We all always whinge about government incompetence. It’s an American sport. But there are times when that incompetence becomes deadly. The two examples of absolutely deadly government incompetence are currently staring the U.S. and the world in the face. The abysmal failure of the British parliament to pass a resolution to investigate rape gangs which have been operating for decades under the noses and with the knowledge, and at times, cooperation of law enforcement authorities. The second glaring example are the fires raging through Los Angeles right now. These both are horrifying reminders (or should be) that politicians and bureaucrats are not really in the business of actually being concerned about your wellbeing.
Let’s look at both of these horrific situations. What do these two groups of politicians, the Labour Party in the UK, and Governor Gavin Newsome and LA Mayor Karen Bass (and all their assorted cronies and appointments) have in common? Yes, they’re all out and proud progressive leftists. They are all proud of the work they’ve done to drive merit out of the government and its administrative offices, and bring in people whose sole attribute is their race, sexual orientation, actual gender, or preferred gender. Hiring people where such things become the primary job requirement leads to failure.
Now, do me a favor and allow me to elaborate before you go into an incoherent rage and accuse me of everything you can think of. No, I do not think these jobs should be restricted by race. That’s just stupid. If you’re going to accuse me of racism, go find another sandbox to play in. Secondly, no, I do not think individuals falling into the sexual orientation, gender, and preferred gender categories should be excluded from the jobs of firefighter, police officer, etc. What I do think is those individuals MUST MEET THE HIGHEST PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS OF THE JOB. And by that I mean the requirements which existed prior to the “opening up” of these career paths to women.
When the politicians on the left moved to open physically demanding jobs to women they lowered the physical requirements for those jobs. This means that if you’re the victim of a house fire, you may die because the firefighter is physically incapable of pulling you out. Check this video out. If she can’t carry you out of a fire, that’s your fault. WTF?? If you’re not horrified by this casual dismissal of the job of a firefighter, then you are part of the problem. I think it’s safe to say that most people don’t care who’s carrying them out of a burning building, just that they’re being carried out.
Are there women who can meet the physical requirements demanded of male firefighters? Of course, but there are not a lot of them as a percentage of the population. Women are generally physically smaller than men. Does that mean we should be relegated to second class citizenship? Of course not. But it does mean that there are jobs we are simply not suited for and insisting that we are also leads to failure.
The other issue around the fires in LA is the lack of water. Hydrants are running out of water. This is why Altadena, large swaths of Pacific Palisades, and other places no longer exist. The policies enacted by Governor Gavin Newsom to “save the environment” have guaranteed a failure of water distribution. The LA Fire Chief cannot answer questions as to why hydrants ran out except to say water was used faster than they can refill reservoir tanks. California is known for wildfires, yet the LA Fire Chief seems to believe that those would never happen while she was fire chief. Newsom seems to believe that somehow Joe Biden can solve the problem of not enough water.
Additionally, there is growing evidence that all four of these fires are arson. One guy has already been arrested after residents of a neighborhood caught him trying to set a fire. Henry Winkler has asserted that he had reason to believe the fires were set on purpose and now video has come out showing someone doing just that. These fires are NOT due to climate change. They are due to arson. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if we find out that some screaming lunatics set the fires to “prove” that “climate change is real” because there aren’t enough actual natural disasters.
Moving over to the UK and the abominable response of Parliament to the desire of British citizens for opening an investigation into the decades old problem of rape gangs made up of primarily Pakistani men… it is NOT RACIST TO POINT OUT THE ETHNICITY OF THE PERPETRATORS!! That’s called identifying them. And ignoring such horrific crimes for decades because you don’t want to appear racist, is an absolute failure which should result in the conviction of accessory to torture, abuse, and rape of every single police officer and bureaucrat who engaged in such behaviors.
That Parliament REFUSED to even open an investigation speaks volumes about the lack of morals on the part of the Labour Party. The failure of the vote also raises the question of what Labour is trying to hide?
More glaringly, the failed vote highlights the ongoing class issues that are rampant in the UK. The cities where the gangs operated, the neighborhoods, and the girls, are all considered lower or working class. The upper crust of British society clearly still doesn’t really care about the working class. These girls and their families have been dismissed because they just aren’t the “right sort of people.”
The only other explanation I can come up with for such insane behavior on the part of Labour is – what are they hiding about their own activities and/or proclivities? How corrupt are they all? (Never mind, don’t answer that. They’re as corrupt as the day is long.)
If you disagree with this assessment, I look forward to your explanation of why Labour is so intent on ignoring the fact that multiple gangs of Pakistani (and other south Asians) men are operating so freely and kidnapping, torturing, and raping girls as young as eleven. I also ask you to provide an explanation as to why the police arrested some of the fathers of these girls when they tried to rescue their daughters. Go on. I’ll wait.
The actions of the higher-ups at LAFD and the Labour Party should make it clear to everyone that institutions dominated by the Left are only working for themselves. They really don’t care about you or anyone else they claim to represent.
So my final question to you: Why do you continue to believe them when they open their mouths? Why do you go along with their policies?
You can go to jail longer for criticizing the government’s support of Rape gangs, or for identifying rapists in the UK, than those people will go to jail for.
In Germany a judge actually praised one of these rapists. When someone criticized that judge, they got hammered by the government.
Raping children is just another sacrament of the left. Along with pedophilia. No, I don’t get it either.
Becky I acknowledge that this is a “rant”. But I’m gonna respectfully disagree with you about the fire hydrant issue. The city fire hydrant system was never designed to support this level of emergency and the LAFD has explained this multiple times. Never in the recorded history of Los Angeles has there been a wind event on this level, literally hurricane speed winds. The cause of the fires are under investigation and I expect there will be arson discovered in some cases as well as downed power line ignition in others. You might consider giving the region a chance to actually get all the way through the crisis before you accuse them of failing to deal with it properly.
You state, “…politicians and bureaucrats are not really in the business of actually being concerned about your wellbeing.” Perhaps the problem is that politicians and bureaucrats should not be in “business” at all but in service. But it’s really hard to get anyone to change the process if it means they lose both power and money, and its true regardless of party affiliation or none. That’s just the general problem with humans.
Tantris, it’s not the *region* I’m mad at. It’s the authorities. Did you watch the video? There’s another one of the fire chief stating that she doesn’t know how to get the hydrants filled again. She admits they didn’t plan for anything this bad. My question is why not? If you’re in charge of a fire dept in an area as big and spread out as LA, you MUST plan for the worst possible scenario. That’s your job. I don’t care how unlikely it is, you plan for it. Plus *she* is responsible for the deplorable shape LAFD is in right now. She cut their budget and fired hundreds of firefighters for not taking Covid vax, and now she’s begging them to come back. She screwed up big time. *She* did not the region. I can and I will blame her for these massive failures. This is on her and the mayor.
And bureaucrats are in business, not service. And it’s a problem with how the system works. It’s almost impossible to fire a civil servant which means we wind up with the incompetents staying forever.I would argue that saying it’s just how humans operate is a cop out. Are we not capable of doing better? Of holding people in charge of such important areas to a higher standard? Or do we just hope they don’t kill us all? And you can’t say this is on both parties in LA. There are no Republicans in any position of importance in LA. None. On the political side of things, Democrats own this horror show.
The LA Times reports that the reservoir in Palisades was offline and empty… for almost all of 2024. That’s a total failure on the part of LA leadership. So, yes, it’s more than fair to call them out. They are responsible for their failures.
Thoroughly enjoyable and accurate rant. I will not defend the performance of Newsom or Bass, but I do want to point out two things:
1. There are photos circulating purporting to show the start of the Eaton Fire. The veracity of at least the location and a house shown in the photos was confirmed by a blogger for Power Line, who has repeatedly visited both. I have yet to read an accusation of arson for the Eaton Fire. The most recent edumacated guess was an arcing power line (no pun intended).
B. The Santa Ynez Reservoir that serves Pacific Palisades should not have been empty and closed for almost a year. That said, reservoirs such as Santa Ynez do need maintenance. There was reportedly a tear in the reservoir’s cover that required repair. I’ve seen reports that the tear rendered the water in Santa Ynez undrinkable. I cannot speak to that fully. However, the cover would have to be repaired at some point. I can imagine a scenario where the reservoir has to be drained in order to assess the damage, then after the damage is assessed, they have to bid out the contract to repair it. Even in places more efficient than Los Angeles County, this process is not fast. Should it have been fast-tracked as an emergency? Yes. I can’t say how long it would take to repair the cover. But it does bring up the question of when would you take the reservoir offline and drain it to make the repairs. Normally, this would be the time to do it. This is not normally the fire season in Southern California. Should they have been prepared for this fire with Santa Ynez offline? Yes. Should Santa Ynez have been repaired in less than a year? Yes. But I would cut them a little slack inasmuch as Santa Ynez had to be taken down at some point for repairs. This was a logical time for it to be down. That a fire whipped up during this time is just horrible luck.
With those caveats, I very much agree with your rant. Nicely done.
“Never in the recorded history of Los Angeles has there been a wind event on this level, literally hurricane speed winds.”
Not true. Hurricane-force Santa Ana winds only happen every few years, but they’ve happened repeatedly throughout Southern California’s recorded history.
The record is from 2011, when sustained winds of 97 and gusts of 167 were recorded in Altadena.
You mean “whose” here: drive merit out of the government and its administrative offices, and bring in people who’s sole attribute is their race, sexual orientation, actual gender, or preferred gender.
I think an appropriate sentence for any of the police or politicians found to have aided the rape gangs would be to have the same sorts of things inflicted on them. Some of that stuff is completely barbaric. I have no problem with letting 3rd world immigrants in, as long as they don’t bring their 3rd world values with them.
I’m not sure that the Rothergate stuff must be race or class based.
There’s an argument that is that this is merely an expected result of feminist ideologues run amok. This is basically an extension of the ‘Hillary is the king feminist, and vicious towards everyone’ model. HRC manipulated the feminists to see her specifically as the symbol of ‘the success of all women’. Her personal behavior is of a queen bee entirely callous of whether Bill is a serial rapist, and towards his victims. What if feminist leaders generally make a deliberate attempt to terrorize poor or less career oriented or less academia oriented women?
This would explain why the intersectional feminists are so strictly aligned to criminal justice reform, despite the outcomes in the murder or rape of women. If women felt emotionally secure, and free from being victims of violent felons, then maybe they would have less support for feminist ideologues?
So maybe Rothergate and Laken Riley’s murder are the natural outcome of feminist influence on policy?
This prompted by Ombre Oliver’s analysis of the possible statistical significance of the gang rapery on the experience of UK women.
IT’d be nice if I am wrong about this bit of paranoia on my part.
As for California, and the land management practcies from Hell, yeah, I’ve been figuring for a while that it was badly in error.
You could also have cited the recent terror attack in New Orleans where officials failed to put out bollards that had been purchased to prevent just that sort of attack. Not only did they fail to put them out, they didn’t even know they had them!!!!!
New Orleans pols are sighing with relief, saved by the LA inferno.l
It’s not “South Asians” who are doing these things. It’s not Hindus. It’s not Sikhs. It’s no Jains.
It’s Muslims. 100%. This is an Islam thing, not a South Asian thing. They are just doing what it says they have a right to do in the Quran. Don’t believe me? Read it yourself.
The first step in solving a problem is acknowledging you have one. The entire world has a problem. We won’t start solving it until we can say its name.