... but so is Brad Gilbert and those annoying f**king nicknames.

The Los Angeles Police Department apparently aren't heeding warnings from the city's fire department. Wednesday, the LAPD confiscated fireworks from someone shooting them off ahead of the July 4 holiday.

It wasn't just a few fireworks, however, it was 5,000 pounds of illegal fireworks, both homemade and from China, police said.

"A bomb squad was called in to destroy some unstable devices while the boxes were loaded onto a tractor-trailer to be taken away for disposal," said KTLA.

Instead of taking them back to the police station and dunking them in water or holding onto them until California isn't under a dangerous drought with threats of fire, the LAPD exploded them in the residential neighborhood. ......(more)

https://www.rawstory.com/lapd-stupid-fireworks-drought-danger/

June 29, 2021 at 5:47 a.m. EDT

As United Airlines Flight 5365 was readying to take off from Los Angeles International Airport on Friday evening, 33-year-old Luis Antonio Victoria Dominguez of La Paz, Mexico, leaned over to the woman sitting next to him and whispered that he was going to jump out, she said.

"I’m serious,” the woman remembered him telling her.

Victoria Dominguez then allegedly sprinted to the front of the plane and tried to enter the cockpit, banging on the door. When he was unsuccessful, he delivered on his promise: He opened an emergency exit door and leaped out of the plane, court documents state.

Now, Victoria Dominguez faces a 20-year maximum sentence in federal prison on the charge of interfering with the flight crew, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in the Central District of California, which filed a complaint detailing the incident Sunday. It was not immediately clear whether Victoria Dominguez had a lawyer to comment on his behalf. ......(more)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/06/29/los-angeles-airport-cockpit-breach/

The Dream of Florida Is Dead
The Miami condo collapse is a crisis for the entire state.

BY MARY HARRIS
JUNE 30, 202112:40 PM




(Slate) Danny Rivero was one of the first reporters on the scene of the Champlain Towers South condo collapse in the town of Surfside, Florida, not too far from Miami Beach. He’s been there almost every day since, chronicling what is still, technically, a search and rescue mission. The death toll now stands at 12, but 149 people are still unaccounted-for. And Rivero says the initial shock of the event is “starting to wear off,” turning to grief—and anger. “This didn’t happen for no reason,” he says. “Even though it came out of nowhere, in a sense, it did not come out of nowhere. There were reasons behind why this happened.”

On Wednesday’s episode of What Next, I talked to Rivero, a reporter for the local public radio station WLRN, about the decisions that led up to the disaster, the role of climate change, and what it all means for the state of Florida. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Mary Harris: An important thing to know about Champlain Towers South is that it’s a condominium. Different people own individual units, and when repairs need to be made to the building as a whole, they’ve got to find a way to pay for them collectively. They elect a board to manage these kinds of decisions. All the way back in 2018, the condo board retained an inspector who assessed the stability of the tower. He found a “major error” in the integrity of the bottom floor of the building. Residents were informed of the problem but spent years negotiating how and whether to fix millions of dollars of damage.

Danny Rivero: There were structural deficiencies identified that probably went back all the way to the construction of this building. And a lot of it has to do just with the fact that the pool deck was built flat, which is a huge no-no. I mean, even me, as a non-construction person, knows you don’t build flat.

....(snip)....

This was in addition to the fact that just having a building on the beach means it’s subject to harsh conditions because you have all the saltwater and salt air.

Right. We do know that properties that are right on the beach get more corrosion from the salt that comes from the salty air, from the saltwater that intrudes every once in a while from just harsh winds and hurricanes. But at the same time, this is a structural issue that, like I said, likely goes back to the very building of this building. And there is also the inability of the condo board to get residents on board for paying for these repairs.

....(snip)....

And I mentioned earlier that condo building is our state’s industry. I literally mean that. The state of Florida was basically considered a wasteland until developers figured out that they could sell the dream of Florida. I’m not exaggerating on this. Our economy over history has basically been a pyramid scheme of developers and people marketing the dream of Florida, to come down to Florida, it’s so beautiful, it’s so carefree. Well, now we have something to care about. This is a serious thing that this tragedy has brought to the forefront, and I think we’re going to be dealing with it for a very long time. .............(more)

https://slate.com/business/2021/06/miami-condo-collapse-florida-building-industry-crisis.html

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – A Florida man tried to smuggle methamphetamine into a local jail by hiding it in a sensitive area, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.

Deputies said they were in the process of booking Shaft Bang Adams, 30, into the Orange County Jail on May 13 when they located four white crystal rocks inside his “penis skin” during a strip search.

Adams is facing a charge of introducing contraband in a state facility in connection with the incident.

The arrest affidavit didn’t say why Adams was being booked into the jail but court records show he’s been arrested multiple times in Orange County. .........(more)

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2021/06/30/yes-a-florida-man-is-actually-accused-of-hiding-meth-inside-this-body-part/#//

(CNN) More than 230 deaths have been reported in British Columbia since Friday as a historic heat wave brought record-high temperatures, officials said Tuesday. The province's chief coroner called it an "unprecedented time."

"Since the onset of the heat wave late last week, the BC Coroners Service has experienced a significant increase in deaths reported where it is suspected that extreme heat has been contributory," Chief Coroner Lisa Lapointe said in a statement.

The coroner's service normally receives about 130 death reports over a four-day period. From Friday through Monday, at least 233 deaths were reported, the chief coroner said, adding "this number will increase as data continues to be updated."

Coroners are now gathering information to determine the cause and manner of deaths and whether heat played a role, the statement said. ...........(more)

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/29/americas/canada-heat-wave-deaths/index.html

American carnage: What we are now learning about Trump's nightmarish mishandling of COVID
Despite his desire to be seen as the man who single-handedly created the vaccines, Trump just got people killed

By HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
PUBLISHED JUNE 30, 2021 10:01AM


(Salon) There are a lot of books coming out over the next few months that chronicled the final days of the Trump administration and it's pretty clear there are a lot of stories to tell. Of course, there is also a burning desire on the part of some members of Trump's entourage to buff up their severely tarnished reputations.

Michael Wolff of "Fire and Fury" fame has a new book coming out about the post-election period called "Landslide" that sounds as though it will be as lurid and gossipy as his previous Trump book. ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl's book called "Betrayal" (which I referenced in this piece about Bill Barr on Monday) appears to take a look at the same period as another new book by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender called "Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost." It makes sense that there would be a number of books about the election, Trump's Big Lie and the subsequent nsurrection. The assault on democracy is the biggest political story of our time and it's still unfolding.

But I think the most serious story of the Trump administration and granted, it's hard to choose, has to be the massive, overwhelming failure to deal with the COVID pandemic that's killed over 600,000 people and counting. I still can't quite wrap my mind around that number or the fact that the leadership of the United States of America was so inept. According to yet another new book, aptly entitled "Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic That Changed History," it was all actually much worse than we even thought.

The authors, Washington Post reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta, tell the coronavirus story from the perspective of the science advisers as well as the political people around Trump who were desperately trying to get him to take the problem seriously. We knew from Bob Woodward's earlier reporting that Trump had consciously made the decision to "downplay" the virus, ostensibly to keep people from panicking. Nobody really believed that, of course. It was obvious that he was "downplaying" the virus because he was afraid that the stock market would panic and that the ensuring economic turmoil would cost him the election. It seemingly never even occurred to him that mass deaths might be a bigger drag on his campaign. .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/06/30/american-carnage-what-we-are-now-learning-about-trumps-nightmarish-mishandling-of-covid/

The heatwave that has settled in the Pacific Northwest during the past few days is expected to continue through Tuesday and has impacted regional rail and light rail service.

The National Weather Service (NWS) reported Portland, Ore., reached 112°F Sunday, which is the highest temperature since records began in 1940. The high in Portland is forecast to be 115°F on Monday.

NWS Seattle reported the city also reached a new all-time high on Sunday with a high of 104°F, which beat the previous record of 103°F set on July 29, 2009. Seattle is forecast to be 109°F on Monday.

Amtrak Cascades service issued an alert June 25 that trains would be operating a reduced speeds through Monday due to heat restrictions. The railroad explained extreme heat can cause railroad tracks to shift* slightly, prompting the operations to slow down as a precaution.

Sound Transit issued alerts throughout the weekend that Link light-rail trains were operating at reduced speeds due to excessive heat on the tracks. Additionally, the agency warned Sounder trains could be delayed or operate at reduced speeds. ............(more)

https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/infrastructure/article/21228386/excessive-heat-impacts-passenger-rail-and-transit-operations-in-pacific-northwest

(Detroit Free Press) Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr looked into and concluded that President Donald Trump's claims of voter fraud at the TCF Center in Detroit in last year's election were baseless and told him so, according to an interview published in the Atlantic.

In an explosive meeting between the men, held at the White House as Trump watched a Michigan legislative hearing on the election, Barr told the president that the legal team pressing the claims was a "clown show" and that Trump had actually done better in Detroit than he did in 2016, which helped disprove the claims.

"You actually did better there this time around than you did last time," Barr told the president, according to the article by ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl. "You keep on saying that the Department of Justice is not looking at this stuff, and we are looking at it in a responsible way. But your people keep on shoveling this s--- out.”

Trump, who had cursed at Barr after hearing he had knocked down his claims of fraud publicly, apparently continued to rant about what he viewed as his Justice Department letting him down and called the attorney general worthless. ...........(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2021/06/28/ag-william-barr-rejected-trump-detroit-claims/5370355001/

A man who allegedly spouted racist, anti-Semitic and white supremacist rhetoric stole a truck, decimated a building by ramming it, and then fatally shot a retired Black Air Force veteran and a Black cop in what police are investigating as a hate crime.

A police officer in Winthrop, Massachusetts, then shot the suspect, who later died.

Massachusetts State Police are investigating the shooting rampage as a possible hate crime, even as they mourn one of their own.

Authorities identified the victims as David Green, 58, a retired Massachusetts State Police officer who had been with the force for 36 years, and 60-year-old Ramona Cooper, Air Force veteran who still worked with the military, Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins said Sunday at a news conference. ...........(more)

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/ny-black-air-force-veteran-cop-shot-dead-possible-hate-crime-20210628-t4ofk4fcp5gw7grhyu5feil3wu-story.html