..and in other news
- Thread starter ILisBest
- Start date
So Carter gave away a contract 20 years early and you think that was just dandy. LOL. He was rated the worst President of all time for a reason...until the guy you voted for in 2020 took office.
History; Manhattan Island ; purchased from Tribal Indians.
Louisiana Purchase; from France.
Alaska ; from Russia.
Texas; annexed from sovereign nation.
Washington ; 54 40 or fight.
California; Spanish/Mexico Lost the Mexican War.
My Grandfather on my Mom's side was a steam shovel operator on digging the Panama Canal. My Mother and 2 of her Sister's were all born in Costa Rica, because the "air" was thought more healthy. (Malari source unknown).
Then we went to war in Panama to displace a Dictator.
There was no insurrection . Just like no police officers were killed. Insurrections involve weapons like when the Bolsheviks used during the Marxist revolution that killed millions .
It would have ended under its terms 25 years ago and you jokers are still pissed about it😃
It was dumb. Here we are 45 years after Carter gave it away and the Chinese are all over running both ends now. Go read up on the Monroe Doctrine. I've bitched for many years that we pay way too much attention to Europe and not the Americas.
Laughing? About rare earth metals? Do you know what China is getting out of Afghanistan? Rare earth metals. You want China ruling the US? Yes or no?
Good! Get it done. No Paul Ryan at the helm of the House this time is a positive.
Actually Trump was voted worst of all time. Soon he has a chance to be voted worst and second worst of all time.
RE: LA Fires. I went to UCLA for grad school after leaving Illinois. UCLA is East of Santa Monica and so I'm familiar with the areas in today's news.
LA is a huge sprawling city that is primarily built in large valleys surrounded by hills leading to even more rugged areas. As land became less available some people built into the hills and higher. If you drive N along the ocean, there are some homes between the ocean and the highway and steep hills to the right. As time went on they carved roads into the hills and up into the canyons and crammed home after home up there. This area is called Pacific Pallisades, which is where the largest fire is burning.
Every year seasonal strong winds blow into LA from the East. There is fire danger every year and usually a couple of fires in these canyons -- they are in the news every year. The homes are on the top of the hills/canyons, and in the valleys is dense brush. It is basically impossible to fight these fires when the wind is blowing this strongly.
Only time will tell how bad this fire rates against other ones in LA history. The thing I always wonder about with all the big fires, here or anywhere else in the country, is bad actors. The fire in Pacific Palisades started during the day and 2 more started in the evening elsewhere in the hills/canyons of LA. Hopefully that is coincidence.
Edit: it looks like it has gotten down into at least one subdivision in Pacific Palisades that looks more open. High winds and embers seem to have devastated this community as well. Sad all around.
LA is a huge sprawling city that is primarily built in large valleys surrounded by hills leading to even more rugged areas. As land became less available some people built into the hills and higher. If you drive N along the ocean, there are some homes between the ocean and the highway and steep hills to the right. As time went on they carved roads into the hills and up into the canyons and crammed home after home up there. This area is called Pacific Pallisades, which is where the largest fire is burning.
Every year seasonal strong winds blow into LA from the East. There is fire danger every year and usually a couple of fires in these canyons -- they are in the news every year. The homes are on the top of the hills/canyons, and in the valleys is dense brush. It is basically impossible to fight these fires when the wind is blowing this strongly.
Only time will tell how bad this fire rates against other ones in LA history. The thing I always wonder about with all the big fires, here or anywhere else in the country, is bad actors. The fire in Pacific Palisades started during the day and 2 more started in the evening elsewhere in the hills/canyons of LA. Hopefully that is coincidence.
Edit: it looks like it has gotten down into at least one subdivision in Pacific Palisades that looks more open. High winds and embers seem to have devastated this community as well. Sad all around.
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A pretty high % of “wildfires” are fires started by humans that get out of control.
The largest fire in New Mexico history (2022) was started by a careless human. Most of our fires here in Colorado are started by humans.
Southern California shouldn’t be home to 23 million people. You put that many people in an area and they are going to be susceptible to significant damage (and lives lost) in scenarios like this.
Ive never understood “squatters rights”. Why do people think groups should be able to take over a home that isn’t theirs?
California doesn’t do planned burns, they do not get rid of the trashy plants on the floor. Add in they send their water to the ocean as opposed to putting it in reservoirs for fire use and you get what you got. This situation that has been created by leftist morons. Proper forestry matters.
It will take you a couple of years just to learn how to make the oranges.
Has California thought of trying to change the type of vegetation in fire prone areas? I recall Israel went through a large tree planting program in their hills where pines were planted. Result: massive increase in wild fires. Now they’re trying to replace those pines with indigenous trees such as (I think) fig, olive, etc which diminish the fire risks.
That and zero talk about population density tells me we are still far away from the target when discussing climate and disasters.
I’ve said for many years that access to fresh water is a much bigger concern than oil. Situations like this reinforce that belief.
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One other issue in this disaster is fire insurance. Major homeowner insurers like State Farm announced they were pulling out of Calif about a year ago. They lost a lot of money in the past in both N and S Calif and they weren't being allowed to charge what they felt they needed to for the risk. The effective date was upon policy renewal but how this actually has transpired will be a news story once they get the fires under control.
Bill O'Reilly here. Welcome to the No Spin News Tuesday, January 7th, 2025. Stand up for your country. Donald Trump press conference today, more than an hour. And interestingly enough, Joe Biden's not going to have a departing press conference. So he says, I guess that could change. But Biden doesn't want to talk to the press or anything like that. But Trump looked pretty strong if you saw it. The headlines, of course, are misleading, as they always are. But I'm going to go over the press conference today, a little bit later in the program. I want to get some breaking news stuff out of the way. But I want to tell you a few things before we get to the Talking Points Memo. So the highlights of the press conference were overseas stuff. Canada, because Donald Trump is baiting Canada saying, well, we really want you to be the 51st state. And the crux of that matter is the United States gives Canada in the form of trade deficits and aid about $200 billion a year. And that's going to stop because we can't afford to do this anymore. Trump knows it. And Trump saying, look, we're not going to subsidize your economy or your government any longer, so you probably should become a state because then we'd have to subsidize you. But Canada is not going to become a state. This is all theater. Trump loves political theater. There's Panama. Now it's another big problem and President Trump is correct. Panamanians are charging us way too much to get our shipping back and forth from the Caribbean to the Pacific and vice versa. And there are two Chinese companies that are doing security down there, which is absurd. And Panama has got to change the agreement, has to. But instead of negotiating quietly, Donald Trump goes, hey, you know, we may send some people down there, but there's not going to be an invasion of Panama. That'll work it out.
Greenland. Now Greenland has 56,000 people, many of whom are indigenous people. The kingdom of Denmark, it is a kingdom, owns Greenland and has since the 18th century, and it's not giving it up. Trump wants Greenland because there's a lot of fossil fuels and a lot of very valuable minerals under the perma ice frost there. And if President Trump can make a deal that would allow us to send U.S. military forces to protect the deal and that flanks Putin. That's what Denmark's all about. So I guess Don Junior is going up there. He better bring a heavy coat. And he says, Well, I'm not meeting with anybody. I'm just going to go up. Maybe you want to do that in July, Don? Okay. Anyway, what's likely to happen is that the people in Copenhagen will make a deal with Trump and we'll lease parts of Greenland, which would be the fifth largest country in the world if it were a country. It's not. It's a territory administrated by Denmark, by Copenhagen. But that deal is easily made because the Danes can get a lot of money out of it. Danes aren't going to harvest the fuels in Greenland. They already would have. They don't have the ability to do it. All of this is cloaked under bombast, and that's how Donald Trump rolls and deals. Okay? He throws the grenades, shakes everybody up, and then his negotiations are easier because they're afraid. He's always done that.
Greenland. Now Greenland has 56,000 people, many of whom are indigenous people. The kingdom of Denmark, it is a kingdom, owns Greenland and has since the 18th century, and it's not giving it up. Trump wants Greenland because there's a lot of fossil fuels and a lot of very valuable minerals under the perma ice frost there. And if President Trump can make a deal that would allow us to send U.S. military forces to protect the deal and that flanks Putin. That's what Denmark's all about. So I guess Don Junior is going up there. He better bring a heavy coat. And he says, Well, I'm not meeting with anybody. I'm just going to go up. Maybe you want to do that in July, Don? Okay. Anyway, what's likely to happen is that the people in Copenhagen will make a deal with Trump and we'll lease parts of Greenland, which would be the fifth largest country in the world if it were a country. It's not. It's a territory administrated by Denmark, by Copenhagen. But that deal is easily made because the Danes can get a lot of money out of it. Danes aren't going to harvest the fuels in Greenland. They already would have. They don't have the ability to do it. All of this is cloaked under bombast, and that's how Donald Trump rolls and deals. Okay? He throws the grenades, shakes everybody up, and then his negotiations are easier because they're afraid. He's always done that.
Yes, this too. Much like State Farm and others pulling out of states like Louisiana and Florida due to constantly losing $ there because of hurricanes.
Maybe we should encourage people to move to places that don't have so many natural disasters. Again, SoCal was never meant to have 23 million people. This is a risk people take living there. Doesn't make it any less devastating, but we should probably talk about it.
California is a water rich state. Reagan and his predecessors handed the current generations brilliant water infrastructure which they have squandered.
In Arizona, the founders of the modern iteration handed this generation brilliant water infrastructure which has been used very wisely.
It's not a population problem; it is poor governance.
Not sure what to do about beach front on the Gulf of Mexico (yes, I said Mexico, President Trump). Certainly very low lying areas. The little islands people inhabit are tough, too. Florida seems to be a trap in some ways.
