When Trump announced his run for president in 2015, he (in)famously boasted:
“I will build a great wall—and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me—and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”
https://time.com/5499391/donald-trump-border-wall-mexico-pay/
RIIIGGGHHHTTT …
Sadly, the courts had allowed Trump to ignore environmental laws during the wall’s construction, and that mistake proved to be its undoing. As the old Chiffon margarine ad goes: “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”
Trump’s US-Mexico border wall was no match for the heavy rains and accompanying flooding that happened this past week in Southern Arizona. They destroyed a large section of TFG’s wall along the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge.
Rain measurements near Douglas, AZ (closest town to the wall) showed 290 cubic-feet of water moving through the area every second – that’s equivalent to 112,200 gallons of water every minute. And it was calculated the storm surge could have reached a height of 25 feet!
Flood gates are common across sections of the wall along the Arizona-Mexico border. Agents must manually raise the gates to protect the steel barriers from thousands of gallons of floodwater laden with sediment, rocks, and tree limbs that can otherwise pile up to create a dam, with the power of the water overwhelming and toppling parts of the border wall.
http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/082121_border_wall_damaged/monsoon-floods-damage-border-wall-near-douglas/
Gizmodo blamed the failure on rushed construction and an alleged bypassing of environmental regulations. “Who could have predicted this? Ah yes, just about everyone,” author Brian Kahn penned in the article.
https://gizmodo.com/trumps-border-wall-torn-apart-by-arizona-monsoon-rains-1847535174
[Not sure why, but this video showing the results of the flooding cannot be embedded. You have to click on it to view it.]
https://youtu.be/rvPVYHeVaYc
I want to close on an upbeat note. While things have not gone as well with our exit from Afghanistan as we would have hoped, there were some bright notes.
America’s men and women in uniform have, once again, covered themselves in glory with displays of care and compassion – particularly with Afghani children.
I could not find attributions for these – but I want to include them anyway:
Of course it wasn’t only with children that they displayed their compassion. And I’m sure you join me in thanking them for their service – they did us proud!