January 13, 2025

January 12, 2025

#EVIL:

Posted at 10:22 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THE CYCLE OF LIFE:

Shot: L.A. County Fire Department donating surplus supplies to Ukraine’s first responders.

Ukrainian first responders will soon be receiving some much-needed equipment from all the way in Los Angeles County.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department announced this week it would be sending some surplus supplies across the globe to Ukraine as the country staves off the ongoing Russian invasion.

Boots, hoses, nozzles, body armor and medication were among the items packed and shipped out during an event earlier this week.

The care package was loaded at an L.A. County fire station in Inglewood on Thursday afternoon. Fire Chief Daryl Osby and county supervisor Janice Hahn were in attendance and helped pack up the items.

“As Ukrainian firefighters continue to work under extreme peril to remove victims with limited resources, we felt the need to step up and help in some way,” said Osby in a news release.

—L.A.’s KTLA, March 18th, 2022

Chaser: Zelensky says Ukraine has offered assistance on California wildfires.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that his country has offered assistance on the California wildfires.

“Today, I instructed Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs and our diplomats to prepare for the possible participation of our rescuers in combating the wildfires in California,” Zelensky said in an address, according to an English transcript on his website.

“The situation there is extremely challenging, and Ukrainians can help Americans protect lives,” he added.

—The Hill, today.

Will the Ukrainians be bringing our equipment back with them if decide to parachute in?

Posted at 9:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL: The dawn of the anti-woke era.

In late November, a California judge rejected a demand by several women’s volleyball teams to disqualify a transgender player for San Jose State before this year’s tournament. Six opponents have forfeited games against the team this year rather than collude in what they see as cheating. The larger question of transgender athletes in college sports will be decided later, but the judge is defending a lost cause. Fewer than a quarter of Americans (23 per cent) support allowing transgender athletes to play on women’s teams. Teams that do field trans athletes are sometimes booed off the pitch. Such feelings go a long way towards explaining Donald Trump’s resounding win in November’s presidential elections.

Washingtonians are often asked what it feels like to watch the second age of Trump dawn. Oddly, it does not feel much like his first arrival in 2016. It feels more like Barack Obama’s in 2008 or Bill Clinton’s in 1992 – less a political than a social revolution, in which philosophical habits will be broken along with political hierarchies. This particular social revolution owes most of its energy to a revulsion against woke. That is the source of the new era’s promise and danger.

There’s way too much here for me to quote; definitely read the whole thing.

Posted at 9:17 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: The Biden Legacy Unmasked: If You Thought Antisemitism Was Bad Before, Hold Onto Your Yarmulkas.

Each year, the oldest generations cede new ground to the youngest. By the end of Trump’s second term, the Democratic Party will be — overwhelmingly! — anti-Israel.

It didn’t have to be this way.

During the first few years of the Biden administration, the moderate wing still had enough power to stave off the antisemites. Biden still had the stature to win the debate — and to defeat and discredit the Antifa-inspired radicals. He could’ve used his age to his benefit by describing the rising tide of Jew hatred in personal, emotional language, making it perfectly clear that there’s no place for antisemitism in the Democratic Party — and YES, treating Israel dramatically differently than you treat China (*cough* Tibet and the Uyghurs), Iran (*cough* terrorism), Russia (*cough* Ukraine), Cuba (*cough* human rights), and so on IS A FORM OF  ANTISEMITISM.

Back then, it was still a winnable debate.

But today, the political climate and Democratic demographics have shifted: The anti-Israel movement is ascending. The anti-Hamas opposition is dying out. And the impulse to define yourself by doing the opposite of Trump will be too irresistible to resist.

Which is why 2025 will be a banner year for antisemitism. And it’s also why 2026, 2027, and 2028 will be even worse.

That’s the final legacy of the Biden years: He mainstreamed antisemitism in the Democratic Party. And unlike most of his “legacy,” this one will last for decades.

John Gill smiles.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

READ THE ROOM: Even in a Crisis, the LA Times Makes Sure Its Evacuation Advice Remains Stupidly Woke:

A year ago, Victoria Taft asked: The Lefty L.A. Times Is in Hospice. Could There Be a Death Bed Conversion?

In 2018, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the newspaper. The South African-born emigre discovered a drug to slow metastatic cancer and became a billionaire. He believed it was his civic duty to take over the troubled newspaper as online news and social media platforms eviscerate print journalism.

The newspaper went even more woke. Soon-Shiong was derided as an absentee landlord and excoriated by the newspaper’s union shop. The clashes continued and so did the layoffs. This week’s layoff, which goes into effect in March, was the worst in the paper’s history.

* * * * * * * *

What good is a regional newspaper if it tells only one point of view and chooses stories based on young, dumb, activist reporters’ confirmation biases? As a result, the Fourth Estate has become the Fifth Column. These flaws are the reason PJ Media and other conservative media exist.

Soon-Shiong has vowed in the weeks leading up to the election and afterwards to reduce the activist journalism at the L.A. Times — and yet this sort of leftist Newspeak “unexpectedly” keeps getting past his paper’s editors.

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

ABIGAIL SHRIER: Cabinet of the Canceled.

One could say many things about Trump’s cabinet picks. At times, they seem to embody Government by Middle Finger. But they also, undeniably, represent Government by the Canceled: an assemblage that doesn’t need to be reminded of the administrative state’s ability to coerce the American public by calling in favors from Big Tech or pulling the levers of regulation, audit, or investigation. Many have experienced such treatment firsthand.

Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick to lead the intelligence community, was briefly placed on a government watch list, she says, for criticizing Kamala Harris. The Biden White House and surgeon general pressured social-media companies to censor Stanford epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya’s attempts to warn the public that the Covid lockdowns were the biggest policy error in American history; Trump named Bhattacharya to head the National Institutes of Health. And Elon Musk, appointed to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, knowingly overpaid for Twitter to give Americans a sphere for free speech. At takeover, Musk immediately released the Twitter Files, revealing a coordinated effort by the Biden administration to censor the speech of Americans whose views it disfavored. The Biden administration repaid Musk by targeting his businesses with unprecedented levels of regulatory harassment.

One wonderful thing about Americans: we despise being bullied by our government. Not even our Anglosphere allies share this aspect of our national character. Yet, over the last decade, for anyone with views departing from progressive orthodoxy, American life has become increasingly suffocating. Our posts have been censored on social media—or labeled “misinformation” by “fact-checkers”—as mine were, for criticizing Biden administration policy on boys participating in girls’ sports. We got booted from Twitter for opposing gender ideology or expressing skepticism about Covid vaccine safety.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

FIRE SAFETY IN BUILDING DESIGN: A THREAD.

Posted at 8:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

SF CHRONICLE: Private firefighters protected a Hollywood talent manager’s home. Why are some people so mad?

As [Miley Cyrus’ manager Adam Leber] rushed his family to safety amid a broader firestorm engulfing wide swaths of Los Angeles County, a private firefighting service arrived to ensure his 6,000-square-foot home — once owned by filmmaker Preston Sturges and “rumored to be the site of Charlie Chaplin’s first wedding,” according to an old real estate listing — remained standing.

Leber is one of a growing number of Californians who, faced with the growing threat of wildfires in populated areas, have turned to private firefighting teams as an added layer of protection. Supporters of private firefighting teams argue they can augment the work of government-run efforts, stepping in to fill the cracks caused by depleted city and state budgets and an ever-worsening climate crisis.

But not everyone is a fan of private firefighters, particularly those that contract directly with homeowners outside of insurance, like the company Leber hired. Critics contend that when wealthy individuals hire their own firefighters, they compete with public teams for precious resources such as water, and could potentially interfere with those teams’ efforts by, for example, blocking or crowding narrow access points.

Moreover, they say, private firefighters widen the already-vast chasm between rich and poor, safeguarding the interests of the former at the expense of the latter.

“The rich suffer zero consequences of anything, even cataclysmic natural disasters,” one user wrote on X, responding to a video the Chronicle posted showing private firefighters saving Leber’s house. “Private and firefighter should not be in the same sentence,” wrote another.

As Jon Levine of the New York Post tweets, “Imagine paying into one of the highest tax cities in the nation, and then none of the municipal services you pay for are there for you when you need them and so you have to resort to private services — and then are shamed for doing so!”

Between championing riots and looting that destroy local businesses (recall Tim Walz’s wife saying, she kept her windows open to “smell the burning tires” during the 2020 BLM riots), cheering on Luigi Mangione after he assassinated an insurance company CEO, and now wishing that the wealthy lose their homes in the L.A. fires, American leftists are now reduced to being the crusty conservative in the “Point/Counterpoint” segment of Airplane:

UPDATE: And again: Billionaire tycoon is blasted after hiring a private fire crew to protect his luxury outdoor mall as devastating wildfires continue to rip through LA.

Los Angeles residents are furious a billionaire tycoon spent thousands of dollars on private firefighters to help protect his business while emergency services struggle to contain the flames.

Billionaire developer and former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso is receiving backlash online after the New York Times reported that he had hired private fire crews to protect Palisades Village – an upscale outdoor mall owned by the businessman.

‘So Rick directly or indirectly contributed to the fires by diverting resources to himself and away from the greater population. I think this needs to be investigated ASAP’, one user wrote on X.

Another said: ‘We cannot survive the billionaire class’. A separate account commented: ‘Dystopian capitalism’.

DailyMail.com has reached out to Caruso’s team.

Fire crews for hire can cost between $3,000 and $10,000 a day and are mostly contracted with insurance companies or the government.

Shana, they bought their tickets…

UPDATE: “They genuinely want you to die.” Exactly:

Posted at 7:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

WHEN THERE’S A DISASTER, LOOK WHO’S ALWAYS THERE BEFORE FEMA NOW:

UPDATE: From the comments: “Compare and contrast with ‘I don’t know how the water gets to the hydrants.'”

Posted at 4:29 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OBVIOUSLY, EVERYTHING THAT HAS HAPPENED IN LOS ANGELES IS THE FAULT OF REPUBLICANS:

Posted at 2:58 pm by Glenn Reynolds