Cute isn’t everything:
Trump and Obama at Carter’s funeral
Funerals make strange seatfellows:
Former President Barack Obama casually and amiably chats with Adolf Hitler as the latter is set to assume power in 11 days, end American democracy, and impose a white nationalist dictatorship. https://t.co/4tbj46yVk8
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 9, 2025
By the way, Laura Bush still looks fabulous. On the other hand, George W. Bush doesn’t, and he’s the same age as Trump. Is Bush ill?
The LA fires and the lack of water to fight them
There’s no shortage of criticism of the leadership of Los Angeles and the state of California in the wake of the Los Angeles fires. One of the biggest topics is the fact that, in Pacific Palisades, the hydrants went dry.
But the situation is more complicated than most people know. For example:
LADWP’s explanation for the shortage comes down to three nearby water tanks, each with a storage capacity of about a million gallons. These tanks help maintain enough pressure for water to travel uphill through pipes to homes and fire hydrants — but the pressure had decreased due to heavy water use, and officials knew the tanks couldn’t keep up the drain forever.
“We pushed the system to the extreme,” LADWP CEO Janisse Quiñones said in a news conference. “Four times the normal demand was seen for 15 hours straight, which lowered our water pressure.”
According to LADWP, the tanks’ water supply needed to be replenished in order to provide enough pressure for the water to travel to fire hydrants uphill. But officials said as firefighters drew more and more water from the trunk line, or main supply, they used water that would have refilled the tanks, eventually depleting them.
That decreased the water pressure, which is needed for the water to travel uphill. …
… [F]ire hydrants have also run dry in the case of other wildfires that spread to urban areas, including the 2017 Tubbs Fire, 2024’s Mountain Fire and 2023’s Maui wildfires.
In these cases, firefighters have to rely on other water sources. For the Palisades Fire, LADWP brought in 19 water trucks, each with capacities of 4,000 gallons.
In LA and other parts of California, large fires are often fought with the addition of firefighting helicopters, but in the present fire the winds have been too high and the visibility too poor to use them.
Then there’s the topic of why California doesn’t have more reservoirs. If you read this article from 2023, you’ll learn a lot on that score. An excerpt:
Last century, California built dozens of large dams, creating the elaborate reservoir system that supplies the bulk of the state’s drinking and irrigation water. Now state officials and supporters are ready to build the next one.
The Sites Reservoir — planned in a remote corner of the western Sacramento Valley for at least 40 years — has been gaining steam and support since 2014, when voters approved Prop. 1, a water bond that authorized $2.7 billion for new storage projects.
Still, Sites Reservoir remains almost a decade away: Acquisition of water rights, permitting and environmental review are still in the works. Kickoff of construction, which includes two large dams, had been scheduled for 2024, but likely will be delayed another year. Completion is expected in 2030 or 2031.
That’s quite a time frame. And the dam would only help the situation about 3%.
More:
Jerry Brown (not the former governor of the same name) of the Sites Project Authority, which represents local water districts pursuing the project, said it takes many years to develop and plan projects of this scale.
“My personal rule of thumb is that for every year of construction you spend about three years in the planning-permitting-engineering stage,” he said. Since Sites’ construction takes six years, the process would be expected to take 18 years.
California is a state with too many people for its water supply, some special geological and climate challenges which present the possibility of disasters, environmentalists eager to block most potential solutions, and one-party Democrat rule. It’s a situation rife with possibilities for incompetence and corruption.
Two excellent and informative videos about Israel’s wars
If you’ve got the time, these two videos are rewarding. I ordinarily listen to these sorts of “talking heads” videos at a faster than normal speed.
The first is a Caroline Glick interview on the topic of Lebanon and the IDF:
And here’s a guy who does not pull his punches:
Roundup
(1) Zuckerberg rediscovers his inner libertarian and does away with fact-checkers, planning to replace them with “X”-style community notes.
(2) It turns out that neither the press nor Biden and company seem to think that Trump is really Hitler. Fancy that. But unfortunately many people – including some I know – took it all to heart and believe it at this point. The people I know who believe this are quite smart in other respects and are not especially gullible, either. I’m not sure why the “Trump is Hitler” propaganda took with some people and not with others.
(3) Karen Bass, current mayor of Los Angeles, is in big trouble:
Honestly, between the taxpayer-funded Ghana trip, the deer-in-headlights look in front of the reporter, and the awkward press conference, I don’t see how Bass survives this politically speaking. Because after all the smoke clears, the harsh glare of the media spotlight is going to shine down even brighter on her bigger failures which will include questions about funding for the fire department.
But Los Angeles is a Democrat-dominated city and they’re known for routinely voting for the same people/political party and yet expecting improved results each time.
(4) Many Democrats appear to be prepared to join with Republicans in voting for the Laken Riley Act.
(5) Biden’s corruption is actually the big “underreported story” of the last five years.
Open thread 1/9/2025
Waiting for January 20
Everyone is waiting for January 20th, when Trump takes office again.
Those who voted against Trump are waiting with dread, terror, or resignation.
Those who voted for Trump are waiting with eager anticipation and hope.
And I get the impression that the waiting isn’t limited to those in the US, and that most of the world is relieved that Trump will be in charge soon rather than the addled Biden and his faceless handlers.
Trump’s task will not be easy, however; not at all. I wrote of uncontained actual fires in California earlier today – well, there are a lot of uncontained metaphorical fires all over the world and in this country that will need his attention.
Have you experienced slowdowns and outages on the blog?
Every now and then lately, this blog has been slowing down or even going down, fortunately only for short periods of time. I’ve talked with the host and they don’t really know what’s happening, except that they say it seems to coincide with some bot attacks. And yet bot attacks have happened regularly for ages and haven’t caused slowdowns and outages, so I tend to doubt they’re the reason.
If it continues for long, I will have to consider another host. I really don’t want to do that, not only because it’s an annoyance but also because no host is perfect and it wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem. But please bear with me and let me know what you’ve been experiencing.
Trump and the hostages
Recently Trump has reissued his warning to Hamas about the hostages:
When pressed by American political commentator Hugh Hewitt on the specific meaning behind his warning, Trump elaborated with characteristic intensity: “If those hostages aren’t released by the time I get into office, there will be hell to pay.
“I don’t think I have to go into it. … But it won’t be the word ‘don’t,’ you know. I heard the word ‘don’t,’ you can add that into it, but that would just be a small part of it. … Those hostages have to get out. They have to get out now.”
And now this news:
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, is scheduled to be in Doha, Qatar, on Wednesday to advance multilateral negotiations aimed at securing the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
During a press conference on Tuesday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, Witkoff, a Jewish businessman and longtime friend of the president-elect, expressed optimism about the ongoing discussions.
I’d love to be privy to Witkoff’s instructions.
Meanwhile, the bodies of two of the hostages have been found in Gaza by the IDF. They are Yosef Al Zaydani and his son Hamzah, who until now were among the hostages believed to still be alive. The two were Bedouins, which is a reminder that Hamas also warred on Israeli Arabs as well as Israeli Jews:
RIP.
LA fires
If memory serves, large California fires don’t ordinarily happen at this time of year, which is usually California’s rainier season; they happen in the fall and are usually over by early December. And I think that memory does serve, since because of Gerard I am intimately familiar with the Paradise fire. Not only that, but I lived in California for a while and have witnessed a few, as well as having a good friend whose mountain home in Malibu – looking out on the Pacific – was totally destroyed in 1993.
Large and destructive fires in California usually occur in the drier seasons and are often wind-whipped. The wind is definitely a factor in the current ones:
The Palisades Fire started burning around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday and scorched nearly 3,000 acres between the beach towns of Santa Monica and Malibu. Around 6:30 p.m., the Eaton Fire broke out in Altadena near Pasadena and swelled to more than 2,200 acres. By 10:30 p.m. a smaller blaze named the Hurst Fire had ignited in Sylmar, in the San Fernando Valley northwest of downtown Los Angeles and consumed about 500 acres.
The cause of all three blazes are still under investigation, according to Cal Fire. But the powerful Santa Ana winds are likely driving their rapid growth.
“The combination of low humidity, dry fuels and shifting winds has heightened the potential for spot fires and rapid expansion,” Cal Fire said in an update.
Governor Newsom and others on the left are of course blaming climate change. The story is far more complex than that, but it’s not politically expedient to emphasize the other reasons. I’ve written a lot about California wildfires, their causes, and how to control them: for example, see this and this. See also this article from 2017.
More about the present fire situation:
Jon Keeley, a senior research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, previously told USA TODAY climate change isn’t the only reason for the increase in large fires.
In California, population growth, increasing fire ignitions and the Santa Ana winds are bigger factors in wildfires, Keeley said.
This is from James Woods:
I took this last night from our beautiful little home in the Palisades. Now all the fire alarms are going off at once remotely.
It tests your soul, losing everything at once, I must say. pic.twitter.com/nH0mLpxz5C
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 8, 2025
Having been very close to two people who “lost everything at once,” I’m well aware of how catastrophic it is. However, it pales in comparison to losing one’s life in a fire. RIP to the two people who have died in the present fires, which are as yet uncontained.
Open thread 1/8/2025
On ancient jewelry
[NOTE: This is a repeat of a post of mine from 2015. Why? Because I feel like it, that’s why.]
I’m not all that fond of precious jewels. That’s very fortunate, because I don’t own many.
Richard Burton would have gotten off easy with me. When I got married, I wore a plain gold wedding ring, one that had been in my family since the 1800s, and never missed or thought of a diamond engagement ring. It just wasn’t my thing.
I have plenty of non-precious pieces of jewelry, though, and I’m particularly keen on this guy’s work (if you’re interested in a gift for somebody—they look better in real life than in the photos, for some reason). On reading the maker’s bio [link broken], it occurs to me that the following may be the underlying reason I’m so fond of his jewelry:
I was inspired as a young boy by visiting the great art museums in New York City, and spent many hours in the Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art looking at the gold jewelry.
Aha! Ancient jewelry was his inspiration. Now that, I’ve always liked. And the thing that has long fascinated and amazed me about very ancient jewelry is that the design of most of it could be easily worn today; it never dates. And what’s more, jewelry that is thousands of years old and displayed in museum collections looks, for the most part, practically new.
For example, please take a look at the stunning examples here and reflect on how very old most of them are.
Care to guess the age of this one?
Hint: it’s from Ur.
Which makes it about 4500 years old, give or take a few.
Here’s one that’s practically modern:
And to the inhabitants of Ur, it would be futuristic. But to us, it’s a bit old: it’s made of emeralds, garnets, and gold, and is a Helenistic piece from about 200 BC.
And of course, the whole thing also reminds me of poetry, in this case Yeats:
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
Although neither Grecian nor Byzantine (the latter being the site of where Constantinople and now Istanbul lies), and made in the late 1700s in India, this is something akin to the way I always pictured the artifact in the last verse of the poem:
Or this, also from India and the same period, which includes enamel and gold (as in the poem):
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.