High overcast this early Monday on California’s parched northern coast, and after summer weather the last last few weeks, rain, precious wet rain, is expected this week — 60 percent chance tonight and tomorrow, and up to 90 percent by Thursday.
We need it — and the nefarious workings of Republicans need it. Unable to do anything with regular living, they’ve turned to the drought for a mid-term election boost.
But we’re familiar with this shit: “This is a political stunt,” said Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), a veteran of the state’s water tensions. “Their argument is so stupid.”

(Illustration: The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) for North America, found here).

Stupid is good for the GOP. They’ve been running on the stupid platform for years — and right now Republicans are so screwed up, they’ve got three different responses geared for tomorrow night’s State of the Union speech by President Obama. One official rejoinder, one from the Tea Party, and one from Rand Paul, for whatever lunacy he can articulate.
Meanwhile, here in California the GOP is going after blood with water tales — although the title of a Web page devoted to the state’s water problems, “The Man-Made California Drought,” is correct in its statement (climate change, yo!), Republicans are all politics.
Yesterday, from the LA Times:

Up and down the state’s increasingly dry Central Valley, Republicans have pounded away at the argument that Democratic policies — particularly environmental rules — are to blame for the parched fields and dwindling reservoirs that threaten to bankrupt farms and wipe out jobs.
In his latest campaign video, Republican Doug Ose stands in the middle of dried-out Folsom Lake.
At a mere 17 percent capacity, the usually scenic reservoir favored by boaters and sunbathers looks like the set of “Mad Max.”
As the camera pans, Ose declares, “We’re facing a real crisis.”
“Where’s our representative?” he demands, referring to Rep. Ami Bera, a freshman Democrat elected in 2012 on a razor-thin margin, whom he hopes to unseat this fall.
House Speaker John A. Boehner joined the effort recently, flying to Bakersfield and promising to shepherd legislation through the House to divert some of the state’s dwindling water supply to farmers.
“When you come to a place like California, and you come from my part of the world, you just shake your head and wonder what kinds of nonsense does the bureaucracy do out here?” the Ohio Republican said, referring to the long-running diversion of millions of gallons from farms to the habitats of endangered fish.
“How you can favor fish over people is something that people from my part of the world never understand,” he said.
…
Across the state’s agricultural heart, crisis is bearing down.
Laborers face unemployment, and the owners of small companies that rely on a robust farming industry are panicked.
The GOP is leveraging their anger.
Until now, “nobody cared,” said Tony Quinn, an editor of the California Target Book, which handicaps political races.
“In a drought, all of a sudden there is rationing, there is no boating, no fishing.
People are told not to flush when they pee in the toilet.
We’ll be going through all that. People begin to pay attention.”
“Republicans are looking for an issue in this very Democratic state,” Quinn added.
“Congressional candidates throughout the Central Valley are going to seize on this.”
…
The political advantage exists even though the plan Boehner unveiled last week, which would give more water to farms and less to habitat conservation, stands almost no chance of becoming law.
The Brown administration dismisses the proposal as crude and potentially catastrophic, and its odds in the Democratic-controlled Senate are about nil.
Leading Democrats argue that the Republican proposals ignore the reality that California’s water woes are complex and caused by diverse issues.
Among them are gambles that agricultural interests took when they invested heavily in operations that rely on unstable water supplies.
Relaxing of endangered species protections would not necessarily free up any water amid a drought this severe.
Moreover, Democrats note, proposals to fund large water conservation and recycling programs have foundered in the GOP-controlled House.

All Republicans are doing is all they’ve been doing the last five years — whine and slobber over points that make noise, but actually do little if anything for the problem.
The GOP plan-of-action comes this week when they will introduce legislation in Sacramento to temporarily stop the San Joaquin River restoration, keep the Sacramento-San Joaquin pumps operating and establish a special 10-member House and Senate committee, among other bullshit. The scheme will pit farmer-vs-farmer and the northern part of the state-vs-the south, sowing bad feelings — which Republicans seem to savor.
Via the Fresno Bee, and reality: “Sucking the delta dry is not the answer to California’s water issues,” says Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, adding that the pending Republican proposal “will only create further discord.”

And with Obama’s State of the Union speech, it will be another word war — from Time magazine:

Obama’s oratory has always been the most powerful weapon in the White House arsenal, able to change conventional wisdom, unstick public opinion and embarrass recalcitrant opponents.
But after 10 years in the national spotlight, four State of the Union speeches and a tendency to rely too heavily on speechmaking when in a bind, the novelty is fading.
“The fact is that the oratory and the communicating skills are just not what they used to be. They peaked maybe during the ’08 campaign, and he hasn’t been able to match that because it’s not new anymore,” says Kenneth Khachigian, Ronald Reagan’s chief speechwriter for the second State of the Union address in Reagan’s second term.
“People are used to it. It’s not a knock on him or his speechwriters. It’s that familiarity breeds contempt.”

And the GOP bathes in contempt, dry-sand-showers with lots of rain dancing on tiptoes.

(Illustration out front found here).