La-La Land largely aflame in January 2025

[bryan_styble]

This big-picture* essay from the Hollywood Reporter is quite elegantly
written--and positively heart-wrenching for anyone (like myself for
better than a decade, so fortunately) who ever lived in Los Angeles or
was employed there in showbiz.*

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
-----------------------
* Meaning figuratively there...but the coverage does also include many
stunning large photos.
=================
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/local-news/hollywood-wildfires-rage-photos-1236104478/

[bryan_styble]

Linked below is a short list of metro Los Angeles landmarks already
consumed by the ongoing conflagration as the surely-mounting death toll
has reached 5 human lives (and many, many more cherished pets).

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
=================
https://dnyuz.com/2025/01/08/several-local-landmarks-are-destroyed-in-southern-california-wildfires/

[bryan_styble]

6:22 pm local [Pacific Time] on Wednesday, January 8, 2025:

Everything out there advancing in The Southland from already-horrific to
worse, yet another new fire has just broken out in the Hollywood Hills
adjacent to Runyon Canyon, and not too far from the fabled Hollywood
sign.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

[bryan_styble]

Hillside homes aren't the only things in Los Angeles being burned, as
Mayor Karen Bass is being singed by at least one local media hound for
being on a junket to Africa whilst the fires broke out early this week,
as well as Herzonner's earlier decision to reduce local firefighting
budgets by $20 million.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
=================
https://nypost.com/2025/01/08/us-news/stone-faced-la-mayor-karen-bass-refuses-to-answer-questions-about-absence-as-wildfires-rage-across-her-city/

[bryan_styble]

You knew it was going to happen: a KCBS/Los Angeles television
correspondent has reported apparent would-be looters dodging police on
electric scooters in the Hollywood Hills.

Meanwhile, the familiar intersection of Highland Avenue & Hollywood
Blvd. is under evacuation orders at 8:04 pm local Pacific Time as the
fire lines creep down from the Santa Monica Mountains toward the
Hollywood and West Hollywood commercial districts.

Local weathercasters are offering a glimmer of hope with forecasts of
somewhat abating Santa Ana wind velocities as The Southland approaches
midnight.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

[Louis Epstein]

Post by bryan_styble
You knew it was going to happen: a KCBS/Los Angeles television
correspondent has reported apparent would-be looters dodging police on
electric scooters in the Hollywood Hills.
Meanwhile, the familiar intersection of Highland Avenue & Hollywood
Blvd. is under evacuation orders at 8:04 pm local Pacific Time as the
fire lines creep down from the Santa Monica Mountains toward the
Hollywood and West Hollywood commercial districts.
Local weathercasters are offering a glimmer of hope with forecasts of
somewhat abating Santa Ana wind velocities as The Southland approaches
midnight.
BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

CNN says 10 fatalities notified by the LA County Medical Examiner
but fire.ca.gov is still only saying 5.

The big fires are scarcely contained at all.

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

[Adam H. Kerman]

Post by Louis Epstein

Post by bryan_styble
You knew it was going to happen: a KCBS/Los Angeles television
correspondent has reported apparent would-be looters dodging police on
electric scooters in the Hollywood Hills.
Meanwhile, the familiar intersection of Highland Avenue & Hollywood
Blvd. is under evacuation orders at 8:04 pm local Pacific Time as the
fire lines creep down from the Santa Monica Mountains toward the
Hollywood and West Hollywood commercial districts.
Local weathercasters are offering a glimmer of hope with forecasts of
somewhat abating Santa Ana wind velocities as The Southland approaches
midnight.

CNN says 10 fatalities notified by the LA County Medical Examiner
but fire.ca.gov is still only saying 5.
The big fires are scarcely contained at all.

They have firefighters and modern equipment and fireplugs at regular
intervals throughout these builtup areas.

They have no water pressure. California does not keep reservoirs filled
with adequate water levels. During heavy rainstorms, water isn't allowed
to percolate back into the shallow acquifir. Their entire drainage
system is still directing fresh water from heavy rainstorms into the
ocean as it's been doing for decades if not more than a century in some
places.

These idiots live in desert and build houses in dry forested areas and
they utterly fail to take the most basic steps to conserve water. They
have failed to redesign drainage systems that shouldn't have been built
in the first place.

They elect government after government after government that refuses to
address this entirely manmade problem. But that's ok, because if you
blame climate change, that's an all-purpose excuse.

[Louis Epstein]

Post by Adam H. Kerman

Post by Louis Epstein

Post by bryan_styble
You knew it was going to happen: a KCBS/Los Angeles television
correspondent has reported apparent would-be looters dodging police on
electric scooters in the Hollywood Hills.
Meanwhile, the familiar intersection of Highland Avenue & Hollywood
Blvd. is under evacuation orders at 8:04 pm local Pacific Time as the
fire lines creep down from the Santa Monica Mountains toward the
Hollywood and West Hollywood commercial districts.
Local weathercasters are offering a glimmer of hope with forecasts of
somewhat abating Santa Ana wind velocities as The Southland approaches
midnight.

CNN says 10 fatalities notified by the LA County Medical Examiner
but fire.ca.gov is still only saying 5.
The big fires are scarcely contained at all.

They have firefighters and modern equipment and fireplugs at regular
intervals throughout these builtup areas.

"Not designed to handle these types of fires",I've read.

Post by Adam H. Kerman
They have no water pressure. California does not keep reservoirs filled
with adequate water levels. During heavy rainstorms, water isn't allowed
to percolate back into the shallow acquifir. Their entire drainage
system is still directing fresh water from heavy rainstorms into the
ocean as it's been doing for decades if not more than a century in some
places.
These idiots live in desert and build houses in dry forested areas and
they utterly fail to take the most basic steps to conserve water.

And now they're about to be stuck with a President who demands their
Governor abandon whatever steps HAVE been taken.

Post by Adam H. Kerman
They have failed to redesign drainage systems that shouldn't have been
built in the first place.
They elect government after government after government that refuses to
address this entirely manmade problem. But that's ok, because if you
blame climate change, that's an all-purpose excuse.

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

[bryan_styble]

BREAKING L.A. FIRES NEWS at 7:09 pm [local Pacific Time] Friday, January
10th:

Greg Kelly on NewsMax cable news network just reported that embattled
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has fired proud-and-loud lesbian Fire
Department Chief Kristin Crowley.

But who has the authority to fire Karen Bass? (Governor Gavin Newsom
might indeed have that power until the California State Constitution,
but it seems doubtful that Democrat team-player would do so, even if he
legally can.)

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

[unsubscribe]

Anti-gay much asshole. And I thought you were "just" a racist.

[bryan_styble]

The report from CBS News linked below disputes and refutes Greg Kelly's
reporting over NewsMax re the dismissal of embattled L.A. Fire Chief
Kristin Crowley, suggesting Kelly was merely advancing unfounded
speculation and no actual on-the-ground reporting.

CBS News seems to be accurate here, as that bombshell of a supposed
story would otherwise be all over the media by this point, as dawn
approaches the increasingly-charred Southland landscape. So if Greg
Kelly values his credibility, he should be MUCH more journalistically
scrupulous with unverified reports before incorporating them into his
cablecast reporting.

As for that vulgar if anonymous (not to mention seriously-erroneous)
character-maligning calumny that my various postings hereto reflect
sentiments that are both anti-gay AND anti-black, I might remind every
kind alt-obits reader that:

(1) my Florida condo has for eight years now (and, uh, PROUDLY) flown
the gay-rights Pride Flag I kept as a souvenir of the now-infamous riot
outside the Comet Pizza restaurant in the District of Columbia, a nasty
Christians-vs.-gays dustup I inadvertently found myself in the violent
middle of as a journalistic bystander in 2017, not to mention being long
and publicly on-record as regarding assassinated gay-rights leader
Harvey Milk to be one of the greatest Americans of the 20th Century; and

(2) I've humbly visited (at considerable personal expense and many, many
hundreds of out-of-my-way miles driven) to pay my respects at darned
near every significant civil-rights site around The Lower 48, including
but not limited to:

(a) retracing EVERY MILE of the fabled Selma-to-Montgomery March in
Alabama from the Edmund Pettis Bridge to the State Capitol (albeit not
on foot, but rather behind my steering wheel);
(b) the spot, also in downtown Montgomery, where civil rights celebrity
Rosa Parks famously boarded that city bus on Thursday, December 1, 1955;
(c) the Lorraine Motel MLK assassination site of Thursday, April 4, 1968
in Memphis, nowadays housing the National Civil Rights Museum (which I
solemnly toured as well, of course);
(d) Jesse Jackson's PUSH headquarters on Chicago's South Side during a
near-blizzard as my personal tribute on MLK Day 2000 on Monday, January
17, 2000, while that same snowy night I ALSO devoted a couple of hours
to tracking down and identifying the storefront which during WWII housed
The Jack Spratt Diner near the University of Chicago campus, site of
America's first-ever segregated restaurant sit-down in 1943, a
now-seldom-remembered demonstration organized by CORE founder and future
Freedom Rides organizer James Farmer (whom in 1988 I was honored to
interview* during his retirement in rural Virginia a decade before his
Friday, July 9, 1999 death);
(f) King's birthplace and tomb in Atlanta (including even standing in
MLK Sr.'s Ebeneezer Baptist Church pulpit, which ALSO happens to be the
house of worship where MLK Jr.'s mother (and MLK Sr.'s bride) Alberta
King was assassinated while sitting at her church organ on Sunday, June
30, 1974; and
(e) the downtown Woolworth's store in North Carolina, at whose lunch
counter the Greensboro 8 gained fame in 1960.

(Oh, and (g) I WOULD have been at King's legendary Wednesday, August 28,
1963 march and rally [though actually organized on The Washington Mall
by the late great A. Phillip Randolph]...but was only 8 years old that
summer, and thus had to watch it on TV from Missouri.)

SO: it's clear that it is a seriously silly and untrue claim that THIS
guy hates either gay OR black folks--but I DO indeed intensely hate all
elected-official INCOMPETENCE, and the still-burning L.A.-area fires is
an ongoing story which has been RIFE with state and city-hall
"woke"-inspired ineptitude, as the three linked political cartoons below
comically (if oh-so-tragically) illustrate.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
-----------------------
* I've been informed more than once that I was the final
journalist--broadcast or otherwise--to interview the late (and
ever-gentlemanly) Farmer, but have never been able to verify that
hearsay.
=================
https://townhall.com/political-cartoons/afbranco/2025/01/10/209604
-------------
https://townhall.com/political-cartoons/chipbok/2025/01/09/209600
------------
https://townhall.com/political-cartoons/garyvarvel/2025/01/09/209583
------------
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/lafd-refutes-claim-chief-crowley-was-dismissed-amid-fires/

[unsubscribe]

Good lord. Get a life.

[Louis Epstein]

Post by bryan_styble
The report from CBS News linked below disputes and refutes Greg Kelly's
reporting over NewsMax re the dismissal of embattled L.A. Fire Chief
Kristin Crowley, suggesting Kelly was merely advancing unfounded
speculation and no actual on-the-ground reporting.
CBS News seems to be accurate here, as that bombshell of a supposed
story would otherwise be all over the media by this point, as dawn
approaches the increasingly-charred Southland landscape. So if Greg
Kelly values his credibility, he should be MUCH more journalistically
scrupulous with unverified reports before incorporating them into his
cablecast reporting.
As for that vulgar if anonymous (not to mention seriously-erroneous)
character-maligning calumny that my various postings hereto reflect
sentiments that are both anti-gay AND anti-black, I might remind every
(1) my Florida condo has for eight years now (and, uh, PROUDLY) flown
the gay-rights Pride Flag I kept as a souvenir of the now-infamous riot
outside the Comet Pizza restaurant in the District of Columbia, a nasty
Christians-vs.-gays dustup I inadvertently found myself in the violent
middle of as a journalistic bystander in 2017, not to mention being long
and publicly on-record as regarding assassinated gay-rights leader
Harvey Milk to be one of the greatest Americans of the 20th Century; and

I regard him as an outright villain of history,
like his fellow Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient
Henry Hyde.

This is not "hate" for anyone,but a strong feeling that
those afflicted with same-sex sexual attraction have a
need to recognize a responsibility to never allow it to
guide their behavior,which a government committed to the
general welfare will concern itself with to the exclusion
of any desire they may have to misrepresent that attraction
as even theoretically entitled to gratification.

We don't treat kleptomaniacs as entitled to steal,
alcoholics as entitled to be drunk at will,
the blind as exempt from eye tests when called for...
and in no case is this "hate" for their persons.

Post by bryan_styble
SO: it's clear that it is a seriously silly and untrue claim that THIS
guy hates either gay OR black folks--but I DO indeed intensely hate all
elected-official INCOMPETENCE, and the still-burning L.A.-area fires is
an ongoing story which has been RIFE with state and city-hall
"woke"-inspired ineptitude, as the three linked political cartoons below
comically (if oh-so-tragically) illustrate.
BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
-----------------------

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

[Invalid]

Post by unsubscribe
Anti-gay much asshole. And I thought you were "just" a racist.

"I'm not racist, I just worship Andrew Jackson."

[bryan_styble]

As temporarily-easing atmospheric conditions into early Friday morning
give Southern Cslifornia fire crews a chance to start to get a leg up on
the still-raging but increasingly-contained remaining fires, one
arrested arsonist told authorities she did so because she enjoys
"causing chaos and destruction."

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
=================
https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-wildfires-southern-california-212389bfba69f39baaf72579f1644ddd

[Louis Epstein]

Death toll now reported as 24.

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.