The ocean off the coast of Los Angeles is red. Million-dollar homes are consumed by unstoppable walls of fire, pushed by winds of 100 miles per hour. Entire neighborhoods are burned down. Smoke, the stuff of nuclear mushroom clouds, has blackened the blue sky. ‘Heat bloom’ is visible from space.
At least five people are dead, 137,000 have been evacuated and almost half a million people are without power. As we wake up to the third day of fires, the two largest fires remain completely unattended.
How can this happen in the United States of America? In LA, the city of dreams, a place like no other in the American psyche – a place that may no longer exist this weekend?
Much of this is the result of democratic rot from the top down, a party that cares not about practical solutions to real threats – like these wildfires – but about insistence on pronouns and wokeism.
A party that lectures about racism and colonialism and how terrible America is.
Only a party that maintains this will have the moral high ground on the issues it believes define our times, including climate change.
How does that work out for the poor people of California?
It turns out that President Biden was in LA this week for the birth of his first great-grandchild. Yet it still took almost 36 hours for the fires to show their face.
Smoke, the stuff of nuclear mushroom clouds, has blackened the blue sky. ‘Heat bloom’ is visible from space.
How can this happen in the United States of America? In LA, the city of dreams, a place like no other in the American psyche, a place that may no longer exist this weekend?
Much of this is the result of democratic rot from the top down. (Image: President Biden with California Governor Gavin Newsom during a CalFire briefing on January 8).
When he finally did, guess who was top of mind?
None other than Hunter, his recently pardoned degenerate son who has recently been living in Malibu on his ill-gotten gains.
“There is only one good news,” Biden said during the press conference on Wednesday. ‘My son lives here. [His home] may still stand.’
Well, thank God for that!
Biden stood in his usual pose: his jaw slack, his mouth open, his eyes blank, still, his face waxy and unearthly, as local officials briefed him on the destruction and carnage.
Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Shouldn’t our president be addressing the nation as commander in chief, telling us what federal forces he has mobilized, what leaders he is coordinating with, what the facts are on the ground, calmly and under control?
So much for the idea that Biden could do little harm while serving out his term.
The richest state in America, the fifth largest economy in the world, resembles a third world country with a third world reaction.
WHO is in charge?
It’s not Joe Biden. It’s not Kamala Harris. It’s not California Governor Gavin Newsom, who rightly ended up in hell on Wednesday for a cynical photo-op, Brylcreemd in Biden-esque aviator sunglasses, staring out at the raging inferno without a hair out of place.
It’s not LA Democratic Mayor Karen Bass, who inexplicably flew to Ghana on Tuesday despite repeated warnings that this apocalypse was coming.
When Bass was dragged back home Wednesday, he stood stone-faced and silent for two minutes as a reporter bombarded her with questions.
If Bass was even a little embarrassed, she would resign immediately.
California Governor Gavin Newsom deservedly ended up in hell on Wednesday for a cynical photo-op (pictured), sporting Biden-esque aviator sunglasses and staring out at the raging inferno without a hair out of place.
LA Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, the city’s first female and LGBTQ chief, is no better. Her top priority since her appointment in March 2022 has been – you might be shocked – diversity.
Crowley’s online biography lists her main goals as “creating, supporting and promoting a culture that values diversity, inclusivity and equality.”
If there was ever a moment when DEI died, this is it. Crowley must be terminated immediately.
California’s annual wildfires have been getting worse. Last year’s events were a harbinger: more than a million hectares burned and more than a thousand structures were destroyed.
Yet city, state and federal leaders seemingly do nothing, learn nothing and care more about their national profile than the lowly ones who elected them.
Remember, this is the same Gavin Newsom who was caught dining at The French Laundry (starting price: $390 per person) during the height of the Covid lockdown he imposed, who was recently seen with a latte in his hand as he was chased out of Skid Row by homeless drug addicts.
Newsom thinks he has a shot at being president in 2028. He’s about to get a serious upset.
In recent years, LA has suffered endless, unresolved droughts and a $17.6 million budget cut in the fire department at the hands of Mayor Bass.
So many questions need to be asked now about the mismanagement of this week’s unmitigated disaster.
First, why could the fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades, currently experiencing the most devastating fire in LA history, run out of water or dry before the first embers started?
Palisades has a population of 23,000. Panicked residents fleeing the fast-moving flames were trapped in a gridlock on the Pacific Coast Highway, the main evacuation artery.
Many residents had to abandon their vehicles and flee on foot. There should have been a better evacuation plan.
Imagine if Kamala Harris had won in November. Does any honest person think she – and her party of “joy” – can handle a crisis of this magnitude?
It says it all when we see gas-powered bulldozers knocking electric Teslas off the road so emergency services can get through.
Why could the fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades, currently experiencing the most devastating fire in LA history, run out of water or dry before the first embers appeared?
While Democrats were busy doing everything they could to delegitimize, impeach, and oust President Trump during his first administration, he was sounding the alarm about the dire state of California’s wildfire preparedness.
‘I told you [Newsom] from the first day we met, he said he had to “clean up” his forest floors, no matter what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him. He also has to do burns and cut firestops,” he posted on X in 2019 and then on Twitter.
He was, of course, 100 percent right.
America is hungry for leadership. And I suspect that, in the wake of this tragedy, even the most liberal Californians may feel differently about a second Trump term.
Five separate fires were burning Thursday in Palisades, Eaton, Hurst, Woodley and the Hollywood Hills. And make no mistake: these areas are not just the domain of the rich and famous.
Many ordinary people also live there. Hardworking families, Los Angelenos for generations, pay off their mortgages, only to be abandoned by insurers because they live in danger zones.
These are the people who have nothing left. But our disgrace of a president spent Wednesday’s press conference cheering on the birth of his great-grandchild in LA instead of reassuring the newly homeless, poverty-stricken and bereft.
Joe Biden simply doesn’t care unless it affects him or his immediate family. He never did that. Even as thousands of people experience the specific trauma caused by fire.
It’s one I know well.
When I was ten years old, my grandmother died in a house fire, not from flames but, as is often the case, from smoke. My uncle, then a young man, survived by jumping from a second-story window.
Firefighters found my grandmother’s body just behind her closed bedroom door as they tried to grab the doorknob.
When something similar happened to me decades later — the apartment next to mine in Brooklyn caught fire, flames and smoke pouring through my open bedroom window — I somehow woke up, against all odds.
My father, who never recovered from his mother’s senseless death, later said that she had visited him in a dream shortly before my own near-miss and was convinced she had woken me up.
Make no mistake: these areas are not just the domain of the rich and famous. (Image: A burning Altadena Community Church, on January 8, in Pasadena).
There are also many ordinary people living here. Hardworking families, Los Angelenos for generations, pay off their mortgages, only to be dropped by insurers because they live in a danger zone. (Image: Houses burning in Altadena on January 8).
How lucky I have been – and how my heart breaks for the friends on the West Coast I have had to suffer through this unholy crisis. One told me that he and his wife woke up Wednesday morning to an orange sky, no power and silence except for their phones buzzing with emergency alerts to evacuate immediately.
They don’t know if their house is still there.
There is no longer a “fire season” in California, a season that lasted from spring to fall. The “new normal,” we are told, has California living in fire season year-round.
It is abundantly clear, writ large in the ashes of entire communities now vanished from the map, that this great state cannot survive under its current leadership.
If these flames die out, the people of California must force a recall of Newsom and oust Mayor Bass.
Because the next fires, if they happen, could be even worse. But that doesn’t have to be the case.