Speaker 1: It's called the broken window theory. And if you're looking
at the video, you're seeing a picture right now of
a plastic bag and it is over the top of
a button for a lit crosswalk in Los Angeles or
around Los Angeles. My friend Chris Bray writes a great
substack and he put this on his substack. And what
does this have to do with the Los Angeles fires.
It has everything to do with the fires in and
around Los Angeles. Chris will explain that to us next
with the help of Bulwark Kapital Management. No, you'restradio dot
com and of course God Almighty, but.
Speaker 2: Todd Herman show is one percent disapproved, but big pharma
technocrats and Tyrn's everywhere from the high mountains of Free
American Here's the Emerald City exime Todd Herman.
Speaker 1: Today is a day the Lord has made in These
are the times to which God is the sad we
should live. We continue to pray for the people in
California first responders who are doing what they do so well.
God bless them and protect them. Chris Bray joins us
outside of Los Angeles, Chris, welcome back out, you're here,
and I'm.
Speaker 3: Glad you're okay, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you told me there's some people from idahof come
down to help. I want to talk about that and
are getting help from all around the world. But let's
start right off with a picture of a plastic bag
covering a button on a lit crosswalk, because this begins
the tale of how you've been warning people about what
happens with performative politics.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I live in a city. I live in
a little suburban town called South Pastena three point four
square mile town. Remember the size of the town three
point four square miles, about twenty seven thousand people that
for years has been deeply engaged in the world. We
have a climate action plan to fix the climate. When
we debated our resolution condemning Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine,
you know, the city council sent it back to staff
several times to rework it to make sure the resolution
was properly worded, so that the South Pasadena City Council
spirmly rebuked Vladimir Putin. We had a resolution against bigotry
in November of twenty sixteen for some reason, and on
and on not you know, we debated a ceasefire resolution
in kaza Ah. And all the time we've been doing this,
things have been breaking in the city. And one of
them is the city you know, a long time ago
put in flashing crosswalk lights at crosswalks near things like
schools in the library, and a few years ago they
started breaking. And when they started breaking, they put bags
over the buttons that said out of service, that people
wouldn't mistakenly think that they could use the flashing lights
and the crosswalk and cross and then once they put
the bags on that said, oh yeah, this is broken.
That's just what they did and it can't be fixed.
It can't be fixed. There are these orange bags over
all of these buttons that have faded because they've just
been sitting there for years. And I see that all
over the city. I see that in the streets. We
have a bridge that cracked years ago, a concrete bridge.
It's a pedestrian bridge, an old historical pedestrian bridge. And
they put signs at the entrance to the bridge that
say bridges closed unsafe conditions. That was two years ago,
and they're the science sit there. They're not going to
fix the bridge. They're not going to do the safety
assessment of the bridge. They said they would do. So
we're very very busy.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: The mayor of Los Angeles was in Ghana as the
fire started. Yes, doing cultural outreach of my city, my
three point four square miles suburban city. Several years ago
did a jazz outreach trip. She led a city delegation
to New Orleans to research the French Quarter. We do
that stuff, but when things break, nobody notices, nobody fixes them,
nobody does anything about them. I have a street sign
near my house that points one way as Raymond Hill
and the other way is Columbia Street, and years ago
it faded so that it doesn't really say anything anymore.
It's a green cline sort of what used to be
the outline of letters, and if you squint at it
really hard, you can make it out. But nobody's ever
going to replace that sign. It's just gonna sit there blank,
and it's it's uh, look upon my works the Mighty
in Despair. It's the poem about the statue and the
desert surrounded by nothing. We don't fix anything, we don't
do anything, but we're very very deeply involved in gaza.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm glad that you are, because that's really
helped over there and Adam Schiff, You're fine, not now what, Senator?
He had an update, Chris, I don't know if you've
heard this yet. I'll share this with you in a second.
Chris prays with us. There's a link to his sub stack.
I pay to read Chris's writing and I gladly do it,
and I would recommend you do it as well. It's
just absolutely filled with wisdom. I use a product called Wisdom.
It's a biblically based herbal blend. And I'm thrilled to
tell you that my twenty year old daughter loves this stuff.
And I'm fifty seven and I love this stuff. Gives
me a sense of calm. I know it's helping my
immune system. I know it helps me with calmness and
awareness helps harness inflammation on your side. And it came
about because doctor Patrick jen Tempo, who does a podcast
called Christ Revealed, was walking through the Holy Land smelling
all these spices, reading about them in the Bible in
almost a sacred way. Just this morning, I was reading
David again about hissop and being made pure with that.
So he created this blend applied scientific rigor. It is
made in cold brew processing small batches and they lock
into potency with sound waves and light waves. And I
take this stuff straight, fantastic taste. My daughter puts it
in her coffee throughout the day and her she has
anxiety sometimes, so coffee is great for her but not always.
This gives her the coffee lift without the jagged edge.
You can get this now, go try wisdom Try wisdomnow
dot com slash todd. That's try wisdom noow dot com
slash todd. You will get thirty three percent off free
shipping at one hundred and eighty day money back guaranteed.
That try Wisdom now dot com slash todd. You may
have seen this, Chris Bray, but your fine Senator Adam Schiff,
who may well read your your your sub stack and
shudder and fear, he has come out and said that
the reservoirs were in fact full, that it is apparently
some no he did. He's on record this weekend on
TV saying that the reservoirs were in fact full. And
your Governor Newsom has said that in fact he didn't
cut the budget that never happened for firefighting. So let's
go through this, bit by bit by bit from the
bridge to the bag to the reservoir, which I heard
you say, and I've never known you to spread this
information that it in fact was not full.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And as people started saying, oh, that's
a lie, the reservoir was full. Let's establish the context,
which is that when the fire started burning in the Palisades,
there are three water tanks in the Palisades with a
million goawns each, and those had water in them. The
firefighters had three million gowns of water. There's a reservoir
right in the middle of Pacific Palisades that can hold
one hundred and seventeen million gawns of water, and it broke.
There's debate about this, but the city has acknowledged that
it broke at least a year ago, that the cover
of it broke, so they drained it to fix the cover,
and they haven't fixed the cover, and they don't know
when they're going to fix the cover, and they don't
know exactly what's going on with it. Nobody can really
say what it means. But that was empty when the
fire was burning, so the firefighters ran out of water.
As the fire got bigger and people were turning on
their garden hoses to put water on their houses. Pacific
Palisades ran out of water and then it burned, and
the city is saying the city had said for a while, oh,
it's not true, that's disinformation, that the reservoir was empty,
and then they acknowledged that the reservoir was empty, and
journalists started walking. There's a guy from ft Financial Times
who walked to the reservoir and looked at it and said,
it is empty. Here's a picture of it. So there's
all of this debate about whether or not that would
have mattered.
Speaker 1: Whether one hundred and seventeen million gallons or even half
of it or ten percent of it would have mattered.
Speaker 3: This is debateable. Would one hundred and seventeen million gallons
of water have mattered in a place where firefighters ran
out of water while it was burning? You know, it's
a really obscure point. Who can say water helps out there?
There's a Millionaire's a guy named Rick Krusa who has
built a bunch of shopping malls in Los Angeles, and
he owns a shopping mall in Pacific Palisades, And when
the fire started burning, he started calling for water trucks
and he has private firefighters under contract, and he rushed
a bunch of water trucks and a bunch of private
firefighters to his shopping mall in Pacific Palisades. And this morning,
and if you're from if you're from Los Angeles, or
you've been to Los Angeles, Palisades, village burned, which is
like Maybury RFD for rich people. It's a beautiful little
sort of downtown area, like you're in a small town.
And I've spent a lot of my life there. It's
a absolutely wonderful place. And it's gone, with the exception
of Rick Ruso's shopping mall. And you know, people, this
being Los Angeles, this being the land of shay Goovara politics,
people started waking up and saying, are very very angry
that the billionaire saved his property. But what the billionaire
did is when a fire started, he got some water,
and he got some firefire any spray water on buildings.
So we are here, we are saying, well, I don't
know what an extra one hundred and seventeen million gallons
of water would have helped.
Speaker 1: There's there's instances, Chris, you've probably seen this, that there
are families who saved our houses. One gentleman had a
pool pump ready to go. The grandfather had said you
got to have this. They're on video simply sprang out hotspots.
Another guy refused to evacuate, stayed behind by himself, and
he had a very similar setup. He said, all I
did was at see a sparkland, I'd make it wet
and in this entire neighborhood his these two houses.
Speaker 3: Survey.
Speaker 1: But you're telling me there's actually people debating whether this
one hundred and seventeen million they're actually and do they
actually believe themselves? Like what's that great phrase that JD. Vancy's.
Do they hear themselves?
Speaker 3: Do they hear themselves? Yeah, google this up, look for this.
There's a surgeon in Malibu. The fire burned all the
way down to Malibu and destroyed beachfront houses. There's a
surgeon in Malibu who was in surgery, finished his surgery,
drove home, and he had been he had been thinking
for several years that Malibu was going to burn again
because Malibu burns fairly often, and that the government wouldn't
be able to that the government was not well run
enough to deal with it. So he started taking firefighting classes,
and he bought turnout gearan he bought firefighting hoses, and
he bought pumps for the pools in the neighborhood. And
when the fire came, he said to his neighbors it's time,
and they went and they started jumping water out of
their pools. And his call to the sack of six
houses in Malibu didn't burn, well, everything around them burned.
Speaker 1: Okay, So but he's got to be some form of criminal.
Speaker 3: Right, So think about this. I actually all of these
they're all over liberal media now this week. There are
all of these stories arguing, you know, you can't blame
government because there's nothing anyone could have done. Fire is
a force of nature. The fires were so big, there
were winds, There's nothing anyone could have done. And in
the places where like this surgeon fought for his neighborhood,
Rick Caruso hired firefighters and got water and fought for
his male and the places where people fought things survived.
So so what is the role of government and what
is the place of government? And a Los Angeles liberal,
Karen Bass would tell you government is central to our lives.
Government is a critical force for ordering our lives. If
you question the power or the value or the role
of government, or you try to limit it, or you
talk about enumerated power as you're being an anti government extremist.
Because government is very very important to us, and it
makes the world more fair and more just in a
better world. And also there's nothing government can do in
an emergency because because you know, think done, how could
you expect the government to deal with this? So the
very core, the dead center. The the director of the
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which runs that
reservoir that was empty when the fire started, makes seven
hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year as a base
salary to not fix the reservoir in the middle of
the place that's burning that could have had an extra
one hundred and seventy million gallons of water. So government
is very very important, but don't expect it to help you.
And I find watching the reading all of these articles
this week about you know, there's nothing that could have
been done. You know, stop with your your bizarre MAGA
conspiracy experience about about such excusing water to put fire out.
That's crazy talk. It's like watching a snake eat its
own tail, Like what do you mean government is here
to help you. Government is very important. Government is impotent.
Don't don't blame us. Of course, government couldn't have fixed
this incredible And I have said the personal experience I had,
I not just describing to you things I've seen on
the news or things that I got from other people,
from talking to other people. A friend I live in
South Pasadena, which is down the hill from the fire
that started an Eaton Canyon and earned an incredible amount
of Altadena and burned into Pasadena. I got a text
message from a friend who lived in Altadena. We had
a beautiful house there he'd owned for more than thirty years.
And he texted me and he said, the house is gone,
but I'm here. He's a sculptor. He bends steel to
make giant steel sculptures, so he has an enormous studio
in his backyard that he uses to do all of
this metal work. And he texted me and he said,
the house is gone, but the studio is still here.
Can you come and help me get things into the car?
And I drove up to help him, and I had
a really hard time getting to him because the Sheriff's
department was already closing off roads, and I kept running
into roadblock after roadblock after roadblock, so I was having
to wind my way through little residential streets, and I
was driving through streets that were burning and houses that burned.
I saw this burned to the foundation, and the foundations
were still burning. The debris collapsed into the foundation and
the foundations the debris and the foundations were still burning.
Probably two miles from the hills, maybe a little more.
I started seeing houses burn and people out in their
yards where they still had water using garden hoses to
try to keep their houses from burning. And no fire department,
no firefighters anywhere, no fire engines anywhere. And as I
got closer and closer, more and more buildings were burned,
and again like a post apocalyptic landscape of driving through
a place where everything is burning. There's no fire department.
Everything that burns burns to the foundation. When I got
to my friend's house, and you know, all of his
neighbors to his right and all of his neighbors across
the street were gone, and the house to the left
was just fine. And I carry things out of his
garage and his workshop next to his very old house
that still has a basement, which not many houses, not
many houses in Los Angeles do, but everything but his
house collapsed into the basement, and all of the debris
in the basement was burning. So we were walking past
this ongoing fire in a pit, and all the neighbors'
houses were down to the foundation but they were still burning.
Everything around us was still burning except the house to
the left, and we were there for maybe an hour
loading things into the car. He when he got there,
he realized there was fire at his studio was still standing,
but there was fire in the walls because there was
smoke coming out of the walls. Yeah, So he called
nine one one and said, hey, you know, my house
is gone, but my workshop in my backyard and my
garage is still standing. There's smoke coming out of the walls.
Can you get someone here? And they said, no, no possibility,
We have nowhere near enough people to send you. And
he turned on the garden hose. No water came out,
but fortunately the fence had burned. So when he walked
out of the studio into his yard, he could see
his neighbor's pool and he ran over and got buckets
of water from the pool, and he opened the wall
with a sledgehammer and poured buckets of pool water into
the walls and saved them.
Speaker 1: Incredible, incredible though.
Speaker 3: The experience of being in a place where everything is
burning and the fire department isn't there. It's something I've
never experienced and never imagined experience experiencing. But it was
just a fascinating experience, just a surreal experience and the
strangest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: And for those of us who haven't been that, I mean,
I've been to Pasadena. I've actually been to that mall
you talked about, and I'd loved to meet this surgeon
you mentioned earlier, Chris. His name is Chester Griffiths, went
out and saved his home and planned to be as
a amateur firefighters at work because he knew what was coming.
I want to ask you a real quick response on
your assistant LA Fire chief, the woman who explained that
the primary concern of folks when they are trapped in
a fire and their kids are near to burning to death,
is it you look like they do. So she wants
to go rescue heavy, short haired lesbian women period who
happened to be black, by the way, but not men
our age who might be trapped in a building because
that's our fault. Plus she's proud that she can't carry us.
Is this going to be Chris, honestly, do you think
this is any sort of mental breaking points that might
actually have people reflect on their votes? In other words,
could this red pill anybody in California?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's such and such a difficult thing to talk about.
This assistant fire chief in Los Angeles said, people asking me,
could you carry my husband out of a fire? And
she said, if your husband is trapped in a fire,
he got himself into the wrong place. We had a
that's maybe twenty years ago at this point, a teenager
who committed suicide in Alameda, up in northern count of
California by swimming out into the San Francisco Bay and
drowning himself, and people saw him doing it and called
nine to one to one, and the police department in
the fire department came and stood on the beach and
watched him drown and eventually a woman who was out
taking a walk on the beach stripped down to her
underwear and swam out and dragged his body in. Because
the fire department and the police department wouldn't do anything
about it. Oh And as you know, I used to
work for local newspapers. I used to cover fire departments,
and I can tell you that every firefighter I ever
knew would say that the ethic of the fire service
is if you need us, were coming. It's very, very
hard to get to a point where and I think
in these fires that we just had, the problem wasn't
that the fire department didn't want to do anything. The
problem was that we didn't have enough firefighters and they
were out, you know, frantically. The firefighters who were on
duty were out frantically trying to put out fires, but
there just weren't enough of them. The ethic of the
fire services We're going to help you, no matter what
it takes, you know, no matter how hard it is,
We're coming. And so to see someone wearing a fire
department uniform saying, you know, don't expect me to carry
out of your house. You shouldn't have gotten yourself there, I think,
is a replacement of one ethic with a radically different
and incompatible ethic. Yep, yep. If people can't notice that,
we're not going to fix it. Now the question of
whether or not they can notice it. You immediately start
getting I've seen this over and over and over again
for years. Saw this during COVID. You know, don't be ridiculous.
Of course, a mask stops COVID. Of course it does that,
you know, Anthony Fauci says, so, so, how can it
possibly not be true? You start immediately running into you
start immediately hearing the phrase conspiracy theory when you say
things like maybe if they'd had water, they could have
fought the fire. Oh, you know, that's what you're listening to,
these online conspiracies. I think. I mean, it's it's such
a dramatic and astonishing failure. And Pacific Palisades. I did
the math on this, about five percent of the city
of Los Angeles, and we lost more than the Palisades.
The fire burned a whole bunch of other cities, So
we've lost more than five percent of the city of
Los Angeles. If you lose an enormous portion of a
major American city, does it force you to reconsider? Does
it what or how much has to be destroyed before
you're willing to say maybe we should think about this,
and if if your status, anxiety, and your your feelings
about you know, ultimately if you say the government failed
on this, Gavin Newsom failed, Cam Bass failed, Democratic run
government in Los Angeles failed, and in California failed, it
means that you're one of these maga people. Maybe you
should move to a trailer park and fly over the country, right,
and as mentionings that are different than what it actually
means in practical.
Speaker 1: Terms, not to mention the racism involved and the racism
and the bigotry. And I want to get back Chris
to infrastructure with you and the website. By the way,
Chris's SUBSCT is Chris Bray dot subsec dot com. Again,
it's linked in the show notes. And I want to
go back to something else you wrote about, which was
this nasty warning fire that happened and affected some infrastructure.
We'll talk about this with Chris Bray, my very favorite
subseec writer. I pay to read his writing. I suggest
you do the same thing. He's a journalist. We should
really really support and respect. My friend Zach Abraham, chief
investment officer Borwart Capital Management, someone I'm going to respect
so much so that I gave him a whole boltload
of money to Steward. I tried to give him all
our money, and he said, no, don't do that because
I'm a risk management zealot, and what if I have
a bad year the year we retire, so.
Speaker 3: Balance that out.
Speaker 1: So he wouldn't let me do that any other fun
to be like, yeah, well give me all that plus
your kids. So he doesn't play that game. Zach Abraham,
he's fanatically focused on risk management. He's also hear about
our program once a week. He's a very keen, astute
observer of what's happening politically and societally and culturally and spiritually,
so that he takes it all into account. He's doing
his first live webinar which is free in twenty twenty five,
and he's really going to focus on the changes that
President Trump's team is going to bring, what might happen
to the economy, how the Empire is going to strike back,
and what this means for your retirement. If you're five, ten,
fifteen years from retirement, you really need to make sure
that you're calibrated for reality, because I'm here to tell
you that many accounts are not. And Zach accomplishes this
by actively managing every account, which can reduce risk and
volatility so that you have only one retirement, so go
get a second opinion. It's free to go to this webinar.
It's Thursday, January thirtieth. Register now at Know your Risk
radio dot com. That's know know your Risk Radio dot com.
Get that second opinion and your retirement. You only get
one retirement, so don't put this off. It's Know your
Risk Radio dot com. Investment Advisors services off for the
Teck Financial LLC and SEC registered investment advisor investments involved risk.
It are not guaranteed past performance, isn't guaranteed future results.
Trek twenty five's one zero three. Chris Bray is with me.
It's Chris Braid dot substack dot com. And Chris, you
wrote and took pictures of a very nasty fire that
happens under a freeway. And this is shocking to anyone
who's ever been in a city like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle.
But it apparently started with a homeless camp and some
propane tanks. And i've people have seen you and others
refer to this sort of as a warning fire that hey,
things might get bad. So can you remind us of
that circumstance.
Speaker 3: If you look at video of the the Iten Freeway.
But there's so much video of this on YouTube of
the Iten Freeway fire in November of twenty twenty three,
you can watch firefighters sprang streams of water over homeless
encampments over tenths over these makeshift plywood buildings next next
to the freeway, and there were also illegal storage yards.
There were a bunch of junked cars and a bunch
of wooden palettes packed tightly underneath the freeway. And so
when it when all of that burned, the rebar in
the concrete became unstable. It melted and reformed and became unstable,
and I had to rebuild the under the uh, the understructure,
the foundation of the freeway to keep it from collapsing.
So the it In Freeway, the freeway through the middle
of Los Angeles was closed while they uh, well they
built what are called false works. I love that term,
underneath the false works. Okay, and the same two idiots,
uh you know it's it's it's so familiar. Karen Bass
and Gavin Newsom stood on that freeway, on that closed freeway,
and celebrated the good work they did rebuilding it. They said,
you know what a what an amazing success. We've done
an extraordinary job here and look how good, Look look
how good we are. And I've been watching the press
conferences like the LA County Board of Supervisors and the
Los Angeles City Council with the fire Department, of police
department leaders and the Sheriff's department leaders, all of these
elected officials, and you can always watch my state senator,
my new state senator always sort of gets her face
in the frame behind there, and the theme with the
fire burning, with houses burning. The theme of their press
conferences was you know, we're doing an extraordinary job. No
it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, no, they did not they wait, they did that.
Speaker 3: Go to Karen Bass's Twitter account. Karen Bass, the mayor
of Los Angeles. This actually really fascinates me. She posted
a video yesterday where she talks about the scope of
the disaster and the pain and the suffering and the
grief sweeping through Los Angeles, and she's smiling an enormous, happy,
warm smile and it's captioned, so I've taken a screenshot
that says your grief and your agony underneath the smiling,
the beaming face of a happy Mayer. Karen Bass The
theme has been we're doing a wonderful job. So things
just happen, right like bad stuff just happens. You can't
expect anyone to put out a fire because it's very
obscure how you would do that. And if the reservoir
was empty, that's you know, what does it even mean?
But now we're doing a very wonderful job, and it's
important that we not blame and it's important that we
not be negative. Now is the time. Karen Bass is
very fond of the phrase link arms. We need to
link arms, and we need to stand together. And if
you want an example of how ridiculous that can become,
while the fires were burning, the California Legislature convened a
special legislative session.
Speaker 1: Everybody stopped. Everybody stopped. Listen to what Chris Brey's about
to tell you. Everybody stop, if you're listening in earbuds,
if you're listening live, if you're watching later, if you're
on YouTube, you stop and you listen and you look
at Chris Bray tell you what happened in a special
legislative session. Okay, Chris Sarf interrupting, But this has to
be absolutely clear to.
Speaker 3: People at the moment, the biggest city in California was
burning with an uncontrolled fire that we couldn't stop. The
legislature convened a special legislative session to budget money to
stand up to Trumph. They created a fund for the
Attorney General's office to sue Donald Trump and tie up
his agenda in the courts. And then as the legislative
session ended, Gavin Newsom and separately the Los Angeles County
Board of Supervisors sent letters to Donald Trump inviting him,
in a spirit of friendship, become fire zone so that
he can help us when he takes office, so that
he can help us with fire recovery. So the argument
in California is that Donald Trump is literally Adolf Hitler.
He's a fascist, he's a bigot. His election is the
destruction of democracy. It's the end of our democracy. America
is now an autocratic dictatorship and democracy is dead and
Hitler rules. And also, come be friends with us. We'd
like you to come tour our fire area so you
can help us. So the rhetorical strangeness of people saying
as the city burns, we're doing a wonderful job and
I'm just so proud of how everyone is linking arms
and standing together, and there's nothing. You know, government is
extremely important to your life, and government is central, and
government is about helping. And also there's nothing we could
have done about the fires. And also so we're inviting
literally Adolf Hitler to come be our friend into our
burning city. If you look for any any form or
degree of logical order or sense or rationality in the
discussion that our elected officials and our media. But our media,
by and large, although there were reporters, local reporters who
did not do this, our media buy and large is
rushing to say, Californiy's well, government, there's nothing anyone could
have done about this. Look for theses, don't, don't, don't
try to blame. I will say two moments. There was
a reporter reflecting the moment I had standing in Altadeno
watching an entire neighborhood burning. For the hour we stood there,
we didn't see the fire department. There was a reporter
who said to Karen bass, the mayor of Los Angeles,
Mayor Bass, I stood in a neighborhood in Pacific Palisades
for hours. I drove around Pacific Palaces with my crew.
We personally watched with our own eyes as hundreds of
houses burned and we did not see a single fire engine.
Can you explain what happened? And Karen Bath said, I
don't think this is the right time for that conversation.
Speaker 1: I saw Newsom. I saw Gavin Newsom attempting to blame
President Trump on a podcast. On the same podcast, he said,
now's not the time for finger pointing. This is the
same Gavin Newsom who stood next to President Trump in
a forest that had burned, and President Trump, a Manhattan
real estate developer, displayed more knowledge of how to not
have forest fires than a guy who supposedly manages the
biggest like eighth biggest economy in the world, was some
of the most diverse forests and beaches and grasslands in
the world, and they're blaming him. I have to ask
you about one interaction I saw. I'm sure you've seen this,
and we'll play this later this week and you guys
will see this, and let me ask you about this.
Senator at a second, Chris, someone this weekend did something
really horrible at my house and it listen, it pales
in comparison to losing your house on a fire. Someone
stole my magnesium breakthrough, So I'm looking for the person.
We've got a seriousness of security cameras. I'm I think
it may have been my wife seeking revenge on me
for having woken rupted the night, and it might have
been that she didn't know she's actually watching, so it
didn't it wasn't her. Magnesium breakthrough is something I've talked
to you about sleep. It's very helpful that way. It
helps you fall asleep and stay asleep. That's my experience
with it. I don't talk enough about how it helps
manage anxiety and calm people down. It does this by
managing the stress hormone cortisol. It also regulates five hundred
and ninety nine other body interactions. This is the thing
I love about Matt Wade. Though they never stop improving,
they have reformulated magnesium breakthrough so that it is more dissolvable.
I used to take it two hours before bed, and
I can take an hour four bed. It's also more
bio available, so even if you've tried it the four
point oh, it's better, you get ten percent off. Go
to boptimizers dot com slash Todd, use promo code Todd.
Then take my tip on this subscribe, You'll never run
out of products never. Even if someone steals it, you
can have a backup plan. I'm gonna start storing some
in my gun safe right ope, so every people find
I have a gun safe.
Speaker 3: Now I'm in trouble.
Speaker 1: Boptimishers dot com slash Todd promo code Todd ten percent off.
When you subscribe, you get free gifts, you get discounts,
and you don't run out of product. Boptimishers dot com
slash Todd promo code tod. You probably saw this Chris
Bray and it's Chrispray dot substack dot com. A woman
wearing a mask, and I'm going to give her the
benefit of the doubt that she was wearing it because
of this smoke and that actually is really bad for
your lung, so I'm gonna give her that benefit of
the doubt. There's Gavin Newsom who look great. He looked
really great, his hair was perfect, and there was a
beautiful shiny black suv that didn't have any smoke or
dust on it, and he was surrounded by a security personnel.
And she came up very lightly using the honor effic
governor knew some governor, May I talk to you please
and the security kind of stuff. She said, I'm not
going to hurt him. I promise, I promise, and they
kindly allowed her to approach the king and he and
she said what are you doing? What are you doing
to help? And he said, I'm literally right now, literally
on the phone with the president, literally trying to get help.
And she said, may I hear? May hear the conversation,
because I don't believe you.
Speaker 3: Catknew.
Speaker 1: Some said, well, that's why I'm walking around and I
don't have signal and so this the first words out
of his mouth was a lie. I'm literally on the
phone with the president.
Speaker 3: Right now, and well, let me give me yep. Right.
Speaker 1: Did you see this interaction?
Speaker 3: I did? Okay, can you actually far off? It was
so painful to me to see it that I didn't
make it through the whole. It's like a minute and
a half and I made about thirty seconds and and
just couldn't. I couldn't watch his sociopathic.
Speaker 1: So people have to understand something about Newsom. And this
is so important in terms of what California has become.
There's the Getty family, there's Newsome, There's Pelosi and one
other family. There's kind of four families who have controlled
California forever. And this came to mind when I was
listening to a nine to one no. I was listening
to a fire dispatch call. You may have heard this
as well, that two firemen were arguing. Dispatch is saying,
we have a high priority historic building and they were
referencing the Getty Museum and we need assets over there,
and a heroic firefighter said, no, no, no, I can't apportion.
I don't have enough men and a crew. No, I
have family homes, et cetera. Can you talk through the
historic power culture that is Gavin Newsom that surrounds him,
And I mean, is that true? These are these four
families who just rule over California.
Speaker 3: That's so hard. I mean, yes, yes, mm hm. But
there's to me, there's so much more going on at
this point that talking about the balance of power and
talking about how Los Angeles works and how California works.
To me, the the the families that have ruled California
that they I mean like a personal fiefdom. Yeah, that's
an important story. But one of the things that's happening
to us before the uh we you know, before the
last election. We have a We have a legislator named
uh Corey Jackson who has a very important doctorate in
social I know this guy, I know, yeah, And Corey
Jackson represents it kind of a purple district. He's out
in the Inland Empire and a heavily Latino district that's
probably politically liberal, but culturally at least somewhat conservative and
very Catholic. And Corey Jackson authored a bill to ban
book bands in school he says, yes, and it passed
and the governor signed it, and he and Gavin Knwsom,
you know, did a video together about how proud they
were that they'd banned book bands and what that means
in practice is that he made it illegal to not
have sexually explicit curriculum materials in schools. He's very very
proud of this. You know, you want, you want eight
year olds to have plenty of books about blowjobs, so,
you know, so they can learn. And I said, I
started saying to the Republican Party, to the California Republican Party.
I started emailing staff, the executive director of the California
Republican Party, the political director of the California Republican Party,
saying for crying out loud. You can beat this person,
get resources into this district, talk you know, talk to
your donors, get money to this district, can test this seat.
And not only did they not do that, but they
never talk to me. They never responded to me. I
never heard from anyone. So part of what's happening in
California is we have, I think three things. We have
the the oligarchy of old families that you're talking about unchecked.
We have this growing careocracy of legislators who are former
teachers and former social workers who have a vision of
government not as the thing that provides service, but is
a thing that changes society. And we have no culture
of opposition. We do not have a Republican party in California.
We have no significant statewide Republican figure. We have a
couple of legislators, Republican legislators who are outspoken, and a
bunch of republic We have a handful of Republican legislators.
The Democrats have a super majority in both houses, but
the few Republicans who get elected mostly just keep quiet
and don't do very much. We have no culture of
opposition in California, and we're not I think going to
develop one in the near future. I think that's a
generational problem. So the thing I'm hoping for in California,
because because there's not a the Republican Cavalry is not
on the way in California. The thing I'm hoping for
is people like Rick Russo, the real estate developer who
ran for mayor. Yeah, and to Karen Bass, the biggest
idiot on the face of the earth. I'm just astonished
by that she was in the shortlist to be VP.
I just.
Speaker 1: Chris Braid speechless. That never happens.
Speaker 3: Man who makes a living with words runs out of words.
It's like they were on a quest with the Knights
of the Round Table to find the biggest idiot in
the realm, and they didn't succeed. They only found the
second biggest idiot. The only thing that I think can
happen in californ that can begin to produce even a
tiny bit of health is the re emergence of a
kind of centrist Democrat who's capable of actually running things.
Los Angeles and California in the late twentieth century were
built by Democrats. Pat Brown. Governor Pat Brown was Democrat,
but he was a centrist Democrat, who built things, who
made things, who provided, who made the government work at
its basic function. Tom Bradley was a five term mayor
of Los Angeles. He was a Democrat and former LAPD officer,
a career government employee, and he was would not have
casually said, well, there's nothing government could have done about this, yep,
although he finally was driven finally lost office after twenty
years of being a highly respected mayor because of the
Rodney King riots, because he was the mayor city burned.
I familiar, familiar theme.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me ask you a question as we as
we close this off, even so kind with your time,
and let me let me warn you that I'm going
to ask about North Carolina. And there's a reason I'm
asking you about this. It's FEMA. It's this guaranteed that
the figurehead was caused to give to California. And also
because you write so well and so beautifully about rural
America and the reality of rural America versus what the
people in the very important cities like the center of
the center of the universe, Washington, d C. New York,
the Cela Corridor, Los Angeles think of it. I was
Chris about this in a second. A reminder that the
bone Frog Coffee relationship now is going on our fourth year,
and we have an opportunity this year to expand bone
Frog pretty significantly. We're getting some inroads into some of
the retail stores. And and don't worry, we're not going
to shift. We're not going to change. It's going to
continue to say God Country, team on it. Tim Krukshank,
the founder of bone Frog Coffee, is a dear friend,
a brother of mine. It's a retired Navy seal. That
stuff's not going away, not off those bags. He's not
going to run from those values. But the direct sales
right now, your opportunity to lock in fifteen percent off
subscription coffee, that's something you need to take advantage of
now because as the retail pressure comes along, et cetera,
things are going to change in that pricing front. So
go to Bonefrog Coffee dot com slash tod make sure
you subscribe. They've got all sorts of blends and roasts
if you want. My personal favorite, it continues to be
the goatlocker. Bront Blend read about the goatlocker.
Speaker 3: In the Navy.
Speaker 1: It's a tradition beautiful tradition of enlisted officers being able
to have a place of their own and even a
big league admiral has to knock to come in. I
love that tradition. That's a dark front roast without a
hint of bitterness. It took Tim's team three years to
get that right, under the tutelage of Dave Stewart, who
started Seattle's Best Coffee. So go to Bonefrog Coffee dot
com slash todd, skip the single purchase, subscribe, and help
us push into this retail world. For Tim and his
late wife, Liz god restorers Bonefrog Coffee dot com slash Todd,
So Chris very quickly. Figurehead Biden was caused to say
that the federal government's going to pick up the entire
tab for rebuilding and taking care of californ I have
no problem in helping my neighbors.
Speaker 3: I don't think you do either.
Speaker 1: In short order, Gavin Newsom said he's gonna wave a
bunch of red tape, et cetera, so you can build
back better. And I guarantee you're going to be building
back better of some smart city stuff that's going to happen. Meanwhile,
the FEMA was announcing that, hey, we're done letting you
stay in hotels in North Carolina. The FEMA director just
went on Fox News this weekend and didn't address any
specifics other than she's very, very angry that people aren't
calling the FEMA hotline and not going to FEMA help centers.
It's their fault and some people in North Carolina. In
other words, About three thousand people in the comment sections
replied the stink in help centers are closed. They were
closed this weekend. Not enough staffing. So you write really
gloriously about urban America, And I don't know, man, I'm
bothered by the comparison. You guys are getting paid off
in North Carolina.
Speaker 3: Hurts.
Speaker 1: Does that make me a pettyman?
Speaker 3: Don't assume yet that that's going to happen. I think
the I think Joe Biden saying something is going to
happen doesn't necessarily mean that it's well.
Speaker 1: He did say cal Mahars could have beaten Trump.
Speaker 3: Oh if only she right, I was. I mean, you
have to say, it's it's winter in the appellations and
it's knowing in fourteen degrees, and femas saying that people
were lost their house as well, your your vouchers have
run out, and people are being thrown out into the
snow or at immediate risk of being thrown out into
the snow. And the extraordinary importance of private charity, the
extraordinary importance of organizations like the Cajun Navy, the well
named Cajun Navy, and a Samaritan's Person in places like that,
those are tremendously important. What's coming next in Las Ane?
When you hear people saying, oh, big door, recover it all.
We're going to wave all the red tape, don't believe
that until you see it. We had a very large
fire in Malibu something like five years ago, and most
of the homes that were lost in that fire have
not been rebuilt. We are not going to rebuild Malibu,
the Palisades, Altadena quickly. That is not going to happen
five years from now. If you go back to those
destroyed neighborhoods, you might see some houses being built. And
Gavin Newsom is talking about He's saying, Oh, don't worry,
we've already We've got a plan for La two point zero.
We're going to reimagine Los Angeles. I think what that's
going to mean in practice, we already have state housing
laws that requires cities to approve housing in much higher densities.
The California legislature has been four years now at war
with single family housing. Yes, and once single family housing
were replaced with apartment buildings, and I think we're going
to see beautiful neighborhoods of old homes. Altadena is a
beautiful neighborhood northern Altadena. The part that burned was a
beautiful neighborhood that was built in the early twentieth century
and had a bunch of one hundred year old homes
and more than one hundred year old homes that were
absolutely beautiful homes. And they are not going to be
replaced by the same kind of stately, historically, historically interesting
or culturally interesting homes. They're going to be replaced by
Gavin Newsom's vision of LA two point zero. So the
emergency will persist in Los Angeles generationally.
Speaker 1: Wow, man, this is I wanted to say it's a
cynical view. It's not because I've been making the same prediction,
and there there were against single family housing all up
and down the West Coast. I just appreciate you joining us.
Chris This is going to be in full form on YouTube.
You can share it with friends and please do subscribe
to Chris's Subsecond's Important Chris Bray dot substack dot com.
Appreciate your time, sir, and continue to pray for you.
And I'm really glad that you're safe and your family.
Speaker 3: Thank you for joining us. Thanks, this is a Todd
Herman show.
Speaker 1: Please go, be well, be strong, be kind, and just
a little bit of a different wrap up today, Please
do pray for the people California and North Carolina and
maybe just that God would peel the skill scales back
from people's eyes to show them this is what human
kings get you. I think a prophet named Samuel warnus
about that.