Worst Storm in Years Hit San Francisco Bay Area

They got hit much harder than Southern California.

Via CBS News San Francisco:

The Other America

From VDH, at the O.C. Register (via Blazing Cat Fur):

Germany’s first chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, supposedly once said that there was “a special providence for drunkards, fools and the United States of America.”

Apparently, late 19th century observers could not quite explain how the U.S. thrived when, by logic, it should not. That paradox has never been more true than today.

The U.S. government now owes more than $18 trillion in long-term debt. Even after recent income tax hikes for the very wealthy and huge cuts in the defense budget, the Obama administration will still run an annual budget deficit of nearly $500 billion.

No government official dares to trim Social Security or Medicare. Everyone knows that both programs are fiscally unsustainable.

More than 11 million undocumented immigrants are residing in the U.S. as federal immigration law is reduced to a bothersome irritant. A record 92 million American citizens ages 16 and older are not working.

Red-state and blue-state animosities reveal a nation more divided than at any time since the 1960s – or perhaps the pre-Civil War 1850s.

The permanent bureaucracy is awash in serial scandals. The IRS, VA, GSA, NSA, ICE and Secret Service have all deservedly lost the public trust.

Congress suffers from overwhelming public disapproval. President Obama’s approval rating hovers just above 40 percent.

Our new foreign policy could be characterized as managed decline. Three defense secretaries have retired or resigned under Obama. Two of them, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, wrote memoirs in which they blasted the administration. From Russia to the Pacific to the Middle East, the world seems to be descending into the law of the jungle as the U.S. withdraws from its role as a global overseer of the postwar order.

The Michael Brown shooting illustrates seeming racial divides not seen in 50 years. Al Sharpton once was seen as a social arsonist and tax delinquent. Now he appears to be the White House’s most influential adviser on racial matters.

Student-loan debt exceeds $1 trillion. Six years of college has become the new normal. More than a third of the students who enter college never graduate.

In such a depressing American landscape, why is the United States doing pretty well?

Put simply, millions of quiet, determined Americans get up every morning and tune out the incompetence of their government. Instead, these quiet Americans simply go to work, pursue their own talents, excel at what they do and seek to take care of their families.

The result of their singular expertise is that, even in America’s current illness, the nation soars above the global competition.
Only in America can you find the sort of innovation, talent, legal framework and can-do attitude needed to invent and refine hydraulic fracking and horizontal drilling. Just a few hundred thousand scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, oil riggers and skilled craftsman have revived the once-ossified oil industry for 320 million Americans.

The United States is not running out of fuels – as was predicted over the past 20 years. It instead has become the largest gas-and-oil producer in the world.

The epitaph for Silicon Valley is written each year. Its tech industry is copied the world over. Yet, seemingly each year a new American technical innovation sweeps the world.

Neither drought, nor cumbersome regulations, nor unfair trade practices have stalled American agriculture. U.S. farms – where less than 2 percent of the population resides – have never turned out so much safe, nutritious and cheap food that is feeding the world and earning America hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign exchange.

The U.S. military – in which fewer than 1 in 100 Americans serves – is facing record cuts. The Navy will have fewer ships than the American fleet of World War I. The Air Force and the Marine Corps are shrinking. Yet superb American forces continue to ensure that the United States and its allies remain safe. Neither Vladimir Putin’s Russia, nor the communist Chinese hierarchy, nor the Iranian theocrats are quite ready to take on the U.S. military.

America is not saved by our elected officials, bureaucrats, celebrities and partisan activists. Instead, just a few million hardworking Americans in key areas – a natural meritocracy of all races, classes and backgrounds – ignore the daily hype and chaos, remain innovative and productive, and dazzle the world.

Stocks Tumble After Weak Oil Forecast

At WSJ, "How Crude Oil’s Global Collapse Unfolded: Tracing the Plunge In Oil Prices Back to Texas":

Since the 1970s, Nigeria has sent a steady stream of high-quality crude oil to North American refineries. As recently as 2010, tankers delivered a million barrels a day.

Then came the U.S. energy boom. By July of this year, oil imports from Nigeria had fallen to zero.

Displaced by surging U.S. oil production, millions of barrels of Nigerian crude now head to India, Indonesia and China. But Middle Eastern nations are trying to entice the same buyers. This has set up a battle for market share that could reshape the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and fundamentally change the global market for oil.

On Friday, crude prices dropped to their lowest level in five years after the International Energy Agency cut its forecast for global oil demand for the fifth time in six months. That signaled to investors that the world economy would struggle in the coming year, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling by 315.51 points, or 1.8%, to 17280.83. That’s the Dow’s biggest weekly percentage loss in three years.

Since June, the IEA has cut its demand forecast for 2015 by 800,000 barrels, while it says U.S. oil output will rise next year by 1.3 million barrels a day.

The drop in global oil prices from over $110 a barrel to under $62 on Friday has been portrayed as a showdown between Saudi Arabia and the U.S., two of the world’s biggest oil producers. But the reality is more complex, involving Libyan rebels and Indonesian cabdrivers as well as Texas roughnecks and Middle Eastern oil ministers. It reflects both the surging supply of crude and the crumbling demand for oil.

And the oil-price plunge may not end soon. Bank of America Merrill Lynch says U.S. oil prices could drop to $50 in 2015.

The roots of the price collapse go back to 2008 near Cotulla, Texas, a tiny town between San Antonio and the Mexican border. This was where the first well was drilled into the Eagle Ford Shale. At the time, the U.S. pumped about 4.7 million barrels a day of crude oil.

In 2009 and 2010, the global economy improved, demand for oil increased and crude prices rose, creating a large incentive to find new supplies. In Cotulla and elsewhere, U.S. drillers answered the call. “There was, for lack of a better term, an arms race for oil, and we found a ton of oil,” says Dean Hazelcorn, an oil trader at Coquest in Dallas.


Today, two hundred drilling rigs blanket South Texas, steering metal bits deep underground into the rock. Once drilled and hydraulically fractured, these wells yield large volumes of high-quality oil; at the moment, the U.S. is producing 8.9 million barrels a day, thanks to the Eagle Ford and other new oil fields.

Americans aren’t pumping more gasoline or otherwise using up all that new crude, and under U.S. laws dating back to the 1970s, it has been almost impossible to export.

As a result, American refineries snapped up inexpensive crude from Texas and North Dakota, using it to replace oil from Nigeria, Algeria, Angola and Brazil, and almost every other oil-producing nation except Canada.

OPEC sent the U.S. 180.6 million barrels in August 2008, a month before the first Eagle Ford well; in September 2014, it shipped about half that, 87 million barrels. That is about 100 fewer tankers of crude arriving in U.S. ports. They went elsewhere.

For a long time, it seemed like the world’s growing appetite for oil would soak up all the displaced crude. By 2011 prices began to hover between $90 and $100 a barrel and mostly stayed in that range.

But earlier this year, another trend began to come into focus, catching Wall Street energy analysts and other market watchers by surprise. In March, many analysts predicted global demand for crude oil would grow by 1.4 million barrels a day in 2014, to 92.7 million barrels a day.

That prediction proved wildly optimistic...

More.

Feminists Try to Save the 'Rape Culture' Narrative

Good luck with that.

At the Other McCain, "As UVA Rape Story Falls Apart; Feminists Try to Save ‘Rape Culture’ Narrative."

ZoNation: Hands Up, Can't Breathe

Via Theo Spark:

Total Control with Joy Corrigan

At Maxim, "Joy Corrigan Can’t Sit Still."

Elizabeth Warren's 'Festival of Hypocrisy'

Here's Charles Krauthammer on Senator Warren's grandstanding for the 2016 presidential primaries.

Camarillo Springs Mudslides

More from the big "Pineapple Express" that tore through the Southland today.

At CBS News Los Angeles:

Bill Whittle's Firewall: The New Barbarism

He the best!

Orange County's Catherine Keefe, an Obama Supporter, Slams ObamaCare as 'Hurting My Family...'

A great personal essay, and eminently depresssing.

From Ms. Keefe, at the Washington Post, "I’m an Obama supporter. But Obamacare has hurt my family":

What Obamacare hasn’t eliminated is worry: We’re deeply concerned about our ability to get quality medical care from doctors we trust. The day may soon come when we can’t afford the plans our doctors accept, or we’ll have to wait hours to seen. Will the best doctors flock to a cash-only model? How long can a good doctor be satisfied with the $39.75 the insurance company paid her for my annual check up a few months ago?

We had thought that our work and businesses had paid us enough to live on in these older years — but we’re discovering we didn’t account for such dramatic increases in health care costs. Medical expenses already gobble up 20 percent of our income. In 2015, if we keep the same plans, our premiums will rise $95 a month. We have no choice to opt out of the required pediatric dentistry or maternity coverage we’ll never use, so we’ll eventually have to settle for less generous policies, with higher deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums. My husband isn’t required by law to insure his one employee, though he feels it’s the right thing to do. As costs continue to rise, we may have to direct him to buy his own health insurance at his own cost.

We’ve already started the dance of enrollment all over again and are having a hard time finding partners. As I write this, the “Find a Provider” link on the Covered California website offers 2014 health providers, but not 2015, even though we’re shopping for 2015 insurance policies. Ditto Blue Shield. Administrators at our medical group won’t say yet if they’ll remain with Blue Shield. At least this year, we think we know the steps to the dance. Let the music begin.

A bleedin' nightmare. ObamaCare has objectively made healthcare in American worse.

But RTWT.

'I Am the Walrus'

From last night, while picking up my son from work, at the Sound L.A.

Peace of Mind
Boston
5:55 PM

Hitch a Ride
Boston
5:51 PM

Shake It Up
The Cars
5:41 PM

You're All I've Got Tonight
The Cars
5:37 PM

Dangerous Type
The Cars
5:33 PM

I Am the Walrus
The Beatles
5:21 PM

Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
The Beatles
5:19 PM

Come Together
The Beatles
5:15 PM

Runnin' Down a Dream
Tom Petty
5:10 PM

Free Fallin'
Tom Petty
5:05 PM

REFUGEE
TOM PETTY
5:01 PM

Non-employment: The Vanishing Male Worker

This is kinda sad.

At NYT, "The Vanishing Male Worker: How America Fell Behind":

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Frank Walsh still pays dues to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, but more than four years have passed since his name was called at the union hall where the few available jobs are distributed. Mr. Walsh, his wife and two children live on her part-time income and a small inheritance from his mother, which is running out.

Sitting in the food court at a mall near his Maryland home, he sees that some of the restaurants are hiring. He says he can’t wait much longer to find a job. But he’s not ready yet.

“I’d work for them, but they’re only willing to pay $10 an hour,” he said, pointing at a Chick-fil-A that probably pays most of its workers less than that. “I’m 49 with two kids — $10 just isn’t going to cut it.”

Working, in America, is in decline. The share of prime-age men — those 25 to 54 years old — who are not working has more than tripled since the late 1960s, to 16 percent. More recently, since the turn of the century, the share of women without paying jobs has been rising, too. The United States, which had one of the highest employment rates among developed nations as recently as 2000, has fallen toward the bottom of the list.

As the economy slowly recovers from the Great Recession, many of those men and women are eager to find work and willing to make large sacrifices to do so. Many others, however, are choosing not to work, according to a New York Times/CBS News/Kaiser Family Foundation poll that provides a detailed look at the lives of the 30 million Americans 25 to 54 who are without jobs.

Many men, in particular, have decided that low-wage work will not improve their lives, in part because deep changes in American society have made it easier for them to live without working. These changes include the availability of federal disability benefits; the decline of marriage, which means fewer men provide for children; and the rise of the Internet, which has reduced the isolation of unemployment.

At the same time, it has become harder for men to find higher-paying jobs. Foreign competition and technological advances have eliminated many of the jobs in which high school graduates like Mr. Walsh once could earn $40 an hour, or more. The poll found that 85 percent of prime-age men without jobs do not have bachelor’s degrees. And 34 percent said they had criminal records, making it hard to find any work.

The resulting absence of millions of potential workers has serious consequences not just for the men and their families but for the nation as a whole. A smaller work force is likely to lead to a slower-growing economy, and will leave a smaller share of the population to cover the cost of government, even as a larger share seeks help.

“They’re not working, because it’s not paying them enough to work,” said Alan B. Krueger, a leading labor economist and a professor at Princeton. “And that means the economy is going to be smaller than it otherwise would be.”

Keep reading.

Storm Slams Southern California

It's the so-called "Pineapple Express."

Whatever it's called, it's putting a serious dent in the California drought.

At LAT, "Live updates: Southland storm brings heavy rain, rockslides, flood warnings."

Plus, "Mudslides batter Southern California residents who suffered through fires," and "L.A. storm: Walkway falls on car; roof collapses."

Also at ABC7 Los Angeles ,"HEAVY RAIN PROMPTS FLASH FLOOD WARNING FOR LA REGION."

The Left's War Against Justice and Peace

From David Horowitz, at FrontPage Magazine:

When rioters and “protesters” defend criminals and attack the police it is not a protest. It is an attack. When radicals and rioters defend the guilty and attempt to prosecute the innocent, it is not a protest. It is an attack. When they make race an issue when it is clearly not an issue, it is an attack. When whites are regarded as guilty before the fact and blacks guiltless even after the facts show they are guilty, it is not a protest; it is an attack. It is a calculated attack and the target is America, is us.

“No Justice, No Peace!” is the cry of modern lynch mobs. It means “Our Justice, Or Else” – or else we will burn your city down. Or else we will burn your system down. This is the agenda of the left in the streets and of their supporters in the White House and the Democratic Party:

“We are going to fundamentally transform the United States of America: your system of justice, your system of governance and your system of laws. If we can’t do that, we are going to burn it down.”

Conservatives need to stop dropping their jaws when progressives say “My mind is made up don’t confuse me with the facts” – and mean it. Conservatives need to recognize that the only facts that matter to progressives are the ones that justify their attacks. The mobs who have occupied our streets are not protesting injustice. They are a lynch mob demanding their due. They want officers of the law handcuffed and hung, and criminals (aka “political prisoners”) set free. They want honest juries disbanded, and racist judgments the rule.

Understand that our president and his chief civil rights officer, who are encouraging the “protests,” are racists, as is the Democratic Party which exerts monopoly control over every major inner city in America. Why else would Obama and Holder look to Al Sharpton, who is certainly the nation’s most prominent racist, as their chief adviser on race relations?

Al Sharpton is author of the fundamental transformation of the civil rights movement into a racial lynch mob, which took place decades ago. It probably began with the teenager Tawana Brawley, who accused white cops of raping her because she was afraid of being beaten by her mother when she failed to come home. Sharpton led the charge, whose self-appointed posses ruined these officers’ careers and lives. The progressive phrase of the day was: “Even if Tawana Brawley was lying, she was telling the truth.” (Because white men regularly raped black women – a bigger lie than Brawley’s own tall tale.)

Sharpton has made his career as a slanderer of whites in too many cases to list. Think only of the innocent Duke LaCrosse players whose careers and reputations he and his minions destroyed for a year while defending their criminal accuser who was black. Think of Paula Deen, who voted for Obama and gave millions of her self-made fortune to poor black children, but was falsely and successfully framed as a racist by Sharpton and Co., until her multi-million dollar empire lay in ruins. Nor are apologies ever necessary for black lynchers like Sharpton. There are probably more cases like this of whites who have been destroyed by black racists than there are of blacks being shot for being black by law enforcement officers. And there are surely a lot more cases of blacks being shot for being black by other blacks...

More.

Oh My! White Millennials Abandon Obama!

Now that's some hope and change!

At Gallup, "Obama Loses Support Among White Millennials":

President Barack Obama's job approval rating in 2014 among white 18- to 29-year-olds is 34%, three points higher than among whites aged 30 and older. This is the narrowest approval gap between the president's previously strong support base of white millennials and older white Americans since Obama took office.

Just look at this as a key barometer of how The One has alienated white America. If you can't keep the hipster Millenials, who can you keep?

More.

America's Worst Homosexual Power Couple

From Jamie Kirchick, at the Daily Beast, "The Rise and Fall of Chris Hughes and Sean Eldridge, America’s Worst Gay Power Couple":

Contrary to the popular narrative, TNR did not “die” last week. Its demise as a thoughtful journal of liberal (in the classical sense of the word) thought was foreordained the day Hughes purchased the magazine. And the signs that he would destroy The New Republic as we knew it were clear for anyone willing to take off their ideological blinders. For behind the seemingly accomplished, smart, and creative prodigy that supposedly is Chris Hughes lies a deeply insecure man with few accomplishments to his name and a heavy burden to prove his self, not to mention net, worth. Hughes’s wealth and status owe little to his ingenuity as a supposed Facebook “co-founder” but rather his luck at being in the right place at the right time...

Heh.

RTWT.

Enhanced Interrogations Saved Lives

At the Wall Street Journal, "Ex-CIA Directors: Interrogations Saved Lives."

And ICYMI, "Andrea Tantaros is Awesome!"

LeBron James Puts Arm Around Duchess of Cambridge, Breaks Royal Protocol

At Telegraph UK, "Kate's reaction to LeBron James' royal protocol error" (VIDEO).

And the Los Angeles Times, "What did LeBron James do wrong while posing with the royal couple?"

People don't get it's not OK for LeBron James to slide his hand down Kate's waist not b/c she's a princess, but b/c she's a woman #feminism

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) December 9, 2014

Would it be OK for #LeBron to get all feely on another woman who didn't invite it, but Kate should suck it up because she's royal? WTF?

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) December 9, 2014

#LeBron doing *this* is not OK, not because Kate's a princess, but because she's a woman. #feminism pic.twitter.com/Pct1sY9kJY

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) December 9, 2014

Democrats Lost the South via Culture War and Elitism

They're such stuck up, contemptuous assholes.

From Timothy Carney, at the Washington Examiner.

The Death of OPEC

At Astute Bloggers, "$50 Per Barrel Oil Is Coming: 'OPEC No Longer Exists In Any Meaningful Sense'."