Bass and Newsom’s Woke Shame and DEI Incompetence
I write to thank all those who have written me to inquire about my situation in light of the Southern California (SoCal) wildfires.
Barukh Hashem (Thank G-d), it seems that our region here in Central Orange County has been spared.
Pacific Palisades is well north of us, sort of west of Los Angeles, occasionally threatening to blow east into Brentwood, on L.A.’s western outskirts. The wind direction of the blustery 50 mph Santa Ana winds determines all. These winds are a regular phenomenon out here. Los Angeles was built in a desert. Remember “Operation Desert Storm”? How did they come up with a name like that? Because deserts have windstorms. But they do not necessarily cause wildfires. For that, you also need … fire.
Three more intense wind days are expected Monday-Wednesday. Another fire, north of that, likewise missed the heavily populated San Fernando Valley, but a change of wind direction later led the authorities to issue evacuation orders for parts of the Valley. Hopefully, they will be spared. That community and its residents include many who mean a great deal to me. So far, their odds are not bad.
In my region, we are not even experiencing any discernible atmospheric impact — no smell of smoke, no ashes blanketing car hoods, etc. That is important to me with my lung transplant.
The greater shame and sorrow is that the greater amplification of the whole thing is the result of Woke Leftist politicians who control this one-party state. A fire is a fire; sometimes that cannot be prevented. But sometimes it can be. Or at least be minimized and controlled. The Woke have insane laws in so many areas and 99 percent of Woke Leftist laws and policies that are supposed to help people always backfire and screw them up worse.
There are four basic ways a wildfire starts. Arson, which is what it is, and guilt for that should not be assigned at any door but the arsonist. Second, an unattended campfire; that’s like arson. Third, a lightning strike. That is what it is, in secular legal parlance an “Act of God.” That may be no one’s fault, or it can be an avoidable disaster when trees are crowded too close together.
When loggers cut down trees, they protect the forests from disastrous wildfires by preventing perilous overcrowding. However, because the Woke tree-hugging environmental laws ban appropriate logging, connect the sparks. Logging thins overcrowded forests. Furthermore, it clears out avenues and roads within the forest for firefighters and their equipment, like fire trucks, to rapidly pass through and reach a fire point. Loggers clear out the accumulated dead brush, dried-out leaves, and fallen branches, that serve no purpose but to add fuel to a budding fire. The environmentalists bar all that. Thus, a lightning bolt and its aftermath become more perilous than it should be.
In addition to arson, campfires gone awry, and lightning, the fourth main cause of a wildfire is faulty electric wires. That is what caused the infamous fire that burned down and destroyed the entire city of Paradise, California. Really. Paradise.
Why should there be faulty electric wires in a modern city? The electric utility companies have been trying for years to do something about an infrastructure whose electric lines often are more than 100 years old. When feasible, they try to move the electric lines below ground. Otherwise, they try to replace the ancient infrastructure with brand-new lines, wires, and connections to prevent or reduce sparks that can set off a wildfire if the trees are overcrowded — which they are.
After an electric line needs to be closed down briefly, for any number of safety and maintenance reasons, when it is turned back on, insignificantly minor sparks are generated. You may even have noticed that at a light switch at home. Modern lines are built to protect against that; century-old lines are not, partly because the trees were not so overcrowded then. So the Woke who rule in the one-party state imposed on the utilities a requirement to reallocate their funding from upgrading and modernizing the century-old electric lines and instead use that money to create new recyclable solar and wind power. Nice, new, clean recyclable power. That Woke vision burned down Paradise. It murdered many of its residents. We yet shall learn what caused the five active fires now in Los Angeles.
Everything the Left touches turns to disaster. Their welfare policies in “The Great Society” of the 1960s were supposed to raise up Black Americans but instead destroyed the core and fiber of Black families, and they have not recovered more than half a century later. The Left destroyed Black families with policies prompting men to leave their wives and children. The tragedy is too well documented. Now, 60 years later, what did all of that progressive help achieve, to lift up the Black community? Read the California news: they tell us in 2025 that they need reparations.
Woke recycling programs backfire, don’t work, and never will work. Most of the stuff that gets separated into separate bins ends up in the same dump anyway and adds additional toxins along the way. The ban on disposable bags forced people to start reusing the same food shopping bags again and again. People finally figured out that they now were infecting all their foods unless they washed and scrubbed their reusable bags with hot water and soap after each shopping trip, adding that to the water supply. So it caused more pollution and disease. They finally went back to plastic bags, but bigger and thicker special plastic ones that supposedly are recyclable. Read the studies. They take up more dump space than the old ones.
The Left screw up everything they touch. They have taken over a golden state, the dream of America — seriously, remember the song “California Dreamin’”? That’s what California was when it was balanced between Democrats sometimes and Republicans (like Reagan, Deukmejian, and Wilson) sometimes. Now, for years, it has been a one-party Woke state. You may have had occasion to meet our former attorney general and U.S. senator, Kamala Harris, over the passage of time. She is representative of the best the one-party Woke state has had to offer over time.
This inferno mess has happened in great measure for several reasons. Here are a couple:
- Our Woke Governor cut the state fire prevention budget. He refuses to build needed reservoirs or dams. They have spent hundreds of billions on a bullet train that still is not operating as promised — and never, ever, will. In fact, he released water so that more rainwater could flow into the ocean to save a two-inch fish called a smelt. Los Angeles gets only a few rains each year, but they are heavy rains, often for a few days. When they come, everyone initially feels relief because any drought ostensibly has been resolved. And then a week or two later the news reports that, nope, so much of it simply went into the ocean and was lost because, despite the voters’ approval to build, there were inadequate reservoirs or dams to hold it.
- So there is a water shortage due to a lack of reservoirs and dams. In L.A., the fools who live in that city elected a mayor of doubtful qualification, but it is chic to now have the city’s first Black woman mayor, the very first. Her election opponent, Rick Caruso, was an outstanding legend of a business titan who had three flaws: too white, too male, and too not-Democrat. So they elected a bozo who already has shown during several antisemitic riots and shootings here that she is completely incompetent. DEI = Didn’t Earn It. People here think she is anti-Semitic because she does nothing after Jews get beaten and shot at. I tell them I think, in all fairness, she really is not. She simply is incompetent, and way out of her league.
The L.A. Fire Department is led by three lesbians named Kristen, Kristina, and Kristine. Read that last sentence again. They all are DEI and have job descriptions that focus primarily on expanding the Fire department’s DEI programming. They have spent something like $2 million on DEI in the LAFD, while the mayor cut $17 million from the LAFD core budget because the city lacks the money for fire protection partly because they spend so much on DEI — not only the $2 million on fire DEI but DEI everywhere. Literally. Like the Midnight Stroll Transgender Café.
When asked about the insanity, one DEI fire department spokesperson literally responded that the LAFD now believes that, during a fire, citizens feel more confident when they are helped by someone who looks like them. Do you ever see, like on TV or in the movies, tragic fire dramas, and a heroic firefighter risks his life to go in and grab a victim, half-conscious or disabled, and carry him on his back through the burning building or down the 10-story-high ladder? Can you imagine one of these lightweight DEI lesbians carrying a 150-pound (not to mention 200-pound or 250-pound) victim 10 stories down a ladder or through a building? When a 200-pound Black lesbian is hanging out a window and has a choice of being saved from the 10th floor of a fiery inferno by being carried down the ladder by a 250-pound gruff-looking, muscle-bound, White man or a 135-pound Black lesbian, do you think she is thinking, “I’d rather wait for the lesbian. Can you please go back down and get me someone who looks more like me?”
Who votes for these same Woke fools and their same one-party Woke policies year after year? The voters. Which voters? The L.A. voters. So it’s a tragedy for the clear-headed conservatives who try to change the Woke culture, but they are outnumbered and canceled. And where does the money come from to pay for the Woke politicians to keep campaigning and winning? From the rich celebrities who never, ever — ever — personally experienced the impact of their horrible Woke virtue signaling and policies that have incentivized and intensified crime and criminals, promoting progressive Woke theory over public safety.
And where can you find those rich progressive celebrities? Well, now on the news, weeping to TV reporters, pleading for answers as to why their houses all are burning down now. “But we pay our taxes!”
So the firefighters go, hook up their hoses, and find there is no water in the hydrants. Really. As Dave Barry would say, “I am not making this up.” No water in the hydrants! So everyone is screaming at the idiot mayor, who was visiting Ghana in Africa while the city was burning down, asking her why there is no water in the hydrants. She blames Kirsten or Kirstine or Kkristine or Kristina. They blame her. They all look for a straight white guy with a MAGA hat to blame, like upon his return from beating up Jessie Smollett in Chicago. And then some of the fire department lesbians clarified: there actually was enough water, it’s just that there was no water pressure in the hydrants.
Pause a moment. Take it all in. And now, because you all know me and know that my mind works in strange and screwy ways that no one else’s does, you will not be surprised that I am asking the Number One Most Important Question that no one else is asking:
If there are, let’s say, 10,000 fire hydrants in Los Angeles, and none of them works anyway … then why the heck don’t they just pull them all out so we at least can have 10,000 more parking spaces?
OK, so that covers the lack of water. The lack of water pressure. The $17 million lack of cash. The DEI lacks top-notch El Primo experienced firefighters. The overcrowded trees.
Anyone with a sense of justice, and hatred of cruelty and evil, would be outraged that so much has been lost and destroyed for so many people so unnecessarily and yet so predictably. Yet, that is what they voted for. Hollywood loves virtue signaling. It is awards season — Globes, Oscars — and they will be shifting gears to maximize virtue signaling. Let’s see what they come up with.
READ MORE from Dov Fischer:
Presidents Jimmy and Joe: Goodbye and Good Riddance
The Brilliance of Trump’s New Campaign Suing Fake News
If Only We Had More Daniel Pennys!
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