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As the title of this blog implies, we live in Hollywood, which is a considerable distance from either the Palisades Fire or the Eaton Fire. and thanks be to the Almighty, we were neither burned out nor ordered to evacuate. On the other hand, the powerful wind gusts that fed the fires also brought down trees across the whole region, which in turn took down power lines and left several million households without electricity. Our own neighborhood was out from Wednesday morning to noon yesterday, so although we and our neighbors were safe, we were incommunicado.

The emerging consensus seems to be that the fires cmnstitute the worst disaster in Los Angeles history, which would put it above the previous top, the 1938 Los Angeles floods. Other lesser disasters include the 1933 Long Beach eartrhquake, the 1961 Bel Air fire, the 1965 Watts riots, the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, the 1992 Rodney King riots, and the 1994 Northridgw earthquake. But there were also strong reminders of the 1942 Battle of Los Angeles:

shortly after 2 a.m. on February 25, military radar picked up what appeared to be an enemy contact some 120 miles west of Los Angeles. Air raid sirens sounded and a citywide blackout was put into effect. Within minutes, troops had manned anti-aircraft guns and begun sweeping the skies with searchlights.

It was just after 3 a.m. when the shooting started. Following reports of an unidentified object in the skies, troops in Santa Monica unleashed a barrage of anti-aircraft and .50 caliber machine gun fire. Before long, many of the city’s other coastal defense weapons had joined in.

On top of the non-feasance by local and state leadership in managing the crisis, the performance of media across the board, both legacy and alt, was disgraceful. A good example was the so-called "Sunset Fire" on Wednesday evening:

The Sunset fire was reported at 2350 N. Solar Drive in the Hollywood Hills shortly after 5:30 p.m. and spread to 60 acres by 9:25 p.m., according to the Los Angeles Fire Department and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The fire created massive traffic jams as residents rushed to evacuate the densely populated area below Runyon Canyon.

But by the time the message was sent for a good part of Hollywood to evacuate, things were nevertheless under control:

The eastern perimeter of the fire was “holding well” at around 8:30 p.m. thanks to a fire road and the work of ground crews, according to a statement from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. And active flames were extinguished at the heel of the fire, while smoldering continued within the interior.

But the evacuiation order created a mass panic:

Traffic was bumper to bumper as people tried to flee the area, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced that the Police Department was being deployed to help manage the traffic. “We are working urgently to close roads, redirect traffic and expand access for LAFD vehicles to respond to the growing fire,” she said in a post on X.

The evacuation order was mostly lifted by midnight, entirely by early Thursday morning.

The acreage burned in the fire was also updated to 43 acres.

“Fortunately, the Sunset Fire is under control,” LAFD spokesperson Margaret Stewart said while announcing the evacuation update Thursday morning.

No structures at all were destroyed. In other words, it was a small brush fire thst was put out by routine measures, but panicked local officials overreacted, ordered a general evacuation of a good part of Hollywood, and set off a media frenzy. According to the BBC, of all outlets,

Much of the heart of Hollywood is blanketed in thick smoke. You can barely see the tops of the towering palm trees that line streets here.

It is utter chaos on the streets near the fire. People are using sweatshirts to cover their faces so they can breathe. Many are carrying bags and suitcases looking for a place to go.

Some are wearing pyjamas, clearly taken by surprise.

According to the Toronto Star,

As the Hollywood Hill fire raged Wednesday evening, several nearby landmarks like the Hollywood Bowl, the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the TCL Chinese Theatre fell under evacuation orders. Other landmarks, like the Hollywood sign and beaches in Santa Monica were photographed with plumes of thick black smoke rising in the background throughout Wednesday.

Nothing of the sort occurred; within a few hours of the evacuation order, the brush fire was out, and the authorities said mever mind. My own view was that the "Sunset fire" fiasco was the factor that led the media to back off on coverager, and they seem to have decided that having David Muir or Anderson Cooper going blah blah in front of raging flames was maybe overdoing things, and by Friday morning, they'd moved on to President Trump and Judge Merchan. The big story of Hollywood itself burning down wasn't going to happen, much as the BBC and Toronto Star wanted it to.

For now, the real issues are only startring to trickle out. I'll cover them in the next several days. But just looking at the "Sunset fire" episode, it was so quickly put out by routine firefighting tactics simply because the Hollywood water lines had adequate pressure, and a full reservoir was nearby from which helicopters could quickly draw water. Had these resources been available in Pacific Palisades, the outcome there might well have been the same as in Hollywood.

Archbishop Garcia-Siller In Context

As I reflected further on Archbishop Garcia-Siller's history of intemperate posts -- oddly reminiscent of Trump's own back in the day -- I thought about the timeline of his tenure as Archbishop of San Antonio. He was named to that post in 2010. I first learned about him when he removed Fr Christopher Phillips as pastor of the Our Lady of the Atonement parish in early 2017, and my editorial position on the old Cold Case File blog was that Phillips was overrated and something of a charlatan, and the archbishop's move was fully justified. I still think this way.

Oddly, the archbishop's current pattern of making posts on X that he's had to delete, walk back, and apologize for, didn't begin until 2019. But then he stayed away from open controversy until this past year, when in May he had to delete, walk back, and apologize for two posts critical of Israel and the Jews in general. Then, following the New Orleans Bourbon Street attack, he indirectly blamed "trump (sic)". He deleted the post, but so far, he hasn't felt the need to apologize. What's going on?

I'm starting to get the impression that times are catching up with received opinions among the Catholic hierarchy. As far as I can tell, up to now, there's been a tacit agreement among the US bishops quietly to agree to disagree and avoid public debate on key issues that could potentially be divisive. It's been clear enough that Catholic laity has been moving toward support for Trump and away from boutique issues like transgenderism, over which some bishops have been squishy, and they've been hesitant to weigh in on a losing side.

Trump's election may be changing this. Recent remarks from Chicago's Cardinal Cupich, prominent among the squishy bishops, suggest the cease-fire may be ending:

Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich has warned of “prophetic” denunciation by the U.S. bishops if President-elect Donald Trump tries to deport illegal immigrants.

In an interview this weekend with the Argentinian daily La Nación, Cardinal Cupich said that the bishops “are going to have to be prophetic and denounce any abuse of human dignity that may occur” during the Trump presidency, especially regarding immigrants.

. . . Cupich said that he and the bishops conference have “expressed our concern regarding the issue of the deportation of undocumented persons, something that could divide families and make many see the newcomers as enemies.”

. . . Cardinal Cupich has made a name for himself by suggesting moral equivalency among diverse social issues, such as immigration, abortion, capital punishment, and joblessness, provoking a sharp response from his brother bishops.

The problem is that Cathoic Social Teaching makes it clear that countries have the right to resrict immigration and control their borders:

Because there seems to be no end to poverty, war, and misery in the world, developed nations will continue to experience pressure from many peoples who desire to resettle in their lands. Catholic social teaching is realistic: While people have the right to move, no country has the duty to receive so many immigrants that its social and economic life are jeopardized.

For this reason, Catholics should not view the work of the federal government and its immigration control as negative or evil. Those who work to enforce our nation's immigration laws often do so out of a sense of loyalty to the common good and compassion for poor people seeking a better life. In an ideal world, there would be no need for immigration control. The Church recognizes that this ideal world has not yet been achieved.

Trump and those who support his policies have been successfully making the point that in fact, under Biden's open-border policies, the US has been receiving "so many immigrants that its social and economic life are jeopardized". This is evident when the native-born poor complain that new immigrants are taking the housing, food, and educatonal benefits they had previously received, or that the numbers of convicted criminals and mental patients in current unrestrricted immigration waves are creating an increased public safety problem.

A related problem has been the willingness of the squishy faction in the hierarchy to ally itself with secular leftist anti-Semitism. Alan Dershowitz makes the point,

In an act that flies in the face of the Christian Bible, the Vatican recently featured a nativity scene which laid the baby Jesus on a keffiyeh, thus accepting the false Palestinian narrative that Jesus was a Palestinian and not a Jew.

The bible of the Catholic Church expressly states that Jesus was born a Jew in the Judean city with the Hebrew name of Beth Lechem ("House of Bread," Bethlehem in English). He was born there on what has now become Christmas, around the time of the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah. He was circumcised as a Jew on New Years Day. He preached as a Jewish rabbi in the Jewish area called the Galil (Galilee in English). He was crucified as a Jewish enemy of the Romans in Jerusalem. During his lifetime, he never heard the word Christian. He lived as a Jew and died as a Jew. He did not wear a keffiyeh. The Muslim faith only began 600 years after his death. It would have been more appropriate for the Vatican to lay the baby on a Jewish tallit (prayer shawl) and wearing a Magen David (star of David). The Vatican willfully violated their own teachings by falsely trying to present him as a Palestinian.

The problem for the hierarchy is that the bishops -- many of whom are aging -- who've adopted a fashionable leftism of earlier decades are being left behind, and in fact, they've never been in step with actual Catholic teaching. At this point, even liberal bishops like Cardinal Gregory are calling the avatars of that old Catholicism like President Biden "cafeteria Catholics". The world is changing.

The old consensus held that immigration was an absolute good, with multiculturalism the end goal. Arguments contrary to progressive social attitudes was “disinformation” that must be combated by robust online censorship. People would quickly adjust to massive changes in social attitudes around sex and gender because objections would be seen as bigoted. And anyone who said anything that questioned the consensus would become a pariah.

This consensus is being rejected across the West. Donald Trump won the presidency by building a multiracial, working-class coalition that had little affection for the progressive activists who supposedly spoke for them.

It looks like the squishy bishops, in an end-phase desperate move, want to restart the old debates on the old terms. This isn't going to work, and newer bishops recognize this.

"Archbishop Garcia-Siller Apologizes. . ."

Roman Catholic Archishoop of San Antonio Gustavo Garcia-Siller became a prominent figure at my old Cold Case File blog when he removed Fr Christopher Phillips as pastor of the Our Lady of the Atonement "Anglican use" parish in that diocese. Phillips was highly popular in some traditionalist Catholic circles, especially those that favored a hybrid Anglican-Catholic liturgy that was anything but traditional.

At the time of that controversy, I was on the archbishop's side. A vocal minority at the Atonement parish objected to Phillips's cult-like leadership, and as matters developed, it appeared that he had tolerated highly questionable conduct by his deacon with teen boys. There were also allegations of financial mismanagement. In that circumstance, as I got reports from parishioners, former parishioners, and other San Antonio Catholics, the archbishop struck me as a solid, even courageous, figure.

Over the weekend, a visitor sent me links to a new controversy involving the archbishop:

San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller has again taken to social media, issuing a series of infelicitous posts that characterize president-elect Donald Trump as a “tyrant” while laying blame for violent tragedies on Trump’s rhetoric.

In a now-deleted post on X, García-Siller nonsensically proclaimed, “Thanks be to God that trump (sic) is not God. Thanks be God for ever!”

. . . Following the news that the New Year’s celebration in New Orleans’ French Quarter had become a scene of human carnage after a terrorist deemed by the FBI to be a radical Islamist plowed into crowded Bourbon Street, killing 15 and injuring many more, the archbishop wrote on X: “The killing today is the result of words and actions that leaders have demonstrated in our recent history. We should not blame others. We need to take responsibility. We need civil discourse and lots of humility and charity.”

Many saw the prelate’s words – often delivered in error-prone English – as blaming the victim rather than the evil terrorist perpetrator.

But digging into the episode a little deeper, I found that the archbishop has a a history of intemperate language on social media. On May 9, 2024,

The Archdiocese of San Antonio says Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller “deeply regrets” that some recent social media posts on the war in Gaza, several of which were deleted Thursday, have “caused confusion and misunderstanding.”

In a series of posts on X on Tuesday, García-Sillar expressed solidarity with Palestinians while also appearing to conflate the Jewish people with the state of Israel.

“Jewish brothers and sisters stop killing Palestinians. STOP!” the archbishop wrote in one now-deleted post.

A few weeks later, on May 30,

In a series of four posts on X (formerly Twitter) that have been seen by thousands of users, San Antonio's Catholic leader apologized for what he called a "very poor choice of words" in relation to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.

Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller said he was offering "my most heartfelt apology for a series of posts on X which have been seen by many as being solely a condemnation of the government of Israel and the people of that nation concerning the war in Gaza." Earlier this month, García-Siller condemned the conflict with urgent, pointed language in posts that have since been deleted, at one point appearing to directly address Jews when he wrote: "Jewish brothers and sisters stop killing Palestinians. STOP!"

On August 7, 2019,

Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller released a statement Tuesday evening apologizing for singling out President Donald Trump, but remaining steadfast that racism and violence must be rooted out of society.

"I regret that my recent Tweet remarks were not focused on the issues but on an individual," he wrote in a two-page statement sent to KSAT.com and posted on several of the San Antonio Archdioceses online platforms.

Hours before the statement, the archbishop had deleted the tweets that directly referenced the president. The string of messages were posted Monday night, two days after the killing of 22 people in an El Paso Walmart by a racist gunman who targeted Hispanics.

In his statement, the archbishop added that it is his ministry to serve spiritual needs and "express myself in ways that convey compassion, civility and build up unity."

It's worth noting that the Roman Catholic hierarchy has gradually been reconciling with Trump's resurgence. New York Cardinal Archbishop Dolan said just before Christimas,

“I’ve had talks with him before in the past where he’s pretty blunt about, you know, he can’t say that he was raised as a, as a very zealous Christian, but he takes his Christian faith seriously,” Dolan told host Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Dolan said he recently talked with Trump at the Notre Dame Cathedral, telling Trump it was “nice to see” him “somewhere besides Fifth Avenue.”

Trump and first lady Jill Biden attended the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral earlier this month. The cathedral endured a devastating fire in spring 2019 that resulted in the collapse of its spire and wooden latticework of its roof.

This comes in the wake of Cardinal Wilton Gregory calling President Biden a "cafeteria Catholic" this past Easter. Catholics in geneal supported Trump in 2024:

In 2020, the Catholic electorate — one the biggest religious blocs in the nation — was almost evenly split, with 50% backing Trump and 49% favoring Biden, a longtime member of the faith.

This year, according to VoteCast, 54% of Catholic voters supported Trump and 44% backed Harris — a shift that was particularly notable in North Carolina, Florida and Texas.

Trump improved his 2020 performance with Latins:

Donald Trump may have broken a Latino voting record for a Republican candidate in his 2024 presidential victory. With 42 percent of this bloc’s vote according to AP projections, Trump bested George W. Bush’s 2004 performance among this demographic, which today accounts for about 15 percent of the total U.S. voting population.

With 56 percent of the Latino vote, Kamala Harris continued the trend of Democratic majorities. However, Trump’s share of the Latino vote is a major improvement from his first presidential campaign in 2016 where he only captured 28 percent of the bloc’s votes and in 2020 when he captured 32 percent.

In Texas, the shift of Latin voters toward Trump was significant:

Latinos, long considered a foundational component of the Democratic Party's prospects in the Lone Star State, abandoned the progressive ship in mass during the 2024 election.

Overall, Republicans saw a 28 percent gain among Texas Latinos from 2020 to 2024.

Times are changing even among Abp Garcia-Siller's own flock. At 68, he's fairly young for an archishop, and he isn't reguired to submit a resignation letter until he's 75, but the pope isn't required to accept his resignation at that time. I think, though, that his style is increasingly out of date. The other US Catholic archbishop with a background in Mexico, Los Angeles's Jose Gómez, seems to be much more focused and careful.

Allstate Pulls CEO's Social Media Post

According to Breitbart News,

Allstate, the sponsor of Thursday’s Sugar Bowl contest between Notre Dame and Georgia, appears to have deleted CEO Tom Wilson’s post-terror attack message, which aired before the game and ignited a firestorm of controversy online.

As I noted Friday, Allstate had already issued a mushy statement sorta-kinda walking back wilson's original wording:

On Thursday, Allstate issued a statement to Fox News Digital condemning the terrorist attack and attempting to clarify its CEO’s message.

“To be clear, Allstate CEO Tom Wilson unequivocally condemns this heinous act of terrorism and violence in all forms,” the statement read. “We stand with the families of the victims, their loved ones, and the community of New Orleans. The reference to overcoming divisiveness and negativity reflects a broader commitment to fostering trust and positivity in communities across the nation.”

This need to clarify had me wondering where the pressure came from. Let's recall that Bud Light initially didn't much care that it had insulted its customer base of working straight guys by doing a sponsorship deal with Dylan Mulvaney. It was only when Bud Light distributors, not the company itself, began to feel the pinch from the boycott that the people responsible for the deal were publicly placed on leave and the company began to change course.

There was at least a flurry of X posts from people saying they were dropping their Allstate policies after Wilson's statement, and my surmise is it was Allstate agents, not the company itself, that began to get nervous and put pressure on the company. So I did some searching, and lo and behold, Allstate is already being sued by some of its agents:

Many of the individuals selling insurance through this system are hired by Allstate as “exclusive agents.” The company classifies them as independent contractors and requires them to sell exclusively for Allstate.

As a result of the independent contractor designation, these exclusive agents are expected to bear all or most of the business expenses of the agency locations that they operate. These expenses often include renting office space, advertising and marketing costs, hiring and paying staff, setting up phone lines and internet, buying required Allstate-approved computers and Allstate software, and other costs associated with operating an agency.

Plaintiffs in the pending class action lawsuit against Allstate allege that the insurance corporation is abusing the independent contractor designation by requiring exclusive agents to pay business expenses.

Independent contractors are common in the insurance industry. These individuals typically own their own agencies and client lists, sell insurance for multiple competing insurance companies, and retain their client information and intellectual property if they stop working for a given insurance provider. In fact, Allstate also sells its products through these types of agents—which they refer to as “Independent Agents” (as opposed to the “exclusive agents” at issue in this case).

Unlike Allstate’s Independent Agents, the exclusive agents hired by Allstate operate like at-will sales employees while bearing the costs of independent contractors.

. . . Allstate recently cut the commissions on auto policies sold by exclusive agents by 84 percent while restricting the variety of products they could sell. But there was no change in the expenses that agents were expected to bear. As a result, many agents—including the plaintiffs involved in our lawsuit—suffered significant losses. Many have had to close their agencies, but still have unpaid debts due to expenses they incurred working for Allstate, including paying for office leases.

In addition, throughout 2024, Allstate has imposed massive rate increases on homeowners and auto insurance policies. It turns out that Allstate has had an overall bad reputation for some time:

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) publishes a “complaint index” that ranks insurance companies in terms of the frequency of consumer complaints against them.

According to the NAIC, Allstate receives 2.71 times the number of complaints than you would expect based on its market share.

. . . Allstate’s complaint index of 2.71 places it among the worst insurance companies in the US.

. . . The American Association for Justice, a trial lawyer’s advocacy group, agrees with Allstate’s dubious “No. 1” distinction. Its ranking of the 11 worst insurance companies, as reported by the National Law Review, lists Allstate as the number one worst insurance company in the United States.

. . . If you’re going to suffer such poor service, at least Allstate should be the cheaper option. After all, you get what you pay for, right? No. CNET ranks Allstate as one of the nation’s most expensive car insurance companies despite its poor customer service record.

So nothing new here. A corporate prettyboy screwing the agents, screwing the customers, but saying all the right things and powergliding through life. All I can think, though, is that if somebody was told to pull Wilson's Sugar Bowl message, things may change.

AI, Surveillance, And Curing What Ails Us

A lot of people, I think, get a lot wrong about security and AI. Twenty years ago, when I was briefly involved in the Dartmouth alumni trustee movement, I participated in online discussions among students and alumni that taught me a lot. I discovered that a major complaint among conservative students was that they had to swap electronic ID cards to get in and out of the dorm buildings. They felt this was a restriction on their freedom.

I had a career spent partly on the road, and I thought that electronic key cards in hotels were a major advance in traveler safety. Why would anyone object to something like this? Well, they didn't like the idea that someone could look up where they'd been and when they'd gone in and out.

I tried explaining that a record like that could actually be in their favor -- in an age of unsubstantiated rape accusations, for instance, it could prove you weren't in someone's dorm when they claimed you were. They still didn't like it, and I was beginning to get a feeling it was based on a sense of elite entitlement. I soon enough lost interest in the alumni trustee movement. Alumni trustees weren't going to fix the Ivy problem.

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse is raisimng what I think are related issues with the surveillance state, but his concerns are mostly reasonable.

The concern we have is about the “surveillance state” and the creations of the Silicon Valley tech bros that are building out tools that can easily be weaponized as the contracts with the U.S government are fulfilled. President Trump will not weaponize them, but the existing tools and the DHS track and trace enhancements being built by the tech team are threats to liberty.

. . . What we have researched with Elon Musk carries many of the same background datapoints and nuance. Musk takes popular positions to cover for some very un-MAGA proposals; the H1B issue is just one facet. Overall, a technological system of surveillance and control by a few tech oligarchs is well underway.

Sundance links to an article from last September about Musk's silent partner Larry Ellison, Billionaire Larry Ellison says a vast AI-fueled surveillance system can ensure 'citizens will be on their best behavior'. One thing the article gets wrong is that it assumes these things are in the future; in fact, they're here now.

Walking down a suburban neighborhood street already feels like a Ring doorbell panopticon.

But this is only the start of our surveillance dystopia, according to Larry Ellison, the billionaire cofounder of Oracle. He said AI will usher in a new era of surveillance that he gleefully said will ensure "citizens will be on their best behavior."

There's no future tense about it -- such systems are widely in operation, but why aren't we already on our best behavior? For instance in New Orleans:

The New Orleans Office of Homeland Security boldly protects communities by operating the city’s state-of-the-art, 24/7 Real-Time Crime Center (RTCC). This nerve center proactively monitors locations across the city using advanced technology to provide critical intelligence to first responders in real time.

Opened in 2017 as part of our agency’s $40 million Citywide Public Safety Improvement initiative, the RTCC stands on the cutting edge based on global security best practices for local, state and federal public safety leaders. Analysts access hundreds of CCTV and ShotSpotter feeds while coordinating response logistics down to exact addresses of incidents including crimes and quality of life issues.

Instead of a citizenry cringing in fear of Big Brother, we simply have an increasingly empowered lumpenproletariat, which the surveillance systems struggle to keep up with. A recent episode of the A&E show Homicide Squad New Orleans covers two random and seemingly unrelated street killings that police discovered were committed by a single perp.

Det. Walter Edmond responds to a homicide in Central City, where a young woman named Cayla Kelley has sustained multiple gunshot wounds and is found dead in the street. . . . Edmond is led to a primary suspect named Earl Simmons. Edmond collects surveillance footage that places Simmons at the crime scene with Cayla and issues an arrest warrant. A few days later, a ballistics match shows that the murder weapon that killed Cayla, killed another innocent victim named Eddie Matthews. This piece of evidence breathes new life into Det. Jameson Diesburg’s investigation, who once feared the case would go cold.

The New Orleans RTCC's role in making the footage of two separate shootings in two separate areas quickly available to the detectives was mentioned only in passing. Surveillance footage from traffic cameras, business and home security systems, and doorbell cams has become an important investigative tool. The broad ability of AI technology to consolidate access to such footage is already working to improve law enforcement capability.

The probolem is that right now,things are falling apart. Public spaces and public transit are unsafe. For instance,

Barriers to protect bus drivers have been installed on [Los Angeles] Metro's entire fleet, the transit agency said Tuesday.

The barriers are designed to protect drivers. In April, the Metro board approved an emergency procurement motion to accelerate the installation following an uptick in crime on the Los Angeles transit system, some of which targeted drivers.

. . . The completion of the barrier installation comes at the end of a year that saw several high-profile crimes involving Metro, including a bus hijacking in September in which a passenger was shot and killed. That bus was equipped with a safety barrier designed to prevent a hijacker from approaching the driver and taking control of the bus.

The deadly hijacking was about six months after another Metro bus was commandeered by an armed man in downtown Los Angeles. That bus collided with cars and eventually slammed into the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. The bus driver and a woman in a car struck by the bus were injured.

For now, we can only begin to infer the connection between illegal immigration and increased crime, which primarily affects low-income and minority populations. The public expectation is clearly that Trump will move quickly to reduce the rapidly expanding criminal class, and some form of enhanced data correlation will need to be used to identify aliens with criminal records, locate them, and remove them. I would say that by and large, these methods already exist; the issue is the political will to employ them. It appears this also exists now as well.

Sundance is correct in his assumption Trump won't weaponize these capabilities. In addition, the political process has already demonstrated that weaponizing these capabilities is unpopular. For now, I think the prospect of usimng AI-related capabilities to improve the current public environment outweighs the potential danger.

Trump Can't Take Office Soon Enough

NEW: Allstate CEO Tom Wilson says Americans need to overcome their "addiction of divisiveness" and "accept people's differences" following the terror attack in New Orleans.

If only Shamsud Din Jabbar had heard this message two days ago!

The comment was made at the start of the… pic.twitter.com/WDPWZhPrru

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 2, 2025

One thing I'm hoping for is that the national mood will stop tolerating the ostentatious display of luxury beliefs. As of 2023,

Allstate CEO Tom Wilson collected $15 million in total compensation in 2022, down from $19.1 million in 2021.

Citing the company’s proxy statement filed with the SEC, Crain’s Chicago Business reported that the decrease in compensation was largely due to the annual cash bonus paid for a single year’s operating performance, which came in at 58% of Wilson's target bonus.

Since that target is three times his salary, which sat at nearly $1.4 million last year, the bonus amounted to $2.4 million.

Additionally, Wilson’s stock and options awards were at $11.2 million, increasing 6% from $10.6 million in 2021 and remaining at the board’s target level of 775% of salary.

So heck, we can be pretty sure he's got a bunch of expensive cars, a private jet, a vacation home in Aspen or Hawaii or wherever -- that's just routine, why flaunt those? Insead, flaunt your expensive beliefs!

Fans tuning into the Sugar Bowl were incensed by a statement made by Tom Wilson, the chairman, president and CEO of The Allstate Corporation, where he talked about Wednesday's terrorist attack moments before kickoff.

. . . 'Welcome to the Allstate Sugar Bowl,' Wilson's speech began. 'Wednesday, tragedy struck the New Orleans community. Our prayers are with the victims and their families.'

'We also need to be stronger together by overcoming an addiction to divisiveness and negativity. Join Allstate working in local communities all across America to amplify the positive, increase trust, and accept peoples imperfections and differences. Together we win.'

The reaction to that message was not well received in any medium, including on social media.

According to Zero Hedge:

Some questioned who exactly the comments were supposed to be aimed at given that the only ‘divisiveness’ and ‘negativity’ on display was that which motivated Jabbar to carry out his heinous attack.

. . . Allstate previously triumphed their advocacy for DEI policies in a year end report, boasting about how the company employed a declining number of white men.

I did some other searchi9ng on Tom Wilson, especially to see if anyone noticed his toupee. Yup. In 2020:

Tom Wilson wouldn't know a roof rating if it slapped his toupee off his head.

(A roof rating classifies roof construction for fire resistance, an insurance-related concept.) Or this:

Tom Wilson is old & very outdated. His thought process & ideas are antiques! Its not just TW it’s all the Sr leaders, VPs, directors. . . . Tom Wilson is an over paid, bad toupee having dinosaur!! Time for a change with new younger fresh minds!!!

The feeling seems to have been for some time that Wison is out of touch, and in areas outside his utterly conventional views on diversity. In any case, Allstate apparently felt the need to clarify, not a good sign:

To be clear, Allstate CEO Tom Wilson unequivocally condemns this heinous act of terrorism and violence in all forms. We stand with the families of the victims, their loved ones and the community of New Orleans. The reference to overcoming divisiveness and negativity reflects a broader commitment to fostering trust and positivity in communities across the nation.

It sounds, at least for now, as though his poaition at Allstate is secure -- but nobody at that level wants controversy. Allstate shouldn't have had to issue a non-clarifying clarification. This is starting to look like a corporate crisis approaching Bud Light's partnership with Dylan Mulvaney.

We'll have to see how Allstate manages it, if it does at all. The problem is that Allstate is already unpopular, and Wilson isn't an attractive figure.

"We Need Kash Patel NOW!:"

Hold up.

An FBI Agent with a nose ring who can barely speak coherent English sentences told the media that a terrorist driving a truck with an ISIS flag killing 10 Americans is NOT a terrorist attack!?!

Seriously. listen to this

We need Kash Patel NOW!pic.twitter.com/v2sjeJ2bcH

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 1, 2025

The tweets in response to this one on the thread definitely weren't unaninmously in agreement. Some didn't see anything wrong with a nose ring, while others thought an obvious grammatical error was OK, since she was clearly nervous or something. I've never been a public spokesman, but I'm broadly familiar with policies over statements to the press, and from what I see here, several things aren't quite right.

First, any public statenment made to the press concerning an incident like this is normally drafted with some care and produced in writing to be approved up the chain of command. It can't be otherwise. As far as I can tell, this wasn't done in this case -- if nothinng else, the grammatical error should have been corrected up the chain. The woman who read the release might have been winging it, got nervous, and flubbed the line she was trying to read, but that's another problem.

Law enforcement agencies have a position called "public information officer" or PIO. This may be part-time, as-needed, but news organizations have that person in their Rolodex, and cops or agents on the street know to refer any inquiries from the press to the PIO. For a street officer or agent to try to wing it with a reporter would be a disciplinary issue. The PIO in turn is selected for his or her judgment, tact, and poise when information like this has to be released.

So first, the FBI's initial announcement had a grammatical error. It isn't so much a reflection on the individual agent, Alethea Duncan, as it is on her chain of command, which either didn't catch the error in the draft phase, or it put Duncan up without being confident in her poise under pressure. My sense is that the head of the FBI New Orleans field office should have made the announcement in any case, not a low-level agent.

The next problem is that the announcment said, flat out, “This is not a terrorist event", which was almnost imnmediately contradicted by the fact that the perp had an ISIS flag on his rented truck. This was definitely somethng that higher-ups who should have approved the statement would normally have caught. If they didn't know, they should have said they didn't know. Standard "can't confirm" wording is normally part of every senior bureaucrat's vocabulary.

Finally, the nose ring. I went searching the web for any guidance on whether the FBI has a policy on body piercings. The closest I came was a reddit thread, What are your guys’ department’s/agency’s rules on piercings/tattoos?

Wondering if I can hear specific examples beyond just it having to be professional. Especially hoping to hear from anybody at FBI/DEA/HSI/USMS. I’m assuming certain things aren’t allowed most places, like septum piercings, but wanted to know if anyone had any concrete examples of what was/wasn’t allowed.

As far as I can tell, nobody indentified thenselves as FBI in replying, likely out of prudence. A few identified themselves as Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) with answers like this:

If HSI has a tattoo policy then I've never seen it. I feel like most HSI agents have at least one tattoo, I definitely know some with hand and head/neck stuff going on but no face tattoos. Obviously tattoos showing affiliation with any hate group or gang would be a problem.

I think there are restrictions against certain piercings while in training but that's for safety reasons. Don't want someone's finger going through you gauge while rolling on the mat!

A "gauge" is a large, open piercing of the earlobe. It looks like the FBI doesn't much care if you have a nose ring or not, or maybe they'd even rather you have one. I discovered, though, that policy in local police departments is typically against any sort of facial piercing, for instance:

It is the policy of the Conway Police Department to present a professional image and appearance to the public. In order to maintain this professional image and appearance, restrictions will be placed on tattoos and body piercings.

. . . Members shall not wear any item of ornamentation in their nose, eyebrow, tongue or any other location of their body that is visible while functioning in a law enforcement capacity. Female members are authorized to wear earrings however, they will be limited to two (2) per ear.

This strikes me as entirely reasonable, even to the extent that a male officer is apparently not allowed to wear earrings. This particular department allows wedding rings, but others don't for safety reasons. I would think there would also be safety-based arguments against facial piercings, since officers do sometimes get into situations where perps will bite, scratch, gouge eyes, grab noses, ears, and so forth while being placed in custody, and facial piercings could exacerbate any potential injury.

Another post on the reddit thread above says,

I know an ATF agent with gauges that actually wears them and some HSI guys who have the piercings but never wear them so they closed up. I can't remember anyone with a septum piercing. I know an HSI agent with a tongue piercing.

I've never heard any positive comments about any of these piercings.

The best I can conclude is that well-run state and local law enforcement agencies have policies designed to project an image of professionalism, as well as concern for officer safety. For whatever reason, federal agencies don't seem to have equivalent policies, and it's now affecting their image of professionalism. The problem in the New Orleans case goes beyond the individual agent, Alethea Duncan. Her chain of command was responsible for the poorly worded statement with a clumsy grammatical error, and they should have had a designated PIO with more poise to give the properly worded and spproved text.

It does look like the FBI needs a purge, but it has to be at the upper levels.