Zero Per Cent Contained
Los Angeles comes to terms with "the big one in magnitude"
The catastrophic wildfires across the areas surrounding Los Angeles continue to rage, fueled by high winds and low humidity, with thousands of acres ablaze and unprecedented numbers of people under mandatory evacuation orders.
Five deaths have so far been reported and it’s still unclear how many homes and buildings have been lost.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the fires "the big one in magnitude”, while emergency officials said several of the fires were “zero percent contained”. The financial cost of the fires is set to be huge, putting further pressure on a strained insurance market in regions vulnerable to climate excesses.
President Biden was in Santa Monica on Wednesday and pledged full federal support, declaring a major disaster and promising to do “anything and everything for as long as it takes.” Biden also cancelled the final foreign trip of his presidency – a visit to the Pope in Rome – to monitor the ongoing disaster.
President-elect Trump used the emergency to re-ignite his feud with California Governor Gavin Newsom; jumping on criticism of authorities over the effectiveness of public water systems in their ability to fight wildfires.
The New York Times reported:
“In his social media post, the president-elect called the governor “Gavin Newscum” and said he had refused to sign a declaration that would have allowed more water to flow into Southern California.
“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Mr. Trump said.
“The governor’s press office responded with a statement on social media.
“There is no such document as the water restoration declaration — that is pure fiction,” the statement on X said. “The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.”
However, as we saw with last year’s hurricanes across southern states, “playing” politics – if only the consequences were something so childish – even in disastrous circumstances, has become the norm. Hardly a time at which, say, eliminating fact-checking on major social media platforms might be considered a good idea.
Chris Stokel-Walker at The Guardian said we’re entering “a new era of lies” and that Meta’s move this week was an “extinction-level event” for online truth.
“To be clear: all businesspeople make shrewd moves to accommodate the political weather. And there are few more violent storms than Hurricane Trump approaching the US. But few people’s decisions matter more than Mark Zuckerberg’s.
“The Meta CEO has found himself, in the past 21 years, a central part of our society. Initially, he oversaw a website that was used by college students. Now it’s used by billions of us from all walks of life. What in the early 2000s was a quaint online pursuit for fun has become the “de facto public town square”, to borrow Elon Musk’s words. Where Meta goes, the world – online and offline – follows. And Meta has just decided to take a drastic, dramatic handbrake turn to the right.”
If there’s anything we know for sure these days, it’s that mis- and dis- information, inflammatory by definition, spreads like wildfire.
Zero per cent contained, indeed.
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Certifiable
Monday was the fourth anniversary of, well, whatever it was you believe happened at the Capitol, depending who you support.
In one of her final tasks as Vice-President this week, Kamala Harris certified her own electoral defeat in a forty-minute ceremony during which a total of zero protesters defecated on the House Speaker’s desk or paraded a Confederate flag through the “citadel of liberty”.
With two weeks until the change in administration, Donald Trump has promised pardons for those convicted of Jan 6th offences “in the first hour” of his second term. The former leader of the Proud Boys, who is serving a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy, is among those who have formally asked the incoming President for clemency.
It will be difficult to imagine a more symbolic completion of the transition from a traditional Republican party to the fully-fledged MAGA party it has become than watching people convicted of attacking members of law enforcement being not only freed but celebrated.
According to the Chief of the US Capitol Police:
“What message does that send? What message does that send to police officers across this nation, if someone doesn’t think that a conviction for an assault or worse against a police officer is something that should be upheld, given what we ask police officers to do every day?”
(Read the Q&A from the 2022 season with Beth Ely Torres, a military musician who was deployed to the Capitol in the aftermath of Jan 6th – 'About-Face')
Meanwhile, Mr Trump took a break from his latest imperialist visions to petition the Supreme Court to use its previous ruling on Presidential immunity to pause his sentencing, set for tomorrow, in the so-called hush money/election interference case, in which he was convicted last May of 34 felonies. The judge in the case has already said he did not plan to sentence Trump to jail or probation, rather the sentencing would confirm his status as a felon – making him the first President to enter office having been criminally convicted.
The Washington Post reports:
“If the justices agree to delay Trump’s sentencing until after he takes office, it could effectively shut down what little remains of the four criminal cases against him that until recently were making their way through the courts.
“Special counsel Jack Smith has dismissed Trump as a party in the cases charging him in Florida with mishandling classified documents and in D.C. with trying to block the results of the 2020 election. A Georgia appeals court last month disqualified the state prosecutor leading the case accusing Trump of conspiring in that state to overturn his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.”
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An ‘Antidote To Politics As Spectacle’
The nation comes together today to bid farewell to its 39th President Jimmy Carter. President Biden will deliver a eulogy during the State Funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington DC, before President Carter’s final journey to his hometown of Plains, Georgia to rest alongside his wife Rosalynn.
You can watch a livestream of the memorial service here beginning at 9am ET.
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Congressman Ro Khanna remembered Carter in The Guardian, writing that he was an “antidote to politics as spectacle.”
“American politics is different these days. Ridiculing is in vogue along with making outlandish statements that go viral on social media. Colleagues on both sides scream at each other in hearings and cling to power long past their mental and physical primes. In frivolous political times like ours, Carter is a refreshing reminder that it is possible to have a politics of dignity and statesmanship.”
It’s been well documented that Carter was a baseball fan, and yet, during his single term he became the first incumbent President since Taft began the tradition in 1910 not to throw out a ceremonial pitch on Opening Day – what Chris Birkett refers to as “the symbolic commitment to the national pastime.” The next President to skip Opening Day would be Donald Trump.
Carter did, however, throw out a first pitch at the final game of the 1979 World Series when the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Baltimore Orioles (becoming the first President to host the Pirates and Super Bowl champion Steelers at the White House the following year); and again before Game Six of the 1995 World Series, when his Braves beat the Cleveland Indians to seal the team’s first championship since moving to Atlanta.
Carter was in the crowd when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record in Atlanta on April 8, 1974. A few years later the President welcomed Aaron to the White House and described the slugger as “a personal hero.” (In a stat that perhaps requires reading twice but serves to bring the timeline of the game to life, at the time of the former President’s passing, Babe Ruth had hit more home runs during Carter’s lifetime than any currently active player. Ruth hit 430 after 1924, while the current MLB leader is Giancarlo Stanton, with 429).
