As we enter the last week of Joe Biden’s interminable presidency, he’s providing more and more reasons to celebrate his departure. Between pardoning scores of criminals, selling as much of the border wall as he can, and giving temporary amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegals whom the American people just voted to deport, he’s adding salt to the gaping, infected wound that is his presidency.
When he was called upon last week to say some comforting words to the people of LA who are suffering through the most devastating wildfires in many decades, this is the closest he could come: “The good news is… I’m a great grandfather, as of today!”
Good lord! The man’s narcissism is thicker than the smoke hanging over LA. I’m surprised that he didn’t say, “My heart goes to all Californians who have lost a loved one in the fires. You know, I lost my son Beau in a devastating wildfire, too. Let me spend the next hour telling you about my pain.”
But his life isn’t the only thing on Biden’s mind lately. A CNN story last week detailed that Biden and some of his aides are worried that Trump won’t give him a state funeral when he dies.
Which confused me, because unless I’m mistaken, he had his state funeral last week. I remember that flags were at half mast, and there were eulogies and everything. I thought the mortician did a pretty good job, because Biden looked about as lifelike as he has during his presidency. Not good enough to go with the open casket, in my opinion, but I’m not the one who makes these decis—
Wait, my crack researchers just handed me a bulletin. Apparently that was Jimmy Carter. According to this, he was the oldest ex-president in US history, dying at 100. But I guess he’ll lose that title when Biden becomes an ex-president next Monday, at the age of 118.
But Carter still looked better than Biden last week. So he’s got that going for him.
Speaking of Carter, I thought I was the only one who thought it was weird that John Lennon’s “Imagine” was played at his funeral, until I saw a lot of commentary about it.
Carter was a lifelong Baptist, and his mourners were serenaded with an atheist song? I wrote about that song early in my CO columns; I think it’s a lovely tune, but the message is half-baked commie/utopian crap. (Everyone “living for today,” with “no possessions” leading to “all the people sharing all the world?” That’s been tried all over the world, and it always works out the same way: a few thug party bosses become billionaires, and the rest of the people end up in misery, gulags and graves.)
I can’t think of anything more dispiriting at the funeral of someone who at least considered himself a Christian. There’d be as much dignity in back-to-back renditions of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” and “Who Let the Dogs Out?”
And if they were going to pick a Beatles’ song, wouldn’t “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” have been just as good?
I hesitate to write about the main story in the news right now – the LA fires – because they are still going on, and the loss of life and property is unutterably sad. With strong winds predicted to pick up again tomorrow, the death toll and staggering losses will surely increase.
If anyone reading this has loved ones directly affected by the fires, please stop reading this. I don’t want to inadvertently add to anyone’s pain while this disaster is ongoing. But it’s weighing on my mind, as it is on most people’s.
In one sense, seasonal fires in California are examples of the kind of natural threats that all regions face. Northern states have brutal and sometimes fatal winters, the Midwest and other regions have tornadoes, the South and part of the Atlantic seaboard have hurricanes. Earthquakes and droughts and floods affect many areas at one time or another.
But there’s also no denying that good or bad governance can have either mitigating or exacerbating effects on all of these. Ron DeSantis has been a great blessing to Florida, handling the frequent hurricanes masterfully. He has picked great personnel, and leads from the front, preparing for the storms ahead of time and overseeing fast, coordinated restoration and relief efforts afterwards. (And he never goes to Ghana during hurricane season.)
The politicians in New Orleans have offered an opposite example. Riven by corruption and incompetence, they’ve diverted federal money intended for flood control measures into their own and their friends’ pockets for decades. When a storm is on the horizon – with almost a week’s notice of its arrival – they bumble around, stepping on one rake after another, and their residents pay the price.
Ray “School Bus” Nagin (D-isorganized) earned his nickname during Hurricane Katrina, when he had a citizenry that included many thousands of poor and infirm people trapped in the path of the storm, and also a fleet of hundreds of school buses – sitting in below-sea-level New Orleans parking lots – at his disposal.
Naturally, he connected those dots, added up 2 and 2… and got 427. He twiddled his thumbs for days as the storm approached and then hit New Orleans. When the storm was over, hundreds of residents had died, many thousands had been trapped in their homes and endangered, and the school buses ended up under water and ruined.
But when it comes to incompetent a-holery, Nagin had nothing on Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass, and the woke leadership of LA’s Dem establishment. Many fire victims are already pointing fingers, but a full accounting won’t be possible until after the fires are put out and the extent of the damage has been assessed.
But it’s already clear that foolish policy choices have turned what might otherwise have been a few typical fires into this epic disaster. Newsom celebrated the removal of at least four dams holding water that could be used in fire prevention, in service of questionable environmental concerns. The closest reservoir to the Palisades had been drained before the fire started. Traditionally common forest management practices (regularly clearing away dead vegetation, clear cutting areas to provide firebreaks, etc.) have been discontinued in recent decades.
CA residents have also voted based on priorities that most of the country – even many California Democrats – have now started to reject. Hiring based on identity politics, and valuing DEI goals over competence has produced painful results.
The LA fire chief was hired two years ago with glowing praise for her genitalia and gender preference, and she quickly said that one of her top priorities would be hiring more female firefighters. One of her senior assistants – and head of a DEI Bureau – is also a gay female, and she is the one who said that people want cops and firefighters who “look like them.” She also shrugged off concerns that a female firefighter might not be able to pull someone from a burning building.
But even when mostly blue Californians voted reasonably, their leftist politicians betrayed them. Residents voted for a $7.5 billion water infrastructure act in 2014; $2.7 billion of that was supposed to build water storage reservoirs. Ten years later, nothing has been built, and the city is on fire.
Meanwhile, LA Mayor Karen Bass is another winner. Last week she was hard at work, making sure that the fire didn’t jump the Rocky Mountains, spread across North America, jump the Atlantic Ocean, and then start burning up the lush forests of Ghana.
Before you bad mouth her, I will point out that there are no reported fires in Ghana right now. So, yeah.
Other CA Dems have done no better. Newsom is smart enough to say that he’ll streamline building permits and curb his state’s famously tortuous regulations to allow rebuilding (I’ll believe it when I see it), but dumb enough to blame Trump, and local officials, and climate change, and probably Russian disinformation.
I saw a brief video of Maxine Waters, and was about to send thoughts and prayers, assuming that she must have been caught in the fires. But then I remembered that that’s just how she looks. (She’s not called “Melting Face Maxine” for nothing.) (Okay, so far I’m the only one who’s been calling her “Melting Face Maxine.” Which I think is just more evidence that I’m ahead of the curve.)
She made a statement which began with, “I’m not into the blame game,” before she began blaming people. The primary culprit, according to the Wigged Wonder? The evil 1% of rich people, who don’t pay their share of taxes, and thus deprive California of the money they need to prevent wildfires.
By the way, this year’s California budget is $297.9 billion. With a “B.” Which is enough to provide billions to illegal aliens, and billions for mentally ill and/or addicted homeless people, and billions for a high-speed rail project that so far has not actually laid a single rail. And tens of thousands of dollars for Gavin Newsom’s hair gel and featureless-Ken-doll-crotch-moisturizing ointment (don’t ask.)
But not enough to keep LA from burning to the ground.
One meme summed up the idiotic policy preferences in a nutshell – LA County: 72 genders, 0 working fire hydrants.
One final fun fact: Karen Bass – whom nearly 100,000 Californians have now signed a petition to recall – was reportedly one of the top three contenders for Biden’s VP pick in 2020. Once he’d promised to pick a black female, the three prime candidates were Susan Rice, Karen Bass and Que Mala.
Rice was tainted by her previous selling of various failed Obama policies, so much so that she had to withdraw herself from consideration for SecState after Hillary left. Karen Bass is Karen Bass.
So Que Mala got the nod.
In retrospecticus (obscure Simpson’s reference for the win), Biden should have picked Bass, for several reasons:
1. She couldn’t have done any worse than Que Mala.
2. She couldn’t have enabled the LA fires if she was in the White House. (Most of the buildings in DC are stone monuments, which are very hard to burn down, no matter how incompetent you are at fire stuff.)
3. He could have sent her to Ghana a lot, and that would have pleased everybody but the Ghanians.
Lesson learned.
Okay, one week left. Pray for LA.
Martin Simpson 