Author: Mark Alexander

From Jeff Tiedrich:

Millions Of Gallons Gone, For A Pointless Photo-Op

Donny Convict believes a lot of stupid shit. for instance, that magnets stop working when they get wet. seriously, here's a thing Donny actually said while campaigning last year.

"all I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that's the end of the magnets."

that's just unbelievably idiotic, and so easy to disprove — but just try talking Donny out of it. you could walk up to him and stick two wet magnets together, right in front of his big, dumb pumpkin face — and it wouldn't make a dime's worth of difference. Donny knows what he knows, and fuck you if you think you're going to change his mind.

last Thursday, two of Donny's favorite misconceptions came together to spectacularly fuck up Central California's water supply.

here's what we're dealing with: first, there's Donny's nonsensical insistence that there's one ginormous building-sized faucet somewhere that controls allof California's water. secondly, there's Donny's childlike belief that the Army Corps of Engineers is a combat outfit. make no mistake, they're not. while the ACoE is technically part of the Army, they're about 96% civilian — and they don't do combat. the Corps does infrastructure shit. they deal with roads and bridges, and maintain water distribution systems.

but don't try to explain any of that to Donny. all he sees is the word "army" is in the title, and right away he imagines the big strong soldiers with the tears of gratitude and the massive biceps.

the reality is that they're a bunch of civil engineers in hardhats.

but when Donny directs the ACoE to do something, he literally believes that he's sending in GI Joe and his commandos to fuck shit up.

that's why when the Corps did some routine water pump maintenance in California recently, Donny breathlessly announced that he had 'sent in the military.'

last Thursday, Donny ordered GI Joe and his Hardhat Commandos to open relief valves at two of California's dams — and then the reckless imbecile took a victory lap. you're welcome, California!

"Photo of beautiful water flow that I just opened in California. 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!"

Donny imagines that he has somehow 'saved' Los Angeles by letting 'billions of gallons of water' pour down into Southern California.

in reality, he accomplished none of that shit. what he did do was seriously fuck up Central California's water reserves — and now there's a strong possibility that farmers won't have the water they'll need for their crops this summer.

in typical Donny style, there was no forethought or planning — because fuck that. who needs planning when you know more about water management than all the water managers? Donny doesn't plan — that shit's for losers. he just picks up the phone and starts barking orders.

Water managers said they got about an hour's warning from the Army Corp's Sacramento office to expect the Tule and Kaweah rivers to be at "channel capacity" by Thursday night.

Channel capacity means the maximum amount of water a river can handle. For the Kaweah, that's 5,500 cubic feet per second and for the Tule, it's 3,500 cfs.

Those levels were last seen, and surpassed, during the 2023 floods, which destroyed dozens of homes and businesses and caused significant damage to infrastructure.

an hour's warning! imagine that. you're at the office, enjoying a hot cuppa and shooting the shit with your coworkers — and the phone rings. "hi, this is GI Civil Engineer Joe. we're on our way over to flood your farmland. ok bye!"

here's what happened the last time those rivers were at 'channel capacity':

panicked local officials managed to get the Corps to ease off.

"We were able to get them to back off that," said Eric Limas, General Manager of the Lower Tule River and Pixley irrigation districts, of the Army Corps. "They'll still be releasing water sometime tonight, but it will be a smaller amount, which will increase tomorrow."

"We're still trying to wrap our minds around the numbers that made this happen," Fukuda said. "We haven't received much information from the Army Corps, just very vague answers."

just 'vague answers' — because the Corps probably didn't know anything either, except that some ignorant asshole in Washington was screaming at them to get it done.

but the thing is, none of that water ended up anywhere near Los Angeles — because that's not how Central California's water system works.

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.

fuckity-bye, water!

farmers were depending on that water to grow crops this summer —and now it's gone. wasted for a photo op, so Donny could pretend he'd accomplished something. you're welcome, California!

"This is the wrong time of year to be releasing water from these reservoirs. It's vitally important that we fill our reservoirs in the rainy season so water is available for farms and cities later in the summer," Gleick said. "I think it's very strange and it's disturbing that, after decades of careful local, state and federal coordination, some federal agencies are starting to unilaterally manipulate California's water supply."

when you can't find oranges in your supermarket later this year, you can blame Donny.

The two dams are considered important reservoirs of water for farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, which is known for its "Citrus Belt" that produced more than four million tons of citrus fruits — particularly Mandarin, Navel and Valencia oranges, along with grapefruits and lemons — in the 2020-2021 season alone.

locals can't fucking believe what just happened.

"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.

now here's the quote of the day.

"This decision was clearly made by someone with no understanding of the system or the impacts that come from knee-jerk political actions."

no fucking shit.

by the way, here's that clip of Donny having no clue how magnets work. it's just another one of those stunningly crazypants moments that have to be heard to be believed.

in another clownfuckingly stupid move, Donny's put ruinous tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports. even the Wall Street Journal called it "the dumbest trade war in history."

there will be a lot to say about this in the days to come, as the shit hits the economic fan — but for now, here's something you probably never thought would happen: Canadian hockey fans booing America' National Anthem.

do you have any idea just how badly you have to fuck up to get Canada mad at you?

let's go out on a high note. here's a suburban mom chasing some Patriot Front fucksticks out of her neighborhood by using a bullhorn to scream YOU BETTER RUN, BITCHES! at them.