Good morning from my Hunker-Bunker overlooking the Puget Sound built into the hills of West Seattle. It is 0500 and I have just finished making a four-egg omelette using eggs that cost me a dollar each. And that wasn’t even the most expensive in the Thriftway down the street.
Now granted, damn near everything you buy in this particular grocery store is about a buck more than the very same item further down the street at QFC. But the way I see it, I could save that buck in the price at QFC, but cost me that same buck in gas driving there. And driving means dealing with that many more transplanted drivers from elsewhere who can’t drive to save their lives.
I heard a lot of “day one” promises made back in November. One of them was to magically lower the price of eggs on “day one”. Because for some reason, those nasty Democrats were deliberately keeping the price of eggs high.
The actual reason for the high price of eggs located in those “grocery” stores isn’t quite as sexy as accusing an entire political party for being behind the high costs.
Bird flu, shmerd flu. Ain’t nobody buying that load of crap. Not when we KNOW that “Sleepy Joe” secretly ordered that all hen houses raise their rates. That deep state action, the “enemy within” was at it again…
But all of this is going to magically be fixed on ‘day one’, right? Are we still on schedule for that?
Today I plan on continuing on with the assembling of my new podcasting studio. I’ve been converting the old sound studio I’ve had here for the past fifteen years into a broadcast studio. I have all of the equipment — you might say I’ve gone a bit overboard on it, considering I have four Blackmagic Designs cameras, a ATEM Mini Pro ISO, a soundboard, a director’s monitor, lights, green screens, and now the time to finish setting it all up.
But first, the news..
The myth of the unarmed Liberal
The Armed Homeowners Defying the Rules of L.A.’s Burn Zones
LOS ANGELES—In the still-smoldering neighborhoods of Altadena, where fires destroyed more than 2,700 structures, about 80 people have defied orders to evacuate, staying behind to protect what is left of their properties from looters and more fires after losing faith in authorities.
Residents patrol streets and interrogate strangers, living in a Hobbesian world without electricity or clean drinking water. Some are armed. They are hemmed in by yellow caution tape at neighborhood entrances flanked by National Guard troops, Los Angeles County Sheriff deputies and California Highway Patrol officers.
“We do feel like we’re in the Wild West,” said Aaron Lubeley, a 53-year-old lawyer who is one of the holdouts and serves as an unofficial emissary with police and fire representatives.
If Lubeley and the others try to leave, they risk being unable to return. On Monday, one of Lubeley’s friends, Janely Sandoval, delivered essentials. The real-estate broker drove her white Mercedes SUV up to the neighborhood checkpoint and stacked supplies for Lubeley and others at the makeshift border: water, bagels, bananas, grain-free tortilla chips and other staples.
“Can you guys hurry up?” one officer told Sandoval as she finished. “We just got an order not to allow any supplies through.”
Before Sandoval departed, Lubeley asked, “Can I hug my friend?”
The officer nodded, and Lubeley and Sandoval embraced across the yellow caution tape.
MY TAKE:
I promise that if I were in a similar situation and it was my home still standing, I would be staying also. And I am armed.
But I also understand why the cops want everyone out of the area, but they aren’t thinking about this correctly. The cops are needed elsewhere, but the properties do need to be protected from not only looters but also dousing hot spots that can remain for days, if not weeks under the piles of ashes. Deputize these people, give them radios for communication, and give them the fucking supplies that they need.
This isn’t all that complicated, This is their property, they have an invested interest in keeping it, and their neighbor’s properties safe.
But what about the raking and grooming of the forests?
Fire-scarred Los Angeles has been given another rare warning
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Millions of Southern Californians were on edge as a final round of dangerous fire weather was forecast for the region on Wednesday, along with a rare warning of a “Particularly Dangerous Situation” for an area near where two massive blazes have killed at least 25 and destroyed thousands of homes.
Firefighters got a reprieve Tuesday when winds were unexpectedly light and they were able to make progress battling the two huge Los Angeles area fires and quickly snuff out several new fires.
The Eaton Fire burning just north of Los Angeles and the Palisades Fire that destroyed much of the seaside LA neighborhood of Pacific Palisades broke out Jan. 7 in conditions similar to what’s expected Wednesday. High winds last week pushed flames at remarkable speed and carried fire-sparking embers sometimes miles away.
The National Weather Service issued red flag warnings – done when temperatures are warm, humidity is low and strong winds are expected – from 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. from the Central Coast 275 miles (443 kilometers) south to the border with Mexico. The “Particularly Dangerous Situation” was in effect for an area that includes parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
“Key message: We are not out of the woods yet,” the weather service said in a post late Tuesday. “The winds underperformed today, but one more enhancement could happen tonight-tomorrow.”
MY TAKE:
I live in a forested area. Forest management IS a thing, and it is performed almost religiously by the Department of Natural Resources. Yet still, trees burn when they are dry from drought. They burn when struck by lightening. They burn when they rub against each other.
Looking out my window right now, I see the Olympic Mountains across the Sound. It’s home to a fantastic rain forest, with the fantastic green moss and gigantic tree trunks of old-growth trees. I own property in Humptulips, Washington and it is damn wet most of the year. It can rain so hard that the rain will go straight past the window seals on your car and fill up the doors with water. People who live over there drill holes in the bottom of their car doors to drain the water.
Yet the forest still burns over there. Added to the problem is the fact that like Los Angeles, the elevations create natural wind ducts where the wind off of the ocean gets accelerated inside these natural air ducts, and causes any fire to burn hot and travel fast.
Los Angeles has these fantastic hills with natural fast-growing vegetation that tends to burn when dry. Most of the time it is fairly manageable — a small burn that is contained fairly quickly. Unless there is a sustaining wind.
How low can you go?
…about goin-high, it seems…
Johnson confirms ‘discussions’ on tying wildfire aid to debt limit
House Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed to reporters Monday there’s “been some discussion” of tying California wildfire aid to a debt limit increase, after GOP members raised the issue with Donald Trump in several meetings at the President-elect’s Florida resort this weekend.
The notion that Congress could make the release of disaster relief dollars conditional upon also agreeing to raise the debt ceiling is already facing pushback from some Democrats.
But many California Republicans, including Rep. Doug LaMalfa, said in a brief interview Monday they may have no choice but to pursue that option given the potential urgency around addressing the Los Angles fires, paired with the reality that the nation could default on its borrowing authority in a matter of months.
Linking the two issues together could bring a larger coalition of support to the table from both sides of the aisle and allow Johnson (R-La.) to deliver Trump a debt ceiling increase sooner rather than later.
LaMalfa also noted, however, that it will “take a little time” to assess the damage in California and estimate how much money will be needed on top of the $100 billion Congress made available for natural disasters at the end of last year.
He added that a bipartisan negotiation over wildfire aid and the debt ceiling could actually be a positive exercise for lawmakers early in the year. But it could also be complicated and quickly grow unwieldy: LaMalfa, the chair of the Congressional Western Caucus, said he expects lawmakers from states that were hit hard by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, including North Carolina, to also press for more federal disaster relief money if wildfire aid is also made available.
MY TAKE:
I will consolidate below.
What goes around comes around
Sen. Rounds: Tying debt limit to California aid ‘not meant as a penalty’
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said Monday that tying the debt limit to California aid for the recent deadly wildfires it has experienced is “not meant as a penalty.”
Earlier in the conversation with NewsNation’s Blake Burman on “The Hill,” Burman asked Rounds about the potential of fire aid being “tied to increasing the debt limit.”
“I think it will have to be, because we simply can’t provide the assistance unless we have the ability to borrow the money to do so,” Rounds replied.
Rounds later added that “the secretary of the Treasury has already advised us that we are using extraordinary means in order to pay our bills, until such time as we increase the debt limit again.”
“It’s not meant as a penalty, or it’s not meant to slow down the delivery,” Rounds said, talking about the fire aid and debt limit connection. “It simply means that we’ll have to expedite the discussion about the debt ceiling.”
[…]
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) also said Monday that California doesn’t “deserve” funding after wildfires unless the state “make[s] some changes.”
“If you go to California, you run into a lot of Republicans, a lot of good people, and I hate it for them, but they are just overwhelmed by, by these inner-city woke policies with the people that vote for them,” Tuberville said on Newsmax’s “The Chris Salcedo Show.”
“And it … you know, I don’t mind sending them some money. But unless they show that they’re going to change their ways and get back to building dams and storing water, doing the — the maintenance with the brush and the trees and everything that everybody else does in the country, and they refuse to do it, they don’t deserve anything, to be honest with you, unless they show us they’re going to make some changes,” he added.
MY TAKE:
I will consolidate below.
Remove the debt ceiling altogether.
Mike Johnson wants to raise the debt limit until 2029
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Tuesday he wants to raise the debt ceiling until the end of Donald Trump’s presidency in 2029.
Why it matters: That would be a heavy lift for Republicans and would likely require them to solicit votes from House Democrats.
- In an acknowledgement of that dynamic, Johnson has floated the idea of tying wildfire aid to California to passage of a debt ceiling increase.
- Trump has suggested he wants the debt ceiling taken off his plate so congressional Democrats can’t use it as leverage.
Driving the news: Johnson told Punchbowl News that a four-year debt limit extension would be “ideal,” his office confirmed to Axios.
- But the House speaker acknowledged such a lengthy timeline could be “costly” in terms of concessions to Democrats.
MY TAKE:
So they want to politicize a natural disaster still going on in order to change an arbitrary date on a rule that has no basis in law or the constitution in order to be able to make giant tax cuts for billionaires such as President Musk and to a lesser extent his co-pilot and public distraction, President Trump.
Why stop there? Get rid of the “debt ceiling” forever. It’s a political farce that you have just now unwittingly proven to be such, and should never see the light of day again. This is a rule that stops the payment of authorized debt already incurred, debt that MUST be paid unless it is your intent to take down the US Dollar and let some other currency take over.
This “DEBT” that has people wound up is not your kitchen table economics ‘debt’. It’s more of a ledger crisis where the books don’t settle the same way. Unlike the federal government, you can’t print your own currency to control the flow in order to change the value in order to skim a substantial return via the supply and demand of the currency itself.
Every year for DECADES, the Defense Department hasn’t been able to balance its books. Year over year it cannot account for hundreds of billions of bucks. How much of that is reflected in that ‘national debt’ farce? Most, of not all of it?
It’s not debt in the classical sense. It’s just an accounting tool. It’s money the government owes to itself — and was borrowed from the Social Security trust fund in the form of US Bonds.
The “Ponzi Scheme” that Republicans like to call Social Security started when THEY started robbing the trust fund to balance the books way back during Reagan. And they’ve been trying like hell to figure out how to put that money back before 2035.
The ONLY way they can do that is not to lower taxes on the billionaires, but raise them. Also, raise the maximum cap on contributions to social security by at least double.
“You will not do that. I am not a child. I am not a child. If you want to take it outside.”
Nancy Mace Challenges Democratic Rival to a Fight on House Floor
A meeting of the House Oversight Committee erupted into chaos when Nancy Mace challenged a Democratic lawmaker to a fight.
The Republican congresswoman, a lighting rod for controversy in recent months, was offended that Jasmine Crockett had called her “child” while criticizing her fixation on anti-trans messaging.
“Somebody’s campaign coffers really are struggling right now,” Crockett said of Mace. “So she can’t keep saying trans, trans, trans, so that people will feel threatened. And child, listen—”
Mace immediately interrupted, yelling: “I am no child! Do not call me a child. I am no child. Don’t even start. I am a grown woman, 47 years old.”
While Crockett tried to continue speaking, Mace kept screaming.
“I have broken more glass ceilings,” Mace shouted over Crockett. “You will not do that. I am not a child. I am not a child. If you want to take it outside.”
Crockett: Somebody’s campaign coffers are struggling right now so she’s going to keep saying trans trans trans.. Child listen
Mace: I am no child! Do not call me a child. I am a grown woman. If you want to take it outside pic.twitter.com/o2EBHzcwoT
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 14, 2025
Meanwhile, the committee’s chairman, Republican Rep. James Comer, pounded his gavel and repeatedly called for order to no avail.
Shortly after the meeting, Crockett addressed the heated moment on X, writing: “Nancy Mace loved the ‘uneducated’ as Trump calls them. Please explain to me how the same damn Karen that called Cap Police on a child who shook her hand wanted to act like she wanted to fight me?!
“ME… the same person who has represented real killers in court. She’s an attention seeking loser who clearly has some fundraising goals to hit… and to be clear that is the only thing that she will hit…
“SN: Republicans incite violence from the highest levels of government & ALSO claim to be the party of law & order,” she continued. “The two cannot be true! Do yourself a favor, decide to require better of your electeds. Last I checked, threatening members in a committee room doesn’t exactly reduce the cost of eggs.”
MY TAKE:
“I’ll meet you out behind the gym after school”
But she’s not a child?
Over-priced, under-utilized. What was the point?
Even Harvard M.B.A.s Are Struggling to Land Jobs
Landing a professional job in the U.S. has become so tough that even Harvard Business School says its M.B.A.s can’t solely rely on the university’s name to open doors anymore.
Twenty-three percent of job-seeking Harvard M.B.A.s who graduated last spring were still looking for work three months after leaving campus. That share is up from 20% the prior year, during a cooling white-collar labor market; the figure was 10% in 2022, according to the school.
“We’re not immune to the difficulties of the job market,” said Kristen Fitzpatrick, who oversees career development and alumni relations for HBS. “Going to Harvard is not going to be a differentiator. You have to have the skills.”
Harvard isn’t the only elite business school where recent grads seem to be stumbling on their way into the job market. More than a dozen top-tier M.B.A. programs, including those at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and New York University’s Stern School of Business, had worse job-placement outcomes last year than any other in recent memory.
Most M.B.A.s from top schools end up with good-paying jobs, and school officials say they have an edge in the white-collar job market. But the three-month figure is closely watched because it signals hiring demand for corporate climbers in high-wage fields and it usually gives schools a statistic to woo young professionals into investing in a management degree.
Ronil Diyora received his M.B.A. from the University of Virginia’s top-ranked Darden School of Business last spring, aiming to change careers from manufacturing operations to technology. Diyora, 30, said he’s applied to at least 1,000 jobs so far and attends networking meetups in San Francisco, but wonders if he was naive about changing industries.
“Ask me in two years,” Diyora said of whether his graduate degree was worth it.
MY TAKE:
You can’t swing your briefcase without hitting another out-of-work MBA. Besides, having an Ivy League degree doesn’t guarantee they know anything.
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