[RedState] During the inferno that devastated part of the island of Maui, wiping entire towns off the map and possibly killing more than a thousand people (once a full assessment can be made), people on Maui begged state officials to allow West Maui stream water to be diverted to fill up reservoirs for firefighting. That request went to M. Kaleo Manuel,
...betcha this time the M. does not stand for Mohammmed...
Deputy Director of Hawaii's Commission on Water Resource Management, and he delayed approval of that water for five hours - five hours in which the once-contained fire exploded. By the time the approval was received, workers were unable to reach the siphon release so that the water could be diverted. Now we're learning that Manuel, an Obama Foundation Leader for the Asia Pacific Region, is a climate change activist and DEI devotee who's said, "Like, we can share [water], but it requires true conversations about equity." I'd start the conversation by waterboarding this asshole
Glenn Tremble with the West Maui Land Company gave the chronology in a letter sent to Manuel, and obtained by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
According to the letter, although the initial fire was contained at 9 a.m., there were reports of fallen power lines, fierce winds, outages and low reservoir levels, prompting the company to reach out to the commission to request approval to divert more water from streams so it could store as much water as possible for fire control.
Instead of approving the request, CWRM asked the company whether the Maui Fire Department had requested permission to dip into the reservoirs and directed it to first inquire with the downstream user to ensure that his loi and other uses would not be impacted by a temporary reduction of water supply.
Communications were spotty, the letter said, and the company had already tried unsuccessfully to contact the one downstream user.
According to the Star-Advertiser, locals reported that the fire moved so fast and burned so hot that "water was spewing out of melting pipes and depressurizing the lines that also supplied the fire hydrants." Tremble said that once approval was received to divert more water, it wasn't possible to do so because of the fire.
“At around 6:00 p.m., we received CWRM’s approval to divert more water,” Tremble wrote. “By then, we were unable to reach the siphon release to make the adjustments that would have allowed more water to fill our reservoirs.
“We watched the devastation unfold around us without the ability to help. We anxiously awaited the morning knowing that we could have made more water available to MFD if our request had been immediately approved."
Tremble’s letter said it is unknown whether filling the reservoirs at 1 p.m. would have ultimately made a difference.
But “we know that fires spread quickly. We know that we need to act faster during an emergency. We know that the community we serve relies on the water as a defense from spreading fire. We know that we must have water available for MFD before MFD needs it. We know we can do better. We’re all in this together.”
Posted by: Skidmark ||
08/19/2023 00:00 ||
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#7
Too many companies and commissions. In an emergency, when public safety is at stake, the fire department's authority should supersede all others. If not, the fire chief should damn well release the water anyway and take his lumps afterwards. What's that old saying? "It's easier to ask forgiveness later than to ask permission beforehand."
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
08/19/2023 11:57 Comments ||
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#8
Limited fresh water.
Mountain filtered rain.
Don't know if there's an aquifer.
Why not fight fires with seawater?
Too corrosive on pipes?
Haven't seen many Forest Service contractors scooping water out of the bay.
#10
No, he needs to have a conversation with the water. He should be flow by helicopter to the nearest, large body of water be allowed to commune directly with it. The water will gently catch him and cradle him once he hits.
#12
^Skid, all Navy firefighting and toilet water is sea water, but it does take copper-nickle piping with non-ferrous bolts. Also regular urinal cakes are a bad idea.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
08/19/2023 19:28 Comments ||
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#13
I'm sure the volcano requires a sovereign so it'd have to be the governor and maybe the lieutenant governor.
[Breitbart] Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) introduced a resolution on Friday to censure Judge Tanya Chutkan for open bias and partisanship in her handling of cases of Americans linked to the January 6 protests.
“It is deeply concerning to see a United States District Court judge show such blatant impropriety from the bench,” Gaetz explained to Fox News Digital in a written statement.
He continued, “Judge Tanya Chutkan’s impracticality of her tough sentencing of Jan. 6th defendants, despite openly supporting the violent Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, showcases not only a lack of impartiality but also a disregard for the sacred duty of a judge to uphold justice fairly.”
A man holds a Black Lives Matter sign as a police car burns during a protest on May 29, 2020, in Atlanta, Georgia (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images).
Chutkan is overseeing the American government’s case against former President Donald Trump for allegedly trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Gaetz cited in his resolution that in October 2021, Chutkan disagreed with a comparison between the Black Lives Matter riots and the Capitol riots.
Citing Chutkan, Gaetz wrote:
People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man … to compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the Jan. 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.
The Florida conservative also accused Chutkan of giving Matthew Mazzocco, who “was a nonviolent offender who spent merely 12 minutes on Capitol grounds and who urged others to remain peaceful,” of sentencing Mazzocco to 45 days in jail over the misdemeanor charge.
Gaetz also directed the House Judiciary Committee to probe the judge’s conduct.
I just returned from Depot. Wiring a new basement smoke detector. 15 foot of 14/3 Romex wire. After taxes, over $45.00. Unbelievable. All the Romex was in a cage due to shrinkage.
#2
I don't mind having to ask a store employee to unlock the cage. The problem is you can't look at the box to see if it was Made in China before you ask when it's locked inside the cage. The store employees don't want to hear about it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
08/19/2023 12:14 Comments ||
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#3
And the boxes are all resealed with packing tape.
As if they were repackaged after returns.
No idea what's really in the box.
[Julie Kelly] After the special counsel claimed in a secret court filing that Donald Trump was a flight risk, Twitter fought back. Then Smith insisted it was just a big mistake.
A few weeks after his appointment as special counsel to take over the Justice Department’s existing investigations into Donald Trump on two criminal matters, Jack Smith carefully plotted his first move.
Get Trump’s DMs.
For non-Twitter users, DM is short for "direct messages." But that’s not all Smith had in his crosshairs. According to a recently unsealed search warrant served on Twitter earlier this year, the longtime DOJ apparatchik also wanted tweets that the former president drafted, deleted, liked, or retweeted.
Certain that evidence of criminal activity existed deep in the bowels of Trump’s long-dormant Twitter file, Smith further sought the identity of accounts the former president "followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked or unblocked, and all users who have followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked or unblocked the subject account." The social media behemoth, at the time transitioning to its new owner, Elon Musk, also would be forced to disclose any purchases the @realDonaldTrump account made as well as associated credit card numbers and billing records.
And that wasn’t all Smith wanted. To ensure Trump didn’t learn of the search warrant and attempt to invoke executive privilege to protect his records from the prying eyes of Joe Biden’s Justice Department, Smith applied for a nondisclosure order. Twitter, if a judge approved both the warrant and the nondisclosure, would be prevented from notifying the former president of the warrant for 180 days.
Smith, of course, got his wish. Beryl Howell, the former chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, signed off on the broad search warrant on January 17. The Obama-appointed judge also approved a nondisclosure order under the terms of the Stored Communications Act, the statute Smith relied on to hide the warrant from Trump.
And that’s when Twitter cried foul.
Twitter: No, Donald Trump is Not a Flight Risk
In a motion asking to vacate or modify the nondisclosure order, Twitter made a number of arguments related to Trump’s First Amendment rights and the novel nature of the case. "[The] issues presented by the government's demand for private presidential communications without notice are weighty and entirely without legal precedent. These executive privilege issues are distinct from issues presented in a typical search warrant," Twitter’s legal counsel explained in a February 6 filing.
But one claim really irked Twitter: the suggestion that Donald Trump was a flight risk.
The Stored Communications Act requires the government to meet one of five criteria before seeking a nondisclosure order that would prevent a provider from notifying a customer about a search warrant: one is fear the target will flee prosecution—a claim Jack Smith’s office proposed in its application for the nondisclosure order.
And, it appears, a claim Smith later explained he made in error. Which is impossible to believe considering the flight risk threat was discussed by his lawyers during private conversations and at least one sealed court hearings.
In a phone call with Smith’s office on January 31, Twitter’s senior counsel "raised specifically the claim in the Non-Disclosure Order that the former President was likely to flee from prosecution if the Non-Disclosure Order or Warrant was disclosed." Counsel further told Greg Bernstein, one of Smith’s prosecutors, "that it seemed very unlikely that the former President presents a risk of flight because of a warrant for his Twitter data." (The name of Twitter’s senior counsel at the time is redacted in court documents.)
During a February hearing before Judge Howell, the flight risk matter was discussed on numerous occasions by the judge and lawyers representing Twitter. Howell asked Bernstein to directly respond "to Twitter's comment that there is no reason to believe notification would suddenly cause Trump or potential confederates to destroy evidence, intimidate witnesses, or to flee prosecution (emphasis added)." Bernstein stated they would address those concerns in another sealed motion.
Howell herself said she reviewed her own nondisclosure order "to see, is that language just as specific as that, and it is"—meaning the language in her order specifically determined Trump was a flight risk and therefore he should not know about the warrant. She continued: "It doesn't have to be. Under [the nondisclosure statute], it's not just by the account holder, it's by any other person who might flee, might obstruct. And this NDO was written fairly narrowly, to say the least."
Howell, once again, reiterated the fact the NDO declared Trump as a flight risk. And Smith’s lawyers, once again, did not object to her reading of their proposed order.
Howell further challenged Twitter’s request to remove the flight risk statement from the NDO. "Your modification was to take out of the NDO ’potential risk of flight by the President,’ although he does have properties overseas that would be probative," Howell said.
When Twitter pressed the matter, Howell suggested the company was trying to get in Trump’s good graces. "Is it because the CEO wants to cozy up with the former President, and that's why you are here?" Howell sneered at Twitter’s legal team. "No, Your Honor," George Varghese, one of Twitter’s retained lawyers, replied. "In this case, one of the arguments was flee from prosecution. As this Court has already noted, the former President of the United States, who has announced that he is rerunning for President, is not at flight from prosecution. Presumably, with his security detail, he is not fleeing."
But it appears that Twitter at least partially got their way. In her March 3 order denying Twitter’s motion to vacate the NDO and impose a $350,000 fine for allegedly delaying fulfillment of the subpoena—another falsehood as I explained here—Howell disclosed in a footnote that the NDO accidentally stated Trump was a flight risk. "By contrast to the Application for the NDO, the NDO itself also offered as grounds for nondisclosure the basis that the user of the Target Account would ’flee from prosecution.’ The government has since explained that justification to the NDO was erroneously included."
Sure.
A subsequent appellate court decision upholding the search warrant and NDO also revealed Smith’s deception: "The district court also found reason to believe that the former President would ’flee from prosecution.’ The government later acknowledged, however, that it had ’errantly included flight from prosecution as a predicate’ in its application. The district court did not rely on risk of flight in its ultimate analysis."
That may be true since Howell completely ignored the matter, with the exception of a footnote, in her March order despite the fact Twitter made the "flight risk" excuse a major point of contention with Smith’s office. And since Smith’s application for the NDO remains under seal, the public cannot see exactly how it was presented to Judge Howell.
Here’s what likely happened. Smith cited Trump’s risk of flight in both the application and proposed order sent to Howell. (Government motions seeking any court order often include a proposed order ready for the judge to sign.) Howell, who has issued unprecedented rulings against Trump in both the classified documents case and January 6 investigation, probably didn’t even read the text of either the application or proposed order before signing it.
If it targeted Trump, that’s all she needed to know.
It wasn’t until Twitter busted Smith and Howell for claiming Trump would flee the country if he found out about the warrant that both offices retracted the claim. Howell actually backtracked on her own order during the February 7 hearing. When Twitter’s lawyer again insisted that the ’risk of flight for a former President of the United States doesn't make a lot of sense," Howell confessed, "I would agree with that."
Huh?
Not that any of it matters. Smith will face no sanction for misleading the court. The court will face no sanction for filing an NDO against the former president of the United States partially based on Judge Howell’s belief he is a flight risk.
And these same deceptive villains now have all of Trump’s Twitter records in their dirty little hands.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/19/2023 08:06 ||
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#1
Judge Beryl Howell is a corrupt POS and an Obama appointee. Which are mutually compatible
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/19/2023 8:25 Comments ||
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#2
She also worked at the same law firm when Hunter did and was working with several Biden election groups and donated.
She will be a good soldier for the Party and make sure Trump gets fucked.
#3
And the kangaroo court continues to hop. History will read this as the beginning of the end of our democracy. I doubt we will have an election next year and if we do the Dems will get over 100 million votes. reminds me of thew USSR when every single vote went to the party... In this case our communist totalitarian party is the Dems... Get an exit plan ready...
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
08/19/2023 11:29 Comments ||
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#4
And it was Obama who tried to get Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court, if I recall correctly.
#5
I guess Comer can subpoena the DM’s for all of Joe’s aliases. How could Musk say no at this point?
Posted by: Super Hose ||
08/19/2023 11:38 Comments ||
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#6
"The essayist N.S. Lyons (a pseudonym) put it well in a piece last August, describing the futile efforts of Team B to call out the hypocrisy of Team A:
You see, it’s possible you are under the misapprehension that you are not supposed to notice what you described as the “double-standard” in acceptable behavior between Team A and Team B. And that you think if you point out this double-standard, you are foiling the other team’s plot and holding them accountable. This might be because, in your mind, you are still in high school debate club, where if you finger your opponent for having violated the evenly-applied rules a neutral arbiter of acceptable behavior will recognize this unfairness and penalize them with demerits.
Except in reality you are not holding Team A accountable, and in fact are notably never able to hold them accountable for anything at all. Even though Team A gets to hold you accountable for everything and anything whenever they want. This is because unfortunately there is no neutral arbiter listening to your whining. In fact, currently the only arbiter is Team A, because Team A has consolidated all the power to decide the rules, and to enforce or not enforce those rules as they see fit."
[NYP] In an old "Saturday Night Live" sketch, Ronald Reagan (brilliantly played by Phil Hartman) pretends to be a doddering, out-of-touch dotard until the press leaves the room, and then suddenly transforms into an evil genius.
Is this what’s going on with Joe Biden?
In public he appears increasingly out of it.
He speaks nonsense, he shows flashes of inappropriate anger, he walks off stage in the middle of events, and he has trouble with stairs.
Even Democrats are beginning to admit to serious doubts about his ability to function as president.
But what if it’s all an act?
I ask that because the latest word is that, according to James Comer, President Biden had at least one pseudonymous email account that he used so he could secretly collude with his son (and alleged bagman) Hunter.
The only reason to run such an account is to make sure that the emails don’t get archived in official systems and aren’t available under the Freedom of Information Act, and to keep the communications out of the reach of critics, and possibly law enforcement.
Writing in National Review, Charles C.W. Cooke observes: "If this allegation is proven to be accurate, what could the defense possibly be? As with the claims that the Biden family created a network of more than 20 shell companies; that Vice President Biden joined phone calls with Hunter and his foreign business partners upwards of twenty times; and that Joe flew Hunter to China on Air Force Two to meet with one of Hunter’s CCP-connected Chinese business partners, I honestly can’t think of one."
#2
Referencing a SNL sketch when, in reality, Reagan was battling Alzheimer's is a bad example. Joe has never been smart. He has also been mean and wicked for the entire length of his time in public office. As we witness Joe’s obvious decline, his frustration will showcase the meanness and anger. He is focused on the Hunter problem, but we are beyond Hunter.
Under an Alias, Joe didn’t just participate in influence peddling, he changed policy against our interest using $1B of our tax dollars as a chip in his quid pro quo. That was just the beginning. How much money has he sent to Ukraine since? It is also likely that his China game dwarfs his Eastern European deals by a factor of 10. Joe could be removed because he is addled, angry and perverted, but he needs to be removed because he is compromised. Is he the worst president? I don’t think you can rank Biden as more horrendous than the man who is pulling his strings.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
08/19/2023 10:28 Comments ||
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#3
It is also likely that his China game dwarfs his Eastern European deals by a factor of 10.
[LawEnforcementToday] Given the documented fact that only 11 Grand Juries out of 162,000 cases for federal court, grand juries decided NOT to indict.
The odds of a No Indictment finding for Trump were LESS THAN 0.006789662430328805% without hearing a word spoken.
By just by showing up, any State & Fed prosecutor could expect a Indictment 99.9321% of the time.
In short the Fulton Co. District Attorney and the DC District Attorney knew the Deck of Cards was stacked against Trump going in. Then add the 99.9% odds figure to a Liberal Democrat Controlled Metro-Area for a jury pool.
Posted by: NN2N1 ||
08/19/2023 00:00 ||
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#1
What is the purpose of the Grand Jury process step? It is like installing a gate valve in a pipe without a flapper.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
08/19/2023 10:35 Comments ||
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#2
Solomon "Sol" Wachtler ... was Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals from 1985 to 1992. Wachtler's most famous quote, made shortly after his appointment as Chief Judge, was that district attorneys could get grand juries to "indict a ham sandwich". This guy should know.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
08/19/2023 11:29 Comments ||
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#3
Once you get a social/media climate that makes jurors vulnerable to intimidation (especially reverse racial intimidation) Marxist Prosecutors can become little Robespierre's, using the fig-leaf of "prosecutorial discretion" to protect allied supporters.
Not much tour time.
There and back again, Monday.
Last I flew from LAX it was 3 hours.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
08/19/2023 06:44 ||
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#1
It's gonna be crappy weather at Tahoe the entire time. The rain will tamp down the stench.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
08/19/2023 9:42 Comments ||
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#2
His visit will unite Hawaiians. They will be United in hating him.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
08/19/2023 10:37 Comments ||
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#3
Looking at the backside of the Tahoe Sierra crests right now and it is a beautiful morning over South Lake Tahoe. The Puppet Show is currently up around Incline Village at the North end of the Lake, but it is equally gorgeous there right now. However -
"Affected Area
Greater Lake Tahoe Area
Description
...Shower and thunderstorm chances continue today... ...Heavy rain with isolated flood potential Sunday-Monday...
Showers and thunderstorms will develop again this afternoon and evening. These storms will be capable of gusts in excess of 45 mph, which could kick up dust from desert sinks and playas, in addition to localized heavy rainfall and small hail.
Major Hurricane Hilary in the eastern Pacific is forecast to make landfall Sunday along northern Baja of California or extreme southern coastal California. While this system will rapidly weaken into a remnant low by the time it reaches Nevada, significant amounts of moisture will bring periods of heavy rainfall to the region Sunday afternoon through Monday. The greatest threat for flooding is across the Basin & Range and the eastern Sierra. However, isolated flooding cannot be ruled out elsewhere across western Nevada and northeast California."
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Law enforcement officials are investigating threats targeting members of the grand jury that indicted former President Donald Trump and 18 of his allies, after names and addresses of jurors were leaked online, a sheriff's office said.
The Fulton County Sheriff's Office said: 'Our investigators are working closely with local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to track down the origin of threats in Fulton County and other jurisdictions.'
It comes after several users on Trump’s social media platform Truth Social posted the names and addresses of the court's jurors, according to The Independent.
Posts were also found with violent rhetoric against Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, who oversaw the more-than-two-year investigation of a suspected scheme by Trump and 18 others to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Advance Democracy president Dan Jones, whose organisation uncovered some of the leaks, said: 'Statements by Trump and his allies continue to inspire violent language and threats online.
An indictment in Georgia that is available as a public record includes the names of grand jurors but not their addresses or any other personally identifiable information.
Reports by Advance Democracy, which conducts public interest investigations, this week found posts by users on at least four social media websites targeting the grand jurors that 'often included violent rhetoric.' So they're a Democrat hack front
It’s a marvel of the American judicial system that Emily Kohrs, a 30-year-old woman who has described herself as between customer service jobs and who said she didn’t vote in the 2020 presidential election, could play a pivotal role in the potential indictment of a former US president Kohrs is cagily answering questions, teasing that the special grand jury may have recommended charges for Trump and saying she hopes something comes of it all.
Her identity as the foreperson was first revealed by The Associated Press, and in addition to the AP, she has, in short order, done interviews with The New York Times, NBC News, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and CNN.
The former US Attorney Harry Litman said on CNN on Wednesday that prosecutors have got to be “consternated” that a potential jury pool could be contaminated by Kohrs’ “odd 15-minute PR tour.”
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/19/2023 8:03 Comments ||
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#3
Good work! Now whatever you do, don't investigate the government employee who leaked those names.
#10
False flag would be my guess after years of observing how these people operate. Leaking those names is the exact kind of thing donks would do and so they would do it and then try to make it look like those dastardly MAGA people did it. We've seen this picture before.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
08/19/2023 12:44 Comments ||
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#11
And what exactly are they threatening? Is it Convict or Not Guilty? Hmmmm?
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.
[Julie Kelly] After the special counsel claimed in a secret court filing that Donald Trump was a flight risk, Twitter fought back. Then Smith insisted it was just a big mistake.
In short the Fulton Co. District Attorney and the DC District Attorney knew the Deck of Cards was stacked against Trump going in. Then add the 99.9% odds figure to a Liberal Democrat Controlled Metro-Area for a jury pool.
