Firebombing on the Pacific
Over 25,000 acres are ablaze in Los Angeles in the Pacific Palisades fire, a veritable living hell.
Some 12,000-plus structures were incinerated. More than 250,000 souls have been evacuated and are in need of shelter.
No one has really taken charge yet. And now even the woke culprits for the catastrophe are blame-gaming each other to determine who was the more incompetent, which in this case translates to the most woke.
No one knows how many have died; all know the number will escalate in the next few days.
The eventual price tag of the ruin will exceed $200-300 billion and outstrip the billions of dollars given to Ukraine.
And there are still some fires that are completely uncontained.
The Los Angeles apocalypse was a multisystem, green-woke collapse—and a disastrous reminder that when Soviet-style, anti-meritocratic ideology permeates all aspects of modern life in California, disaster is inevitable.
First, note that the culprit of the catastrophe is not climate change; it is not Donald Trump. Those are excuses for arrogant incompetency and disdain for the public. And it is not racism or homophobia to fault those who paraded and virtue signaled their tribal identities so extraneous to their actual responsibilities for public safety.
Note that all California statewide officeholders are left-wing. The California left holds supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature. Only 17 percent of California’s huge congressional delegation of 52 seats is Republican. California’s judiciary is the most left-wing in the country. There is not a single Republican on the 15-member Los Angeles City Council.
Add it all up, and the woke socialist state has been eagerly deindustrializing, decivilizing, and retribalizing its way into what is now a veritable peacetime Dresden on the Pacific.
Again, there is no one else to blame, because California is one of those rare states in which Republicans have de facto zero political power. All the state media, the legacy newspapers, the Silicon Valley daily online news sites, the Bay Area-based Apple, Google, and Facebook monopolies, and the local news outlets are parrots of the woke-green mindset.
To the degree that anything still works in California, it predates 2000. The core of the ossified Central Valley Water Project and the California Water Project remain—though they are in need of massive maintenance, like almost all the infrastructure the current generation of politicians inherited and largely ignored.
Now crowded and obsolete highways that were once the nation’s best still function—but barely. And there are a few remnants of sanity in what is left of the pre-woke and once-great universities of Berkeley, Caltech, Stanford, UCLA, and USC, founded by a now despised but far wiser and more competent long-dead generation of visionaries.
The Real ‘Basket of Deplorables’
Los Angeles brags about its new $50 billion budget and trumpets how it expanded “Care First” programs. Indeed, the mayor’s budget claims it created a new “451 positions”—highlighting its investments in “growing the department of youth development.”
It boasts it is adding positions to the “Justice, Care, and Opportunities Department,” “reducing our jail population,” and expanding “voting solutions for all people.” There is not much about fire, policing, or water—apparently now the low priorities that prior sexist, racist, and homophobic generations once worried about.
The role of DEI? Mayor Karen Bass was warned of the current danger of dry hillsides of chaparral buffeted by record-high, 100-mph Santa Ana winds. Her response?
She went junketing a continent away to the inauguration festivities of the president of Ghana—a strange way to prepare for a possible inferno to come. Does Ghana have firefighting expertise to share with Bass? In damage-control mode, Bass flew back only to be confronted at the airport by a now rare honest—and thus foreign—reporter.
He asked her why she cut over $17.6 million from the LA fire service budget—itself just 65% of the city’s homelessness expenditures. (She had planned to cut millions of dollars more). And why, he asked, was she in Africa at all in her city’s hour of need?
Bass stood mute—shamed into silence.
I think Los Angelenos needed no answer since it was obvious to them: she went to Ghana because she could and wanted to—since identity chauvinism is what ensured she was elected, reelected, and immune from criticism. Look at her appointments and budget, and it is clear public safety, fires, and water are most certainly not her priorities.
Bass was confident that if LA went up in smoke as she pursued her African agendas, the woke megaphones would silence critics as “racist” or “homophobic” or “sexist” in the way Soviet commissars used to send to Siberia any “ideological enemies of the state” who complained that the farms, industries, and trains of Russia no longer worked. And on spec, we now hear it is now racist to criticize a black woman incompetent mayor.
How about the Bass-appointed DEI “deputy mayor for safety,” Brian Williams?
Surely, he stepped up in the mayor’s absence, given his purview of the city’s “safety?” Nope.
You see, he is currently under suspension for suspicion of phoning in a bomb threat to Los Angeles City Hall.
Well, how about the DEI- and the much-acclaimed “first Latina” director of Los Angeles’s vast waterworks? Bass recruited such talent by nearly doubling the job’s normal salary to $750,000 per year.
What did she accomplish on her over $2,000-a-day salary? Did Janisse Quiñones, “the new Chief Executive Officer and Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and the “first Latina woman to lead the organization,” leap into action?
Well, the water very quickly ran out in Pacific Palisades, and the hydrants went dry—as many had been for months prior.
Quiñones claimed that “three million gallons” in tanks above the suburb were mysteriously not up to the task of quenching the LA Dresden. You think?
She apparently gauges disaster preparation by the number of gallons of water available in tanks, not the number of gallons needed to save thousands of homes and lives. And she forgot to tell the public that in fact there is a 117-million-gallon water reservoir atop Pacific Palisades built for some purpose unknown to her.
Yet it was empty and “under repair” for months because of a mere damaged cover. Consider that: a dry autumn, the onset of the usual Santa Ana winds, a recent plague of hilltop wildfires, and Quiñones shuts down the linchpin of a prior generation’s plan to save the Palisades.
Note Quiñones was supposed to be the professional replacement for a retired director of water and power, who himself had been a replacement for another director who was found guilty of bribery and is currently in federal prison.
So goes the agency created by water wizard William Mulholland, who once created the 18-million-person Los Angeles megapolis by tapping every river and reservoir he could to feed the city’s unquenchable thirst for water.
How about fire chief Kristen Crowley? She now blames the mayor for dry hydrants. But in doing so, she pleaded that her job starts only after water flows out of them—as if their inert condition is not really her concern.
The self-celebrity, nonbinary fire chief Kristen Crowley has talked nonstop for the last two years about “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and the “LGBTU community.” Less was said about the need to ensure the most meritocratic force possible, unmatched equipment, and long preplanned measures to prevent conflagrations—and screaming to high heaven that fire hydrants were either being stolen or bone dry.
Instead, like Bass, Crowley was mostly mute about the lack of preparation or the absence of sufficient warning to those about to be engulfed.
How about her deputy Kristine Lawson, who claimed people in need want to see fire officers arrive who look like they do? And if they don’t?
She is also on record with this: “Am I able to carry your husband out of a fire? He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out.” Consider that helpful LAFD logic: So, if you are a man who suffers cardiac arrest and collapses on your kitchen floor, it is your fault that you died without medical attention, not Kristine’s, who apparently either would not or could not carry you out the door.
How about morally bankrupt politicians?
The speaker of the California Assembly, Robert Rivas, along with Governor Gavin Newsom, had just called a special session of the legislature to “Trump-proof” California. He wished to allot millions of dollars in state funds—in a year of massive deficits—to sue and impede the federal government.
Will Rivas’s Trump “resistance” session include canceling California’s simultaneous request for hundreds of billions of federal dollars for Los Angeles from the Trump administration? When asked whether it was wise to borrow millions to sue Trump while Los Angeles was burning, Rivas mumbled, stuttered, and revealed himself to be little more than a caricature of an incompetent.
Governor Gavin “Nero” Newsom made his usual performance art, virtual-signaling appearance. When asked why the hydrants were dry, he batted it off as a “local problem.” He now uses his own campaign website, linked to Democratic fundraising efforts, to warn the fire-struck public about supposed “misinformation.”
But what could Newsom do or say? His entire tenure is synonymous with too many catastrophic forest fires and too little water.
He did nothing after the catastrophic Aspen and Paradise fires to revive the timber industry to glean and clean the forests. He never allowed much new grazing on fuel-rich hills or sent crews in to cut back the chaparral.
He never reconsidered his policies of diverting precious snowmelt from the Sacramento River tributaries to flow into the sea to help the delta smelt rather than to ensure that farmers could irrigate their crops or that Los Angeles County reservoirs were fully banked.
Despite an approved 2014 $7.5 billion bond to build three huge dams and reservoirs, Newsom ensured that we built none: not the easily constructed Sites reservoir, not Temperance Flat, and not Los Banos Grandes, all tertiary foothill reservoirs that could have given California by now nearly five million additional acre-feet of storage.
Or is it worse than that?
Governor Dam-Buster still brags about how he greenlit blowing up four dams on the Klamath River—the largest dam removal in American history. The dams provided 80,000 homes with clean hydroelectric power, farmers with irrigation water, and the public with recreation and flood control.
Instead of following the voters’ bond to build reservoirs and dams, Newsom preferred to dynamite them. The ensuing muddy deluge wiped out the surrounding riparian ecosystem.
Joe Biden, now in the last days of his disastrous tenure, was in the LA area by chance to boast that he had put thousands of valuable federal square miles off limits.
Instead, he mumbled about his new great-grandson and relief that his kid’s house was saved, as the fire was engulfing 12,000 homes of others. Then Biden unceremoniously left, heartbroken that his last junket to Italy might have to be canceled as Los Angeles continued to burn. Later he too grumbled about “misinformation,” which is his synonym for telling the truth about the Los Angeles green woke bomb.
Kamala Harris? Was the vice president perhaps marshaling federal money and assets to stop the fires in her last weeks in office? After all, we remember from her 2024 campaign Harris’s frenzied efforts to help out during national disasters, as she scolded the capable Florida governor Ron DeSantis that he was not partnering enough with her to mitigate the effects of flooding.
She too proved invisible other than remarking the fire was “apocalyptic.” Instead, Harris was too busy planning a multimillion-dollar junket in her last week in office and of free royal travel.
Insurance? Is there some plan to rebuild these suburbs as they were, to ensure there are some $300 billion to pay out claims? Well, no again. The state is broke and is driving out insurance companies, not enticing them in. Its public “Fair” unfair insurance plan of last resort is underfunded and will go insolvent once a week or two of claims flows in.
California’s failure to effectively prevent and put out fires—along with hyper-regulation and failure to combat an epidemic of insurance fraud—has destroyed the state’s insurance industry. Given the prior inability of homeowners to buy credible fire insurance at any cost, there are thousands of now-homeless who had no insurance at all.
How about the region’s large homeless population that camps out on the streets and in the tinderbox chaparral above the suburbs? Did the city investigate arson or detain, arrest, charge, and jail those rounded up with incendiary devices or seen lighting fires? Of course not. They vetoed any notion long ago of an anti-camping ordinance.
Collective Suicide
Add it all up. The California nihilist green ethos and the left-wing politicians who run the madhouse ensured there is no effort to glean the forests and hills of combustible fuel.
There is not enough water for hydrants, not enough to deliver to Los Angeles, and when it arrives, there is too much incompetence to know how to use it.
There were no real warnings to residents that they had mere minutes to flee for their lives. Or was it worse still? As the fires wore on, continuous false alarms of new fires sparked unnecessary and dangerous mass evacuations citywide, destroying what, if any, trust was left in the fire department.
There is no reason to believe that such derelict politicians during the next fire will not again be AWOL on DEI junkets, boasting of their genders, their race, and their sexual orientation, but not of their duties to those whose lives they are sworn to protect.
The final tragic irony?
California’s DEI “humanism” and Green New Deal environmentalism ensured the cruelest imaginable treatment of thousands of people and unrivaled destruction of the natural ecosystem.
No one in the government dares to guess about what might have caused the fires, even as they cry “climate change”—as if to do so would expose their own incompetency or confirm rumors of sporadic homeless arsonists.
The California green utopians, by their very ideological zealotry, ensured their fires likely will have released into the atmosphere several weeks’ worth of the entire state’s collective auto emissions.
The fires will have wiped out thousands of protected flora and fauna, will have released toxic fumes into the air, and will have destroyed the lives of thousands of Los Angeles residents for years to come.
To paraphrase a 1960s California left-wing slogan—green-woke is not healthy for children and other living things.
thankyou for this article.
Here in Australia we suffer the same socio-political insanities. And “religious”. Dare I mention that global “Green” political ideology was given birth in Tasmania, to my home state’s shame. It quickly became our most eagerly sought export. And all the while we keep building further into forests (bush). We await the next catastrophic wildfires. Melbourne’s most recent, sixteen years ago, cost 170+ lives. Hardly a lesson learnt…
LA is a miracle and So. Cal has the best weather in the world. But it lacks local food or water to support a metro in the middle of a coastal desert, and yet since I was a teen in the eighties it has grown 3 fold from 7 million to 21 million. Even as a teen U wondered what would happen when an 8.0 jolt comes rolling around from OC to Ventura? Part of reason I am in Texas.
I cant wait for your next article when you talk about what will be rebuilt. Or will the subject be L.A. 2.0 ? The plan that was started with these fires.
Owner of LA Times admits mistake to have endorsed current mayor of LA.
House fires burn vinyl siding, vinyl flooring, vinyl pipes, vinyl fence, other things plastic and chemical, and create and release dioxin. It’s likely this has been a dioxin contamination catrastophe. That makes rwo such dioxin environmental disasters that Democrats have created during Bidens four year reign of asininity. The other one was the chemical train derailment where a mushroom cloud of dioxin contaminated smoke went up fromtankcars of vinyl chloride being burned, by the EPA order if memory serves.
We have all been horrified by the satellite images of the before and after photos of the various California communities, destroyed by fire. However, I am wondering why no investigative agency has researched satellite photos of the Pacific Palisades area time-stamped to show the location of the multiple fires as they began to burn. It seems to me that that would be a clear indication of intentional multiple fire-starters, ruling out a “natural” disaster overwhelming criminally mismanaged natural resources to halt the fire spread. Why has this not been researched to arrive at the truth of how and when these fires started and then spread so rapidly?
Can the Giant Sequoias Survive Gavin Newsome? His response to fires in the state is following his past pattern…shift the blame…
So how does Gavin Newsome get a pass from environmentalists on the destruction of Giant Sequoias occurring during his administration?
During his term as governor he has been at least partially responsible for the biggest die-off the state’s unique Giant Sequoias. And, except for a few ash-kicking media events by Newsome, his plans on ways to stop the carnage are unknown.
He did take the opportunity to shift blame to the federal government, Mitch McConnell, Republicans, and climate change.
According to the National Park Service more than 85 percent of all giant sequoia grove acreage across the Sierra Nevada has burned in wildfires between 2015 and 2021, compared to only one quarter in the preceding century. Three of these fires burned into Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
In 2020 the Castle Fire alone killed an estimated 7,500 to 10,600 large sequoias. That’s 10 to 14 percent of all large sequoias in the world lost in one fire.
He administers the overall firefighting capability of the state and oversees the state’s efforts to manage the forests to better protect them from wildfires; yet somehow he seems to skate any responsibility for the fires that have already occurred during his administration.
“You get what you put up with”
The next question is: Will those who lost their homes be fined for the air pollution caused by their burnt houses?
VDH,
The best California can hope for will be the fantasy movie Hollywood will make about the LGBTQ person, 1/3 Black, 1/3 Latin, 1/3 Asian, who comes to the rescue. There will not be a plot, the need for a future orientation is much too logical for this film.
The ending of the movie will be kept secret, but I think our hero morphs into Donal Trump and saves California, unfortunately Nancy Pelosi wakes up from her nightmare screaming, she is surrounded by Hakeem Jeffries and every Democrat member of congress reassuring her that it was only a nightmare. Someone says, you just nodded out in your seat as Donald Trump is heard speaking in the background at his first State of The Union speech since winning the 2024 election.
To the list of unemployed Californians will soon be added many former government officials and employees. Will their DEI-wokeness save their asses?
My simple view is this:
— The bonuses of the SCE and LADWP officers should be taken from them and granted to the firefighters that ore doing all they can to save property.
— SCE should be required by the PUC to put underground any power distribution cable that is located in the high-wind canyons, and be precluded from charging new fees to SCE customers for this long-overdue effort.
Sorry to say… won’t happen anytime soon
I grew up in Altadena over 70 years ago. We moved from the western side of town to the Eaton Canyon area when I was in 5th grade. Altadena is a very hilly place, as any 10-year-old who rode his bike everywhere will attest. The Eaton Canyon fire was miles away from the upper fires in the western portions of Altadena. Now fire burns uphill, but not against 80 mph winds. The problem presented by these very strong, downslope winds was evident in the TV coverage …. large burning embers filled the skies and ignited downwind bushes and roofs. So, what ignited the fires that blew downslope onto the lower reaches of western Altadena? At least one arsonist on a bicycle with a propane torch was detained by a citizen, but it wasn’t clear where this happened in the video. If LA holds to form, the citizen will shortly be indicted for unlawful inference with a bicyclist. 70 years ago, the mountain sides were marked with fire breaks that were maintained by work details from the County jail. And Altadena’s police and fire services were provided by the County as well. I wonder what the current practice is. There are lots of questions, but few will ever be addressed in this uni-party, lotus-eating state.
Back in the day, i spent time in the military in southern ca. It truly was a golden state of that era.
Not Dresden!! the dresdeners were neither woke nor climate change fanatics nor did they mis align their forestry or water management. Their crime ? Being Germans and in Hitler and allied crosshairs.
The City of Los Angeles and it’s public services were once so well run that it was the only major city in the USA to avoid widespread rioting and violence in April 1968 when MLK, Jr was assassinated. The LA city and county fire departments were the envy of fire brigades everywhere. The LAPD was considered the gold standard for decades. After 35 years since the radical leftist takeover of the state, California is now a basket case. A basket case with money to be sure, but at this rate, the money will slowly trickle away as well.
Californians need to wake the hell up and stop voting for virtue signaling idiots. Start by at least electing some moderates to important offices. Maybe you’ll like the improvement and double down as time goes on. As it once was in California…..when it was a paradise.
Many questions about the future cost of this total debacle. There will likely be a considerable chain of painful consequences to the system.
How many had insurance sufficient to cover their losses? Rebuilding costs will far exceed the final assessed value of what once stood. Will the insurers survive? Will the re-insurers survive? In most cases, there is no collateral left in the former residence or business.
Will the property taxes for every home owner in CA go way up to help cover the costs of the fires? If so, will that lead to more millions fleeing our state?
Will the feds backstop the insurance companies with more inflated dollars?
How many fire victims will choose to vacate their mortgage commitments? How does the mortgage market react to that?
The Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed about 12,000 structures, while the 2018 Camp fire had over 18,000. However, the average cost for each structure could be 5x or 10x more for the LA fires.
How much will LA lose in property taxes? How will the county continue to pay for its bloated pensions?
It gets worse the more you think about it. So I’ll just stop there.
Sadly, the ones who voted these incompetent ideologues will probably keep them in office even after being forced to address all of the excellent points listed in your article. This simply reinforces the fact that liberalism is insanity, as they continue to support and promote their DEI-climate change priorities expecting a different outcome each time.
This is why my wife and me (both native Californians) fled to Idaho 7 years ago and never looked back….
The Germans have a saying: “he who will not see, must feel.”
Thanks to VDH facts, history and common sense are known. His wisdom is only useful if we individually and collectively take action. prayers and footwork, coupled with integrity and commitment will result in better outcomes for California and beyond.
Historically speaking …
First, I’m wondering if this is what it looked like to the residents of Sodom & Gomorrah.
Second, Having been lulled to sleep by the drone of Old King Cole and his politicians, maybe the residents of the state will finally awaken and cut the strings of their fiddles.
VDH’s “Dresden in California” is too accurate for those who know their WWII history.
Its firebombing continues to be considered an enormous error.
Robert,
Some say it was payback for Coventry.
A few bullet points:
* There was insufficient pressure to deliver water even though the tanks/reservoirs had water. The hydrant system is the same system that delivers tap water to the homes so the pipes are sized accordingly , assuming everyone on the block isn’t watering his lawn at the same time. One can increase flow in a pipe of a given diameter by increasing pressure upstream or SUCKING on the delivery end. Every pump has some “lift” head, that is it can suck water in. But this requires a rigid wall hose from the hydrant to the firetruck. Were the trucks equipped for this?
* A line of firetrucks should have been set up ahead of the fire to present the fire with a “wall of water”. Was this attempted? Even a partial wall would have saved some properties downwind of the wall.
* Why wasn’t the natural gas turned off? Gas flares were observed.
* Apparently, burned-down houses had open water spigots caused by the heat. Crews should have gone into the burn areas and turned off the water lines to save water.
* Could firefighting boats have been brought it to at least save the beach houses? Or would that not be climate justice?
* Could have firetrucks pumped water from the sea and/or swimming pools?
* People should be situationally aware and realize they are sitting on a powder keg and take mitigating actions. Every homeowner with a house near the sea house should have initiated a gas-powered pump/sprinkler system, dido for pool owners.
California’s Dresden: A Tragic Verse
Upon Pacific’s gilded shore,
Where chaparral once proudly grew,
A blaze erupts, as flames do roar,
Consuming dreams in ashen hue.
With acres burned and thousands fled,
The woke now bicker, trade their blame,
While smog-stained skies hang overhead,
And ruin marks their hollow name.
Not storms, nor stars, nor Trump to blame,
But hubris bold that stoked the fire.
Their green utopia’s fleeting claim
Left ashes where they reached too higher.
With billions lost to flame’s cruel bite,
They boast of virtue, shirk their care,
Yet fields lie scorched, the air a blight,
Their zeal breeds nothing but despair.
Leaders crowned in hollow guise
Abandoned duty for their pride.
Bass fled afar, while flames did rise,
And hydrants drained as warnings died.
The fire chief sang of DEI,
Yet water failed the deadly test.
The people knew, and so did sigh:
For woke neglect had burned the West.
Oh, California, once so bright,
Thy brilliance dims in ruin’s flame.
Rise from these ashes, claim thy right,
Or face the doom of thy own shame.
Credits: VDH 50%, Bard 20%, AI 20%, Other 10%
Bravo, Jim. 👏
Thank you Dr. Hanson. What is going on in CA is terrible and VDH laid out the scenario years ago for what has just happened.
I have lived my whole life, 78 years, in NJ. We are mini-CA. Our progressive liberal Governor Murphy has said he wanted NJ to be the CA of the East. We are there, every woke -idiotic liberal policies has been pursued. How about NY, CT, MA, NYC, Chicago — it is a cancer that is on the Nation and it needs to be removed.
VDH nails it as usual!!! Just a bit younger than VDH. Grew up in LA area. Remember many summer vacation treks to northern CA. Driving Hwy 99 was part of those memories, even a friendly trucker giving a surprised young boy a fresh cantaloupe as I stared at his cool rig during an early morning rest stop. Then left CA for the military, life journey did not have me return. During my youth was so proud to be from CA, but over time that pride faded to sadness. Occasionally throughout my years have heard the saying: “As California goes, so goes the nation.” At one time it may have been a good saying, but hopefully does not apply right now. Keep on truck-in VDH!!!
Nothing has been learned from this catastrophe. The voters in California will continue to elect incompetent people who “are not republicans”. That is the voting mantra in California, at least in the big cities. I sit in San Diego where 1980 county supervisors, conservatives all, built infrastructure that has allowed us to survive the fires and droughts. With the adoption of term limits the progressives were able to replace these competent conservatives with DEI incompetents. We are now a super sanctuary city/county that is run by fools. As the infrastructure ages and the leaders replace real infrastructure with projects that nobody wants nor provide any benefits to the population.
One of your finest columns ever. My grandfather immigrated as a teenager in 1908 from France to the land of opportunity…California, the golden state, the bread basket of the country. My father was born and raised and died in So CAL. I too was born in So CAL and lived there 61 years until I just could not take it anymore. A California I do not recognize from the days of my youth. The wringing of hands and displays of “sorrow” at the news conferences will soon be replaced with no change. Will the voters change? I’m not holding my breath….
Yes, but you can get an abortion easily in California!
Sometime back in the mid to late 1980s a California politician proudly stated that now that the state finally had absolute Democrat majorities in the statehouse and judiciary and in the big city governments, that California could now serve as a laboratory for progressive policy making, to show the rest of the county how to govern properly. I wish I knew the date and what publication it was.
There may be another more sinister reason for the fires, criminal greed. This is too perfect a storm to be coincidental, you have no water, reduction in force, cancelation of insurance and over regulation.
The result will be speculators will come and buy this vacant land and rebuild, displacing the economically distressed. The average person Mohave the luxury of waiting three years for a permit to start to rebuild.
Hugh,
But who would want to rebuild in the current political environment just to have the same insanity repeat itself?
We always reap what we sow.
So now it is apparent that the so-called smelt fish have not been seen for 10 years according to California harvest records. Why would they dumping trillions of gallons of fresh water into the Pacific Ocean for a fish that nobody can find and nobody can see ?
Now there is knowledge that the so-called smelts have not been seen for 10 years according to state of California harvest records. So why were they dumping trillions of gallons of freshwater into the ocean for a fish that does not exist anymore ?
It will not help they will vote these people right back in. Also the voting fraud in California is so big that they will be voted in anyhow no matter who votes for what. The counting of millions of mailed ballots is heading never to be observed and never to be challenged and they can make the outcome anything they want and guess what the outcomes going to be.
They’re going to be right back in office yet again.
After such a catastrophe, might the incipient cultural-political shift reach even California?
Yes but….Trump said that there were good people on both sides.
One of your best columns ever. Would make a great video to be used in schools, on tv and in churches all across the fruited plain.
Excellent work.
I feel Yahweh’s smoldering anger about this situation. No wonder it caught on fire. These horrendous policies and foolish and rebellious thinking have killed people, destroyed property, and ruined lives. Yes, it teaches a lesson not to trust them, but beyond that is the great harm of what they have done.
I’ve been saying, do you think the Santa Ana winds care about DEI, tribal elders or the Delta Smelt? That would be a loud hell no!
Very well said, Victor. Keep saying out loud what so many Californians are thinking !!
Nothing will change until most of those who are “thinking” start DOING. And the key part of that “doing” is to start learning WHY and HOW this state of affairs came to be. Then to put your backbone where wishbone is and DO something.
Sitting about on yer thick end wishing someone else would DO something is how this came about.
Newsome’s cries of “misinformation” and finger pointing in the wake of these fires demonstrates not only his incompetence but his “pass the buck” mentality. Misinformation is a default for those who cannot make an argument or whose arguments aren’t logical or persuasive.
Let’s abandon the idea that allegedly oppressed groups, such as sexual deviants and various races, have a special virtue that makes their poorly trained members’ shoddy incompetence in office immune from criticism.
Drill baby drill bad. Burn baby burn good. Only in California?
Will this disaster finally wake up Californians to finally vote for people with merit, rather than identity BS? Or instead will those who survived rejoice that at least the smelts were safe and survived……
Nope. And the citizens will wander around wondering why if they always do what they have always done, they will always get what they always got. That it is happening to Hollyweird is pure Schadenfreude.
J Brown,
Sadly, I think not. The people who voted for Newsome, Bass, et al. are so intransigent that I doubt anything could change their minds.
“Woke” went for broke and got it.
Anyone looking ahead to when it rains?
…..and mudslides…..
LA county went 70% democrat and I read that Palisades voted 90% democrat; explain why they don’t deserve this.
Perhaps DJT could negotiate a trade deal with Denmark: California for Greenland.
VDH again is our national treasure and replacement for the loss of Rush with even more facts and insight – and proves that DEI means the wipe out of all reason, common sense, fact base, and work that could help any people. California here shown to rush to kill even what they lefties say all they say they want with natural environments of plants and animals smashed by BLOWING UP four DAMs, needed water wasted into the sea and the rest of people crushed as these fool Nihilists try to kill us all with insane ideas that turn out to be delusions of suicidal compassion devoid of any common sense.
“But we’re never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy”
Seal
Not surprisingly, a spot on, well written encapsulation of this debacle…..my dad (born/raised in California, I was born there) who passed away in 2017 is grieving.
Great analysis of issues that have been not properly addressed for decades
Such a bizarre time we live in. Government grows and grows with ever increasing budgets as it becomes less competent and effective. Because nobody in any level of government is doing “their job.” They are all too busy solving all the problems of humanity. You have a governor with no interest in the hard work of fire mitigation because he is too busy lecturing you about what computer models say the temperature will be a hundred years in the future, or who was racist a hundred in the past. You have the head of the teachers union making multiple trips to Ukraine to show “solidarity.” You have the Secretary of Transportation going awol during a supply chain crisis, but showing up on all the Sunday shows to talk about the sacred right to abortion. Meanwhile all the Ivy League educated geniuses are giving themselves awards for curing the ills of humanity, while on the actual ground their societies are being ravaged by medieval and pre-historic ills like fire and plague. It is all utter insanity. After this, the state will take over fire insurance with a new California Fire Authority exactly like their earthquake insurance. And next time there is a big fire, anyone filing a claim will realize it was all a giant scam/slush fund to pocket money to pay unfunded public sector pensions.
Well said!
You’re revealing the true horror of Leftist madness that never fails to destroy everything it touches. It’s been a twenty-five year slow motion train wreck since Gray Davis became governor – we remember, the only California governor ever to be thrown out of office – and who “deregulated” the state’s energy grid. Brown-outs in Silicon Valley followed within six months. Only divine intervention will tip the balance of annihilation. Besides rain, what can stop the greater terror?
I also was reminded of the self proclaimed “Bengal Tiger” while reading this excellent article. I wonder how long it will take for California to become “conservative” (normal for the people) again?
If CA has a state FOAI, someone should request any and all documents related to the potential repair and subsequent draining of the 117 million gallon reservoir (is it Santa Ynez?) for cover repair.
I read it was a less that 5 foot tear. If so, my first thoughts were to suspend a repairman (excuse me, repairperson) from a helicopter, or use a drone. My very last alternative would have been to empty the reservoir.
Just spitballing here, but I imagine that Donald Trump or Elon Musk would have done something different as well.
And now it is time to pay for the results of this collective incompetence. The debate will be if part1san politics have limited the flow of funds from US taxpayers to the Blue failed state of California?? How many times do citizens have to pay for the policies they oppose? The same people that are vilified and called racist for not supporting open borders or the “green new deal” will now be forced to pay for the damage done by the polices they oppose. The first order of business should be to redirect all federal funds allocated to these failed programs to disaster relief. Every “green dollar”, every “high speed rail dollar” the unused funds for reservoirs that were never built, all sanctuary city funds, all funding for illegal immigrants, any residual political campaign funds- Every dollar in California should be redirected before one dollar from any other state flows to this reconstruction. All regulations that will add cost and impede the progress of rebuilding Pacific Palisades, and greater LA suburbs should be recinded before we fund any projects. The inevitable legal challenges of the Sierra Club and the Nature Conservancy, should be denied and face immediate summary dismissal under provisions of a declared emergency. The state should face the accountability for their policies and then reach out to for support from the “deplorables” they detest
Not gonna happen.
Excellent !! Keep up the good work.
Having Duds for Leaders is bad enough but being a Dud and not knowing it is really bad.
Richard, you raise a very, very interesting point.
A pattern is notable in large cities and even among the super wealthy of the coasts.
No offense meant to anyone here including the innocent voters of the (former) Golden State that actually now appears a little worse for the wear (of Duds and lefties).
#3 appears to fit your assessment of the Dud.
Ingenuously, Carlo M. Cipolla, a former professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley, in the mid 1970’s developed five laws of stupidity:
1st: Always & without variation everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
2nd: The probability that someone is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
3rd: A stupid person is a person who causes losses to others while himself deriving no gain or loss. Too often the stupid person is not even aware of the harm he/she has done.
4th: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. Notably, non-stupid people frequently forget that at all times and places and under any circumstance dealing with or associating with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
5th: A stupid person is a dangerous person.
Cheers… 😉
You comments about stupid people remind me of a quote from the great Thomas Sowell, “stupid people can create problems, but it often takes brilliant people to create a real catastrophe”.
John, interesting and so, so true. Thx.
Possibly, Cipolla and Sowell were soul mates of spirit.
On another note, without VDH’s soothing podcasts these last few years, it is questionable i would have survived Biden’s mess.
And something on the order of 80% of Californians are stupid, and they’re ones that really are to blame for this, not the stupid people they elected. The California politicians have been very upfront with what their priorities are, and they have a long history of being consistent in their policies implementing those priorities. Californians are getting the government they chose, as well as the easily foreseeable consequences. Elections have consequences, as Angelenos probably still do not realize.
That seems absolutely correct, Karl.
Especially so after having read “Barb’s” (Streisand) blaming the inferno on climate change and then Gavin pointing to Trump for the blame. Those “beautiful people” appear to lack something upstairs.
This is a great addition to article. Thank you.
“Consider how stupid the average American is (Californian?), now realize that HALF of them are dumber than that!” – George Carlin
“Leftism is a mental disease” – Michael Savage, PhD