LA Wildfires and the Competency Crisis ｜ Guest： Peachy Keenan ｜ 1⧸13⧸25
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Summary
Author and writer P.G. Keenan is in the Palisades reporting on the devastating fires that have ravaged Southern California and the surrounding areas. She talks about what it's like to live in a disaster zone, and what it means to be a looter.
Transcript
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If you've been paying any attention to the news,
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then you know that California has been experiencing some very crazy wildfires.
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And in particular, the LA County area is really getting hit.
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You have a lot of celebrities posting pictures from their homes,
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some that have burned down, some that are getting very close.
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You have a large number of people who have lost property.
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But I think the best thing to do is to get a report from somebody who's on the ground.
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And luckily, one of our previous guests, P.G. Keenan, who's a great author and writer,
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So we'll get into, I guess, how all this started in a second.
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What is the situation like on the ground right now?
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The Palisades is my hometown, my childhood home, the village burned down, my mother's
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And basically everyone I know in the Palisades is now homeless.
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And a lot of people got evacuated and are still evacuated.
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So here in Altadena, all the way across town, I'm an hour east, I'm by the Rose Bowl, the
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Pasadena, just sort of, Altadena is like this beautiful little nook just north of Pasadena
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where they have the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl.
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The entire business district on Lake Avenue, the big north-south road through Pasadena and
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Altadena is basically gone on both sides, north of approximately New York Drive.
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And I'm basically a block away from the military evacuation zone.
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My husband actually stayed behind, strapped, because we heard about all the looters.
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And this morning on a press conference, I heard that they like arrested 30 people yesterday
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People are dressed up as firemen to go into people's homes here in Altadena.
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Altadena and in the Palisades, Altadena is not as wealthy.
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And everyone is waiting to come back to their house.
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I have a lot of friends who live near me whose house has survived, but they've been out of
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their homes for now a week with all their kids.
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Kids don't have their school uniforms, their backpacks, clean underwear, all that stuff.
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They're not letting people in, apparently, because they're going house by house looking for
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So I heard on the news today, this morning, West Altadena, which is a historically Black
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This is a lot of lower middle class Black families in West Altadena.
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There was a grandpa and his son both died in the fire.
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I think a few dozen people, I think, are dead in this area alone.
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There's National Guard guarding every intersection.
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School school reopened and we headed west and I had to dodge like armed army guys the whole
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Yeah, I'm surprised that schools are open that early.
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When you have a devastating thing like this, the hardest thing is really transversing the
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And so a lot of times you have an extended shutdown.
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You said the air quality was pretty rough right now.
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The first two days I had, we had migraines, nausea, so we got out of here.
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Like the whole, I almost went to Manhattan Beach by the beach to get away.
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But my friends were coming back because they said the air was actually worse there.
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So the last day or two has actually been blue skies.
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And so, you know, we have the air purifiers going.
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So you have to kind of wait if you want to do that.
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We just have fans going and keeping the windows closed.
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So I'm just like, you know, I'm ventilating the city air right now with my lungs.
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So obviously, California is a place that's known for wildfires.
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This isn't a brand new phenomenon in Florida, where I live.
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And obviously, we know they're coming for a while.
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You have the option of getting ready and writing it out or evacuating.
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Usually you don't just have a hurricane kind of pop into your area.
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Obviously, this is the first thing that, you know, the that the left does.
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Oh, we've never seen a fire in California before.
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How much warning did you have that this was coming?
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When did you know that this was going to be making its way
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to areas you live, to the homes of people you know?
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The fire started up in the highlands, which is like a kind of like adjacent neighborhood
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up and really up in the in the hills with only one in and out.
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So apparently it started in a off a hiking trail up there.
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So all day we were kind of watching the news and people evacuating from the highlands,
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but never in a million, which has had a few fires.
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And obviously, Malibu does every few years burn down.
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But but but the Palisades village has never burned.
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And the idea that fire would come that far down to like, to Mescal, to Pali High, all
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the way to the beach, it wiped everything down to the water, gone is is totally unthinkable.
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So we were watching the news to all day Tuesday, like, oh, my gosh, our friends are getting
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Like, I hope everyone's OK, but not really panicked about it at all.
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We're all watching the news kind of glued like, wait, the Palisades village is on fire.
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And then my husband, like, tapped me on the shoulder and he'd like showed me his phone
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and he had just gone an alert that Eaton Canyon was on fire because I've been sitting there
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It's a very well-known kind of like a ravine and a trailhead here in East Altadena, right
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above Pasadena, that leads up into these beautiful hiking trails.
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Thinking, obviously, that we wouldn't see anything, you know, that's like about a mile
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And to my surprise, the entire sky behind my street is bright red.
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And we went inside and we were like, OK, I don't know how close that is.
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My husband went up to walk around and look around.
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And he came back and said, like, let's pack our bags because this is actually looks like
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And I have to say that from 8 p.m. until about 10 p.m.
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when we when we evacuated was probably the scariest two hours of my life.
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My little kids were like freaked out, like they were fully suitcased, like they just
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And I was like, this is actually is this happening?
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This is like so hard to believe this is not a fire zone.
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You know, there was a few fires way in the Angeles Crest Hills, those mountains, the
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mountaintops, you know, every few years will be a fire up near Mount Wilson, the observatory,
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which I think is still standing, which I can see from my house.
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They've survived earthquakes and all these things.
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So it's totally unthinkable that we would have to evacuate for fire.
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By the time we left the house, it was about 1030 on Tuesday night.
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You could see flames in the blocks, a couple blocks north of us.
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And the winds at that point were something I've never experienced.
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It was like my analogy was like I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz trying to open
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the storm cellar, but the winds like won't let her like that was me trying to open the
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But my husband wanted to get us out of, you know, the fire.
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And so we just had this like caravan, my teenage son in his car in front of us.
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We packed whatever we could, photos and all that, and got to my friend's house a couple
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miles south of us and just watched the alerts all night.
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I was up all night seeing alerts of these houses burning that I know very well and just
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And now I'm on the edge of a FEMA disaster zone, which is a very unusual and new.
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I didn't imagine that 2025 would start like this.
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Yeah, I've interviewed a bit a part of many FEMA recoveries.
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The winds you mentioned there, is that a relatively new thing?
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Is that a function of the fire or seasonal weather pattern?
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What what the winds have been attributed to a lot of kind of the speed at which this
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Is it was that unique to you or have you seen that before?
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I mean, the Santa Ana winds is what they're called.
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They're like a famous feature of living in Southern California.
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They happen usually in the fall, which does which is what makes the fire danger worse because
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it gets really dry in the fall before the rain starts.
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And so the Santa Ana's are basically every year there'll be like some strong winds.
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They blow from the mountains down to the beach.
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Most of the wind in L.A. is like, you know, offshore comes in from the ocean, cools everyone
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But the Santa Ana's are these like very ferocious winds that we get.
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And they're not ever like 70, 80 miles an hour.
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Maybe in the mountain passes, it would get more extreme.
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And it's never, I've never experienced what I, it felt like a tornado was like going around
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And obviously that's why I think the fire became like a blowtorch.
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When I found out my friend got a great deal on a designer dress from Winners, I started
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wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners?
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Like that woman over there with the Italian leather handbag.
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So how many total fires did they identify at one point?
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And do you know how many they've been able to reduce it to at this point?
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There was the Palisades, which then went over to Brentwood to Mandeville Canyon, just a little
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east of the Altadena fire, or they're calling it the Eaton Canyon fire.
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And then there was one in Hollywood that was put out, and then there's one in the valley
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There might be one way out in Santa Clarita that's actually not a big deal.
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In terms of the Palisades, I think it's maybe 30% contained.
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And here in Altadena, if you look out and see, there's no smoke.
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There's no visible fire going on anywhere, but I see this morning on the way back from
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school, like right in front of me, it was like 50 crews from all over the state, heading
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And then my friend who lives up the street from me said that on her block, there are
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So nothing is like in full inferno right now, but up here, just off lake there, apparently
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So that's like a concern because apparently the tonight into Tuesday night into Wednesday
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So I'm really praying and hoping that they manage to, at least on this residential side
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Like you said, you think you have things locked down.
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You think that at least you have the residences out of the path of possible expansion.
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And then something like a wind can, can completely, uh, you know, blow that back open.
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And this is probably a good time to talk about the actual firefighting.
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Uh, so a lot again, has been put on climate change and I'm not somebody who is entirely,
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um, you know, skeptical of the fact that men, you know, that, that people can have an impact
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on the climate and they can, you know, that we need to be good stewards of the land that
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Those, those arguments don't fall on my ears, uh, completely deaf.
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However, it's very clear that many of the policies that have been put in place by California
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governance has really hindered the ability of them to one control the outbreak of fires
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Uh, it's my understanding that there due to different environmental concerns, there is
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The underbrush is not burned away on a regular basis.
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And so this adds to the possibility that when fires occur, they can really get out of control.
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Yeah, that's my understanding too, that they're, and I think Donald Trump has talked about
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this, um, in regards to his criticism of Gavin Newsom, our governor, that they're not clearing
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Like they used to, they would do controlled burns.
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And now, because they don't want to hurt the, like, you know, endangered ground squirrel or
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whatever, the little beetle, they don't do that as much.
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Um, however, you know, in terms of like, I think Bernie Sanders was like, we have to get,
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we have to find the people who did this climate change.
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It's like, we had the last two winters in a row, we had the highest rainfall on record.
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And I remember when that was happening, we were just like getting deluged, right?
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And everyone's like, okay, well, the drought is over.
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They can't say we're in a drought anymore and restrict our water use, but where's all
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It sure would be nice to have all this water captured so that when there is an inevitable
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fire or a drought or a shortage, we have all this water.
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Billions of gallons were just rushing through all the, all the channels down the LA river.
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They have a few old reservoirs, but they have no way of capturing this water.
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I was actually shocked to see that the closest reservoir to Pacific Palisades, which was on
00:15:30.180
And that was the, that is the reservoir that is supposed to feed all those fire hydrants in
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There was no more fire, no, no more water, no more water, no more water in your hose, no
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Why isn't there a local reservoir here in Altadena?
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I don't know where they're getting the water from in Altadena, but I do know that we have
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But the morning of the fire, very early Wednesday morning, my, before everything was closed
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off, my husband ran up Lake to see our friend's houses.
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And so he went up there and he took this incredible video of their home, which is kind of the backyard
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And he said that he tried to put out some spot fires with the hose, but there was no water
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A friend of mine, a couple, they just had a baby.
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They live a few streets North of me in Altadena.
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He powered his sprinklers with his truck and then had some kind of bucket brigade with
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a neighbor and they rigged up some kind of hose system.
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And him and one neighbor all night saved their block all except for, I think one house.
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And so their house stands and they got lucky because people were, and I hear story after
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story of that, of like these homeowners and they were, there was no fire truck the whole
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day, the whole night, the whole day, there was nothing.
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And I went up and looked and I saw women, women with hoses doing their, you know, trying
00:17:02.820
And there was, I saw a couple of trucks, but there was just not that you could see there
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If there had been more trucks in that area, it would have saved more homes.
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And right now they're actually going door to door looking for bodies.
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I don't know what the reason is, why there aren't worth that many trucks, but we've all seen
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those reports now of how the mayor of LA and the governor, they've defunded all of these
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fire departments and diverted the money to DEI programs.
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And they even, they even sent our excess fire equipment to Ukraine.
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So, I mean, it's like, actually that would have been really nice to have.
00:17:50.140
However, you know, that, that, that is the category that belongs in with all intended punishments.
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Uh, that, that, that is an absolute, uh, betrayal of the people that you serve, uh, for no other
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interest than to kind of signal to the popular zeitgeist about being a great person and helping
00:18:09.680
some foreign country you, you don't even know about.
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And so, um, it's just absolutely insane and gross.
00:18:15.340
And, you know, you pointed out that the, you know, the, the initiatives that have been started
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by so many of these California governments, I mean, the mayor of LA wasn't even in LA during
00:18:26.420
She was like in, in Ghana, she was in West Africa because that's, that's where you would
00:18:32.260
put the mayor of a, of an American city because that's, that's the way we conduct business.
00:18:36.560
Uh, but, but it particularly striking has been the response, I think from so many of, uh,
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kind of the state, uh, functionaries and even the fire departments, there's a, I think an
00:18:47.200
assistant, uh, fire, uh, chief in LA who, you know, basically when there was a large amount
00:18:53.860
of kind of criticism, cause it's hard not to notice that the LA fire department is run
00:18:59.120
Uh, it's a very strange that, uh, just the most qualified for people in all of LA just
00:19:03.900
all happened to be, uh, you know, happened to be lesbians, uh, to run a fire department.
00:19:09.200
Um, and, and she was being questioned about the, the wisdom of, of kind of forcing women
00:19:14.700
into these roles of, uh, firefighters and, uh, said, well, could, could, could an average
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woman doing this job carry a man out of a fire?
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And her response was something like, well, if, if your husband put himself in a place
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where I need to carry him out of a fire, that's his problem.
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What you're saying is you can't do the job at all.
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And you're the person in charge of this whole thing.
00:19:44.100
I mean, that's like the number one requirement, right?
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Like all your gear on and you can climb a ladder and haul an unconscious adult male out of
00:19:52.780
That seems to be the like number one requirement.
00:19:55.900
Like it's literally called the fireman's carry.
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Like that's literally the name of the move to put someone over your shoulders and carry
00:20:02.440
And I tweeted this today, but like every guy I've seen in the trucks today, this morning,
00:20:07.260
heading up there, I saw a lot of straight white guys.
00:20:09.640
I saw a lot of guys with like goatees, you know, the kind of guy you want fighting fire.
00:20:21.840
When you're dying, when you're burning alive in your home, don't you feel better knowing
00:20:25.780
that you did because a lesbian of color got to have a job in like a cool uniform?
00:20:30.960
Well, and that was, that was her line is like, well, you want someone who looks like you
00:20:35.540
No, I want someone who can rescue me, rescuing me.
00:20:39.400
I don't care how they look as long as they're carrying my butt out of the fire.
00:20:44.100
Like that is, that is the qualification as you point out that I want the most.
00:20:49.080
I think that DEI, you know, if it comes to like, you know, who's teaching the ceramics
00:20:57.300
There are certain jobs that are life and death that we can't, they have to be meritocratic.
00:21:08.820
The guys driving the, flying the big tanker, you know, planes full of the pink stuff that
00:21:18.140
I guarantee you the pilot of that airplane was probably a, you know, heterosexual male.
00:21:24.860
These are, there's no DEI when it comes to that job, flying these crazy maneuvers, these
00:21:29.760
aerial pilot, helicopter pilots are doing like these incredible kind of heroic maneuvers.
00:21:34.580
And it's just the old adage, you know, DEI is D-I-E.
00:21:39.560
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00:21:58.580
Like, I know that this cultish behavior has taken over.
00:22:04.200
I've been in the middle of bureaucracies where the, the mission has been sacrificed specifically
00:22:10.820
But it is still stunning to me when you, when you, as you point out, you know, this isn't
00:22:17.080
This isn't accumulating, you know, English literature.
00:22:22.820
Uh, and when you have that kind of job, uh, the fact that this insane suicidal, uh, ideology
00:22:30.760
has worked its way even into these critical positions like police, like firefighters, like
00:22:36.260
the military, it's the stuff that would, it was never supposed to touch, right?
00:22:40.040
This is what we always heard is, oh, well, you know, it's just a bunch of crazy kids coming
00:22:43.560
out of college and maybe they'll take over a humanities department or even the, you know,
00:22:50.120
But, you know, when, when it's people's lives on the line, when it's life and death, when
00:22:54.480
it's, it's a clutch moment, you know, hard sciences, you know, virology, uh, you know,
00:23:00.740
uh, police, firefighters, military, none of this will be taught.
00:23:03.920
This is the core of what makes the society function.
00:23:06.920
We would never hollow that out just to give a bunch of people jobs because they, you know,
00:23:11.840
uh, you know, screw the right person or have the right, uh, anatomy.
00:23:15.040
And apparently we will, we'll, we'll literally just burn civilization down to promote this
00:23:21.500
And this is a case where, you know, virtue signaling doesn't matter, you know, voting
00:23:31.200
You get to feel good about yourself as a liberal for voting, for example, like Karen
00:23:34.460
Bass, this completely incompetent, unqualified woman to be the mayor of the second biggest
00:23:43.000
And then suddenly you never think that vote will matter.
00:23:48.980
So you might as well vote for someone like Karen Bass or someone like Gavin Newsom until
00:24:01.200
Whether you lived or died, whether your house burned down.
00:24:03.800
And this is the first time that kind of like, you know, the kind of rich elites of LA figure
00:24:11.300
And they're now faced with the consequences of their decisions.
00:24:20.980
Overwhelmingly voted for Gavin Newsom, Joe Biden.
00:24:25.500
Um, a lot of upper middle class and rich people.
00:24:29.440
But interestingly in 2022 in LA city, I'm not in LA city in Pasadena.
00:24:34.420
It's a different system, but Pacific Palisades is part of LA city.
00:24:41.380
The election in 2022 for mayor was between her and Rick Caruso, who is a kind of a centrist,
00:24:54.360
He built all these, the beautiful malls in LA, the Grove by farmer's market, the Americana
00:24:59.900
in Glendale, the new mall in, in the Palisades village.
00:25:10.900
And one of them in mid midtown got looted during the George Floyd riots.
00:25:15.160
And so he hired like private security to go in and stop.
00:25:18.740
They were smashing the Nordstrom's glass, all that stuff.
00:25:24.360
As mayor, like this, we can't have this LA needs law and order.
00:25:28.340
We cannot have women like Karen Bass running these things, running the city into the ground.
00:25:33.060
Pacific Palisades voted for Rick Caruso, a Republican, something like 65% to 35%.
00:25:40.560
Gwyneth Paltrow came out to support Rick Caruso.
00:25:43.560
People like the Kardashians, um, came out to support Rick Caruso.
00:25:47.500
You know, people who are kind of generic, probably liberals.
00:25:54.400
Um, and so the Palisades tried to vote themselves out of the mess that basically years and years
00:26:00.860
of voting for Democrats had put them in because really quality of life issues have degraded
00:26:05.540
here in LA so much that even if you're in one of these wealthy enclaves in Malibu or the Palisades
00:26:12.260
or Brentwood, even if you're in these enclaves, it's, it's everywhere now.
00:26:16.460
Um, and it's, it's, there's tents in Santa Monica.
00:26:19.660
Santa Monica has, which is where all those people shop and, you know, do their, that's where you
00:26:24.100
have all the big like movie theaters and the malls and stuff.
00:26:26.780
That's now basically a deserted homeless, uh, camp.
00:26:33.140
Um, it was, to this day, some stores are still boarded up four or five years later in downtown
00:26:39.760
And then in their schools, they saw what was happening with gender ideology and gender
00:26:44.480
So these, you know, and the Palisades is very, it's, you know, you say what you will,
00:26:52.240
It's mostly married mothers and fathers with their kids.
00:26:55.460
And so they're trying to, they were trying to hide there in the Palisades from the bad
00:26:59.820
policies that they probably spent years, um, supporting just because it didn't matter.
00:27:05.120
And now they are, uh, sowing what they, they're reaping what they sow.
00:27:09.420
We obviously saw a lot of this with the illegal immigration, uh, question, right?
00:27:13.920
You had a lot of cities like New York and Chicago who, yeah, we're sanctuary cities.
00:27:20.600
Well, mainly because we're not a border state and we never have to deal with this.
00:27:24.340
And then all of a sudden Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis start, you know, sending some,
00:27:28.460
some, uh, diversity up North so they can enjoy the blessings.
00:27:32.000
And all of a sudden it turned out that maybe mass immigration isn't good for New York either.
00:27:37.240
And Eric Adams is, you know, a super lefty, but even he recognizes a disaster when it lands
00:27:43.000
on his doorstep and you know, that, that didn't mean that New York went for Trump, but it was,
00:27:49.700
You, you could feel the shift that more people in New York were opening themselves up to this
00:27:54.680
You saw shifts among Hispanics and other voters in the direction of Trump because they, even
00:28:00.140
they recognize that ultimately an open border is bad for them and their children, the American
00:28:06.920
But I gotta say, I'm skeptical that we're going to see a Republican LA, but do you think
00:28:13.700
that being exposed to the consequences, no longer being able to hide behind the gated
00:28:19.360
communities, uh, to, you know, of kind of the consequences of those policies, do you
00:28:24.020
think that that's going to end up shifting the political dynamic in California in any
00:28:28.520
I think it, I think it actually will now, will we be a red state?
00:28:34.100
We were, California was a red state, like up through the late eighties, basically.
00:28:40.140
Could it be purple in, in eight years, in 12 years?
00:28:47.080
Now that neighborhoods like the Palisades that got burned out, those voters have, have
00:28:54.600
They'll go to the OC, they'll go up to Ventura County, but they'll, most of them will probably
00:29:03.280
You know, people live in California for a reason, you know, it's, it's kind of nice here.
00:29:07.140
Um, but politically things have already been changing, triggered by the, the November election.
00:29:14.200
And so it's actually been unbelievable to watch the, uh, owner of the LA times.
00:29:23.140
Um, he bought, he's owned the LA times for a few years.
00:29:27.760
He, he kiboshed the editorials that were endorsing Kamala Harris for president in the LA times.
00:29:36.340
It's like, you know, Marxist, um, you know, red sheet.
00:29:39.900
Like it's so left wing that people just read it as a joke.
00:29:45.600
Um, basically, but he owned, he bought it and apparently he woke up like, you know, like
00:29:50.860
Jeff Bezos did like all these kinds of like tech bros did.
00:29:54.740
And so he didn't let them endorse Kamala Harris in the LA times.
00:29:57.920
And he's actually looking for, um, conservatives now to write for them.
00:30:02.420
Um, he just added Mark Andreessen to the board of the LA times, um, who is like a, yeah, who
00:30:08.120
is like, you know, a tech bro who kind of came to the right and, you know, now it's like
00:30:13.180
And so that was an incredible shift that started happening right after the election.
00:30:18.380
Like, and, and the owner of the LA times has now been on, been on Fox news talking about
00:30:22.180
this, trying to make the paper more, more centrist, allowing different views to be heard,
00:30:27.920
I mean, it's still a majority, you know, liberal place it's never going to be, you know, uh,
00:30:37.480
We, a lot of people who don't live in California, they always tell me like, get out, screw California.
00:30:45.680
Like, why are you even wasting your time there?
00:30:49.560
Now is turning California red a lost cause by, you know, is it going to vote for JD Vance in
00:30:56.480
However, if you saw the map in November, in November, what happened with the election
00:31:01.480
is that huge swaths of California that were blue turned red, mostly in the central and
00:31:07.140
like Riverside County and blue areas turned a lot less blue.
00:31:14.580
We need it because without the California representatives, we, we lose the house.
00:31:20.380
So you need Republicans here voting for representatives in Orange County and all those red areas.
00:31:27.780
If we don't have that, that's the edge that gave us the house.
00:31:31.020
And so if you let California go totally, then you lose the house forever, like forever.
00:31:38.740
There are so many people here that is important.
00:31:41.560
There are more Republicans and Trump voters who live in California than live in like the
00:31:50.360
There are Twitter anons I know who are all over LA who are displaced right now.
00:31:55.020
You know, we're not, we're here, like we're out here.
00:31:58.000
And so I'm not saying Texans and Floridians should like rush back to California to save
00:32:02.960
it, but it is worth the people who are still here.
00:32:06.540
We survived the COVID filter for various reasons.
00:32:08.840
We couldn't leave because of family, older, older parents like I have jobs that it could
00:32:17.160
A lot of people made a choice, you know, in 2020, I'm going to stay, I'm going to stick
00:32:24.520
And, um, California is just too important in terms of the numbers, the sheer numbers
00:32:30.720
So I do think it is worth trying to fight and keep what we can.
00:32:34.540
And like, for example, growing VOC, I, I encourage people who are want to get out from under the
00:32:40.140
thumb of someone like Karen Bass, move to orange County, move to a redder area or support those
00:32:44.980
places because that's where the rebirth will start.
00:32:48.580
You know, it, if you're in these scenarios where kind of the, the thin veil of civility
00:32:58.440
I've been through a number of hurricanes, uh, and, and have been through some that completely,
00:33:02.600
you know, took out the power, people were losing their homes.
00:33:05.440
I mean, you were talking about, you know, returning to your home and not knowing if you're
00:33:09.580
Like I have been in that scenario where you're, you're driving in every street before you
00:33:16.000
You know, you're sure that your house is going to be toast.
00:33:18.680
We were incredibly blessed and we're the only house on the street that did not flood in the,
00:33:28.880
A lot of people will look and they'll like, Oh, people in California, you're rich or whatever.
00:33:35.300
Like, and, and, and it's, it's a place that your kids grew up in.
00:33:39.220
Your family has been to, you have cultivated relationships there.
00:33:43.540
You have built, you know, a network of people that you care about.
00:33:47.580
Yes, it's physically a building, but it's so much more.
00:33:51.240
Uh, and, and, and if you haven't been in that scenario, you just don't know that the emotional
00:33:56.560
gut punch, um, can be really, really difficult.
00:34:02.980
I know, you know, like you said, looting was a big problem.
00:34:05.320
And again, we're, we're in a scenario where we had looters pulling people out of cars and
00:34:10.440
stuff at, at, at, you know, at stop signs or stoplights and stuff.
00:34:13.300
You just blew through because you didn't, you didn't want to be in that scenario.
00:34:18.020
And, and our sheriff specifically said, you know, uh, looters who show up here will be
00:34:22.260
Like we encourage, you know, we, we encourage our citizens to protect themselves.
00:34:26.600
And if you try to steal something in the, in this area of Florida, then you, you're not
00:34:30.400
walking away, uh, which is exactly what you want to hear from a sheriff in that area, California,
00:34:39.280
And do you feel like, you know, a state that is known for it's ignoring law and order, allowing
00:34:45.000
people to shoplift and live in the streets, these kinds of things.
00:34:48.020
Will this kind of bring that into sharper focus?
00:34:51.820
It's so ironic, uh, seeing Gavin Newsom saying, you know, looting looters will not be tolerated.
00:35:01.180
It's legal in California to loot anything you want, any store you want, any house you
00:35:08.560
If it, if the value of the things that you steal is under like $950, that's only a misdemeanor.
00:35:14.360
And that's why we had these gangs going into Sephora and Ulta and Nordstrom and your home
00:35:20.100
and just getting whatever they could, if it was under $950.
00:35:22.640
And even if they caught you, you can do that over and over again.
00:35:27.060
And so they have these gangs, like 20 people, and they never bothered to catch them.
00:35:31.120
And so that law actually just got overturned in November.
00:35:33.800
And so it's very ironic and I just, the hypocrisy is sick that he's now saying looting will not,
00:35:42.060
And so, okay, well, how about it wasn't also in 2020?
00:35:48.540
Because your, your elite donor base in the democratic party donor base in the Palisades
00:35:54.620
and Brentwood, those people are really pissed off.
00:35:56.580
You know, they're in rental houses in Palm Springs and Montecito and they're really mad
00:36:02.180
So now you're going to say you're protecting their houses.
00:36:04.960
I will say that the sheriff department in LA has, has traditionally been kind of like,
00:36:11.980
Although the new sheriff, Sheriff Luna is not as, he's, he's a liberal, but the last sheriff
00:36:19.140
They, the sheriff department tends to be much more kind of like hardcore, more traditional.
00:36:24.600
And they're the ones up here patrolling Altadena.
00:36:28.300
And I know that they are arresting people who are, there was, they, they arrested some
00:36:33.000
They arrested people just walking around like look, you lose.
00:36:36.780
Although they did find someone, the police found someone in the Valley, an illegal immigrant
00:36:41.860
with like a blow torch and some matches and some like flames or like lighter fluid.
00:36:50.440
They took him down, the citizens of the Valley, that neighborhood took him down in a residential
00:36:53.660
neighborhood and the police did not charge him with arson and he's not being deported.
00:36:59.460
And so you have the LAPD just business as usual, sanctuary city rules.
00:37:04.640
So until we see Gavin Newsom actually like rescind those laws, the sanctuary city laws,
00:37:11.500
and frankly cracking down on the homeless, because as we know, 80% of the fires in SoCal
00:37:17.940
are arson and a lot of that is the homeless camps all up and down these hills.
00:37:23.920
And I'm pretty sure that when they investigate the Altadena fire, which started apparently
00:37:29.800
at Altadena drive and Midwick drive right next to the Altadena, the Eaton Canyon trailhead.
00:37:35.520
I've seen on next door, all these people who live there for, for, for, for like a couple
00:37:40.380
of years now reporting a homeless camp in the Eaton Canyon trailhead kind of ravine and they
00:37:47.600
would find garbage and beer bottles and all this stuff down in there.
00:37:51.720
So I'm, I'm fairly certain that that is what happens.
00:37:55.180
People see the wind, these, these schizophrenic, these drug addicts, and they think it's fun to
00:38:01.140
And so, um, and that's, that's firmly the fault of the city, um, the County for leaving,
00:38:08.440
And just, just yesterday, I drove down Lake Avenue to target, to get some water.
00:38:14.760
We're allowed to bathe in it apparently, but you know, who knows what I'll get, what diseases
00:38:18.200
we'll get in a couple of years, but driving down Lake Avenue, um, you could just see so
00:38:23.200
many people still passed out on the street, like the usual homeless junkies there, they're
00:38:33.860
You know, when you allow vagrancy, when you allow these situations where people are regularly
00:38:38.480
living on the streets or camping out in areas, you're going to end up, as you point out with,
00:38:43.700
you know, you obviously have crazy people and they'll just light things on fire because
00:38:52.680
Uh, but also just running, you know, fire barrels and, uh, campfires and all these things
00:38:58.060
that are constantly, uh, being introduced in the environment.
00:39:00.820
And then as you point out, you have illegal immigrants who are literally arsonists who
00:39:04.800
are running around, uh, possibly, you know, lighting fires.
00:39:08.220
And there's just no response, uh, from the local departments and that this is, is terrible.
00:39:14.200
I mean, we, you know, we just had, you know, people have already forgotten this, but we just
00:39:17.500
had an illegal immigrant lighting a woman on fire and burning her to death in New York on
00:39:22.140
the subway, you know, it's just basic stuff like this.
00:39:25.980
Like whether that one individual is personally responsible for the wildfires in California
00:39:34.160
Like there's just no reason for this animal to be running around and adding to the pain
00:39:39.480
and suffering of people who are going through horrific times, you know, for his own amusement.
00:39:44.920
But when you, you know, you're always going to have people who are supposed to be here,
00:39:48.980
who are doing the wrong thing, homeless, you know, uh, you know, arsonists like that can
00:39:53.320
But obviously the people who should not be here at all, when they're piling in on top
00:39:57.240
of that and they're not accountable, there is, you know, most of the time they're ignored
00:40:00.440
by the justice system when they are caught, like you said, not going to be deported, getting
00:40:04.240
lesser charges so that they don't look bad on criminal reports, these kinds of things.
00:40:10.440
And, you know, Ron DeSantis just announced that he is going to be taking action to make
00:40:16.800
sure that mass deportations can be more smoothly, uh, enacted in Florida.
00:40:22.820
Obviously I'm not expecting that from Gavin Newsom, but do you think we'll see more, uh,
00:40:28.020
kind of red state governors recognize the importance of this and get on board with facilitating
00:40:35.020
And, you know, it's really funny seeing actually video of Gavin Newsom.
00:40:40.900
You can see that like, I think he knows he's cooked a little bit and then he's going to
00:40:45.060
have to find a way to get himself out of this mess and deflect all the blame.
00:40:49.460
He'll, he'll deflect it onto like, you know, the, the, the, the black female mayor of LA
00:40:54.700
But LA is a very unique case because it's like decades and decades of mismanagement by, you
00:40:59.920
know, it's well known that there's sort of like a Chicano cartel that runs the city
00:41:17.320
You cut out when you were saying there was a cartel running the local politics there.
00:41:21.680
They're, I think they're probably about to like, you know, maybe my wifi is burning down.
00:41:25.620
They, they know that you're, you're, you're informing us.
00:41:34.780
And the key will be if any of these people face any repercussions.
00:41:39.780
If Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass, the LA County board of supervisors, I think they're called,
00:41:45.680
they're just the worst bunch of crony, um, basically socialists who have been running
00:41:51.780
the city and no one cares because everyone's just like, has their latte, you know, then
00:41:55.780
the Range Rover, no one, no one pays attention, but until you can reform them, nothing will
00:42:00.860
The fire department is, it is totally beholden to the left-wing mayor and this left-wing
00:42:06.120
city council, I think there's one Republican on the, on the city council, but she's like
00:42:11.180
barely a Republican, you know, and these, these, these are people are so entrenched.
00:42:15.020
It's like the deep state, like California has its own, um, deep state and it's going
00:42:19.700
to be very hard to dislodge, but, but yeah, deportations, I think if they don't happen
00:42:24.900
here, look, my advice to red state people, red state governors, tell the illegals in your
00:42:32.700
I think it may have the same effect that it had on New York city.
00:42:35.600
Like, I don't want this personally, but I think nothing will change and you have to
00:42:41.160
In order to like, go get like heal and like quit, quit your, your, your addiction to illegal,
00:42:46.000
illegal immigrants, red state governors send, tell everybody in your state, go to California
00:42:50.200
and just send them, give them Gavin Newsom's home address.
00:42:52.760
He just bought a $9 million mansion in Marin County.
00:42:55.620
Give them that, give them his address, give them Karen Bass's address.
00:43:00.400
And let's see what, what happens if they wake up and there's like 10,000, um, Venezuelans
00:43:06.200
Well, and you know, they're still closer to the border that way.
00:43:10.060
So there's still, you know, relatively geographically close.
00:43:12.720
You can, you know, when you need to, when LA finally wakes up, they, they don't have to
00:43:20.740
Well, uh, peachy, I think we're going to go ahead and wrap this up.
00:43:24.560
Let me see if we have any questions from the people, but before we go, uh, I know you've
00:43:32.460
You're in the process of, of another book or, um, my new book is called super villains.
00:43:37.260
I'm writing it for passage press this time, and it is going to be another nonfiction book.
00:43:42.340
And I'm sure we'll touch on a lot of these issues.
00:43:44.300
It's literally about our favorite super villains.
00:43:49.000
Well, besides the looking for the new book, is there anywhere else you want to point people,
00:43:53.220
you know, um, sub stack or Twitter or anything else you want people to check out?
00:43:56.800
I'm going to be, my sub stack is, um, peachy keenan.com.
00:44:03.660
I would love you guys to read some of my articles there.
00:44:13.960
I'm going to DC to some parties there and hopefully we'll witness the inauguration and
00:44:21.020
Passage press has the ball going over there, right?
00:44:24.920
I will be at the carnation ball in my full incarnation garb.
00:44:29.520
All right, guys, we'll make sure you check out peachy stuff.
00:44:32.260
And of course, if it's your first time on this channel, you need to subscribe on YouTube,
00:44:40.240
If you'd like to get the broadcast as podcasts, then you need to subscribe to the Oren McIntyre
00:44:46.100
And of course, my book, the total state just came out on audio book a few weeks ago.
00:44:50.400
So if you've been holding out until you could get a listen in, you can go check that out
00:44:56.000
And don't forget, we also have merch now for the show in the merch store on the blaze.
00:45:00.500
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