I apologize deeply and unreservedly for stupid and tactless remarks about Keynes that I made on Thursday bit.ly/13cZ6B7
— Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) May 4, 2013
Fire crewsthat have worked 24 hour-shifts wait for relief crews this morning at #springsfire #kpcc twitter.com/ReporterSteph/…
— Stephanie O'Neill (@ReporterSteph) May 4, 2013
Scott Dettorre was a young firefighter in 1993 when the infamous Green Meadow wildfire swept through, leaving a path of destruction from Ventura County to Malibu.More at the top link. Check back for updates.
The fire, which destroyed 53 homes and consumed 44,000 acres, caught firefighters unprepared and prompted officials to rethink the way they fight blazes driven by fierce Santa Ana winds.
This week, Dettorre helped lead the battle against the Springs fire, which like the devastating 1993 blaze covered a wide swath of the county. Dettorre, now a captain, said crews fought the blaze much differently this time.
It's a game plan that as of Friday evening was showing signs of success. Although the fire licked against several subdivisions and hillside estates, it has largely remained confined to rugged wildlands and agricultural zones.
"With this fire, having experienced Green Meadow, our commanding officers realized much sooner that we were not going to get ahead of this fire," he said Friday. "Consequently, we were able to put plans in place to minimize damage to a much greater extent. It is the lessons of Green Meadow that is allowing us to do what we are doing out here."
The fire, which had burned more than 28,000 acres by Friday evening, ignited Thursday morning amid historically dry conditions and strong Santa Ana winds considered unusual for May.
Fire officials quickly determined that the leading edge of the fire was too dangerous to confront head-on.
"It became apparent very quickly that this fire was going to overwhelm us," Dettorre said. "Instead of us being able to outflank the fire, the fire was outflanking us and putting all of the fire personnel in grave danger."
Harvard Professor and author Niall Ferguson says John Maynard Keynes' economic philosophy was flawed and he didn't care about future generations because he was gay and didn't have children.Okay, yes.
Speaking at the Tenth Annual Altegris Conference in Carlsbad, Calif., in front of a group of more than 500 investors, Ferguson responded to a question about Keynes' famous philosophy of self-interest versus the economic philosophy of Edmund Burke, who believed there was a social contract among the living, as well as the dead. Ferguson asked the audience how many children Keynes had. He explained that Keynes had none because he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of "poetry" rather than procreated. The audience went quiet at the remark. Some attendees later said they found the remarks offensive.
It gets worse.
Ferguson, who is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, and author of The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, says it's only logical that Keynes would take this selfish worldview because he was an "effete" member of society. Apparently, in Ferguson's world, if you are gay or childless, you cannot care about future generations nor society.
This takes gay-bashing to new heights. It even perversely pins the full weight of the financial crisis on the gay community and the barren.
Not only is this intellectually void, it's mad. And anyone with a moral conscience should be outraged. It is one thing to take issue with a society fueled by self interest and one fueled by a larger ethic. But it's entirely vulgar to make this argument about sexual preference -- and to do so glibly.
The results aren’t all in yet, but it’s obvious what’s happening: Ukip are the moral victors in yesterday’s local elections. A party that was just two men on a golf cart ten years ago has placed second in South Shields and won county seats across the country. A few early observations:RTWT.
1. The Lib Dems are at risk of becoming politically irrelevant. In South Shields they came seventh, a pathetic result for a governing party.
2. Ukip have helped to smash the BNP. By providing a non-racist Right-wing alternative, they reduced the BNP’s result in the Spalding East and Moulton ward in Lincolnshire from 20.5 per cent in 2009 to just 3.9 per cent today.
3. Labour did well but its gains were only modest. It held South Shields (the kind of seat that a donkey in a red rosette could win) but on a lower majority. Miliband is not popular in southern England and that will prove a problem in 2015.
4. Dan Hannan’s dream of a Ukip/Conservative coalition might actually happen in Lincolnshire and Gloucestershire – a fascinating laboratory for any future pact.
But the big story is the rise and rise of a tiny party once derided by its critics as full of fruitcakes and closet racists. It probably won’t gain any parliamentary seats in 2015: the electoral system is stacked against it and while Ukip’s support is broad, it isn’t deep enough in individual constituencies to win anything. This doesn’t seem to trouble Nigel Farage who says that he sees his party as playing the same role that the SDP played in the 1980s – driving the political agenda in his preferred direction.
Guns galore twitter.com/EmilyMiller/st…
— Emily Miller (@EmilyMiller) May 3, 2013
Gov. Rick Perry sat back in shock when I told him President Obama told Mexicans that an upside of his efforts to infringe the Second Amendment would be to make them safer. The Texas Republican, a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), pushed back his chair and thought before speaking.Continue reading.
“The idea that a United States president would go to Mexico and make that statement is incredulous,” the 2012 president candidate told me in an interview after his rousing speech at the NRA annual meeting in Houston Friday. “His goal — well before he became president of the United States — was to try to disarm the American public. He just disregards the Constitution.”
The video of a relative of a victim of the Newtown massacre confronting Senator Kelly Ayotte at a New Hampshire town hall meeting has been all over the cable news channels, as the effort to shame those who opposed efforts to expand background checks for gun purchases escalated this week. Other objects of the increasingly aggressive gun-control lobby like Arizona Senator Jeff Flake have also been subjected to attempts by gun violence victims’ relatives to embarrass him for voting against the Manchin-Toomey amendment. But if these supporters of gun-control bills are really interested in getting something passed, they should listen to one of the measure’s co-sponsors.Continue reading.
It’s like legalization is a magnet or something. But we know that can’t be true because we were repeatedly told by amnesty advocates that illegal aliens would not show up just because we promised to legalize them.Image Credit: The People's Cube.
But someone neglected to tell them that.
Arrests of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States have nearly tripled in recent months — in anticipation of Congressional efforts to enact comprehensive immigration legislation, border patrol agents told CBS News Wednesday.
“Once the first group gets across, they call their family, they call their friends and let them know, ‘Hey the time is right, come on over,’” Border Patrol agent and union representative Chris Cabrera told CBS News.
In March, 7,500 illegals were arrested in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas — which includes McAllen — Cabrera told CBS News. That’s up from 2,800 in January.
In February, nearly 4,800 illegals were arrested in the Rio Grande, the local news website The Monitor.com reports.
In fact, agents in McAllen used their station’s carport to process nearly 900 illegals caught over three days in March, according to the Monitor.com.
#SpringsFire:#PointMagu State #Park on #PCH. twitter.com/RobertNBCLA/st…
— Robert Kovacik (@RobertNBCLA) May 3, 2013
The Southern California wildfire season got off to an ominous start Thursday with a massive brush fire in Ventura County that officials fear is just a preview of dangerous months ahead.
The fire showed in dramatic fashion how the region's record dry conditions and lack of rainfall can quickly combine with fierce Santa Ana winds to produce widespread havoc.
Firefighters said the dry winter and spring left the brush much more combustible than they've ever seen it at this time of year. Weather forecasters said the Santa Ana wind conditions Thursday produced gusts topping 60 mph. Those are speeds significantly above normal for May and more common for the fall, when the Santa Anas are at their strongest.
Thousands fled from several communities Thursday morning as flames consumed bone-dry terrain, devouring more than 6,500 acres in just a few hours. Humidity levels dropped to as low as 4%. Walls of flames — some topping 20 feet — bore down on homes and licked up against the side of the 101 Freeway. Temperatures topped 90 degrees.
The heavy winds forced officials to ground air tankers battling the so-called Springs fire, putting more pressure on weary firefighters. Helicopters continued with water drops, and ground crews made several tense stands that prevented flames from getting into subdivisions in Camarillo and Newbury Park.
"It's very unpredictable. Winds are swirling and twisting, and we don't know what way it's going to turn," said Ventura County Fire Department spokesman Tom Kruschke.
With only about 5 inches of rain since last July, Los Angeles is headed toward its fourth-driest year since 1877.
For most women a police mug shot is the most humiliating photograph that will ever be taken.More at the link.
In recent months, photographs of celebrities such as Reese Witherspoon and Lindsay Lohan have been forced to pose for the mandatory 'booking in' picture at the police station. But these pictures of 10 women arrested in the U.S. have shown that some women have managed to maintain their looks in their mug shots.
Why are phony "hate crimes" so common, especially on college campuses? We'd like to go through a few obvious answers, all of which have merit, and then delve a bit deeper into the psychology of such incidents.Continue reading.
One obvious answer is that people do this sort of thing to get attention. Multicultural identity politics, which is a dominant force on campus and a significant one off it, creates a perverse incentive structure by rewarding victims of purported hate and going easy on hoaxers. In March Michelle Malkin wrote of an incident in which her alma mater, Ohio's Oberlin College, experienced a rash of racist graffiti.
The college president and three deans "ostentatiously published an 'open letter' announcing the administration's decision to 'suspend formal classes and non-essential activities.' " The incident drew national media coverage--but the denouement didn't: "After arresting two students involved in the spate of hate messages left around campus, police say 'it is unclear if they were motivated by racial hatred or--as has been suggested--were attempting a commentary on free speech.' "
Lanker-Simons, unsurprisingly, turns out to be quite the left-wing activist herself. The Boomerang reports that in 2010 she successfully sued the university challenging its decision to bar domestic terrorist and presidential pal Bill Ayers from speaking on campus. But this time around, the university's position vis-Ã -vis Lanker-Simons isn't exactly an adversarial one...
