[Townhall] If you reward criminals with fewer consequences, crime grows exponentially.
So mark January 1st 2024 on the calendar.
Today January 1st 2023, a new law goes into effect. The law will leave a major impact on the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago.
In some circles it is being touted as "the most dangerous law in America." All for good reason.
The new law closely mirrors criminal "reforms" that have now been in effect for two years here in New York. In short it seeks to "right the wrongs" of "unfair" law enforcement and to press its thumb on the side of those previously disenfranchised.
This is mostly just a way to say that the woke left is attempting to bring down effective law enforcement in another big state, create chaos, and further allow that environment of anarchy to bring about their culturally marxist ideals.
We’ve seen the pattern across the nation. Change enforcement of criminal codes so that actions that once were considered serious crimes to simple misdemeanors, refuse to prosecute, let criminals roam freely to terrorize once again.
In other words if you can’t get cities to defund the police directly, create such a difficult job for them that they more or less quit doing the job they do best: stopping crime and protecting citizens.
And while they’ve been very unsuccessful in getting actual police departments to lose funding, they have been moderately effective at installing DA’s who just refuse to enforce the laws as written.
And now a couple of states they’ve been most effective at getting "criminal reforms" passed and laws changed so that criminals en masse don’t have a healthy fear of committing crime.
New York led the way on this with its "bail reform" law that was passed by touting how fair it was to those who had been prejudiced by the system. Now a couple of years into it being law, New York is a crime ridden tenement smelling of weed, with blind assaults being committed on innocent bystanders, and rotating doors at the precinct booking offices where some criminals literally are being charged multiple times per day and are back out on the street before the arresting officer has finished their paperwork.
#3
Had a spate of shootings over the New Year's weekend here in Florida. Every single news story showed police tape in a seedy neighborhood with trash in the yards and multiple expensive vehicles in each driveway. Exception was elderly husband and wife killed in their condo.
The media here is treating this all as a "run-up" to the Wild West that is always screeched about but never arrives in the wake of Constitutional Carry legislation, which may or may not be on deck here given the conniving natures of our alleged GOP state reps.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/02/2023 9:50 Comments ||
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#4
I want my town to hire Hayley from Waffle House as a security consultant.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/02/2023 14:09 Comments ||
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[BBC] It spread Anglo-European culture across the nation and caused trade to flourish, but the story of the Chinese labourers who built the track has largely been forgotten.
Utter nonsense. I’ve never seen it referenced without the Chinese workers being mentioned.
"You can almost feel the pain it took," said Roland Hsu, standing inside the train tunnels along Donner Summit in California's Sierra Nevada mountains.
Jagged and bumpy, the walls of the tunnel hardly resemble underpasses made by modern-day machinery. Instead, in the 1860s, teams of Chinese labourers blasted through the granite and painstakingly hand-chiselled 15 shafts through the Sierra Nevada so that the first transcontinental railroad could whisk passengers 1,800 miles from Sacramento, California, to Omaha, Nebraska, cutting travel times from six months to just six days and forever transforming the nation.
"It took four men to hold a big iron bar to manually drill a hole into the granite," said Hsu, director of research for Stanford's Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project (CRWNAP), which seeks to shed more light on the experiences of Chinese railroad workers. "A fifth man would pound it with a sledgehammer. Then they would rotate the bar a quarter turn and pound it again, and so on. This was how they drilled the hole to then pack the black powder, light it and run. There were no hydraulics."
This strenuous construction process meant that workers only cleared inches a day; it took two and a half years to bore through the nearly 1,700ft-long tunnel at Donner Summit. Look closely, Hsu said, and "you can still see the drill marks".
#4
Given the approx 70,000+/- miles of abandon track, the equipment and land no longer in use in the USA. The R&R companies should be able to recover a few
$100 Billion.
I'd love to purchase an Abandon Rail Tunnel, a 100 ft long.
Very little choice, its how his armies moved and were supplied. After the Battle of Chickamauga, they moved an entire corps from the eastern theater to fill the line. While most of the European military looked upon the war as a fight between two large mobs, the Prussians were particularly impressed by the exploitation of railroads. Railroad planning became a major part of their war plans thereafter.
The railroad didn't impact the aboriginals much. It was the Homestead Act of 1862 that would.
#6
the Prussians were particularly impressed by the exploitation of railroads.
I seem to recall Russia still uses railroads to bring troops and equipment up to the border. Does Ukraine as well, or are they able to use the roads because their have less distance to travel?
#7
It is usually unnoticed that international travel changed overnight; the Transcontinental was completed in the year 1869, the same year that the Suez Canal was opened.
#8
Had a little analyst at CENTCOM years ago that reported HETS (heavy equipment transports) in and out of motor parks. Saddam wasn't moving tanks anywhere without HETS and rail.
Once we got her imagery and counts, everybody relaxed a bit.
#9
Ukraine extensively uses their railways to transport military personnel and supplies, TW.
Unfortunately, most of the Ukraine rail systems are electric and the damage to the electrical systems shut many of those down. I do believe they are re-purposing diesel engines to work on some of those lines, though.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
01/02/2023 9:48 Comments ||
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#10
Lincoln specialized in Railroad Law after his congressional service. At the beginning of the 1850s, while in partnership with Herndon, Lincoln started dealing with railroad cases and by the middle of the decade he was considered one of the most successful Illinois practitioners of railroad law.
#12
Farther east, the Irish and Italians were exploited for tough, dangerous railroad work. A lot of other ways to get killed on the early railroad construction other than in tunnels.
Father east, for example, the Hoosac Tunnel in western Mass. started in 1851 with an estimated cost of $2 million and ended in 1875, having expended $21 million and 135 lives.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/02/2023 14:27 Comments ||
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#13
TW, as a military historian noted that "...the USSR had fewer miles of all-weather surfaced roads than the state of Connecticut in 1939" the military logistical efforts had to be on rails. More modern version is that Russia is a big place and too poor to pave over everything when rail works 'well enough'.
#14
The German invasion was accomplished largely using horse drawn logistics over unpaved roads. Same as Napoleon with the same result.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/02/2023 15:10 Comments ||
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#15
Fascinating! Thank you all for explaining, including the things it didn’t occur to me to ask. Abe Lincoln a hotshot railroad law lawyer? That is going to come up in conversation soon, I can tell. :-)
#16
In 1872 Abe's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, joined a Chicago law firm that was then named Isham, Lincoln, and Beale. Robert died in 1926, but the firm continued until 1988 and kept his name prominently displayed on their letterhead. I was in a couple of minor cases with the firm; and it was exceedingly cool for a young lawyer to get a letter with Robert Todd Lincoln's name on it.
Posted by: Matt ||
01/02/2023 18:11 Comments ||
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#17
^ Cool, indeed
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/02/2023 20:00 Comments ||
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[INSIDER] The chance that a nuclear bomb would strike a US city is slim, but nuclear experts say it's not out of the question.
A nuclear attack in a large metropolitan area is one of the 15 disaster scenarios for which the US Federal Emergency Management Agency has an emergency strategy. The agency's plan involves deploying first responders, providing immediate shelter for evacuees, and decontaminating victims who have been exposed to radiation.
For everyday citizens, FEMA has some simple advice: Get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned.
The six urban areas that Redlener thinks are the most likely targets of a nuclear attack: New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.
But according to Irwin Redlener, a public-health expert at Columbia University who specializes in disaster preparedness, these federal guidelines aren't enough to prepare a city for a nuclear attack.
"There isn't a single jurisdiction in America that has anything approaching an adequate plan to deal with a nuclear detonation," he said.
That includes the six urban areas that Redlener thinks are the most likely targets of a nuclear attack: New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.
I’m not living in any of them — that seems a good start.
These cities are not only some of the largest and densest in the country, but home to critical infrastructure (like energy plants, financial hubs, government facilities, and wireless transmission systems) that are vital to US security.
Each city has an emergency-management website that informs citizens about what to do in a crisis, but most of those sites (except for LA and New York) don't directly mention a nuclear attack. That makes it difficult for residents to learn how to protect themselves if a bomb were to hit one of those cities.
"It would not be the end of life as we know it," Redlener said of that scenario. "It would just be a horrific, catastrophic disaster with many, many unknown and cascading consequences."
Posted by: Titus Sninelet5461 ||
01/02/2023 0:36 Comments ||
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#2
Whenever power fails at home, I think of the grid. There are several battery operated radios around the house. I turn them on & check whatever traffic there is from AM to FM to XM to 2M & some SW. Total absence of traffic (including shortwave reception) would be a very very bad sign.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
01/02/2023 8:52 Comments ||
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#8
...Not a single American city has been prepared for a nuclear attack within my memory. The 'you-can't-escape-so-why-try" crowd made sure of that.
And FWIW - a dear friend of mine who worked in strategic analysis (lost him to COVID two years ago) told me once that if the bad guys really wanted to play dirty, there IIRC six to eight targets that would pretty much end us as a functioning nation that if hit comparatively few civilians would die directly from.
Sleep tight.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/02/2023 9:12 Comments ||
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#9
I was in grade school at the end of the duck and cover era. Lists of who was allowed to try to walk hone vs the rest of us being stuck in an unequipped for war school building.
My thoughts run to the story line in The Road. Try to walk to somewhere less devastated while dodging brigands and cannibals, or lay down and die.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/02/2023 9:37 Comments ||
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#10
Once was a 'floor warden' in a high-rise office building in Seattle - someone who is to make sure everyone gets out and off the floor in case of a fire / earthquake /etc... Seattle did a presentation of what they do to prepare for a major disaster (likely earthquake). They had identified major problems (like evacuating downtime when major bridges are down - downtown Seattle is surrounded by water on 3 sides). Tall brick buildings were identified as problems (the pile of bricks will block surrounding streets). All in all it was interesting.
But there were no planning for nuclear strikes, as an example, some containership-nuke device going off at the waterfront.
#11
What criteria would have a city have to have to be "Prepared"? Have every building rated as a 'Ground Zero bunker'? Hazmat suits in every closet? Certainly most major US cities are "Corrupt Blue State hellholes" that can't even assure they are free of rats and have working utilities...
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/02/2023 13:05 Comments ||
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#14
More money! That's the answer!
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/02/2023 15:30 Comments ||
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#15
Yes send us a lot more money so we can tell people to hide under desks. The only real way to prepare is to be nowhere near any big city. Have off-grid set up and a grow your own food. Good to be with some friends to to help you secure the place.
#17
The only real way to prepare is to be nowhere near any big city. Have off-grid set up and a grow your own food. Good to be with some friends to to help you secure the place.
[Garowe] Whenever the name Somalia pops up in a conversation, folks always associate the country with abject poverty, violent mostly peaceful extremism, endless political wrangles, and in most cases, drought, which has bitten hard in the last three years and could worsen into famine.
The country is no stranger to the aforementioned challenges but resilience and hope have notably revised the history of the country, especially on matters of conflicts and the al-Shabaab ...... the Islamic version of the old Somali warlord... menace, which has claimed thousands of innocent civilians.
Continued on Page 49
#1
Logically, Eritrea should have joined AlQaeda in the decade after its founding. However, the Sudanese military's Islamist leaders did not trust Eritrea's President Isaias Afewerki. In 1992 a Sudanese was captured during an attempt to assassinate Afewerki. The prisoner was found to have begun specialized Sudan Security Service intelligence training in August 1991 at the Ideraba camp west of Omdurman,Sudan. The frosting on the cake and the twain was ne'er met when it was learned that Usama al-Turabi, son of Sudan's Islamist factotum Hassan al-Turabi was in his class. (See UN Security Council S/1997/517, 7 July 1997, p.13.)
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin:
Video is in Russian, but is translatable. It features a discussion of the beginning of the battle by Fedor Lisitsyn and Alexey Isaev.
[ColonelCassad] There was a continuation of a large historical cycle of military historians Fyodor Lisitsyn and Alexei Isaev dedicated to the Russian-Japanese war.
The new issue deals with the first part of the Battle of Tsushima - from the morning of May 24, 1905 until the lapel of the Japanese squadron, when Russian battleships led by "Emperor Alexander III" and "Borodino" got the opportunity to retreat to the south, but ultimately continued to follow the order "Course to Vladivostok which led to the subsequent disaster.
PS. I fully agree that the chapter about the death of "Oslyabi" is one of the strongest in the book of Novikov-Priboy, along with the chapter about the last battle of the battleship "Admiral Ushakov".
[ZERO] Inventor of mRNA vaccines Dr. Robert Malone, having worked with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) for many years, warns that a war is being waged by the government for control of people’s minds, and that social media platforms are being weaponized in this war and are "actively employed" by the intelligence community to influence what people think and feel.
"This new battleground, in which your mind and your thoughts, your very emotions are the battleground. It is not about territory," Malone said during a recent interview for EpochTV’s "American Thought Leaders" program. "Twitter, it’s clear now, has become the premium platform for shaping emerging global consensus about the topics of the day."
During his work with the DOD, Malone became aware of companies researching multilingual programs that assess the emotional content of the language used on social media, which those companies then use to "map relationship clouds," including what topics people are discussing, who the influencers are, and who is at the fringe of that cloud, said Malone.
"By using these tools of manipulating what information, what tweets you put out, what messages you put out to your influencer cloud, they can modulate how those people behave," he said. "You can actually very actively control what individuals are thinking, the information that they’re gathering, what they’re being influenced to do."
The people who control information warfare weapons can modulate the messaging within the influencer clouds that can be readily mapped, Malone said.
"Your current state of mind, based on the language that you’re using and the topics that you’re talking about, can be mapped very precisely, psychologically," he said. "It can be tied into a web of influence relationships."
HIGH-TECH SURVEILLANCE
Members of a specific "influencer cloud" can be tracked using the military spy technology called the Gorgon Stare, said Malone. This spy technology is capable of detecting movements including what car you drive, who gets in your car, and where you go, he said.
The Gorgon Stare is a surveillance technology, originally created to target terrorist groups, that utilizes high-tech cameras mounted on drones to capture video images of large areas, such as entire cities. Then artificial intelligence is used to analyze the surveillance footage.
Arthur Holland Michel, author of the book, "Eyes in the Sky: The Secret Rise of Gorgon Stare and How It Will Watch Us All," called this technology the "pinnacle of aerial surveillance" during a 2019 interview with the CATO Institute and said the things he learned while writing the book were so troubling, they kept him up at night.
[Independent Sentinel] Mitch McConnell will host Joe Biden in Kentucky on Wednesday at a "bipartisan" celebration of Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed in 2021 with help from McConnell. It’s a far-left inflationary, climate extremism boondoggle, but they are proud of it. Biden will brag about it, and McConnell will aid and abet.
"President Joe Biden will open the new year with a bipartisan show of support to tout one of his major legislative wins, appearing with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky to announce a major project funded by the infrastructure law." NBC News reports.
Maybe McConnell, R. KY, is senile. How could he be this out of touch? He’s trying to work as a gentleman in a bipartisan manner, abandoning the Republican-led House. McConnell wants to work bipartisanly with a mob of socialists and communists. This man is sick.
#2
His term ends in 2027 and in his 37 years in office his net worth has grown to $22,841,026. Kentucky sources report he is planning on resigning before his term expires and is working to pick his successor. This is nest-feathering by a corrupt politician at the end of his lucrative career, and faux political loyalty is no longer useful, just raw political sellouts for downstream benefits from the real power centers in the Imperial Capitol. Somehow, his wife is often invisible, but her Taiwanese connections are a source of further wealth.
As of December 2022, Chao has a net worth of over $35 million. This wealth has come from her expansive career both in the public sector as well in the corporate world.
[BBC] The Indian government has banned the Popular Front of India (PFI)
…the latest identity of Pakistan sock puppet National Development Front (NDF) and the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). They’re fond of IEDs, swords, Al Qaeda and Taliban propaganda, the perverse pleasures of Love Jihad, and have surprisingly well-trained connections with jihadis in Bangladesh and Pakistan...
- a controversial Moslem group - for five years for allegedly having links with terror groups.
The ban, announced on Wednesday morning, comes amid a crackdown on the organization - over the past week, authorities have twice raided its offices across several states and arrested many of its leaders.
[OneIndia] In Kashmir ...a disputed territory lying between India and Pakistain. After partition, the Paks grabbed half of it and call it Azad (Free) Kashmir. The remainder they refer to as "Indian Occupied Kashmir". They have fought four wars with India over it, the score currently 4-0 in New Delhi's favor. After 72 years of this nonsense, India cut the Gordian knot in 2019, removing the area's special status, breaking off Ladakh as a separate state, and allowing people from other areas to settle (or in the case of the Pandits, to resettle) there.... it has been found that there are many working within the government who are giving out prior information to the terrorists. The administration has been sacking such officials and this has given dividends to the security forces who have been gunning down terrorists.
In October this year, the Kerala police denied a report No, no! Certainly not! that many part of its force had links with the now banned Popular Front of India (PFI).
…the latest identity of Pakistan sock puppet National Development Front (NDF) and the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). They’re fond of IEDs, swords, Al Qaeda and Taliban propaganda, feeding volunteers to Al Qaeda and ISIS, the perverse pleasures of Love Jihad, and have surprisingly well-trained connections with jihadis in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Unlike the usual Muslim Brotherhood branches, their political front — the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) — has not won anything...
Earlier this week, when the National Investigation Agency (NIA) conducted a raid at 56 places in Kerala, there were reports which stated that three members of the PFI had managed to escape due to prior information which is suspected was handed out by some members of the local police.
Sources tell OneIndia that the the agencies would also probe the role of the local administration and like was seen in Kashmir, it is important to beat down the inside rot in order to curtail anti-national acts.
We do not rule out the role of the local administration in information leaking said the source cited above. The PFI has been operating for long and has many a time got away since 2006 thanks to support from within, be it the local police or politicians. That in itself explains how the outfit was able to grow to such an extent and carry out its operations.
In Kashmir, following the abrogation of Article 370, the state administration made a lot of efforts to weed out out the rot from within the administration who were passing on information to the hard boyz and their sympathisers. This information came in handy to these persons as a result of which they were able to carry out their activities unabated.
Intelligence Bureau officials say that there are many in the Kerala administration who have sensitive positions and are in close contact with the operatives of the PFI. The problem is that it is not just the money that the PFI has used to lure these officials into their fold. A good number of people are in cahoots with the PFI because they themselves have been radicalised and believe in its ideology.
The PFI like the Urban Naxals too followed the same modus operandi of infiltrating the force. A key document prepared by the naxalites speaks of infiltrating the police force, government offices and even the Indian Army. The PFI has operated text book Urban Naxals in Kerala as a result of which their unprecedented growth can be explained.
While the first raids by the NIA targeted the top rung of the leadership, the second one was in connection with the second rung. In the months to come, the NIA would go after the foot-soldiers as they have the capability of regrouping with instructions from jail from their masters. However the inner rot is the most important to clean up, officials cited above said.
When the first raid took place, the NIA, Enforcement Directorate and the CRPF all under the Centre had not informed the local police before hand. This led to a very successful operation and not one PFI member managed to get away. During the second raid that took place last week, the NIA had intimated the local police and three PFI operatives managed to get away. That tells the story of the inside rot.
[Top Speed] Toyota is taking a diversified approach to achieve carbon neutrality and it could be a winning formula for the Japanese automaker.
Since it launched the revolutionary Prius in 1997, Toyota has been a leader in hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles, which paved the way for the current electric vehicle craze. However, in spite of its roots, the Japanese brand has been hesitant to jump headfirst into the all-electric trend. Toyota’s first 100-percent EV, the awkwardly named BZ4X, has sold only a few hundred units as of mid-October and according to a report by Electrek, the Japanese carmaker doesn't plan to ramp up production until 2025.
#1
Thank you Toyota. It's about time. Biden will block Toyota some way to promote his EV folly. China is working on this also in a big way. This winter already has shown how poorly Ev's performed. Even fully charged problems and charging stations hacked.
#3
To begin, thick, armored fuel tank(s) are required for holding the highly flammable hydrogen technology that Toyota gleaned from its FCEV (Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle), the Mirai.
Ford: Pinto
Toyota: Hold my saki
BTW: Where is all this hydrogen going to come from?
#4
Thirty years ago, Scientific American had an article explaining that since the production of hydrogen requires more energy than it produces, the only practical way to make large quantities was using (relatively) cheap nuclear power.
That pretty much squelched the idea then.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/02/2023 9:02 Comments ||
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#5
Iceland is about the only country that can produce hydrogen cheaply as they use their vast abundance of thermal energy to produce the quantity of electricity needed for Hydrogen production.
Drill a hole and set up a turbine.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
01/02/2023 9:53 Comments ||
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#6
The most abundant atom in the Universe. Nature seems organized to use it efficiently without man's technical efforts.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/02/2023 9:54 Comments ||
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#7
So you're telling me that EVs may wind up being the Betamaxes of the evolution of automobiles?
Posted by: Tom ||
01/02/2023 11:39 Comments ||
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#10
Using hydrogen for transportation is the worst of all worlds. Electrolyzing water to make H2 then burning it in an ICE vehicle is 4 times less efficient than using than driving an electric vehicle.
Steam reforming nat gas to make H2 will lose 1/3 of the egergy as burning the nat gas in an ICE and you still have the CO2. Not to mention the huge costs of needed to make the H2 and difficulties in transporting it.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
But must we pay Chinese reparations forever ? 
[INSIDER] The chance that a nuclear bomb would strike a US city is slim, but nuclear experts say it's not out of the question.
None of them are prepared.
...... the Islamic version of the old Somali warlord...
[ZERO] Inventor of mRNA vaccines Dr. Robert Malone, having worked with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) for many years, warns that a war is being waged by the government for control of people’s minds, and that social media platforms are being weaponized in this war and are "actively employed" by the intelligence community to influence what people think and feel.
[Independent Sentinel] .jpg "Kashmir")
...a disputed territory lying between India and Pakistain. After partition, the Paks grabbed half of it and call it 
