Haunting story of Baby Floyd
From The Los Angeles Times
Wildfires have been a part of the California ecosystem since long before modern settlement, let alone the exurban sprawl that brings housing and development into fire-prone areas. We tend to deal with the possibility of raging firestorms abstractly — local governments do a little planning, fire departments offer advice on clearing brush and other flammables from property, insurers sell policies to cover our losses if a fire actually burns our homes and businesses to the ground. But those steps don’t prepare us for the violent reality.
The fire currently raging in Ventura County (the Thomas fire) and the one in foothill neighborhoods around Sylmar in the San Fernando Valley (the Creek fire) are breathtaking in two ways: the sheer power of wind-driven wildfire to devour landscape, whether it hold scrub brush or mansions, and the fragility of human life in the face of it. Forecasts predict this current round of Santa Ana winds will run with varying intensity through most of the week, which means these two major fires — moving too fast to be contained — have only just begun to destroy property and upend lives. And it means, too, that additional dangerous fires are likely to crop up.
There will be time for assessments after these firestorms subside. Were they natural or human-caused? Would better zoning limit exposure? Do we have sufficient capacity to fight so many fires at once? Are there better building materials we should be using to limit fire damage? For the time being, we must focus on evacuating where prudent, getting firefighters the support they need to protect as much property as possible without endangering themselves needlessly, and hope that the destruction we’ve already seen stands as the peak of this outbreak, and not just the opening act. October’s wine country fires, which killed 44 people, turned Santa Rosa neighborhoods to ash and damaged or destroyed more than $3 billion in property, serve as a sober warning of how bad this can get.
What should make Southern California fearful is that climate change could mean a future of more frequent and more intense wildfires. Today’s fires will end, and what we do afterward — assessing how to better prepare, and how and whether to rebuild — will influence the damage from the fires next time. From The Los Angeles Times
Following President Trump’s questionable lead, some congressional Republicans are trying to sow doubt about the integrity and impartiality of the FBI and the investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. That investigation already has resulted in an indictment of Trump’s former campaign chairman and a guilty plea by his first national security advisor, and it shows no sign of concluding.
On Thursday, four days after Trump tweeted that the FBI’s reputation was “in tatters,” Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told FBI Director Christopher A. Wray: “We cannot afford for the FBI — which has traditionally been dubbed the premier law enforcement agency in the world — to become tainted by politicization or the perception of a lack of even-handedness.”
True enough, but the question is whether such a perception is fair or the result of politically motivated exaggeration by the president and his supporters. So far the evidence points strongly in the latter direction. That comes as no surprise — the attacks on the FBI fit a clear pattern of misdirection and deflection by the Trump administration and its GOP allies on the issue of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Ever since Mueller was appointed, there has been an effort by the president and his allies to discredit the special counsel’s investigation.
Take the incident that Republicans are treating as a “smoking gun”: the fact that an FBI agent named Peter Strzok was reassigned from Mueller’s investigation earlier this year after it was discovered that he had sent personal text messages critical of Trump to another FBI official.
Strzok also was involved in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server for State Department business, and some Republicans speculate that he softened the FBI’s conclusion about Clinton’s culpability. Trump has made a similar accusation. Last Sunday he tweeted: “Report: “ANTITRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE” Now it all starts to make sense!” Their claim isn’t supported by any evidence, however, just their deep, abiding belief that Clinton should not have been let off the hook.
Wray, testifying before the Judiciary Committee, declined to comment in detail about Strzok because of a current investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general. In general, he told the committee, “we will hold our folks accountable, if that’s appropriate.”
Even if Strzok didn’t violate any Justice Department regulation, expressing political opinions may have been indiscreet in light of the sensitivity of the investigation. The fact that Strzok was transferred suggests that his supervisors recognized that there was an appearance problem. But at this point, no one has presented even a shred of evidence that Strzok was influenced by his political beliefs in the way he performed his duties, either as part of the Mueller investigation or in connection with the Clinton email inquiry.
Although it may be impossible to satisfy Republicans on these issues, it’s appropriate for the inspector general to investigate not only Strzok’s conduct but the Clinton email investigation as a whole, including decisions made by former FBI Director James B. Comey to discuss publicly his unusual decision not to recommend that Clinton face criminal charges. What isn’t needed is a special counsel to reexamine the Clinton investigation, as some Republicans are demanding. Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein — whom Trump put in office — is perfectly capable of deciding whether there is any reason to revisit the Clinton case.
The larger context here is that ever since Mueller was appointed, there has been an effort by the president and his allies to discredit the special counsel’s investigation — for example, by pointing to the fact that some lawyers on his staff made political contributions to Clinton or other Democrats. There also have been attempts by the president’s allies to change the subject, such as the claim that the real scandal was improper “unmasking” of members of the Trump transition team whose communications with foreign governments were intercepted by U.S. intelligence. The unmasking allegations have proved to be a non-scandal too.
Finally, while the president’s lawyers insist that he wants to cooperate with Mueller, Trump might be tempted to enact his own version of Richard Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre — firing Mueller and any Justice Department official who gets in the way — if he thought Republicans in Congress would go along. They shouldn’t give him that opening by casting aspersions on the professionalism of the FBI.
On this Friday night Duke and I decided to stop at a drive-in and get a bite to eat. The drive-in had girls on skates to wait on you. We had ate there before and had got to know some of the girls. We pulled in and a girl we knew brought out a order to a car next to us. I watched as she put the tray in the window. The person in the car reached out and grabbed her, and she let out a scream and threw the tray down. There was a hot cup of coffee on the tray that poured into his lap. He let out a word that curled my hair. It was one of the most vulgar words that I had ever heard. He came out of the car and grabbed her telling her what he would going to do to her.
I came out of the car at full speed and grabbed him. I threw him back against his car. In not so gentle words I let him know that he was not going to do anything to her unless he went though me first. I stepped back looking him over. I remember thinking “I have had it now,” as he was twice my size. His face puckered up and he let go with a blast of cuss words. I stepped in to him and said, “Shut up or I will shut you up.” He didn’t move, just stood watching me. It was a standstill, he stood watching me and in turn I was watching him. I stepped back and waited. It didn’t look good, his 200 pounds against my 130. Duke stood by watching the other boy making sure he didn’t become involved.
“Here, here what’s going on?” I heard someone say. I turned and saw that Peggy, the girl, had gone and got the manager. He stepped between the two of us. He called the name Herman and said, “I have told you to stay away from here. I am telling you now if you ever come back on this lot I will have the police on you. Now get,” he said. Herman left the lot with his tires smoking. He wasted no time getting off the lot. I watched and saw him parked on a lot across the street. The manager went back inside and we told Peggy that we would take her home. Peggy and a friend came out at closing time and we headed for her home.
Once in the car Peggy began to tell us about Herman and how she had dated him once and she told him she would not go out with him after that. Herman was a groper, he couldn’t keep his hands to himself. He would come to the drive-in where she worked and would order. When she brought out the order, he would grab her. The manager had gotten on him and told him to stay away. Herman was the kind that listened to no one. I remember reaching under the seat and feeling the jack handle. Words that my Mother would say came back to me. The words were, “Those who cannot listen shall feel.”
We had left the street with the lights and onto a small dark road. I told Duke to stop. He pulled over and I rolled down the window so I could see a house that looked like it had been burned. It was one of the old types that had columns in front. It was a two story and I could see that the back of the house was burned. I looked at Duke and said, “Wow, I bet that old house is full of ghosts.”
Peggy spoke up saying, “That was our old home place. The house burned down a few years ago. As for ghosts, yes, it has ghosts. Some of my people got burned up in the house.”
Duke started the car moving and Peggy said “this driveway.” We pulled in and, to my surprise, a big man carrying a shotgun came out to meet us. “My Father,” Peggy said. I looked at the big man with the shotgun saying nothing. LONIE ADCOCK