Immigration

California, Angela Merkel, and Dancing With a Train

by

I was thinking of California and Angela Merkel today.

Los Angeles County is being hammered by wildfires, causing damage on an epic scale. The destruction is heartbreaking and it will only get worse in the coming days. There are stories of bulldozers being deployed to push aside cars abandoned by fleeing residents so that emergency crews can be deployed.

For California, like much of the West, fire and water are a fact of life. However, California has a very poor track record when it comes to wildfire mitigation tactics, allowing fuel loads to build on forest floors and in canyons.

Then there is the issue of water. In a state where five years of precipitation can fall within a single year, dams and water systems are essential to capture that bounty before it flows into the Pacific. Yet it will take nearly 20 years, if ever, to build water systems that are already funded. A dam may  be made of of concrete but it is constructed through red tape.

All of this lack of preparation is combined with a dearth of first responders, fire hydrants running dry, and a lack of crisis leadership. Watch the following clip of the LA Mayor, trying to respond to a reporter’s questions.

Read more

2024 Election Plus/Delta

by

Pluses: admittedly much the shorter list, but we did resolve a few things.

  1. Thanks mainly to vote shifts in California and New York, the popular vote outcome was not at variance with the Electoral College vote, and it wasn’t particularly close (over 4-1/2 million votes).
  2. Largely as a result, the losing side, and VP Harris herself, have indicated cooperation with formal certification and transition processes.
  3. Harris is gone. She’ll get a chunk of money for a book and retire to the lecture circuit.
  4. Walz, same, and given the likelihood that he would have been a 21st-century version of Henry Wallace, with Chinese instead of Soviet agents in his inner circle, that might be more important than getting rid of Harris.
  5. Taking a somewhat longer view, Trump is gone too (perhaps not a much longer view; see the final Delta item below).
  6. By extension, there is some chance that ’28 will not have the electorate choosing between a crook and an idiot for President.
  7. Whatever one may think of prediction markets, and there are arguments on both sides regarding their functionality, the biggest prediction market of all, the US stock market, was forecasting a Trump victory all year (not coincidentally, the same thing happened in 2016).
  8. By the way, the media will actually report negative economic news now.
  9. I could have put this in either category, but I’ll leave it here: your Cluebat of the Day is a reminder that Trump is as old as Biden was in ’20, and notwithstanding some of my more apprehensive items below, to expect anything much of him is a waste of time.
  10. Likely continuation of relatively good space-industry policy across Administrations, which should be the only thing that matters several decades from now.

Read more

Mwen Rekòmande Panik Imedyat

by

Having sensed that my public is calling: “In fair Springfield, where we lay our scene …”

Read more

Yon Tanpèt Pafè

by

In the wall mural of global incompetence that is our Crisis Era, Haiti has become the most lurid corner, a hallucinatory labyrinth worthy of Hieronymus Bosch; not so much the canary in the mine as a collapsed side tunnel whose maimed and trapped victims are within earshot and line-of-sight of First World institutional leaders already fumbling with a dozen groundwater leaks and toxic gas buildups in the main shafts.

Read more

Quote of the Day

by

David Harsanyi:

Though Jews are by far the most targeted religious minority in the United States, we have yet to have a big national conversation about the problem. No one in major media dares even bring it up.

There are lots of “conversations” we’re supposed to have, meaning mob actions where leftist cadres will abuse isolated non-leftists who are dumb enough to take the bait. Media and top Democrats are all-in. Maybe it’s time to go Alinsky on the Left and hold struggle sessions about antisemitism? It’s a nice thought.