Silicon Valley is outsourcing jobs out of state and overseas like a mofo, as daily trips to any newspaper would inform anyone who cared to read the writing on the wall. San Diego is an open sewer, overwhelmed by homeless and overrun by illegal aliens, while the last few retirees there wonder if they can sell out and move or die, before their McMansions in the north county 'burbs become completely untenable. Los Angleles looks more like Tijuana wall-to-wall, and the few enclaves of civilization along the coast are priced fro the uber-rich, and served by the uber-poor, tending the coastal overwhelmingly liberal plantations like latter-day slaves. And when Jubilee comes, Whitey won't be invited.It's a cesspit out there.
* * *
If you think commercially-available hobby drones are too small to be weaponized, think again. Imagine a drone laden with a payload consisting of thermite and something to ignite it on command. Imagine that drone landing on one of those large fuel storage tanks you see here and there, and the thermite being ignited. Okay, half a pound of stuff burning at 4,000 degrees is going to cause a bit of trouble when it melts through the top of that storage tank, don't you think? Especially considering that steel melts--I mean "becomes liquid", by the way, not "soft enough to sag under its own weight"--around 2750 degrees?
This all comes to light, by the way, because a weaponized drone--a drone with an IED and remote detonator!--was confiscated from some bad guys in Mexico. So, those who are saying, "Oh, that can't be done" should STFU as it's already being done.
* * *
All you need to do is to watch the news to discover why.
* * *
Ace says it's time for Hillary to do some time in the federal pen. "Time"? Dude, it's long past time that she and her equally nefarious husband were locked up for a good long time. Holy shit.
* * *
Head of the Democrat party doesn't understand the origin of the Electoral College. He said--he actually said--"The Electoral College is not a creation of the Constitution."
Uh, dude? There's this little tidbit in Article II of the US Constitution: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress." Not to put too fine a point on it, but that is the Constitution of the United States and it is rather explicitly creating an Electoral College.
Hate to break it to you, but you're wrong.
* * *
I agree with this entirely.
Puerto Rico is in dire straits because for decades--not years, but swaths of years--they ignored electricity infrastructure, preferring to funnel state money to social programs and cronyism rather than update a power grid cobbled together and jury-rigged since McKinley was president.The result? A month after a hurricane knocked down the electrical grid, only about a fifth of the island has power again.
The solution is to teach the man to fish, rather than give him one:
...[T]he soft racism of condescendingly low expectations is part and parcel of the entire wrong approach to deal with disasters like this. Send them all the tools they need to fix the problem, but let them fix it themselves, and do it right, so they don't need the same thing next year, and the year after that. Build a power grid that doesn't go down forever from one hurricane, or even two. Build storm drains that take into account the problem, and eliminate it the minute the clouds blow over. Instead of sending them food stamps, teach them to fish and raise food, so the entire island isn't a cargo cult dependent wholly on imported supplies 24/7/365. Teach them the hard way that they should have strategic stockpiles of medicine in storm-proof storage right there on the island, and not depend on immediate shipments because they never thought of that. And stop building things too flimsy to survive a Cat V hurricane, which they're going to get every decade or two.Puerto Rico is smack dab in the middle of a region that suffers hurricanes. It should not be too much to expect them to be prepared for them, exactly the way we expect Californians to be ready for earthquakes, Hawaiians to be ready for volcanoes, or midwesterners to be ready for tornadoes.
If you want an example, look at Japan. They get hit with typhoons (Pacific Ocean hurricanes) and don't end up being knocked back to the stone age for months on end. This is so because they build to withstand them.
"They can't help it!" Well, they need to learn. There's nothing wrong with us helping them learn, but they need to learn. And it is nothing but racism to assume they cannot.
* * *
Company coming on Saturday, so I've gone into emergency cleaning mode. Got 90% of the clutter out of the way already. A bit left for the garage, mainly tools I brought in for this or that and haven't yet taken back out. Tomorrow I'm going to clean the kitchen and bathroom, and dust and vacuum and do the rest of the household cleaning.
I'm also hoping to get the recycling taken care of. That'd be helpful.
Well, we'll see how I do.