99 Comments
User's avatar
Ryan Gardner's avatar

All I can say is I thought CA was bad when we moved to Florida at the beginning of scamdemic.

Apparently there's no floor to bad.

It was a slow decline starting in the late 90's...and now we're in the "all at once" phase.

Terrible reflection of our society. It actually gives me a heavy heart, but assurance that my family made the right decision to get out.

Expand full comment
Brandon is not your bro's avatar

Glad for you and your family RG

Expand full comment
Ryan Gardner's avatar

What i find just utterly ridiculous is:

How do people not put two and two together?

I mean the decline started the minute it became a rule by one party state.

Seriously I can send you pics of my nice neighborhood in San Diego, even as recently as 2018, and compare it to now. Its shocking.

Or compare photos of the Gaslamp District downtown. It used to have some of the best restaurants and clubs in SoCal...now its just a homeless encampment.

Expand full comment
John Anthony's avatar

I abandoned my home state for good in ‘23 Ryan. I had a junior colleague, an intelligent and thoughtful young friend who I knew that in his younger days was an Acorn activist and Obama loyalist. He was an active member in the California Democratic Party and an alternate national delegate from CA. He was also a devout Catholic and my wife and I went to his wedding at the Los Angeles Cathedral. I asked him if he was okay with one party rule and he answered, “Absolutely. You realize that there’s a lot of internal debate within the party, so it’s not as though we’re just parroting the party line!”

I realized there was no longer hope at that point. California will never recover. It’s in an unstoppable vortex into self-destruction. Be content that you got out!

Expand full comment
Ryan Gardner's avatar

Its bizarre. I have two very close friends that are under the same spell. Its a spell, right?! If not, I don't know what else to call it.

Expand full comment
Reader East of Albuquerque's avatar

I know what you mean about the "spell"— the ones I know repeat what they hear on TV, whatever's the thing du jour, as if they're in a trance. They also tell me all about their sudden onset baffling health issues, and how very highly they regard their doctors. I should be a poker player.

Expand full comment
Maria's avatar

OMG, yes, my liberal drink-the-kool-aid friends are suffering a multitude of health issues too! But they've taken their covid boosters every time they are told to. Insanity.

Expand full comment
Dena's avatar

They lost touch with reality. Covid exposed just how many suffer from this mental disorder.

Expand full comment
Ryan Gardner's avatar

Yes. The Scamdemic was the ultimate Turing test.

Expand full comment
Reader East of Albuquerque's avatar

Yes, it exposed a lot. But I think a part of what's going on with many people, previously in-touch (more or less) with reality, is a sort of fear-lock in their thinking coupled with some brain fog.

Expand full comment
CStone's avatar

Read Romans ch 1 vs 18 to the end. It explains everything.

It is called a ‘reprobate mind’

Expand full comment
Ryan Gardner's avatar

You're right. That's exactly it

Expand full comment
Heidi Kulcheski's avatar

How on Earth can you be a devout Catholic and California Democrat? That makes no sense at all.

Expand full comment
John Anthony's avatar

He had a practicing Muslim father and a devout Catholic mother. He went to madrassa and also pursued becoming a priest. He’s so much of an outlier that he can’t be used to understand the progressive mind. The most we can learn is what I posted: how they justify a single party system, i.e., there’s so much internal debate there’s no need to consider debate from those outside the party.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Oct 28
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Heidi Kulcheski's avatar

Yes but then you are not a devout catholic.

Expand full comment
Michael L's avatar

Yep, there's healthy, spirited internal debate, followed by the people at the top of the pyramid doing whatever they want.

Expand full comment
Steenroid's avatar

Yes downtown used to have great restaurants and fun to walk around at night but that was years ago when I was there.

Expand full comment
TheUnderToad's avatar

Interesting name, the Gaslamp District...

Expand full comment
Ryan Gardner's avatar

Yeah. They might as well call it the "gaslighting" district now

Expand full comment
K2's avatar

^^^This!!^^^

Expand full comment
coldsummer1816's avatar

Perhaps the biggest scandal in our national politics is that Democrats still, somehow, can get away with blaming Republicans for easily solvable problems with big city governance, even though Democrats have ruled uninterrupted over many large cities for fifty-plus years. Even though large cities around the world today produce literate students and safe streets.

My (likely futile) hope is that Trump’s very public intervention with crime is enough to help city dwellers see the light. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. By that definition, expecting better schools and safer streets from a Democrat is insane. I’ve been trying to be less shy about phrasing it so directly to my friends and neighbors, and this blog helps.

Expand full comment
Chris Bray's avatar

Yes. "Why did Trump light that building on fire," they say, while standing there smelling like gasoline and holding a half-used book of matches.

Expand full comment
Ryan Gardner's avatar

If Trump taught them how to make fire, they'd burn him at the stake.

Expand full comment
Leonard's avatar

Theyd accidentally burn themselves first.

Expand full comment
KenO's avatar

Kudos to the heavy-hitting reality exposure, Chris.

Obviously, there is some serious money at the top of this temple of debauchery. And the high profile names are proof of that.

So the animal park rangers are expected to keep things at status quo while the suits audit the park/plantation for return on investment. They figure darkly that there will never be a society clean from this evil underworld. But when the human costs are paralleled to costs to society, the ‘new’ face, which is really the aging face of degeneracy in the order of the occult world of mafia/gang ‘turf exploitation’ managed by levels of ‘mutually assured destruction’ between the political class and these underworld avatars who act like their hell-hole is still a paradise of tribal self- determination. But they want us to subsidize it — pay for it ! And the godless pinkos do everything they can to fight for ‘their democracy, theirs’ through the excuses of ‘brown, black, colored, and disadvantaged communities’ — which again, we wicked, guilty and selfish white Christian nationalists are expected to support through declared virtual reparations.

These areas may well be the flash points of the fires that will be ignited by these cartels and underworld cabals — once the wicked Dems have brought destitution to a reality never before experienced while the cash spigot has been purposefully OFF so they could get their way with the unchecked entitlements that have us up to 37+T(rillion) in debt; which of course they regard as an ‘only right’ investment in the people of ‘their democracy.’

Damn your pale ass Republic.

Hooray for ‘our democracy.’

Jeffrey Mead laid it out accurately today.

Chris highlighted the reality check we’re in for nationwide, with CA as the fish bowl that’s gotten so foul that nothing will survive without a thorough redo of the whole ecosystem.

Gangsters love turf wars for the cred they can showboat.

Time to see if We the People have the ‘intestinal’ (C)constitution for the show of bigger, better and more lethal tools of control the Gmen claim.

Otherwise, the underworld is ever more firmly in the grip of the Mexican cartels, and by extension, Xi and the CCP — with the Dems as the beard.

Expand full comment
Alison Bull's avatar

If only they decided to protect those kids with the same fervor as their Trump screeching. What pathetic and nasty people.

Expand full comment
Ryan Gardner's avatar

You nailed it to it's core.

It's that simple

Expand full comment
Steenroid's avatar

Nasty doesn’t begin to describe them because they actually think they are intellectually and morally superior but they have no intelligence and have the morals of a dog in heat.

Expand full comment
Ryan Gardner's avatar

Agree, buddy.

Haven't "seen" you in awhile. Hope you're doing well!

Expand full comment
Steenroid's avatar

Doing fine. Just haven’t commented as much. I go through cycles.

Expand full comment
Clever Pseudonym's avatar

When my friends and family in NYC say they're worried about Mamdani, I tell them it's doubtful he could be as useless and stupid as his Comrade Karen Bass, who should be remembered forever for standing in LAX with her mouth closed and a look of terror in her eyes as a journalist asked questions about the wildfire she skipped out on. What a profile in courage!

As much as she tried to melt into the floor and transform herself into a puddle of shame, she survived and has the nerve to show her face and run for re-election. Imagine what she would do without Trump—he is the center of her universe, her reason for being and her all-purpose Swiss Army knife of excuses. If we vote her back in, we deserve wildfires around the clock.

Expand full comment
Leonard's avatar

NYC residents being worried about Mamdani is like a German starting to worry about Hitler in 1944.

Expand full comment
Reader East of Albuquerque's avatar

lol jawohl

Expand full comment
Navigator18's avatar

Newsome, Bass and especially the Satanic Weiner should probably all be in chain gangs, picking up trash on the sides of interstates for the rest of their execrable lives. What a vile posse of malevolent snakes.

Expand full comment
TheUnderToad's avatar

👍🏻

Expand full comment
Aviva W.'s avatar

All those bleeding hearts on the L.A. City Council are well aware of the prostitutes on Figueroa, at minimum because some Asian guy makes inappropriate comments about them every week in the council’s public comment time. That the city leadership chose to ignore these exploited women and children FOR YEARS… there really are no words.

Also, the article I saw this morning mildly said that “laws were changed” to make it harder to prosecute the traffickers. Ahem, Scott Wiener and crew.

There is so much blame to go around.

Expand full comment
Aviva W.'s avatar

Oh I see you talked about the laws being changed in your earlier piece. I need to catch up.

Expand full comment
TheUnderToad's avatar

Always in the passive voice though "...laws were changed." No ownership. No one changed them. They just, somehow, *changed*. Like the way the leaves change color in the Fall, or how the weather may suddenly change. Those crazy laws! There's no telling how they might change next!

Expand full comment
Aviva W.'s avatar

100% correct. Another recurring theme in CA is how no one in charge is willing to take responsibility for their actions. During covid, the school said they were only following county public health rules, public health in turn blamed the state health dept, who said they were merely following the CDC. No one was responsible for the shmatte on my children’s faces. Same with the January fires— Mayor Bass should have resigned. But no, she fired her fire chief instead. Zero leadership and zero shame.

Expand full comment
Alan's avatar

I saw this headline yesterday, "Swalwell demands 2028 Dem candidates vow to destroy Trump's White House ballroom project."

Spiraling, spiraling down...down...down.........

Expand full comment
Vermont Farm Wife's avatar

Swalwell lol.

Expand full comment
Hugh Wayne Black's avatar

For a minute there, I thought you were describing my morning dump. Then I realized you were referring to Swalwell. I’d say “same thing” but I’d rank my dump above that POS.

Expand full comment
Cathleen Manny's avatar

An iron fence around MacArthur Park. Way to resolve the root of the problems. And how do they intend to keep the ‘wrong’ people out? Sentries at the gates? And people will instantly find a way to get over the fence. Are we really talking about this? Good grief. Does these idiots even see how stupid they look?

Expand full comment
NanaW's avatar

Maybe it’s to get the populace used to seeing iron gates around an enclave. Escape From L.A. anyone?

Expand full comment
jewel's avatar

likely another grift

Expand full comment
Victoria Chandler's avatar

As to MacArthur Park, put up the fence, clean it up, and maybe require an entrance fee to use the renovated park. If that doesn’t work, turn it into a gigantic concrete slab, and explain to the citizens that they can’t have nice things because the government they elected doesn’t have the will to police criminal activity.

Expand full comment
Roger Kimber, MD's avatar

I wonder what ways Swalwell Newsom and the commie mayor are benefiting from this trade? Kickbacks, bribes, are they at the top of the organization, are they customers?

Expand full comment
Roger Kimber, MD's avatar

I would have to see receipts showing that they are not directly involved; remember, Adam Schiff has been credibly alleged to be a homosexual pedophile.

Expand full comment
Jerri Hinojosa's avatar

Definately possible, but I believe Democrats like this LA gang, Chicago and Philadelphia officials are mostly motivated to maintain power by feverishly trying to foist blame for their ineptitude onto the easiest target, Donald Trump.

Expand full comment
Arne's avatar

It keeps getting more difficult to access non-polemical news. No one in the media seems willing to emphasize the facts.

Expand full comment
Pat Robinson's avatar

All narrative all the time.

Facts don’t matter if they contradict the narrative.

Expand full comment
Arne's avatar

For relatively unbiased news, I'd suggest going to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California home page at https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca

But what do you see at the top of that page? "Democrats have shut down the government. Department of Justice websites are not currently regularly updated."

Expand full comment
Susan's avatar

Thank you for posting the link to the U.S Atty's Office, Central District. I will be using it. I've often checked their site in the past but somehow got out of the habit.

Expand full comment
Victoria Chandler's avatar

We need to be loud and unapologetic in drumming in the mantra that any adult who eyes a child with lust is a sick puppy. Any adult pimping a child or ‘purchasing’ their ‘services’ will be removed from polite society. No leniency. No negotiations.

Expand full comment
TheUnderToad's avatar

That you even have to state this as a stratagem shows just how far the state has fallen. What you have said should just pass as plain human common sense.

Expand full comment
Irwin Chusid's avatar

"Bass, Swalwell, and Newsom ... appear to have total immunity to shame [and] leave ruin in their wake, always and everywhere." Hence, they're supremely qualified for 2028.

Expand full comment
Rich Helppie The Common Bridge's avatar

“Idiot Mayor” is an apt description for Karen Bass and it should be on the style sheet for every writer.

However, in the Idiot Mayor’s defense, she actually be ignorant of the state of MacArthur Park. To be knowledgeable it would require at least being in the country, having a competent staff and possessing an IQ measured in 3 digits. All are in question.

Expand full comment
Leonard's avatar

The dealers in the park donate to the party for protection.

Expand full comment
Leonard's avatar

So now LA Dems think building a wall is a good idea??

Two problems:

1) Holes will immediately be cut in the fence. The cut pieces will be sold to scrap metal dealers for cash to buy drug in the Park. So really no better than just handing out needles.

2) The fence was probably the idea to corral ICE into specific entrances to make hassling them easier.

Am I cynical enough yet?

Expand full comment
Kate Finis's avatar

Wait a minute... I thought fences were anathema to the Dems! Why, it's downright cruel of them to use this barbaric device to keep the drug dealers and gangs out of that beautiful park! THEY have families and frolicking children who want to picnic, too!

Expand full comment
Cathleen Manny's avatar

And who is going to guard the gate entrances? And how will they decide who to allow in, amd who to turn away? It’s all ludicrous.

Expand full comment
Maureen Hanf's avatar

Local 'community advocates,' I'm sure.

Expand full comment
Hugh Wayne Black's avatar

I thought walls don’t work, at least that’s what the Democrats told me. Now you’re saying that the Democrats say they want them to protect a park? WTF? I’m so confused…🤔😕🤷‍♂️

Expand full comment
Eliz F's avatar

Chris, I could not “❤️” this article. These politicians are soul sucking demons. Not only are these criminals evil, but the politicians who are supporting this by turning a blind eye are worse. My heart hurts after learning about this.

Expand full comment