Moroccan earthquake death toll over a thousand, and rising

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s been a major earthquake in Morocco causing high casualties:

The number of people who have died in the Morocco earthquake has risen to 1,305 people with 1,832 injured, state TV in the country has said.

Many of the fatalities after the 6.8 magnitude quake are in hard-to-reach areas south of Marrakech.

The epicentre was high in the Atlas Mountains – about 43 miles (70km) away from Marrakech, a popular tourist destination.

Reaching people in remote villages, where old, traditional buildings may be more likely to collapse, will be a key focus of the rescue effort.

The major problem seems to have been non-earthquake-proof structures. Large earthquakes are rare in Morocco, but it is an earthquake zone:

According to the US Geological Survey (USGS) the 6.8 magnitude earthquake was just 11 miles below the surface.

The epicentre was in the High Atlas Mountains near Oukaimeden, around 50 miles south of Marrakech.

It’s a sparsely populated area with Amazigh, or Berber, villages.

Houses are traditionally built with mud bricks and may not have withstood the shaking. There’s also a risk of landslides on steep slopes.

The location is within the African tectonic plate, around 350 miles south of the boundary with the Eurasia plate that Europe and much of Asia sit on.

RIP to the dead.

Open thread 9/9/23

The New Neo Posted on by

Another obscure sport that’s more like an impressive circus act:

And it takes two women to do the work of one man – but still extremely impressive. The gradated sizes of the women are no accident:

Actually, sometimes the heavy lifting can be done by one woman – if it’s the right woman:

The Biden administration would like to make Texas the sanctuary state

The New Neo Posted on by

This:

The Biden administration is considering forcing migrants who cross into the United States illegally to remain in Texas while they wait out their asylum screening.

Administration officials cite the proposed plan as a way to curb the flow of illegal immigrants at the southern border, The Los Angeles Times reported, citing three U.S. officials not authorized to discuss the matter.

The plan would force migrants to remain in Texas, or possibly other border states by tracking their location through GPS monitoring devices, such as ankle bracelets, the officials told the Times.

The Democrats must be alarmed by the reaction in places like New York to the recent influx there of illegal arrivals. They can’t afford to alienate (pun intended) their base. But Texas? No need to worry about alienating Texans; it’s already been done.

On Biden’s polls

The New Neo Posted on by

There is polling that shows Biden’s approval rating low and dropping, but I’m not so sure it matters except in one sense: it may motivate the Democrats to make sure he doesn’t run in 2024. Then again, polls also show that he and Trump are statistically tied. To me, that means that their support is more or less locked in. Those who plan to vote for Trump are probably never going to vote for Biden no matter what is done to Trump, and those who plan to vote for Biden will vote for any Democrat over Trump and could not care less what Biden does or has done. They may think he’s awful, but they think Trump is more awful.

Another point is that national polls aren’t much help. It’s really the state polls in the swing states that matter, and I’ve seen precious few of those.

This recent CNN poll has another interesting aspect, though. If you go to page 17, which pits the GOP contenders against Biden, you’ll notice that – at least in this poll that was taken the last week of August, shortly after the GOP debate – they all do rather well. Every single candidate they asked about (Haley, Pence, Scott, Ramaswamy, Christie, and DeSantis) are pretty much in a dead statistical heat with Biden. The sole exception is Nikki Haley, who is six points ahead of Biden.

I wonder if that Haley advantage has any legs, or if it’s just a statistical glitch or a temporary reaction to the debate. It’s something to think about, though. And I wonder how she does in swing states.

Haley is not my preferred GOP candidate at all, but if she has the strongest chance of winning I’d support her. Thing is – as I’ve written before – I think the GOP primaries are pretty moot since I believe Trump will be the nominee.

Hey, why not indict all the Republicans?

The New Neo Posted on by

Except maybe those who voted for Trump’s impeachment.

This grand jury in Fulton County probably would have done so, if asked:

The grand jury wanted to charge 39 people allied with President Donald Trump.

The list includes Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), former Georgia Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, and Michael Flynn.

The district attorney ended up charging 19 people, including Trump.

That’s some conspiracy. There’s plenty of precedent in the annals of tyrannical regimes for outlawing the opposition party, and the Democrats would dearly love to do just that. But even Fani Willis didn’t go that far – yet, anyway.

A grand jury has a very different task than a jury. A grand jury only hears the evidence favorable to the prosecution. That gives a prosecutor who wants to go after certain people perceived as enemies a great deal of power, and an unscrupulous prosecutor is capable of great harm. But Fani Willis is not a rogue prosecutor acting on her own. The Democratic Party is wholly behind her, and her actions are part of a – dare I say “conspiracy”? – on the part of the left, which has taken over the party almost entirely.

NOTE: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – even back in law school when I was a Democrat, I was very very troubled by the broadness and opportunity for prosecutorial abuse afforded by the conspiracy laws.

I don’t care about Obama’s sex life

The New Neo Posted on by

As long as the acts are between two consenting adults, I don’t much care. I also think this claim is garbage from a convicted forger and fraudster who wants to make a buck on a book and has gotten his fifteen minutes of fame. But even if it were true, I still wouldn’t care.

Not only that, but I don’t care all that much if politicians lie about their sex lives. And these days even the old argument that such activities expose the politician to blackmail doesn’t hold much water, because shame ain’t what it used to be.

What I do care about is what a politician did in terms of policy when that person held office. I care if that person lied about something material – oh, such as if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor (see this).

And for those who say that if a person lies about sex then that person is more inclined to lie about other things, I’ve never been at all sure that’s true. Sex is one of those things people are most inclined to lie about. Nor is it the case that if someone is sexually faithful and has nothing to lie about it means the person won’t lie about other things.

I do care if the person with whom I’m in a relationship lies to me – about anything, including sex.

NOTE: And no, I don’t think Bill Clinton should have been impeached, nor do I think he committed perjury in the legal sense. I’ve discussed and defended my opinion on that many times, mostly in comments over the years. If you’re interested, I refer you to this, this, this, and this.

In order to go after the J6 defendants, the government has dangerously expanded the definition of “seditious conspiracy”

The New Neo Posted on by

But I guess they don’t think it’s a dangerous expansion because they don’t intend it ever to apply to the left, only the right.

From Julie Kelly:

So, what was the crime of sedition? To help us understand, here are the instructions given to jurors for seditious conspiracy. The government’s burden of proof in this trial was basically nonexistent—not that a jury picked from a city of nearly all Democrats requires much evidence before finding a Trump supporter guilty of any concocted charge. In the indictment,

This essentially could apply to any protest in the future and certainly could have applied to the 2017 inauguration riots and 2018 Kavanaugh demonstrations.

What follows is a legal document that can’t be cut and pasted, and it’s well worth it to follow the link and read it. It’s not tremendously lengthy. The gist of it, however, is that – like conspiracy laws in general, which I’ve always found dangerously broad, even back when I was a Democrat and a law student – not all that much is required: at least two people getting together to oppose by force the authority of the government or to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the government. And though force is a required element of the conspiracy, the term is redefined as including the mere threat of violence without any actual acts of violence. Thus, protected speech and protest become crimes under the conspiracy umbrella, if and only if the government chooses to prosecute. In addition, these J6 defendants also got a terrorism enhancement in sentencing, which is highly inappropriate but expanded their sentence lengths very significantly.

Julie Kelly adds:

During closing arguments in the trial, one prosecutor told the jury a “wink and a nod” represented an agreement to join the conspiracy. What a joke.

The left would be outraged at such things if applied to them, but the J6 defendants are no leftists. The cases will be appealed, and one of the commenters to Kelly’s article maintains that SCOTUS will overrule this verdict:

Seditious conspiracy – up to 20 years imprisonment – will be tossed out 9-0 by Supreme Court as overly broad and vague statute, never successfully charged before like this (most all such charges dismissed), except for Puerto Rican nationalists firing 30 rounds onto the House of Reps floor from the gallery in 1954. Gotta get there fast through appeals process. This Civil War statute is a joke as the jury instructions illustrate, as so well pointed out by Julie.

Obstruction of an official proceeding felony (1512c2) – also up to 20 years imprisonment, will also be tossed out at least 6-3 (s/b 9-0) as inapplicable as it only involves the administration of justice where evidence is being presented – and never charged before like this. Two cert petitions have already been filed with SCOTUS as this issue has already been through the Cir Court.

Forget about Judge Kelly. He will be made to look like the fool that he is.

Would that this were true. Maybe it is true. I’m not anywhere near as sanguine as the commenter. And at least some of the overrulings had also better include concurrence from the liberal/left wing of the Court, because if they don’t join, watch for the left to up its campaign to delegitimize SCOTUS and to pack the Court if at all possible.

“Sanctuary” is apparently just virtue-signaling rhetoric for New York

The New Neo Posted on by

New York is a so-called “sanctuary state,” one of eleven, and New York City is a sanctuary city. As such, it won’t cooperate with federal immigration authorities on reporting or deporting illegal aliens, and supposedly has a welcoming and protective attitude. A number of those states instituted their sanctuary policies when Trump was president, in a show of opposition to mean old Trump. New York, however, has an earlier history with that status:

New York City became a sanctuary city under Mayor Ed Koch in the 1980s.

Elected officials wanted to make sure asylum seekers would not be afraid to report crimes or enroll their kids in public school and get medical care over fear of being deported. …

Sanctuary city policies have evolved over the years under new administrations and city councils.

Just before President Trump took office then Mayor Bill DeBlasio and the city council speaker re-affirmed the city’s commitment to protecting immigrants.

But talk is cheap. A huge influx of illegal arrivals is fine for nasty states such as Texas, which after all were already full of … Texans. New York didn’t really mean it wanted to deal with illegal immigrants in any sort of numbers. Mayor Adams is not pleased:

Mayor Eric Adams warned that the raging migrant crisis will “destroy” New York City and tore into President Biden for ignoring his pleas for help, saying the White House has given “no support” for the thousands of asylum seekers arriving each month.

“I’m gonna tell you something, New Yorkers, never in my life have I had a problem that I didn’t see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this,” Adams said at a town hall on the Upper West Side Wednesday night. “This issue will destroy New York City. Destroy New York City.”

Hizzoner took aim at Biden for not stepping in with federal assistance as the city has received more than 110,000 migrants in the past year.

“Month after month I stood up and said this is gonna come to a neighborhood near you. Well, we’re here, we’re getting no support on this national crisis, and we’re receiving no support,” Adams said.

Some are being bused from Texas – estimates are 13,000 total – but since it is also estimated that 10,000 are coming per month to New York City, it seems that the Texas-sent contingent is only a small part of the whole.

“All of us are going to be impacted by this. I said it last year when we had 15,000 and I’m telling you now with 110,000. The city we knew, we’re about to lose, and we are all in this together, all of us,” he added.

Hey Mayor Adams, maybe it’s time to stop being a Democrat and supporting Biden. Because it is Biden and the Democrats who have created this situation, perpetuated it, and defended it. Mayor Adams is one of those people who have been mugged by reality, but I am virtually certain he will not take that next step.