what the fuck they’re talking about discuss the fire situation. I’m about 3 miles from the Eaton fire and it’s just unreal devastation. The wind that night was surreal. Transformers exploding all over my hood, trees down everywhere.
They say 4-5000 structures burned in Altadena, which is full of gorgeous craftsman and Spanish homes (many owned by blue collar families for decades), and it’s an “affordable” enclave full of first-time home buyers. It’s a little lawless up there (unincorporated LA County ftw) and that’s what’s cool about it. Impossible to quantify how much has been lost. No idea what it’s gonna look like in five years.
I'm on the East coast but a long time friend lives in Pasadena. I'm not exactly sure where, and it looks like he was spared, for now anyway. This is his FB post from about 8:30 pm Pacific time Friday: "Smoke partially lifted and cleared today. For those who lost homes, businesses, and other parts of their community, it is actually worse than reported. Everything is covered in gray ash; a black/white scene of destruction in a formerly colorful community. The smell lingers, and the threat continues (3% containment). It will take years to rebuild. The sound of moving forward has yet to start. Shock is the prevailing mood. It is difficult to know what to do. Through the distance of TV, I have watched this happen in other communities. Now I understand much better. I feel like one of the lucky ones, but that does not feel good in this context. It all happened very quickly, and the answers are coming very slow...if at all. Thanks to all who reached out. Family and community are ultimately our most important and lasting connections."
Took a taxi tonight from Athen's airport to downtown (Athens, Greece). One of the first questions asked was what was the latest i knew on the fires. Having just listened to Matt, i made an observation or two. It's wild to think the worldwide awareness this event has garnered.
I've still never encountered anyone who told me they believe in Pizzagate, but if I do, I plan to calmly and patiently listen to their hypotheses about Satanic pedophilia, then hit them with, "Yeah, but PIZZA. Mmmmmmm."
Some of you here with special concern/interest in the LA fires might be interested in Leighton Woodhouse's latest Substack post, "Anti-Wokeness Is a Mental Autoimmune Disorder", subtitled "The LA fires have nothing to do with DEI." Nobody would describe Woodhouse as woke, and I thought it was pretty good. I thought Michael's description of southern California and its fire regimes was pretty spot-on, although I have spent little time there. As a retired wildlife/forest ecologist, I was on a fire crew here in my part of Appalachia for some years. Sometimes on wildfire details, more often helping conduct prescribed burns in hardwood forests, a few prairie burns. I had the chance to go west several times, but no desire. You can pretty much always jump over the flame height on wildfires here. And what I've seen of southern California fires I wanted nothing to do with, even in my most macho younger days. My heart goes out to all those losing their homes, businesses, and sometimes loved ones.
Altadena is a shabby, proudly unincorporated little town in a pretty part of LA. We moved here in 2015 because my wife sends things to other planets. Yes, Leah, some foxes really are aerospace engineers.
Last October we were on the Cape watching the LARGEST SPACECRAFT EVER launch for Jupiter on a Falcon Heavy. On it, four instruments my wife oversaw. It was a glorious culmination of a five-year slog.
Last Tuesday, warm in a Colorado condo with our two dogs enjoying apres ski, we received word of a serious wind event and a small fire in Eaton Canyon. Concerning, but not unusual for Altadena—we’ve made it through others. [EATON, not “Easton,” Matt “sugar walls” Welch].
That afternoon, a friend collected a few essentials from our house, evacuated his own home later that evening amid a rain of cinders, and we sat there as it snowed trying to piece together info from Facebook pages and feckless local news reporters.
I hated that fucking chimney and had been scheming to remove it in a future, imagined remodel.
We drove back from Colorado and arrived yesterday. Now we’re safe in a dreary corporate suite in Monrovia where we’ve started negotiating endless man-made road blocks designed over decades to prevent anyone from recovering from this (largely) man-made natural disaster.
I went to our town last night to see what I could. It’s encircled by National Guard and LA’s finest stationed at all inbound streets, taped off on at least two sides like a crime scene investigation. Big, ugly military transports are stationed on most of the street entrances. I really don’t think my Land Cruiser would be any match for some of the 50 caliber machine guns I saw.
But because I know where I’m going, I (genuinely) accidentally transgressed the cordon sanitaire. Inside, there is no power and the streets are lined with ash-covered cars. I probably could have gone wherever I’d wanted merely by driving and acting confidently. The smatterings of law enforcement, national guard, and utility workers within seemed like nice folks. I spoke to several as I tried to find my way back out. One deputy seemed unsure about which street she was on and gestured vaguely toward Long Beach. I was reminded of cub scouts, standing around, den-motherless, none of them sure when the pinewood derby would start.
The air is rancid. It’s not great in Monrovia, but in Altadena and far south, it is unfit for human consumption, probably known to the State of California to cause cancer. I’m sure someone is printing the warning labels right now.
California could and should be paradise. I grew up here (Nor Cal) in the 70s and 80s and remember the endless, self-righteous battles by adults to stop—the dam, the hydroelectric facility, the reservoir, the nuclear plant, the bridge, the subdivision, the road, the street, the highway, the bypass, the development, the shopping center, the sports facility. As a kid, I loved visiting my grandparents in Paradise, which was reduced to cinders in 2018.
Yes, we plan to rebuild. But there are rules. In almost the same time my wife and thousands of colleagues, designed, built, assembled, tested, and launched an enormous ice-mapping, solar-powered space robot, the County of LA has been unable to approve our plans to build a simple detached garage on our land in our town.
RE: Kmele noting Matt's sensual new look, I think that's probably part of a larger "Welch Erotica" plan that surfaced for a brief but intense moment in the chat a few days ago iykyk
at the risk of being anti-climatic🤔(and to allay any concerns) it was just yet another episode of wordplay on your name courtesy of the impish chat and indicative of the clever but juvenile fan base ya'll seem destined to attract:
I’d be lying if I said I knew who that was before googling, but yeah, I can see it. I’ve been told (by Moynihan) that I look like Andy Levy 😕 . . . Still waiting for someone to tell me I look like Matt Damon, but it hasn’t happened yet for some reason.
Brandon Johnson is an unmitigated disaster, but congestion pricing has a good track record and early data in NYC also suggests reasons to be optimistic. Israeli economist Omer Moav has spoken about the topic at length and his material is pretty digestible and easy to find.
I do have some hesitation about Chicago in particular because its public transit system is more or less star-shaped - it's very difficult to get between two points that are not roughly on the same straight line away from the Loop without taking a detour through the Loop. If that is ever addressed, however, I think a congestion charge for the Loop would make a lot of sense.
Chicago is tricky because like you said, if you come from outside the core it is still quicker (outside of rush hour) with transfers to drive in. Though I expect most will be able to pay congestion fee, even if they grit their teeth.
Where do you think it should be applied to? should looping around downtown on lakeshore be covered?
Hearing Matt talk about the cascading failures in this state have me thinking - is this finally the tipping point where people wise up and maybe we can run things better? Or is it the tipping point where I need to get out of here as fast as possible?
If the past few election cycles have taught me anything, it's that I want to live someplace where if elected officials from either party start fucking things up, a majority of the electorate will turn on them.
Talk to Will Swaim at California Policy Center - he's talked about the insane salaries for firefighters (even before overtime) that severely impact the number that can be hired, etc.
Yeah, CalFire's pay is high enough that it siphons off staffing for the Federal side of wildland fire (which is the main vehicle for wildland fire in most Western states outside of CA). Fire procurement and aviation are wild cost drivers as well, probably more so. Aviation resources and those contracts sink the big bucks
For those interested, "contained" and "controlled" are both kinda funky terms of art in wildland fire usage, and subjective. Containment percentage at least used to mean fireline or other containment was around x percentage of the fire's perimeter. Current definitions have it as 'control line that can be expected to hold'. So it's totally a judgement call when you have super brutal Santa Ana winds pushing against any control you establish, you could have impermeable surfaces all around that would control a lesser fire, but that wind is going to throw embers and burning material way down the line.
All, great episode. About the democrats and progressives *rethinking* things and acknowledging that they actually existed, I.e. an immigration issue and all the headlines Michael mentioned. Something I wish you mentioned is not the normal people coming to terms (although that is good to see), but the crazy making effect this has had to anyone somewhat sane right of center.
As of the election night (being in Chicago with all liberal-centrist friends), I am watching coverage with 10 friends and I am the only one who didn’t vote for Harris. I get in an argument/discussion about immigration (and other topics, I.e. trans treatment of children), and it wasn’t even “you have a bad opinion on this” or any middle ground. Instead it was “here’s our INSANE right wing friend who is so delusional and misguided by his insane right wing outlets, that he’s just going insane talking about a fantasy that bears no semblance to reality”.
There wasn’t even a discussion on any topic because not a single person even granted there was an issue to begin with. Anything I said was just immediately dismissed as a total confection of my mind. And, as I got frustrated and pressed the topic all were easily able to pull up legitimately 10s to 100s of articles from *prestigious* news organizations that also immediately confirmed it was a fantasy.
I do not bring this up to get a “I was right” pat on the back, I bring it up and I hope you all do not lose sight of it because I think that component explains so much more of the rightward/maga shift we have seen in the country than anyone gives credit for. It isn’t being right and just not believed. It is being right and being not told you’re wrong and able to discuss it, but being told you are an insane, crazy fantasist who has lost their grip on reality.
I work in real estate. We manage hotels and dealt with localities dealing with migrants and wanting to use our hotels for periods of time. I have had those meetings, it impacts our business, I have seen the properties and the migrants in person, I lived a life that interacts with it directly. My friends all know this too (that this is my work), yet when it gets to a political discussion, I’m an insane person making up fantasies and making up stories while cloth, because fucking Axios, WaPo, The Atlantic, NYT, etc etc etc all said it was a fantasy and I must have been dreaming the whole time.
That aspect of these issues and the media and the reckoning they’re having needs to be addressed and it needs to be hammered home. Because I believe the country will continue to swing wildly and continue to become more polarized and violent. It’s absolutely crazy making and it makes one’s blood boil and see red to basically be called a dipshit by someone (even friends, maybe moreso friends who you respect and trust), who has no idea what they’re talking about while you’ve experienced it directly. And my friends aren’t stupid or ignorant. Most are not at all paying attention to politics that closely and just read these outlets information and think they’re okay because they cross referenced the information with 10 other outlets. In a sane world that should be enough. None expect that all these outlets are all actively lying for political purposes and goals and purposefully misleading them. Which they 100% are, I know you all are 10,000x more involved in media than me; however, I have had many personal anecdotes from friends and acquaintances in these spaces that have said they’re knowingly lying, enough to be quite certain that if it’s not ubiquitous, it’s definitely still an issue.
These outlets need to have a serious public, mea culpa, that outlines exactly what they’ve known, where they misstepped, and how they won’t do it in the future. Or, they need to be burned to the ground and rebuilt from the ashes. The current status quo of them all acting as apparatchiks for one side of the aisle where one side is Hitler until they’re out of office, when it is okay to then actually come to terms with everything they did well, and the other side are angels doing everything the best they can, until they’re out of office (now) and they can start admitting all the terrible shit they did, is just completely unsustainable.
Another being Bidens health condition. I know you all have a pretty balanced view of what people knew and what they were reporting on, and give a ton of people the benefit of the doubt. I hated Trump (still do though slightly less so), and when Biden came into office in 2021 I told everyone I knew he was mentally deficient. Screamed it from the rooftops. I knew this because I watched his interviews (when he’d give them), I watched his press conferences, I watched him speak over and over and over and over again…. And he was so unquestionably mentally deficient and degraded it was 100% impossible to believe otherwise.
To think there were still think pieces and people going to bat for him in June 2024 when he was 30% worse (whatever that means) while also calling themselves reporters, is just lying or incompetence to a degree where if they were in legitimately any other industry (besides politics I guess - which is what they are, they aren’t news) they’d have been fired 100 times over by then. Remember “cheap fakes”? Are you really going to say that wasn’t explicitly lying? The whole idea of cheap fakes was that right wing outlets ran a video in an unflattering manner to make Biden look worse. It wasn’t the video was altered, or manipulated in some manner. It was just they didn’t like how Biden looked.
That is another one I got in arguments with people about. I’d say Biden is degraded. They’d say no he isn’t, here are 20 articles that say he isn’t. Then I’d say, why in the hell do you need an article? Just look at him, watch the videos yourself, make your own judgement. And they’d respond, well look at these articles, they all say those videos are fake.
That’s the kicker with the whole cheap fake episode. No one ever showed the videos that depicted Biden well. They just said the ones that were bad were *fakes*. And that is why I say they’re outright liars or they all need to be burned to the ground.
Someone comes to me and says “hey, this buyer misrepresented the data, it’s inaccurate”. The FIRST FUCKING THING YOU FOLLOW UP WITH IS “ok, so what’s the real data, what’s the real picture, what is it all actually?”
Are you seriously telling me no one at any of these organizations said that? Someone went into an office and said “hey this is a cheap fake” and every producer, writer, camera man, assistant, person walking by the fucking office just went “ok, sounds good” and they just went with it? Didn’t ask “ok, well what did Biden actually do/say/behave here then?” Really? That just can’t be right unless again they were all lying or should be burned to the ground. A 3rd grade lemonade stand runs more appropriately.
As you can see, this whole topic drives me insane and that is the entire point. That is why I think there are so many people swinging and explains things much more clearly. I don’t think people held beliefs on politics have changed this much, if even at all. I think people are fucking furious for being told they’re crazy by millions of people who have no idea what they’re talking about when they literally deal with these issues and experience them directly in their day to day life. It makes people see red and say “fuck you, you’re pissing on my face and telling me it’s raining, I’ll literally vote for anyone else in the world as long as they’re not doing that”.
“Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
At approximately 2:44pm (20 minutes later) Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot by law enforcement while attempting to jump through a broken window and into the Speaker’s Lobby.
These two data points taken together are actually shocking. Whatever was true (regarding security) at the time of the Babbitt shooting was also true 20 minutes earlier when Trump threw Pence under the bus in that tweet. And, of course, we know what was true- lawmakers were still being evacuated and the area beyond the door to the speakers lobby was not secure. It was obvious from the footage of the shooting that anyone who crossed that threshold was going to be shot.
And one would think the President would have access to any and all relevant information of this sort. The situation on the ground was obviously quite “hot” during these few minutes in this particular area. And how did our President behave? Like a reckless ten year old little bitch throwing a tantrum.
I don’t care if there were 1000 FBI agents on the ground that day acting as agent provocateurs. It doesn’t change my mind about Trump’s role in this whole thing- including his role in this poor, misguided, conspiracy addled woman’s death.
Trump’s tweet about Pence has gotten a lot of coverage but the timing of it is rarely emphasized. But it seems pretty damning to me. I was glad to hear Christine Rosen tell Sam Harris that she thinks the Senate should have voted to impeach Trump, which would have prevented him from a second term. I agree. Rosen is really smart so I feel like I’m in good company.
Add to that- Kevin Williamson and Megan McArdle who have both said that Trump is a threat to democracy.
Additionally- Nick Gillespie, Jonah Goldberg, Matt Welch who have all used the word “disqualifying” in reference to Trump’s actions on January 6th.
But somehow, because CNN and MSNBC called it an insurrection and engaged in embarrassing hyperbole about it being the darkest day in American history, millions of people have become convinced that the coverage of that day was overblown and that the whole event wasn’t actually as bad as it initially seemed.
Again- two data points are all you need to understand that this guy is way too reckless to be anywhere near the presidency.
The saddest part is that, while it is very obvious from the video that anyone crossing the threshold would be shot, I think it was not obvious to her. She was screened by the people further ahead of her and she probably did not have a clear view of the officer, and given the noise it's possible she did not hear his commands.
That said, she almost certainly had line of sight to several Congressmen. How could anyone think they would be allowed to get within punching distance of a member of Congress? Just utterly moronic and wasteful.
I think your points are more or less right, and the media's 4 year bitch fit about Trump prevented his supporters and even a lot of centrists from caring. Classic boy who cried wolf.
@matt - great to hear someone who knows
what the fuck they’re talking about discuss the fire situation. I’m about 3 miles from the Eaton fire and it’s just unreal devastation. The wind that night was surreal. Transformers exploding all over my hood, trees down everywhere.
They say 4-5000 structures burned in Altadena, which is full of gorgeous craftsman and Spanish homes (many owned by blue collar families for decades), and it’s an “affordable” enclave full of first-time home buyers. It’s a little lawless up there (unincorporated LA County ftw) and that’s what’s cool about it. Impossible to quantify how much has been lost. No idea what it’s gonna look like in five years.
Hope you stay safe
Likewise!
I'm on the East coast but a long time friend lives in Pasadena. I'm not exactly sure where, and it looks like he was spared, for now anyway. This is his FB post from about 8:30 pm Pacific time Friday: "Smoke partially lifted and cleared today. For those who lost homes, businesses, and other parts of their community, it is actually worse than reported. Everything is covered in gray ash; a black/white scene of destruction in a formerly colorful community. The smell lingers, and the threat continues (3% containment). It will take years to rebuild. The sound of moving forward has yet to start. Shock is the prevailing mood. It is difficult to know what to do. Through the distance of TV, I have watched this happen in other communities. Now I understand much better. I feel like one of the lucky ones, but that does not feel good in this context. It all happened very quickly, and the answers are coming very slow...if at all. Thanks to all who reached out. Family and community are ultimately our most important and lasting connections."
Took a taxi tonight from Athen's airport to downtown (Athens, Greece). One of the first questions asked was what was the latest i knew on the fires. Having just listened to Matt, i made an observation or two. It's wild to think the worldwide awareness this event has garnered.
I've still never encountered anyone who told me they believe in Pizzagate, but if I do, I plan to calmly and patiently listen to their hypotheses about Satanic pedophilia, then hit them with, "Yeah, but PIZZA. Mmmmmmm."
It would take more than pizza to lure me into a satanic cult. But pizza would be a very strong opening move.
“Yeah well if you’ve got a better way of harvesting adrenochrome, I’d like to hear it.”
never trust someone who doesn't like pizza
Although, with Bill Clinton visiting Epstein’s island I ask you how far off that conspiracy really was in the end
Yeah conspiracy aside if we’re being honest about it the politicians and Hollywood sure do sounds awfully pedo friendly
Some of you here with special concern/interest in the LA fires might be interested in Leighton Woodhouse's latest Substack post, "Anti-Wokeness Is a Mental Autoimmune Disorder", subtitled "The LA fires have nothing to do with DEI." Nobody would describe Woodhouse as woke, and I thought it was pretty good. I thought Michael's description of southern California and its fire regimes was pretty spot-on, although I have spent little time there. As a retired wildlife/forest ecologist, I was on a fire crew here in my part of Appalachia for some years. Sometimes on wildfire details, more often helping conduct prescribed burns in hardwood forests, a few prairie burns. I had the chance to go west several times, but no desire. You can pretty much always jump over the flame height on wildfires here. And what I've seen of southern California fires I wanted nothing to do with, even in my most macho younger days. My heart goes out to all those losing their homes, businesses, and sometimes loved ones.
Altadena is a shabby, proudly unincorporated little town in a pretty part of LA. We moved here in 2015 because my wife sends things to other planets. Yes, Leah, some foxes really are aerospace engineers.
Last October we were on the Cape watching the LARGEST SPACECRAFT EVER launch for Jupiter on a Falcon Heavy. On it, four instruments my wife oversaw. It was a glorious culmination of a five-year slog.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBHZ4VvvmX7/?igsh=Y2RyY2RzdDZvY2xt
Last Tuesday, warm in a Colorado condo with our two dogs enjoying apres ski, we received word of a serious wind event and a small fire in Eaton Canyon. Concerning, but not unusual for Altadena—we’ve made it through others. [EATON, not “Easton,” Matt “sugar walls” Welch].
That afternoon, a friend collected a few essentials from our house, evacuated his own home later that evening amid a rain of cinders, and we sat there as it snowed trying to piece together info from Facebook pages and feckless local news reporters.
24 hours later, a neighbor sent us this:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DElUPmaPMkO/?igsh=M2E4aW1xYXRuOTVm
I hated that fucking chimney and had been scheming to remove it in a future, imagined remodel.
We drove back from Colorado and arrived yesterday. Now we’re safe in a dreary corporate suite in Monrovia where we’ve started negotiating endless man-made road blocks designed over decades to prevent anyone from recovering from this (largely) man-made natural disaster.
I went to our town last night to see what I could. It’s encircled by National Guard and LA’s finest stationed at all inbound streets, taped off on at least two sides like a crime scene investigation. Big, ugly military transports are stationed on most of the street entrances. I really don’t think my Land Cruiser would be any match for some of the 50 caliber machine guns I saw.
But because I know where I’m going, I (genuinely) accidentally transgressed the cordon sanitaire. Inside, there is no power and the streets are lined with ash-covered cars. I probably could have gone wherever I’d wanted merely by driving and acting confidently. The smatterings of law enforcement, national guard, and utility workers within seemed like nice folks. I spoke to several as I tried to find my way back out. One deputy seemed unsure about which street she was on and gestured vaguely toward Long Beach. I was reminded of cub scouts, standing around, den-motherless, none of them sure when the pinewood derby would start.
The air is rancid. It’s not great in Monrovia, but in Altadena and far south, it is unfit for human consumption, probably known to the State of California to cause cancer. I’m sure someone is printing the warning labels right now.
California could and should be paradise. I grew up here (Nor Cal) in the 70s and 80s and remember the endless, self-righteous battles by adults to stop—the dam, the hydroelectric facility, the reservoir, the nuclear plant, the bridge, the subdivision, the road, the street, the highway, the bypass, the development, the shopping center, the sports facility. As a kid, I loved visiting my grandparents in Paradise, which was reduced to cinders in 2018.
Yes, we plan to rebuild. But there are rules. In almost the same time my wife and thousands of colleagues, designed, built, assembled, tested, and launched an enormous ice-mapping, solar-powered space robot, the County of LA has been unable to approve our plans to build a simple detached garage on our land in our town.
RE: Kmele noting Matt's sensual new look, I think that's probably part of a larger "Welch Erotica" plan that surfaced for a brief but intense moment in the chat a few days ago iykyk
Thank God I don’t k.
at the risk of being anti-climatic🤔(and to allay any concerns) it was just yet another episode of wordplay on your name courtesy of the impish chat and indicative of the clever but juvenile fan base ya'll seem destined to attract:
https://open.substack.com/chat/posts/7e506d49-a678-47b2-af98-510498d88ab3?utm_source=share
whew
People email about Michael dreams but simply cannot share their Matt dreams
they are nsfw and also nsfc (not suitable/safe for chat/comments)
Not Safe for Welch
Matt Welch, the only Fifth Column host who can pass for both Peter Meijer and Ben Affleck.
Or their harmonic mean, Darin Erstad.
Has anyone ever seen David Eckstein and Peter Meijer together? Just asking questions.
I’d be lying if I said I knew who that was before googling, but yeah, I can see it. I’ve been told (by Moynihan) that I look like Andy Levy 😕 . . . Still waiting for someone to tell me I look like Matt Damon, but it hasn’t happened yet for some reason.
That Ken Lane quote about Karen Bass was cathartic, thank you.
Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt column at NR has been doing some good reporting on Bass' incompetence.
Brandon Johnson is an unmitigated disaster, but congestion pricing has a good track record and early data in NYC also suggests reasons to be optimistic. Israeli economist Omer Moav has spoken about the topic at length and his material is pretty digestible and easy to find.
I do have some hesitation about Chicago in particular because its public transit system is more or less star-shaped - it's very difficult to get between two points that are not roughly on the same straight line away from the Loop without taking a detour through the Loop. If that is ever addressed, however, I think a congestion charge for the Loop would make a lot of sense.
Why are you going soft on Johnson?
Unmitigated disaster is far too kind;
how about astronomical catastrophe?
Chicago is tricky because like you said, if you come from outside the core it is still quicker (outside of rush hour) with transfers to drive in. Though I expect most will be able to pay congestion fee, even if they grit their teeth.
Where do you think it should be applied to? should looping around downtown on lakeshore be covered?
I׳m somewhat agnostic to the precise boundaries. I'm open to any arguments on these specifics.
Hearing Matt talk about the cascading failures in this state have me thinking - is this finally the tipping point where people wise up and maybe we can run things better? Or is it the tipping point where I need to get out of here as fast as possible?
If the past few election cycles have taught me anything, it's that I want to live someplace where if elected officials from either party start fucking things up, a majority of the electorate will turn on them.
Agreed! I’m tired of the answer to a problem being more of the same problem.
Talk to Will Swaim at California Policy Center - he's talked about the insane salaries for firefighters (even before overtime) that severely impact the number that can be hired, etc.
Will's great.
Yeah, CalFire's pay is high enough that it siphons off staffing for the Federal side of wildland fire (which is the main vehicle for wildland fire in most Western states outside of CA). Fire procurement and aviation are wild cost drivers as well, probably more so. Aviation resources and those contracts sink the big bucks
Does the state national guard have fighters? If not, they should.
is the impending video podcast going to include finally hiring an audio engineer?
Hey my daughter is an audio engineer who works with podcasts (and her rates are reasonable, just sayin' :-)
This is Spencer’s chance
love you guys! Michael has too much dynamic range and he's hard to hear without headphones on sometimes
YES! We need to crowdfund a compressor for MM.
I already remaster the audio to listen to it anyway. Just saying.
I want to hear more about Matt's plan to mandate electric guitars (as mentioned on the last MK show)
Pete Seeger rolling over in his grave.
I'm ok with that.
Judas!
Guys, Greenland. I’m a believer.
Neocons gotta neocon!
💀
It makes a lot more fucking sense for us to have it than Denmark
For those interested, "contained" and "controlled" are both kinda funky terms of art in wildland fire usage, and subjective. Containment percentage at least used to mean fireline or other containment was around x percentage of the fire's perimeter. Current definitions have it as 'control line that can be expected to hold'. So it's totally a judgement call when you have super brutal Santa Ana winds pushing against any control you establish, you could have impermeable surfaces all around that would control a lesser fire, but that wind is going to throw embers and burning material way down the line.
All, great episode. About the democrats and progressives *rethinking* things and acknowledging that they actually existed, I.e. an immigration issue and all the headlines Michael mentioned. Something I wish you mentioned is not the normal people coming to terms (although that is good to see), but the crazy making effect this has had to anyone somewhat sane right of center.
As of the election night (being in Chicago with all liberal-centrist friends), I am watching coverage with 10 friends and I am the only one who didn’t vote for Harris. I get in an argument/discussion about immigration (and other topics, I.e. trans treatment of children), and it wasn’t even “you have a bad opinion on this” or any middle ground. Instead it was “here’s our INSANE right wing friend who is so delusional and misguided by his insane right wing outlets, that he’s just going insane talking about a fantasy that bears no semblance to reality”.
There wasn’t even a discussion on any topic because not a single person even granted there was an issue to begin with. Anything I said was just immediately dismissed as a total confection of my mind. And, as I got frustrated and pressed the topic all were easily able to pull up legitimately 10s to 100s of articles from *prestigious* news organizations that also immediately confirmed it was a fantasy.
I do not bring this up to get a “I was right” pat on the back, I bring it up and I hope you all do not lose sight of it because I think that component explains so much more of the rightward/maga shift we have seen in the country than anyone gives credit for. It isn’t being right and just not believed. It is being right and being not told you’re wrong and able to discuss it, but being told you are an insane, crazy fantasist who has lost their grip on reality.
I work in real estate. We manage hotels and dealt with localities dealing with migrants and wanting to use our hotels for periods of time. I have had those meetings, it impacts our business, I have seen the properties and the migrants in person, I lived a life that interacts with it directly. My friends all know this too (that this is my work), yet when it gets to a political discussion, I’m an insane person making up fantasies and making up stories while cloth, because fucking Axios, WaPo, The Atlantic, NYT, etc etc etc all said it was a fantasy and I must have been dreaming the whole time.
That aspect of these issues and the media and the reckoning they’re having needs to be addressed and it needs to be hammered home. Because I believe the country will continue to swing wildly and continue to become more polarized and violent. It’s absolutely crazy making and it makes one’s blood boil and see red to basically be called a dipshit by someone (even friends, maybe moreso friends who you respect and trust), who has no idea what they’re talking about while you’ve experienced it directly. And my friends aren’t stupid or ignorant. Most are not at all paying attention to politics that closely and just read these outlets information and think they’re okay because they cross referenced the information with 10 other outlets. In a sane world that should be enough. None expect that all these outlets are all actively lying for political purposes and goals and purposefully misleading them. Which they 100% are, I know you all are 10,000x more involved in media than me; however, I have had many personal anecdotes from friends and acquaintances in these spaces that have said they’re knowingly lying, enough to be quite certain that if it’s not ubiquitous, it’s definitely still an issue.
These outlets need to have a serious public, mea culpa, that outlines exactly what they’ve known, where they misstepped, and how they won’t do it in the future. Or, they need to be burned to the ground and rebuilt from the ashes. The current status quo of them all acting as apparatchiks for one side of the aisle where one side is Hitler until they’re out of office, when it is okay to then actually come to terms with everything they did well, and the other side are angels doing everything the best they can, until they’re out of office (now) and they can start admitting all the terrible shit they did, is just completely unsustainable.
Another being Bidens health condition. I know you all have a pretty balanced view of what people knew and what they were reporting on, and give a ton of people the benefit of the doubt. I hated Trump (still do though slightly less so), and when Biden came into office in 2021 I told everyone I knew he was mentally deficient. Screamed it from the rooftops. I knew this because I watched his interviews (when he’d give them), I watched his press conferences, I watched him speak over and over and over and over again…. And he was so unquestionably mentally deficient and degraded it was 100% impossible to believe otherwise.
To think there were still think pieces and people going to bat for him in June 2024 when he was 30% worse (whatever that means) while also calling themselves reporters, is just lying or incompetence to a degree where if they were in legitimately any other industry (besides politics I guess - which is what they are, they aren’t news) they’d have been fired 100 times over by then. Remember “cheap fakes”? Are you really going to say that wasn’t explicitly lying? The whole idea of cheap fakes was that right wing outlets ran a video in an unflattering manner to make Biden look worse. It wasn’t the video was altered, or manipulated in some manner. It was just they didn’t like how Biden looked.
That is another one I got in arguments with people about. I’d say Biden is degraded. They’d say no he isn’t, here are 20 articles that say he isn’t. Then I’d say, why in the hell do you need an article? Just look at him, watch the videos yourself, make your own judgement. And they’d respond, well look at these articles, they all say those videos are fake.
That’s the kicker with the whole cheap fake episode. No one ever showed the videos that depicted Biden well. They just said the ones that were bad were *fakes*. And that is why I say they’re outright liars or they all need to be burned to the ground.
Someone comes to me and says “hey, this buyer misrepresented the data, it’s inaccurate”. The FIRST FUCKING THING YOU FOLLOW UP WITH IS “ok, so what’s the real data, what’s the real picture, what is it all actually?”
Are you seriously telling me no one at any of these organizations said that? Someone went into an office and said “hey this is a cheap fake” and every producer, writer, camera man, assistant, person walking by the fucking office just went “ok, sounds good” and they just went with it? Didn’t ask “ok, well what did Biden actually do/say/behave here then?” Really? That just can’t be right unless again they were all lying or should be burned to the ground. A 3rd grade lemonade stand runs more appropriately.
As you can see, this whole topic drives me insane and that is the entire point. That is why I think there are so many people swinging and explains things much more clearly. I don’t think people held beliefs on politics have changed this much, if even at all. I think people are fucking furious for being told they’re crazy by millions of people who have no idea what they’re talking about when they literally deal with these issues and experience them directly in their day to day life. It makes people see red and say “fuck you, you’re pissing on my face and telling me it’s raining, I’ll literally vote for anyone else in the world as long as they’re not doing that”.
100% cosigned, which is why the media's reputation is in the toilet with 70% of Americans.
Regarding Trump’s behavior on January 6th-
At 2:24pm he tweeted the following-
“Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
At approximately 2:44pm (20 minutes later) Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot by law enforcement while attempting to jump through a broken window and into the Speaker’s Lobby.
These two data points taken together are actually shocking. Whatever was true (regarding security) at the time of the Babbitt shooting was also true 20 minutes earlier when Trump threw Pence under the bus in that tweet. And, of course, we know what was true- lawmakers were still being evacuated and the area beyond the door to the speakers lobby was not secure. It was obvious from the footage of the shooting that anyone who crossed that threshold was going to be shot.
And one would think the President would have access to any and all relevant information of this sort. The situation on the ground was obviously quite “hot” during these few minutes in this particular area. And how did our President behave? Like a reckless ten year old little bitch throwing a tantrum.
I don’t care if there were 1000 FBI agents on the ground that day acting as agent provocateurs. It doesn’t change my mind about Trump’s role in this whole thing- including his role in this poor, misguided, conspiracy addled woman’s death.
Trump’s tweet about Pence has gotten a lot of coverage but the timing of it is rarely emphasized. But it seems pretty damning to me. I was glad to hear Christine Rosen tell Sam Harris that she thinks the Senate should have voted to impeach Trump, which would have prevented him from a second term. I agree. Rosen is really smart so I feel like I’m in good company.
Add to that- Kevin Williamson and Megan McArdle who have both said that Trump is a threat to democracy.
Additionally- Nick Gillespie, Jonah Goldberg, Matt Welch who have all used the word “disqualifying” in reference to Trump’s actions on January 6th.
But somehow, because CNN and MSNBC called it an insurrection and engaged in embarrassing hyperbole about it being the darkest day in American history, millions of people have become convinced that the coverage of that day was overblown and that the whole event wasn’t actually as bad as it initially seemed.
Again- two data points are all you need to understand that this guy is way too reckless to be anywhere near the presidency.
What am I getting wrong?
How bad is my TDS?
The saddest part is that, while it is very obvious from the video that anyone crossing the threshold would be shot, I think it was not obvious to her. She was screened by the people further ahead of her and she probably did not have a clear view of the officer, and given the noise it's possible she did not hear his commands.
That said, she almost certainly had line of sight to several Congressmen. How could anyone think they would be allowed to get within punching distance of a member of Congress? Just utterly moronic and wasteful.
I think your points are more or less right, and the media's 4 year bitch fit about Trump prevented his supporters and even a lot of centrists from caring. Classic boy who cried wolf.