In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Speaker Mike Johnson reveals just how out of the loop and cognitively impaired Joe Biden was as President after meeting with Biden and discussing his LNG Executive Order: “Biden was not lying to me. He genuinely did not know what he had signed.” Scary. pic.twitter.com/Clbytug8e3 — Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) January 18, 2025 All of a sudden, Speaker Mike Johnson and Democrat Leader Schumer are getting in line to say they knew all along that Joe wasn't running on all cylinders. This suggests to me that even more will be coming out as Trump's staff gains access to White House records, but it's nevertheless significant that the House Speaker and then-Senate Majority Leader were aware of serious problems with Joe's ability to perform his duties but nevertheless did nothing, at least partly because they currently have no constitutional ability to initiate any sort of action. Sen Schumer is now trying to cover himself by claiming he met with Joe on July 13 of last year, j...

The self-satisfied gent with the fussy Hitler mustache in the photo is Frank L Shaw (1877-1958), who was mayor of Los Angeles fron 1933 to 1938. He was the only mayor of LA ever to be recalled, and in my view, he'll likely keep that distinction barring major changes -- as Greg Gutfeld puts it about the current situation, lots of ash, no phoenix. The newspaper story below (click on the image for a more legible copy) gives the outline of the story that led to his recall, but as Wikipedia points out , "His administration was seen as one of the most corrupt in Los Angeles history, although he had some defenders and was never charged officially with any crime." The prevailing "whig history" view of the episode portrays it in pure good-guy-vs-bad-guy terms: Fletcher Bowron, a Superior Court judge, ran against Shaw on a so-called "fusion ticket" of all good elements to recall Shaw, and he won. He was characterized by Time as "a fiercely honest ...

My first job after I left academe was as a writer with the LA City statistical bureau. In that job, I worked a lot with the fire department, and one of the first things I learned was that LAFD is a "Class 1" department. Its apparatus proudly carried, and in fact still carries, a "Class 1" designation, as you can see in the photo above (click on the image for a better view). Here's an explanation of what the ISO "Class 1" means : ISO stands for Insurance Services Office (ISO), which is an independent, for-profit organization. The ISO scores fire departments on how they are doing against its organization’s standards to determine property insurance costs. After analyzing the data it collects, the ISO assigns a Public Protection Classification (PPC) on a scale from 1 to 10. The higher the ISO fire protection class (with Class 1 being the best), the “better” the department – at least in the eyes of the ISO. To determine ISO rating for fire depa...

As I follow the unfolding scandal of the LA fires, the issue that begins to stand out is the reduction of resources to the Los Angeles City Fire Department, for instance : In a preliminary budget request for 2025/26, signed by Fire Chief Kristin Rowley, made on October 29, the LAFD asked for $96,535,000 to fund a 'fleet replacement plan'. . . . The firefighting force said in its request to the city: 'Many vehicles have surpasses their expected service life, leading to increased maintenance costs, reduces parts availability and potential downtime.' And in its formal proposal to the city in November, it requested $24,063,000 for 'new fleet/apparatus purchases'. In the preliminary budget request, the LAFD also asked for more than $1.9million to restore 16 maintenance positions 'deleted' in last year's budget. It said in its request: 'The positions support fleet maintenance, equipment engineering, purchasing and warehouse managemen...

Karen Bass was at a cocktail party while the Palisades burned. https://t.co/xjk1BcncKd pic.twitter.com/qgeulSklac — Eric Spiegelman (@ericspiegelman) January 15, 2025 Efforts to recall or defeat political figures like Gov Newsom, Mayor Bass, or others have been generally feckless in recent years. Los Angeles County voters failed twice to secure enough signatures to recall soft-on-crime district attorney George Gascon before they ultimately did vote him out in his reelection bid last year. A 2021 effort to recall Gov Newsom failed, and he was reelected in 2022 : Gov. Gavin Newsom sailed to reelection Tuesday night, easily defeating Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle in an outcome seen as so inevitable that he barely campaigned for reelection. He's term limited now, and he has to find a new job, possibly running for president in 2028, if he wants to continue his career. Mayor Karen Bass won her first mayoral election against developer Rick Caruso in 2022 by about 10%....

“Competence matters”: LA Times owner says that it was a “mistake” for his paper to endorse Karen Bass for Mayor in 2022 pic.twitter.com/Y6btIn2dW7 — Rantingly (@rantinglydotcom) January 13, 2025 Mark Halperin had Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong, currently best known as the owner of the Los Angeles Times, on his Morning Meeting 2WAY show yesterday morning for an extended interview, along with his co-hosts Sean Spicer and Dan Turrentine. For all rhe hoopla, there wasn't much to it: Dr Soon-Shiong is best known for vetoing the Times editorial board's decision to endorse Kamala for president last November, then asking CNN conservative commentator Scott Jennings to join the same editorial board. More recently, as we see above, he's said it was a “mistake” for his paper to endorse Karen Bass for Mayor in 2022, which he repeated in the Halperin interview. And that's just about it. What's the big deal? Wikipedia says Jennings "worked in the George W. Bush administration a...

The current news about the Los Angrles fires carries a remarkable echo of the great LA noir film Chinatown (1974). The MacGuffin of that film involves the suspicion of Hollis Mulwray, the Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Departmnent of Water and Power, that huge quantities of water are being diverted from a city reservoir every night despite a drought. Mulwray is murdered as he tries to investigate, which leaves private detective Jake Gittes to unravel the mystery. Much of this year's story involves Janisse Quiñones, the Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and why a city reservoir intended to store water for the Pacific Palisades area was empty and unable to provide water to fight fires in that part of the city , which resulted in local hydrants going dry at a critical time. On Mayor Karen Bass's orders, the city maxed out its budget to 'attract private-sector talent', hiring Department of Water and Power (LADWP) CEO Janisse Quiñ...