At Celeb Jihad, "Gal Gadot Mile High Scene."
I remember during the promotions for the first "Wonder Woman," when in one interview Ms. Gadot asked, "Do you like my breasts?"
Well, now I can definitely say, yes, I like them, dang!
Tuesday, February 16, 2021
What Went Wrong With the Texas Power Grid?
If you read my previous post, and clicked through at the W.S.J., some folks were apparently roaming the streets, wrapped in blankets, looking for food like a scene from "The Road."
And again, it's Texas, for crying out loud! Tucker Carlson was saying last night that if you're out of power in Texas, and families are freezing (and some folks have died), it'd be like starving to death inside a grocery store. Man, I'm still shaking my head.
At the Houston Chronicle:
Millions of Texans were without heat and electricity Monday as snow, ice and frigid temperatures caused a catastrophic failure of the state’s power grid. The Texas power grid, powered largely by wind and natural gas, is relatively well equipped to handle the state’s hot and humid summers when demand for power soars. But unlike blistering summers, the severe winter weather delivered a crippling blow to power production, cutting supplies as the falling temperatures increased demand. Natural gas shortages and frozen wind turbines were already curtailing power output when the Arctic blast began knocking generators offline early Monday morning. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which is responsible for scheduling power and ensuring the reliability of the electrical network, declared a statewide power generation shortfall emergency and asked electricity delivery companies to reduce load through controlled outages. More than 4 million customers were without power in Texas, including 1.4 million in the Houston area, the worst power crisis in the state in a decade. The forced outages are expected to last at least through part of Tuesday, the state grid manager said. CenterPoint Energy, the regulated utility that delivers electricity to Houston-area homes and provides natural gas service, started rolling blackouts in the Houston region at the order of state power regulators. It said customers experiencing outages should be prepared to be without power at least through Monday. “How long is it going to be? I don’t know the answer,” said Kenny Mercado, executive vice president at the Houston utility. “The generators are doing everything they can to get back on. But their work takes time and I don’t know how long it will take. But for us to move forward, we have got to get generation back onto the grid. That is our primary need.” Dan Woodfin, ERCOT’s senior director of system operations, said the rolling blackouts are taking more power offline for longer periods than ever before. An estimated 34,000 megawatts of power generation — more than a third of the system’s total generating capacity — had been knocked offline by the extreme winter weather amid soaring demand as residents crank up heating systems. The U.S. Energy Department, in response to an ERCOT request, issued an order late Monday authorizing power plants throughout the state to run at maximum output levels, even if it results in exceeding pollution limits. Ed Hirs, an energy fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Houston, blamed the failures on the state’s deregulated power system, which doesn’t provide power generators with the returns needed to invest in maintaining and improving power plants. “The ERCOT grid has collapsed in exactly the same manner as the old Soviet Union,” said Hirs. “It limped along on underinvestment and neglect until it finally broke under predictable circumstances.
Winter Storm Creates Havoc Across the U.S. (VIDEO)
I was in Houston in November, and it was very pleasant weather. If someone would have told me then that an arctic freeze was to descent over the city in February, I'd have been a bit credulous. But it's all out there to see now, and some folks on Twitter have been sharing their experiences of trying to keep warm.
Rolling blackouts? In Texas? We get those in California, because, of course, the once-"Golden State" isn't so golden anymore. But Texas is a fossil fuels powerhouse, so it's gotta hurt, more than the chilling freeze.
Millions of Americans were without power Tuesday after a winter storm brought snow, ice, blackouts and record-setting low temperatures to swaths of the U.S. Nearly 75% of the Lower 48 states of the U.S. was under snow cover, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Snow Analysis daily report, including many places rarely hit by inclement weather. A week ago, 45% of the Lower 48 was under snow. The snow, as well as freezing rain, created travel concerns from the eastern Great Lakes to New England on Tuesday morning, according to the National Weather Service. The Mississippi Department of Transportation said there were reports of ice on roads and bridges in 74 counties in the state. Dangerously cold wind chills from Arctic air are expected to linger over the Great Plains and Mississippi Valley through midweek, the weather service said, adding that a new winter storm was emerging in the Southern Plains and would head toward the mid-South on Wednesday. On Monday night, a tornado struck Brunswick County, N.C., killing three people, according to the county Sheriff’s Office. With electrical grids facing strain because of the extreme weather, rolling blackouts have been instituted in a number of states. Over five million customers across the U.S. were without electricity on Tuesday morning, according to PowerOutage.US. More than 4.5 million of those outages were in Texas, the website said. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s electricity grid, began calling for rotating outages overnight on Sunday to avoid widespread blackouts. But the severe power shortages forced companies to curtail power beyond short rolling blackouts, with many customers losing electricity for much of the day. Water utilities were also affected by the weather, with some cities urging residents to boil water to make it safe to drink, even though they have no power. President Biden declared a state of emergency in Texas after receiving a request from Gov. Greg Abbott, allowing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate all disaster-relief efforts. Mr. Abbott also sent the National Guard to conduct welfare checks and assist with emergency operations across the state...
Sunday, February 14, 2021
'China's Bitch Mitch' — Statement After Trump's Acquittal (VIDEO)
AoSHQ has some choice words about some conservative "cucks," including "China's Bitch" Mitch McConnel.
The "cucks" at Hot Air also come in for some hilarious thrashing as well.
Good times, lol.
'Burning Love'
Since I'm not driving much during the pandemic, I don't listen to the radio like I used to. But Friday I was taking my wife over to get her car serviced, and she has satellite radio in her car, and Elvis Presley's "Burning Love" came on. Elvis wasn't really "my generation," but I do remember "Burning Love" playing on the radio back when I was about 12-years-old, so that's the story.
The song was a "top-ten" hit, and the video's a real throwback, heh.
Slate Star Codex? The New York Times Slammed Again for Shoddy, Muckrake 'Journalism'
I guess it really was (is) a bad week for the Old Gray Lady, as I argued yesterday, here: "The 'Woke' Takeover at the New York Times Facing Pushback."
The NYT author is Cade Metz, who I've never heard of before, but who was getting slammed yesterday on Twitter, along with his newspaper, for an article on Scott Alexander, a psychiatrist by training who blogged at Slate Star Codex (which I only vaguely recall, and that's after myself being immersed in online debates and flame wars for over a decade; so you can see, perhaps, that a lot of NYT's reporting here is "inside baseball," and one of the biggest critiques of Metz is that he gets just about everything wrong at the article, entitled "Silicon Valley’s Safe Space.")
Below is Alexander's own response, at his Substack blog, as well a screenshot with some criticism pulled from Twitter earlier. (I can't seem to cut and paste from Alexander's Substack blog, and maybe that's by design, considering.)
See, "Statement on the New York Times Article."
Lisa Murkowski Readies to Face Impeachment Vote Fallout (VIDEO)
As I was saying earlier, some of the Republicans who voted to convict might find their voters back home less than pleased.
Behold, already, the case of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who'll face her constituents in 2022.
At Politico, "Up in '22, Murkowski readies to face impeachment vote fallout."
Saturday, February 13, 2021
Donald Trump's Statement on Impeachment Acquittal (VIDEO)
“I want to first thank my team of dedicated lawyers and others for their tireless work upholding justice and defending truth. “My deepest thanks as well to all of the United States Senators and Members of Congress who stood proudly for the Constitution we all revere and for the sacred legal principles at the heart of our country. “Our cherished Constitutional Republic was founded on the impartial rule of law, the indispensable safeguard for our liberties, our rights and our freedoms. “It is a sad commentary on our times that one political party in America is given a free pass to denigrate the rule of law, defame law enforcement, cheer mobs, excuse rioters, and transform justice into a tool of political vengeance, and persecute, blacklist, cancel and suppress all people and viewpoints with whom or which they disagree. I always have, and always will, be a champion for the unwavering rule of law, the heroes of law enforcement, and the right of Americans to peacefully and honorably debate the issues of the day without malice and without hate. “This has been yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our Country. No president has ever gone through anything like it, and it continues because our opponents cannot forget the almost 75 million people, the highest number ever for a sitting president, who voted for us just a few short months ago. “I also want to convey my gratitude to the millions of decent, hardworking, law-abiding, God-and-Country loving citizens who have bravely supported these important principles in these very difficult and challenging times. “Our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement to Make America Great Again has only just begun. In the months ahead I have much to share with you, and I look forward to continuing our incredible journey together to achieve American greatness for all of our people. There has never been anything like it! “We have so much work ahead of us, and soon we will emerge with a vision for a bright, radiant, and limitless American future. “Together there is nothing we cannot accomplish. “We remain one People, one family, and one glorious nation under God, and it’s our responsibility to preserve this magnificent inheritance for our children and for generations of Americans to come. “May God bless all of you, and may God forever bless the United States of America.”
Trump Acquitted in Democrats' 'Snap' Impeachment: Seven G.O.P Senators Break With Former President in Second Sham Retaliation Bid to Punish Trump and His Supporters (VIDEO)
I've had CNN on this afternoon, and while it's still early, I can tell you, the folks over there are absolutely crushed that Trump wasn't convicted.
And the seven Republican senators who voted to convict didn't do themselves any favors. G.O.P. Sen. Bill Cassidy has already been censured by the Louisiana Republican Party, so he's lucky he was just reelected to his Senate seat this last November, since he'll at least have six long years for his constituents to "forgive" him for his treason to the Trump cause.
And no doubt some of the others Republicans who voted to convict will sooner or later pay the price for siding with the demonic Democrats in this farce of an impeachment.
In any case, FWIW, at the Los Angeles Times, "Despite 7 Republicans voting guilty, Senate acquits Trump in attack on Capitol":
WASHINGTON — The Senate acquitted former President Trump on Saturday in his second impeachment trial, even as seven members of his own party delivered a historic rebuke by joining Democrats in voting to convict him of inciting the deadly insurrection last month at the U.S. Capitol. The 57-43 vote to find Trump guilty fell short of the 67 votes needed for conviction, but it was the most bipartisan such vote in any presidential impeachment trial, exposing the fractures in a Republican Party divided over its future after Trump’s presidency. The vote was immediately followed by a blistering indictment of Trump on the Senate floor by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who had voted to acquit saying that impeachment of a former president was unconstitutional, but painted Trump as an unhinged menace to democratic institutions. The Republicans who voted for conviction were Sens. Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania. Trump is the first American president to be impeached twice, and this trial, which lasted just five days, was the first of a former president. The House impeached him last month on a charge of inciting the insurrection Jan. 6, when a violent mob of his supporters broke into and ransacked the Capitol. The assault left five people dead, including a police officer. “It is now clear beyond doubt that Trump supported the actions of the mob, and so he must be convicted,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said in his closing arguments. “If that’s not grounds for impeachment — if that’s not a high crime and misdemeanor against the republic of the United States of America — then nothing is. President Trump must be convicted for the safety and security of our democracy and our people.” “This trial, in the final analysis, is not about Donald Trump,” Raskin continued. “The country and the world know who Donald Trump is. This trial is about who we are.” In their closing arguments, as they did during the trial, House Democrats played a collection of videos that showed graphic violence from the rioters’ attack, including heretofore confidential security video that revealed how close the mob got to lawmakers and staff. The videos — some filmed just steps from where the trial took place — provided an emotional punch to the case...
You can see how the lame "MSM" news outlets are trying to frame things. The "seven" Republicans who voted to convict are the heroes of the story. The New York Times made it sound like acquittal was the first step toward some kind of ultimate reckoning within the Republican Party. That's of course highly doubtful, since now that Trump's acquitted he can toy with running for reelection in 2024 all he wants, and I doubt the state-level prosecutions around the country (in New York, especially) will have their intended effect of destroying Trump, much less his huge MAGA movement, which is the ultimate bane of deranged leftists everywhere.
The 'Woke' Takeover at the New York Times Facing Pushback
It's not that big of a "pushback," but it's something to see, nevertheless.
One really interesting development is the role that Nikole Hannah-Jones played in the despicable firing of veteran Times correspondent Donald McNeil (covered here previously).
For one thing, Hannah-Jones apparently attempted to "dox" Aaron Sibarium, a reporter at Free Beacon. He writes on Twitter: "It was my personal number, actually. And Hannah-Jones left it up for two days after someone 'mentioned it'."
I read the whole Slate piece linked by Sibarium, and while I can't verify a word Hannah-Jones says, she still comes out looking like the awful person she is. (She's the Pulitzer-winning "journalist" who hatched the mindbogglingly dumb "1619 Project," and she's bitter she's taken so much heat for it; and I don't believe for a second that she had "no role" in the firing of Donald McNeil; she's as "woke" as "woke can be, and being "woke" means being intolerant as hell, so you probably should just take her words with some heavy salt, that is, if you even want to read the Slate piece).
And here's a second bit of inside information on what's happening at the Old Gray Lady. It turns out that Bret Stephens, who was formerly editor of the Jerusalem Post, before jumping ship from the Wall Street Journal for the Times (for reasons I guess having to do with his own "woke" evolution), wrote a scathing commentary piece that the totalitarian editors of the Times spiked, obviously because Stephens was hitting too close to home.
In fact, someone at the Times leaked the Stephens op-ed to the New York Post, where it was published in full (no doubt to the bitter consternation of Nikole Hannah-Jones and her evil black allies working inside the Times' black radical "lynch gang" now despoiling --- even more than the Times could be already be despoiled --- the newspaper's reputation.
See, "Read the column the New York Times didn't want you to see":
Every serious moral philosophy, every decent legal system and every ethical organization cares deeply about intention. It is the difference between murder and manslaughter. It is an aggravating or extenuating factor in judicial settings. It is a cardinal consideration in pardons (or at least it was until Donald Trump got in on the act). It’s an elementary aspect of parenting, friendship, courtship and marriage. A hallmark of injustice is indifference to intention. Most of what is cruel, intolerant, stupid and misjudged in life stems from that indifference. Read accounts about life in repressive societies — I’d recommend Vaclav Havel’s “Power of the Powerless” and Nien Cheng’s “Life and Death in Shanghai” — and what strikes you first is how deeply the regimes care about outward conformity, and how little for personal intention. I’ve been thinking about these questions in an unexpected connection. Late last week, Donald G. McNeil Jr., a veteran science reporter for The Times, abruptly departed from his job following the revelation that he had uttered a racial slur while on a New York Times trip to Peru for high school students. In the course of a dinner discussion, he was asked by a student whether a 12-year-old should have been suspended by her school for making a video in which she had used a racial slur. In a written apology to staff, McNeil explained what happened next: “To understand what was in the video, I asked if she had called someone else the slur or whether she was rapping or quoting a book title. In asking the question, I used the slur itself.” In an initial note to staff, editor-in-chief Dean Baquet noted that, after conducting an investigation, he was satisfied that McNeil had not used the slur maliciously and that it was not a firing offense. In response, more than 150 Times staffers signed a protest letter. A few days later, Baquet and managing editor Joe Kahn reached a different decision. “We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent,” they wrote on Friday afternoon. They added to this unambiguous judgment that the paper would “work with urgency to create clearer guidelines and enforcement about conduct in the workplace, including red-line issues on racist language.” This is not a column about the particulars of McNeil’s case. Nor is it an argument that the racial slur in question doesn’t have a uniquely ugly history and an extraordinary capacity to wound. This is an argument about three words: “Regardless of intent.” Should intent be the only thing that counts in judgment? Obviously not. Can people do painful, harmful, stupid or objectionable things regardless of intent? Obviously. Do any of us want to live in a world, or work in a field, where intent is categorically ruled out as a mitigating factor? I hope not. That ought to go in journalism as much as, if not more than, in any other profession. What is it that journalists do, except try to perceive intent, examine motive, furnish context, explore nuance, explain varying shades of meaning, forgive fallibility, make allowances for irony and humor, slow the rush to judgment (and therefore outrage), and preserve vital intellectual distinctions? Journalism as a humanistic enterprise — as opposed to hack work or propaganda — does these things in order to teach both its practitioners and consumers to be thoughtful. There is an elementary difference between citing a word for the purpose of knowledge and understanding and using the same word for the purpose of insult and harm. Lose this distinction, and you also lose the ability to understand the things you are supposed to be educated to oppose. No wonder The Times has never previously been shy about citing racial slurs in order to explain a point. Here is a famous quote by the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater that has appeared at least seven times in The Times, most recently in 2019, precisely because it powerfully illuminates the mindset of a crucial political player. “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights’ and all that stuff.” Is this now supposed to be a scandal? Would the ugliness of Atwater’s meaning have been equally clearer by writing “n—, n—, n—”? A journalism that turns words into totems — and totems into fears — is an impediment to clear thinking and proper understanding. So too is a journalism that attempts to proscribe entire fields of expression. “Racist language” is not just about a single infamous word. It’s a broad, changing, contestable category. There are many people — I include myself among them — who think that hardcore anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism. That’s also official policy at the State Department and the British Labour Party. If anti-Semitism is a form of racism, and racist language is intolerable at The Times, might we someday forbid not only advocacy of anti-Zionist ideas, but even refuse to allow them to be discussed? The idea is absurd. But that’s the terrain we now risk entering. We are living in a period of competing moral certitudes, of people who are awfully sure they’re right and fully prepared to be awful about it. Hence the culture of cancellations, firings, public humiliations and increasingly unforgiving judgments. The role of good journalism should be to lead us out of this dark defile. Last week, we went deeper into it.
School Reopenings in California: Whiter, Wealthier Communities More Likely to Bring Back Students
Well, if poorer minority communities are less likely to open schools for in-person instruction, who's fault is that? Certainly not the kids'.
I don't think California's as bad as Chicago, Illinois, but our state could certainly be doing a better job, and the blame can certainly be placed right at Governor Newsom's feet, who's likely to be facing recall, if those signature petitions, now circulating statewide, gain enough valid signatures.
We'll see. We'll see.
Meanwhile, at LAT, "Schools in more affluent areas move faster to reopen than those in low-income communities":
South Whittier schools Supt. Gary Gonzales works seven days a week to move his elementary schools closer to reopening. But the barriers are significant: He’s looking for ways to get vaccines to teachers, negotiating with the union and closely monitoring coronavirus case numbers that show that the virus is still ravaging his community, even as case numbers fall countywide. Gonzales knows his district’s students, almost all of whom are Latinos from low-income families, are struggling under remote learning. And he knows his community is hurting — the pandemic has claimed 118 lives in tiny South Whittier. A date for bringing students back to the classroom is unclear. “It’s all kind of wait and see,” he said. Thirty miles away, Supt. Wendy Sinnette of the La Cañada Unified School District, which has among the lowest coronavirus rates in the county and few students from low-income families, has been focused on reopening as many classrooms as possible since November, when students in transitional kindergarten through second grade returned to campus. Third-graders will be welcomed back on Tuesday. Sinnette spends her days ensuring desks are socially distanced, teachers have KN-95 masks and acrylic plastic dividers are installed. “When I go on campus and see the in-person instruction that’s happening, it really makes you understand why you’re doing all of this,” she said. “Kids need the structure, to be in school.” A Times survey of more than 20 school districts throughout Los Angeles County in the past two weeks has found that districts in wealthier, whiter communities such as La Cañada are more likely to be moving full steam ahead to reopen elementary schools and have plans in place to welcome students back as soon as permitted — within as little as two weeks if coronavirus infection rates continue to decline. They were among the first to bring back their youngest students under waivers and guidelines allowing in-person instruction for high-needs students. These districts are building on that momentum to quickly expand their reopening. Districts serving less affluent Latino and Black communities — some of the hardest hit by the pandemic — are further behind. Their leaders spoke of the suffering and fears of their families in the darkest months of the pandemic. School officials, measuring the hardships within their communities, largely did not use waivers to bring back young students. Their teachers and staff, too, harbor ongoing worries about the trajectory of the virus in the neighborhoods they serve. Although they want to bring students back to school, many said their reopening date was uncertain...
Well, maybe if we change some of the names of schools around the state that will make everything all better?
Still more, in any case.
Flashback: Alexis Ren in Aruba (VIDEO)
I do love me some Ms. Alexis!
Remember this one, "Alexis Ren: Beautiful Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model Shows Off."
She's brilliant!
Glenn Greenwald on the Left's Obsession with 'Domestic Terrorism' (VIDEO
Following-up, "A Domestic Terrorism Law Is Debated Anew After Capitol Riot."
I'm not a huge fan of Glenn Greenwald's, particularly in light of his shady operations in years past.
I'll swear though, he's probably the most prescient thinker who gets significant media coverage, if only on Tucker Carlson's show. Whatever the case, he's worth a listen.
Rule 5 Saturday
I haven't posted Rule 5 links in a while.
Check the Other McCain, where "Rule 5" originated back in the day, "Rule 5 Sunday: Hedy Lamarr Presents The Teutonic Titwillow, Lili von Shtupp!"
Also, A View from the Beach, "Rule 5 Saturday - Getting Fit with Jennifer Nicole Lee."
And, at Woodsterman's, "Presidents Weekend ~OR~ Rule 5 Woodsterman Style."
Still more, at Pirate's Cove, "If All You See … are climate killing dogs making the seas rise and land turn to sand, you might just be a Warmist."
And on Twitter.
A Domestic Terrorism Law Is Debated Anew After Capitol Riot
It's probably not being debated "anew."
Democrats are out for the blood of Trump's 74 million supporters, who Democrats are libeling as "right-wing domestic terrorists." And those MAGA folks aren't stupid, despite what the idiot leftists in Congress think. The Biden regime is not getting off to a good start, and the 2022 midterms will be here before they know it, and poof!, bye bye Democrat majority in both chambers. Then who's going to be labeled "domestic terrorists"? The Republicans, as sad a lot as they are, certainly know how to play tit-for-tat.
So buckle your seat belts as our partisan divisions get worse over these next few years, and China Joe's pledges for "national unity" go up in smoke like a BLM Molotov cocktail.
As a candidate, President Biden promised to make tackling domestic violent extremism—a long-simmering issue in the U.S.—a priority. The threat has taken on fresh urgency after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which involved several far-right groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. The matter is fraught: Addressing terrorism involving U.S. citizens is complicated by constitutional, political and cultural concerns, homeland-security officials and other experts say. One long-debated issue is whether the U.S. needs a generic federal domestic terrorism offense with which to charge violent extremists. Mr. Biden’s campaign website said he would make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism “that respects free speech and civil liberties,” though it is unclear if that would entail creating a broad statute. The Biden administration has yet to make any recommendations and is considering civil-rights concerns, a senior administration official said earlier in February. What is the argument for a domestic terrorism law? The Federal Bureau of Investigation can robustly monitor international terrorists with the goal of disrupting plots before they occur. But there are legal constraints on what the bureau can do at home. Its ability to open an investigation solely based on hateful speech or affiliation with known domestic extremists is severely curtailed by the First Amendment and other constitutional provisions, which protect Americans’ rights to speak, organize in groups and even stockpile firearms. The law-enforcement response to domestic terrorism has been largely reactive—investigating and helping prosecute attacks after they occur. “Domestic terrorism within law enforcement has historically not been given the importance” of its foreign counterpart, said Tom O’Connor, a former FBI special agent who worked on domestic terrorism cases for 23 years. By law, U.S. officials have limited ability to monitor communications between people on American soil who may be intent on violence, lacking the sweeping surveillance powers against U.S. citizens that they can use overseas. The U.S. also has no federal terrorism laws “that apply to the most common method of committing a terrorist attack—a mass shooting—where there is no tie to a foreign terrorist organization,” Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor, has said. In recent years, most ideologically motivated killings in the U.S. have been tied to far-right extremists such as white supremacists, according to researchers, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Some federal prosecutors, FBI officials and experts tracking American extremism have called for a new law for years, particularly after a string of deadly attacks committed by white supremacists. For example, the man responsible for killing 11 people in 2018’s Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh was hit with 44 charges, including federal hate crimes, but faced no terrorism offenses. “Enacting a federal crime of domestic terrorism would place it on the same moral plane as international terrorism,” Ms. McCord and Jason Blazakis, a professor at Middlebury Institute of International Studies, argued in a 2019 article in Lawfare. Mr. Blazakis said in a Feb. 11 interview that a statute could result in additional jail time for violent offenders, though such a law would require government oversight to ensure that U.S. authorities don’t infringe on civil rights. The FBI Agents Association has said it supports creating a law...
Still more.
Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Sylmar Earthquake of 1971 Still Rattles
I was 9-years-old when the Sylmar earthquake woke up Southern California Feb. 9, 1971 --- and I still remember it clearly. Even in Orange County it caused structural damage. Our house in the City of Orange had some cracks in the walls afterwards. And on that same day, my fourth grade class had a field trip planned to Los Angeles (I think to the tar pits, but I can't remember.) All the kids lining up before classes at 8:00am were chattering on about how their families also felt it. And while there've been stronger earthquakes in California since then (Lomo Prieta in 1989 and the Northridge quake in 1994), apparently it's the Sylmar quake that still resonates the strongest in the geological scientific community.
Also interesting, at the L.A. Times piece below, is that apparently back in the 1970s, the state actually had some good and farsighted leadership who passed legislation that did some good things to protect the state's residents from future temblors. (Must've not been so many Dems in Sacramento back then, for one thing.)
In any case, this is fascinating, "50 years ago, the Sylmar earthquake shook L.A., and nothing’s been the same since":
How close Los Angeles came to what would have been — many times over— the deadliest disaster in U.S. history remains a matter of historical conjecture. When the Sylmar earthquake rumbled through Los Angeles 50 years ago, on Feb. 9, 1971, the top of the earthen Lower Van Norman Dam melted into the reservoir. No one knows exactly what kept the dam near Granada Hills from collapsing. Was it the number of feet of earthen wall that remained? Was it the duration of the quake, since a few more seconds might have shaken loose the rest of the dam face, unleashing a torrent on tens of thousands of homes below? That the dam survived has rendered those questions a subject for scientific inquiry rather than the annals of catastrophe. But what might have been remains part of the mystique that sustains the Sylmar earthquake — formally, the San Fernando earthquake — as the keystone in the long arc of seismic knowledge and the practice of earthquake safety. The quake might not have been the Big One, but it still managed to wake California up to a danger that was largely unrecognized. The modern era of earthquake awareness and preparedness is deeply rooted in Sylmar. Before then, earthquakes were either removed in time — 1906 in San Francisco, 1933 in Long Beach — or physically distant —1964 in Anchorage. The 6.6 magnitude earthquake that struck the northeast San Fernando Valley seconds after 6 a.m. not only woke up the city but fixated the nation’s budding seismic community as none had before. “Los Angeles was the city of the future,” said geophysicist Susan Hough of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earthquake Sciences Center. “You had the space-age LAX. You have this modern glistening city and all of a sudden hospitals are being knocked down. It really got people’s attention in many ways.” The indelible images of Sylmar were the hospitals. At the Veterans Administration Hospital in Sylmar, two buildings dating to the 1920s collapsed and several others were severely damaged, causing 49 of the 64 deaths attributed to the disaster. Less costly in lives, yet more startling to engineers and scientists, was the partial collapse of the 4-month-old Olive View Medical Center. Elevator towers tumbled, and the second floor of the 50-bed psychiatric unit collapsed onto the first. Three died there. No less shocking was the collapse of the soaring, nearly completed overpass from the new Antelope Valley Freeway (Highway 14) to the Golden State Freeway (Interstate 5) in Newhall Pass and portions of the Foothill Freeway (I-210) interchange, where two men in a pickup were killed. “There were some structures that people thought were safe that turned out not to be,” Hough said. The hospital buildings and the freeways, all made of concrete, proved unable to roll with the earthquake’s punches. “We as an engineering community learned from that, that just having strength was not enough,” said Jonathan Stewart, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UCLA. “You had to have ductility” — the ability to stretch. “The [building] code would essentially produce nonductile concrete buildings.” Another revelation was the damage to single-family homes, at the time thought to be resilient enough to ride out moderate quakes. They proved helpless when the fault rupture reached the surface, a phenomenon that had not previously occurred in an urban earthquake. “It would go through people’s lawns, it would go through homes,” said Tim Dawson, engineering geologist with the California Geological Survey. “It would torque the buildings. That was the recognition of that earthquake, ‘Oh, we shouldn’t be building on top of faults that can rupture the surface.’” For the seismic community, the near debacle of the Lower Van Norman Dam, causing no loss of life but forcing the evacuation of 80,000 people, was the most frightening lesson. “This was a big one because people started to realize you could have killed 100,000 people if that dam had cut loose,” said acting state geologist Steve Bohlen. Luck may have played a part. The water level had been lowered 10 feet in 1967 after an evaluation had raised doubt about its stability. “It was very close,” Bohlen said. “Had the shaking gone on for maybe another five seconds or 10, it could have been horrific. It galvanized both the state and the federal government.”
Still more at that top link, including photos and video.
Katie Pavlich Hammers Biden Administration's 'Job Killing' Minimum Wage Plan (VIDEO)
Well, it's not just the minimum wage, of course.
Practically every "executive order" the new president has signed is designed to destroy some group that voted for Trump in November. Jobs? Schmobs? The Democrats don't give a crap about creating jobs. They care about the hardline leftist agenda being pushed out by the weak and feeble new president's freakin' job-destroy anti-capitalist handlers.
Dallas Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban Ordered Team to Stop Playing National Anthem and No One Noticed (VIDEO)
Of course no one noticed.
The NBA's a black league and besides the NFL loser Colin Kaepernick, the NBA's been the biggest bastion of BLM-style cheerleading. And the MSM? You think this might have been news before the season's 13th game? Nah. MSM types hate the patriotic anthem just as much as Antifa and Black Lives Matter terrorists.
At Bro Bible, "Mark Cuban Ordered the Mavs to Stop Playing the National Anthem This Season and No One Noticed Until After the Team’s 13th Home Game."
Naturally, this Sky News video (from Australia!) was the only one that came up on a YouTube search, probably not because YouTube's censoring any outlets --- there just are no American outlets that are interested in reporting the story. For shame.
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