Words fail to describe the disaster unfolding before us so I’ll try a picture from the Texas Department of Transportation.

The dark blue symbols with the slash through it are road closures; the light blue circles are flooding.  To give non-Texans a sense of scale, the east-west distance of this map is over 300 miles.  So far, thousands of homes have been inundated.  Tens of thousands of people are out of their homes.  The ENTIRE Texas National Guard has been activated with over 12,000 personnel mobilized.  The US Coast Guard has brought HALF of its US helicopter fleet to the Houston metro area.  The shelter at the George R. Brown Convention Center is now near capacity with 5,000 people who’ve lost their homes, and shelters all over the area are running full.  Gasoline shortages are just right around the corner since most of the refineries here are shut down; both of the metro areas major airports are still shut down.

The only word that begins to capture this disaster is unprecedented. Unfortunately, one word that can’t be used is unexpected.  This is what happens when you pave over hundreds of square miles of land that was once prairie.  This is what happens when you build homes on top of watershed and up against major rivers and bayous.  This is the expected result of unbridled development without appropriate oversight for infrastructure.  We’re finally reaping the result of what we have sown for years, and if we’re honest, there is major work to be done beyond simply repair these thousands of homes and buildings.

We’ll see if our elected officials will follow through after the television lights turn off.

Customer Rob just sent me this picture of one of our badass first responders.

Houston SWAT officer Daryl Hudeck carries Catherine Pham and her son 13-month-old son Aiden to safety after they were rescued via boat from the flooding on Interstate 610 south in Houston on Sunday, August 27, 2017. (Louis DeLuca/The Dallas Morning News)

So, if I have to call somebody to come get me, y’all send Daryl.

We are still dry and have electricity this morning.  That puts us in the top 1%.  Thousands of my friends and neighbors are under mandatory evacuation today because the Brazos River (which is one unforgiving sumbitch of a river) will hit 59 feet tomorrow night.  That’s higher than any flood in recorded history.

We have been told to stay put.  We do have a second floor.

Let me tell you what a good man I married. You know about our Republican neighbors across the street.  They are so typical of Republicans – haughty and oh so much smarter than anyone else.  We don’t chat much.  Well, they are in their 80’s, so Bubba walked across the street in the rain and told them if it flooded, they would be welcome to come to our house since we have a second floor.  They said that they appreciated the offer, but you could tell it would just kill them to ask a Democrat for help because Republicans are so damn self-sufficient and can take care of themselves.

Our neighbor beside us is the one who asked us not to have so many Muslims come to our house because Muslims are ordered by their God to kill us all.  That guy can drown.  I don’t care.

Sorry about the lack of news but we ain’t getting any news here.  But, Nick Anderson did this cartoon.

Yesterday morning, as the slow motion disaster in Houston was unfolding, Donald Trump demonstrated for the 1,348th time since January his absolute tone deafness and poor self control by pushing Post on this tweet:

That’s correct, folks…while the sun was rising on the biggest disaster in the history of Houston, Trump was plugging a book written by his buddy, David Clarke, sheriff in Milwaukee Wisconsin, who is well known for his cruel treatment of prisoners, encouraging the guns everywhere culture and for festooning his uniform with meaningless lapel pins to make himself look highly decorated.  Trump nominated Clarke to the Department of Homeland Security, a job he declined after the ensuing uproar.

So, Trump is plugging his friend’s book on Twitter on the day that Houston was going underwater, people were dying, and thousands of homes were being abandoned.  Thanks, Donnie J, for keeping your priorities straight.

9 TRILLION TONS OF WATER DUMPED BY HARVEY.

Oh no, oh, NO.

Donald Trump is coming to strut around hurricane damage and where the damn fool tarnation do you think he’s going?

Oh yeah, his guide is gonna be Blake Stinkin’ Farenthold.

I am not kidding.  I wish the hell I were.

Ducky Boy says …

“I might be of a little bit of value to the president because I grew up in this area and can provide some context,” he added.

Sure you can, Blake, and Trump needs it.  “See this tree laying on the ground with no leaves on it?  Well, it used to be standing.  See this building with no front on it.  It used to have a front.  See that house with only the roof sticking out of the water? That water wasn’t there a week ago.”

Trump knows for damn sure he better not come to Houston.  He’d baptize him and not in the nice way.  Hell, if he sets foot in Houston, we’d have to skim nasty off the flood water for weeks and we just don’t have time.

So Trump is going to Corpus to talk about the size of his inaugural crowd.  Just what we need.

Y’all, Anna the Geek sent me this link early this morning to let me know I am not the only one having misery.

The White House communications team’s rapid response director, 31-year-old Andy Hemming, resigned on Monday. National news outlets probably knew him best as “that guy who tried to find positive news stories about Trump.”

This isn’t an uncommon role, but Hemming’s job reportedly included delivering a folder full of positive news articles twice a day to Trump. According to Politico, Hemming was paid “$89,000 a year to spot and distribute positive stories from the mainstream media.” He worked from 5:30AM to 11PM every weekday.

That poor guy could come to Houston to vacation this week and think it’s an improvement over his past job.

I am fine, and I tend to feel a little guilty about that.  My friends and neighbors in the path of Harvey are not so good.  I know the word catastrophic is overused right now, but I don’t know a better one.  This is Katrina.  People are on the roofs of their homes, big fancy two story homes included.  Hospitals are packed and the largest trauma center (Ben Taub) has backed-up septic system.  Even outside of the flooding, the roads are not holding up well. This is the road I take to the grocery store.

This is why they are telling people to stay home if they can.

It will take Houston years to recover.  On the plus side, we have a good mayor and county judge.  We also have a sense of humor and a whole lot of guys with flat bottom boats who just live for this so they can go rescue people.