Earth Wind & Fire 🔥 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🔥 

🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥: Disastrous events bring out the best and worst in people so while firefighters are doing what they bravely do, putting their lives on the line, and while some ordinary people, many facing their own unimaginable losses, have been reaching out to help others and President Biden has promised lots of resources and funding, Trump, and a number of his MAGA adherents, are instead fueling the flames. Snidely calling Governor Newsom, “Newscum,” Trump attacked him on Truth Social for failing to sign a nonexistent “water restoration declaration” that he falsely claimed would have flowed more water towards Los Angeles.  He also asserted that the Governor’s protection of smelt fish and other components of the state’s ecosystem had led to a lack of water for fire management and lied about reservoirs not being filled to capacity before the fires broke out.  The reservoirs were full but were quickly drained, overwhelmed by the unprecedented need and the challenge of getting water to the flaming hills which also impacted fire hydrant functionality. Naturally, conspiracist Alex Jones also weighed in with an Xitter post, “liked” and amplified by Elon Musk, claiming that the fires were caused by globalists as in those of “us” with space lasers, seeking to destroy America as we know it. Also untrue, assertions that the inability to quickly extinguish the fires is due to DEI, that other scapegoat of the right. There’s more, but I think you get the picture, the worst people including the soon to be president acting out in the worst of ways. The likely reality is that the fires were caused by some combination of manmade or naturally occurring sparks stoked by a historically dry year, that last part likely due to global warming combined with a water system that hasn’t kept up with overdevelopment.  “Drill baby drill” Trump who doesn’t acknowledge the reality of climate change nor the dangers of relying on fossil fuels for energy won’t do anything to help fund the hugely expensive improvements to the infrastructure that are needed (remember all those infrastructure week that weren’t), nor would his benefactor/co-president Elon Musk sign off on any such expenditures because he’s too busy trying to shrink government or at least shrink the part of government that doesn’t subsidize his businesses.  As to Elon, yesterday he admitted that he and his DOGE team have concluded that they won’t be able to cut $2 trillion from the US budget so they are shrinking their savings target to $1 trillion, not that they will be able to achieve that either.     

Legally Yours:  Trump’s hush money/election interference case non-jail sentencing will go forward this morning.  Last night, five members of SCOTUS, the three liberal Justices together with Chief Judge John Roberts and occasional swinger Amy Coney Barrett rejected Trump’s lawyers’ argument that as president-elect he is entitled to full immunity from both prosecution and sentencing.  Justices Kavanaugh, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito, who Trump had a questionable sidebar with this week and who should have recused himself but of course didn’t, would have granted Trump’s request.  Shortly after the announcement of the SCOTUS decision, a Federal appeals court overturned Judge “loose” Cannon, ruling instead that the Justice Department can publicly release the entirety of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on Trump’s efforts to undo the results of the 2020 election as well as the section concerning his purloined Mar a Lago classified documents. For anyone keeping count that’s the third time that one of pocket judge Cannon’s pro-Trump rulings has been overturned. However, the Appeals Court left Cannon’s short stay in place which means that Trump and his legal team, most of whom will soon be joining him in the White House, have three more days to appeal to SCOTUS and since stalling until inauguration day is their strategy, they will appeal. Attorney General until January 20 Merrick Garland has already said that he will not be publicly releasing the Mar a Lago part of Jack Smith’s report because he believes that doing so would be unfair to co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, not that the two have much to worry about since Trump’s DOJ will stop their prosecution and/or Trump will pardon them soon enough.  Garland does plan to release the classified documents part of the report to a few “key” members of Congress so there’s a chance it will eventually see the light of day, well maybe.  That’s especially important because it’s believed that the report includes information that proves that Trump’s FBI Director nominee Kash Patel lied when he said that Trump declassified documents that he did not really declassify.      

Day One: According to the NY Times, Trump’s minions, most notably Stephen Miller, are trying to identify a disease, preferably a really contagious and lethal one carried by migrants, to justify calling a national health emergency in order to justify Trump closing the border with Mexico.  The problem is that they have been unable to identify any. The irony here is that if RFK Jr, whose confirmation 17,000 US doctors have signed a letter opposing, is confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services and moves forward with his anti-vaccine plans, contagious disease will flourish on the US side of the border which could cause disease wary Mexican leadership to block us from crossing into their country.  As to all those undocumented migrants that Trump wants deported, quite a few of them will likely be needed in California to help with rebuilding destroyed areas not that Trump cares all that much about California.  Trump is also considering declaring a national economic emergency to justify imposing tariffs, another problem because the economy keeps humming along.  In other ridiculous news, son Don Jr is in Greenland, testing the waters for his dad’s land grab. It turns out that the “crowds” who greeted him warmly at the airport weren’t really fans, rather they were a few dozen mostly downtrodden types paid to show up and and provided with red MAGA hats to make them look like genuine Trumpers.

Please consider contributing to one of the many reputable charities accepting donations for California relief. 😊  

#BringThemAllHomeNowAndAlive