California Burnin'

California Is Becoming Unlivable  The Atlantic

. . . "California’s housing crisis and its fire crisis often collide in what’s known as the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, where trailer parks and exurban culs-de-sac and cabins have sprung up amid the state’s scrublands and pine forests and grassy ridges." . . .

. . . "Even if the state reins in future development, millions of Californians already live in the WUI, at risk of having their homes destroyed and their lives endangered by fire—and at risk of being unable to insure their homes, or of seeing their housing values fall and their economic security imperiled.
"California’s housing crisis has exacerbated its wildfire crisis, and its wildfire crisis has exacerbated its housing crisis. That vicious cycle is nowhere near ending." 

. . . Environmentalists in California don’t want anyone to cut trees. They already shut down most of the lumber mills in California. That means the bankrupt state of California doesn’t have money from timber leases to build fire breaks, repair remote access roads, and thin brush. Underbrush accumulates and leads to the intense wildfires that are ravaging California..again and again, year after year. The Democrat politicians who rule California need someone to blame as citizens wonder if their house will burn down. California Governor Newsom blames.. climate change. The media nods their approval rather than ask why California is burning and the rest of the world isn’t." . . .

Whither Kamala Harris? A Failed-State Senator’s Failing Campaign; Her ambitious rise and ignominious fall mirror California’s trajectory.  
. . . "California’s dysfunction is tolerated only because the system has been rigged to insulate the richest stakeholders from the worst costs of it. With one hand, California creates disorder through misgovernance, and then with the other it creates more gated communities, protected in an authoritarian manner. Kamala Harris’s campaign began to implode almost the moment her pretenses and self-image were directly challenged. And the moment that Silicon Valley stops being a gusher of money for Sacramento, the California model will crater as well." 

How to Tell That the News Media is Lying to US

Clash Daily

. . . "The only thing that holds politicians in check is a spotlight from the press, and today, the press is in the tank for the Democrats. We know the media lies to us because the politicians are never shamed into telling the truth." . . .

Rob Morse : . . . "In one breath, Senator Kamala Harris, a Democrat candidate for president, says we should turn in our guns, yet she owns a handgun for self-protection. The senator thinks her life is more important than ours, and she knows the media won’t call her on her hypocrisy.

"Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, blamed oil companies for the frighteningly high price of gas, and then signed a bill to restrict exploration for oil and gas in California. Setting aside the insane environmental regulations in California, the state and local taxes on a gallon of gas in California are far larger than industry profits. The governor will blame anyone and anything to hide the fact that taxes and regulations make gasoline in California over twice the price we see in the rest of the country. The politicians know the media won’t shine a light on their political failures.

"The governor of California cut a deal with the largest electric utility in the state so the utility could shut off the electricity when high winds are forecast. Then, the governor says that we should buy electric cars and solar panels which don’t work when the utility turns off the electricity. The governor needs someone else to blame for millions of California citizens sitting in the dark.. so he blamed the “greedy utility”. The news media lets this lie slide. " . . .

Trump Changes His Permanent Residency Status

Leah Barkoukis  "President Trump, who was born and raised in New York, announced on Twitter Thursday evening that he and his family have changed their permanent residency status to Florida. 
"He said he’s come to love living at the White House and hopes to stay throughout a second term, but Palm Beach, Florida, where his Mar-a-Lago Club is located, will become his new home. 
“ '1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House, is the place I have come to love and will stay for, hopefully, another 5 years as we MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, but my family and I will be making Palm Beach, Florida, our Permanent Residence,” he said. 
"While he said he “cherishes” New York, his decision stemmed from the fact that he has been treated very poorly by city and state political leaders, despite paying a tremendous amount in taxes. 

“ 'I cherish New York, and the people of New York, and always will, but unfortunately, despite the fact that I pay millions of dollars in city, state and local taxes each year, I have been treated very badly by the political leaders of both the city and state. Few have been treated worse. I hated having to make this decision, but in the end it will be best for all concerned. As President, I will always be there to help New York and the great people of New York. It will always have a special place in my heart!” . . .

2011: NY governor Paterson mocks Rush Limbaugh for leaving the state  . . . "Mr. Limbaugh also had harsh words for Mr. Paterson, calling his tax increases “stupid,” and, according to The Huffington Post, saying they amounted to “punishing the achievers for the mistakes and the lack of discipline on the part of a bunch of corrupt politicians.' ”

“If I knew that would be the result,” he said after a speech Thursday morning in Midtown, “I would’ve thought about the taxes earlier.”

Al-Baghdadi mourned by Jihadi widows and the Washington Post

American Thinker

WaPo Baghdadi obit not the only jihad-covering doozy from mainstream media  
"Speaking of the deaths of austere religious scholars, the Detroit Free Press published a ten-year anniversary tribute to the late Imam Luqman Abdullah, an outspoken jihadist who died a violent death during an FBI raid in Dearborn on October 28, 2009.  According to the FBI, and the independent investigations of the incident, Abdullah was shot resisting arrest after he refused repeated law enforcement commands to show his hands, then fired his Glock at a police dog while nearby agents were in his line of his fire, who then shot him in self-defense.  According to CAIR Michigan, it was an FBI murder.  According to the Freep's Niraj Warikoo, Abdullah "is the first mainstream religious leader to die in the U.S. at the hands of federal law enforcement in recent memory."  He makes it sound as if there's an ongoing pattern of religious leaders getting murdered by cops, but since it's been ten years since the last one, it's not much of a trend." . . .

ISIS jihadi brides want revenge for the killing of their beloved leader al-Baghdadi

"Just another reason why no country in the West should allow the return of its Muslim female citizens who went to Syria to become ISIS brides and ended up ISIS widows." . . .

Toons like this depart from the Biblical teaching of Hades, but do accurately place these individuals together. TD

Chuck DeVore: California wildfires are 'one of the most preventable tragedies in human history'

Fox News  "The wildfires ravaging California are "one of the most preventable tragedies in human history," according to a former California state assemblyman.
"We’ve seen this coming for a long time. We have half the people working in California today that used to work in the logging industry because environmentalists and their political enablers have shut down the timber industry in California and when you don’t log the timber, eventually, it’s gotta burn,” Chuck DeVore said on “Fox & Friends” after pointing out that Gov. Gavin Newsom has blamed "capitalism, global warming," and the Pacific Gas & Electric company.
"DeVore's comments came after Newsom declared a statewide emergency Sunday after multiple wildfires prompted the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people from their homes. Mandatory evacuations were ordered Wednesday morning in Southern California as a rapidly moving wildfire ignited and burned in Simi Valley, near the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
"The Getty Fire in Los Angeles, which has destroyed a dozen homes and forced many people – including some celebrities – to escape the area, was sparked by a tree branch that fell on top of power lines and ignited nearby brush, officials said Tuesday." . . .

This has been called the most preventable fire: How Regulations Made California's Fires Worse  Written back in 2018:
. . . "During a congressional hearing in May, California congressman Tom McClintock blasted environmentalists for having fervently opposed such measures since the early 1970s.  Instead, they have been advocating that forests be left to their own devices – despite the fact that thousands of years of history shows that forests need to be appropriately maintained in order to reap all their benefits and reduce the risk of fires.  This understanding of the environment has too often been trumped by politics in California.

"When a 2013 environmental impact report advocated the benefits of large-scale vegetation management in San Diego County, activists violently rejected its conclusions.  As in the decades before, concerns over wildlife and environmental impacts were ultimately more important than the safety of fellow citizens, with the result that brush and dead vegetation were allowed to accumulate unimpeded for more than forty years.

"Ironically, 2013 also saw a range of massive wildfires across California that were exacerbated by the U.S. Forest Service failing to follow through on crucial tree-thinning projects.  The same happened immediately before the recent devastating fires, with the U.S. Forest Service once again neglecting to clear brush in the woods around Los Angeles as originally planned.

"Worse still, government agencies have actively stymied rescue efforts.  In this case, it was CAL FIRE withholding a license for a Boeing 747 Global SuperTanker firefighting plane, capable of dropping almost 20,000 gallons of fire retardant on the inferno below." . . .

Is California Becoming Premodern?

California is now a one-party state. Democrats have supermajorities in both houses of the legislature. Only seven of the state’s 53 congressional seats are held by Republicans. The result is that there is no credible check on a mostly coastal majority. VDH

Victor Davis Hanson  "More than 2 million Californians were recently left without power after the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric — which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year — preemptively shut down transmission lines in fear that they might spark fires during periods of high autumn winds.
"Consumers blame the state for not cleaning up dead trees and brush, along with the utility companies for not updating their ossified equipment. The power companies in turn fault the state for so over-regulating utilities that they had no resources to modernize their grids.
"Californians know that having tens of thousands of homeless in their major cities is untenable. In some places, municipal sidewalks have become open sewers of garbage, used needles, rodents, and infectious diseases. Yet no one dares question progressive orthodoxy by enforcing drug and vagrancy laws, moving the homeless out of cities to suburban or rural facilities, or increasing the number of mental hospitals. 
"Taxpayers in California, whose basket of sales, gasoline, and income taxes is the highest in the nation, quietly seethe while immobile on antiquated freeways that are crowded, dangerous and under nonstop makeshift repair.
" 'Gas prices of $4 to $5 a gallon — the result of high taxes, hyper-regulation, and green mandates — add insult to the injury of stalled commuters. Gas tax increases ostensibly intended to fund freeway expansion and repair continue to be diverted to the state’s failing high-speed rail project." . . .

AF Branco 

Andrew C. McCarthy: Examining the House Impeachment Inquiry Resolution

Andrew C. McCarthy: Examining the House Impeachment Inquiry Resolution

. . . "Some observations about the eight-page resolution.
"1) The resolution is flawed, for reasons we’ll get to (the flaws could be major or minor, depending on how the resolution is implemented). By any measure, though, it is a significant improvement over the status quo ante. Once it’s passed, the House as an institution will have endorsed the impeachment inquiry. As we have pointed out, the Constitution commits the impeachment power to the House, not to the Speaker or the majority party in the House. The House acts as institution only by voting . . .
2) Not surprisingly, Democrats are posturing that the passage of the resolution means the president must produce any information directed by the House. This is an overstatement. . . (Keep reading...).

'This Ain't Over': Doug Collins Calls on Schiff to Testify About His Relationship With the Whistleblower  "Republican Congressman Doug Collins is calling on House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff to testify as a witness after Democrats moved forward with their impeachment resolution Thursday morning.

" 'Come to the Judiciary Committee and take every question asked of you [Schiff]. Be the first witness and take every question asked of you, starting with your own involvement with the whistleblower. Folks, this ain't over. Get ready. The cloud that is dropping will be dropping on their heads because process matters and substance will always win out in the end and this president has nothing to worry about on substance," Collins said." . . .

NSC Official Testifies He Heard Nothing Illegal On Trump-Zelensky Call, Transcript Accurate  "CBS News is reporting that Tim Morrison, the National Security Council's Senior Director for European Affairs, testified before Congress on Thursday that he heard nothing illegal on the phone call between President Donald J. Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Morrison also reportedly testified that the transcript released by the White House was accurate." . . .

 [VIDEO] Tom Brokaw Disappoints Andrea Mitchell When He Tells Her ‘Democrats Don’t Have The Goods on Trump’  . . . The average American is not consumed with Trump-hate, even if they don’t particularly like him, they don’t allow this hatred and blackness to rule their lives as these crazy fake media elites do. They can still assess a situation with reason and commonsense. These media nut jobs are unable to do that, and how scary that they’re the ones “reporting the news” to the rest of us.
"So, when Tom Brokaw joined Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC and explained to her that unlike Nixon, the Dems just don’t have the “goods” on Trump, you can just feel her fantasy bubble popping.
"But don’t worry, she’ll regroup and get “high” on more of her supply right after Tom leaves the building.

Pelosi In 1998: Impeachment Has ‘A Traumatic Impact On The Confidence That The American People Have In Government’  What are Pelosi's firm convictions?

Catherine Herridge, Fox News Veteran, Moves to CBS News

From Weasel Zippers, which commented:  "Great reporter, bad move. She should have spoken to Sharyl Attkisson first. She’s going to end up back at Fox when she finds out she wouldn’t be able to report freely."

In a rather direct conversation former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson talks about her decision to leave CBS News.

Some of the interesting aspects she discusses are how CBS was uninterested in airing numerous reports on scandals that surround the Obama administration and White House. She also talks about how the White House would call CBS to pressure the network to stop airing information, and how even her print reporting would find White House officials calling to express their concerns.

Variety  "Catherine Herridge, a Fox News Channel veteran who has been with that network since it was founded in 1996, is moving to rival CBS News.

"She will work as a senior investigative correspondent out of Washington, CBS News said, and will start in November.

"Herridge is the second long-serving Fox News journalist to leave the Fox Corporation-owned cable-news outlet in recent weeks. Shepard Smith, another long-serving Fox News journalist who was seen as the network’s main breaking-news anchor, surprised viewers earlier this month by announcing his departure on a Friday-afternoon broadcast. Smith had tangled on air with opinion host Tucker Carlson.

"Herridge’s move is said to have been in the works for several weeks, and is not tied to Smith’s exit. Her contract with Fox News lapsed this summer, and the network had been negotiating to get her to stay, according to a person familiar with the matter. She has not been known for jousting with the opinion programs, making frequent appearances on Fox News’ most-watched program, “Hannity.” The opportunity to move to CBS News was seen as one she could not turn down, this person said.

"Her departure may give a new boost to recent speculation that the network’s news-side employees have grown frustrated during a period when its opinion hosts have largely used their programs to lend support to President Donald Trump and his administration, sometimes criticizing news reports.

“ 'CBS News has always placed a premium on enterprise journalism and powerful investigations,” said Herridge, in a statement. “I feel privileged to join a team where facts and storytelling will always matter.” Herridge’s national security reporting was recently recognized by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society with the “Tex” McCrary Award for excellence in journalism." . . .

Tucker: A plea to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, calling out her bigotry

Tucker Carlson
Stop attacking people for the color of their skin!

The Beltway's 'Whistleblower' Furor Obsesses Over One Name

Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigations  . . . "For a town that leaks like a sieve, Washington has done an astonishingly effective job keeping from the American public the name of the anonymous “whistleblower" who triggered impeachment proceedings against President Trump — even though his identity is an open secret inside the Beltway." . . . 
"Trump supporters blame the conspiracy of silence on a “corrupt” and "biased” media trying to protect the whistleblower from due scrutiny about his political motives. They also complain Democrats have falsely claimed that exposing his identity would violate whistleblower protections, even though the relevant statute provides limited, not blanket, anonymity – and doesn’t cover press disclosures. His Democrat attorneys, meanwhile, have warned that outing him would put him and his family “at risk of harm," although government security personnel have been assigned to protect him. 
“They’re hiding him,” Fleitz asserted. “They’re hiding him because of his political bias." . . .

. . . "In effect, Ciaramella helped generate the “Putin fired Comey” narrative, according to the research dossier making the rounds in Congress, a copy of which was obtained by RealClearInvestigations.
'Ciaramella allegedly argued that “President Putin suggested that President Trump fire Comey,” the report said. “In the days after Comey’s firing, this presidential action was used to further political and media calls for the standup [sic] of the special counsel to investigate ‘Russia collusion.’ “
'In the end, Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no conspiracy between Trump and Putin. Ciaramella’s email was cited in a footnote in his report, which mentions only Ciaramella’s name, the date and the recipients “Kelly et al.” Former colleagues said the main recipient was then-Homeland Security Director John Kelly." . . .

Ben Garrison

The Whistleblower revealed: the White House couldn't see this coming?

Meet Eric Ciaramella — H.R. McMaster Appoints Susan Rice Ally to be his Personal Aide  Going back to 2016.

. . .  "Ciaramella’s ascension is surprising considering pro-Trump sources within the Obama administration disclosed to me in December, 2016 that Ciaramella’s helped draft Susan Rice’s anti-Trump talking points before the Inauguration.

In fall of 2016 as Obama’s director for Ukraine on the NSC, Ciaramella was the main force pushing Trump-Russia conspiracy theories.

Some suspect Ciaramella was one of the original leakers who told the media about classified conversations Trump had with Russian diplomat Sergei Lavrov. While it’s unproven that Ciaramella leaked that conversation, it is now a fact of life that he will have access to every conversation Trump has with foreign officials, as part of his official duties for McMaster." . . .

Whistleblower Eric Ciaramella: Is this the best they've got?  . . . "Not long after that, he got kicked out of the NSC for suspected leaking, something other people have been jailed for.  It raises questions as to why the heck this guy even ended up at CIA, drawing a likely six-figure salary and big bennies.  He doesn't even sound security clearance–worthy, given his propensity to leak.  Tight-lipped he wasn't.

"And maybe that has a lot to do with his past politics, unimpeachably Democratic and leftist — which would amount to the real reason Democrats are protecting him.  How bad was it? [Paul] Sperry writes:" . . .

What we learn ultimately from Paul Sperry is that Schiff needs to recuse himself from his sham because he was right in the middle of it from the beginning and his efforts to keep Ciaramella's identity secret were efforts to protect himself. As for Ciaramella, he ought to be fired, and working now for an organization more compatible with his inclinations, political operativity and bureaucratic dishonesty ...  some place like Fusion GPS.  . . .

 Mystery Revealed – CIA Gossiper Eric Ciaramella: Democrat, Former NSC Staff, Worked with Joe Biden and John Brennan…

The Democrat plan for a 42% national sales tax

Yahoo  

"If you’re a Democrat who supports “Medicare for All,” pick your poison. You can ruin your political career and immolate your party by imposing a ruinous new sales tax, a gargantuan income tax hike or a surtax on corporate income that would wreck thousands of businesses.

This is the cost of bold plans.

"Supporters of Medicare for All, the huge, single-payer government health plan backed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and several other Democratic presidential candidates, say it’s time to think big and move to a health plan that covers everyone. Getting there is a bit tricky, however. A variety of analyses estimate that Medicare for All would require at least $3 trillion in new spending. That’s about as much tax revenue as the government brings in now. So if paid for through new taxes, federal taxation would have to roughly double.

"The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) has done voters a favor by spelling out what kinds of new taxes it would take to come up with that much money." . . .