[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
12/30/12 0526.33 PST
San Jose, California
California has been soaked with 140% of normal precipitation this year, easing the constant faint hum of worry of all natives who know drought, who know that without our water we are nothing. It won’t rain after May 1st for at least 5 five months, little rain in the winter means serious drought implications. Californians have seen the powerful tornado and hurricane storms rip and smash other parts of the country and worry too that global warming will somehow take away the water, but it hasn’t happened yet. Climate change appears to have given California more water, we haven’t had a drought in a long, long time.
I’m no hydro-electric engineer, of course, but as far as I know California has the only major water irrigation system on the globe that doesn’t solely utilize gravity to move all the water. H2o is notoriously heavy, and I was beyond appalled to learn in the Enron-Cheney electricity crisis that approximately 30% of California’s electricity use will always be used to simply pump water to LA and a few reservoirs, what a hideous energy choice that was, even in the 1950’s.
Governor Brown has some tunnel plan to move more water out of the delta, after the announcement of plans there hasn’t been any fresh news. Far better to use the new tunneling technology to solve that hideous pump electricity usage over the San Gabriel mountains, but the idea seems totally remote to our leadership.
Watching the appalling political evolution currently taking place in Washington DC leads to nothing but sadness from way, way out here on the left coast, there’s nothing to do but wait to see what the horrible result will be. Anyone with any sense takes this week off after such an exhausting political year, how could any result in such rush compressed circumstances be good? The House isn’t even in session until tonight, tomorrow is New Year’s, why on earth keep up the pretense Republicans are interested in trying?
Ah, it would irrefutable proof that the political system in Washington DC is broken and cannot function. Jesus Christ on his new electric scooter, my dear DC representatives and executive leadership, we’ve all known that in California for a long, long time, there’s no need to demonstrate it in a nuclear fashion by botching another deal when you should be celebrating New Year’s Eve.
I’ve noticed that among the Kool DC journalism kids the plain phenomena of a broken system from Republican obstructionism is starting to catch on. It started with the plain truth from Mann and Orstein that in fact the two parties in DC are not acting in equal good faith, the Republicans have run completely off the rails in Tea Party extremism but the staid, flabby, fatuous, shallow cesspool of DC journalism won’t report it. Ezra Klein, an insider at the Washington Post I do not trust,1 was the latest to finally shine the light on this elemental truth, so perhaps the rest of the US journalism corps will finally catch on everyone knows what paid stupid corporate dullards they are in this hurricane of DC bullshit, the Republicans are out of control but you pathetically can’t say so.
I think it was DougJ of Balloon Juice, I’m not precisely sure, who recently said it was total folly to expect the truth from DC journalism, we can never expect it when journalist’s income and livelihood are on the line, no human could be expected to uphold the truth with children to feed. Perhaps that’s so, but the truth that the Republicans have gone politically crazy with absolutely zero regard for the country or the little people is such screaming plain fact at this point one wonders how long the journalists in DC could possibly keep the current fantasy façade up. It’s been a long time so far, apparently they’re willing to be total professional clowns for as long as their incomes depend on it.
Well, we got our water for 2013 in California, at least it’s something. We could have had all our unemployment bill with the Feds forgiven and $30 billion stimulus waiting for the new year with a real Congress, but of course Congress is broken, has been by the Republicans, and they won’t suddenly fix it in the next two days. Reaching some frantic foolish deal with them won’t fix it either, that’s screamingly obvious too, even if the DC journalism corps still can’t say it in the glaring obviousness of it all.
[1] I mean no animosity or disrespect, I mean I do not trust a journalist on the Washington Post payroll. I wouldn’t trust St. Francis if we wrote for them. I’ve met Mr. Klein very briefly, he is a nice man who works hard with an enviable professional accomplishment record.