California's Beach Lockdowns Could Continue Into Late-2021

I'm freakin' gobsmacked at the Democrats' tone-deaf politics here.

Remember from the other day, "Beach Lockdowns" (PHOTOS).

People are not wearing masks, and folks are only slightly better at "social distancing."

Tonight my young son and I went down to the Balboa Peninsula, in Newport, and it was the same thing again.

At the Wedge, the beach and the parks are closed and taped off. You can't even sit on a bench on the sidewalk. But people ignore the signs and few, if any, wear masks. And especially at Balboa, it's not just young people. Perhaps it's mostly local residents who pay local property taxes and feel like they own the place, but older couples were just cruising along without regard to the protocols set in Sacramento.

Which leads me to question recent polls showing overwhelming numbers of Californians down with the lockdown mandates, the distancing protocols, and especially the closed beaches. It's not just hippie protesters down in Huntington Beach. I suspect the numbers of anti-lockdown types are not shown in recent data. Here's the L.A. Times' piece from last week, which purported to show a 75 percent acceptance rate (or "approval rate," if you could call it that) of Governor Gavin Newsom's "stay-at-home" order: "Californians broadly trust state government on coronavirus — but mistrust Trump, poll finds."


The Times's poll, conducted along with the U.C. Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, uses a massive online panel of essentially non-randomized respondents. The I.G.S.'s methods disclaimer says that "stratification" techniques are used to adjust normally anticipated sampling errors, but of course less well-off respondents are already less likely to be included, and frankly, affluent Californians, especially at the beaches, have more time and knowledge important to political participation, and are thus more likely to give a big F.U. to Newsom's mandates. And given the dire straights of polling in recent years, in any case, folks should interpret these results with a large dose of salt.

And now the "experts" are saying it could be a year or more until Newsom's stay-at-home mandates are completely lifted. And about enforcement? No doubt the Newsom regime's "suede-denim secret police" will be coming for your "uncool niece."

See, from yesterday's paper, "California reopening would start slow, not be complete for a year or longer, expert estimates":

Ridiculous: #California reopening would start slow, not be complete for at least a year, expert estimates. @MelissaTweets #HuntingtonBeach #NewportBeach #TheOC 🏖☀️😷 https://t.co/efoS1GtXUH

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) May 4, 2020

SAN FRANCISCO —  So when might California be ready to really loosen up its statewide stay-at-home order?

One expert told The Times it would be a slow process that could take more than a year. But as some counties have pushed to reopen faster, Gov. Gavin Newsom is moving ahead with initial steps in the second stage of his previously outlined four-stage plan.

Newsom, who has said he understands frustrations with the projected pace of reopening, announced on Monday plans to allow some retail businesses to reopen as early as Friday for curbside pickup. And he said some counties would be able to move faster than others to reopen more types of businesses.

Some health experts on the local and national level have cautioned that some coronavirus restrictions — like sports teams not being allowed to play to packed stadium crowds — may need to continue through the rest of this year and into next year...

Stage 4: Full opening:

The full end of the stay-at-home order, allowing the resumption of:

* Sports with live audiences
* Convention centers
* Concerts

Expert forecast: This may not be implemented until the middle or latter part of 2021, Kim-Farley said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said that, even under the most optimistic scenarios, it would take 12 to 18 months for a vaccine to become available.

Last week, Fauci said it might not be possible for sports teams to resume play this year.

“Safety, for the players and for the fans, trumps everything,” Fauci said in an interview with the New York Times. “If you can’t guarantee safety, then unfortunately you’re going to have to bite the bullet and say, ‘We may have to go without this sport for this season.’”

Still more.

Orange County's beach communities are some of the last bastions of conservatism in the state, and yet Republicans still couldn't hold these seats in the 2018 midterm elections. As long as the Democrats maintain their one-party dictatorship in Sacramento, it's hard to see the overall political balance shifting any time soon.

We may be in for some more rowdy protests in the near future, and I'm not ruling out political violence if radical leftists refuse the kind of compromises necessary to govern such a diverse state, one with a large minority of gun-toting Gadsden flag-waving patriots. Talk about one "long, hot summer."

Beach Lockdowns

Here's the latest at LAT, "California stay-at-home order faces revolts at beaches and in rural communities," and "Surfers ignore barriers, protesters confront police on Orange County beaches."

I took my young son down to Corona Del Mar on Friday night to watch the sunset. It was spectacular. But everything was taped off. The grassy knolls were closed and you couldn't walk down the steps to the jetty. People in the crowd weren't wearing masks, especially younger people who were all devil may care. There was even some angry shaming going on. One woman was pissed when a group of men came back up the stairs and jumped over the rail, coming within one foot of her. I think she was right to call them out as rude, although she herself wasn't wearing a mask.

So, that's my little experience of heading down to the water during this pandemic. Maybe the beaches will open back up this week and I'll go for a long walk on the shore at Newport?

Newport Beach Votes to Keep Beaches Open (VIDEO)

At LAT, "Newport Beach council votes to keep beaches open, despite crowds and rebuke from Newsom."

And CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Newport Beach Looking to Shut Down After Weekend Surge of Visitors (VIDEO)

It was bound to happen. The crowds have been massive, it not completely out of control, sheesh.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Nazi Swastika at Newport Harbor High School Kegger Party

This is mind-boggling to me, but then, it's almost 75 years since the end of World War II and the defeat of the Nazis. Perhaps there's something to the effect of "historical amnesia" among today's youth. Still, the education system is doing Generation Z no favors. Sooner or later folks have to take responsibility, and some of these kids at the party could have their futures seriously effed up.

At the Los Angeles Times:

Teens involved in swastika party apologize as outrage grows. ‘My actions were disgusting’ https://t.co/6dZfYjXtXt

— L.A. Times: L.A. Now (@LANow) March 5, 2019

“Ignorance is the soil from which evil takes root. When we get to a point where it’s elected officials appearing in blackface in younger days and younger people today making light of the Holocaust, it shows an incredible stressor on the civic fault lines” https://t.co/NS77ss2f6W

— Hailey Branson-Potts (@haileybranson) March 6, 2019

When Kaitlyn saw the Snapchat photos of fellow Orange County teenagers posing around a swastika made of red Solo cups, she immediately posted a screenshot to social media, expecting outrage.

Instead, she got a mixed response. Some people were offended by the display. But others said they were more surprised by the outcry — arguing that students, some posed with their arms raised in Nazi salutes, were just joking.

“How can these kids who have been educated about [the Holocaust] still find it funny?” said Kaitlyn, a 17-year-old student at a private Jewish school in Irvine.

The Holocaust is a standard topic covered in history classes, and “The Diary of Anne Frank” is often required high school reading. But with time, knowledge of the Nazi atrocities among young people has decreased. And some darker ideas are filling the void.

A study commissioned last year by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany showed that 66% of U.S. millennials did not know what the Auschwitz concentration camp was. Four in 10 millennials thought 2 million or fewer Jewish people were killed during the Holocaust; the actual number is around 6 million.

For people born after 2000, post-millennials, the Holocaust feels less real, as they’re less likely to hear from the ever-dwindling number of survivors and WWII veterans, said Edward Dunbar, a UCLA clinical professor who has researched hate crimes and violence for two decades.

“These forms of atrocities are fading far into the distance for young non-adults, adolescents and teenagers, and it’s no closer than the Civil War would be for them,” Dunbar said.

Brian Levin, director of Cal State San Bernardino's Center on Hate and Extremism, said revisionist history about issues like the Holocaust can eventually lead to hate crimes.

What’s most disturbing about incidents like the Costa Mesa party last weekend, he said, is that most of the students likely are not “hardened bigots” but that Nazi symbols have become so mainstreamed that their meaning has been diluted.

“What’s scary is that there’s far more ignorance in America than evil, but ignorance is the soil from which evil takes root,” Levin said. “When we get to a point where it’s elected officials appearing in blackface in their younger days and younger people today making light of the Holocaust, it shows an incredible stressor on the civic fault lines.”

The Orange County incident comes as hate crimes are spiking nationwide. From 2014 to 2017, anti-Semitic hate crimes rose 54%, according to the FBI.

Particularly alarming, experts on hate and extremism said, is the rise in incidents on school campuses. In California, there was a 65% increase in hate crimes on elementary and secondary school campuses from 2012 to 2017, according to a report by the state’s Department of Justice.

There has been a huge jump in recent years of reported “papering” incidents on high school and college campuses, with hate groups posting fliers with slogans like, “It’s OK to be white” and “protect your heritage,” Levin said.

The Orange County teenagers, who were attending a Costa Mesa house party, were far from the only ones to have invoked Nazi iconography or gestures.

In December, students at Matilija Junior High School in Ojai lay down on a field in the shape of a swastika and shared a photo in a group chat that included racist comments. In 2016, a sophomore at Shadow Hills High School came to class dressed as a Nazi on Halloween, and the school held sensitivity training after pictures of her circulated on Twitter and Snapchat.

High school students in New Jersey, Florida, Kansas and Georgia have been punished in recent years after posting photos of a beer pong-style drinking game called “Jews versus Nazis,” in which teams arrange plastic cups in the shape of swastikas and the Star of David.

After Kaitlyn, who did not want her last name used out of concern she would be targeted online, posted screenshots from the party, a friend texted her screenshots showing a Snapchat conversation among some of the students at the house that night. They were making insensitive jokes about the Holocaust.

“Yaaaa no, phones gonna die,” one student wrote. “Just like the Jews.”

The students had titled the conversation “master race.”

One said to be at the party posted an Instagram story with what initially looked like an apology, saying he was “very sorry for my actions as I am guilty by association.” In the next image, he wrote that he was just joking, that “last night was awesome” and that he had “absolutely no sympathy” for anybody who was offended. He claimed to be Jewish. Then he deleted his account...

The Old Man and the Sea

I spent the day with my young son yesterday, cruising around for books, going out for pizza, and then topping off the afternoon with a stop in Newport Beach. My son was so excited to walk around the pier, see the fishermen and examine their catch, and, most of all, rekindle some memories of previous visits down to the water.

We've taken away my son's digital items for a couple of weeks, because he's been having issues. No cell phone. No iPad. No tablet. He can watch television, but there's no inter-connectivity, which is good. It's amazing how much fun it is to just unplug. He was joyous. You talk. You communicate. You reminisce about the good times and you create new memories. I love my son so much and want him to be healthy and happy. Disconnecting helps.

More later. Have a wonderful day.

Just got home from the beach. Hey, that’s the old man and the sea! #NewportBeach #California pic.twitter.com/QIHEwrppy3

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 27, 2017

Newport Beach Barbecue Competition (VIDEO)

The Kansas City BBQ Society's hosting the event.

God, that looks fabulous!

How Swimmer Survived Newport Beach Shark Attack (VIDEO)

Well, previous attack victims have survived by punching back twice as hard.

That's always good advice, in the water and in real life.

At the O.C. Register, "Shark attack survivor: Woman suffered one big bite across her body, a punctured lung and broken ribs":

She had wounds in a half circle across her torso, teeth marks from her upper right shoulder in the back to her pelvis in front and to the other side of her buttocks in the back.

Several ribs were fractured. A lung was punctured. She lost no less than a liter of blood. Doctors looked for teeth that might’ve still been in her body.

Maria Korcsmaros, a 52-year-old triathlete and mother of three, survived a shark attack Sunday in Corona del Mar.

She lived only because of her own quick thinking, strong work from a pair of Newport Beach lifeguards who luckily were close at hand, and medical experts who responded well to a trauma none had seen first-hand.

“It was life before limb,” said Dr. Philip Rotter, director of orthopedic trauma and chairman of orthopedics at Orange County Global Medical Center in Santa Ana.

Details of the attack emerged Tuesday as Rotter and other experts offered an inside look at what the swimmer endured Sunday and how she was treated.

They talked about how lifeguards pulled her from the water and treated her appropriately, and how emergency physicians and others later had to spring into action to treat a woman who had a tourniquet wrapped around her arm to slow the flow of blood spilling from her body.

Based on the description of the wound, local shark expert Chris Lowe, who runs The Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach, thinks the shark was an adult, likely more than 10 feet long.

“I can tell you that’s probably not a pup.”

As medical experts discussed the events that saved Korcsmaros, Newport Beach lifeguards on Tuesday re-opened beaches between Balboa Pier and the Wedge, a stretch of water closed to swimmers since the attack. Swimmers returned to the water around noon, after lifeguards had looked into the ocean from boats and from overhead, in a helicopter, to see if any sharks remain in the area.

Corona del Mar, where the attack occurred, was opened back up Wednesday morning.

Lifeguards also described what happened during the human-vs. shark rescue...

Keep reading.

Great White Shark Attack Closes Stretch of Beach in Corona del Mar (VIDEO)

Wow.

A great white too. That's major.

At the O.C. Register, "UPDATE: Newport Beach lifeguards spot possible shark bite victim in distress, rescue her."

And at CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "Beach Closed After Alleged Great White Shark Attack."

It's Going to Feel Like Summer This Weekend, and the Beaches Are Going to Be Packed (VIDEO)

Slather up the sunscreen and head down to the water, lol.

Watch, at CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "Hot Weekend Weather Is Expected to Pack the Beaches."

Orange County Beach News That Made National Headlines This Summer

This is really cool.

At the O.C. Register, "Shark selfies, dolphin attack and red crabs: Here are 5 weird things that happened at the beach this summer" (via Twitter):

Summer at the beach is one thing, usually an excellent thing.

But summer at the beach involving wayward sharks, and stinky crabs, and a dolphin jumping into a boat, and lightning - lightning? in July? -- keeping people off the sand?

That’s something only seen during summer at the beach, 2015.

So, today, as summer unofficially signs off, here’s a look at five of the beach events that made us scared, shocked, or even smile...

Keep reading.

15-Foot Waves at the Wedge in Newport Beach

It's been beautiful beach weather too.

At the O.C. Register, "The Wild Wedge puts on a show with waves reaching 15 feet and higher."

And at ABC-7 Los Angeles, "HUGE WAVES LURE BODYSURFERS, CROWDS TO NEWPORT BEACH."

Newport Beach Paddle Out for Hero Lifeguard Who Gave His Life

This was on Sunday.

What a story, at CBS News Los Angeles, "Paddle Out Held to Honor Lifeguard Who Drowned In the Line of Duty."

More, "Large Crowd Gathers to Honor Lifeguard Killed In the Line of Duty."

The lifeguard, Ben Carlson, saved the swimmer before he himself was overcome by the heavy surf.

Corona del Mar High School Cracks Down on NFL-Style 'Prom Draft'

Because it "objectifies" girls and exacerbates the school's culture of "entitlement."

Kinda like white privilege, I guess.

At the O.C. Register, "High school boys hold 'draft' to pick prom dates":

In a world where asking a date to prom has become more romantic than asking for a partner’s hand in marriage, one group of high school boys has gone the opposite direction.

For years, junior and senior boys at Corona del Mar High School have selected their dates for the formal dance through an NFL-style “Prom Draft.” The school’s principal is now condemning the tradition, saying it has the potential to objectify or judge those involved.

Though the draft is not affiliated with the school and secret for the most part, some of the draft results were broadcast on Twitter, with pictures of sport-coated teens making their selections. One tweet posted by the senior class Twitter account joked the day before Thursday’s draft that “Many drafters on the prowl tomorrow for #freeagents so dress nice ladies.”

A rule book sent out in a tweet notes that “sophomores can be drafted,” and some pictures show girls’ names printed on the back of jerseys. The Twitter account has since been deactivated, but several students continued to chatter about it on Twitter in the days following the draft.

Sophomore Jessie Harris was one of the girls included in the draft and said the negative coverage it generated on Tuesday was unnecessary.

“I am part of the draft and am friends with many girls in the draft and yes, in some instances girls can be picked by appearance,” she wrote to the Register. “It is all just a fun way to decide who you will be going to prom with. It is not meant to harm those who are picked and I do not believe that it does. It is not, was never, and will never ever be used to objectify the girls at our school.”

Wow. Even the chicks on campus dig it. But hey, never let a little teenage prom-date innovation get in the way of good old bureaucratic authoritarianism!

Wait, the nearby Estancia High School campus feminists took to the barricades to denounce the objectification. Oh the humanity!

At neighboring Estancia High School, also in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, a club dedicated to discussing women’s rights issues released a statement saying the draft was “insulting.”

“Prom should be about having a fun time with your peers and celebrating the end of a successful academic year,” wrote senior Emily Flores, co-president of the Feminists United club at Estancia. “These boys must be very confused about the time we live in if they think that being asked to prom is such a high honor.”

Remember, this is Newport-Mesa Unified School District, afflicted by de facto segregation, so it's about inequality and the white hegemonic patriarchy!

I think this post is gonna qualifies for National Offend a Feminist Week, lol! (Indeed, no doubt Emily Flores is lesbian, heh.)

More at LAT, "Prom draft: Newport Beach boys rented venue to pick dates."

Nonprofit Fundraising Groups Promoting Inequality at Newport-Mesa Unified School District

If you listened to Shanta Driver's comments on Sunday, much of her argument for affirmative action rests on the idea that K-12 education is "segregated" and inherently unequal for students of color. Nowhere have I heard her distinguish between de jure and de facto segregation (she can't because to do so would drain the emotionalism right out of her arguments), although if she had any intellectual credibility she might discuss the real ways in which de facto patterns of racial imbalance create economic differences among students in public education.

I've been worried about these problems for a long time. I teach lots of students who come from majority-minority public schools (a real problem in Long Beach), and it's just one more factor that explains their inadequate academic preparation and difficulties in achieving student success. (This is, in fact, the main problem facing my college as an institution, but as noted the cause is not just de facto school segregation).

In any case, a fascinating example that I've been closely familiar with for a long time is the Newport-Mesa Unified School District. Newport Beach is one of the most affluent cities in the state, in not the country. And right next door is Costa Mesa, a nice city, very beautiful, but extremely diverse and a longtime magnet for recent immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. I often refer to it as the O.C.'s "Little Santa Ana."

Sunday's Costa Mesa Daily Pilot ran a great front-page report on this, "Unintended consequence of foundation groups: inequality":

The median income in Newport Beach hovered around $109,677, according to U.S. Census data collected between 2008 and 2012, whereas it was $65,373 in Costa Mesa for the same time period.

In Newport-Mesa Unified, there are 13 foundations serving schools on an individual level. Out of the 20 schools in Costa Mesa, there are four foundations serving Costa Mesa Middle School and High School, TeWinkle Middle School and Estancia High School, Kaiser Elementary and Woodland Elementary, and California Elementary. The nonprofits raised about $484,000 in 2012, according to tax forms.

There are nine foundations serving the 12 schools in Newport Beach. In all, they raised about $3.6 million in 2012, according to the organizations' tax forms.

The only group that funds all of the district's schools is the Newport-Mesa Schools Foundation, which provides money to individual teachers through a grant program, said Barbara Harrington, president of the Newport-Mesa Schools Foundation.

In 2012, the organization raised slightly more than $1 million, according to tax forms.

When the Newport-Mesa Schools Foundation was first formed in the 1980s, it raised money to provide services like extra music teachers and instruments for schools, similar to how current foundations operate at individual campuses, Harrington said.

However, more-affluent communities became upset that they were raising money for teachers on the poorer side of town, she said. In response, the organization changed the way it operates.

"If you try to equalize it, and people see that more money is coming from the Eastside and funding the poorer areas, you'd find that people on the Eastside wouldn't give as much the next year," she said.

While the pockets may not be as deep in some Costa Mesa schools compared with Newport Beach communities, student education doesn't suffer, DeVusser said.

"We don't have a foundation that sits behind us and asks us what we need," he said. "We do have incredible teachers that work every day to make sure kids are receiving a quality education, regardless of where they live."

The Costa Mesa High School Foundation has been expanding in recent years in order to access more donors and be comparable to other foundations in more-affluent areas, said Foundation President and Newport-Mesa Board Trustee Katrina Foley.

Foundations have proven to help schools deal with education cutbacks handed down from the state in recent years, she said.

"Foundations should come in and pay for the extras," she said. "We need to get back to that."

So, while you can see the clear disparities in economic resources between the Newport Beach schools and those of Costa Mesa, the fact remains that even if spending were 100 percent equal on all the money raised by the nonprofits, educational performance among the Newport Beach students would far surpass the performance of kids in Costa Mesa schools. The reasons for this are found in the intangible factors that regressive leftists refuse to talk about. Things like the breakdown of the family in minority communities, illiteracy (particularly among poorer minority families and recent immigrant children), and cultural disadvantages that have longstanding bases in the natural dynamics of social strata in American society. Very little of these things can be changed by equalizing funding. Change has to come about through larger public policies that strengthen families and communities among very traditional and conservative lines. In a word, "values" matter. There will be little improvement in educational outcomes among the disadvantaged until regressive leftists stop blaming "structural inequality," "racism," and "white privilege," and start building families and communities from the bottom up, along the lines of upward mobility that have marked successful ethnic groups throughout American history.