MaxRedline

Oregon Skyline

Yep, that's one of our fires, to the west.

Gifts From Northern Idaho

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho. (AP) — Health officials say people with COVID-19 in Northern Idaho soon may have to be sent to Seattle or Portland, Oregon, because the region's hospitals are nearing capacity. Kootenai Health hospital said in a statement Wednesday that their hospital is at 99% capacity for patients that need medical or surgical care. As of Wednesday morning, Kootenai Health had 31 COVID-19 inpatients and 11 required critical care. 

Do they only have one hospital in all of Idaho? If so, it seems that they've not done a very good job of planning ahead for health emergencies.

 

Score One For The Little Guys

Over the summer, the co-owner of Taste of Sicily — an Italian restaurant in Palmyra, Pennsylvania — made headlines when he defied left-wing Gov. Tom Wolf’s COVID-19 shutdown mandates and scoffed at the $10,000 in fines that came along with them.

 

“Some rob you with a gun, while others rob you with a pen,” co-owner Mike Mangano declared to PennLive at the time, referring to Wolf. “We ain’t paying crap.” “There’s absolutely no fear here. We’re going to continue to come to work, and the governor ain’t going to do anything about it.” 

Taste of Sicily took the matter up in court — and won. Judge Carl Garvey ruled the family business was unconstitutionally cited and the restaurant was found not guilty, the station said, adding that Winter noted Taste of Sicily’s owners won’t have to pay any fines, and they’re waiting for a hearing date against the Department of Agriculture.

Unsurprisingly, the governor says he plans to appeal the decision.

Of course, the governor's using tax dollars to pursue his vendetta, while the restaurant owners are using their own money.

The joint had been shut down for quite a while; owners and employees - unlike the governor - actually had to earn a living, and so they re-opened. Good for them! It's past time that ordinary people were able to tell the politicians to take a hike.

 

Covid-19 May Be Stoppable

On Wednesday, Anika Chebrolu from Frisco, Texas was named the winner of the 3M Young Scientist Challenge after discovering a molecule that can selectively bind to the spike protein of the SARS-COV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19. Her discovery could lead to important developments in COVID-19 research. By binding to the spike protein in the coronavirus, the molecule she found can potentially prevent virus entry into the host cell, and can be used in creating a potential drug to cure COVID-19.

She's 14 years old, and was working on a school science project. Kids these days....

 

Nastier And Nastier

H.L. Mencken: "People deserve the government they get, and they deserve to get it good and hard."

This is exactly why we don't have a democracy. We have a representative republic for good reason.

 

Karma

Transit districts around the country can apply for $10 million to fight COVID-19 — unless they are Portland-based TriMet or its "anarchist" counterparts in Seattle and New York.

Actions have consequences.

 

They Can't Keep The Lights On, But

Here's an idea: let's force everybody in California to drive only electric cars! Worry about the necessary infrastructure later; it'll probably all magically take care of itself. Every day after rush hour, when everybody's charging their cars and trucks, things should get even more interesting.

PG&E posted outage maps Wednesday to reflect locations around California that will see a deliberate power shutoff as early as 6 p.m. Wednesday afternoon with severe fire weather in the forecast. You can also look up your address on the PG&E website to determine if you will lose power.

If you consider about three people live in each household on average, the outage could impact up to 158,000 people.

 

 

Orwell Only Had The Year Wrong

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and his merry band of censors may currently hold all the cards in dictating what the truth is, but their heavy-handed approach to controlling the platform leading up to the presidential election doesn’t account for one thing.

Missing from their calculations is the indelible American spirit heavily steeped in revolution — meaning the one thing sure to rile up an American is to tell them what they cannot do.

White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Scott Atlas got into hot water with Twitter when he posted tweets arguing that masks are ineffective. He was locked out of his account over the weekend until he deleted the offending tweets, according to The Federalist.

He did so, and fired off an apt new "first tweet":

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." "And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth." George Orwell, 1984

Actual Clean Energy On Its Way From Oregon

Oregon’s very own NuScale Power, a company developing small-modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), has officially received a final safety evaluation report from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. NuScale is the first company to be issued a report for an SMR by the Commission, and receiving one serves as a technical review and design approval for the new technology.

This is a major milestone for NuScale, which originally submitted its certification application in 2016 and puts it one step closer to installing its first 720-megawatt plant in Idaho Falls.

Reliable, and better yet, the SMRs can't meltdown, they're more efficient than traditional big nuke plants, and therefore don't generate significant amounts of radioactive waste. It's a win-win all around.

Thankfully, Election Day's Only A Couple Of Weeks Away

It can't come soon enough. The constant flyers cramming the mailbox gets awfully old. And around here, they go straight into the recycling bin. They pay to produce and mail them; you pay to get rid of them.