Free Republic

Germany, as we well know with its Russian gas capers, is a highly industrialized society in need of a lot of energy. Fine and dandy. But how they get it presents increasingly bad options. They got rid of their nuclear power in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown after a big earthquake in Japan, (despite Germany not being in a quake zone), driving themselves to dependency on foreign suppliers. That's presented problems for them what with Russia filling that role, so their other recourse has been the one Joe Biden is touting for America: Green energy -- like...

He says he was just headed to Walgreens. But the expired registration on his car tag meant he could be pulled over. So there he is, sitting on the cold curb at night, cuffed by the Fresno County sheriff's deputies. Yes, the man tells CNN, he'd avoided getting a new registration, not wanting to spend the money. So now the 28-year-old is looking at a ticket on top of the registration and a late fee. Nothing comes cheap and easy for him -- except for methamphetamine. That's the lesson he says he got at the age of 13, when his...

The Fresno Nightcrawler — often described as walking, ghostly pants — is known far beyond California's central San Joaquin Valley. It's become a darling of the cryptids — creatures typically described as mythological in nature, whose existence are widely considered unproven. "It's up there with Chupacabra, the Mothman and Bigfoot," said Michael Banti, founder of Weird Fresno, about the Fresno Nightcrawler's popularity. "It's very niche. It seems to be bigger outside of Fresno than inside."

....The national guard has been deployed to hospitals in rural north and central California, where short-staffed hospitals have been overwhelmed with coronavirus patients – exposing stark disparities within the most populous US state. Although California has the lowest coronavirus case rate in the country, its agricultural heartland in the Central Valley and its sparse, rural north have case rates that are three or four times higher. National guard medical teams have been deployed to several hospitals in the valley’s Bakersfield and Kern counties, and to two hospitals in Shasta county in the far north.... ....In Shasta, which has one of...

A major construction team on the California bullet train project notified the state rail authority this month that it will not complete a 65-mile section of the future route in Kings County until at least April 14, 2025 — nearly two years after the date that the state included in a business plan adopted Thursday. The additional delay could again boost costs and jeopardize the state’s funding plan to complete a partial operating system between Bakersfield and Merced by 2030. The project’s rising price tag has forced the state to repeatedly scale it back and delay indefinitely a goal to...

Two girls attending a birthday pool party in California were fatally shot and three others were wounded, according to reports.

California Democrats are building a wall of money to defend the congressional seats they took from Republicans in 2018, new Federal Election Commission financial reports show *** In the Central Valley, Rep. Josh Harder, D-Turlock (Stanislaus County), took in $789,093 in the quarter that ended March 31, leaving him with $3.5 million in campaign cash. His Republican opponent, veterinarian Ted Howze, raised $71,147 in the first quarter, leaving him with $100,575 in the bank. *** Brian Maryott, a San Juan Capistrano city councilman, is challenging Democratic Rep. Mike Levin in a district that bridges San Diego and Orange counties. But...

President Trump brings razor sharp instincts to the political picture, and nowhere was it more obvious than in his appearance in Bakersfield, California, signing a bill to clean up the junk-science federal "research" on water for the parched Central Valley, and better still, ordering the feds to give California's Central Valley farmers the water for their farms that they already paid for.  According to Politico: “What they're doing to your state is a disgrace," Trump said. "After decades of failure and delays in ensuring critical water rights for the people of the state, we are determined to finally get your problems solved." The...

In the California central valley, much of America's breadbasket has been reduced to a dustbowl by destructive leftist politics which shut off water to farmers. Is the historic Delta Region next just so Jerry Brown can have his pathetic legacy? Last weekend as my husband and I were enjoying vin rouge and fromage at one of our favorite Delta wineries in Clarksburg, CA, we discussed Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed Delta Tunnels project, and how it would destroy the historical, rich agricultural region. Some of our favorite wineries, and all of the Delta agriculture could end up under water and/or the...

The board that oversees California's high-speed rail project is expected to approve a revised plan calling for a $64 billion approach that sends the train from the Central Valley to the San Jose area before it heads to Southern California.

It’s not just producers and farmers who are getting hit with rising costs and growing shortages of water. When it comes to H2O, everyone better get prepared to pay more and get less. In its long history, water has never been more precious, more controversial, more expensive or more essential to agriculture and commerce than it is right now. A symbol of purity in cosmetic ads, a stand-in for quality in beer ads, the poster boy for violence and destruction during floods, hurricanes and tsunamis, water is currently so scarce out West that it threatens to decimate the nation’s most...

Farmers again will get no federal river water for more than 2 million acres of cropland in the San Joaquin Valley, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced Friday. Though the announcement was no surprise, it sent ripples of anxiety through the farming industry on both the east and west sides of the Valley, which rely on water from the federal Central Valley Project. Don Peracchi, board president of the Westlands Water District’s board, mostly in west Fresno County, said: “The federal government’s Central Valley Project is broken. Some of the most vital elements of the state’s economy are being allowed...

Ok, this is just the germination of the plan. We have independent units from the Bolinas Border Patrol and the Central Valley Citizens militia joining forces with independent citizens militia units of Texas to defend our southern border in Texas, to protest Obama's lawless open borders policies and to rally support for Governor Perry to officially call out Guard units and Texas militia units at his disposal to defend the border!! Lawsuits will not cut it. The invasion is happening now. Action must be taken NOW!! FReepers, Patriots, Militia members: Prepare to answer the call!!

An Unconventional Desalination Technology Could Solve California's Water Shortage By Dina Spector 11 hours ago   View photo. WaterFXA parabolic trough collects energy from the sun. The heat is used to evaporate clean water from the salty agricultural drainage water of irrigated crops.This year, farmers in California's Central Valley likely won't receive any water through the federal irrigation program, a network of reservoirs, rivers, and canals that is normally replenished yearly by ice melt from the Sierra mountains.Crippling water shortages have made desalination technology more attractive, including a startup, WaterFX, that uses the sun to produce heat. The heat separates salt...

Obama’s schedule for Fresno trip released: Excerpt: President Barack Obama’s trip to the Fresno area on Friday will not be open to the public, according to the White House. Obama will arrive in Air Force One at Fresno Yosemite International Airport at 2:30 p.m., traveling from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Taking Marine One, the presidential helicopter, Obama will fly to the San Luis Water Facility in Firebaugh to tour a local farm at 4:15 p.m. At 4:30 p.m. Obama will deliver remarks at a private residence in Los Banos. At 5:35 p.m., he will depart Fresno from Fresno Yosemite...

WASHINGTON--President Obama will travel to Fresno next week to highlight federal efforts aimed at helping farmers and others hit by a severe drought. A White House official said Obama will visit the Central Valley city Feb. 14. The White House already had announced Obama's plans to meet with Jordan's King Abdullah II at the Sunnylands estate near Palm Springs that day. Obama’s visit comes as interest on Capitol Hill in taking action to alleviate California’s water crisis grows. The Republican-controlled House passed a bill Wednesday dubbed a response to the drought, but the measure faces a White House veto threat....

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Amid severe drought conditions, California officials announced Friday that they would not send any water from the state's vast reservoir system to local agencies beginning this spring, an unprecedented move that affects drinking water supplies for 25 million people and irrigation for 1 million acres of farmland. The announcement marks the first time in the 54-year history of the State Water Project that such an action has been taken, but it does not mean that every farm field will turn to dust and every city tap will run dry. The 29 agencies that draw from the state's...

Politics: To leftist food scolds, eating more vegetables is important. So why are California's two Democratic senators having a cow about a water bill that would let their Central Valley's farmers grow more veggies? House Republican Devin Nunes' Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Water Relief Act (H.R. 1837), which passed easily in the House last week, was the first standalone bill to address the persistent problem of arbitrary state decisions to deny water to the farmers of the Central Valley. It's a good bill. But not to the more obtuse Democrats. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has denounced the Nunes bill as "a recipe...

Politics: Is sanity finally coming to California's Central Valley? America's breadbasket has long been victim of capricious water cutoffs to "save" the environment. A bill in Congress puts an end to this man-made drought. It should pass. Rep. Devin Nunes of Visalia, Calif., has come forward with a legislative remedy for the policies that have turned fertile fields into hollowed-out dust bowls in the name of "being green." Nunes' Sacramento-San Joaquin Water Reliability Act goes to a vote in the House Wednesday and if it passes, it will guarantee that water the farmers paid for finally gets to the parched...

I've called the judicially-imposed drought in California's Central Valley --- the Dust Bowl Congress created --- through its creation of the Endangered Species Act, invoked in this case by the Delta smelt, a fish that's not suitable for eating. Once a breadbasket for the nation, the cutoff of irrigation water to the Central Valley has destroyed agriculture and tens of thousands of jobs as a tradeoff for the endangered fish. Now, however, voices of sanity in Congress have begun to speak on the man-made economic and agricultural disaster, as Rep. Devin Nunes builds support for his Sacramento-San Joaquin Water Reliability...