Hello Hollywood, Welcome to Reality, Part I

By Rich Kozlovich

It appears Hollywood has received a "warm" welcome to the world, the world they helped to create, one they lovingly embraced, the secular religious world of leftism.  Everywhere else that embrace represented disaster, and we have over 235 years of history to prove it.  No lights in Cuba, no water in L.A. and after sixty years of communist control of Cuba a third of their houses are in ruins, and they've supported all of this insanity everywhere.   So, yet they're not all warm and happy? 

Instead they're outraged, outraged I tell you, ranting and demanding the resignation of these people in charge in California (Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here,) And these are the same kind of nitwits Hollywood wants running the nation.  Imagine that!  

And just because it's their ox that's being gored, or in this case their houses being destroyed with all the things they treasure, they're outraged.  Remarkable.  Well,  I say.... schadenfreude!  They brought this on themselves, but this will help prevent this from being brought on the nation. I'll tell you what, we'll come back to that.

Will Hollywood, and California abandon their leftist dipsticks, and turn MAGA? Nah, I don't think so because there's always a lunatic like Jim Jarmusch who knows those really responsible are ‘climate deniers’, i.e., conservatives, whites, along with traditional Christians and Jews, and it wouldn't be long before the invertebrates in Hollywood and the rest of the leftist nutrolls would follow suit.   Bernie Sanders, who thought the Soviet Union was paradise, also claims global warming is the cause, but scientists are finally bucking this mass scientific hysterical fraud say, climate change isn't the cause.   

But, hey, c'mon man, we really know who's at fault.   It's the Jews.  Radical Left-Wing Code Pink Links California Wildfires to Gaza Conflict.  What would these poor insane leftists do if there were no Jews to blame for their failures? 

Believe it or not, there is an upside to this, and perhaps we should all stop picking on these politicians and officials in California.  They’ve provided an incredibly important service to the nation, and the world. So, let me explain.

Let's take a look at the official incompetence of the unelected leadership.

1. L.A. Fire Captain: Some Supplies Aren’t Designed for Firefighting
2. Firetrucks Use Garden Hoses From Residential Homes to Fill Up Water Tanks as Hydrants Run Dry (VIDEO)
3. Environmentalism-Obsessed LA Doesn't Have Enough Water to Fight Fire Effectively
4. LA Fire Chief Warned Budget Cuts Would Impact Responses to Major Emergencies Weeks Before Fires
5. Years Before LA Inferno, Commiefornia’s Fire and Water Management Policies Raised Fears of Catastrophe
6. Last Year a Fireman Told Joe Rogan That With the Right Wind and Fire, LA Would Burn to the Ground [VIDEO]
7. Firestorm of incompetence in Los Angeles: Water company admits their big reservoir to fight fires was bone dry 
8. Marlow: LAFD Prioritizes Diversity over Preparedness…
9. L.A. Officials Complain There Aren’t Enough Firefighters – After Firing Hundreds Who Refused to Take COVID Vaccine

Official incompetence and stupidity was universal, and on going, and in spite of all the history and warnings about California's fires and "devil wind storms", stupidity was embraced as wisdom.... an all too common thread for leftists. 

For years there’s been a lot of rhetoric back and forth between conservatives and leftists, but conservatives no longer need to argue.  California has in so many ways provided proof leftism, represented by Democrats and RINO’s in America, is a failed secular religion ruled by historically ignorant, emotion mongering brainless nitwits, incompetent fools, and corrupt misfits.  See, definition does lead to clarity!

Now a look at the incompetence level by the elected officials.

1. LA Mayor Karen Bass Was MIA in Africa While Her City Burned
2. Maybe That's Why Mayor Karen Bass Kept Her Mouth Shut About Her Absence in Handling the LA County Fires 
3.  Dem Rep. Sherman: ‘Political’ to Blame L.A. Fire Budget Cuts for Impacts of Fire
4. Newsom on Water Situation: ‘Local Folks Are Trying to Figure That Out’
5.  Palisades Fire Incinerates Future Career of Mayor Karen Bass, Gavin Newsom’s Presidential Aspirations 
6. Watch: Gavin Newsom Thanks L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, Away in Africa, for Help by Phone During Fire 
7. 'Never enough diversity': Watch as L.A. Fire Department spent years pushing super-woke policies
8.  No Water, No Mayor, But Plenty Of Diversity
9.  MADDENING: Watch Adam Carolla Explain How He Applied to be a Los Angeles Firefighter But Was Turned Away for Being a White Male (VIDEO)

Amerian Thinker puts out a Weekly Digest, and Andrea Widburg made some extermely cogent observations:

The Democrat politicians they trusted to protect them from reality’s consequences failed. Obsessed with social justice, climate change, DEI, CRT, LGBTQ+, ..... Gavin Newsom cut the fire remediation budget, although he did make free medical care available for illegal aliens.........

Mayor Karen Bass (a Maoist who once believed in violently overthrowing the American government) found money for a trip to Ghana after cutting the fire department budget.  As for the fire department itself........ The fire chief, Kristina Crowley, believed that her priority as chief wasn’t dealing with fires; it was getting more women on the force......Kristine Larson, the “Equity Bureau” chief, had tough words for men foolish enough to find themselves physically incapacitated during a fire with only women firefighters available to help out: 

“He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.”

What about the California Republicans?  From what my conservative friends from California involved in CAGOP say (who are not on the leadership's happy list) the party leadership is filled with RINO's and act just as corruptly as Democrats to hold on to power. They share in this fiasco just as sure night follows day. If what the author is asking for is going to happen, there would have to be a massive revolt in the CAGOP. We'll see, but given what they've tolerated, their anti-conservative biases, along with their TDS issues, I'm inclined to think holding your breath until that happens really isn't a very good idea.

So, back to my point about thanking California, and the reason why we need to thank Californians, even the dead ones, for continuing to vote  for these misfits.  We can now assuredly say if California is doing something they think is really great, we know it's really a bad idea.  So, now anyone choosing to do the opposite to what they're doing in California can be confident they're making the correct decision.   That's priceless, and it's incontestable history!  So, from now on all conservatives have to say to ranting leftists is, “tell me about the water in L.A".

Thank you California, and keep up the good work!  I thank you, the nation thanks you, and the delta smelt thank you also. 

Update:  

•  L.A. Descends Into Chaos as Looters Exploit Wildfires
•  National Guard deploys to stop looters.
•  Newsom, Bass guilty of negligent homicide 

Posted by Rich Kozlovich at 12:24 AM

P&D Geopolitics Issue

By Rich Kozlovich 

Over the years I've written a lot about China because I've read a lot about China, and I think Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies published in 1997 had a lot to do with perking my interest there, and more so his views on why patterns keep repeating in so many different societies worldwide. 

China's history is large, complicated, and well studied by the Chinese.  I've often said those who've read much about China's history often know what they're going to do, and while not always, most of the time why.  It's just absolutely no one knows when or where they're going to do it.   

Nothing about China is ever as it appears, including their economy.  Their human rights record is abysmal, their conduct with their neighbors is appalling, and internationally illegal. 

While all the economists, pundits, and politicians were lauding China's economy the bug man was saying it's all smoke and mirrors, for almost 20 years now, and it's become obvious that's true to the experts as well. Imagine that.  Think about this.  If the bug man could see that almost 20 years ago, how could the highly educated and knowledgeable experts not see it?

On October 26, 2024 John Mauldin published his weekly Thoughts From the Front Line with this piece, Broken China noting the growth and the transition to the lack of growth and why, their massive debt, their banking system that's in effect a department of the government, their property development default issues, their centralized economic schemes, their demographic problems and the housing issues:

“China has a bigger problem lurking behind all those empty apartments: even more homes that developers already sold but have not finished building. By one conservative estimate, that figure is around 10 million apartments.“…......One recent estimate, from the research firm Rhodium Group, put the real estate sector’s entire domestic borrowings, including loans and bonds, at more than $10 trillion, of which only a tiny portion have been recognized.”

The real issue in China is the CCP's desire to remain in control at all costs:

........maintaining the party’s power is always top priority in a Communist system. To some degree, this requires keeping the population happy and comfortable. Hungry people, even relatively uncomfortable people, are generally less cooperative (note sarcasm). But if push comes to shove, regime preservation comes first. Xi’s predecessors demonstrated that with the “Cultural Revolution” and later Tiananmen Square.

All this is going to reduce willingness to invest in China, and this new N. Korea and Russia embrace is an illusion.  They're all going broke.  N. Korea is working overtime to provide military equipment Russia needs and is incapable of producing themselves, which I think is a long term tell on Russia's state of affairs, along with the fact were seeing what was considered to be the number two military power in the world unable to defeat the number 22 military power in the world for over two years and a half years.  

Communist Cuba's entire power grid has collapsed. After Russia stopped funding Cuba in the 80's and Venezuela wasted all their money supporting socialist nations, and went broke, Cuba had to rely on it's own resources, and they failed.  Their taxpayer base is pretty much non existent, and they're not only lacking energy, they're lacking all the basics, including food. 

Repairing their grid is going to be more than difficult since they didn't even create it in the first place, the Russians created it in the early 1970's, and they never properly maintained it after 1980 when the Russians turned off the tap and the Soviet Union collapsed, and the US embargo made it difficult to get material, but I think that's way over played.  It's estimated it will take $10 billion dollars to bring it up to snuff, and that's the equivalent of  "10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product".  And they don't have it.   It will be interesting to see if Russia, China, Iran, or N. Korea come to their rescue, especially since Cuba is such a strategically  important nation.   But is irritating the United States with such a smoke and mirrors game worth ten billion dollars to them?

How about converting to solar?  Well, they're incapable of creating such a system, and what private enterprise with that capability would be willing to invest in Cuba, as they're notorious for nationalizing businesses.

Russian, China, and all the rest of that cabal may throw some money at them to infuriate the American war hawks, but that's all smoke and mirrors, they can't afford Cuba now any more than they could afford Cuba decades ago, and it's much worse now.  The more they throw away supporting Cuba, the sooner they go broke.  The left screams about Batista, but under him Cuba was better off than many European nations at that time.  Was he a thug?  Sure, but compared to the horrors the Castro cabal imposed on Cubans he was a humanitarian.

Cuba is unfixable unless they overthrow the communists and embrace America, and that goes for Venezuela also, but it's not happening no matter how their nation is swirling down the sewer being turned into a criminal controlled state, just like Haiti, and Cuba will end up the same way. 

There's all this scary talk about BRICS, and again, I think it's all smoke and mirrors, as  Antonia Colibasanu notes: 

For leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the annual BRICS summit is an excellent opportunity to present a vision of a world in which the United States does not lead. And yet, each summit confirms that the grouping has no function other than to promote lofty rhetoric and symbolic gestures.

They want to create an economic system to overcome the American dollar, and America's ability to impose restrictions on trade with countries who like Russia attacked Ukraine, and those who support them.   But these are all economic losers, and guess what?  They have no idea how to do it.  There was a lot of rhetoric but no new economic multilateral model offered that could possibly match what already exists, and the potential for mutual beneficial cooperation is a dream, kind of like a nightmare, and one thing I think all these countries have come away with is the understanding BRICS isn't about mutually beneficial multinational cooperation, it's all about what's beneficial for China and Russia, and mostly China, and the question is does Putin grasp that, or is it he's in so much trouble over his invasion of Ukraine, he has no choice but to embrace this folly.  One more thing.  If they actually did work something out, who's currency would they use?   

Did you know there was an Organization of Turkic states? Yeah, me neither, and before all this it didn't really matter, but for the first time the met this last weekend in Istanbul. Okay, so what?  Well, no one's saying it so I will.  Supposedly this is all about industry, science, technology, and innovation, and I'm sure it was, but I believe there's a behind the curtain factor here.  This is a push against Russia, or at least a warning.  Why? Look who the members are, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan with Hungary and Turkmenistan as observers.  Most former Soviet satellites who very often are going their own way whether Putin likes it or not, and Turkey is playing a dangerous cat and mouse game with the west and with Russia. 

Turkey is part of NATO, but not the European Union, and wants to play both sides in this Russo/Ukrainian War.

Turkey is asking to be fully "admitted in the Russian-Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, where it is a dialogue partner, and to BRICS, while successfully contending with the Iranian (actually another Turk) Ali Khamenei and the Saudi Muhammad bin Salman for the leadership of the Islamic ecumene and claiming the spiritual leadership of the Organisation of Turkish States. Turkey is whatever it needs to be. Turkish, Muslim and Asian, but also European and Western. Part of the developed world, but also part of the Global South. A strategic component of the American Empire, but also a potentially lethal threat to the superpower’s hegemony. In essence, Turkey is itself and its interests. And it is in the light of this banal reality that Ankara will calibrate its moves in the Ukrainian game".

In the end Turkey want's to crush the US, enfeeble Russia, and become the overriding power in the Middle East.  That's not going to happen, because Turkey is a mess and no one trusts anything Erdogan does or says.