Keeping the California 'Pacific Surfliner' Running on Time

At LAT, "Little-known agency keeps commuter rail network on track":

The 351-mile rail corridor that runs along the coast between San Diego, Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo is the second-busiest intercity route in the nation.

Its annual passenger load of 7.4 million is surpassed only by that of the northeast corridor between Boston and Washington, D.C., which handles more than 11.4 million a year.

But keeping those trains running on time — and safely, as they occasionally share tracks with freight traffic — is a constant challenge. The job has fallen to a little-known regional authority known as the LOSSAN Rail Corridor Agency.

During the last 25 years, the agency has helped synchronize schedules so passengers do not have to wait long to make connections. Maintenance and construction are better coordinated to keep trains running without significant delay.

It also tries to foster good relationships among the region's half-dozen railroads so riders can better navigate a complicated network crowded with freight and passenger trains.

Rail projects to accommodate more trains are underway, and the agency is starting to address track and scheduling issues along the popular route between Los Angeles and San Diego.

"I'm all for anything that integrates travel and fares," said Anthony Kemp, an English professor at USC who regularly rides the Metrolink commuter line from his east San Gabriel Valley home in Claremont to the campus near downtown L.A.

Kemp, who is from England, gave the agency good marks but said there is room for even more improvements. For example, European passenger railroads have long had convenient schedules and transit passes, such as the Oyster Pass in London, that allow riders to go from trains to buses to subways without buying a ticket for each boarding.

"That would be absolutely great to have that here," he said...

More.

New York Officials Defend Decision to Shut Down New York City

Hmm...

The storm wasn't as bad as folks has expected, although I don't take the "worst blizzard in history" prognostications too seriously. Someone's got an invested interest in climate hysteria.

At NYT, "Leaders in New York and New Jersey Defend Shutdown for a Blizzard That Wasn’t":

It was an unprecedented step for what became, in New York City, a common storm: For the first time in its 110-year history, the subway system was shut down because of snow.

Transit workers, caught off guard by the shutdown that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Monday, scrambled to grind the network to a halt within hours.

Residents moved quickly to find places to stay, if they were expected at work the next day, or hustle home before service was curtailed and roads were closed.

And Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose residents rely upon the transit system by the millions, heard the news at roughly the time the public did.

“We found out,” Mr. de Blasio said on Tuesday, “just as it was being announced.”

The storm largely spared the city, instead battering eastern Long Island and much of New England, where Nantucket lost power and Scituate, Mass., flooded.

And on Tuesday, local and state officials were left to defend one of the most consequential decisions elected leaders can make: effectively closing a city, in light of an uncertain forecast.

With travel bans instituted across the region, residents had little choice but to heed the warnings to stay put. Even as roads reopened and trains creaked back to life early Tuesday, there would be no normal business day, even though most parts of the city received less than 10 inches of snow, not the two to three feet that had been predicted.

The weather laid bare the civic and political high-wire act of the modern snowstorm — pocked with doomsayer proclamations and sporadic lapses in communication.

At the episode’s heart is the sort of damned-if-you-do decision that has bedeviled politicians for decades: Play it safe with closings, all but guaranteeing sweeping economic losses, or try to ride out the storm?

“I would much rather be in a situation where we say we got lucky than one where we didn’t get lucky and somebody died,” Mr. Cuomo said.

Briefings and interviews with officials suggest that recent challenges — including Hurricane Sandy, a snowstorm in Buffalo and public spats between top local leaders and forecasters — have left decision-makers even more risk-averse.

As the storm approached, a sort of one-upmanship theater had visited the local political stage: Mr. Cuomo’s announcement about the subway shutdown came hours after the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority suggested a full shutdown was unlikely. New Jersey Transit riders were told on Monday afternoon not to expect rail service until Thursday...

More.

Kayslee Collins for Playboy Plus

She's a beauty.

At Egotastic!, "Kayslee Collins Outright Hot for Playboy Playmate Spread."

I must say, I've gained newfound respect for Jonathan Chait: Leftist 'language police' destroying liberalism. Heh, thank you.

You gotta read this piece from Jonathan Chait, at New York Magazine, "Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say: How the language police are perverting liberalism." (Via Memeorandum.)

It's particularly good for its extensive and choice selection of crushing leftist p.c. attacks on ideological opponents, to say nothing of the intra-leftist policing that's scaring away many self-identified progressives from participating in contemporary political debates.

But the proof of this piece is in the outraged (if not unhinged) response it's generated from the very leftist types most likely to embody hardcore p.c. intolerance.

For example, Alex "Ping-Pong Balls" Pareene, with an hilarious, heaping lack of self-awareness, responds with a purportedly snarky piece at Gawker, "Punch-Drunk Jonathan Chait Takes On the Entire Internet." (Also at Memeorandum.)

There's a lot of inside baseball in "Ping-Pong" Pareene's response, but the bottom line is to validate Chait's argument by nicely illustrating that today's uber p.c. left operates in a rarefied world of epistemic closure on steroids. You simply CANNOT get on the wrong side of radical leftists. You will be destroyed, even if you deign to identify with them.

In sum, contemporary p.c. leftism is a sick, psychotically self-contained movement of ideological hatred and intolerance of difference. Chait simply bored down to the core, causing a catastrophic meltdown among the faithful.

Hmm. *makes shuffling noise with copy of new york magazine* You know, honey, I'm beginning to think this Jonathan Chait fellow is a dumbass.
— Jeb Lund (@Mobute) January 27, 2015

I can't wait till the tribunal executes Jon Chait for word crimes
— Malcolm Harris (@BigMeanInternet) January 27, 2015

This Chait piece is so gloriously bad and self-refuting that it's actually a great joy to read.
— Jonathan Shainin (@jonathanshainin) January 27, 2015

@jaredbkeller @originalgriz @markberman the funny thing is that Chait is actually trying to police speech himself
— Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa) January 27, 2015

If chait had talked to literally 1 person to his left he might have figured out that nobody calls it "p.c." anymore
— Alison Herman (@aherman2006) January 27, 2015

jonathan chait literally believes that the falsity of this argument goes without saying pic.twitter.com/nfO48IF8z8
— Melvin Spacecraft (@LOLY2K) January 27, 2015

Wow everything sure is white today! Oh yeah there’s a blizzard too! Sorry I was just reading this Chait feature...
— Rusty Foster (@rustyk5) January 27, 2015

Finally finished the Chait column and it seems like the point is that the radical left is just as authoritarian as the radical right
— Shane (@shaneferro) January 27, 2015

This rant against political correctness was stale when Rush Limbaugh made his career on it dude. This shit was tired in the 90s.
— Rusty Foster (@rustyk5) January 27, 2015

will reading that Jonathan Chait piece make me want to punch things y/n
— Karen K. Ho (@karenkho) January 27, 2015

And yet nobody's managed to make YOU shut up have they bro
— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca) January 27, 2015

People are hating on Jonathan Chait's dumb opinions with renewed vigor today. Maybe there are such things as blizzard miracles
— Dan Massoglia (@jujueyeball) January 27, 2015

I'm as critical of some of this stuff as anyone, but sorry, this is ridiculous & half-baked. http://t.co/lEI1aDghO3
— Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) January 27, 2015

U.S. Busts Russian Spy Ring in New York

At WSJ, "U.S. Charges Russian Banker in Spy Case: Prosecutors Also Accuse Two Handlers in Ring to Glean Economic Intelligence."

And at Time, "Sloppy Russian ‘Spymasters’ Burn a Deep Cover Operative in New York":

Monday was a bad day for Evgeny “Zhenya” Buryakov, the alleged spy arrested in the Bronx for his role as a deep cover case officer in a Russian ring targeting female university students, business consultants and the operations of the bank at which Buryakov worked. But it was an even worse day for his alleged spymasters, two Russian officials operating under diplomatic immunity who come across as sloppy, bureaucratic buffoons in the Justice department complaint detailing the alleged conspiracy.

Buryakov nominally faces up to 20 years in prison on two charges of acting as a foreign agent. But practically speaking he will only have to cool his heels in a U.S. jail for a few weeks or months until officials in Moscow find a suitable American operative to arrest and trade for him. Thereafter, he’ll likely return to Moscow, and given what appears to be fairly entrepreneurial work as a deep cover agent in New York, he can probably expect to thrive in the public or private sector there.

His two bosses, on the other hand, broke basic tradecraft rules and exposed Buryakov’s work, as well as other intelligence efforts by the Russian espionage services, according to the complaint. Both have already left the U.S. for other assignments. And while the days of banishment to Siberia for failed spy-handlers are long gone, the two at least face a grim professional future of pushing paper in the bowels of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service in Moscow...

More.

Doe-Eyed Jen Psaki Denies Obama Administation Traded al-Qaeda Jihadist Ali Saleh Al-Marri

Jamie Kirchick has the background, at the Daily Beast, "Exclusive: Freed Al Qaeda Agent Was Part of Proposed Swap for Jailed Americans."

But the ever-innocent Jen Psaki spins her way out of a definitive answer.

Watch: "State Dept. Spox Jen Psaki Dodges on Whether Obama Admin Traded Al Marri to Yemen."

The United States of 'American Sniper'

A great piece, from Rorke Denver, at WSJ.

American Muslim Group Attacks 'American Sniper', Demands Eastwood and Cooper Denounce Fictional 'Islamophobia'

From Pamela Geller, at Breitbart.

Victoria's Secret Superbowl Commercial 2015

Via Theo Spark:

Sharyl Attkisson: White House Hiding Photos of Obama on Night of #Benghazi Attack

A great segment, from December (via DC Clothesline).



And buy her book, Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington.

The Left is Still looking for a Modern 'Rape Culture' Poster Child

From Ashe Schow, at the Washington Examiner:

The term “rape culture” entered the English lexicon in the mid-1970s, but has never really found a poster child, a name that could be pointed to as an example of this supposed epidemic of sexual violence toward women on college campuses.

Liz Seccuro should be the best example of this, although hers was a gang rape by a stranger who (20 years later) would go to prison for his act of violence. Since rape culture has come to more generally refer to a new, blurry definition of rape that involves he-said/she-said situations, non-strangers and usually alcohol, Seccuro’s case does not fit.

But today’s activists have needed someone that proves police and school officials still don’t do anything about sexual assault accusations, even after decades of information campaigns. Even better if the alleged rape was perpetrated by white athletes or fraternity members who came from wealthy families.

And they have so far failed to find their poster child.

Activists thought they had her in Crystal Mangum in 2006. She was a young working mother and student (the media portrayed her as) who claimed she was gang raped by multiple (in some iterations of her tale as many as 20) members of the Duke lacrosse team. Her story turned out to be a complete lie, yet rape activists at the time claimed that her story was indicative of a very real problem.

But the activists needed a sensational, but true, story to trumpet. They had to wait years for the Duke backlash to settle down, but in 2010, they thought they had their premier victim.

That year, National Public Radio and the Center for Public Integrity produced a report claiming sexual assault was as prevalent on college campuses as underage drinking and as ignored as the lone guitar player on the quad. The report told the story of Laura Dunn, who alleged she was raped by two friends after she drank too much at a party. A year and a half after the incident, Dunn reported the assault. A philosophy professor had discussed rape in class, prompting Dunn to come forward.

Since the alleged assault was reported so long after the incident, the university had no evidence to go on other than he-said/she-said. So Dunn turned to the Department of Education, which also found there was not enough evidence to show an assault happened or that the university handled her case improperly.

Despite Dunn’s story differing between what she told NPR and the Department of Education and the fact that she continued to see the alleged attackers after the incident, Dunn’s story was used as the basis for the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleague” letter that prompted the current hysteria surrounding campus sexual assault. Dunn has been on TV and at White House events involved campus sexual assault, but because the details of her story (the long time to report, continuing to hang out with her alleged attackers and her differing accounts of what one of the men said to her at a party after she reported) keep her from being that quintessential poster child.

So the activists kept looking and thought they found a heroine in Emma Sulkowicz. But Sulkowicz isn’t the best example either. Columbia University found the student she accused “not responsible” for sexual assault. And only after the university failed to find the verdict she wanted, after she told her story to the media and began carrying a mattress around campus and after people began asking why she hadn’t gone to the police did Sulkowicz file a police report. But the police don’t appear to be pursuing the case (Sulkowicz might say its because of police bias, others might say there was no evidence outside of he-said/she-said).

Having Sulkowicz as a spokesperson for campus sexual assault is kind of like having Al Gore as the spokesperson for global warming: They tell people what needs to be done to solve a problem but don’t take their own advice.

Sulkowicz is no longer pursuing charges against the man she accused of raping her. She finds time to go to the State of the Union address and tell her story again and again to major media outlets and MTV and promote her college art project (carrying around the mattress) but won’t do what needs to be done to get the man she accused, who is, according to her, a rapist, off the streets and away from other potential victims.

Finally, the activists thought they had the perfect story. Young college girl? Check. Brutal gang rape (similar to Crystal Mangum and Liz Seccuro)? Check. White fraternity members? Check. A university indifferent to such a horrific tale? Check, check and check.

Also, she had a name that was easy to remember and easy to name a law after: Jackie...

Hmm... Jackie?

You know where this is going, but keep reading anyway, lol.

'Couldn't Get It Right'

Listened to the Climax Blues Band while out to pick up my young son this afternoon, on the Sound L.A.

Down Under
Men At Work
3:56 PM

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
AC/DC
3:52 PM

Jet Airliner
Steve Miller Band
3:39 PM

If You Wanna Get to Heaven
The Ozark Mountain Daredevils
3:36 PM

Proud Mary
Creedence Clearwater Revival
3:33 PM

The Boys Are Back In Town
Thin Lizzy
3:29 PM

Working for the Weekend
Loverboy
3:25 PM

Couldn't Get It Right
Climax Blues Band
3:22

Millions Brace as Massive Winter Storm Hits East Coast

Huge coverage at the Weather Channel, "Winter Storm Juno Forecast: Northeast Snowstorm Ramping Up; Blizzard Conditions Expected in 7 States" (via Memeorandum).

And at the Boston Globe, "Baker declares state of emergency, statewide travel ban: Boston public schools to be closed Tuesday and Wednesday, Mayor Walsh says."

And at CNN, "Officials plead with residents amid blizzard preparations."

Added: From London's Daily Mail, "'Worst snowstorm in history' shuts down the East Coast: Thirty five million hunker down as five states declare emergencies, troops are deployed and New Yorkers rush home before 11pm curfew."

Humans Hit Hard by California's New Chicken-Coop Law, Especially the Poor

More on California's anti-human animal welfare law that's causing a shortage of eggs.

At the Wall Street Journal, "California’s Scrambled Eggs":

California has a way of living up to the worst regulatory expectations, as grocery shoppers across the country are discovering. The state’s latest animal-rights march is levying a punishing new food tax on the nation’s poor.

Egg prices are soaring in California, where the USDA says the average price for a dozen jumbo eggs is $3.16, up from $1.18 a dozen a year ago, and in some parts of the state it’s more than $5. The Iowa State University Egg Industry Center says retail egg prices in California are 66% higher than in other parts of the West. National wholesale egg prices also climbed nearly 35% over the 2014 holiday period, before retreating.

The cause of these price gyrations is an initiative passed by California voters in 2008 that required the state’s poultry farmers to house their hens in significantly larger cages. The state legislature realized this would put home-state farmers at a disadvantage, so in 2010 it compounded the problem by requiring that eggs imported from other states come from farms meeting the same cage standards, effective Jan. 1, 2015.

The new standards require cages almost twice the size of the industry norm, with estimated costs to comply of up to $40 a hen. That’s about $2 million for a farm with 50,000 chickens. Some farmers are passing the costs on to consumers, while others are culling their flocks by half for each cage.

Government statistics show that the number of egg-laying chickens in California has fallen 23% in two years. Many farmers outside the state are choosing not to sell eggs to California, leaving egg brokers scouring the country for cage-compliant eggs and paying top dollar to meet demand in a state that has imported more than four billion eggs a year.

This comes when egg demand is growing, in part because soaring meat prices have caused Americans to turn to other foods. Per capita consumption is expected to reach more than 260 eggs this year, the highest since 1983, according to the USDA. The poorest consumers have been hit hardest by the price spike because eggs have traditionally been a cheap source of protein.

California’s cage law is part of the nationwide animal-rights effort to raise the costs of animal food production in the name of more, well, humane treatment. Groups like the Humane Society of the United States failed to get Congress to pass national chicken-cage standards, so they turned to California to set what they hoped would be a de facto national standard because of the size of its market.

There’s a strong argument that this violates the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which bars states from discriminating against interstate trade...

Still more.

And previously, "California Faces Egg Shortage as Far-Left Animal Welfare Law Takes Effect," and "Prices for Wholesale Eggs Expected to Rise 10 to 40 Percent in 2015 as California Animal Welfare Law Kicks In."

Miss Beverly Hills Chanelle Riggan Wardrobe Malfunction at Miss California USA Pageant

Looks like she's about to slip and fall, and don't ask me how her bikini top flies into the air.

But hey, she caught herself and kept on going like a pro.

Video at TMZ, "Miss USA Contestant -- My Bikini Can't Take The Pressure."

Former Fox Station Employee Commits Suicide Outside News Corp. Headquarters in New York

Now this is just sad.

At WSJ, "Former Fox Station Employee Shoots Himself Outside Manhattan Office Building":

A former employee of a Fox television station in Texas shot himself outside the front doors of a Midtown Manhattan office building shortly before 9 a.m. Monday, a law-enforcement official said.

The building houses 21st Century Fox Inc., owner of the station, and News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal.

He was rushed to Bellevue Hospital Center, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later, police said.

The man, Phillip Perea, 41 years old, of Irving, Texas, shot himself once in the chest outside of 1211 Avenue of the Americas, the official said. Mr. Perea had previously worked for a Fox station in Austin, Texas, police said.

Mr. Perea had also been handing out fliers, which criticized his employer for having “ended my career,” moments before he shot himself, the official said...

Via Memeorandum.

More at CBS News New York, "Police: Ex-Fox Producer Kills Himself Outside News Corp. Building."

Obama's Casual Sacrifice of America's Security and Moral Standing in the Middle East

From Noah Rothman, at Hot Air:

In President Barack Obama’s penultimate State of the Union address last Tuesday, there was no reference to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. This was the first time since 2011 and the eruption of the brutal Syrian civil war that Obama had not mentioned, or even obliquely alluded to, the Syrian dictator’s crimes against humanity.

This was no accident. Little more than one year after the President of the United States addressed the American people in a prime time address aimed at shoring up support for a humanitarian intervention in a war in which Assad had deployed weapons of mass destruction against civilian populations, America’s regional doctrine has evolved dramatically.

“The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way,” read a White House statement in 2011. “For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” Obama later insisted extemporaneously that “Assad must go,” and set his now infamous “red line” for military action in Syria.

For the sake of political expediency, Obama backed off both his “red line” and his insistence that Assad must be removed. The president did not want to invite scorn by taking a necessary course of action that was nevertheless opposed by a majority of the public. Today, 220,000 lives later and following the precedent-setting use of chemical weapons, the White House has essentially conceded that Assad must stay...

Keep reading.

Chilling Drone Footage Shows Sheer Scale of Auschwitz Death Camp (VIDEO)

Here: "Auschwitz 70th anniversary: Drone footage shows scale of camp."

And at the Irish Independent, "Chilling drone footage captures Auschwitz ahead of 70th anniversary of liberation."

Taylor Swift, Lean and Leggy, Romps in the Surf in Hawaii

She looks great.

At London's Daily Mail, "PICTURE EXCLUSIVE: Taylor Swift hits all the right notes in a retro polka dot swimsuit as she soaks up the sun in Hawaii."

Naomi Watts Trips Over Emma Stone's Dress at SAG Awards

Heh.

Watch, at E!, "Oops! Naomi Watts Trips on Emma Stone's Dress."

That Emma Stone's a riot.

At Fox News, "Naomi Watts trips on stage at the SAG Awards":

Stone’s reaction to the ordeal was priceless — the 26-year-old’s red lips formed one of the widest-mouthed O’s we’ve seen as she said the word “sorry.”