More Oppose Than Support Trump's Deployment Of Marines To LA

The chart above reflects the results of a YouGov Poll -- done on June 10th of a nationwide sample of 4,309 adults.

The results are only slightly better for the National Guard deployment.

L.A. Fires Give Trump Fuel For His Revenge Agenda

 

The following is part of a post written by former Republican Steve Schmidt:

Like the Great Fire of London in 1666, the Great Fire of Los Angeles will be recalled for 500 years.

The scale of the conflagration is biblical. These epochal fires will join Chicago and San Francisco atop an infamous registry of American destruction.

The fires are still spreading, still growing. There is no precedent, and no similar event by scale, cost or damage that has ever occurred in America. None.

The “Big One” came, but it wasn’t an earthquake that triggered the inferno, it was January winds that brought with it a storm surge of fire.

Donald Trump has talked at length about his revenge.

It has begun. It is underway. It is happening. Right now. It’s not in my head, and not in my imagination.

During the greatest crisis in the history of California en route to becoming the costliest natural disaster in American history, Donald Trump has offered snarling insults, veiled threats, misinformation and unrestrained malice.

He has used the disaster to attack the California governor, and has said nothing that matters of any consequence to the multitudes who are terrified and have lost everything.

Instead, like always, he has debased, inflamed and manipulated when he should have done the exact opposite. He seeks to gain from suffering, and incredibly, he doesn’t even bother to hide it anymore. More than anything else, it is this revelation from his chaotic transition that is most bone-chilling.

Our president is Arthur Fleck deep down.

Somehow he has concluded that a firestorm that has devoured a geography larger than Manhattan, and is only six per cent contained, is good for him. Donald has decided it proves him right about something — if only any of us could know what that might be. It certainly has nothing to do with his idiocies around the Delta smelt, a small fish that is the subject of controversy hundreds of miles away, as it has been for more than 30 years.

The capitulant Wall Street media should cover the dishonesty and incoherence of Trump’s inanity and insanity like the evil it is. Have no doubt, malice masks predation, and it is premeditated and purposeful. Trump looks at this disaster, and he sees one thing, and one thing only.

Opportunity.

He sees an opportunity to attack and weaken the enemy, which in his sick mind, is California.

The enemy is us.

Trump is happy today. Do you doubt it?

Over and over again, he has made clear what he wants to happen.

Trump despises California. He has made that clear enough.

Ten days from now, he will take command. What better way to pay back “Shifty Schiff” than by making his constituents suffer?

Why would anyone think anything else would happen?

In fact, just when California needs a mass deportation least, it’s going to get one.

It’s going to get it because common sense is in short supply around Donald Trump. Up in the thin air, where the stupid never takes a break, there will be no let up.

Delivering on this promise — long discounted by the media, which constantly asserts that he doesn’t really mean it and can’t possibly do it — he has been playing like Lucy does Charlie Brown for the last 10 years.

The "Nanny State" Strikes Again

The "Nanny State" is alive and well in Los Angeles. The city council has decided that poor people in that city are too stupid to make their own choices, so they're going to force them to make the right choices. After all, the city council members are so much smarter than poor people.

In their infinite wisdom, the council has decided that poor people in Los Angeles are too fat. To remedy this situation, they have banned the opening of any new fast food restaurants in an impoverished part of the city for at least one year. They say it's to give the area time to attract healthier food outlets.

This is just stupid. When did it become the government's job to force people to eat "healthier"? What happened to freedom of choice? Of course, by banning the fast food joints, they are also banning the new jobs they would bring to the area. It would seem to me that jobs are exactly what is needed in a poverty-stricken part of town.

I don't have any problem with the government or any private group trying to educate the public on how to live a healthier lifestyle (or anything else). That is just free speech. But when actions are banned by the government, that is just wrong. In a free country, people should be able to make their own choices, even if those choices are not good ones.

It's ignorant and elitist thinking like this that makes me glad I don't live in Los Angeles.

Can The Police Investigate Themselves ?

The Los Angeles Police Department has just released some rather disturbing statistics. It seems that they had 320 accusations of racial profiling lodged against them in 2007. After investigating these charges, they found that not a single one of them was true. 252 of the cases were dismissed as unfounded. The others were dismissed because of "insufficient evidence".

It's amazing enough that not a single one of the charges was found justified, but it reaches the level of incredible when you consider that 2007 was the sixth year in a row that not a single case was to be found justified. Considering the past reputation of the LAPD, is it even remotely possible that the findings are correct?

The truth is that there are bad apples in even the best department. It is just the nature of the job, and the impossibility of weeding out all "bad apples" in the hiring process.

The LAPD, like all organizations that deal with people from a position of power, needs to have an outside investigative agency dealing with departmental accusations. The lesson to be learned here is that no organization does a decent job of investigating itself.

No department is perfect, no matter what the statistics say.