In comparison, the ’89 Loma Prieta quake which dropped the Embarcadero freeway in San Francisco was “only” 6.9.
Archive for 2017
September 19, 2017
AT AMAZON, Deals on Top Rated Products.
CLAIM: 12 to 15 million Americans use steroids. Is that high? Maybe, though I see a fair number of folks at the gym — including more than a few women — who have the telltale signs. I’d legalize them, just as I’d legalize recreational drugs.
ALLIES: Trump team to block Erdogan gun deal.
The decision blocks a $1.2 million deal that would have supplied arms to Erdogan’s security detail, months after Erdogan’s team outraged U.S. leaders by beating protesters against his regime during a trip to Washington, D.C. The violence added new stress to an alliance that has grown fraught in recent years, despite Turkey’s status as a key member of NATO.
“The State Department, in informing Congress that it was formally withdrawing the planned sale, said it was at the request of Sig Sauer, which had requested the license from the U.S. government that’s needed to export weapons outside the U.S.,” according to the Associated Press, which first reported the cancellation. “But the U.S. had already quietly put the sale on hold after the violence, and the Trump administration had informed the Turkish government that the sale wouldn’t be allowed to take place. Sig Sauer appeared to have pulled its request for a license from the U.S. government after hearing from the Turks that it no longer expected to purchase the weapons.”
The cancellation drew immediate applause from Congress, where Republican and Democratic lawmakers have demanded that Trump punish Erdogan. “Erdogan thinks he can beat up people with immunity from our law,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., told the Washington Examiner. “He may behave that way in Turkey but he can not do that in America.”
Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey is gone, and Erdogan’s Turkey is no friend to Western values.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Do I Carry A Dangerous Amount Of Belly Fat?
THE CFPB IS A CONSTITUTIONAL ‘EXCRESCENCE’: Oklahoma Attorney AG Mike Hunter takes the CFPB to task for its excesses – and Congress for allowing them to continue. He’s right on both counts (although the House has done its job and passed a bill that would constrain the Bureau), and I shall endeavor to use the word “excrescence” more when talking about the CFPB.
In related news, the House Financial Services Committee has just released a report that finds that the Bureau rushed to settle with Wells Fargo when it finally realized what was going on at the bank.
HOTBLACK DESIATO COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: NASA’s Hubble Captures Blistering Pitch-Black Planet.
The oddball exoplanet, called WASP-12b, is one of a class of so-called “hot Jupiters,” gigantic, gaseous planets that orbit very close to their host star and are heated to extreme temperatures. The planet’s atmosphere is so hot that most molecules are unable to survive on the blistering day side of the planet, where the temperature is 4,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Therefore, clouds probably cannot form to reflect light back into space. Instead, incoming light penetrates deep into the planet’s atmosphere where it is absorbed by hydrogen atoms and converted to heat energy.
“We did not expect to find such a dark exoplanet,” said Taylor Bell of McGill University and the Institute for Research on Exoplanets in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, lead researcher of the Hubble study. “Most hot Jupiters reflect about 40 percent of starlight.”
Hubble is still producing fascinating results, nearly 30 years after its launch.
THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: In San Diego, hundreds line up for hepatitis A vaccinations after deadly outbreak may have hit restaurants.
NEWS I HOPE YOU DON’T HAVE TO USE: 8 Essential Things You Should Be Doing NOW to Prepare for an EMP Attack.
MISSILE DEFENSE: U.S. Establishes Permanent Military Base in Israel.
The move comes at a time of growing Israeli concerns about archenemy Iran’s development of long-range missiles. Together with the U.S., Israel has developed a multilayered system of defenses against everything from long-range guided missile attacks from Iran to crude rockets fired from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
The base’s opening is largely symbolic and isn’t expected to bring operational changes. But the Israeli military says that along with other measures, it sends a message of readiness to Israel’s enemies.
“It’s a message that says Israel is better prepared. It’s a message that says Israel is improving the response to threats,” said Brig. Gen. Zvika Haimovich, the commander of Israel’s aerial defense.
The base is located within an existing Israeli air force base and will operate under Israeli military directives.
This is a huge deal — or would be, if any of Israel’s Arab neighbors chose to make it one. But they haven’t, which just goes to show you how much Israeli-Arab relations have improved in the face of Iranian aggression.
JUDGING FROM MY LAST TRIP TO KROGER, THE MARKET FOR THIS COULD BE HUGE: This Needle-Covered Patch Dissolves Excess Body Fat Wherever You Stick It.
EXPLAINER: Understanding the Roles of the IAEA, the Joint Commission, and the United States.
On August 31, major Western media outlets reported that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had once again certified Iran’s compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal. This assertion, which purported to re ect the IAEA’s seventh and latest post-implementation report on Tehran’s nuclear activities, mirrors statements by the Iranian government and key world leaders in response to the agency’s previous reports. e IAEA has repeatedly a rmed “that Iran has implemented the deal faithfully, fully, and completely,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on July 16. Federica Mogherini, the high representative of the European Union for foreign a airs and security policy, said on July 20 that the UN watchdog “has certified six times – not once, six times – the full implementation of the deal’s provisions.”
These accounts are false. In fact, the IAEA has never certified Iran’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
This is pretty dry reading from the FDD, but it goes a long way towards clearing up the misconceptions presented by Washington, the international community, and the mainstream media.
SHADES OF TEDDY ROOSEVELT: Time for a Conservative Anti-Monopoly Movement.
DON’T BE WEEVILS: Gab.AI Sues Google Over Removal Of App From Google Play Store. “Google used comments from users to justify removing the app due to ‘hate speech.’ Now, Gab is fighting back.”
Google intends to monitor speech even on other people’s platforms.
THEY ALREADY ARE: Are Conservatives Prepared to be Censored?
What images should appear when you Google “white couple”? Probably two people of European descent. If you search those words today, though, you’ll find almost exclusively black couples. The results are similarly skewed for “white man & white woman” and “white couple with children”. Try it. Strange, a bit annoying, and vaguely political – just imagine the reaction if a query for “black couple” turned up only whites. I suspect that wouldn’t fly at Google.
What results would you expect when Googling “American inventors”? Likely a mix of great innovators from our past and present, from a variety of backgrounds. Instead, Google tells us they’re almost all black. No Benjamin Franklin, no Samuel Morse, no Bill Gates. Without disrespecting Dr. Patricia Bath and her cataracts-surgery machine, the telegraph and personal computer merit a higher placement.
Somebody at Google is skewing the queries, in this case a form of digital affirmative action: conceivably another point scored in an endless matchup against “white supremacy,” whose presence at all turns is the greatest of progressive obsessions. The implication is that anything related to whiteness – even the telegraph – shouldn’t be searched for at all, and takes up “space” from the accomplishments of marginalized people. In both of the above examples, we receive a political indoctrination in lieu of sought after information. In the second one, we actually learn an altered version of history.
Read the whole thing.
Google made its name by doing what no one before them could: Produce meaningful search results of the web’s nearly unlimited and completely un-curated information. Their results were, by far, the best — and it made the company untold billions.
Clearly that’s no longer true — so use a different search engine, refuse to part with your personal data in exchange for their “free” services, and take away their billions.
NEW YORK TIMES: Republicans Demand Another Vote to Repeal the Affordable Care Act.
“Demand?” Republicans control The Hill, allegedly, and ObamaCare repeal is one of the jobs what they were elected to get done.
KIDS THESE DAYS: Today’s US teens about three years behind ’70s generation when it comes to sex, alcohol and getting jobs.
The findings in the journal Child Development were based on an analysis of seven large, nationally representative surveys of 8.3 million teenagers between 1976 and 2016.
The surveys sought to find out how those aged 13 to 19 spent their time, and how often they engaged in adult activities such as drinking alcohol, dating, taking jobs, driving, or having sex, said the report.
What researchers found was a ‘broad-based cultural shift,’ said the study.
Adolescents in the 2010s ‘are less likely to work for pay, drive, date, drink alcohol, go out without their parents, and have sex than adolescents in previous decades,’ it said.
These changes were apparent across the nation, and regardless of race, gender or socioeconomic lines.
‘The developmental trajectory of adolescence has slowed, with teens growing up more slowly than they used to,’ said lead author Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University.
‘In terms of adult activities, 18-year-olds now look like 15-year-olds once did.’
It’s one thing to skip the youthful sex and drinking for ambitious kids taking on the world at work. Or to slack off for a few years sowing some wild oats. But missing out on gainful employment, sex, and alcohol is just sad.
GEORGE KORDA ON TENNESSEE DEMOCRATS: Basing a strategy on ‘resistance’ won’t turn Tennessee blue. “Democrats and a good many talking heads repeatedly over eight years said how wrong it was to be disrespectful toward a president when his name was Obama. Changing directions 180 degrees because the president is named Trump may work for the committed faithful, but the politically non-adamant can’t turn that fast to embrace a concept of disrespect Democrats condemned for eight years.”