Welcome to the chaotic and confused State of Californica.

The new year of 2025 has barely begun and already the lower (butt-end coastal) part of our state is turning into a barren (if astronomically expensive) landscape of charred, multi-million dollar celebrity mansions and aesthetically decor-compatible forests of objects that might have formerly resembled stately fir trees.

The notorious 'Santa Anna Winds' that are an annual feature of Southern California's climatic patterns are sweeping through the tinder-dry Pacific coastal mountains that border Western LA (chosen by so many of LA's wealthy Hollywood celebrities as the site for their exponentially costly, luxury homes) on its outer-most flanks, with predictable results.

California's overstretched and grossly under-budgeted CALFIRE resources are backs-to-the-wall, as so many luxury homes are incinerated in the exclusive, narrow little forested box-canyons that constitute the preferred aesthetic settings for that area's wealthier among us. But the state's fire-fighting resources have been on the ropes for years, with under-funding having become the norm. And this in a state that predictably and reliably suffers wild-fire conflagrations routinely!

In that regard, more recently the state's Hollywood-grade governor (Mr. Noisome) recently sent a huge shipment of what was described as "surplus fire-fighting equipment" to war-ravaged Ukraine...a gift from the state that every year runs up costs of billions of dollars to fight wild-fires that are as regular an occurance as Yellowstone's 'Old Faithful' geyser eruptions.

Meanwhile, where is Los Angeles' 'woke' Mayor? Hovering concernedly on the fire-lines? Nope, off on a junket to Ghana, which she appears to have been in no undue concern to return expeditiously from as trip as her city turns into a Tinsel-Town MGM version of Hell.

Today, the latest news from the civilised blight known collectively as SoCal is that the region's fire fighting resources are so over-burdened by the challenges of this disaster that they are actually running out of water needed to fight the massive conflagration known as 'The Palisades Fire.' Refelect upon this, here: A state that has gone to extraordinary lengths to divert precious water resorces so as to protect a population of Smelt (a fish that has little commercial value of much regard) cannot even assure an adequate water supply in urban SoCal to deal with disatrous, massive fires like the current one!

Reportedly some 30,000 or more people have been evacuated from their homes and properties in those ritzy, up-scale areas and the estimate of property and possessions lost to date must by now run well into the many, many billions of dollars (a burden that will predictably fall upon the shoulders of all of the rest of the state's already overtaxed citizens). No wonder, given Californica's history of widespread wild-fire contagion that insurance companies are not only refusing to insure homes in fire-prone region of the state (virtually the ENTIRE state), they have recently pulled up stakes and moved out of our state entirely!

In the news, we are told that celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Chloe Kardashian and a great many other vapid 'socialistas' from tinseltown are now 'suffering' from the effects of the fires and the media are enjoying a regular news feeding frenzy, amplifying and hysterically hyping all of this news as only media can, to titillate, aggitate and worry its listeners/viewers. Think of it in a very crass, callous way, as just another Hollywood 'reality TV' show, if that amuses you, but to someone like myself, who dispises our state's vacuous adullation of 'celebrity culture', it's all part of the showmanship Hollywood is so famously noted for.

"Lights, camera, action...FIRE!"

As far as I am concerned, I am completely nonplussed (in the modern North American sense) about all this, since I have always regarded the entire Los Angeles region as a blight on any petense of civilised society. I used to regularly joke with my confreres about waiting for the San Andreas Fault to finally break off that whole lower butt-end of the state and float it out to sink in the Pacific Ocean (like the Sodom & Gomorrah Atlantis that it is...or ought to be), a scenario amusingly portrayed some 68 years ago in a lovely old 1957 Stan Freeberg radio parody about the Aragon Ballroom (and Lawrence Whelk's Orchestra) that most people have now forgotten entirely about.

While this latest disaster is simply more evidence that NorCal (Northern California) and SoCal (Southern California) are so totally and completely different, one from the other, that the state should long ago have been divided into two entire separate states, the greater perplexity that arises from this latest disaster is the sheer, mind-fooking incomptence of California's Democratic, progressive Governor (whom I refer to as 'Gravel Noisome'). Indeed, "fiddling as Rome burns" is far more than an apt and fitting analogue!

Noisome is, of course, adored by his left-leaning sycophant progressive cohort, replete with his carefuly cultivated photo-op left-profile (how fitting is that term, eh?) and carefully fabricated 'dashing man-of-the-people' image, but in the harsh, cold light of practical, functional reality his inept ministrations in response to California's myriad problems have amounted to a complete catastrophe from start to finish. As a relative of Diane Pelosi (with his consequent links to the San Francisco City administrative oligarchy), Noisome is as appropriate husbanding the overall 'good and welfare' of the state under his command as Emperor Nero was to Imperial Roma.

What isn't well understood by those outside of this hellish 'Hotel California' paradise that our formerly lovely state has morphed into is that the state is largely controlled by Los Angeles 'big money' interests, secondarily only to the insular power elite whims of San Francisco's progressive administration. The rest of the state appears to matter little to the Guv, as he continues to ignore the state's most urgent needs (among them, aging state-wide infrastructure, particularly the increasingly decrepit state highways, which continue to deteriorate because previous subsidies and specific allocations for their upkeep were "diverted" into money-holes like the 'Homeless crisis' and his High-Speed Rail boondogle) and spends every last penny in tax revenues the state receives, instead of setting aside emergency reserve funds for predictable crises such as the current Pacific Palisades Fire conflagration.

What is sorely needed, in my considered opinion, is another no-BS Ronald Reagan to wade knee-deep into all Noisome's expensive follies and fiscal excesses and start slashing pork barrel funding left and right, but sadly, that seems about as likely to happen in this deep-blue, leftist progressive fantasyland as the merest vestige of responsible accountability on the part of state government!

And the ones who keep this much-needed salvation from occurring are the same clueless folks (older 'brain-dead' individuals and those who, under 30, are as politically alacritous as a dead toad) who stubbornly persist in displaying 'HARRIS/WALZ' campaign signs on their front lawns...signs that metaphorically proclaim (not unironically) "I'm a herd-following loser and I'm proud of it!"

Oh yes, Californica is a WONDERFUL state, but only if you've left it trailing in your dust and relocated some place elsewhere, where people are brought up wisely, to be intuitively thoughtful and sagaciously reflective. People who feel that idiocy is always unacceptable, even if you are VERY wealthy or politically powerful!

As for that ever happening across the spread of the resident California Humming Beans we more thoughtful people reluctantly coexist with, as my wifie always reminds me, "Neva hoppin', Occidental barbarian!"

Put that in your Palisades Forest luxury home's fireplace and smoke it, Los Angeles!

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POSTSCRIPTS:

1) Read what The Federalist has to say about 'Noisome's' mismanagement of California

2) A further acute insight into California's anal retentive public policies and mismanagement by Chris Bray (PhD)

3) And let's not forget the 'woke', diversity-obsessed Mayor of Los Angeles, either, who supplied Noisome with his flaming fiddle.

4) Holding State leaders accountable for gross mismanagement (an accellerant to conflagration).