N.B.

     Comments like "Hahahahah. Your a idiot." are not, in fact, actual debate, and will not be published.  Give facts, cite verifiable sources, make an effort to be coherent -- or remain unpublished and much-mocked.

     I get that the junior stormtrooper thing is big fun for you, and you think it's very much the style these days; I get that it must be deeply satisfying for you, after all those years of trying to keep up with the smart kids (while deriding them as grinds and/or weirdos), but you're still a loser, even when you think "your side" is winning.

      PS: The gazillionaires you think are on your side?  The ones raking in daily more money than you'll make in your life?  They are not on your side.  They're laughing at you behind your back while they're picking your pocket.

The Retcon Brigade

     I'm still getting a few comments from people who claim the events at the U. S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021 could not possibly have been an attempted coup or insurrection because "they had no weapons."

     This assertion is risible.  January 6 rioters using clubs (both actual club-type clubs and stout posts from protest signs) and pepper spray can be seen in video of the day, along with improvised weapons that include police helmets and shields and sections of barricade fencing.  A number of rioters were credibly charged with bringing firearms onto Capitol grounds, and reported non-gun weapons included bats, crutches, flagpoles, skateboards and fire extinguishers.

     Aside from all that, a force of roughly 10,000 people is a weapon in and of itself.  At least 2000 made it inside the building, significantly outnumbering law enforcement.  Around 150 of the defenders were injured; I guess you could go argue the semantics of riot vs. insurrection vs. attempted coup with them, but your prospects will not be improved by claiming it was a "day of love" or a "peaceful protest."

     We came very close to losing elected officials to mob violence that day; pretending otherwise is like a cat trying to cover up a mess on a bare tile floor.

     I do not and will not whitewash political violence by any individual or group.  I try to sort out plain old regular protest, as American as apple pie, from "direct action" violence or riots, and from looting.  They're different things.  An enraged, shouting crowd -- like the people listening to then-President Trump and others earlier on January 6 who did not proceed to storm the Capitol, or a pissed-off BLM gathering marching up Meridian Street here in Indianapolis -- is not the same as rioters trashing government offices; nor is either of those two the same as opportunistic looters emptying a store amidst political unrest.  Conflating them is sloppy thinking; pretending the ones whose notions you more-or-less agree with are ever-pure blameless angels and those whose opinion you dislike are entirely malign destroyers is disingenuous doublethink.  Actions matter more than intentions or what banner the perpetrators wave.

     I am sick and tired of smarmy partisan bullshit.  I'm not going to publish it in comments and I'm not going to pretend it has any intellectual standing.  Straining at gnats and swallowing camels whole isn't a good habit to take up, even when a lot of the other kids are doing it.

On High-Level Federal Appointments

     I so should've applied for the top job at the Securities and Exchange Commission.  C'mon -- I played Monopoly a lot as a kid; I ran a cash register the summer I worked at a paint store -- and I read the financial news on the radio once a day, right off the wire, for almost two years!

     Like 'em or loathe 'em, for all of my life, nearly every one of Presidential appointees to the top jobs in the Executive Branch have been highly qualified, at least on paper.  In the past, when Presidents have tried to promote people who were not heavy hitters with prior experience -- remember Harriet Miers? -- the nominees tended to get shouted or laughed down. 

     Man, those were the days.

Skipped A Day

     I skipped posting yesterday.  The attempt to get across the scale of the mess in Los Angeles is depressing.  And people who think the dueling boasts and threats of politicians somehow outweigh FEMA's guidelines and limits for aid annoy me beyond measure.

     Nothing stops fires pushed down dry mountains and hills by winds in excess of sixty miles an hour.  Nothing much prevents them starting; southern California is a tinderbox in the dry season and LA county is vast, a megacity bigger than Delaware or Rhode Island, containing more people than the individual populations of all but ten U. S. States.*  Sparks are inevitable.

     The people who lose their homes will get the same help as the people who lost their homes to natural disaster in the Southeast: FEMA covers their hotel bill or rental and a few other things.  The Federal agency doesn't play favors because it cannot; it's not a rich man's whim or a politician's pork handout but a fairly hidebound Federal agency, one in which (for example) it took a determined band of worried bureaucrats over a decade to make minor reforms in the way the national-level EAS system functions.  Congress can (and may) come up with extra funding; the Executive Branch can tinker a little with what goes where, but the stuff that makes an actual difference to J. Average Citizen is cut and dried, and involves filling out forms.

     Anyone claiming the LA Fire Chief is a "DEI hire" can go look up her record, including written and physical tests.  She's been fighting fires for a long, long time, mostly in jobs where the inability to fight fires or to lead groups doing the work would result in termination for cause.  If you're still worried about some chick running a 3000-plus person fire department, step up and shake hands with Anthony C. Marrone, Fire Chief of the 3000-plus member LA County Fire Department, working side-by-side with the city (and every helper they can get from within the U.S., Mexico and Canada).  There is no shortage of competent bosses, and the only limitation on front-line firefighters is logistics.

     It's a fire (well, several fires).  Just like storms, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and tornadoes, it hasn't got any politics, and no decent person checks the party membership of the victims before deciding if they'll help.
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* How does Greater LA compare to Indianapolis/Marion County?  The population density is about the same, between 2400 and 2500 people per square mile -- but the 400 square miles of Indianapolis is a tenth of LA County's 4000 square miles.  We lose some land area to lakes and rivers; LA loses a lot more to slopes too steep to build on.

Steak Night

     Tam and I went to Half Price Books this afternoon and on the way home, stopped off at the other foodie grocery store in Broad Ripple -- where they had grass-feed New York strip steaks at a price that fit my holiday-bonus budget!

     Cooking them in this weather -- it was 37°F this afternoon, but dropped rapidly as the sun set -- meant getting out my cast-iron grill pan, scrubbing it with chainmail (no, really, fine chainmail is the best way to clean cast iron) and olive oil for good luck and to refresh the seasoning, and an even tougher scrubbing job after.

     Paired with trumpet mushrooms sliced and fried in the grill pan next to the steaks, plus seasoned tiny potatoes nuked in the microwave and a bagged salad, it was a good way to wrap up the weekend.

Snow

     Indianapolis had another 2.7 inches of snow yesterday.  I'm measuring at least ten inches accumulation on the back yard picnic table here.

     It's not fun.  I'm long past snowball fight age.  Driving home Friday night was a little scary.  But the city copes; they keep the major streets pretty well plowed and so far, my Lexus all-wheel drive kinda-SUV has done well with the alleys and side streets.  January in Indianapolis -- we do get snow.

Footnote

     If you're one of the people chortling how the "lib'ruls" of LA voted wrong and now face fires, two bits of information:

     -Post hoc ergo propter hoc is still a logical fallacy.

     -In the 2024 Presidental election, more people voted for Donald Trump in Los Angeles than voted for him in Arkansas or Oklahoma.  This nonsense about "red America" vs. "blue America" ignores the reality that we all live in purple America, a bit redder in some places and bluer in others, and when bad luck falls on Texas or New York, Oregon or Florida, it falls on millions of people who voted the same way you did and hold similar values, no matter how you voted or what policies you favor.  We're all in the same box. 

     But neither voting patterns, election results or efforts to attracts a more diverse pool of firefighters caused the recent and current fires in and around LA.  They had a fairly wet year or two recently, then things got dry (as is normal in that part of our country) and then--  Then the dice came up snake eyes (or double sixes) for the Santa Ana winds, roaring with an intensity rarely seen.  People being people, anyone with a yard has stuff growing in it, and it was all pretty much tinder.  Add strong winds and all you need is a spark.

     Strong winds kept firefighting aircraft on the ground (and still are, at their worst), leaving the greater Los Angeles area with exactly the same resources as any other big city: a hydrant system and trucks and personnel adequate to battle normal fires, a building or three at a time.

     Information about LAFD funding is muddled; they were in the process of negotiating fire department pay (and apparently other terms) during the overall budget process.  LAFD's portion was left for another bill, later, and their funding went up, not down (as has been claimed elsewhere), but reports on how much and what it was for vary.  All I can tell for sure is that it went up some tens of millions -- not much less than 20, nor more than 50 million over what it had been.  Call it a couple week's income for Elon Musk, or more than you or I would see in ten lifetimes.  They've got the money.  They're not worse off for staff than fire departments generally -- and, faced with a wall of flame pushed by katabatic winds exceeding 60 miles an hour, blowing embers ahead of it into paper-dry shrubs, grass, trees and wooden houses, all they can do is fight for time, no matter who they are.  Against a calamity this enormous, all people are the same size, and it's too damn small.  Additional help is pouring in, from as far away as Canada.

     It's probably ironic that the best tool against this kind of disaster is slow and about as nannying as it gets: building codes and zoning.  Requiring more fire-resistant construction and materials for homes and commercial buildings, mandating largely vegetation-free "clear zones" around them, incorporating firebreaks into neighborhood design -- all of those things would help mitigate the kinds of harm we're seeing happen.  Towns and cities in Southern California have made efforts to create such rules -- and it has been decried as liberal interference in personal freedom to do as people wish on their own property.  Like most things in politics, like most things involved in living with neighbors nearby, it's a matter of compromise and sometimes it works out badly.  It's a part of life -- and only a ghoul revels in the bad outcomes.

DEI Didn't Do It

     Elon Musk and others on the Right have decided to blame "DEI" for the California wildfires getting so out of control, or possibly for happening at all.

     That part of California has fires every winter.  They've got native plants that produce seeds that won't even germinate unless they're been through a fire, so you can't claim it's not normal.  And every so often, there's a winter there in which the Santa Ana winds aren't the usual 25 to 35 mph, but much higher.

     If there's any kind of white guy special knowledge and skill, or secret science, or for that matter magic, voodoo, prayers, incantations or handwavium that can counter fires being pushed through dry vegetation by winds of 80 mph and up, in a region of scarce water, I'm pretty sure California firefighters would like to hear about it.  But there is, in fact, no level of training, staffing or demographic adjustment that amounts to a hill of beans against what firefighters there are facing.  What they need is water, far more of it than any fire-hydrant system can deliver, and the way they usually get it is from airplanes and helicopters.  You can't fly 'em in 80+ mph winds; you can't scoop up water in winds that high and you can't drop it with any accuracy in winds that high.  Wind speeds have fallen a little and they are now dumping as much water on the fires as they can, as quickly as they can, and nobody is downchecking pilots for being too pale, too dark, too butch or too femme.  It's tricky flying and they'll take anyone who can do it.

     So some fire departments in LA County spent their downtime looking at demographics and trying to recruit firefighters from groups presently under-represented in the firefighting staff?  So what.  If they ended up with a few more who spoke the various languages spoken in their districts, or more familiar with the neighborhoods, great.  Fighting fires is hard work, and it doesn't pay all that well for the amount of risk and effort it involves.  If you're worried some nice white Christian boy is missing out on those sweet, sweet fireman jobs 'cos a dark-skinned pagan lesbian from across the sea edged him out, you're nuts.

Oh, That Reasoned Debate!

     I can, in fact, be convinced by logical argument supported by verifiable facts.  It's kind of a thing with me.

     On the other hand, if your idea of refutation is this comment: "Damn you're stupid" then all you have done is show me you're a member of the might-makes-right team, nothing more than a brute authoritarian, and you have neither facts nor logic on your side.  Sorry, ol' jackboot, but being quoted to mock is as close to published as your comment will get.

     Another would-be commenter linked to an oily article arguing that tired old trope, that the January 6, 2021 riot (and behind-the-scenes Administration machinations) couldn't possibly have been an insurrection because it was a grabastic soup sandwich, and because the action at the Capitol was not one hundred percent violent chaos.  Nope, sorry, won't wash.  The plotters were pretty clearly counting on Vice-President Pence playing along, at which point the riot would have been mostly window-dressing.  Muddled lines of command, control and communication are an excellent route to plausible deniability.  But a few periods of relative calm in some areas of the Capitol do not negate the violence of the break-in, nor the internal hammering-down of doors and windows, assaults on persons and facilities, vandalism and theft committed in the course of that day.  Smug commentators in comfortable offices can smirk and retcon all they like, but it doesn't change the events recorded on video that day, many of which I watched in real time.

     Trump supporters and fellow travelers would not be trying to rewrite history so desperately hard if they were not embarrassed by their side's actions on that day.  It's hard to claim you Back the Blue when your side is beating up cops, isn't it?

     So go on, keep up the name-calling, keep up the handwaving bullshit.  It doesn't change what actually happened.  It doesn't change what Team Trump tried to do.  And it doesn't change what you are: thugs.  Thugs without respect for democracy, decency or the freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights.  From the crowned heads of 18th-Century Europe to the Know-Nothings, from the Confederacy to the Klan to the fascist movements of Europe and their less-successful American counterparts, the Trumpian Right is part of a terrible tradition that believes power is its own justification and that some men are -- and should be -- more equal than others.  But that is a damnable lie; it is and has always been a self-evident truth that all men are created equal.  All of 'em.  Even women.  Even people who are darker than you are, who are poorer than you are, who don't follow the same religion, even the ones who don't share your political opinions.

     This country is headed down a bad path for the next four years.  I expect a reaction at the midterms.  I have no idea what to expect in the intervening two years, but when I look back at Mr. Trump's first term and hear his wild talk now, I can see it won't be anything good.  Oh, and if you were expecting eggs to get cheaper?  Don't bet on it.

It Was An Insurrection

     Quick reminder: January 6, 2021 was an insurrection.  It wasn't a successful one; it wasn't well-coordinated.  Vice-President Mike Pence's stiff neck impeded a critical step and he sacrificed a political career that he'd compromised a lot to advance, in order to preserve the orderly and lawful function of our system of government and prevent an autogolpe.

     I watched live and near-live coverage of the assault on the U. S. Capitol as it happened and it was not a "day of love."  It was a violent, poorly-organized attack on the building and on Congress.  We came within minutes and feet of serious harm to the Senators and Representatives, and multiple police and citizens were injured.  One rioter was killed while charging at law enforcement personnel through a just-broken window in a door with a raging mob behind her.

     There's a real push on the Right to retcon these events as some kind of overly-enthusiastic hijinks at worst; after all, there were lulls in the fighting (as there are in any such conflict.  Sorry, Hollywood tends to skip over the dull parts) and there's plenty of video of that, too.  But men (and a few women), many armed with clubs and more, scaled walls, burst through barricades, smashed windows, broke down doors and put Congress to flight.

     It was an ugly day.  There may be more ugly days ahead.

Snow Business

     There's over half a foot of snow on the ground per the official count.  Around Roseholme Cottage, it falls short of a foot deep, but not by much.

     I'd love to hang around and talk about it, but I've got to creep my way to work.

Unrepeatable

     I probably won't be able to repeat it, but I certainly will if the chance occurs.

     For Christmas dinner, I made a ham -- steamed it, in fact, which came out much better than it had any right to.  It was a big ham; Tam and I had a nice meal and I froze the leftovers in three batches.

     The corner grocery store always has "fresh" (rehydrated) blackeyed peas for New Year's, and I made a nice pot of Hoppin' John for New Year's Eve, using one of the bags of frozen ham, with onions, peppers, canned chilis and both fresh and canned tomatoes.  Good stuff, and there I was, with a couple of bags of leftovers.*

     New Year's Day, we had corned beef and cabbage (and potatoes, carrots, celery and onions), slow-roasted in a covered pan on the closed grill.  The corned beef was tender and flavorful, and there was enough left to freeze for later.

     Friday, I picked up a chorizo sausage, and Saturday, I squeezed it out of the casing, cooked it and drained it before pushing it to the sides of the big stewpot and sautéing a little red onion and mixed peppers.  I took several thickish slices of corned beef, diced them and mixed them in.  Then I added most of a can of some wild stuff: Heyday Canning Company's Enchilda Black Beans, plus a small can of tomato sauce.  I'd been thawing a freezer bag of the Hoppin' John, and I stirred it in, covered the pot and let it simmer with a bay leaf. (Heyday offers an interesting variety of canned soups and spiced beans.)

     That's three kinds of meat, two kinds of beans, red and white onion, chilis, multicolored peppers, tomatoes and seasonings.  Chorizo, honey ham and corned beef; without leftovers, this would take hours and you'd end up with enough for an army, or at least an Elks Lodge.  It was a thick stew, savory and complex, exactly right for a cold evening.

     It's so much different stuff that I can't really say "try this," but if you get the chance, you should, or whatever similar thing appeals to you.
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* Gallon-size freezer bags make this appealing: stand them up, fill them about one-third full or a little more, squeeze out the air and close them up before laying them flat and letting the contents spread out in a thin layer that will freeze quickly and reheat easily.  If you're feeding more people, use bigger bags; they make them up to at least two and a half gallons!