The Witness Chronicles, 2/7/25

2 billion gallons wasted for a political stunt

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Not Just Dangerous, Crazy Too

No Don, south is not downhill from north

Not to distract from the extremely scary shit going on in DC but it’s important to remember that our President is pretty nuts on top of greedy, racist, power hungry, and narcissistic. Two examples stand out since his inauguration.

First, he sent the military to a reservoir in Northern California to turn the taps on. The idea was to demonstrate that Gavin Newsom, California’s governor never had the faucets turned on during the LA fires. All this did was dump 2 billion gallons of water stored for central California farmers to use in the event of a drought during growing season.

That water was lost and no Don, it did not flow downhill to LA because south is not downhill from north*. Apparently he implied this idiocy. So when you watch this man listening to his ‘experts’ as he takes down the government remember he is dumb as a stick when it comes to the real world.

*I live a mile from the Genesee river in western NY, which flows north, like the Nile. How do you explain that, Don?

That was a good one, but if you were paying attention to his news conference with Bibi Netanyahu this week you got to see this man’s unimpeachable logic at work, and he means it. He said Gaza should be given to the US to be developed into a resort.

And what about the millions of Gazans? Simple. Just force them to move to a new place in a neighboring country, which that country will pay for, and build them a new city to live in. It’s genius. All you have to do is commit a huge war crime by forcibly relocating an entire people, against their will, to free up some prime waterfront real estate for Israel.

Bibi was loving every minute of this bonkers plan, probably because if he had a choice he’d do exactly that. After all, it gets the Palestinians out of his hair even though they have a legitimate claim to the lands they live on and have had it for thousands of years. A technical detail.

There are a lot of those. For one thing, no neighboring country, including Arab states, wants anything to do with this goofy idea, nor will they pay for it. And the people of Gaza want to live in their homeland, not in some other country.

Trump’s press secretary later walked back most of these ridiculous claims, including stating that the US will not pay for any rebuilding, nor do we want Gaza for ourselves. This continues a pattern of Trump making grandiose statements and his people walking them back immediately afterwards, a pattern that has been typical throughout his life.

Netanyahu jumped all over this goofy plan, which surprised Trump’s own staff, and announced Israel will start work on getting Gazans out of their own land and shipping them off to who knows where. It’s just another example of Trump being manipulated by those around him for their own purposes, a la Elon.

Trump seems to think talking about something equates to actually doing it. Remember ‘Infrastructure Week’, his repeated claim to start investing in infrastructure in the US during his first term which never happened? Btw, his successor, Joe Biden, actually passed an infrastructure bill and invested in thousands of projects all over the country.

But we don’t want to talk about that. Remember, Joe Biden never actually did anything.

Today, after an outcry from countries all over the world, Trump backed off on the Gaza thing, which was never anything but an intentional distraction from what Trump and Elon Musk are doing as they recklessly disassemble the govenment.

This is a pattern and we cannot keep letting him do it. MAGA may find crazy Trump entertaining but the stuff going on is going to hit most of them the hardest and it going to be hard to undo.

If there is any good news, Elon Musk’s approval ratings have plummeted as he digs further and further into the government, unleashing his adolescent tech nerds into places and information they have no qualifications, clearances, or rights to access. That is a federal felony and maybe someone should tell those idiots they might be in big trouble.

Lawsuits are finally flying and judges who actually respect the law are trying to hold back the flood of crazy. That does not include the Supreme Court of the United States, which is corrupt and politically compromised, another example of how deep the Trump/Project 2025 goes.

As a person who writes about this stuff almost daily, it’s actually hard to keep up with the pace of the crap they are throwing at us. And that is the plan. Basically it becomes a game of whack a mole and I believe they think they can sneak various changes by us by hiding them in the confusion. They already bank on the intentional ignorance that has bloomed during the Trump era.

It got them back in the White House so don’t underestimate how deep in our society this willful ignorance goes. We were once taught that we had a civic responsibility to pay attention to what is going on in the country and to voice our concerns when things don’t look right. Apparently that kind of responsibility is just too much work for a lot of us.

There is some good news about that. The public access phone lines in Congress are being flooded with calls, nearly 1600 daily compared to a normal volume of around 40. I guess some people are finally waking up and realizing how bad things have gotten. It’s about time.

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Martin Edic