It's Going To Get Harder For Republicans To Win

The basic problem Republicans have is that they are heavily-reliant on Boomers, and every year there are fewer Boomers. The leading edge of the Boomers in this 2018 diagram (from the Calculated Risk blog) is the spike at age 72 (74 now in 2020), on the slippery slope to Forest Lawn. Buh bye, Republicans!

Grifters Gotta Grift

Republican dismay over Trump's defeat presents the golden grifting opportunity of the decade, and the grifters are scrambling:

Montgomery resurfaced in 2013, as a “confidential informant” for controversial Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Arpaio was embroiled in a federal case over his department’s treatment of Latino drivers, and furious at the federal judge who had ruled against him. According to reports and court testimony, Montgomery convinced Arpaio that he had a software called “Hammer” that could prove that the federal judge was colluding against Arpaio with the Justice Department and then-Attorney General Eric Holder.

Arpaio bought into Montgomery’s claims, even as Arpaio’s lawyers and detectives fumed that the “proof” Montgomery was providing about the judge was fake.

At one point, Arpaio reportedly exploded at his subordinates after they complained that he was wasting money on Montgomery and pointing out the controversy over Montgomery’s al Jazeera software. Still, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office paid Montgomery $120,000 for the data he provided Arpaio in his fight with the judge.

By 2017, with Trump supporters furious at the intelligence community and former FBI Director James Comey over the investigation into the Trump’s campaigns, Montgomery reinvented himself as an aggrieved intelligence whistleblower.

I Brought You Some E-Mails To Read

New Mexico's Sinkhole Problem

Manmade, as you might expect:

On a July morning in 2008, the ground below southeastern New Mexico began to shift and crack, shooting a huge plume of dust into the air. Within minutes, a massive sinkhole emerged, which eventually grew to roughly 120 feet deep and 400 feet in diameter.

“At the time, it was an unfortunate situation, but most people considered it to be a one-off,” says Jim Griswold, a special project manager with New Mexico’s Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department. But a few months later, in November, dust once again streamed toward the sky as another similarly sized sinkhole opened, cracking a nearby roadway.

Both holes — and later, a third in Texas — emerged at the site of brine wells, industrial wells through which freshwater is pumped into a subterranean layer of salt. The freshwater mixes with the salt, creating brine, which is brought to the surface for industrial purposes; in this case, oil drilling. After the second sinkhole emerged, Griswold’s department head gave him a new task: Characterize the stability of the state’s 30 other brine wells and report back on where the next crisis might arise.

What he found has been a source of near-constant worry for the past decade. While the first two sinkholes opened in remote areas, the next one, Griswold discovered, could hit the southern edge of Carlsbad: a city of 30,000 people.