Prepping 2.0 325 – Pacific Palisades – This Is What a Collapse Looks Like

Well, guess what? I just did my deep dive. There are no fire hydrants for this person to maintain, and yet they're making almost a million dollars a year, and they're the highest paid employee in LA County. Are you kidding me? When disaster strikes, will you be prepared? This is Prepping 2.0 with authors and prepping experts, Glenn Tate and Shelby Gallagher. Get ready, Prepping 2.0 coming in three, two, one.

Welcome, everyone. This is Shelby Gallagher over here at Prepping 2.0. Not joined by my co-host on the show on co-host and life, Glenn Tate. Today, I'm going to go and do a deeper dive into the Pacific Palisades Fire that will put more meat on the bones of what is happening and how we as Prepping 2.0ers need to think deeply about our environment and how to prep thoughtfully. Intrigued? Stay tuned. And as always, remember, the only thing harder than planning for a disaster is explaining why you didn't.

Yeah, that'll be very poignant today. But before we get any further, let's give a great shout out to one of our great sponsors over here prepping 2.0 EMP Shield. You can find them at our website at prepping2-0.com. Click over and friends and affiliates and you'll see EMP Shield.

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Next up is, we talk about it every week, the top 100 items to disappear first in a collapse. It's based on the Bosnian experience. You can find the list over at our website prepping2-0.com. Next up is chewing gum and candies. I think it

just as a broader term I mean I don't know people that chew gum like I used to when I was a kid and I don't know you know how much people you can't I do think it's valuable to keep candy on hand just in case you need a little shot of energy or something like that or to give out as a bartering item but they do have a shelf life unless you pack them away really well which I would do I would

pack them away in a, you know, a vacuum seal sort of situation, but just know they're perishable and sometimes critters can get into them. I think there's, in this day and age, there's other ways to do that, but I'm, you know, I'm open to far suggestion on that. Again, this is number 97 out of 100. If you go back to the list and look at the top 10, they're pretty critical. Chewing gum and candies are a luxury item that I think are definitely part of a bowl.

Hey, have you ever wondered what you're missing in the after show? Here's what you missed recently. My best friend, he's healthy as an ox. He took the vaccine, you know, he got his booster the night before Thanksgiving. He was going to visit his 80-year-old parents, and he ended up with a seizure and stuck on his living room floor for four hours, unable to move.

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We appreciate that. So hey, let's get into it. So we did a show a couple weeks ago about entitled Pacific Palisades has collapsed or something like that. And this is an after-action report to that, although it's really not. It's more of a deep dive into the fires

Who's behind them? Who are the movers and shakers? How did we get here? And it's a deep dive. And I think it's valuable to do that. And yes, I want to point fingers just like everyone else is. If everyone else gets to point fingers, I get to as well. And I think we need to know how we got here so we don't ever do it again.

And what really inspired me to do this show and to do a deep dive is a recent podcast that Mike Rowe did, and he pulled a phrase out of his interviewee. It's from a gentleman at the California Policy Institute, who Mike Rowe posed the questions with him, well, what about Bass? And this guy, because he is a policy guy, he's thinking fish, and he's thinking how to save wildlife,

And I'll talk about that in here a second. And Mike Rowe was laughing. He's like, no, I'm actually talking about Karen Bass. What are we going to do about her? So what I want to encourage you to do, but because it's really easy to remember the title of that show, but remember this policy institutes. They are all over the United States, California Policy Institute. And I have had some work, I've done work in this world.

I know there's one Washington Policy Institute, Illinois Policy Institute, New Mexico. They tend to be a state thing and they tend to do deep dives and bring out these papers and policy and studies and

to put them into white paper form and put it out for all of us to read about. And so what happens is you get these policy fellows or policy people in these organizations that are really knowledgeable and really passionate. And they tend to come from this kind of scholarly world. They tend to do advocacy work. These are 501c3s, although some of them have 501s, a little bit, different flavors of that.

They tend to be center-right, center-conservative, and they're thinking because they come at it from tax reform, education reform, land use. They tend to come at it from kind of a libertarian side.

However, there are those on the left. The Lincoln Project is one of them where they come out with these papers that are just absolute garbage. They use them as a political weapon. So in the policy world, there's some good work that you can find out and read about. And so the gentleman, of course, I'm sitting here looking at my notes, and I didn't get his name. But I will put a hyperlink to that in our show notes to that podcast.

These are people that really help you know stuff deeper. And I think there's some value in that, especially when you're talking about the kind of policies, the decades-long policies that brought California to the point right now. Where, by the way,

When I checked just a few hours ago, it's now been over two weeks. The Pacific Palisades fire, the LA County fires basically started two weeks ago. They're 60% contained. They're still burning. People's homes are still burning. People are still being injured. They're still sadly a mortality count. People's lives have been lost.

I hear that number anywhere from roughly 20 to 30 people, and I've done a lot of looking. I think we're still on the precipice of finding that out. I know of a couple just reading headlines and whatnot, a couple of celebrities have lost friends. Jennifer Garner comes to mind.

But what really inspired me, first of all, is the catchy line, well, what do we do about the bass? But the other thing is I encourage you to listen to that podcast because he talks a lot about we operate from a right now in terms of how we handle water management and how we handle resources.

We're in this bad habit as our American policymakers, our politicians, our people in leadership. They operate from a point of scarcity, not abundance. And that shapes a lot of what we do. And he brings out the point that we all know, and people don't say this enough, we have plenty of water that cascade out of the mountains of Southern California.

We have plenty of water that flow through the streams. We have plenty of water that falls out of the skies. We have plenty of firewood. We have plenty of timber. We don't harvest. We are a land of plenty. But we've taken on the mentality that we don't have any of those things. And in fact,

In the case of Southern California, when we've had systems and logging roads and abilities to clean out forest and to maintain water systems, we've come at it from a point of scarcity instead of abundance, and we don't take care of the things that we have. And it was just, and it's one of those, I'm pulling up the, because I'm just mad at myself, I don't know this guy's name.

We're forgetting that about ourselves, so it's interesting to stop and think about that, and that's what inspired me to do this. So as we go through this outline today, I want us to think about that. So first of all, the other podcast that inspired me to do this show also comes from Tucker Carlson, and I'll hyperlink that as well, who had a person on, and of course, I can't remember their name.

He's lived in the area. He's watched this happen before him, and he comes from being ultra left, and he's gone kind of libertarian right, closer to right than libertarian in his politics. And he brought up in this podcast, first of all, kind of the social norms, and he gets really kind of up in the clouds a little bit on how things have shifted so much and how these fires are probably going to shift California back to be

to the point where they're holding their elected officials accountable, which I think is really important, especially as we talk about what really went wrong here. One thing he says very clearly, if you look at the National Weather Service, if you look at the patterns of weather, and he talks about, and here in California, we love the weather. It's very temperate and moderate, but we have our seasons where we have extremes. We have our winter

that acts one way and we have our summers that act another way. And this is the time of year, kind of this winter time, where you do have these Santa Ana winds, and it's a little bit windy. But if you look at the trends, there's nothing out of the ordinary. This is the same thing, this same trend that has been happening for 10 plus years in Southern California.

There's nothing exceptional. So I tell you that because one of the talking points that we keep hearing out of all of these news sources, oh, there's just these just got awful Santa Ana winds. It's so weird. We have these weird Santa, nope. These are the same Santa Ana winds that we have every year.

There's nothing exceptional. It's not like we just had a, you know, Hurricane Helene come through Southern California or something really just off the charts. The first thing I wanna talk about is something that's happening right now in Southern California that you're not necessarily hearing a whole lot about. Right now, there is an enormous amount, and I'm not sure what the numbers are, but Southern California particular has an enormous number, higher than average number of EV cars, electric vehicles.

And I pulled up a couple of articles from the LA Times. Well, sorry, I hate to say this, sorry to Elon Musk. I say to him with wholeheartedness. Thank you for saving free speech by purchasing Twitter now X.

not a fan of your cars. I pulled up a couple articles from the LA Times quoting them, burning Teslas and other EVs are delaying recovery efforts for those affected by the wildfires. Has lithium batteries helped to fuel the fires and release toxic fumes? A lot of the cars in the evacuation area were lithium batteries, said Jackie Irwin, a state assembly member.

It goes on to say we've heard from firefighters that those lithium batteries burned fires near homes like those with power walls for much longer. Well, guess what? I just did my deep dive. There are no fire hydrants for this person to maintain, and yet they're making almost a million dollars. So you're the highest paid employee in LA County. Are you kidding me? Well, water can be used to help quell the flames. Lithium battery fires could require

Hold on to this. I want to put emphasis on this. Could require up to 40 times more water than a regular car fire might need, according to a 2023 article by the conversation. I'm sorry, I pulled that out of the Latin times, not the LA times. Latin times is a respected publication that focuses on the Latin lifestyle here in America. Yeah, so burning EVs.

Now, let's couple that with what we talked about a few weeks ago that there was no water coming out of hydrants. And you now have these electric vehicles sitting in driveways, sitting on roadways, sitting in homes that are catching fire and they take an enormous, almost 40% more water to put them out. And if you've ever talked to anyone who is a fire responder,

They'll tell you that. I know that in my previous life when I was closer to that world, many times if you call 911, depending on where you live, depending on who's your 911 responder, they will ask you as your car and electric vehicle because they will change what they do in their response. They may send more water, they may send more resources or different resources because it's a different kind of a fire.

from a Wall Street Journal podcast from 2023. So this is an unknown information. At the name of the podcast is entitled, why EV fires are hard to put out? And it was in this article, or not this article is actually in the transcript. Fire departments across the country are wrestling with a new problem, electric vehicle fires.

And unlike their gas powered counterparts, EVs combust differently, leading to fires that last longer and are harder to extinguish. Some firefighters even are even finding that maybe the best approach is just to stand back and watch a burn.

which kind of was the only option during the Pacific Palisade Fire because there was no water to put on them anyway. Again, just tragic, absolutely tragic. So we talked about in the previous show how water was shut off. We now know that key reservoirs were not filled, they were not maintained, and I'm going to even talk about something a little later. That makes that even worse. The water supply

in Southern California is absolutely decimated. And I want to harken back to the gentleman from the California Policy Institute. He did the interview with Mike Rowe talking about how this is the lack of water in Southern California was a problem that did not need to happen. The water is there. The infrastructure was there until we decimated it.

Everything was there and we just let it go and we operated again from a point of scarcity instead of, yeah. So when you think about that, we used to have a really vibrant water system. We could channel water. We could contain water and then we don't and then not only do we not.

There's still a water budget. Our money is paying for something. What's happening here? As much as we love the environment and maybe having electric vehicles, if we're going to have electric vehicles, we need to then have a plan for what happens when they catch on fire because they are not the same beast. So let's talk more about water. Let's talk about toxic water. Apparently, right now in Southern California, it's really toxic.

don't go near it. There is a little nonprofit kind of environmental organization that they're called Heal the Bay, which clearly sounds very Southern California and taking care of our waterways, which I believe in. And they are at healthebay.org. And they did a fire update. And they say this, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has issued an ocean advisory that warns residents to avoid any water contact at these beaches.

Don't go walking on the beach right now, folks. The firestorms and efforts to beat them down have created masses of amounts of runoff, which may contain toxic chemicals and dangerous debris. All that polluted water eventually sloughs off to the bay. The advisory will remain in effect until three days after the firefighting operations end.

They have not ended yet. I just talked about the containment isn't even there. So this could be a long time. We strongly urge the County of LA and other municipalities to test for the presence of additional contaminants such as heavy metals, PCBs, nitrates, and other unhealthy compounds. These pollutants can be harmful to humans and aquatic species. And given the extensive firefighting that has occurred directly adjacent to the coastline, these pollutants will be present for months to come.

So this nonprofit who focuses on clean waterways and ocean health, they're encouraging the city of LA to test for heavy chemicals because they probably don't. And from what I have read, they're not, and we'll talk about that. So there's some more water bad news. So in this area, there is, you know, as much as we love the environment, there's going to be a huge environmental impact on this.

We're going to talk a little bit more about the toxic air. If you look at some of the ocean models, I'm sorry, the not ocean, well, ocean models too, but especially the air models like when they do like a, from space, kind of look at, you know, Southern California, the, the blow of all of this toxic air over the ocean is, it's far reaching because it's following our, our, our Gulf Stream sort of winds and flows. So let's talk about that. Well, wait a minute.

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So we've talked about the toxic cars running out of water, talked about the toxic air. And I'm going to spend the bulk of my time after we talk about a few more other things, talking about the leadership that got us here and the toxicity of that. So let's talk about a couple other things here. We talked about the toxic air from a local NBC affiliate talking about the air.

To quote them, complex chemical reactions on paint, furniture, building materials, cars, electronics, and other belongings turning ordinary objects into potentially toxic ash that requires protective gear to handle safely. The ash could include harmful lead asbestos or arsenic, as well as other synthetic materials.

So everything is burning. This isn't just a forest fire. This isn't just like a building has gone up. An entire city plus other adjacent communities have gone up. And these are high density homes. It's sort of not just homes, but it's also like car dealers. It's chemical plants, it's grocery stores. It's all of these places that have chemicals within their buildings.

And these are all burning up and it's going up into the air and ashes and it's coming down. And word is out there that's what they've just said here. It is really hard to breathe and it's really hard to have relief from that.

From another local ABC affiliate, they say officials are telling Los Angeles County residents that there could be dangers lurking beyond what is captured in the air quality index. And that's what that healed the bay was kind of speaking to. These indexes, indices, indexes, I don't know, don't capture the presence of toxic materials such as asbestos and lead, which can be released from burning materials. However, that

This is what cracks me up. I'm sorry. We have to have some levity in this. To further this point, they say, however, in an N95 mask, impose its own risk by impeding breathing and elevating blood pressure and heart rates. A potential problem for people with chronic respiratory cardiac and other medical conditions.

All right, I'm going to sit here and breathe and have a moment. Four years ago, five years ago, we were told we had to wear a mask even though we said all the time. These are hard to breathe. It's hard to breathe in these. Kids don't like them. We don't like them. I've got zits on my nose from these things. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's to save our grandma, who was the guy from one of the people in the government saying, we got to do this. Got to wear a mask. Have to do it. We couldn't go into businesses unless we wore a mask. People got in trouble for not wearing a mask. And we have to do it. Well, now it's saying you should do it because it can impede your breathing and elevate your blood pressure.

This is why we have trust issues, folks. This is why we have trust issues. So, yeah, so this is where we're at. Another, from another expert, assistant medical director at the LA County Fire Department, Dr. Punit Gupta said, sickened patients are showing up in emergency rooms where hospitals already are full because of flu season, which it is flu season. And some hospitals could also face evacuations due to the fire. So they have more people coming in, but they could be evacuated. That could be a big

mass of trying to treat people. It goes on to say we have a number of hospitals that are threatened. If they have to be evacuated, it could become a crisis, said Gupta, who is also a spokesperson for the American College of Emergency Physicians. So this is one of the things that we consider.

So this is one of those times. I would suggest if you live in Southern California, this is probably one of the only times for the rest of my life. I'll ever say that you might want to wear a mask. I remember a few years ago, we had, when was it? It was two years ago, a year and a half ago.

Yeah, it was your go anyway. It's a while ago. We had a pretty major fire happening. We always have them in here in Western Montana. And it was thick. Like there was like dust ash on cars and stuff. And I remember joking around with somebody going, yeah, I'll wear a mask for this.

This is actually a good reason to wear a mask. When you see particulate in the air, which is what masks can actually protect you from, that's a good idea. So, folks, we have so many more things to talk about. We're going to talk a little bit after the break about toxic law enforcement. And keep in mind, I back the blue. I back the blue.

These are going to be some of the weird ones. This is not an indictment against law enforcement. It's against policies more than anything. Toxic leadership. That's what we're going to do a pretty good deep dive. We're also going to carry it into the after show where I'm going to tease you a little bit. We have some commentary from Madge 2.0. That would, who's in the thick of it, and has some commentary to give to us. So folks, we have so much more to talk about. Don't go away.

More Prepping 2.0 with authors Glenn Tate and Shelby Gallagher is coming right up. Here all our previous shows free online at prepping2-0.com.

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Now, more of Prepping 2.0 with authors Glenn Tate and Shelby Gallagher. Welcome back everyone. This is Shelby Gallagher over here at Prepping 2.0. Thanks for joining us. We're kind of, it's true, just getting started into the de-bruted toxic policies and results and the long-term results.

of the current fires. They're not going away. The current fires in Southern California were two weeks into that horrific mess. In a previous show, we talked about, God, just we covered it. And now I just feel the need to go back and do a deeper dive. The criticisms have come out. The truth has been coming out more, which has been really great. And I just want to talk about it some more because this relates to us as preppers.

And first of all, these are things we need to be prepping about. We've talked about the toxic water on the beaches. We've talked about the lack of water, the lack of leadership to provide citizens that water. And we're going to talk more about the leadership. But before you get into it, I want to go into our archive dive.

I'm going to go back to episode 95, where we interviewed Joe Fox from Viking Preparedness. He's a former green braid, a pastor, and a really level-headed guy. He was great, great advice for preppers. That was a really fun show to do. I remember doing that. So the other one is I want to give a shout out to survival garden seats.

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So let's continue our talk here. I got it and I'm jumping around about 10 different pages here. So I kind of teased a little bit when I talked about toxic law enforcement.

So you might remember that the new DA for LA County was very strident. And I actually liked the guy compared to the prior DA that I don't remember his name and know what I want to because he was the one who let crime happen. You know, he was a sort of disappointed sort of DA that really was awful for LA County. And LA County did a great job in electing somebody who's not from that ilk.

But there's a headline from Fox News that says, California officials reopen certain Pacific Palace Sades zones and cops are using planes and drones to monitor them. So I know, I'm going to say this to you, again, mad respect to law enforcement, especially when you have to police in this sort of an area and in this sort of a community with really flaccid. It's a word I used a lot lately, leadership.

They're doing their dog on us. I'm just telling you this. The word out on the street right now, if you go look, just go through some headlines. The looting is pretty rampant and it's hard to track it down because there's so much chaos and drones aren't going to do it. Small planes aren't going to do it. Here's another one.

And looters get really creative from Fox News again. There was a couple with a fake fire truck, and they were busted for impersonating firefighters near Pacific Palisades. Why? Because it allows them to get into homes and places that they can go loot. Now, I don't know how much there is to loot. I'm just guessing. I mean, the footage I'm seeing is things are burned up, but there's some things that made it, you know? I don't know.

Here's here's you ready. I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you something that is gonna set your hair on fire This is from the daily signal Headline Los Angeles fire budget cut we know that we talked about in the last show hundreds of hydrants were stolen first scrap before fires and

Quote, OK, that that sink in. I know I just raised your blood pressure. So take a deep cleansing breath. Oh, my gosh. I have so much commentary on this. Hundreds of fire hydrants, fire hydrants. We're stolen from the ground for scrap metal in advance of the blazes raging across Los Angeles, highlighting the local government's challenges in maintaining basic order and infrastructure.

quote those fire hydrants thefts are yet another sign of how crime is out of control in los angeles said los angeles district attorney nathan hokeman that that's the new guy to the center square before his november election quote thieves know they'll face little or no consequence that they are cut so they're willing to risk the public safeties for small profit so that tells you this

The fire budget was tanked, oh, you know, months ago. And then district attorney, Hoekman came into office just, you know, he was elected in November. So he's new to this. He's new. He knows of this history. And he knows that these fire hydrants have been stolen. Okay.

so many layers of things wrong. So thank goodness that you guys have you and LA County have a new district attorney. And the reason why he was voted into office is because crime is out of control there. And he was able to use that to leverage as an election, as a voter interest item talking point. I have a really simple question here.

How in God's green earth do you steal of fire hydrants? That takes some serious tools and equipment. Holy cow on a stick.

How bad can it be? This is what, this is why I entitled this show. This is what a collapse looks like. Folks, if you're living in a community where fire hydrants are getting stolen with impunity, first of all, that tells you that fire hydrants not going to work,

It's not getting replaced, there's no water coming out of it, and law enforcement is doing nothing about it. That's your signal. Get the heck out of there, especially when you live in Southern California where fires and Santa Ana whims are normal.

Southern California, specifically, the Pacific Calusades, had been worn for months that they are ill-equipped to handle a fire. I have the feeling we're going to watch in the next several months how citizens of Southern California

are going to realize that they need to pay attention to who they vote into office. And there's going to be a clear shift. You're starting to see it already. You're starting to see the inklings of recalls or the people suddenly who have been normally on the left are now on the right in terms of how they look at government. It's not just trust and close your eyes. The blue pill, red pill, kind of a thing. Let's talk about Karen Bass.

Karen Bass, and this goes all the way back to the beginning of the show, what about the bass? I have some things to talk about here. Because it goes to, we're going to talk about the bass, and we're also going to talk about the mentality of scarcity versus abundance.

Again, California is the state of abundance. That's where, for the longest time before government got involved, California fed the entire country. It can be argued, it can be argued that they fed a good chunk of the world. There is so much abundance in terms of farmland, in terms of water, in terms of resources, in terms of, I mean, the list goes on and on. That's why people moved there, you know, 75, 80 years ago.

It's an amazing place that has just absolutely been screwed up. So let's start with Karen Bass. She has. She's been criticized for this. I pulled an article from The Atlantic, not known for, you know, this isn't Fox News. This is The Atlantic, hard left leaning publication from 2020.

Karen Bass has ties to Communist Cuba from the Atlantic. She's the only person. She kind of came to the forefront in 2020 when she was on Biden's shortlist when he was choosing his vice president.

She's the only person on Biden's list who spent part of the 1970s working construction in Fidel Castro's Cuba with the, I'm not going to say this right, with the Vince Ramonas Brigade, a group that has organized annual trips to Cuba for young leftist Americans for the last half century. So during the 1970s, now,

I will be reasonable. Young, 20-somethings in the 60s and 70s, you know, the flower children, the revolutionaries, the blah, blah, blah. You know, I give them a pass because they did stupid things. And she definitely did stupid things. During between 1970 and 1980, approximately,

She went to Cuba 12 times. What was she doing there? She was recruiting for this group, then Vinceromas Brigade, which recruits Americans to come to Cuba and enjoy social, I'm not, and enjoy communism, not socialism. And she was recruiting people into communism.

That's exactly what she was doing. So for 10 years, at least every year on average, if not once or twice a year, she was making these trips. That's a lot. So she's recruiting people here in the United States and then taking a trip. That's what she's known for doing.

According to ADN America, which is another Latin group, here's what they say. US-based organization that has facilitated trips for Americans to Cuba in defiance of US travel restrictions. So she went on these trips when the US is saying, don't do it. This is when Castro was huge.

The group has formed a young activist in solidarity with the Marxist-Lenin Cuban Revolution, aiming to challenge U.S. policies towards Cuba, including economic sanctions, referred to as the blockade, an alignment with Fidel Castro's rhetoric and tremble bans.

So this, she's recruiting communists. She's recruiting Americans to become communists. According to their website that I looked at, they tout that they've recruited 10,000 Americans to come see what's so great about Cuba. So that was in the 1970s. All right, so again, I go back to my, all right, all of us did stupid things in our 20s. All right, do we give her a pass? Nope. In 2017, she eulogized

O'Neill Marion canon as a friend and mentor. This is a known communist, referred to this person during a eulogy when they died in 2017, as a friend and mentor. Forgot to mention that O'Neill Marion canon is a known communist. That's 2017. So now we're getting into just a few years ago, 2017. We're talking about eight, nine years ago.

So there you go. So then, so she's just kind of running around as one of these, she's running around, she's working her political career. In 2020, again, going back to what I said earlier, she then becomes, she's on the short list for Joe Biden's vice presidential running mate. I remember Joe Biden came out in 2020 when he was running

and basically put upon himself DEI policies. I'm going to announce a black woman as a running mate. So he's already put that requirement on himself. And so, of course, Kamala Harris is one of them. Another one was Karen Bass.

She almost was the vice president. Think about what I just said about her history and her recent history. And she was questioned in 2020 because, oh my gosh. So what happens is when, uh-oh, she's on the short list, everyone does a deep dive, much like I've just done and somebody says to her, by the way, used to recruit for Fidel Castro in the 70s. Do you renounce that? Well, she's been, so stop for a moment.

She's had, let's just say, her last trip to Cuba was in 1980. She's had 40 plus, no, well, just, yeah, 40 at that time, exactly 40 if we go by 1980. She had 40 years to renounce her communism ties.

Great time would have been 2017 when she's, you know, eulogizing this person and she doesn't. That when she does renounce it is when she has something huge to lose and she's trying to be the next vice presidential pick. So she very, so she and renounced it in 2020. Yes, I renounce communism. You know, so you can see how that, I don't know if I believe her, right?

Glenn Beck did a kind of an exposé on her. She mentioned she visited Cuba multiple times during the reign of Fidel Castro as part of the Vince Romero's brigade, a Marxist training program that taught insurgency and guerrilla warfare. She praised Castro even when he died. So that's who your leadership is in Southern California right now in LA County.

If you live in LA County, folks, and I think this is a great time to do it, get in the recall petitions going, get it done. The only way you're going to reel back, because the election's over, November's over. So now it's the, if you want this person to continue destroying your livelihood, your home, your property, your, you know, the list is pretty long. If you want that person to stop and you want to bring in someone, you got to get the recall petition sent and you got to get it done.

This is what a collapse looks like because what's happened and what is happening right now in Southern California, we know this decades to fix and the only way to fix it right now is to change the leadership. If you're in Southern California still living there now, this is your time. You can honestly start walking around, get the petitions out, get it done.

So here's the other one. And this is one that I pulled from what she's done amongst her staff. We know that we talked about it in the last episode where she has a fire chief. She has one of the highest paid officials on city staff that was supposed to maintain. Remember, we talked about that person supposed to be maintaining the fire hydrants.

Well, guess what? I just did my deep dive. There are no fire hydrants for this person to maintain, and yet they're making almost a million dollars. You're the highest paid employee in LA County. Are you kidding me? See what I mean? There's a systemic thing. All of these people need to get recalled. The only ones that you can really recall is the person at the top, and it starts there with Karen Bash. She needs to go.

from the New York Post. LA's utility system has its, the utility system that's already burned to a crisp. Utility system has its own massive institutional problems. Bass, who has touted her DEI appointments, ousted Cynthia Ruiz, the department's first ever Native American commissioner after less than a year of service.

Two of the last three general managers of the utility have resigned in disgrace, one allegedly mismanaged $40 million in funding, another David Wright was sentenced to six years in prison for taking bribes.

If you live there and you want to stay and fight for better than this and you want to want California to start working from its abundance instead of its scarcity that we apparently have, it's these people that need to get ousted. This is when people might say to me, I don't like political stuff. Politics, you didn't go looking for politics, politics burned your house down.

And I think that's part of my argument to politics, burned, caused this collapse. It really did. So modern day Ghana, what's going on in Ghana?

Ghana is actually a very, it's got its own sorted history, like many African countries. They did a quick dive in there. They've had a few, not violent, but skirmishes and changing their constitution, but they are somewhat of a democracy right now. So why was she there? Why was she there when the fires were happening? Keep in mind, and I'm going to go through a timeline here.

She knew that there was a weather system coming in that was dangerous that could cause fires and that she might not want to leave. Why did she do that? I'm going to talk about that. She did it because Biden asked her to. Biden asked her to, please go. Keep in mind, we've talked about it. You've seen it probably everywhere else on news programs.

She said as a campaign promise before she was elected, I'm not going to do international travel. That's not my job. So she's promised that she's criticized Ted Cruz for going to Mexico to escape a hurricane. And now she's in Ghana because Biden asked her to. She really didn't need to go because Biden was about two weeks from being ousted anyway. She could have said, I'm sorry, I can't.

She's trying to, you know, career climb there, so she goes. So January 2nd, here's the timeline really quick. It's going to be kind of quick here, but it's important. National Weather Service for Los Angeles warned that there's potential to moderate, potential for moderate to strong Santa Ana winds and extreme fire conditions. Those on January 2nd, this is

the timeline of what happened. And I'm pulling this out of CBS News. This is not some, you know, this isn't Breitbart. January 3rd, the White House announced that Bass would join a presidential delegation to attend the inauguration for Ghana's president. The National Weather Service said that a fire weather watch was in effect Tuesday through Friday for portions of LA and Ventura counties. January 4th, Bass left Los Angeles, for Ghana.

January 5th, arrives in Acra, Ghana, on an air for blah, blah, blah, blah. According to flight tracking data received by CBS News, the National Weather Service posted escalating warnings about the threat for widespread damaging winds and extreme weather conditions, an issue to red flag warning at around 2.40 PM.

gone from a watch to a warning, but she was told in her fire department, we know this from the news, that fire department also warned her. This is bad, and she decides to go anyway after promising not to. January 6th, the warnings escalated further the National Weather Service warned of a particularly dangerous situation, one of its most urgent alerts at 3.24 p.m. L.A. City Emergency Alert shared a fire department warning just before 7 p.m. of extreme fire danger and dangerous winds.

at 738 p.m. Mayor Bass posted her first statement about the fire sharing outdated information from ours earlier. It's going to be outdated because she's in the Southern Hemisphere. We're on January 6th, January 7th at 2 a.m., I believe. The swearing-in of Ghana's president-elect John Germani Muhammad started her on 10 a.m. local time on January 7th at 2 a.m. Los Angeles, and there's the clarification. According to Ghana Ministry of Information's Livestream,

The event went on for six hours. 10.30, the Pacific Palisades broke out.

She is, she's, so when you see the news saying she was at a cocktail party, yes, she was 11.50 a.m. Pacific Tender Standard Time Mayor Bass Post on X about the fire and had earlier posted on her website at 1 p.m. Bass's book. By the way, 1 p.m. that day, I am texting with match 2.0 and he's like, I'm out of here. I've just helped friends. The show's gonna be a little late and I'm like, do what you gotta do.

Bass's spokesperson, Zack Zydal, told the LA Times that she was on her way back to LA at about 1 p.m. flight data provided by FlightTrader indicates Bass departed Ghana on a military plane about 1 p.m. January 8th.

about 2 a.m. Bass landed in Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. By 6 a.m. she had departed Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles. By 8 a.m. on January 8th she spoke to President Biden as seen with California Governor Gavin Newsom and that's where you start seeing

You know, the press putting microphones in her face and she's like, I'm just going to focus on the now. And here's the thing, not that her travel was bad, but that she has criticized others for international travel. She promised not to engage in foreign travel.

agreed to do it when Biden asked her to, agreed to do it when her community and experts are warning her not to, and yet she did it anyway. There's about four or five things, promises or things that she did, where she broke principles of...

decency. So it's interesting here too. There's a really interesting, I've only got about a couple of minutes here. There's a great website out there called the Presidency Project, which is a nonpartisan online source for presidential public documents. And I'm going to end with this. They have an article from August of 2020.

By considering representative Karen Bass is a running mate, Joe Biden is signaling to Cuban Americans that he is comfortable with the prospect of a fervently pro-Castro vice president who has always been held a fond view of the brutal communist Cuban dictatorship. Bass is openly admitted in being part of a radical group that trained American militants in Cuba. Whether Bass is on the ticket or not, Joe Biden will be held accountable for even considering a Castro sympathizer for vice president.

Team Trump hosted a press conference with Marco Rubio at the time and Florida Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nunez on Karen Bass and Joe Biden's alarming embrace of communist ideologies. Marco Rubio says the fact that he would even consider Congresswoman Bass, who she was at the time, for a position like this shows that the lack of strength, that shows that elements within his own party have forced him to consider someone with a record like this. If God forbid Joe Biden is elected president and Congresswoman Bass becomes vice president,

shall be the highest-ranking Castro sympathizer in the history of the United States government and it couldn't come at a worse time when both regimes in Venezuela and Havana are teetering on the brink of real collapse and having to make systemic changes and in the case of Maduro abandoned the country. And the only thing they're hoping now is that Donald Trump loses the election November. Keep in mind this is 2020.

So there's a long history there where Karen Bass has screwed up. And the problem is, it's that kind of leadership that causes a collapse, such as what we have just seen and are continuing to experience in Southern California.

And so when I started this show today and I'm talking about working from scarcity, a tenant of communism is scarcity, taking what you have and making it the public good so that you then work from scarcity to the point of, in some cases, in some communist country starvation,

It's sad. It's so sad. That scarcity model when we have abundance is unacceptable and we need to start taking accountability for that. We also need to prepare for that. If you live in a place that works from the point of view of scarcity, such as Southern California, you need to prep that way. So folks,

So much more to talk about in the after show. I'm going to give you some of the highlights from Match 2.0. And boy, it sure hits home today, doesn't it, from Benjamin Franklin? Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Folks, have a great week. You've been listening to Prepping 2.0, with authors Glenn Tate and Shelby Gallagher.

All the information you've heard today, including all our previous shows, is online at prepping2-0.com. Find out more about Glensbooks at 299-days.com and show these books at agreatstate.com. Learn about the latest book they authored together at foodpreps2-0.com. Until next time, be smart, be safe, and be prepared.