Bill Maher brings the smackdown to the politics of the LA fires

 

When even an acknowledged leftist like Bill Maher is so devastatingly sarcastic and caustic in his comments about California politicians, it's clear that politics in that state may be undergoing a sea change.  Can Democratic dominance of politics there continue as before, or will anger and disgust at the mishandling of the fires and their aftermath lead to a new alignment?

This segment is about nine minutes long, and is worth watching.

The image of all those fire engines that were out of service because they hadn't been repaired (due to budgetary restrictions) is very telling indeed.

Peter

I wasn't aware this world record existed...

 

... and I'm relatively certain that if it didn't, we'd be no worse off.  Be that as it may:

Turkish woman establishes world record for watermelons crushed with thighs

A Turkish woman who squashed five watermelons within a 60-second timeframe, using only her thighs, has set a world record ... She is handed a plaque and told she is "officially amazing," becoming the first person to earn the distinction of using the thighs to smash the most watermelons in 60 seconds, in the female category.

There's more at the link.  Here's a video clip of her record-setting performance.

I'm glad her efforts were fruitful, so to speak . . . but if she'd failed, would she have been melon-choly over it?

Peter

The Swamp knows its enemy, and is already fighting

 

The Swamp, or the Deep State, or whatever you want to call it, is well aware that it's fighting for its life against President Trump's agenda.  It's spent months, if not years, preparing its counterattacks against the onslaught it knows is coming.

The first evidence of that occurred literally minutes after President Trump was sworn in yesterday.  No less than three lawsuits were instantly filed against the proposed "Department of Government Efficiency", or DOGE, alleging that it had to comply with the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), but that it had not done so.  Therefore, according to one plaintiff, "This shortcoming renders DOGE’s membership imbalanced and unfit for the function it has been directed to perform".

Sounds impressively legalistic, doesn't it?  The only problem is, DOGE is still conceptual.  It's been proposed, and its agenda discussed, and senior appointees' names have been mentioned:  but as far as I'm aware, President Trump has not yet signed any executive order or other official document that establishes it in law.  It's still only a concept.  In other words, those lawsuits have been filed against a defendant that does not yet legally exist.  Furthermore, FACA's constitutionality has been called into question, so the Trump administration may ask the courts to rule on that issue before anything else is done.

It's also worth noting who filed the lawsuits:  Public Citizen, the American Public Health Association, and National Security Counselors.  Those three organizations, and anyone working for and/or representing and/or supporting them, have thereby publicly identified themselves as members of, or allied with, the Swamp/Deep State/whatever.  Those of us who regard the Swamp as the primary internal enemy of our Republic and its Constitution should take note of that, try to identify links between them and each other and other organizations and individuals, and watch them carefully.  "Know your enemy" remains a cardinal rule, in lawfare as much as warfare, and the Mikado's "little list" is a useful thing to keep up-to-date.

The Swamp knows full well that if DOGE functions as expected, it will dismantle many of the foundational elements of the Deep State, and probably fire many thousands of the employees needed for it to function.  It dare not risk that, so it's trying to derail the process before it can even begin.  It will argule legalese until the cows come home, and seek suitably liberal courts where it can file its cases.  I've no doubt some judges will be found to lend a sympathetic ear to its arguments.

However, this also gives the Trump administration a chance to re-focus DOGE's task, purpose and structure.  If its lawfare opponents are attacking it on grounds A, B and C, DOGE can be reoriented to avoid those legal pitfalls and instead use legal elements D, E and F as its foundation.  Furthermore, it need not necessarily be established as a government department at all.  The Swamp has used non-governmental organizations (NGO's) to do its dirty work for years:  things like censoring public discourse, or indoctrinating the education system, or what have you.  There's no reason (at least in theory) why something similar to DOGE could not be set up by conservative NGO's, existing or new, and its reports submitted to the Administration just as left-leaning NGO's have done.  After all, the three organizations filing these lawsuits advertise themselves as "think tanks", "advocacy groups", and influencers of government policy.  As far as I know, none of them are subject to the provisions of FACA.  Why can't DOGE be set up (under a different name, of course) as precisely the same type of organization, if push comes to shove?  I'm sure the funds needed to do things that way would be forthcoming.  Heck, one might even categorize some of the expenses involved as falling under President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, and use funds already allocated under that Act for the purpose.  (And wouldn't that make the Swamp see red???)

The lawfare lobby is going to try to tie the Trump administration in legal knots in any and every way they can.  It might be time to define the specific area or scope that a given level of federal court can affect.  At present, even an entry-level federal court can issue an order affecting an issue nationwide.  It may be time to codify a system whereby low-level courts' orders affect only that area under their local jurisdiction;  appeals courts affect only the states under their jurisdiction;  and only the Supreme Court can issue an order binding on the entire country.  That would render a lot of low-level cases useless to the lawfare lobby, which would have to appeal cases higher and higher in the system to achieve their objectives.

I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if that's practical.  Would any lawyers among my readers care to weigh in on the matter?

Peter

Quote of the year (so far)

 

"Woke"-ness, political correctness, sexism and sheer plain daftness are all evident in this one-liner:

“When Black female students are repeatedly disciplined for being social, loud, or goofy in the mathematics classroom, they experience mathematical violence.”

"Mathematical violence"???  What on earth is that?  Perhaps it's a variation on the ancient Roman custom of decimation, where one legionary out of every ten was put to death to punish severe misconduct?  There's certainly mathematics involved in that, and violence too (very much so) . . . but I haven't yet come across any school, college or university advocating the execution of one in ten students for "being social, loud or goofy".  Perhaps someone should try that, on the grounds of being mathematically - albeit not politically - correct?

The toenail-curling stupidity and mindless blathering of the "woke" are still with us, it seems . . .

Peter

Biden's "pre-emptive pardons" and the rule of law

 

President Biden's issuing of last-minute "pre-emptive pardons" to several politicians and bureaucrats is both legal, and a stunning abuse of presidential power.

They're legal because our President does, indeed, have the power to pardon offenses against Federal law - even if those pardons have never been charged with or convicted of such offenses.  The presumption is that they have, indeed, done so;  otherwise there'd be nothing to pardon, would there?

They're also a stunning abuse of presidential power in that those pardoned today, according to all we know of what they did while in their respective offices, did indeed abuse the power(s) of those offices to wage a political vendetta against the man who will succeed President Biden in office later today.  In other words, it's now a matter of fact, if not law, that a President can use "the system" to persecute, oppress and attack his opponents, then ensure that they get away with it and can never be held accountable for what they did.

The only useful thing about these pardons is that they prevent those pardoned from invoking their Fifth Amendment constitutional rights against self-incrimination.  They can no longer be tried for any offenses they may have committed, but they can be subpoenaed to give evidence to any inquiry into what those offenses might have been.  Furthermore, if they refuse to give evidence, or lie under oath, they remain liable to a conviction for contempt of court and/or perjury.  They no longer have the right to keep silent about the actions that were pardoned.  One hopes, at a minimum, that their mendacity, corruption and misuse of their office(s) will be thus exposed.

When the full tale of the Biden Presidency is finally unveiled, I suspect it might turn out to have been the most crooked, corrupt and criminal Presidency in our nation's history.  Sadly, it now looks as if some of those most responsible for that will get away with their crimes, as far as the law is concerned.  One hopes that since our judicial system is now prevented from holding them accountable, they will face justice in some other suitably condign way.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 245

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

How many of you remember the Swingin' '60's?  A familiar voice on British airwaves (and, to a lesser extent, American) at that time was a young lady stage-named Cilla Black.  She was a close friend of the Beatles and many of their contemporaries, and they wrote several songs for her that became hits.  She had a simple, unforced, almost little-girl-type voice that fitted the mood of the time.

To begin, here's my favorite of her songs:  "If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind".

Here's her second No. 1 hit in the UK, in 1964:  "You're My World".

Paul McCartney wrote "The Long And Winding Road" for the Beatles, but he went on record as saying that Cilla's 1972 rendition was the definitive version of the song.

Finally, here's "Something Tells Me (Something's Gonna Happen Tonight)".

Cilla Black died in 2015, aged 72, after a fall at her villa in Spain.

Peter

Useful information and insights for "preppers" and avoiding a disaster

 

We've written a lot about that subject here over the years (see the sidebar for some article links), but we never stop learning - particularly from the experiences of others.  After the Los Angeles fires, there's a lot more of that out there.

Eaton Rapids Joe has just published three articles on his blog that you may find useful:

New "Preppers"

New Preppers: The Time-Distance-Options relationship

New Preppers: Stay or Go?

In the third of those articles, he also linked to a classic article originally published in 1989:

Backpack Fever

It examines the pro's and con's (there are many of the latter!) of "bugging out" with a backpack to avoid a dangerous situation.  There are times when one may have no choice in the matter (the Los Angeles fires being a prime example), but in general it's best to stay put and ride out a disaster in one's home (assuming one has applied basic forethought to one's preparations).

Recommended reading, all of them.

Peter

For the benefit of Californians needing home repair contractors...

 

... here's a helpful tool from cartoonist Stephan Pastis.  Click the image to be taken to a larger version at the "Pearls Before Swine" Web page.

I don't know how many building and/or repair contractors there are in the greater Los Angeles area, but I suspect they're going to have enough work on their plates to keep them fully occupied for years to come.

I spoke with an acquaintance yesterday who's on the brink of abandoning his burned-out Los Angeles home and leaving the state.  It was his grandfather's and his father's home before him.  He had no mortgage on the house, but was under-insured compared to its current market value (or what was its market value prior to the fire).  According to him, he's already been advised that the insurers will apply averaging to what they pay out, considering him to be self-insured for part of the value, so they won't give him the full amount for which he'd insured the house with them.  Needless to say, he's not happy.  However, his place of work went up in smoke along with several thousand houses, so he's suddenly free to consider a move.  All things considered, he's probably going to take the insurance money for his house, sell the land on which it stood (which might still be worth a considerable amount in its own right) and head for a freer state with more opportunities for his teenage children.  He was asking me all sorts of questions about Texas, particularly our housing prices, which are low enough compared to California that he can probably buy something acceptable for cash.  If he can find a job that fits his qualifications and experience, I daresay he'll be heading this way within weeks.

I suspect he's likely to be the first of many . . .

Peter

Recycling... and also nauseating!

 

This is one news story I would never have expected to read.

In a gleaming laboratory in Edinburgh, robotic machines whirr and mix. The final product that they are creating will be a pine-smelling chemical that can be used as an ingredient in perfumes. But the starting point is very different: a brown, gloopy, fat mixture, recently fished out from below ground - fatbergs.

Fatbergs are the foul phenomenon found lurking in (and blocking up) sewers. The development of the technology used to perform this apparent alchemy is being described by some as a new industrial revolution.

. . .

Prof Stephen Wallace from the University of Edinburgh is among those turning the fatbergs into perfumes. "It's a crazy idea," he admits to me, "but it works."

Fatbergs are accumulated lumps of fat from cooking oils, toilet and other food waste that people put down their drains. Prof Wallace gets his from a company that specialises in fishing them out of sewers and turning them into biofuels. They arrive at the lab in a tube.

The first step is to sterilise the material in a steamer. Prof Wallace then adds the specially modified bacteria to the remnants of the fatberg. The bacteria have a short section of DNA inserted, to give the bacteria their particular properties.

The fatberg gradually disappears, as the bacteria eat it, producing the chemical with the pine-like smell - this can be used as an ingredient in perfumes.

There's more at the link, including more maggot-gagging pollutant products that are being "reprocessed" into something useful.

Would you apply a perfume to your body that had started out as a fatberg?  I find the very concept repulsive . . . but I guess it's not much different from drinking recycled, purified sewer water, as millions of us do in many cities every day.  In this day and age, we have so much waste to dispose of that it makes sense to recycle and reuse it, rather than create even more pollution by dumping it somewhere.

Nevertheless, the thought of a fatberg being used as a perfume ingredient is about as cringe-worthy as anything I've ever heard!

Peter

If you own insured property anywhere in California, stand by for a very expensive surprise

 

The Wall Street Journal reports that a little-known change in California's insurance regulations last year means that the enormous property losses caused by the current Los Angeles fires may end up being paid by all California property owners - not just those directly affected.

The new policy affects the backstop for California’s Fair Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which sells fire-damage policies to homeowners who can’t get coverage elsewhere.

The worry is that the Fair Plan lacks the resources to pay for the quickly escalating cost of the fires, which have destroyed tens of thousands of structures. 

The rules change means insurance companies can bill their customers if they are forced to bail out the plan, which has an estimated $200 million in cash and $2.5 billion in reinsurance, according to data it reported last year.

That is likely not enough to cover the Fair Plan’s share of the losses from the fires, forecast at up to $6 billion by analysts at Evercore ISI.

. . .

Analysts at Morningstar DBRS now forecast insured losses of up to $30 billion—the highest for any fire in the world in recent times ... the spiraling cost could financially overwhelm the Fair Plan, the decades-old, government-created insurance safety net. 

Like similar insurance safety nets in more than 30 other states, including disaster-prone places such as Florida, the Fair Plan wasn’t set up as a typical insurer. It operates with little cash in the bank, as a way of keeping rates—while higher than private insurers’ premiums—within reach of policyholders. Regulated insurers agree to bail out the plan, if needed, as a price of doing business in the state.

The Fair Plan is required to take all-comers, which means its customers are heavily concentrated in fire-prone areas. 

. . .

If the Fair Plan breaches its financial resources, the state can call on commercial home insurers to pay the rest of the claims, by imposing what’s called an assessment on the companies.

The charge on each company would be roughly proportionate to its share of the home-insurance market ... companies can add to their customers’ bills 50% of the first $1 billion of an assessment, and 100% of any amounts over that, subject to [the California insurance commissioner's] agreement.

. . .

Consumer advocates are up in arms about the prospect of a potential charge of hundreds or even thousands of dollars being added to home-insurance bills.

“Homeowners across the state shouldn’t pay because insurance companies dumped homeowners on the Fair Plan,” said Carmen Balber, the Los Angeles-based executive director of Consumer Watchdog.

There's much more at the link.  If you own and/or insure property in California, it's a must-read article.

Think about it like this.  You own a house in, say, Redding, a city in northern California, about 550 miles from Los Angeles as the crow flies.  You're paying your regular homeowner's insurance on your property, presumably a manageable amount, because you're not in a high-risk zone.  Suddenly your insurer demands that you pay double that insurance premium for 2025, because that's "your share" of its bailout costs for California's Fair Plan insurance scheme, which has been drained by fire losses in Los Angeles - losses with which you had nothing to do.  You object?  So what?  California's rules, regulations and laws make it legal to rob Peter to pay Paul - and in this case, you're Peter.  You say you can't afford the bill, and don't have the money?  Then your insurers will sue you, and may end up taking your house and selling it out from under you to get the money the State of California says you owe them.  Doesn't that give you a warm, fuzzy feeling?

I am so very, very glad that I don't live in the socialist hellhole known as California . . .

Peter