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Oh, come on, pretty please (yes that's me begging) An Arctic Plunge Update

This is an Arctic Plunge update. I just checked and I am now in second place. Team 1 has $1275.00. My team has $1190. Also, team number three is gaining. I know if only a few of you would donate $25.00 - 50.00 (and maybe more) to my team I think we would be sitting pretty good . My goal is at least $1500.00. https://boom.hawkeyewrestlingclub.com/team/625106
I would be ever so thankful for your donations!

DOGE is dispatching agents across U.S. government

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are sending representatives to agencies across the federal government, four people familiar with the matter said, to begin preliminary interviews that will shape the tech executives’ enormous ambitions to tame Washington’s sprawling bureaucracy.

In recent days, aides with the nongovernmental “Department of Government Efficiency" tied to President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team have spoken with staffers at more than a dozen federal agencies, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media. The agencies include the Treasury Department, the Internal Revenue Service and the departments of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services, the people said.

At the same time, Musk and Ramaswamy have significantly stepped up hiring for their new entity, with more than 50 staffers already working out of the offices of SpaceX, Musk’s rocket-building company, in downtown Washington, two of the people said. DOGE aims to have a staff of close to 100 people in place by Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, they said.


While much about DOGE remains unclear — including who is paying the salaries of these staffers or exactly how DOGE representatives work with the formal transition team — the agency outreach reflects intensifying efforts by Musk and Ramaswamy to propose what they say will be “drastic” cuts to federal spending and regulations. Even as the scale of their project grows, Musk and Ramaswamy are encountering a slew of obstacles, including reluctance among congressional Republicans to approve deep budget cuts and a skeptical career civil service.
Two government employees said remarks Musk and Ramaswamy have made about the civil service have made them wary of the entire DOGE effort. Longtime civil servants — some who have built their careers learning the intricacies of the federal bureaucracy — are an awkward fit with Silicon Valley’s fast-moving and disruptive culture. Many in Washington regard the tech entrepreneurs as arrogant or naive about the complexity of reining in government.
The U.S. presidential transition process traditionally involves teams from the incoming administration working with existing agency staff and officials on the transfer of power, including regular briefings. This year’s changeover is far smoother than it was four years ago, when the process was complicated by Trump’s refusal to recognize the results of the election. But the uncertain status of DOGE relative to the rest of the Trump transition team has raised new questions about who precisely is speaking for the incoming administration.


In a potential nod to the myriad challenges facing DOGE, Musk has begun tempering certain promises in his bid to achieve sweeping reform by reinventing the federal bureaucracy, eliminating entire agencies, shrinking the federal workforce and slashing historic sums from the federal budget. In an interview Wednesday night at CES, the tech trade show in Las Vegas, he said DOGE may fall short of his initial aim to cut $2 trillion in federal spending.
“I think we’ll try for $2 trillion. I think that’s like the best-case outcome,” he said. “But I do think that you kind of have to have some overage. I think if we try for $2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting $1 [trillion].”
The idea of a commission to cut waste and regulation, long discussed among conservatives, was taken up by Musk and Trump during last year’s presidential election. Musk put $277 million toward electing Trump and other Republicans in 2024, and Trump has made the billionaire one of his most powerful advisers. After the election, Trump named Musk and Ramaswamy as DOGE’s co-leaders, assigned to identify government waste that the White House Office of Management and Budget would try to cut.


For a project named as a joking reference to a meme-based cryptocurrency, DOGE has taken numerous steps since the election to build a very real Washington operation. Over the past several weeks, DOGE has been deluged by applications that have poured in through direct messages on X, Musk’s social media site, where the group put out a public call for “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.”

That led to swarms of applicants who sought to bring their experience and credentials to the attention of Musk or Ramaswamy. In a blog post, Vinay Hiremath, co-founder of the tech company Loom, described four “intense and intoxicating” weeks of DOGE-related work after he became involved.
Although he ultimately decided not to relocate to Washington for a job with DOGE, Hiremath said he had been added to multiple groups on the encrypted messaging app Signal, where DOGE is conducting much of its initial work. Hiremath did not respond to requests for comment.


The crowdsourced callouts were followed by postings for more specific roles: Just after Christmas, DOGE said it was looking for IT, HR and financial staffers for full-time, salaried positions. This week, it put out a request for software engineers and information security engineers for full-time roles, advising applicants to send over “a few bullet points demonstrating exceptional ability” along with their cellphone numbers. On X, some users have listed their IQ scores in replies to Musk and DOGE and said they included them in their applications.
Key leadership roles have also fallen into place. Steve Davis, the Boring Company president who oversaw steep cost-cutting at Twitter (now X) after Musk bought it, is helping to oversee the entire effort, and deputies have been recruited to focus on narrower aspects of its agenda, such as legislation and regulation, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Emil Michael, a former Uber executive, is one of the people overseeing the effort to cut regulations, according to one person familiar with the matter, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect matters not yet made public. Trump has announced the appointment of Katie Miller, former press secretary and communications director for former vice president Mike Pence, to DOGE. Trump also said in December that Bill McGinley, the former White House Cabinet secretary whom he’d previously named as White House counsel, would serve instead as DOGE counsel.


It remains unclear exactly how DOGE will drive change. The White House budget request applies to spending in fiscal 2026, which doesn’t begin until Oct. 1. Spending for the rest of the current fiscal year is being hashed out on Capitol Hill by congressional Republicans who already have voted overwhelmingly to boost spending for the Defense Department — an agency DOGE has vowed to target.
Numerous party officials, meanwhile, are quietly wary of approving big spending cuts at the same time they are working to extend the expiring provisions of Trump’s 2017 tax legislation, which would reduce revenue by trillions of dollars. And it’s not clear how much weight Musk’s star power will carry on Capitol Hill, where federal spending is often prized for its benefits to hometown constituents. The limits of Musk’s influence were revealed in late December when Congress revised a stopgap spending bill he criticized but passed separate legislation to implement many of the specific provisions he lambasted.
As Musk’s emissaries begin to make contact with federal officials, critical questions remain unresolved about the group’s authority and responsibilities. The two federal employees expressed confusion about what DOGE is assigned to do — including whether it has Trump’s full backing.


“Every administration has to establish a relationship with its career people, because it’s the career people who keep the government going,” said Bill Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank. “I think this is an important foray, but given what they have stated, it will be difficult for some career individuals to be cooperative with the DOGE people, who are not elected and are more advisers than political appointees.”

The Supreme Court’s ‘no’ to Trump was dangerously close to ‘yes’

We should be more alarmed than grateful that the Supreme Court let the sentencing of Donald Trump go forward. The fact that there were four justices prepared to block the proceeding bodes ill for the high court’s willingness to act as a check on Trump once he returns to office.


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This was effectively a non-sentence: The judge imposed no jail time, no fine, no conditions of probation. In deference to his status as president-elect, Trump wasn’t even required to turn up in person, as would anyone else convicted of 34 felony counts.
“All hell breaks loose today!” Trump railed in a fundraising email, but no hell did. Trump now gets to appeal his conviction for falsifying business records to cover up his hush money payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. That’s all.

Trump’s still (barely) private attorneys — his incoming solicitor general, the government’s top lawyer before the Supreme Court, joined by his nominee to be deputy attorney general, the department’s No. 2 post — presented a series of hyperbolic arguments about the supposed harm that would ensue from sentencing.

“President Trump is already suffering grave irreparable injury from the disruption and distraction that the trial court abruptly inflicted by suddenly scheduling a sentencing hearing for the President-Elect of the United States, on five days’ notice, at the apex of the Presidential transition,” they warned the justices. This argument took some nerve, since the delay in sentencing until after the election came at Trump’s behest. As to disruption and distraction imposed on the president-elect and threatening — I’m not making this up — national security, spare us. Trump took time out for a round of golf the other day.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...mc_magnet-opsupremecourt_inline_collection_19

The most outlandish of Trump’s claims was that the doctrine that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution during their time in office somehow also creates an additional category of pre-presidential immunity for presidents-elect.

“Any criminal sentencing, and even the distraction of ongoing criminal proceedings, disrupts and will continue to disrupt the enormously burdensome and sensitive tasks of the Presidential transition,” the lawyers argued.

As the New York prosecutors responded: This is bunk. “No judicial decision or guidance from the Department of Justice has ever recognized that the unique temporary immunity of the sitting President extends to the President-elect,” they wrote. “Such an extension would conflict with this Court’s holdings that Article II vests the entirety of the executive power in the incumbent President alone.”
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Trump raised other, slightly more credible arguments: that the jury was improperly allowed to hear evidence that involved Trump’s official acts, in violation of the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity; and that the doctrine governing immunity for official acts requires that the entire case be paused while that issue is litigated.

But as the five-justice majority noted in its brief order rejecting Trump’s claims: “First, the alleged evidentiary violations at President-Elect Trump’s state-court trial can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal. Second, the burden that sentencing will impose on the President-Elect’s responsibilities is relatively insubstantial in light of the trial court’s stated intent to impose a sentence of ‘unconditional discharge’ after a brief virtual hearing.” A chilling question: What would have happened if the judge hadn’t announced his intention to impose the wrist-slappiest possible sentence?

The next part of the court’s order was even more chilling: “Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, Justice Gorsuch, and Justice Kavanaugh would grant the application.” In other words, two of Trump’s most loyal — most reflexive — defenders, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., and two of his three nominees, Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh, would have taken the extraordinary step of ordering the New York judge, Juan Merchan, not to proceed.
Two of the conservative justices disagreed. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s third appointee to the high court, joined with the three liberal justices to allow the sentencing to go forward.

This is what passes for good news, I suppose, with the current court — which is to say, not terribly cheery.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...d=mc_magnet-optrumpadmin_inline_collection_18

Barrett, who is being decried by Trump’s MAGA allies as a traitor and worse, has been a welcome surprise for her independence and intellectual honesty. In several significant cases last year — the immunity ruling, the scope of the constitutional disqualification provision and the reach of an obstruction statute used to charge some Jan. 6 defendants — she broke from Roberts and the other conservative justices.
Roberts’s role is more complex. He is the author of the immunity and obstruction opinions and is presumed to have written the disqualification ruling, as well. He seems to have little love for Trump — he rebutted Trump in his first term when Trump complained about “Obama judges,” and Roberts ruled against Trump in important cases, including his efforts to eliminate protections for immigrant “dreamers,” his attempt to add a citizenship question to the census, and his resistance to efforts to obtain his financial records.

But it remains to be seen how willing Roberts will be during Trump’s second term to break with the other conservative justices. The arithmetic of the conservative supermajority is relentless.

Thomas and Alito appear automatic in their support for Trump; for liberals, they’re a lost cause. The real disappointments in the court’s actions on Thursday are Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Especially in the context of a request for emergency relief, which sets a high bar for intervention, and given the weakness of Trump’s arguments, it is astonishing they would have stepped in to halt the sentencing.
That does not provide much hope about what will happen when Trump’s lawyers, pivoting from representing him personally to arguing on behalf of the United States, make their next appearance before the high court.

Question for the Resident MAGAs

I'm curious--what's the actual criteria for being labeled a "leftist" or part of the so-called "leftist cult"? So far, it seems like the bar is pretty low. From what I can tell, it includes:

- Not voting for Trump
- Questioning any unverified claims

Are there specific beliefs or actions that qualify someone, or is it just anyone who isn't 100% aligned with Trump? Looking for clarification here.

Biden's regrets: Regarding the debate vs Trump, he only regrets not changing the timing because he had a cold

Story from the New York Times:

Regrets? Joe Biden may have a few.

Analysis: President Joe Biden’s public comments have offered a glimpse into what is on his mind.

By Katie Rogers
The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has less than a month to go until his one-term presidency ends, and he is feeling reflective.
He is voicing regrets about his decision not to sign his name to COVID-19 relief checks and about his longtime reputation — once considered a virtue — of being the poorest lawmaker in Congress. And now, with a planned visit to meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican next month, the president is signaling that he may have additional issues on his mind.

The visit, White House officials said as they issued a readout on Biden’s call with the pope last week, is officially to discuss world peace. But according to a person familiar with his plans for the trip, Biden is also going to the Holy See to seek solace and “relief” as he exits the world stage. Francis, that person said, has become an ally and sounding board, trading occasional phone calls with Biden. Some of those conversations have been casual check-ins of the “Hey, how you doing?” variety.

Throughout his long career, Biden’s penchant for narrating his life experiences has shaped how the public understands him. We know the stories: Childhood struggles with a stutter created a scrappy, bully-fighting neighborhood crusader. Mistakes and bad timing upended earlier attempts at the nation’s highest office. And the devastating losses of his first wife and two children created a wellspring of resilience.

But the regrets he has let slip in the lame-duck portion of his presidency are different from the traditional Biden lore he spun on his way up the ladder. As he makes his way down, his recent comments and actions reveal more about Biden’s thoughts on the current political landscape, one that is drastically different from the one he entered after winning his first Senate election in 1972.

Despite being described by his allies as in a pensive, sometimes angry, mood as the end of his term approaches, the president has not made himself available to answer many questions about his recent actions, including his decision to pardon his son Hunter Biden. Still, in public appearances, the president has offered a few glimpses into what has weighed on him.

Earlier this month, in remarks at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Biden spoke about his long-held belief that the key to strengthening the U.S. economy is through bolstering the middle class. But he paused just long enough to touch on a story that he has shared countless times as a candidate and officeholder. “For 36 years, I was listed as the poorest man in Congress,” he told the crowd with a laugh, before adding, “What a foolish man.”

Given the current atmosphere, the joke carried the sting of bitter truth. The billionaires are at the White House gates, ushered in by voters who were again siding with a wealthy man whose politics are antithetical to Biden’s.

In a month, Washington will be led again by Donald Trump, a man who has made no secret of his wealth or his appreciation for the wealth of others. One of his top advisers, Elon Musk, is by some counts the richest man in the world, and his first act of (unelected) political business this month was to try to goad congressional Republicans into a government shutdown.

Aside from joking about his wealth, Biden has openly stewed over one of Trump’s flashier — and apparently effective — stunts as president. During the same speech at Brookings, Biden said he had been “stupid” not to sign his name to COVID stimulus checks that were distributed to Americans early in his term. Trump emblazoned his signature on checks distributed after a relief bill was passed in the spring of 2020.

Biden and his advisers learned a little something from Trump’s tendency to scrawl his name on things. By 2023, signs touting infrastructure projects “funded by President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law” began popping up around the country. But those had little political impact compared with a signed check. Already, misleading stories are circulating on social media about Trump possibly bringing stimulus checks back in 2025, despite the fact that the president-elect has not detailed plans to issue more money.

Perhaps more revealing about Biden’s list of regrets are the items that do not appear on it. The president does not regret debating Trump in June, an appearance that created a slow bleed in his support among Democrats and ended with his ouster as the party’s presidential nominee. Biden has privately told allies that he only regrets not changing the timing because he had a cold, and believes he would have performed better if he had been in better health.

Biden has also not voiced much public regret for deciding to call his economic plan “Bidenomics,” though he has privately groused to allies about his dislike of the name. And while his administration has acknowledged mistakes during the chaotic and deadly troop pullout in Afghanistan in 2021, Biden does not regret pushing forward with the withdrawal.

According to the Tombstone Epitaph, National Edition…

You don’t wanna mess with those Pella boys!
In this months edition, the Epitaph runs an article about how the Earp boys (Wyatt and brothers) took on the Gaass boys in a feud/fight back in Pella back in the day…. Apparently things dis not go well for the Earps and they got their collective asses handed to them!
The Wyatt’s lived in Pella as youths before moving…the Gaass family is one of the “founders” of Pella, Iowa. There is a pic of the Earp household in the Epitaph article (a row house east of the square) and there is a record of a Earp property north of the town.
I’ll have to try and get ahold of this edition if the Epitaph. Pella has advertised itself as the “childhood home of Wyatt Earp” for decades.
The Epitaph is a monthly that publishes stories of the characters and events of “the Old West.”

Sam Moore of the Dynamic Soul Duo Sam & Dave Is Dead at 89

Sam Moore, the tenor half of the scorching soul duo Sam & Dave — known for indelible hits like “Soul Man,” “Hold On, I’m Comin’” and “I Thank You” — died on Friday in Coral Gables, Fla. He was 89.
His death, in a hospital after surgery, was confirmed by his wife and longtime manager, Joyce Moore. She said the exact cause was unclear.
At their peak in the 1960s, Sam & Dave churned out rhythm-and-blues hits with a regularity rivaled by few other performers. When “Soul Man” topped the R&B charts and crossed over to No. 2 on the pop charts in 1967 (it also won a Grammy), its success helped open doors for other Black acts to connect with white audiences.
Sam & Dave’s live shows were so kinetic — they were known as the Sultans of Sweat and Double Dynamite — that even as charismatic a performer as Otis Redding was hesitant to be on the bill with them, for fear of being upstaged. Mr. Moore once spoke of his need to “liquefy” the audience before he considered a show a success.
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“The strength of Sam & Dave,” he said, “was that we would do anything to please the audience.”

Mr. Moore and Dave Prater, a baritone, met at an amateur night at the King of Hearts, a nightclub in Miami, in the early 1960s. The two unpolished young singers wound up together onstage by accident — Mr. Prater was having trouble remembering the lyrics to a song, and Mr. Moore fed them to him — but they clicked instantly with the audience.
Image

Both men had started out singing in church, and they developed a stirring gospel-tinged call-and-response style that became their trademark. They signed with a local record label, Marlin, and then moved on to Roulette Records in New York. But their early records failed to chart, and they retreated to the King of Hearts.
One night in 1964, Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd of Atlantic Records came to see them perform. Impressed, they offered the duo a contract. The company put the Memphis soul label Stax Records in charge of the production of their records, which would then be released and distributed by Atlantic.
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In his autobiography, “Rhythm and the Blues,” Mr. Wexler wrote, “I put Sam in the sweet tradition of Sam Cooke or Solomon Burke, while Dave had the ominous Four Tops’ Levi Stubbs-sounding voice, the preacher promising hellfire.”
Lending them to Stax proved to be an inspired move. In Memphis, Sam & Dave became part of a remarkable musical family that was a grittier counterpoint to Berry Gordy’s humming hit factory at Motown.

Working with the producers and songwriters Isaac Hayes and David Porter, the house band Booker T. & the M.G.’s and the crisp horns of the Mar-Keys, Sam & Dave were soon enjoying the benefits of stardom, including their own tour bus and plane, plus an entourage of women and hangers-on. They also both became addicted to heroin.
Samuel David Moore’s life can be divided into three almost implausibly tidy acts. Act I began with his birth in Miami on Oct. 12, 1935. His mother, Louise Robinson, was a teacher, and he described his father, John Richard Hicks, as “a street hustler,” a tireless womanizer whose son was soon following in his footsteps. (When his mother married a man named Charlie Moore, the boy took his stepfather’s surname.)
While still in high school, Sam was shot in the leg by the jealous husband of a married woman he was seeing. He later served 18 months in prison for procuring prostitutes. But music lifted him. He sang in a Miami Baptist church, then with an a cappella group called the Majestics and a gospel group called the Mellonaires, before teaming up with Mr. Prater.



Act II began with Sam & Dave’s first breakup in 1970, as their popularity waned. When their solo careers failed to take flight, they reunited and broke up several times. The two were never personally close.
“It was a duo,” Mr. Moore said in the 1998 book “Sam and Dave: An Oral History,” edited by Dave Marsh. “But it wasn’t a partnership.”
Image

Sam & Dave toured in the United States, Europe and Turkey, but their drug abuse had begun to take its toll. Their downward spiral was briefly slowed when John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, as the Blues Brothers, recorded a hit version of “Soul Man” in 1978, bringing new attention to the original.
Sam Moore and Dave Prater performed together for the last time on New Year’s Eve 1981 in San Francisco. After walking offstage, they never spoke to each other again.
Mr. Prater recruited a new partner, Sam Daniels, and they worked together, billed as Sam & Dave or the New Sam & Dave Revue — over Mr. Moore’s objections — until Mr. Prater died in a car accident in 1988.
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Act III opened the year after that final show, when Mr. Moore married Joyce McRae, a self-described “upper-middle-class Jewish girl from Chicago” who had first seen him perform in 1967. She helped him get sober, took over managing his career and guided him through a productive professional twilight.
Sam & Dave were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and received a lifetime achievement Grammy Award in 2019.
Information on survivors in addition to his wife was not immediately available.
Mr. Moore’s solo album “Plenty Good Lovin’,” which he recorded in 1970 but Atlantic, for a variety of reasons, had declined to release, finally arrived to glowing reviews in 2002. He performed for presidents and recorded with Bruce Springsteen, Conway Twitty, Lou Reed and other singers. He also worked to help secure other performers’ and songwriters’ long-overdue copyrights and royalties.
“It’s been a roller-coaster ride, but mostly a good one,” Joyce Moore said in an interview in 2014. “The single most painful part has been realizing how abused and mistreated Sam and his peers were — and still are. Most of them have never gotten their due. But we’ve been blessed.”

Edit: Stats added - Gronowski quick cuts condensed full game video vs Okie ST 2024

Quick release, quick decision making, on a bad snap he didnt just fall on the ball but picked it up and threw out of bounds to save a big loss, you be the judge

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South Dakota State

South Dakota State Passing


C/ATTYDSAVGTDINTQBR
20/372647.121--
20/372647.121

On the 25th of January, we could lose to Ohio State

The matchup vs Ohio State is.

Ohio State heavy favored at
125(#10 Brendan McRone)
141 (#2 Jessi Mendez)
#7 Nick Bouzakis can maybe beat Ayala, depending on how Drake is. I just haven't seen enough if Drake at 133 vs top guys to be sure.
Parco over #12 Dylan D'Emellio we win but a test.
We'll see who we got at 157 vs #7 Paddy Gallagher
I doubt Sasso at this stage could beat Caliendo.
174 #9 Carson Karchla would be a match to see if Kennedy is up ranked high for real
184 #15 Ryder Rogotzke is a test but if Arnold is God we're good
197 we win.
HWT #8 Nick Feldman. Nearly Tech falld Oregon state guy

A win for us, Mathematically, looks challenging

Here is them dominating Oregon St. We did too but if you watch Ohio St looks legit.
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MORE LIBERAL INEPTNESS - LA's water boss struggles to explain why they ran out of water

LA's water boss struggles to explain why they ran out of WATER
Los Angeles' water boss who makes $750,000 a year couldn't quite explain why fire hydrants have run dry during the disastrous wildfires in a bumbling video. During a press conference Wednesday, Janisse Quiñones (pictured), the newly appointed chief executive officer and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said all water storage tanks in the Pacific Palisades area 'went dry' as flames continue to rage on.

At least seven people have been killed and almost 180,000 forced to leave their homes amid the most destructive blaze in the county's history. Quiñones, who previously worked for PG&E prior to being appointed in May, said the third water tank ran out at about 3am local time Wednesday, after the first tank ran out around 4.45pm, and the second at approximately 8.30pm - each at about 1,000,000 gallons each. 'Those tanks help with the pressure on the fire hydrants in the hills of Palisades, and because we were pushing so much water in our trunk line, and so much water was being used before it can get to the tanks - we were not able to fill the tanks fast enough,' she explained. 'So the consumption of water was faster than we can provide water in our trunk line,' she continued, adding that there is water in the truck line, but it 'cannot get up the hill because we cannot fill the tanks fast enough.'

After someone asked her for the number of hydrants that cannot get water because of these issues, Quiñones started to stumble on her words. 'We, um, we were trying to keep water at all altitudes on the Palisades, and I think about three in the morning, that's when - uh - the hydrants went dry above the Brentwood area. We were able to push water on the, on that trunk line on, on the east side of that, um, and we have some water on high elevations - 16-80,000, but at 3,000, all of the, at 3am, all of the, uh, fire hydrants went dry in the Palisades,' she added.

Quiñones said that about 20 water tanks are now being sent from construction crews to firefighters to help them continue to fight the growing blaze. 'We identified other areas in our system where tankers can re-fill - it takes about 30 minutes to re-fill about 4,000 gallons of water, and we're constantly moving that water to the fire department to get them as much water as we can. She further warned that because the department is 'pushing the water system so hard,' the quality of water 'is decreasing in the Palisades area.

A boil water notice has since been issued for the Los Angeles area over the next 48 hours, the CEO said. In the midst of the horrific fires, furious LA residents have slammed local politicians for a shocking litany of failures which have exacerbated the deadly wildfires currently razing the city. Complaints range from Mayor Karen Bass being AWOL in Africa, to fire hydrants running out of water and electricity to power cables being left on to fuel the flames.

Businessman and mayoral candidate Rick Caruso (pictured) blasted local officials for failing to refill the water supplies despite knowing that strong winds which could whip up wildfires were on the way. 'Their hands have been tied. They can't fight a fire without water and the resources that are needed. Everybody knew these winds were coming,' Caruso told Fox 11. 'The other question has to be, were all the things in place to try to mitigate the damage here? The real issue to me here is two-fold.'

'We've had decades to remove the brush in these hills that spreads so quickly, and the second is, we've got to have water. My understanding is the reservoir was not refilled in time, in a timely manner to keep the hydrants going... this is basic stuff, this isn't high science here. It's all about leadership and management that we're seeing a failure of, and all of these residents are paying the ultimate price for that,' Caruso continued.

Audio of communications between firefighters confirms that first responders ran out of water in some areas. 'We have no water, it is... we're doing the best we can up there. We are making sure that people are out of the way,' one firefighter can be heard saying. Lawyer and Pacific Palisades native Rachel Darvish, 49, whose home has likely been engulfed by the flames, questioned why officials like Mayor Karen Bass did not plan ahead despite knowing 'critical' weather conditions were on the way.

I don't know if our house is still there, what I can tell you is I have a photo of the neighbor's house which is gone,' Darvish told Fox News. 'We have questions. I know where I am right now, but I don't know where my mayor was when this was happening. I do know now where she was.' 'Nobody told us where to go or what to do. I didn't even have an evacuation order. I love the fire department, I love our fire personnel (but) we need more, where were they?' Speaking about Bass, she continued: 'For someone to be in charge of my town - where were you? Where were you when the decisions should have been made about how to get in and out of places.' Many celebrities have seen their multi-million dollar mansions burnt to the ground as the fire spread to Hollywood Hills, prompting criticism of city officials who have been blamed for failing to adequately prepare for the disaster.

BB1rdKU5.img



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DEI—-can we all agree

Can we all agree that DEI is a good thing but Corporations and Governments should not make people take quarterly tests, push it endlessly on their websites homepage to make them seem not racist or something, act like they should get an award because they hired “X” number of these many people, etc…

Wouldn’t a simple blurb in the “who we are” section of the website be enough?

LA's $750k-a-year water chief Janisse Quiñones 'knew about empty reservoir and broken hydrants' months before fires!!!!

The $750,000-a-year LA water czar is responsible for a raft of failures that contributed to the devastating Palisades Fire, fire department insiders told DailyMail.com.

On Mayor Karen Bass's orders, the city maxed out its budget to 'attract private-sector talent', hiring Department of Water and Power (LADWP) CEO Janisse Quiñones on a $750,000 salary in May – almost double that of her predecessor.

Now, Quiñones is being blamed by LA Fire Department (LAFD) insiders for leaving a nearby reservoir disconnected and fire hydrants broken for months, DailyMail.com can reveal, leading to firefighters running out of water as they battled the devastating Palisades Fire this week.

And, Daily Mail.com has learned, Quiñones past employer is also linked to fire scandals. She was previously a top executive at electricity company PG&E, which went bankrupt over liability for several massive wildfires in California.

She served as senior vice president at Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) from 2021 to 2023.

The utility company's power lines sparked the second-largest wildfire in California history, Dixie, in 2021. Its involvement in the 2018 Camp Fire cost PG&E a $13.5billion legal settlement.

The firm's liability for allegedly causing fires was estimated at $30billion when it filed for bankruptcy in 2018. It exited bankruptcy in 2020.

Quiñones joined PG&E in April 2021 as Senior Vice President of Gas Engineering, switched to Senior Vice President of Electric Operations in July 2022, and left the firm in December 2023.

Sources told DailyMail.com that since her hiring at LADWP, Quiñones oversaw the shutdown and emptying of a reservoir in the Pacific Palisades during brushfire season.

The shutdown meant firefighters battling the current Palisades Fire ran out of water faster, experts say.

The Santa Ynez Reservoir is designed to hold 117 million gallons of drinking water. But it was taken offline in recent months to repair a tear in its cover that exposed the water and potentially impacted its drinkability.

The shutdown was first publicly reported by the LA Times on Friday morning.

Former DWP general manager Martin Adams told the paper that having the Santa Ynez reservoir would have helped fight the Palisades Fire that wiped out most of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood this week.

'Would Santa Ynez have helped? Yes, to some extent. Would it have saved the day? I don't think so,' Adams said.

He said the crucial reservoir had been offline 'for a while' before the fires, but didn't know the precise date.

But a source in the LA Fire Department (LAFD) told DailyMail.com that DWP officials told them 'had it not been closed they probably would have been ok and had enough water for the fire.'

At a press conference this week, Quiñones said firefighters ran out of water in the Palisades due to low pressure in the system, because they were using water faster than it was being replenished.

A well-connected former LAFD senior officer told DailyMail.com that lack of water was already a 'common' problem, exacerbated by DWP failing to fix cutoff fire hydrants.

'Yearly, the fire department goes out and checks every hydrant,' he said.

'For my entire career we would do this once a year then send in a report to our Hydrant Unit with all the problems we encountered. Year after year the same hydrants that had problems were not fixed.

'One example that comes to mind were the hydrants by Palisades High School on Temescal Canyon. They were dry many times we checked them. DWP knew they had problems and it would take months to fix them.

'It's a City-wide known problem with DWP.

'Last year the yearly hydrant checks were given back to DWP because the firefighters literally are too busy on calls.

'I would be willing to bet DWP didn't do this. I would love to see if they have the documents.'

LADWP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A current senior LAFD official also told DailyMail.com that some hydrants in the Palisades were not working when desperate firefighters tried to use them this week, and that they had not been fixed because of budget cuts by LA Mayor Karen Bass.

DailyMail.com exclusively obtained a memo to LAFD 'top brass' sent on Monday January 6, the day before the Palisades Fire began, revealing demands from Bass to cut the department's budget by a further $49million, on top of $17.6million of cuts already voted on by the city council.

The Los Angeles Daily News previously reported that the city's overall spending on its fire department increased by $53million in the fiscal year 2024-25 which runs to this July, but that $7 million of their budget was put in a separate fund for personnel while pay negotiations were still being hashed out, leading to the $17.6million accounting shortfall.

Department veterans told DailyMail.com that the net effect of the budget machinations has meant less firefighters on the ground for years.

The under-fire LADWP was only just recovering from a series of major scandals, including in 2022 when its former General Manager David Wright was sentenced to six years in federal prison for bribery.

Wright took bribes from lawyer Paul Paradis to help secure a $30million, three-year, no-bid LADWP contract for the lawyer's company, according to federal prosecutors.

Compounding the corruption, Paradis was also taking nearly $2.2million in illegal kickbacks from a complex scheme where he simultaneously represented LADWP and residents suing the department over a billing debacle.

DWP implemented a new billing system in 2013 that inaccurately inflated utility bills, sparking class-action lawsuits.

Paradis represented the city as Special Counsel, but was simultaneously representing claimants in the billing debacle, and colluded to get a favorable payout for himself and clients. He was sentenced to three years in prison in 2023.

Breaking News - Often absent Mayor of LA throws LGBTQ Fire Chief under the bus

LA Mayor Karen Bass FIRES fire chief Kristin Crowley after lashing out.​


Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley was fired by Mayor Karen Bass on Friday afternoon, a source close to the chief’s office told DailyMail.com.

‘Kristin was summoned by Bass this afternoon, about 4pm. She came back from that meeting, hugged her staff goodbye and left. She said she was fired,’ the source said.

The alleged booting follows Crowley lashing out against the Mayor’s cuts to her department, in an interview with a local Fox TV station around 12pm Friday.

‘My message is the fire department needs to be properly funded,’ the Chief said. ‘It’s not.’

‘Did they fail you?’ Fox LA’s Gigi Graciette asked. ‘Yes,’ Crowley replied.

The Fire Department (LAFD) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hours earlier, Chief Crowley delivered a scathing indictment of the Mayor Bass's administration, exposing a crisis of funding, staffing, and readiness that she says left her department ill-equipped to face the catastrophe.

Chief Crowley delivered a swift rebuke on city leadership, raising questions about its preparedness in the face of the most destructive fire season in the history of LA that has displaced more than 100,000 residents.

In an extraordinary public airing of grievances, Crowley acknowledged to a reporter with KTTV that the city, and by extension, Mayor Bass, failed its residents during the wildfires.

When pushed several times if the city had failed, Crowley's response was unflinching: 'Yes.'

The stark admission sent shockwaves through the city, as Crowley detailed the dire state of her department.

Years of budget cuts, she said, had left the LAFD grappling with crippling staffing shortages, outdated equipment, and insufficient resource - issues she claimed had been repeatedly brought to the city's attention.

'Since day one, we've identified huge gaps in regard to our service delivery and our ability of our firefighters' boots on the ground to do their jobs,' Crowley said.

'This is my third budget as we're going into 2025-2026, and what I can tell you is we are still understaffed, we're still under-resourced, and we're still underfunded.'

Crowley painted a grim picture of the department's daily operations, revealing that firefighters are handling more than 1,500 calls and transporting 650 patients every day under normal conditions. The wildfires have only exacerbated these challenges.

'We are screaming to be properly funded to make sure that our firefighters can do their jobs so that we can serve the community,' Crowley said.

'This isn't a new problem. It's been a problem for years. And it's time for it to be fixed.'

Despite her repeated warnings and detailed memos outlining the department's needs, the city slashed the LAFD's budget by over $17 million in recent years.

The result, Crowley said, was predictable: slower response times and a diminished capacity to combat the growing frequency and intensity of fires.

'Any budget cut is going to impact our ability to provide service,' she explained. 'If there's a budget cut, we had to pull from somewhere else. What does that mean? That doesn't get done or that there are delays.'

Crowley's criticism extends beyond the immediate crisis, pointing to a systemic failure to scale the fire department's capabilities alongside the city's explosive growth.

'We know we need 62 new fire stations. We need to double the size of our firefighters,' she said. 'The growth of this city since 1960 has doubled, and we have less fire stations.'

The fire chief called out city officials for ignoring 'real data' that supports the fire department's repeated requests for increased funding.

'When you talk about sounding the alarm and asking and requesting budgets that are easily justifiable based off of the data, real data shows what the fire department needs to serve this beautiful city and the beautiful community that we swore that we would. That's what that is about.'

Crowley's remarks were not just a critique but also a heartfelt plea for immediate and sustained action.

Emphasizing the non-political nature of her role, she said, 'None of us on the fire department are politicians. We're public servants first. We took an oath to serve the public before ourselves and even before our families.

'What our people need to do their jobs is to make sure that we can save lives and that we can protect property to the greatest capacity,' Crowley said. 'But we need to be funded appropriately. And that's where my head is at.'

Bass has yet to respond to Crowley's blistering criticism, but the fallout is already apparent.

Accusations of negligence and failure to prioritize public safety have added fuel to mounting dissatisfaction among residents, many of whom are reeling from the devastation caused by the wildfires.

OPERATION SEA SPRAY


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