At WSJ:
Campaign officials met w/Cipollone on Thurs to go through remaining legal options & determined they had pursued every avenue to that point.
— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) November 6, 2020
Some advisers acknowledge there is little path forward, politically or legally, that would prevent a Trump loss.https://t.co/3cvdX3qeB4
Let the Games Begin. #RealResistance
— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) November 7, 2020
I'm traveling, otherwise I'd be blogging the election like a banshee.
I've been reading all kinds of stuff on my phone, and watching the theft of Trump's victory in real time.
More on all of that later, when I get back to the O.C.
Meanwhile, check this Damon Linker piece, at the Week. It's anti-Trump, but he powerfully eviscerates the left --- and their Democrat Party enablers and allies.
See, "The left just got crushed":
Opinion | Keith Koffler: Biden is leading Trump in 2020 polls. But expect Election Day to be a repeat of 2016. https://t.co/WmAK8HQBlc - @NBCNewsTHINK
— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 1, 2020
The #Friday office 🎃 pic.twitter.com/K3I0W9AzrL
— Alex Curry (@Alex_Curry) October 30, 2020
Man, I like Mark Levin, but sheesh, he needs some mood stabilizers or something.
Dang!
My appearance on Hannity TV last night pic.twitter.com/ghhC7M85bE
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) October 30, 2020
More on Florida, at Foreign Policy.
Just watch Florida next Tuesday. Florida's results should come right around at 5:00pm, and absentee ("mail-in") ballots are counted before election day. We'll know who's winning in the Sunshine State.
The rest is all fluff. Well, actually, if Trump wins both Florida and Pennsylvania ... well, it's going to be a laugh riot.
See, "In Florida, Many Colombian Americans Fear Biden Is Soft on Socialism."
He's toast, says Nate Silver.
But you gotta click through, at Althouse, for the link.
So that's why the leftist "Latinx" journos at LAT are alarmed.
See, "For Latinos, combating disinformation about the election often starts at home."
Hmm. Florida Hispanics are Cuban. There might be some newer arrivals from other countries, but like Cubans, they're also escaping communism and tyranny. With the Democrats going so far left this year, and the anarchy of antifa and Black Lives Matter, this poll, at AoSHQ, is not surprising.
See, "American Greatness Poll: Trump Takes Four Point Lead in Florida."
A couple eager for a kitchen upgrade sold their existing refrigerator, stove and dishwasher, planning to replace them immediately. They were shocked to find out new appliances would be out of stock for months. https://t.co/6uBdrLjchM
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 25, 2020
From Kim Strassel, at WSJ, "The Biden ‘Family Legacy":
Here we go: https://t.co/SukHlG1zGs
— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) October 22, 2020
Joe Biden has a problem, and his name is Hunter. Because the former vice president hasn’t had to answer any questions on this topic—and continued to refuse to do so in Thursday’s debate—that problem could soon become America’s.
That’s the reality now that a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s has come forward to provide the ugly details of the “family brand.” Tony Bobulinski, a Navy veteran and institutional investor, has provided the Journal emails and text messages associated with his time as CEO of Sinohawk Holdings, a venture between the Bidens and CEFC China Energy, a Shanghai-based conglomerate. That correspondence corroborates and expands on emails recently published by the New York Post, which says they come from a Hunter laptop.
In a statement, Mr. Bobulinski said he went public because he wants to clear his name, which was contained in those published emails, and because accusations that the information is fake or “Russian disinformation” are “offensive.” He attests that all the correspondence he provided is genuine, including documents that suggest Hunter was cashing in on the Biden name and that Joe Biden was involved. Mr. Bobulinski says he was also alarmed by a September report from Sen. Ron Johnson that “connected some dots” on the CEFC deal, causing him now to believe the Bidens sold out their U.S. partners.
Mr. Bobulinski’s text messages show he was recruited for the project by James Gilliar, a Hunter associate. Mr. Gilliar explains in a December 2015 text that there will be a deal between the Chinese and “one of the most prominent families from the U.S.” A month later he introduces Rob Walker, also “a partner of Biden.” In March 2016, Mr. Gilliar tells Mr. Bobulinski the Chinese entity is CEFC, which is shaping up to be “the Goldmans of China.” Mr. Gilliar promises that same month to “develop” the terms of a deal “with hunter.” Note that in 2015-16, Joe Biden was still vice president.
As the deal takes shape in 2017, Mr. Bobulinski begins to question what Hunter will contribute besides his name, and worries that he was “kicked out of US Navy for cocaine use.” Mr. Gilliar acknowledges “skill sets [sic] missing” and observes that Hunter “has a few demons.” He explains that “in brand [Hunter is] imperative but right know [sic] he’s not essential for adding input.” Mr. Bobulinski writes that he appreciates “the name/leverage being used” but thinks the economic “upside” should go to the team doing the actual work. Mr. Gilliar reminds him that those on the Chinese side “are intelligence so they understand the value added.”
This dispute almost derails the deal. Hunter is hardly visible through most of the work, until final contract negotiations ramp up in mid-May. He brings in his uncle Jim Biden for a stake. (Mr. Gilliar in a text message soothes Mr. Bobulinski with a promise that Jim’s addition “strengthens our USP”—unique selling proposition—“to the Chinese as it looks like a truly family business.”) Hunter in texts and emails wants offices in three U.S. cities, “significant” travel budgets, a stipend for Jim Biden, a job for an assistant, and more-frequent distributions of any gains. As for annual pay, he explains in an email that he expects “a hell of a lot more than 850” thousand dollars a year (the amount Mr. Bobulinski, the CEO, is getting), since his ex-wife will take nearly all of it.
Mr. Bobulinksi pushes back, warning Mr. Gilliar in a text that they need to “manage” Hunter because “he thinks things are going to be his personal piggybank.” The duo worry about his “mental state,” substance abuse, and his ability to make meetings.
Hunter, in his own angry texts, makes clear that his contribution is his name...
RTWT.
It's been cool, overcast. Its' a nice break from the heat.
Here's the fabulous Ms. Evelyn, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:
At Big League Politics. "SHOCK CLAIM: Rudy Giuliani Says Hunter Biden Laptop Had Pictures of “Underage Girls,” Bizarre Texts."
RELATED: This is gold, Scaachi Koul, at BuzzFeed, via Memeorandum, "Jeffrey Toobin Can't Be The Only Person Masturbating On Work Zoom Calls."
Big eyerolls here, but it's absolutely true.
And it's the most stupid thing. I feel bad for white people, especially meekly progressive whites who are too afraid of being labeled "racist" (and having their lives destroyed) to stand up to the bullying.
At NYT, "'White Supremacy' Once Meant David Duke and the Klan. Now It Refers to Much More":
"As July 4 and its barbecues arrived this year, the activist and former N.F.L. quarterback Colin Kaepernick declared, “We reject your celebration of white supremacy.”THIS—>”’White Supremacy’ Once Meant David Duke and the Klan. Now It Refers to Much More.” The New York Times https://t.co/jhgUkDPq3H
— Christina Sommers (@CHSommers) October 17, 2020
The director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of New York City’s most prestigious museums, acknowledged this summer that his institution was grounded in white supremacy, while four blocks uptown, the curatorial staff of the Guggenheim decried a work culture suffused in it.
The Los Angeles Times editorial board issued an apology two weeks ago describing itself as “deeply rooted in white supremacy” for at least its first 80 years. In England, the British National Library’s Decolonising Working Group cautioned employees that a belief in “color blindness” or the view that “mankind is one human family” are examples of “covert white supremacy.”
In a time of plague and protest, two words — “white supremacy” — have poured into the rhetorical bloodstream with force and power. With President Trump’s overt use of racist rhetoric, a spate of police killings of Black people, and the rise of far-right extremist groups, many see the phrase as a more accurate way to describe today’s racial realities, with older descriptions like “bigotry” or “prejudice” considered too tame for such a raw moment.
News aggregators show a vast increase in the use of the term “white supremacy” (or “white supremacist”) compared with 10 years ago. The New York Times itself used the term fewer than 75 times in 2010, but nearly 700 times since the first of this year alone. Type the term into Twitter’s search engine and it pops up six, eight or 10 times each minute.
The meaning of the words has expanded, too. Ten years ago, white supremacy frequently described the likes of the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke, the neo-Nazi politician from Louisiana. Now it cuts a swath through the culture, describing an array of subjects: the mortgage lending policies of banks; a university’s reliance on SAT scores as a factor for admissions decisions; programs that teach poor people better nutrition; and a police department’s enforcement policies.
Yet the phrase is deeply contentious. Influential writers such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi, a Boston University professor, have embraced it, seeing in white supremacy an explanatory power that cuts through layers of euphemism to the core of American history and culture. It speaks to the reality, they say, of a nation built on slavery. To examine many aspects of American life once broadly seen as race neutral — such as mortgage lending or college faculty hiring — is to find a bedrock of white supremacy.
“It is not hyperbole to say that white supremacy is resting at the heart of American politics,” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor of Princeton, a socialist activist and professor of African-American studies, said in a speech in 2017.
But some Black scholars, businessmen and activists — on the right and the left — balk at the phrase. They hear in those words a sledgehammer that shocks and accuses, rather than explains. When so much is described as white supremacy, when the Ku Klux Klan and a museum art collection take the same descriptor, they say, the power of the phrase is lost.
Prof. Orlando Patterson, a sociologist at Harvard University who has written magisterial works on the nature of slavery and freedom, including about his native Jamaica, said it was too reminiscent of the phrases used to describe apartheid and Nazi Germany.
“It comes from anger and hopelessness and alienates rather than converts,” he said.
The label also discourages white and Black people from finding commonalities of experience that could move society forward,
Professor Patterson and others said. “It racializes a lot of problems that a lot of people face, even when race is not the answer,” Professor Patterson said.
Glenn C. Loury, a conservative-leaning economics professor at Brown University, hears in the term an attempt to spin a mythic narrative about a fallen America.
“So we declare structures of our country are implacably racist,” Professor Loury said. “On the other hand, we make appeals to have a conversation with that country which is mired in white supremacy? The logic escapes me.”
Then there are those whose cultural signposts are found outside the Black-white divide. The essayist Wesley Yang, the son of Korean immigrants and the author of “The Souls of Yellow Folk,” often examines racial identity and has found himself watching the debate over these words as if through a side window. Did this thing called white supremacy really so neatly define the lives of Black people and Latinos and Asians?
“The phrase is destructive of discourse,” he said. “Once you define it as something that has a ghostly essence, it’s nowhere and everywhere”..."
This is not good.
Have you paid attention to this woman? She's a budding leftist totalitarian, and New Zealand voters handed her at least three more years of power. Remember, she forced a major gun confiscation program following the Christchurch massacre in 2019, and New Zealand's coronavirus crackdown this year is perhaps the most draconian of any democracy on earth.
And she's a creepy "Karen" type of woman who assumes she knows what's best for you. "Cringe" is only putting it mildly.
At the New Zealand Herald, "Election results 2020: Labour's Jacinda Ardern wins second term, crushes National's Judith Collins; Winston Peters and NZ First out; Act's David Seymour and Greens' James Shaw and Marama Davidson get 10 MPs each."
The Sydney Morning Herald, "Victory an endorsement for Jacinda's steady hand in unsteady times."
And the Guardian U.K., "New Zealand election 2020: Jacinda Ardern to govern New Zealand for second term after historic victory -- New Zealanders give Labour more votes than at any other election in past five decades."
Due out January 21, 2021, at Amazon, Peter Schweizer, Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America's Progressive Elite.
Definitely got the Streisand Effect going on here.
Twitter made this an even bigger story by trying to block readers from sharing it.
At WSJ, via Memeorandum, "Facebook, Twitter Limit Sharing of New York Post Articles That Biden Disputes."
And at today's New York Post, via Memeorandum, "Emails reveal how Hunter Biden tried to cash in big on behalf of family with Chinese firm."
This is big. We'll see how things play out.
Also, at Instapundit, "AS THEY SHOULD: Twitter, Facebook face blowback after stopping circulation of NY Post story."
And Hot Air, "Biden Campaign Lashes Out at New York Post."
Well, Twitter does have its uses.
#RT if you like her big boobs! @BbtElle #tits #boobs pic.twitter.com/jGhoZ5o5te
— Big Breast Pics (@BigBreastPics) October 14, 2020
this seems exceedingly desperate. https://t.co/BaIEX7aR8b
— Apollycalypse (@PollySpin) October 7, 2020
At LAT, "How out-of-work strippers made their show virtual and are ‘taking the power back’."
When the pandemic hit, a group of dancers from the East Hollywood strip club Jumbo’s Clown Room realized no one was coming to save them.
— LAT Entertainment (@latimesent) October 5, 2020
So, they got creative💃💃💃: https://t.co/6wur5v85oW
Say a prayer for the president and his wife. Hope Hicks too.
It's been nonstop bombshell news for days now, some of it genuine news (and most of it propaganda from the leftist media complex --- here's looking at you New York Times).
Check Memeorandum for all the headlines.
And at LAT, "President Trump and first lady test positive for the coronavirus."
The media's descended into hysteria. On CNN a little while ago, Dana Bash, Kaitlan Collins, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta all looked like they'd just woken up or hadn't been to sleep. Brian Stelter declared an international emergency. Oh brother. It's four in the morning back east. What a nightmare. And to think, I watched baseball all day yesterday, then streamed "Big Brother" with my wife, and then the news hit. Unfortunately, there's just one MLB playoff game until Monday. The Cubs and Marlins are making up a rained out game later today, and after that I'll just stream some shows I guess.
This election's killing me lol.
At LAT, "‘It’s going to be like war.’ Voters eye 2020 election outcome with fear and loathing":
Many supporters of Biden and Trump fear violence is likely in November. Each side blames the other.
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) September 27, 2020
https://t.co/EnJ7qBieKo
When Jim Jackson looks ahead to November, he cringes at what he sees: a defeated President Trump refusing to leave the White House and his supporters waging war to keep him there.
“The militias and the white supremacists ... they’re going to put out the call to arms,” said Jackson, 73, who lives in the conservative-leaning suburbs of Milwaukee and voted Republican for 52 years, but not for Trump. “That’s my worst nightmare.”
Jeanine Davis shares his concern, though for different reasons.Seated near the Huntington Beach Pier, wearing a red “Keep America Great” hat, the Trump supporter suggested Democrats will do whatever it takes to elect Joe Biden, and riot if they fail. “It’s going to be like war amongst citizens,” said Davis, an executive recruiter in her 50s.Candidates often say a presidential contest is the most important ever, telling voters to act as though their life depended on it and the country’s future was at stake. Dozens of conversations with voters across the nation — from the West Coast to the Upper Midwest to the East — suggest that, this time, many people really believe it.Punished by pandemic, buckled by economic hardship and riven by relentless partisanship, America is facing an election unlike any in modern times, a vote shadowed by menace and fringed with paranoia — much of it fed by the occupant of the Oval Office, who incessantly acts to undermine confidence in the result.“He’s essentially trying to pull off a coup,” said Frank Dudek, a 70-year-old retiree, after casting his ballot at an early vote center in Arlington, Va., just outside the nation’s capital.Some voters worry about frayed family ties. Others see the whole country unraveling. A significant number consider threats and violence a reasonable way to solve partisan differences.“You have all these things — the pandemic, the protests, the counterprotests, the Black vs. white, the right against the left,” said Allison Trammell, 60, an Atlanta social worker who supports Biden. “It’s almost like everything is coming up at the same time and there’s no equilibrium. There’s no middle ground.”What is more, many are acting on their fears, anticipating all manner of chaos, up to and including armed insurrection. They’re flooding gun stores and shooting ranges, stockpiling ammunition and provisioning for a postelection dystopia.Ashley Avis, a 36-year-old nurse, was recently out with her father and 2-year-old son in Pinellas Park, Fla., buying plywood to board up their windows in case of civil unrest. She also plans to secure an alternative water supply, lest the public works around Tampa Bay are taken out of commission.“We’re hoping for the best,” said the Trump supporter. “We’re preparing for the worst.”Across the country, in a working-class neighborhood on Las Vegas’ east side, Michael Martinez said he, too, planned to lay in extra food and water “just in case there’s a disruption in our food delivery systems and whatnot.”“I wouldn’t put it past some people” if Trump loses, said Martinez, 69, a retired union carpenter and Biden supporter. “That’s the way they’ll try to disrupt the economy, try to disrupt the way we live now.”Not everyone sees election day as the dawn of a coming apocalypse.Dave Gorrasi, who owns Blue Hook Aquatics just outside Cincinnati, says he believes the talk of widespread upheaval is a device both sides are using to gin up support.“I think there is going to be less trouble once the election’s done because then we can go back to normalcy,” said the 41-year-old political independent, who is still undecided...
Still more.
RHCP, from my errand-run early this morning, at 93.1 Jack FM Los Angeles.
"Can't Stop."
Suddenly Last Summer
The Motels
12:00pm
Runaway
Bon Jovi
11:56am
Down Under
Men At Work
11:46am
Thats All
Genesis
11:41am
The Distance
CAKE
11:38am
Sunday Bloody Sunday
U2
11:34am
Highway To Hell
AC/DC
11:30am
Time Of Your Life
Green Day
11:28am
Born To Run
Bruce Springsteen
11:22am
Just Another Day
Oingo Boingo
11:17am
Rock The Casbah
Clash
11:13am
Hey Jealousy
Gin Blossoms
11:10am
Hotel California
Eagles/Don Henley
11:03am
Bizarre Love Triangle
New Order
11:00am
Use Somebody
Kings Of Leon
10:56am
Rio
Duran Duran
10:45am
Centerfold
J. Geils Band
10:41am
Loser
BECK
10:38am
I Need To Know
Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers
10:35am
Enjoy The Silence
Depeche Mode
10:31am
Cant Stop
Red Hot Chili Peppers
10:26am
Talking In Your Sleep
Romantics
10:15am
No One Like You
Scorpions
10:12am
Today's big story.
The Kavanaugh hearings were a nightmare.
I dread the diabolical attacks Barrett's going to endure. But she'll be confirmed.
See Ed Morrissey's excellent post at Hot Air, "NYT: Maybe A Little Anti-Catholicism Is A Good Thing When It Comes To Barrett."
And at Twitchy, "IT BEGINS: Lib questions Amy Coney Barrett’s adoption of two kids from Haiti," and "Talking points have gone out — Another Democrat operative Goes after Amy Coney Barrett adoptions and then locks down after blowback."
More at Instapundit, "PRESENTED WITHOUT COMMENT."
At Drunken Stepfather, "ON/OFF FLASHERS FRIDAY OF THE DAY."
BONUS: "BARBARA PALVIN TOPLESS OF THE DAY."
Andrew Sullivan is so damn good. It's freaky, too, since he's such a weird guy.
But this is really good. I look forward to Fridays, when I can read his column. I think Matt Taibbi posts his big pieces on Friday as well, so I'm going to go troll over there for a while, to see what he's got going.
Here's Sully, "Is that what's really destroying the legitimacy of our democracy?":
Remind yourself that hefty chunks of our society still insist that Covid19 is a hoax, perpetrated for the sake of social control. Re-read Richard Hofstadter. Remember how vast numbers of white liberals drastically shifted their view of America — almost overnight — from a flawed but vibrant multiracial democracy to a version of apartheid South Africa because of a single video of a brutal arrest and murder. This week, I watched videos of people literally burning Harry Potter books, like latter-day Nazis, in the cause of transgender liberation. It’s safe to say, I think, that many of these people have lost their minds — just by staying online. And they not only think they’re perfectly sane; they think they’re heroes.RTWT.And online is increasingly where people live. My average screen time this past week was close to ten hours a day. Yes, a lot of that is work-related. But the idea that I have any real conscious life outside this virtual portal is delusional. And if you live in such a madhouse all the time, you will become mad. You don’t go down a rabbit-hole; your mind increasingly is the rabbit hole — rewired that way by algorithmic practice. And you cannot get out, unless you fight the algorithms to a draw, or manage to exert superhuman discipline and end social media use altogether.
But the thing about algorithms and artificial intelligence is that they don’t rest, they have no human flaws, they exploit every weakness we have, and have already taken over. This is not a future dystopia in which some kind of AI robot takes power and kills us all. It is a dystopia already here — burrowed into our minds, literally disabling the basic mental tools required for democracy to work at all.
If you watch video after video of excessive police force against suspects, for example, and your viewing habits are then reinforced by algorithms so you see no countervailing examples, your view about the prevalence of such excessive force will change, regardless of objective reality. A new study shows how this happens.
HARTS, W.Va.—Just before 9 a.m., Hollee Blair sat in her boyfriend’s Toyota Tacoma in the parking lot of Chapmanville Regional High School and waited for attendance to be taken.Still more.
With no broadband internet at home, Ms. Blair, a 17-year-old honors student who plans to study nursing after high school, used her boyfriend’s iPhone to connect to the school’s Wi-Fi for an hour-long orientation over Zoom.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to keep up,” said Ms. Blair, shielding her eyes so she could see the phone’s screen. “If it means doing this every day, I’ll do it. It’s worth it.”
Much of southern West Virginia had already been struggling with a drug epidemic and persistent poverty before the coronavirus pandemic took hold here. Now, as students return to school online, the region is coming up against another longstanding challenge: a lack of broadband internet access.
Nationwide, about 21 million people lack access to broadband, according to the Federal Communications Commission. When people with slow or unreliable internet connections are included, the number swells to 157 million, nearly half the U.S. population, according to a study by Microsoft Corp.
Providing service in sparsely populated areas is typically more costly and less profitable than in suburbs and cities. In Appalachia, the terrain has made it difficult to install and maintain the infrastructure necessary for broadband.
In West Virginia, between 30% and 50% of K-12 students don’t have internet access at home, according to the state Department of Education. By the start of school on Tuesday, the state had set up nearly 850 Wi-Fi hot spots at schools, libraries, National Guard armories and state parks for students.
So far, nine of West Virginia’s 55 counties, including Logan County, where Ms. Blair lives, are teaching all classes remotely after spikes in Covid-19 cases pushed them above a threshold for new daily cases set by the state.
But in the state’s other 46 counties, many students will still need to connect online as some districts choose a blended model that mixes in-person and remote classes. Counties may also be required to halt in-person classes if case levels rise too high.
Logan County has had 536 cases of Covid-19 and 36 related deaths.
This week, Gov. Jim Justice lifted a $50 million cap on how much the state can receive from a fund created by the FCC to bring high-speed broadband to rural areas. But it isn’t clear how much the state will ultimately receive and how long it will take providers to connect homes.
“You’ve just got to step up and meet this challenge,” the governor said.
Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat, is seeking federal funding to set up broadband hot spots across the country to aid remote learning during the pandemic.
“This is a short-term fix to a long-term problem, but until we treat access to broadband like the need for electricity was treated in the 1930s, our students will fall behind,” he said.
In Logan County, which is blanketed by rugged mountains, nearly a quarter of residents live below the federal poverty line, according to census data. At Logan High School, the hallways and classrooms are empty, and teachers are troubleshooting tech problems as they begin broadcasting their classes to students from laptops.
Jennifer Stillwell, a history teacher, said some poorer students won’t have transportation to get to a hot spot. She is giving students the option to use a photo of themselves rather than live video, in case they don’t feel comfortable having their home appear on screen.
She was encouraged that after three days of classes, she had been unable to reach only five students who may lack internet out of 105 on her roster.
On Thursday, her AP history class got off to a smooth start, with 16 students logging in. “Let’s see if we can chat,” she said brightly, as she introduced herself from her neat classroom.
The Logan County school district is using a $375,000 grant from the state to get students connected. Patricia Lucas, the district’s superintendent, said as many 40% of K-12 students in the county might not have internet at home...
A fascinating piece, at Politico, "How Legal Weed Destroyed a Counterculture Icon."
SAN FRANCISCO — The cityscape resembles the surface of a distant planet, populated by a masked alien culture. The air, choked with blown ash, is difficult to breathe.Keep reading.
There is the Golden Gate Bridge, looming in the distance through a drift-smoke haze, and the Salesforce Tower, which against the blood-orange sky appears as a colossal spaceship in a doomsday film.
San Francisco, and much of California, has never been like this.
California has become a warming, burning, epidemic-challenged and expensive state, with many who live in sophisticated cities, idyllic oceanfront towns and windblown mountain communities thinking hard about the viability of a place they have called home forever. For the first time in a decade, more people left California last year for other states than arrived.
Monica Gupta Mehta and her husband, an entrepreneur, have been through tech busts and booms, earthquakes, wildfire seasons and power outages. But it was not until the skies darkened and cast an unsettling orange light on their Palo Alto home earlier this week that they ever considered moving their family of five somewhere else.
“For the first time in 20-something years, the thought crossed our minds: Do we really want to live here?” said Mehta, who is starting an education tech company.
It would be difficult to leave. They love the area’s abundant nature and are tied to Silicon Valley by work and a network of extended family members, who followed them west from Pittsburgh. But Mehta says it is something she would consider if her family is in regular danger.
“Yesterday felt so apocalyptic,” Mehta said. “People are really starting to reconsider whether California has enough to offer them.”
This is the latest iteration of the California Dream, a Gold Rush-era slogan meant to capture the hopeful migration of an old nation to a new, rich West. For generations, the tacit agreement for California residents resembled a kind of too-good-to-be-true deal. Live in the lovely if often drought-plagued Sierra, or beneath the beachfront Pacific Coast cliffs, and work in an economy constantly reinventing itself, from Hollywood to the farms of the San Joaquin to Silicon Valley.
But for many of the state’s 40 million residents, the California Dream has become the California Compromise, one increasingly challenging to justify, with a rapidly changing climate, a thumb-on-the-scales economy, high taxes and a pandemic that has led to more cases of the novel coronavirus than any other state.
During the course of his term, President Trump has singled out California, a state he lost by 30 percentage points, as an example of Democrat-caused urban unrest, irresponsible immigration policy and poor forest management, even though nearly 60 percent of the state’s forests are managed by the federal government. Several are burning today, with millions of acres already scorched.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has responded specifically in some cases, but in others, he has invoked the California Dream, an aspirational noun attached to no other state. In his January 2019 inaugural address, Newsom warned that “there is nothing inevitable about” that dream.
“And now more than ever, it is up to us to defend it,” he said.
As the state’s climate has shifted to one of extremes, soaking wet seasons followed suddenly by sharp, dry heat and wind, no region has been safe from fire. This year — even before peak fire season has gotten underway — widespread fires have forced evacuations, from San Jose in Silicon Valley to the distant hamlet of Big Creek along the western slopes of the Sierra.
More than two dozen major fires are burning around the state and have consumed a record 3.1 million acres of land, more than 3,000 homes and at least 22 lives. Los Angeles has reported the worst air quality in three decades as a result of fires surrounding that city, already notorious for orange air and seasonal dry cough.
Wine Country has burned four straight years, with a number of vineyards lost. Homes have been destroyed far to the south in San Diego County, and more than 200 campers had to be airlifted to safety amid the Creek Fire, still burning hot and fast between Fresno and Mammoth Lakes...
My goodness!
Watch, at the New York Post, "Insane video shows moment big rig triggers massive deadly crash."
She's looking fabulous in that mauve dress.
For CBS News 2 Los Angeles:
Nice and cool this morning, overcast.
The beautiful Ms. Evelyn, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:
No, I’m not talking about this — not yet, maybe later today — but rather about an interesting fact you probably haven’t noticed: Nobody cares how many white suspects get shot by cops. And I mean absolutely nobody cares. Certainly no black person has ever bothered to investigate how often the police shoot white suspects, but white people don’t care, either. Like, if I got pulled over by cops tomorrow and became belligerent when they tried to arrest me, nobody would care if this resulted in me being shot to death. My own family wouldn’t really care. My friends would be like, “He probably had it coming. He was always an idiot.”Keep reading.
There would be no protest marches. Benjamin Crump wouldn’t be all over CNN complaining about the “excessive force” if I got shot by cops. And this is not just true me, but of any other white person.
As the sun set in the Sierra Nevada Friday, about 50 residents of the mountain hamlet of Big Creek gathered on an overlook at the edge of town. The Creek fire, as it would be called, had just started burning in the canyon below.RTWT.
It seemed minor, and those assembled looked on hopefully as planes and a helicopter dropped water on it.
“It was a Friday night, something to watch, something to do. We are a bunch of hillbillies,” joked Toby Wait, the superintendent, principal and gym teacher for the town’s 55-student school. “Fire is part of our lives, but this was small.”
It didn’t stay small.
In the hours and days that followed, the Creek fire has exploded into a monster inferno that has consumed nearly 100,000 acres, enlisted nearly 1,000 firefighters, isolated small foothill communities and threatened to burn until mid-October.
California’s fire season got an early start this year with the massive lightning fires in the coastal mountains and wine country. Even without the fall Santa Ana winds, more than 2 million acres have burned so far in 2020, more than in any previously recorded year. Now the Creek fire promises to be one of the worst of the season.
For the mountain communities lying east of Fresno, the assessment as of Monday afternoon looked especially grave.
Fueled by millions of dead trees, the Creek fire has raced through mountain communities like Big Creek and vacation getaways like Huntington and Shaver Lake, confounding firefighters with unpredictable and terrifying behavior. Its smoke plumed nearly 50,000 feet high. There were lightning strikes. Forests seemed to explode.
The drama seemed to peak Saturday night when a CH-47 Chinook and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter rescued some 200 campers trapped by flames at Mammoth Pool.
But among the thousands fighting the fire or evacuating from its path, there have been no reports of deaths.
Damage to property and homes is more difficult to assess. The fire is burning so dangerously and intensely that crews who normally count destroyed houses and buildings have been told to stand down for their own safety...
During the final night of the Republican National Convention last week, Mr. Gaffigan delivered a profane Twitter rant against President Trump: “I dont give a f— if anyone thinks this is virtue signaling or whatever. We need to wake up. We need to call trump the con man and thief that he is.”RTWT.
There was more. Along these lines. You could look it up.
The sheer partisan rancor surely shocked many of Mr. Gaffigan’s fans. Yet the foul language was the real surprise—and, to some, the disappointment. Mr. Gaffigan’s success was built in part on his family-friendly reputation. He works clean—unlike most of his peers, he doesn’t swear during his act. More, he and his wife, Jeannie, have five children. Their willingness to identify publicly as faithful Catholics makes them a rarity in the entertainment business. In 2015 he was invited to “open” for Pope Francis during the pontiff’s visit to Philadelphia. Dave Chappelle and Louis C.K. don’t get those gigs...
Rio
Duran Duran
11:50am
Give It Away
Red Hot Chili Peppers
11:45am
What's on Your Mind?
Information Society
11:41am
Lights
JOURNEY
11:38am
Only Happy When It Rains
Garbage
11:34am
Rock The Casbah
Clash
11:31am
Blasphemous Rumours
Depeche Mode
11:21am
Unforgiven
Metallica
11:15am
Don't You Want Me
Human League
11:11am
You're My Best Friend
Queen
11:08am
Radioactive
Imagine Dragons
11:05am
Panama
Van Halen
11:01am
I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)
Daryl Hall & John Oates
10:52am
Everlong (Acoustic)
Foo Fighters
10:47am
Take On Me
A-HA
10:44am
Margaritaville
Jimmy Buffett
10:39am
Driving across Arizona, it’s hard not to notice a surge in California license plates. The reason for this is becoming more apparent every day. California is a failed state.Still more.
After nearly a decade of one-party rule, the once-Golden State is tarnished, possibly beyond repair. Listing all the problems facing our neighbors across the Colorado River would require several books, so I’ll only highlight a few.
The fifth-largest economy in the world and home to many of the greatest technology companies on Earth can’t keep the lights on. The state’s three largest utilities turned off power to more than 410,000 homes and businesses on Friday, Aug. 21, then again to half as many Saturday, Aug. 22.
Gov. Gavin Newsom sprung to action on Monday by announcing more blackouts. "We failed to predict and plan these shortages,” the governor said. “And that's simply unacceptable."
But accept it he did, noting that the state’s near-religious promotion of solar and wind power left a gap in the reliability of its power grid. You don’t say.
Wildly unpredictable events, like August being hot, never occurred to Newsom last October when he signed six more bills to kill off his state’s fossil fuel industry. Shutting down one of California’s two nuclear plants certainly didn’t help. Perhaps their plan to close the second one in 2024 will have different results.
So have those to stop homelessness
Documentary filmmaker Christopher Rufo’s latest work reveals the tragic failure of the city’s homeless policies. In “Chaos by the Bay,” he shows the results of well-meaning progressive efforts, from decriminalizing homelessness to plying addicts with free drug paraphernalia, alcohol and cannabis. For the most part, rampant mental illness has been left untreated...
