Month: June 2021

Ari Berman (“Give Us the Ballot“) distilled the absurdity of Sens. Joe Manchin’s (D-WVa.) and Kyrsten Sinema’s (D-Ariz.) obsession with Senate bipartisanship Monday night on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes”:

It just seems like we are still witnessing a huge game of asymmetric warfare here where there is a 60 vote supermajority requirement in the Senate to pass any legislation protecting voting rights, but in the states Republicans are unilaterally making it harder to vote with a simple majority on party-line votes.

Indeed, Georgia’s infamous SB202 increasing restrictions on voting (including outlawing providing water to voters in lines) passed both house of the Georgia legislature on party-line votes. The same in Texas and in Florida, Berman adds. Arizona Republicans passed SB1485 to remove tens of thousands of voters from the state’s early ballot mailing list on party-line votes as well.

States operate without the filibuster, and have, Hayes noted.

“The entire point of voter suppression is to make it harder for your opponents to be able to vote. And so there’s just two standards here,” Berman continued. “There’s the game being played by Republicans in the states where they do whatever they can to undermine democracy. Then there’s the game being played by Democrats in Washington, where they fail to protect American democracy because of these arcane rules ….”

Sinema argued in support of keeping the Senater filibuster in place in a Washington Post opinion piece Monday. The filibuster is one of “democracy’s guardrails,” she writes. She insists that “the difficult work of collaboration is what we expect in Arizona” while ignoring what just happened in her own state:

My support for retaining the 60-vote threshold is not based on the importance of any particular policy. It is based on what is best for our democracy. The filibuster compels moderation and helps protect the country from wild swings between opposing policy poles.

Sinema stopped short of demanding we institute democracy’s guardrail in 50 state capitols including hers.

On the core questions of majority rule, the rule of law and democracy, on the “idea of people selecting their leaders as opposed to the other way around,” Hayes argued, there cannot be and Republicans will not compromise.

“There is a brick wall of Republican opposition that will either be sledge hammered down, or will just remain blocking us from a path towards a free and equal multi-racial democratic country.”

“Republicans would rather cheat than compete,” Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) tweeted before her appearance.

Mitch McConnell just said no matter what compromises are made, it won’t be good enough, Clark told Hayes. “We are in a fight for the soul of our country.”

Watch the full open here: https://t.co/WkrSE02LN0

— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) June 22, 2021

Republicans don’t believe in democracy, as I’ve argued again and again. Republicans argue that direct democracy is no more than mob rule (often citing a spurious quote from Jefferson). Then they send a mob to the Capitol to overturn an election. How seriously should Democrats take them as good-faith partners in running a democracy?

This doesn’t look good:

New York prosecutors are investigating whether a top Trump Organization executive, Matthew Calamari, received tax-free fringe benefits, as part of their probe into whether former President Donald Trump’s company and its employees illegally avoided paying taxes on such perks, according to people familiar with the matter.

Prosecutors’ interest in Mr. Calamari, once Mr. Trump’s bodyguard, indicates that their probe into the Trump Organization’s alleged practice of providing some employees with cars and apartments extends beyond Allen Weisselberg, the company’s chief financial officer, and his family. Neither Messrs. Calamari and Weisselberg, nor anyone else connected to the company, has been accused of wrongdoing.

Receiving benefits—such as free apartments, subsidized rent or car leases—from an employer, and not paying taxes on such benefits, can be a crime, although experts said prosecutors rarely bring cases on such perks alone.

The office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has for months been pressuring Mr. Weisselberg to cooperate in its investigation, but there is no indication prosecutors have been successful so far, the people said. Mr. Vance’s office, in coordination with the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, has said it is working on a broader criminal probe into potential bank, insurance or tax fraud by the Trump Organization and its officers.

Prosecutors in recent weeks advised Mr. Calamari and his son, Matthew Calamari Jr., that they should hire their own lawyer, people familiar with the matter said. The elder Mr. Calamari, who works as the Trump Organization’s chief operating officer, and his son, the company’s corporate director of security, had previously been represented by a lawyer who was also representing other Trump Organization employees, one of the people said.

It sounds as if someone in this mess is throwing Calamari under the Trump golf cart and backing over him.

I wouldn’t get my hopes up too much. Who knows whether these leaks mean anything or are just done to try to scare some of the players. But you never know…

There have been some other reports that have Weisselberg still hanging out with Trump in New York, going to work every day and otherwise behaving as if he’s not going to crack. Which he may not. Trump demands loyalty and weirdly, most people in his orbit are happy to give it.

Does everyone remember this? Of course you do:

"I like the numbers being where they are. I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship" — Trump explains that he doesn't want to let people off the Grand Princess cruise ship because he doesn't want the number of coronavirus cases in the country to go up pic.twitter.com/ELhZDjiZW9

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 6, 2020

Well:

Then-President Donald Trump offered a horrifying solution to the burgeoning COVID-19 infections among American tourists returning to the country in February last year, according to the Washington Post.

“Don’t we have an island that we own? What about Guantanamo?” Trump reportedly asked during a meeting in the Situation Room.

“We import goods. We are not going to import a virus,” he continued.

Trump reportedly made the suggestion a second time before his staffers shut down the idea due to concerns over political backlash.

The exchange is detailed in an upcoming book by Washington Post reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta titled “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History.”

I love “we import goods, we’re not going to import a virus.”

He really is the dumbest narcissist in the entire world. Stunning.

The book also lays out the ex-president’s fits of rage over the idea of a federal COVID-19 testing program, which he reportedly feared would damage him politically as he sought to falsely downplay the severity of the virus.

“Testing is killing me! I’m going to lose the election because of testing!” Trump shouted at then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar during a call on March 18, according to Abutaleb and Paletta. “What idiot had the federal government do testing?”

Here's Trump downplaying the coronavirus as "sniffles" pic.twitter.com/lKZwqOsqwG

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 21, 2020

No single man from a small population state, voted into office by just a little more than half of them, should have this much power:

Manchin’s feud with progressive Democrats centers on a basic difference in their assessment of the Republican Party. To many of his colleagues, the G.O.P. has become an overt enemy of democracy, by perpetuating Trump’s lies about his loss in 2020 and rewriting state laws in ways that could allow them to overturn future elections. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has stated plainly, “One hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration,” an echo of his comment, in 2010, that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President.” McConnell, in that view, will never coöperate, because doing so could allow Democrats to win the next elections by claiming policy achievements and a breakthrough in partisan gridlock. Harry Reid, a senator from Nevada for three decades and the Democratic Senate Majority Leader from 2007 to 2015, told me that Manchin underestimates the change in D.C. culture. “We’ve never had it like this before,” he said. “When Lyndon Johnson was Majority Leader for six years, he overcame two filibusters. In my first six years as Leader, I had to face and overcome more than a hundred filibusters. I think that you cannot expect the Senate to be a place where it’s kind of ‘Kumbaya,’ where you hold hands and sing.”

Get a load of this:

On January 6th, when word circulated on the Senate floor that Trump supporters had stormed the Capitol, Manchin did not initially assume the worst. “I’ve always been for a good protest,” he recalled. “My instinct was, Let them in! They’re raising all kinds of hell and hollering. Let them in! Let’s talk!” Soon, he glimpsed the horror of it—“Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine our form of government being attacked,” he said—and, during the impeachment trial, he voted to convict. But Manchin never broke faith with the Republican Party, and he was determined to work with it again.

That “instinct” makes me wonder if he’s all there. Did he really not see that Donald Trump the demagogue had just spent the last four years attacking our form of government, ratcheting up the assault to a fever pitch in the last days of the campaign and afterwards? I think he’s not paying attention. Maybe his buddies in the Senate are all winking and nodding to him about Trump and his power but anyone with a brain can see that he has tens of millions of followers loaded for bear and that Mitch McConnell and his minions are fine with their unpatriotic radicalism if it helps them preserve their power.

And in case you are wondering about what really makes him tick well, we have the answer. It’s his fucking ego, of course. He’s a diva:

His constant triangulation makes him mercurial. “What he stands up and says from one caucus lunch to the next doesn’t match up,” a Democratic strategist said, “and he’s not the type of guy that’s going to go home and read a fifty-page briefing book.” In March, Manchin raised the prospect of making the filibuster “a little bit more painful,” by reviving the requirement for the marathon speeches known as the talking filibuster. Progressives rejoiced, but soon he expressed reservations about the idea. “If you have a talking filibuster, basically, you can just wait that one out,” he told me. “It doesn’t really achieve anything.”

In his office, I told him that much of Washington was asking a version of the same question: What does Joe Manchin really want? He flashed an irritated smile. “Can you believe that? It’s like I came here to hold people hostage,” he said. He repeated the question back to me. “What does Joe Manchin want? Son of a bitch—they think that they can spend a billion dollars or a hundred million dollars and that’ll take care of making it right?” He went on, “They want me to change. To agree. I say, No, I’m not going to change.”

Hello Joe Lieberman. It’s not so nice to have you back where you don’t belong.

Anyone in contact with The Tucker needs to ask themselves: If they had been alive in 1939, would they be indulging in friendly gossiping with Joseph Goebbels? Would they appear on his broadcasts?

Everthing about this article is shameful.

I don’t think she has a chance personally. It’s Wyoming. But it does remain to be seen if Trump’s personal endorsement will make the difference in who ends up taking her out. It sounds as though he has his choice of MAGA freaks to choose from:

If Rep. Liz Cheney loses in a GOP primary in 2022, her successor’s road to victory will likely have begun at a candidate’s forum held by a QAnon-curious Florida activist who calls himself a “massive disrupter” with “titanium balls.”

Earlier this June, six of the seven Republicans currently vying to unseat Cheney convened in a ballroom at the Ramkota Hotel in Casper, Wyoming, for their first chance to stand out since Cheney’s vote to impeach the former president in January kicked off a fervent effort among pro-Trump Wyomingites to kick her out of Congress.

K.W. Miller, the aforementioned disrupter behind the forum’s organizing group, America First PC—not to be confused with America First Action PAC—came to the podium and declared that Wyoming is “ground zero” for the effort to take back the Republican party from so-called “RINOs” and “leftists.” Gesturing to the long table where the candidates sat, Miller proclaimed, “one of these individuals is going to be your new representative.”

That very well could be the case.

The ensuing two hours made clear that Wyoming’s next representative won’t just be different from Cheney—they’ll be from an entirely different political universe.

During Miller’s forum, the six candidates onstage didn’t just castigate Cheney for calling out Trump’s unfounded claims about the election he lost, or just enthusiastically embrace those claims themselves. They bragged about being in Washington for the Jan. 6 riot. They endorsed nationwide audits of the 2020 election—including in Wyoming, which posted Trump’s largest margin of victory anywhere in the country—and they flirted with leading threads of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Wyoming’s GOP congressional hopefuls run the full gamut of experience, poise, and polish. Some are total newcomers who’ve never held or campaigned for office. Some are state lawmakers and party officials. But all are exactly the same when it comes to the most important qualification in today’s Republican Party: unswerving personal devotion to Trump.

“Trump did win, and I hope he will be reinstated by all these different audits that are going on,” said Robyn Belinskey, one candidate who appeared at the forum. “He never—what do you call it, dang it—he never conceded.”

Another candidate, Bryan Miller, said only one endorsement in the race mattered above the voters of Wyoming. “The gentleman whose name is on this hat,” he said, holding up a red MAGA cap. “He is the leader of the Republican Party.”

Every challenger is angling for Trump’s endorsement, which is expected to come in this race. The former president has railed against Cheney constantly since her vote to impeach him in January and is reportedly itching to exact revenge. The congresswoman, meanwhile, has already been booted from her post as the third-ranking House Republican over her refusal to accommodate Trump and his election conspiracies.

Public enemy No. 1 of the MAGA movement is a precarious place to be in Wyoming—a state that went for Trump by 43 points. And the truckload of Trump-loving candidates are hoping to capitalize on the backlash.

Similar dynamics are playing out in other districts and states where GOP officials broke with the ex-president. But few GOP primaries in 2022 will be more symbolically weighty than Cheney’s. And judging by the June 12 forum in Casper—the first big event of the contest—few will be as full of MAGA movement red meat and Trumpian posturing as this one.

I’m sure Matt Gaetz will be happy to travel there again to campaign for her opponent. If he isn’t on trial.

On Sunday night, CNN aired a two-hour documentary called “Assault on Democracy” chronicling the evolution of the American right’s most recent embrace of conspiracy theories and authoritarianism which led to the insurrection of January 6th. Unlike most of the recent TV examinations of this phenomenon, CNN didn’t simply go back to the day Donald Trump descended the golden escalator in Trump Tower but traced the beginning of this latest lurch into right-wing lunacy to the election of Barack Obama and the furious backlash that ensued. (The seeds obviously go back much further, but this is a logical place to begin with the Tea Party’s seamless transformation into MAGA.)

The program rightly attributes the massive growth in conspiracy theories to the rise in social media during that period and especially takes on Facebook for its algorithms that lead people deeper and deeper into insular rabbit holes. Crude profiteers such as Alex Jones and Breitbart are exposed as well as good old-fashioned talk radio and Fox News. There can be no denying the massive influence of those cynical propaganda outfits on the events that transpired over the past few years.

Perhaps the most disturbing moments in the special were the interviews with some of the MAGA faithful who were at the Capitol on January 6th, which was a trip to Bizarro World in itself. They still don’t see anything wrong with what happened and most of them, whether they are QAnon, Proud Boys, religious leaders or local politicians, are obviously 100% sincere in their belief in Donald Trump. If you didn’t think he was a cult leader before, you certainly will after hearing them talk about him. It’s downright eerie.

Recounting the events of that awful day with all the dramatic footage, some of it new, in chronological order is still as dreadful to watch as ever. And we still are missing huge pieces of what happened that day.

We know that Trump snapped at Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., when the House minority leader asked him to call off his followers as they stormed the Capitol: “Maybe you just don’t care as much about this election as they do!” It took much cajoling to get Trump to release the tepid statements he eventually made calling for peace and telling the insurrectionist that they are very special and he loves them. But for all the detailed leaking from the Trump White House over the course of four years, this is one afternoon they’ve kept a pretty tight lid on. (It’s also clear that’s one of the main reasons the Republicans have nixed the bipartisan commission, as some people would have to go under oath and testify about all that.)

Perhaps all of this seems tedious by now. After all, we all know the story. Most of us watched it play out in real-time. But as CNN’s Brian Stelter pointed out, it’s important to keep telling it because the purveyors of lies and conspiracies keep trying to whitewash it into something completely different. He quoted this tweet:

And as I noted last week, conceding to them also means letting down our guard and failing to be prepared for Insurrection Redux. Listening to those MAGA fans in the CNN documentary was very clarifying on that point. Those who took part in the insurrection and have been charged continue to believe they did nothing wrong and are no doubt prepared to do it again. Those who helped incite the mob from their pulpits and various rally stages have absolutely no regrets. There’s no doubt that there could easily be more violence.

But just as important in continuing to tell the truth about January 6th is to continue to combat the Big Lie about the election.

The MAGA faithful have been completely brainwashed and I don’t think they’ll ever change their minds. But devious, partisan players are hard at work in the states subverting the electoral system in ways that are truly insidious. It’s so bad that I think everyone is simply obligated to continue to focus very diligently on this issue. To that end. the New York Times reported some very disturbing new details out of Georgia, where Governor Brian Kemp signed a new law that allows Republicans to remove Democrats from local election boards:

Across Georgia, members of at least 10 county election boards have been removed, had their position eliminated or are likely to be kicked off through local ordinances or new laws passed by the state legislature. At least five are people of color and most are Democrats — though some are Republicans — and they will most likely all be replaced by Republicans.

Democrats in the state rightly point out that had these laws been in effect last fall, there’s every chance that MAGA-friendly officials would have been put in charge of the election and Trump’s requests to “find” votes might very well have been successful.

It isn’t just local officials. Some states are going after statewide offices as well.

One of the more unbelievably transparent acts took place in Arizona, the epicenter of Big Lie activism, in which the Republican legislature introduced a bill that would strip the Democratic secretary of state of authority over election lawsuits. But in an act of epic chutzpah, they plan to have the law expire once she is out of office. (I assume they will reinstate it if another Democrat wins, but perhaps they feel they’ve put up enough roadblocks to ensure that never happens again). In Georgia, they’ve similarly turned the secretary of state’s office into little more than a ceremonial position with little authority.

And this one is especially concerning because it tracks with the growing belief in a crackpot legal theory that state legislatures are the one and only legitimate arbiters of elections, superseding all other elected officials and the courts:

Kansas Republicans in May overrode a veto from Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, to enact laws stripping the governor of the power to modify election laws and prohibiting the secretary of state, a Republican who repeatedly vouched for the security of voting by mail, from settling election-related lawsuits without the Legislature’s consent.

It is only a matter of time before one of these states passes a law that openly allows the legislature to overturn an election — and then does it.

If you read the inane rationalizations by these Republican officials, some of whom are quoted saying they believe the Big Lie, it’s clear that the assault on democracy is actually just beginning. And it isn’t just about Donald Trump. The Republican Party realized that just a few tweaks to the election laws means they can call into question any election result they don’t like and take steps to overturn it. They are also very well aware that the specter of January 6th violence hovers still hovers over the country and they have millions of agitated Americans who are willing to believe anything. They have power and they are using it. 

Salon

“Passing legislation is not a made-for-TV movie,” former legislative affairs director at the Obama White House, Phil Schiliro, tells the Associated Press. It is going to be a long, hot summer for Joe Biden’s $4 trillion “build back better” infrastructure plan:

To land the bills on his desk, the president is relying on an old-school legislative process that can feel out of step with today’s fast-moving political cycles and hopes for quick payoffs. Democrats are anxious it is taking too long and he is wasting precious time negotiating with Republicans, but Biden seems to like the laborious art of legislating.

On Monday, Biden is expected to launch another week of engagement with members of both parties, and the White House is likely at some point to hear from a bipartisan group of senators working on a scaled-back $1 trillion plan as an alternative.

“Everybody wants to do infrastructure,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. But do they?

Donald Trump governed by tweet. But Trump had neither the skill nor the inclination for legislating. “Infrastructure week” quickly became a joke under his administration. Biden’s old-school approach is slow, and may yet prove fruitless. Republicans are not in a bipartisan mood and more interested in running out the clock on Biden’s term. Democratic attempts at swaying them are at best performative, suggests Charles Blow in the New York Times, an attempt to show they played the game with honor:

But that is meaningless when Republicans no longer care about that form of morality, when they no longer want to play the game by the established rules at all. Democrats are playing an honor game; Republicans are playing an endgame.

Republicans are in win-at-all-costs mode. They don’t really care how they sound today or will be judged by history. The only thing that matters is winning and retaining power, defending the narrative of America that white people created and protecting the power and wealth they accrued because of it.

Democrats’ narrow margins in both houses hand its moderates their own veto over progressive ambitions. That’s before one considers that Republicans have no interest in signing on to Democratic legislative victories. “Democrats must brace for massive disappointment,” Blow cautions:

I say dispense with the phony, wish-driven narrative Democrats are selling. Go down screaming and fighting. Much of the Democratic agenda may be stalled, but never stop reminding voters why it is: not because Democrats haven’t compromised enough, but because they could never compromise enough.

The current status quo is an unwinnable negotiation, because it isn’t a negotiation. This is a war. And in it, all is fair. Republicans have embraced a liar and racist in Donald Trump because their voters embraced him. They have excused and multiplied, in fantastical ways, the insurrection at the Capitol. They are rushing to write voter restrictions that also give them more say over how results are verified.

There is a story here, but it’s not a legislative process one. Democrats cannot be the heroes in that story if they don’t name the bad guys. Voter restrictions did not erect themselves. Republicans erected them to stop you from voting. The popular infrastructure package will not stall itself. Republicans will stall it. Say so. Over and over and over.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again:

How many Rocky movies did Stallone make? And they’re all the same movie. So why do people keep going? Because so many Americans themselves feel like underdogs. We want to root for the little guy with heart. Facing insurmountable odds. Risking it all. We want to feel the thrill up our spines and in the tops of our heads when Bill Conti’s trumpet fanfare introduces the training sequence. We want to hear that. Wait for it. Cheer for it. Pay for it. Over and over and over.

Democrats think politics is about good policy and good governance. It is. But only if you win the power to make it happen. Elections are not about good policy. If Trumpism has not disabused Democrats of that fantasy, there’s no hope for them. Voters want leaders — even phony ones — willing to fight for them and to risk themselves in the effort. Wimps need not apply. Stern words to not count.

Rocky lost his match with Apollo Creed and won Best Picture beating All the President’s Men, Network, Taxi Driver, and Bound for Glory. Take a lesson, Democrats.

As if the politics of our time are not soul-sapping enough….

The heat dome and drought afflicting the American West seems almost a bad dream here in the western mountains of North Carolina. Sometimes it seems our species is not terribly bright about settling inhospitable regions, water and shade being somewhat desirable. But then, humans also want to go to Mars.

In Phoenix, it’s 115 degrees by 2:30 p.m. (New York Times):

Across the West, housing markets and temperatures are both scorching hot. A punishing spring of drought, wildfires and record-shattering heat is amplifying questions about the habitability of the Southwest in a rapidly warming climate. But it has done little to slow the rapid growth of cities like Phoenix, where new arrivals are fueling a construction frenzy — as well as rising housing costs that are leaving many residents increasingly desperate to find a place they can afford to live.

The result: a double heat and housing crisis whose sweltering toll is falling hardest on people who have little choice but to suffer the sun and on those who can’t afford the housing boom powering the economy.

Construction workers and landscapers whose sweat is fueling the growth do not have the option of working from an air-conditioned office. Instead, they say they worry about passing out or dying on the job as 115-degree days come earlier and grow ever more common.

There are cooling centers in Phoenix, if COVID-19 allows, for those who hear of them and can get to them. For those who must work, there are long sleeves to protect skin from the sun and shade where one can find it.

It’s a brutal story about brutal heat and people least resourced to cope with it (some undocumented). There were a record 323 heat-related deaths in Phoenix last year. Possible evictions and rising housing costs threaten to put more people on the street in the scorching summer heat.

“Rents in Phoenix rose about 8 percent during the pandemic,” the Times reports via Zillo. The cost increase and the pandemic drove José Castro and his family out of their apartment . They live for now in an un-airconditioned garage belonging to his wife’s parents. They hope to win a subsidized apartment.

At 7 p.m. it is still 113 degrees in Phoenix:

As heat waves get fiercer and heat-trapping cities push ever outward, desert nights do not cool down like they once did. And air conditioning bills are pricier than ever. So as the sun set over the city of Mesa, John Nyre, 70, turned off the window unit in his trailer home and went to watch reruns of an 80s mystery series with his friend Gloria Elis.

Both worry about their power bills and try to run their air conditioners as little and low as they can. Ms. Ellis sets hers to 77 degrees. Mr. Nyre’s trailer is baking at 95 degrees some nights when he comes home.

People living in trailer homes face a heightened risk of dying indoors, and Mr. Nyre said one of his neighbors was found dead two summers ago. The friends spend time in cool grocery stores but said a nearby senior center where they once went to keep cool remains largely closed because of the pandemic.

“It’s not easy,” Ms. Ellis said. “There’s not much you can do.”

I think of Columbia, S.C. as the armpit of that state. Near the borderline between the piedmont and the sandy coastal plain, it feels like the hottest place in the state. Often breezeless and humid besides. (Charleston, at least, gets sea breezes.) A construction worker on a factory site I worked there in 2006 passed out on the roof. A coworker had to fireman’s-carry carry him down seven stories to receive first aid. It may have been over 100, but nowhere near 115.

It’s hard to imagine Phoenix at those temperatures.

The Anasazi vanished from the Southwest during a mega drought. Their civilization was a thousand years old.

William House writes at Medium:

The fate of the Anasazi is relevant to us today because researchers believe we are 20 years into the next megadrought. The tree rings tell us that the last megadrought in western America ended before the Pilgrims landed in 1620. So, the rise of modern America and the subsequent development of the American West occurred in a period of ample water. The term “ample” is used in a relative sense because, after all, we are talking about areas that are largely desert. But still, our calculations for water needs have used a higher baseline for available water than occurs in a megadrought.

Humans are generally better at chasing immediate gain as opposed to taking measured, long-term views of development. When developers apply to build massive new neighborhoods in Phoenix, the wisdom of preparing for the next megadrought is obscured in the push for profits and increases in the municipal tax base. Much like the movie “Field of Dreams,” people convince themselves to build it, and the water will come.

Yeah, good luck with that. “And thanks for all the fish.”

This is the best introduction ad I’ve ever seen. If there’s a more qualified, talented, perfect candidate to run for Governor against that nepotistic, dry socket Sarah Huckabee Sanders, I can’t imagine who it would be:

https://twitter.com/JonesForAR/status/1404800863667957778

That took my breath away and brought tears to my eyes. What an amazing story and an amazing person.