Category Archive 'California'
22 Aug 2021

Mysterious Deaths of Google Engineer, Wife, Baby, & Dog

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Daily Mail:

The mysterious deaths of a British Google engineer and his family on a hiking trail were not a case of homicide, police say.

The bodies of Jonathan Gerrish, 45, his wife Ellen Chung and their daughter Muji – along with their dog Oski – were found by search teams on Tuesday in an area of the Sierra National Forest known as Devil’s Gulch. …

The Marisopa County Sheriff’s Office is now ruling out homicide in the hiking trail deaths, Fox News reports. Spokeswoman Kristie Mitchell said: ‘Initially, yes, when we come across a family with no apparent cause of death, there’s no smoking gun, there’s no suicide note, there’s nothing like that, we have to consider all options.

‘Now that we’re five days in, no, we’re no longer considering homicide as a cause of death.’

Mr Gerrish, originally from Lancashire, had been a software developer for Snapchat and previously worked for Google. …

The couple were last heard from early on Sunday when they uploaded a photo of a backpack. Searchers began looking for the family on Monday after they were reported missing by friends when they did not report to work.

County Sheriff Jeremy Briese said: ‘I’ve been here for 20 years, and I’ve never seen a death-related case like this.

‘There’s no obvious indicators of how it occurred.’

Briese said there was no obvious cause of death and that he had not dealt with a case like this in his 20 years in the area.

‘You have two healthy adults, you have a healthy child and what appears to be a healthy canine all within a general same area,’ the sheriff explained.

‘So right now, we’re treating the coroner investigation as a homicide until we can establish the cause.’

RTWT

19 Jul 2021

California Housing Prices

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(click on image, as usual, for larger version)

My wife Karen forwarded, for schadenfreude laughs, this Zillow record of a recent house sale in San Jose.

San Jose is a depressing, intensely-governed police state of a small city, consisting of truly ghastly cheap suburban houses built of ticky-tacky squatting at the bottom of Silicon Valley and spilling up on to some of the scrub-covered surrounding hills.

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17 Jun 2021

Coastal California’s Waging War on Kern County

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Bakersfield

Joel Kotkin explains how Coastal California environmental superstition combined with snobbery is devastating the economy, and wiping out the jobs, of Blue Collar in-land Kern County.

Located over the mountains from Los Angeles, Kern County has always been a different kind of place. Settled largely by “Okies and Arkies” from the Depression-era South, the area has a culture more southern than northern, more Ozarks than Sierra. Home to just under 1 million people at the southern end of the state’s Central Valley, Kern is noted for producing the “Bakersfield sound,” epitomized by the late country star Merle Haggard, and is sometimes even referred to as “little Texas.”

Its economy rested on two natural resource industries that once powered California – agriculture and oil. The region leads California in energy production and is fourth in agriculture, mainly yielding lettuce, strawberries, and grapes. Its concentration of agricultural jobs is 22 times the national average and its oil industry jobs are 6 times the national average.

Although these may seem like “old economy” jobs, the Kern area has easily outperformed zippy “new economy” places in total job growth; outside of the Silicon Valley, notes Chapman analyst Marshall Toplansky, Kern is one of few California areas producing mid-wage jobs above the national average – far more than San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Orange Counties, which have fallen behind the national pace. …

In a state suffering from high housing prices and a lack of middle-wage jobs, one would think boosting Kern County and its largest city, Bakersfield (population: 700,000) would be a priority. Governor Gavin Newsom boasts that he wants to look for ways of “unlocking the enormous potential” of the Central Valley, but he seems more interested in flattening the area’s aspirations.

Climate policy sits at the core of this assault. Reflecting the prejudicial neuroses of his Bay Area and oligarchic base, Governor Newsom – who Dan Walters describes as “California’s champion virtue signaler” – has announced plans to shut down the state’s oil industry. Newsom’s latest unlegislated decree directed state regulators to ban all forms of oil and gas well stimulation technologies, including steam injection, essential for oil and gas extraction in the state. The draft rules, issued last month, would effectively sharply limit California’s oil and gas industry as well as future exploration and development. According to a study by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, these dictates threaten over 366,000 high-paying, largely blue-collar jobs, about half held by people of color. Another 3.9 million jobs, 16.5% of total state employment, are at risk from these policies.

People in Bakersfield may depend on these jobs, but rigid Ecotopians – backed by investment bankers, social media magnates, and urban real estate interests, the funders of “progressive” politics – want them eliminated. The green push also threatens to destroy the area’s ability to fund local services. Renewable firms thrive in the area – producing 25 percent of all California’s renewable energy, according to the Kern EDC, and serving as home to the nation’s largest solar plant, wind farm, and geothermal facility. But these facilities tend to pay little or no property tax, while oil represents the largest source of local revenue. Green energy won’t do much for the county when faced with the demand for more welfare and other services that would accompany increased joblessness stemming from the demise of oil.

Nor is energy the only area Newsom is seeking to undermine the local economy, particularly now that California is about to have another of its regular droughts. The last one ended in 2017. Since then, first under Jerry Brown and now Newsom, the state has done little to increase reservoir storage capacity during wetter years. Captured water is increasingly released into San Francisco Bay, rather than used for homes and farms, in a quixotic attempt to “save” species in decline despite decades of “scientific” protection.

Like the energy sector, agriculture finds itself in the crosshairs of the greens, who link dry weather to climate but oppose the construction of new reservoirs, preferring to use runoff for natural areas like San Francisco Bay and the adjoining delta. The preferred solution to droughts today is not de-salinization or boosting water storage, but wiping out farmland, creating a dystopic landscape of abandoned fields in some of the world’s richest agricultural areas.

The losers here are not just the “corporate” farms long disdained by California’s progressives. In the last drought, which ended in 2017, thousands of poor and predominantly Latino workers lost their jobs. The most recent drought is hitting just as Central Valley farmers struggle with new groundwater regulations that dramatically cut their ability to cope with reduced runoff from rain and snowmelt. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, groundwater limits will eliminate between 535,000 and 750,000 acres of Valley farmland. Small farmers, who won’t be able to pay for or even secure ever-scarcer water, likely would be the worst hit.

RTWT

10 Jun 2021

17-Year-Old California Girl Throws Bear to Save Dogs

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18 Apr 2021

COVID Sent Bay Area Techies Fleeing to Tahoe

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Outside reports that the COVID epidemic had terrible consequences for the Lake Tahoe resort community:

They just kept coming. The day-trippers, Airbnbers, second-home owners, and unmasked revelers. Unleashed after California’s first statewide COVID-19 lockdown ended in late June of last year, they swarmed Lake Tahoe in numbers never before seen, even for a tourist region accustomed to the masses. “It was a full-blown takeover,” says Josh Lease, a tree specialist and longtime Tahoe local.

July Fourth fireworks were canceled, but that stopped no one. August was a continuation of what Lease called a “shit show.”

The standstill traffic was one thing; the locals were used to that. But the trash—strewn across the sand, floating along the shore, piled around dumpsters—was too much. Capri Sun straws, plastic water-bottle caps, busted flip-flops, empty beer cans. One day in early August, Lease picked up a dirty diaper on a south shore beach and dangled it before a crowd. “This anyone’s?” he asked.

Lease was pissed. He couldn’t believe the lack of respect people had for this beautiful area, his home for two decades. Plus, they’d invaded during a pandemic, bringing their COVID with them.

That day, after the diaper incident, Lease went back to his long-term rental in Meyers, California, a few miles south of the lake at the juncture of Highways 89 and 50, where he could see the endless stream of cars. An otherwise even-keeled guy, he logged on to Facebook and vented. “Let’s rally,” he posted on his page, adding that he wanted to put together a “non welcoming committee.” He was joking—sort of. But word spread like the wildfires that would soon rage uncontrollably around the state. Before long someone had designed a flyer of a kid wearing a gas mask, with a speech bubble that read “Stay Out of Tahoe.” It went viral.

On Friday, August 14, at four o’clock, over 100 locals from around the lake began to gather. They commandeered the roundabouts leading into the Tahoe Basin’s major towns—Truckee, Tahoe City, Kings Beach, and Meyers in California, and Incline Village in Nevada—to greet the weekend hordes. Young women in bikini tops, elderly couples in floppy hats, and bearded dads bouncing babies in Björns held up hand-painted signs: “Respect Tahoe Life,” “Your Entitlement Sucks!,” and “Go Back to the Bay.” One old-timer plastered his truck with a banner that read “Go Away” and drove around and around a traffic circle.

But summer turned to fall, which turned to winter, which became spring, and the newcomers are still here. It’s not just the tourists anymore, whose numbers have ebbed and flowed with lockdown restrictions and the weather and whose trash has gone from wet towels twisted in the sand to plastic sleds split in the snow. There’s another population of people who came and never left: those freed by COVID from cubicles and work commutes. They migrated, laptops in tow, to mountain towns all over the West, transforming them into modern-day boomtowns: “Zoom-towns.”

In Lake Tahoe, the unwelcoming party was hardly a deterrence. The outsiders have settled in.

RTWT

05 Oct 2020

Trans-Black Reparations Now! No Justice, No Peace!

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Godfrey Elfwick (authors’ names come out wrong in Outline) says he is a Trans-Black woman. (Actually, he is a sharp-tongued satirist writing for the British Spectator.)

On Wednesday, California became the first state government in the US to adopt a law to study and develop proposals for reparations to descendants of enslaved people and those impacted by slavery. This is positive news and I am hoping it will set an example to encourage other states to follow suit.

As a transblack individual and an immigrant to the United States, it’s pure coincidence that I’ve recently (since yesterday) been mulling over the idea of moving to California. I believe that I qualify for reparations from the white man who has kept me down and prevented me from achieving my full potential. Only the other week I applied for a position at Microsoft and was told (by a white man, probably, it was on the phone but his voice sounded pale) that I would need a degree in Computer Science to even be considered for any job other than that of a receptionist or cleaner. Now, if that’s not racism I do not know what is. It is sexism too. How is someone like me expected to obtain such a qualification when the cards are stacked so high against me? This has been proven time and time again. The moment I tell someone I am a Black woman (their ignorance and bigotry only allows them to view me as a white male), their demeanor swiftly changes and the atmosphere becomes tainted with the unmistakable stench of hostility, followed by hysterical shouting and racial slurs. Because I’m not just going to stand there while some honky crackerjack stares down their ridiculously pointy nose at me. Not once have I been given a second interview. Discrimination.

In my opinion, it’s high time the subject of reparation was taken to a federal level. I mean, if forcing white people to contribute more taxes to atone for the possible sins of their ancestors won’t end racism once and for all, I honestly do not know what will.

RTWT

04 Oct 2020

New California Law Requires Separate Restrooms For People Who Think They Are Napoleon

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Babylon Bee:

SACRAMENTO, CA—A new California law requires businesses to provide separate restrooms for people who think they are Napoleon Bonaparte.

“Not providing a separate restroom for individuals who believe they are actually the 19th-century French emperor is hateful and wrong,” said Governor Gavin Newsom as he signed the bill into law Wednesday, flanked by several people dressed as Napoleon Bonaparte. “We will no longer allow these individuals to be discriminated against.”

The restrooms will have doorways that are just over 5’7″ tall. 19th-century French classical music will be playing. When the person finishes using the restroom, a victorious military parade will be thrown in their honor as they march out of the restroom and back into the business.

“We must affirm these people’s beliefs that they are actually Napoleon,” said Newsom. “To do anything but reinforce the delusion they’ve built up around themselves is a hate crime.”

RTWT

28 Sep 2020

The Story of the Jeep That Went Viral

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A Jeep Wrangler wound up dangling from a cliff on a Southern California bike trail after somebody drove it up there at night and had to abandon it and walk out.

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The Ford Motor Company graciously offered to rescue it, and to document the rescue to use in some unaccountable way or other. One has the feeling that Ford Broncos would be involved.

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No Bronco, no helicopter! A team from the local off-road club turned up with winches, straps, shackles and more Wranglers and saved the day.

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The Drive did us all a big favor, they interviewed the driver and his brother and found out how it got there in the first place.

There’s only one question that still needs to be answered. How the hell did the Wrangler get up there in the first place?

Wonder no more. The Drive has the answer after tracking down and speaking with Car Internet’s most buzzed-about missing man this week: the Jeep’s owner, a local man named Ricky Barba. As you might’ve guessed, it all started with an ill-advised joyride to show off his rig. But there’s no way Barba could’ve known his misadventure would end up garnered nationwide attention from news stations, social media users and even corporate bigwigs.

And yes, what Barba did was dumb, incredibly dangerous, and wildly irresponsible. He could’ve easily died up there, or someone could’ve lost their life in the recovery effort. And we’re not even talking about the damage done to the bike trail, or the potential to start a brush fire at the height of fire season. Do not off-road by yourselves, after dark, in a place where it’s not allowed. Barba is incredibly lucky that he and his Jeep are still in one piece. There are saints out there in the constellation of off-road recovery Facebook groups, but you can’t count on them to save your bacon.

Anyway, the way Barba tells it, the whole thing started around a barbecue grill. He and his brother had dinner Sunday night, after which they decided around to go for a short off-road drive in Barba’s Wrangler around 7 p.m. A crucial detail is that sunset is at 6:45 p.m. in Los Angeles these days—wheeling alone is never a great idea, and that’s triply true after dark. Still, the brothers took off for a nearby recreational area in the wrinkled hills just south of Loma Linda, California, where he said they’d made memories with their late father years before.

Another key point relayed by Barba: He wasn’t driving. It was apparently his brother behind the wheel.

“So, [my brother] had never driven a Jeep,” Ricky explained. “He was like ‘Let me drive your Jeep’ because I’ve been trying to get him to buy one, so that’s how it started.”

An eager off-road newbie, a darkening sky, and someone else’s Jeep. You can see where this is going.

Now, this area is a network of rolling hills—”mountains” is overstating it, though there are definitely some long, steep dropoffs in places—along the south edge of the San Bernardino Valley, and it’s a hotspot for off-roaders. However, past a certain point it’s not fit for four-wheeling. A network of backroads winds from one side to the other, changing in elevation and winnowing down to single-track hiking and biking trails like Razor Ridge, where the Jeep eventually became terribly and utterly stuck.

Even though Barba and his brother had been there before, the clock wasn’t on their side this time. It was really getting dark, and a series of wrong turns landed them on one narrow trail after another. Unlike them at the time, you can probably see where this is going.

“We ended up driving farther and farther and farther, and he liked the way it handled so he’d say ‘Let me try this, let me try this.'”

Despite what the photos might lead you to believe, the Barba brothers didn’t make it that far. According to Jorgie Maldonado, a member of the Jalados 4×4 group that successfully recovered the Jeep, it was only 15 minutes from the dirt road in nearby Reche Canyon to the stuck Wrangler. …

Another clarification from Barba is that he and his brother initially made it across that knife-edged ridge in the now-famous photo. But when they got to the other side, they couldn’t see over the crest and decided to try and back up. If your head is spinning right now, you’re not alone

“How we crossed it, I don’t know. Obviously, we’re talking about heights, there was no moon, there were no lights. Only our headlights,” Barba told us.
Via Google Maps

It was during that doomed attempt to reverse back across the ridge that they veered off the narrow path to the east, putting the passenger side—where Barba was sitting—on a downhill slant.

“We were able to jump out and he was able to put it in park. If we would’ve went down, we would’ve been dead.”

The thing is, though, Barba says he did fall down, which made the situation even more complicated.

“I fell off the cliff, [my brother] called 9-1-1 for them to come and rescue me at that point, [but] that didn’t happen. ..

Finally, they ditched the Wrangler and left the area in the wee hours of Monday morning. Ricky claims they returned in the following days to secure the rig, which explains why later photos show a strap around its front bumper tied to a stake in the ground.

HT: Karen L. Myers.

23 Sep 2020

Bad Kitty!

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California features a landscape in which real wilderness closely abuts the most densely populated suburbs. It does not rain typically from April to October, and watercourses become brushy arroyos instead of streams, and these serve as perfect mountain lion highways from the uninhabited mountains right into suburbia.

06 Jun 2020

ANTIFA Reputedly Changed Its Plans

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03 Jun 2020

ANTIFA Visits the Suburbs in Yucaipa, California

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30 Apr 2020

Go Down, Donald

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HT: Vanderleun.

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