Shut down for two weeks in March--fine, we can do that. Heck, shut down for the entirety of March, okay. But it's been six months and they keep moving the goalposts for reopening in order to keep everything locked down as long as possible. Not because they want to prevent the spread of infection, but because they want to hurt Donald J. Trump's re-election chances.
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Today is a cloudy, rainy day, which is little distinction since most of the week has been like this. It does keep me inside the house, though.
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"We all knew that environmentalists were functional imbeciles, but clearly we were being kind." California is a state which has vast areas that are subject to wildfires. Environmentalists have insisted on a great many detrimental things, but two in particular are relevant to this discussion: ceasing all forest management, and moving to "renewable" power sources.
Ceasing all forest management means no clearing of deadwood, no maintenance of firebreaks; it means keeping humans out of the forest entirely and leaving it be.
The thing is, wildfires are natural. Absent human intervention, forests come and go all the time. They grow for decades, something sparks a fire that burns it all off, and they regrow. The same thing goes for the great plains. There are plants whose seeds won't sprout unless they've first been scorched.
But you can't do that when people are there. The presence of people means managing the forests is necessary, and we got pretty good at that. Making firebreaks, cleaing the deadwood (because you're preventing the fires that would do that) and in general maintaining the forest.
Environmentalists can't stand that. They managed to get most of California to vote to ban forestry; and so you're left with a gigantic tinder box that goes up every year.
And so, solar power.
The wildfires happen in late summer and early autumn, times when most of the country is at its hottest. This is when people need power to run their air conditioners. But wildfires make smoke, a lot of it, and smoke blocks sunlight, and that reduces the power output of your solar panels. If your capacity for electrical generation depends, in any significant way, on solar power, you're screwed.
In California the smoke and ash have created a solar-power eclipse that is raising the risk of more electric-power blackouts. State regulators in recent years have been ordering shutdowns of nuclear and natural-gas plants that can provide power around the clock and ramp up quickly when demand surges or other electricity sources wane.California generates some thirty percent of its power with wind and solar. The state law mandates 100% "renewable" by 2045.
California is getting what it voted for, good and hard. And everyone who can is bailing out.
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Why they ain't no stores in our neighborhoods? Lookit all this empty space where you could put a store! Um, the space is empty because you folks who live in that area had a riot, and looted and burned everything, because a criminal got shot dead while resisting arrest.
I find that absolutely infuriating, and I suspect I'm not alone in that. It's not racism to decide that you don't want to waste money building a store that will never turn much of a profit and eventually end up being looted and burned.
If you want the stores to come back to your neighborhood, the prescription is pretty simple, but the historial evidence would suggest that you won't be able to accomplish it. All that has to happen is for people to:
1) Not steal merchandise from the storesThe presence, or lack thereof, of stores in your neighborhoods is a function of the behavior of the people living in those neighborhoods. That's all it is.
2) Not vandalize the stores
3) Not threaten the employees
4) Not rob the stores
5) Not commit other crimes in or around the stores
6) Not riot and loot and burn every time a criminal gets hurt or killed while resisiting arrest
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"Trump is the first President in history to try a Middle East policy that has at its center something other than appeasing the Palestinians, and it's worked." ...which is why Biden is claiming that Trump's policies are bad for Israel, or something like that.
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So--lower right rib cage, just below, has been bothering me for about a week. The only way to avoid pain is to recline; lean back in my chair and relax. My face is inconveniently far from the monitor and it makes work difficult.
Last night I took a muscle relaxant. That knocked me out, of course, with the result that I was in bed before 12:30 and slept (with only minor interruption) until after 1 PM. But when I woke up I was completely pain-free and my side only just now began to bother me.
But it's a rainy Saturday and I don't feel like doing much. I'm still feeling logy from the drug and laying back down sure sounds like a nice idea.
Man, I suck.