Interesting Items 12/03

Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information.  Enjoy –

In this issue:

  1. Earthquake
  2. California
  3. Report
  4. Roberts
  5. Musk
  6. Immigration

Aftershock map of Anchorage earthquake 11/30/18. Original quake is the large yellow circle at the 5 PM location on western Knik Arm shoreline.
  1. Earthquake. A M7.0 earthquake hit Anchorage at 0829 Friday morning.  It rocked and rolled for over 30 seconds.  It was immediately followed by a M5.7 aftershock which also rocked the city.  Epicenter was about 7 miles N, on the other side of Cook Inlet and was pretty shallow at 27 miles.  The quake was strongly felt as were over 1,400 aftershocks over the course of the weekend.  One of my personal goals of life is to experience large earthquakes as far away as humanly possible, with hundreds of miles being the minimum goal.  This last weekend was both unsuccessful and bluntly confirmed that approach to life, however poorly practiced.  One of the things you end up with a large quake right under you is that you get the special joy of feeling every single aftershock larger than M3.0.  The other thing you end up with is an appreciation for building codes, as the older buildings here in town did less well than the newer buildings.  Building codes are a dual edged sword as they are often abused by local governments going well over the top and requiring changes to be made after the fact without any compensation.  There was a lot of damage to buildings around town.  Lots of ceilings down, lots of ceiling tiles down.  Liquor stores were particularly hard hit.  So many dead soldiers.  The shaking tended to open drawers in kitchens and open the doors on kitchen cabinets.  Pieces of furniture not attached to the walls with drawers were invariably pulled over by open drawers.  Things inside kitchen cabinets were bounced out with significant damage to glassware and crystal.  We here in ANC are built on glacial till, and there is no small amount of potential liquefaction during this sort of extended shaking.  We had damage to several roads and bridges into and out of town, turning the city into the functional equivalent of an island during the time the airport was closed.  The most amazing thing about the whole affair is we have a major earthquake hitting a large US city and surrounding area (over 400,000 people close to the epicenter), yet we have no dead people.  There were minor injuries and building contractors will be busy for the next couple years, as there was widespread damage.  This was a moderately big deal that came out of the blue.  It won’t be the last one.  Now to get to the job of hardening homes and businesses for the next one.  https://www.adn.com/tag/11-30-18-alaska-earthquake/

 

  1. California. A lot of us are still scratching our heads over the wipeout loss of Republican congressional seats in Orange County, CA and wonder how the democrats pulled it off.  While voting fraud was most certainly taking place, the systematic undermining of state voting integrity laws by democrats in charge of the California government has turned it into a one-party state.  An example was Young Kim, a Republican congressional candidate with a 14-point lead going into election day.  She ended up losing what should not have been a tight race.  How was it done?
  • California has expanded voting eligibility. Some communities grant illegals the right to vote.  SF in 2016 passed local legislation allowing illegals and other non-citizens to vote in local elections.  This year, they spent $310,000 to register 49 non-citizens to vote in a school board election.
  • Inmate voting. State law allows convicted criminals in jail, on probation, on mandatory supervision, on post release community supervision, or on federal supervised release to vote.  The only criminals not allowed to vote are felons in prison or on parole.  And all of these people are registered to vote for democrats.
  • Felon voting. California has downgraded numerous crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.  In 2015, this gave 60,000 convicted felons back the right to vote.  They are all registered as democrats too,
  • Motor Voter Fraud. Every person in California who interacts with DMV is automatically registered to vote.  As many as 77,000 people are double registered.
  • Pre-Registration. This pre-registers 16 – 17 year old’s to vote, capturing them while they are young and dumb.  Only 10% of these teens register as Republicans.
  • Absentee Ballots. A new California law allows counties to mail every voter absentee ballots whether they request one or not.  In just four years, the number of absentee ballots has increased by 44%, with the total number of absentee ballots sent out growing from 9 million in 2014 to 13 million this year.
  • Ballot Harvesting. Illegal in most states.  Automatically registering every single person to vote and sending them an absentee ballot is not enough.  You have to get them back to be counted.  A 2016 change in state law repealed the requirement for a trusted family member to return another’s ballot.  The change now allows anyone to return ballots which has led directly to coercive intimidation tactics to collect the ballots, forcing those who actively refuse to participate to participate.  Of course, only those who registered democrat or non-partisan are so harassed.  Republican ballots are not collected.  More on this in the weeks to come.
  • Conditional Ballots. California effectively adopted same day voter registration with the introduction of conditional voting.  Voters who missed the 15-day pre-election voting election window can request to cast a conditional ballot.
  • Ballots accepted after the election. Voting doesn’t stop on Election Day.  Absentee ballots need only be postmarked election day.  They are counted is they arrive up to 3 days late.  Those sent to the wrong county get an additional 4 days.  This means voting continues for up to a week after the election.
  • Second chance for rejected ballots. A law signed in Sept. requires elections officials to notify every voter whose ballot was rejected due to a mismatched signature.

Tally all these changes up and you end up with a situation where a 14-point lead on Election Day is not enough.  I expect a 20-opoint lead in 2020 won’t be either.  Add to it the California open primary system where the top two vote getters get their names on the November ballot and you have a situation where no Republican, Green, Libertarian or any other party candidates other than democrats show up in front of voters on the state ballot.  https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/nov/27/no-one-needs-voter-fraud-when-all-the-rules-are-ch/

 

  1. Report. The Trump WH Released a 1,700-page National Climate Assessment Report on Black Friday.  This report was prepared by administration climatistas and aimed at directly undermining Trump’s view on climate change (aka, manmade global warming due to CO2 emissions).  It forecast an 8.5 C (15 F) temperature increase by the end of this century, something about five times worse than any of the climate models spit out.  It was dutifully grabbed and waved in our collective faces by gleeful media and democrats all screaming some variation of “See!  See!  We HAVE to do something Right. Now. Immediately. Or. We. Are. All. Gonna. Die!”  As usual, the devil is in the details in this sort of thing, as there are significant problems with the report.  The report claims that the worst climate scenario could cost the US 10% of GDP, twice the loss during the Great Recession 2008 – 2016.  This study was funded by climatista billionaire Tom Steyer, who now that he has his, wants to make sure none of the rest of us have that same opportunity.  The loss is based on the worst-case temperature increase scenario of 8.5 C (15 F) temperature increase previously mentioned, which is the most extreme and least likely climate scenario.  The extreme pathway assumes everything goes wrong – global population doubles to 12 billion, lowest rate of technology growth, massive increase in poverty, high growth of coal use worldwide.  This is a blatant scare tactic as most catastrophic impacts of climate change don’t kick in at currently low (in geologic history) atmospheric CO2 levels.  They cherry pick extreme weather and misrepresents timelines and causality.  There has been no increase in droughts, no increase in floods, no increase in tornadoes, no increase in hurricanes hitting the US, and no data to demonstrate any claimed increase is tied to human activity.  The other little game they play is cherry-picking where to start drawing their graphs.  The carefully selected graphed data claims climate change is leading to an increase in wildfires, completely ignoring lawfare-driven elimination of logging and brush removal in wildfire-ravaged California.  Finally, they adopt perhaps the most idiotic solution to the problem, carbon taxes, making the claim that the cost of inaction (loss of 10% GDP) far outweighs the cost of a carbon tax.  And they produced the numbers to back that claim up, conveniently high-balling climate change impact and low-balling costs of the carbon tax.  Yet another fraud perpetrated upon the taxpaying general public by government-paid advocates for more government.  https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/nicolas-loris/four-problems-trump-admins-new-climate-change-report

 

  1. Roberts. Chief Justice John Roberts dusted off his “Shocked, simply shocked” outrage face last week aimed at Trump comments responding to idiotic O’Bama judges on the federal judiciary using their positions to legislate from the Bench on policy issues.  While I do understand Roberts advocating for the branch of government he heads up, he was most foolish picking this particular fight as his hands are most certainly not clean.  For example, he was completely silent when O’Bama went after the SCOTUS particularly after Citizens United.  He allowed himself to get Mau-Mau’ed into rewriting O’BamaCare as a tax in order to not find it unconstitutional.  He stood silently by while Ninth Circus federal judges make it up as it goes rather than publicly chastising them.  And to make the festivities more entertaining, Senator Charles Grassley (R, IA) got involved and slapped Roberts around for a complete lack of comments when O’Bama went after Justice Alito in 2010.  At this point, the elected branches managed to get Roberts’s attention to the point where he withdrew from the battlefield of ideas and went silent.  Sometimes an attention getting step is necessary, especially when the head of the branch of the federal government that is supposed to play it straight decides not to any more.  https://www.businessinsider.com/republican-leaders-respond-to-trump-attacks-on-john-roberts-judges-2018-11

 

  1. Musk. In case you need yet another demonstration that the entrenched bureaucracy is interested in retaining and growing its power and authority, comes the story of a new NASA Safety Review of SpaceX.  Reason for this?  Did SpaceX blow up another rocket?  No.  Kill anyone?  No.  Commit unsafe actions?  Nope.  In fact, they continue to perfect their ability to reuse first stage boosters, turning at least two of them three times.  So, what triggered this months-long, in depth safety review?  Nothing other than video of SpaceX head Elon Musk toking a joint on a Joe Rogan Experience podcast.  With this, the NASA public employees and the contractors whose asses SpaceX is kicking (Boeing, LochMart, United Space Alliance, etc.) now have their opening to go after their competition via bureaucratic fiat.  NASA spokesman said the review would “… ensure the companies are meeting NASA’s requirements for workplace safety, including the adherence to a drug-free environment.”  Your taxpayer dollars at work.  https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/nasa/417792-nasa-orders-safety-review-of-spacex-over-video-of-elon-musk

 

  1. Immigration. I always find it interesting when the Dowager Countess of Chappaqua (Hilly) and Lurch (John F’ing Kerry) echo one another in the media, especially when what they are talking about sounds like is it coming from a Limbaugh monologue.  Last week, both Hilly and Lurch made anti-illegal immigration comments which instantly pricked Limbaugh’s political change antenna.  So why are two putative democrat 2020 candidates suddenly going after illegal immigration?  Three reasons occur to me.  First would be that with 30+ million illegals in the country and voting for democrats, they don’t need any more as the blue wave continues to creep from California eastward and northward from the Mexican border.  They may think they already have enough illegals in country to make that change.  Second would be to get to the right of their opposition on the issue.  Yeah, I know that democrats nominate democrat candidates, but I also know that the democrat establishment won’t allow anyone unacceptable (Bernie, anyone?) to get the nomination.  Third, and most important, is that they defenestrate Donald Trump by stealing his most powerful issue for 2020.  Anyone else remember the Bill Clinton campaign ads in 1992 blasting away at Bush 41 for breaking his No New Taxes promise in 1990?  Clinton lied through his teeth (which is what all democrats do) and got to the right of Bush on the issue for the campaign, helping him win.  This smells a lot like the same thing is going on.  https://www.investors.com/politics/columnists/immigration-hillary-clinton-larry-elder/

More later –

– AG

 

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