doge bros. I read about musk allies, musk employees, who are they? Why do they have access?
Where this may be heading: DOGE is the Party, and the federal government is the State. You know, as in all those freedom-loving countries like China, Cuba, and North Korea.
@Michael Reynolds:
Attention whore can not resist any opportunity to draw attention to himself.
He learned this from WWE wrestling where attention is sought, good or bad, either way.
Life is like a bunch of tech bros tryin’ to run a gubmint. Ya never know whatcha gonna get.
@de stijl:
I was at a work conference and one speaker did her whole speech as if she were Forrest Gump. Explicitly so. As shtick. Yeah. That person.
It was the year that movie was released, but still so stupid. Who signed off on that?
She tried hard to nail the pronunciation and cadence of Forrest Gump. She failed. It was so cringey. It was a ten / 15 minute speech and I didn’t hear a word she said at all. I was just trying to reconcile this batshit insanity to Tom Hanks. I was “if I were her I’d said that thusly”. Did not pay attention to the text at all. Internally worked to correct her bad version.
Better yet, to correct to lil dude who played Forrest as a wee lad. That dude rocked! He’s so awesome!
Sorry to have a fight in the middle of your Black Panther Party.
It’s really disturbing how quickly the USACE got corrupted to the point of dangerous incompetence. A core mission area is flood control and navigable water management, yet they’ve already thrown their expertise and professionalism out the window by executing dangerous and technically unsound guidance from above, and then muddying the accountability for those actions. This happening within the DoD, just a few days after the Senate confirmed a Defense Secretary having loyalty to his boss but no professional qualifications for the job. Heck of a job, Brownie…or Petey… or whatever your effing bro nickname is.
I have a practical suggestion: Democrats steal a clue from the Brits and create a shadow cabinet. Obviously it won’t have the same standing, but we find a dozen well-spoken, disciplined and squeaky clean Dems. Each member of Trump’s cabinet then has a much more qualified Democrats commenting knowledgeably on his MAGA counterpart. It will drive the MAGAs crazy. Media will start making shadow secretaries a go-to for interviews. Instead of asking people to imagine our future government, we show it to them daily.
Dems, including most of the commentariat here, are in denial, refusing to engage with the future. That should stop. Our job does not stop with doom-scrolling Trump’s daily idiocy. That’s playing their game. You cannot let the enemy hold the initiative.
Let’s have a ranked choice vote among members of the party to fill each shadow position. We can get coverage for the vote, coverage for the controversy, and offer a day by daycomparison of sane to insane.
Practical suggestion #2: Draft anti-corruption legislating, get every Dem member of Congress to agree to abide by the terms preemptively, and use every media opportunity to ask MAGAs why they won’t agree to do the same.
@Kingdaddy: That’s the real discussion worthy topic: obviously Trump is too profoundly stupid and/or mentally impaired to have come up with Project 2025, which took tens of thousands of man hours and a whole lot of money to put together. The Federal Government is gargantuan yet they have identified potential troublemakers in every department and quislings to take their place. Who funded and organized this? I’m willing to bet it was no one with their name on the document.
Right now Trump’s idiocy is serving a useful purpose as a distraction. But once they feel they have secured their power, Trump thinking and acting like he is in charge could cause problems. What will they do then?
@Michael Reynolds: That’s an excellent suggestion
We’re apparently in a trade war with Canada now.
Why. Ffs, why?
Reap and sow. I will riot on the streets if this goes too far. I like good, real maple syrup on my waffles, and polite people, too. I’m 61 and my left knee is dodgy as fuck, but I will resist forcefully if needs must. MCL issues be damned. If you walk straight ahead you’re basically fine. Walk it off, literally.
Pro tip: Most streets do not have cobblestones anymore you can pry up to chuck at the Brownshirts during a resistance riot. Grocery stores have cans of beans and pineapple and tomato sauce fairly cheap and fit your hand well and are perfectly throwable, and carry a good wallop if you score a hit.
Best weight to value ratio is 8 ounce tomato sauce in a can. Two for a buck or thereabouts – that price range.
“Whoops, I thought. Welcome to the night train.” – Hunter S. Thompson
Trump is like a little kid on Christmas morning at the moment but he will get tired. Also, we must bear in mind that all the information we are reading is generally unknown to most of the public, being that the majority of Americans pay no or very little attention to political news, and unless their algorithms are right, they see none of it. They will begin to pay attention when the tariff-inflation hits though. Bigly.
@Crusty Dem:
Another pro tip: if a product is being sold as high in “electrolytes” read that as sodium salt. Were it high in potassium, they’d highlight that, but the word “electrolyte” alone in advertising basically means salt. It has a lot of salt.
Salt is awesome for cooking, and for cellular function, but most of use / intake much more than is necessary.
We like salt. We’re programmed to. Evolution didn’t account for us to have commercial interests manufacturing it on an industrial scale, however.
Well.
It really does look like President Trump intends to double-down on the stupid.
And, arguably, illegality, re both firing of officials without cause, and contrary to law.
And to halting (or not), by decree, expenditures and programs mandated by Congress.
I’m seldom inclined to comment on the details of US domestic politics, but in this instance, it seems plain that if Congress tolerates this, you no longer have either a republic, or a democracy, but the rule of an imperator.
If the Republicans in Congress and the Courts are unable to perceive this, their education has been rather inadequate.
I mean, he wanted to nuke hurricanes.
@JohnSF:
They perceive, they don’t care. As incumbents for the party in power in an electoral authoritarian regime, their seats will be secure. And graft will be easy.
As a kid, I used to play SimCity. Sometimes, it was fun to screw around, make bad stuff happen, and watch the fallout. I’m starting to understand how the Sims in my cities must have felt.