"Woke" Produces Sloth, Incompetence, Malfeasance, Ignorance, and Mismanagement

The devastation that is still being wrought by the wildfires in and around Los Angeles, California, has affected many of those considered celebrities by the world, although I, for one, have never heard of most of them, except for Mel Gibson, as cannot name any entertainment personality after the early-1990s. However, these modern-day celebrities who have basked in their wealth and lived in large mansions that they have bought or had built for themselves are being forced to reconsider their longtime support for the “politically correct” agenda of the political leeches who have been more concerned about adhering to the dogma of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), especially by hiring, promoting, and coddling those engaged in perverse lives contrary to nature:

The vivid, heartbreaking images from this week’s Los Angeles wildfires called urgent attention to California’s longtime decline.

But this time, those affected by its bad policies and bad governance include a demographic rarely touched by them: the rich.

Over the last several years, California’s net out-migration numbers set records.

An astounding 343,000 more people left the Golden State than moved to it in 2022, the highest net loss of any state, and 2023 was almost as bad, with a net loss of 268,100.

But the wealthy of California largely stayed put.

It was mostly the lower and middle classes, walloped by notoriously high taxes, mismanagement at every level of government and crumbling infrastructure, who made a run for the door.

The affluent have been largely protected from all that.

They could easily absorb the heavy tax burden and the high costs of housing or gas.

Like Gov. Gavin Newsom, they could avoid their state’s failing public schools and send their kids to private schools instead.

But no water in a fire hydrant is a great equalizer.

Comedian Billy Crystal lost his home — all but its tennis court — in Pacific Palisades.

The homes of actors Anthony Hopkins, Miles Teller and John Goodman were wiped out there, too.

Heiress Paris Hilton said she saw her luxe Malibu vacation house “burn to the ground on live TV.”

It’s unpleasant to talk about the politics that led to the loss of entire neighborhoods, but it’s necessary to examine the terrible policies that led to this preventable disaster.

After over a decade of one-party rule, California has become the testing ground for the left’s most extreme ideas — and we are seeing the results in real time now.

Whether it was cutting the budget of fire departments, not refilling the reservoirs, ignoring deforesting guidelines under pressure from environmentalists or simply deflecting blame, California’s leaders are agonizingly inept — and it shows.

Newsom has been the physical embodiment of the shrugging emoji throughout this crisis.

Asked why there was no water in the hydrants, Newsom passed the buck: “Look, the local folks are trying to figure that out,” he said.

“I mean, those hydrants are typical for two or three fires — maybe one fire and you have something of this scale, but again that’s gonna be determined by the local.”

At least he spoke actual words.

Mayor Karen Bass shut down completely and looked catatonic when she was challenged by a reporter with questions like “Do you regret cutting the Fire Department budget by millions of dollars?” Blank stare.

The worst part is this crisis was entirely predictable — so predictable in fact that incoming president Donald Trump noted California’s ongoing water problem on Joe Rogan’s podcast three months ago.

And even the rich and famous in this lockstep-Democrat town have taken notice, openly wondering why their leadership has failed to such an extent.

“City of LA you want everyone to evacuate yet you have complete gridlock and not one traffic cop on the roads helping,” actress Sarah Michelle Gellar posted on her Instagram, tagging her absent Mayor Bass.

“Your far left policies have ruined our state. And also our party,” progressive-leaning actress Sara Foster scolded Bass and Newsom on X.

What’s more, they can demand concrete changes to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

It will take bravery.

Breaking with the left is a difficult thing to do in a sea of deep blue.

Yet the Californians who woke up with this current crisis can’t go back to sleep now.

They have a state to save. (LA fires make Calif. elites face the results of blue misrule.)

What will truly save California from the clutches of the racialists and Marxists who control its state government and its major cities is the return of its people to the true Faith that was responsible for its being Christianized, most notably by Father Junipero Serra, O.F.M. (see Father Junipero Serra: Under Attack From the World and Misreprsented by Bergoglio from nearly ten years ago). Despite a few pockets of true Catholicism here and there in California, a state with the highest taxes, the highest prices for food, gasoline, and energy, and the most regulations of any state in the nation, there are still power reminders of California’s rich Catholic history as many of the state’s cities bear the names that were given them by Father Serra and those who follow him (Los Angeles—the City of the Queen of the Angels, San Juan Capistrano, San Diego, San Clemente, San Bernardino, San Jose, Cupertino, San Francisco, Sacramento—which is named after the Blessed Sacrament, San Juan, Santa Maria, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, the San Fernando, San Buenaventura—which is still the official name of Ventura, California, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, San Matteo, San Ramon, Santa Ynez, San Carlos, San Bruno, Merced—which is named after Our Lady of Mercy, Carmel-by-the-Sea—named after Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Soledad, named after Our Lady of Solitude, Santa Rosa, and among the others, Santa Catalina Island, which is named after Saint Catherine of Alexandria). A return to the true Faith is the only thing, not elections, that can return the State of California to sanity and Catholic common sense.

Although I have never heard of a comedienne (most so-called comedians, from what I have ready, are not funny) named Whitney Cummings, a news report indicated she had said the following about the State of California and the City Los Angeles’s unpreparedness to deal with the current outbreak of wildfires, some of which, it appears may have been set by mentally-disturbed homeless arsonists:

Whitney Cummings joined a chorus of critics slamming the Los Angeles Fire Department for placing diversity, equity and inclusion programs over the safety of residents as apocalyptic wildfires cause mass destruction in Southern California.

She accused the "lesbian" leadership of only hiring within their "dating pool."

“Wait, all the people in charge of LA’s fire response are lesbians named Kirstin?” the stand-up comedian and actress said in a video posted to X Friday afternoon.

In the video, Cummings displayed a X post calling out LAFD Chief Kristin Crowley, Assistant Chief Kristina Kepner, and Equity Bureau Chief Kristine Larson.

“I do not recall voting on a prop that said we could recruit our fire team off Grindr. What?!”

The "2 Broke Girls" creator, who shared an emotional video of her evacuating her LA home on Friday, slammed the agency's attempt to only recruit members of the LGBTQ+ community.

"Talking about recruiting more lesbians into the LAFD to be firefighters," she said. (LA fires live updates: News, photos, videos of wildfires across California.)

The insanity of hiring people to do a job on the basis of race or their proclivity to commit various perverse sins has played a very large role in the display of gross incompetence and sloth on the part of state and municipal officials in the not-so golden State of California as their singular obsession with what many call the “woke religion,” which demands a strict adherence to its ever-evolving criteria to be considered an “acceptable” human being, was summarized follows in a secular commentary:

There is an old saying that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.

Perhaps after the wildfires devastation in Los Angeles this week we might also say that a person who has fallen out of love with the cult of “diversity” is a liberal whose home just burned to the ground.

Investigators are looking into the claims of multiple arson attacks that may well have started or whipped along these fires. A lot of blame is going to have to be apportioned in the direction of an awful lot of people.

But we can already say one thing with certainty. Which is that the authorities in Los Angeles failed catastrophically. And there are reasons.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was holidaying in Africa when the fires broke out. She stayed in Ghana despite a red-flag warning being issued in the place she is meant to govern.

When she did return yesterday even she could not have been blind to the utter devastation. More than 18,000 acres of Los Angles has been burned to the ground while she was away.

And while she first avoided media questions and then stumbled her way through a shambolic press conference, perhaps she began to sense that recently cutting millions of dollars from the LA fire department’s budget was not the wisest thing to do.

In the last city budget Bass slashed an incredible $17 million from the LAFD. And while individual firefighters have fought heroically to try to put out the blaze the fact is that the department was badly under-resourced.

Yesterday morning I sat down with a local woman and her teenage son whose house and entire neighborhood had just burned to the ground. Nothing was left standing. Did she see any fire trucks, I asked? “No. Not a single fire truck entered our area,” she said. “Not one.”

Other residents noted the number of fire hydrants which firemen went to only to find out they had no water in them. How can anyone fail so badly at their job that the one thing they are meant to do — keep the water on — is something they failed at?

There will be many reasons. But one is that putting out fires seems not to have been a priority of the leadership of the LAFD in recent years. You can tell this from the appointment and statements made by the woman in charge: Kristin Crowley.

Her biography on the LAFD’s website makes plain her priorities — and those of the LAFD´s leadership.

“Kristin M. Crowley is the 19th Fire Chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD). With her wife and children by her side, Chief Crowley took the oath of office on March 25, 2022 — becoming the first female and LGBTQ Fire Chief in the LAFD.”

How thrilling! How exciting! Can’t you just hear the glass ceilings shattering?

Her official bio witters on: “Chief Crowley leads a diverse department. Creating, supporting, and promoting a culture that values diversity, inclusion, and equity while striving to meet and exceed the expectations of the communities are Chief Crowley’s priorities.”

Which is strange, because most fire chiefs strive to promote a culture of putting out fires.

But not Crowley, or the syrupy, stone-cold stupid media in California who fawned over her. In one recent TV interview, Crowley was asked about her new bureau in the LAFD.

Guess what this exciting new bureau was? A bureau of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. As she told local media: “So, by creating this new bureau — our diversity, equity and inclusion bureau — now we actually have the staff to do the work when it comes to doing a deep dive in regard to how we do business, how we take care of one another.”

Does that sound like anything other than a Kamala-esque word-salad? It is full of every cliché used by incompetent woke bureaucrats. “Do the work,” “Deep dive,” “take care of one another.”

Crowley had one job — which was to make sure people don’t burn to death in their homes. But that was too much for her. She was too busy “doing the work” and “taking care of one another.”

One part of making sure that there were more “diverse” firefighters in her district was obvious. “I am super inspired” she told one interviewer.

What by, you may ask? Why, a three-year strategic plan to increase diversity of course. Specifically to increase the number of female firefighters. Because it seemed to horrify Crowley and California media that out of 3,300 city firefighters only 115 were women.

“People ask me well, ‘What number are you looking for?’ ” she claimed, before answering her own question. “I’m not looking for a number. It’s never enough.”

True. One of the things that residents of California were definitely thinking this week as they were chaotically and incompetently ordered to leave their homes was: “If only we had more lady firefighters. After all, you can never have enough.”

Amid the shattering of actual glass, some people even now seem to think that the fact Crowley ticks another diversity box (“proud member of the LGBTQ community”) is worth celebrating. A publication called “Pride” yesterday ran the headline “Amid Palisades fire, Los Angeles’s first LGBTQ+ fire chief is proving lesbians get it done.”

Personally I suspect Chief Crowley will have set back the cause of lesbians in fire departments by about a hundred years.

Because the truth is that nobody has time for this rubbish anymore. Things are too serious — in California and across this country — to keep playing these stupid games. Whole neighborhoods can’t burn to the ground because remembering to actually collect water and firetrucks is your second-order priority.

There was a time when liberals — not least California liberals — pushed diversity into everything. Conservatives warned that there would be consequences, and there were, and are. All around us. Because DEI makes excellence a second-order priority.

Its proponents treat it like a game. But plainly it is a game that even California can no longer afford. (Our leaders praise 'diversity' without prioritizing what the public really needs.)

While Los Angeles officials were stripping millions in funding from their fire department ahead of one of the most destructive wildfires in state history, hundreds of thousands of dollars were allocated to fund programs such as a "Gay Men’s Chorus" and housing for the transgender homeless.

Deadly fires erupted across Southern California this week, which were amplified by fierce winds that resulted in about 10,000 homes and businesses being destroyed. After fire hydrants weren't producing water and homes burned to the ground, residents began calling out Democratic-led leadership in the state, who cut the Los Angeles Fire Department's (LAFD) funding by $17.6 million just months prior.

But even as the department funding was being pulled back, a Fox News Digital review of the L.A. County budget uncovered thousands of taxpayer dollars that were allocated to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and programs giving syringes to the homeless.

For example, the budget allocated $14,010 to the "Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles" this year, a group that seeks to "create musical experiences that strengthen our role as a leader among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and performing arts organizations."

Another $190,000 was allocated to the Homeless and HIV Program, which includes a "syringe exchange" program that gives sterile syringes to homeless drug addicts.

An additional $100,000 of county funds was put aside to pay for Juneteenth celebrations, while $13,000 was allocated to "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Heritage Month Programs."

The county also granted $13,000 to "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Heritage Month Programs" and $4.5 million to the infrastructure of electric vehicle (EV) chargers. Appropriations for the General City Purposes saw $250,000 set aside for "equity and inclusion."

According to the report, homelessness funding was larger than the LAFD budget for the second year in a row.

Amid the Los Angeles-area fires, celebrities, such as actress Sara Foster, called out state officials for their legislative focus over the years.

"We pay the highest taxes in California. Our fire hydrants were empty. Our vegetation was overgrown, brush not cleared. Our reservoirs were emptied by our governor because tribal leaders wanted to save fish. Our fire department budget was cut by our mayor. But thank God drug addicts are getting their drug kits," Foster wrote in a post on X. "@MayorOfLA @GavinNewsom RESIGN. Your far left policies have ruined our state. And also our party.”

Following the funding cut, L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone on Wednesday said that "there are not enough firefighters in L.A. County to address four separate fires of this magnitude." (LA County spent heavily on woke programs while cutting fire services budget.)

Los Angeles is on fire — and both Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass are scrambling to protect … themselves.

The conflagrations have left at least five dead and thousands of structures destroyed.

Tens of thousands of acres consumed.

More than 100,000 forced to flee and at least 300,000 left without power.

And the fires still rage.

An utter catastrophe. The response from Bass?

“If you need help, emergency information, resources and shelter is available. All of this can be found at URL,” the progressive dimwit bumbled at a press conference.

She had already been justly condemned for being on a pointless trip to Ghana (one she’d chosen to take despite weather service warnings of the coming prime wildfire threat) when the flames began to spread — though she lamely defended herself by saying that she’d been “on the phone the entire time of the flight” as she belatedly hurried back.

This presser, pathetically, was her attempt at damage control.

Just after finally arriving back in LA, Bass faced media questions as she came off her phone-friendly plane — and blatantly refused to answer.

“Have you absolutely nothing to say to the citizens today?” asked a Sky News reporter.

Bass just stared into space and said nothing.

Yet the mayor had good reason for going stone-silent.

She helped cause this catastrophe by cutting north of $17 million from the LA Fire Department for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, instead prioritizing homeless services funding — an act her fire chief warned her would hurt disaster response capacity.

Meanwhile, the guy she defeated to win her job, developer Rick Caruso, is noting that the city’s lack of preparedness for wildfires was one of his key campaign issues.

But what about Gov. Gavin Newsom, until now the alpha dog among likely contenders for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination?

Surely he must have had some useful response, with the eyes of America on him?

Nope: CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked him why the city’s fire hydrants went dry at the moment they were most needed; Newsom blathered, “Look, the local folks are trying to figure that out.”

Pass that buck, Gavin.

President-elect Donald Trump called Newsom out directly for nixing his plan to move water from the state’s lush north to its arid south, reportedly killed in the name of saving a fish called the delta smelt.

And don’t forget that Newsom simply lied about how much anti-fire forestry work the state had done under his administration, overstating how much land was treated with firebreaks and prescribed burns by almost 700%, per a 2021 NPR investigation.

What about LA’s public utility system?

Well, two of its last three general managers resigned in utter disgrace.

But what about Gov. Gavin Newsom, until now the alpha dog among likely contenders for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination?

Surely he must have had some useful response, with the eyes of America on him?

Nope: CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked him why the city’s fire hydrants went dry at the moment they were most needed; Newsom blathered, “Look, the local folks are trying to figure that out.”

Pass that buck, Gavin.

What about LA’s public utility system?

Well, two of its last three general managers resigned in utter disgrace.

One, David Wright, got six years in prison for taking bribes.

The current head, George McGraw, calls himself “a leading queer voice in social entrepreneurship, environmental justice, and water” and says on his official webpage that he wants to “bring focus to equity, empowerment and sustainability” to the job.

DEI kills — literally.

Left-leaning Democrats have run California and Los Angeles for years.

Despite knowing that wildfires are a major risk, they failed totally to prevent or prepare for a major one.

The glaring incompetence Newsom, Bass and their co-partisans on crime, immigration, schools and everything else defined their basic infrastructure and readiness capacity.

Now we see the deadly result, a harsh reminder that a vote for Democrats is a vote for indifference to government’s most basic public safety duties — inviting chaos and destruction.

Amid this inferno raging across Los Angeles, the left can no longer hide from the tragedies it owns. (LA fires show deadly results of voting for Dems like Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass.)

The level of incompetence and sloth that are certainly to be found in a diverse, equitable, and very inclusive array of state and local officials in California so bad that these fools must resort to the disproven junk science of “climate change” even the number of California wildfires peaked in the 1920s, that is, a century ago:

The scenes from the wildfires devastating Los Angeles are apocalyptic. As of this writing, more than 2,000 homes, businesses and other buildings have been destroyed, and five people have died.

Firefighters have battled, with little success, flames spread by hurricane-force winds from Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica — wealthy areas in western LA near the Santa Monica Recreation Area — to the east in Eaton (near Pasadena) and farther toward the Cattle Canyon Bridge, located near the San Bernardino National Forest.

Though the cause of the current blaze has yet to be established, commentators are already making familiar claims that climate change is igniting more wildfires in California — a thesis with no basis in fact.

Some state and local officials even argue that high winds themselves caused the wildfires.

Not so: Wind, by itself, doesn’t create sparks that trigger wildfires, though it certainly worsens them once they’ve started, as is happening here.

The most common causes of recent wildfires in the Golden State have been human activities (including arson) and poorly maintained power lines, such as those belonging to the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which caused the 2018 Camp Fire that killed 85 people.

Another likely culprit: bad forest management.

Last April, Los Angeles County unveiled its Community Forest Management Plan. The plan is heavy on buzzwords about the need to ensure an “equitable tree canopy” and “environmental justice” but light on strategies to reduce wildfire risk.

Though some good work has been done in that regard, such as by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the latest wildfires demonstrate the ongoing failure of Gov. Gavin Newsom to manage the problem.

In 2019, Newsom issued an executive order to devote more than $1 billion to wildfire prevention. But a 2021 investigation found that the governor had misled the public about the acreage of fuel-reduction projects completed in the state: just 11,399 acres, versus his claim of 90,000.

The lack of water in fire hydrants and failure to refill reservoirs — a shocking state of affairs — has obviously hampered efforts to fight the fires.

One would assume that the Los Angeles Fire Department would regularly check to ensure that sufficient supply was available, especially when Santa Ana winds were forecast.

One would be wrong. Apparently, such a basic task was not considered important by department brass.

Instead, LA Fire Chief Kristin Crowley stated that the county and its 29 fire departments “are not prepared for this type of widespread disaster” and that “Mother Nature has been the star of the show.”

Various studies purport to “prove” that wildfires are increasing in number and destructiveness. But the trend since 1987 has been fewer wildfires each year.

The acres burned have climbed upward, though that trend is skewed by the 4.5 million acres burned in 2020 and 2.5 million acres burned in 2021. Acreage burned in 2022-2023 fell to some of the lowest levels in the last 40 years. A longer-running trendline shows that the acreage burned in wildfires peaked in the 1920s.

That the acreage burned is increasing even as the number of wildfires has decreased is not the result of climate change.

Rather it is the combined result of efforts to suppress wildfires and environmentalists’ demands to leave forests undisturbed.

California’s Mediterranean climate, with its historically wet winters followed by months of dry conditions, heightens the likelihood of wildfires. But instead of removing dead and diseased trees and undergrowth, the state, following environmentalist restrictions, has allowed that natural fuel to build up, creating the conditions for explosive wildfires.

Land use restrictions have also forced development nearer wildfire-prone areas, worsening the damage and loss of life.

A 2022 state audit and report found that California electric utilities’ efforts to reduce wildfires were inadequate, and that the state Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety had approved “seriously deficient” wildfire prevention plans.

The utilities, including Southern California Edison, which serves the region around Los Angeles, have been burying their transmission and distribution systems underground, but the costs of doing so far exceed those associated with tree-trimming near power lines.

As with its singular focus on green energy, California’s wildfire prevention efforts have been costly and impractical, with tragic results. Whether sparked by fireworks, power lines, lightning, homeless encampments or arson, the conflagrations devastating Los Angeles are just the latest result of decades of ill-conceived policies. (Bad leaders — not climate change — are the reason LA fires burn in California.)

Gavin Michael Newsom is as much a pathological liar as Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Kamala Harris. Yet this pro-abortion, pro-perversity statist ideologue, Newsom, remains a Catholic in “good standing” within Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s fantasy-land called the counterfeit church of conciliarism. It is to be expected that a man who proudly supports the destruction of innocent preborn life in the womb would seek to protect a fish that is important to a tribe of pagan American Indians rather than to divert the water where the smelt lives to southern California where it is needed, and it is to be expected that Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., would lie on his way out of office as he has done through the course of his fifty-five years in public life feeding from the public trough while enriching himself of his family of fellow grifters with a web of complex influence peddling schemes:

Republicans, including President-elect Trump, have blamed Democratic officials — at least in part — for the water shortage, which has hampered efforts to fight devastating wildfires in Los Angeles County. However, Democrats have rebuked these claims, and on Thursday, Biden suggested the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) bore responsibility for shutting off power to pumps that fuel the hydrants.

"What I know from talking to the governor, there are concerns out there that there’s also been a water shortage," Biden told reporters. "The fact is the utilities, understandably, shut off power because they are worried the lines that carried energy were going to be blown down and spark additional fires. When it did that, it cut off the ability to generate pumping the water — that’s what caused the lack of water in these hydrants."

Biden noted that generators were being deployed following the shutdown to get power back to the pumps and ensure there is no longer a shortage of water to fight the fire.

But a report from The Wall Street Journal unveiled Friday highlighted how LADWP is the only major utility company in California without an intentional shut-off protocol, known as a "Public Safety Power Shut Off" procedure. The protocol lays out plans for how to proactively shut down certain electricity lines during dangerous windstorms and limit the impact to public safety.

"Being prepared for a power shutoff takes careful planning, which begins by designing our water systems the right way and working with local fire agencies and energy companies to ensure community safety," California Water Service, a private utility provider in the state, explains on its website FAQ page about public safety power shutoffs.

"We go to great lengths beyond our standard procedures to ensure water service isn’t disrupted during a power shutoff," the company added. "Cal Water has been installing permanent generators at a number of our critical stations over the years, and we are working to bring in additional, portable generators for other stations. Our crews and employees have also been trained on emergency response procedures for when these widespread shutoffs occur."

Michael Wara, a lawyer who directs the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University and studies wildfire mitigation strategies, added in remarks to the Journal that "there is no need to make any trade-off between reliability and safety." Edward Ring, the director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center, confirmed there are measures that could be taken to keep power to the pumps during an intentional shutoff.

"They need to underground these power lines, that would be the solution, or they need to have parallel systems that go to vital services like fire hydrant pumps that are not on the same circuit as the lines that are going into households," he said.

A spokesperson for LADWP told Fox News Digital that in the absence of a public safety power shutoff protocol for Los Angeles, it has a different procedure in place to reduce fire risks while continuing vital functions. The spokesperson said that Los Angeles's urban environment is different from the environments that other California utility companies serve.

"LADWP worked closely with the Los Angeles Fire Department to develop this emergency protocol," the spokesperson said. "LADWP's plan is audited every 3 years by an independent third party and is submitted to state regulators as required."

But, in the past, according to the Journal, LADWP has asserted it will not proactively shut off power ahead of heavy winds.

Former Los Angeles firefighter John Knox, who spoke with Fox News on Friday, said he was "surprised" to hear that fire hydrants were running dry, adding that there are "a lot of things that need to be asked by the people to get answers from these so-called leaders."

"In my career I've never seen us have — every once in a while you might have a dry hydrant, but we do annual testing in January where we test all the fire hydrants and that didn't happen this year," Knox said. "That area has a very large reservoir with four huge tanks that are supposed to be filled at all times. It's my understanding also that they had one of them that's been out for maintenance for a year during peak brush season.

"There's a lot of issues and a lot of things that need to be asked by the people to get answers from these so-called leaders." (Los Angeles water utility lacks safety procedure that may have kept hydrants pumping.)

No one should be surprised that either Newsom or Biden lie with ease as they simply do not fear any temporal or eternal consequences for violating the Eighth Commandment nor should anyone be surprised that a world where most men live bereft of any concept of the true Faith place their trust in diabolical illusions that makes them unprepared for protecting the public they are supposed to serve, which is why one of the reservoirs in the County of Los Angeles was out of commission during a time of wildfire eruptions:

A major reservoir in the area being ravaged by the worst wildfire in Los Angeles history had been drained and closed for repairs when the deadly blaze broke out this week, a report said Friday.

The troubling news surfaced two days after firefighters in the Pacific Palisades region ran out of water from local hydrants because of low water pressure — as flames raged in full force.

The 117-million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir was undergoing fixes to its torn cover when the historic horrific Palisades Fire broke out in the tony enclave in Los Angeles County on Tuesday, the LA Times said.

A rep for the city’s Department of Water and Power told the outlet that the loss of the reservoir’s supply likely added to the devastating pressure issues but that the fix was necessary to comply with regulations.

“The system was never designed for a wildfire scenario that we are experiencing,’’ the representative added.

Former DWP General Manager Martin Adams told the LA Times that even if the reservoir had been up and running, it likely wouldn’t have solved the overall pressure problem.

“Would Santa Ynez [Reservoir] have helped? Yes, to some extent,’’ he said. “Would it have saved the day? I don’t think so.”

Even if the department had heeded a recent extreme-winds warning and started filling up the reservoir again over the weekend just in case of a blaze, the structure may not have filled up with enough water fast enough anyway, Adams said.

“They would have been betting that there would be a fire that wipes out the whole neighborhood, which of course, no one has ever seen before,” he said.

“It would have been a strange bet.”

But residents and business owners — among thousands who’ve lost their homes and livelihoods — have been furious at officials from California Gov. Gavin Newsom to LA Mayor Karen Bass for the situation. (Reservoir in worst fire-ravaged area of LA was drained for repairs when blaze erupted.)

This level of incompetence is quite similar to the lack of response that residents in the States of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee are still experiencing in the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton as the “woke” authorities in the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) instructed their workers not to approach damaged homes in Florida or western North Carolina with Trump for President signs on their property if they felt “unsafe” doing so:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is accused of instructing volunteers to avoid homes displaying Trump signs following Hurricane Milton—not only in Florida, where initial reports surfaced, but also at homes with Trump signs in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.

Marn’i Washington, the former FEMA worker who was fired after a text chain was leaked that showed her instructing colleagues to ‘avoid’ houses that had Trump signs in their yards, told The Daily Mail that FEMA is ‘lying’ about the scandal and making her the ‘scapegoat of a wider practice.’

She said she has proof that FEMA is lying and that other FEMA employees have also done the same. Washington also told YouTube podcaster Roland Martin that ‘FEMA preaches avoidance first, and then de-escalation.’

“This is not isolated,” she told Martin. “This is a colossal event of avoidance. Not just in the state of Florida. You will find avoidance in the Carolinas.”

Washington added that she was only following orders from FEMA when she issued the controversial directive and that FEMA teams experienced hostility on specific streets in the Sunshine State.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell issued a statement Saturday admonishing Washington’s ‘reprehensible’ actions.

“More than 22,000 FEMA employees every day adhere to FEMA’s core values and are dedicated to helping people before, during and after disasters, often sacrificing time with their own families to help disaster survivors,” she said. “Recently, one FEMA employee departed from these values to advise her survivor assistance team to not go to homes with yard signs supporting President-elect Trump. This is a clear violation of FEMA’s core values and principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation.”

Criswell said that this type of behavior and action would not be tolerated at FEMA, and the agency would hold people accountable if they violated its standards of conduct.

“We take our mission to help everyone before, during, and after disasters seriously,” Criswell added. “This employee has been terminated and we have referred the matter to the Office of Special Counsel. I will continue to do everything I can to make sure this never happens again.”

Another report also claims that 50% of phone calls and messages requesting hurricane assistance were ignored by FEMA.

But this isn’t the first time that questions have been raised about FEMA’s actions in recent years; a recording of a 2023 FEMA webinar recently went viral on social media and made national news for all the wrong reasons.

In it, FEMA employees and consultants discussed the need to center “equity” in disaster relief efforts, displacing the traditional emphasis on efficiency and broad-based aid.

“The shift we’re seeing right now is a shift in emergency services from utilitarian principles — where everything is designed for the greatest good for the greatest amount of people — to disaster equity. But we have to do more,” stressed one of the panelists.

There was also a November 2023 FEMA publication entitled “Achieving Equitable Recovery: A Post-Disaster Guide for Local Officials and Leaders” that raised concerns for those in western North Carolina — and their loved ones — impacted by Hurricane Helene.

According to Brian Balfour, John Locke Foundation’s senior vice president of research, the 144-page document is a convoluted hodgepodge of woke ideology combined with bureaucratic red tape. The document begins by declaring that instead of working to be as prepared and efficient in response as possible, FEMA is “working hard to instill equity as a foundation of emergency management.”

Conducting an “equity assessment” before determining how resources should be allocated and a “recovery planning process that acknowledges historical and current inequities”’ is among one of the eight “equity goals” of the document.

The document also includes a “Checklist for Monitoring Equitable Recovery Progress” that includes 102 questions recovery leaders should ask to ensure they are centering “equity” in their recovery efforts. One of the questions is: “Was there discussion about the role of bias, hate, and stereotypes?”

At an Oct. 15 briefing on recovery efforts in western North Carolina, Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper stressed that “misinformation” about recovery efforts “must stop,” saying rumors hurt those who need help the most.

“There’s still a persistent and dangerous flow of misinformation about recovery efforts in western North Carolina that can lead to threats and intimidation, breeds confusion, and demoralizes storm survivors and response workers alike,” he said. “If you’re participating and spreading this stuff, stop it. Whatever your aim is, the people you are really hurting are those in western North Carolina who need help.”

He pushed back on claims, like those made by former Republican gubernatorial candidate and Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who said on social media that Cooper didn’t do enough to help in the recovery efforts.

Cooper and FEMA have not responded to Carolina Journal’s request for comment by publication time.

“It’s unconscionable that FEMA would purposefully avoid helping hurricane victims because they support President Trump,” North Carolina State Sen. Tim Moffitt, R-Henderson, told CJ in an emailed statement. “Politics doesn’t disqualify someone from getting the disaster assistance they deserve, and FEMA officials need to be held accountable for this disgraceful dereliction of duty.”

The communications director for Congressman Chuck Edwards, R, NC-11, which encompasses most of western North Carolina, told CJ in an emailed statement, “I’d like to direct you to FEMA as this was an internal FEMA matter.”

In a post on X, US Sen. Ted Budd, R-NC, said that the claim will be investigated.
US Sen Josh Hawley, R-MO, said on X that “The Homeland Security Committee needs to launch an immediate investigation and call this individual to testify. Under oath. In public.”

President-elect and former President Donald Trump, who visited Swannanoa and the Asheville area last month, has been very critical of FEMA and the Biden-Harris Administration’s response to hurricane recovery efforts in western North Carolina.

During his last rally in Raleigh, Carolina Journal caught up with Chris, a woman from Lake Lure.

“We saw the devastation, and we saw what the federal government did not do,” she told CJ. ‘Nonprofits have been the answer. There’s a lot of nonprofit agencies, neighbor helping neighbor. It took over three weeks for FEMA to set up a tent in Lake Lure. They set up their headquarters in Durham. People can’t get down their street, let alone to Durham.”

She said organizations like Samaritan’s Purse were there within days, and said she believes Trump would have done a much better job of helping out the storm victims if he had been president.

“They (Biden and Harris) supposedly flew over the area, but they didn’t actually stop,” she said. “It means a lot to the people that are there that someone recognizes them.”

According to Daily Wire, which broke the story on Washington last Thursday, the employees who followed her orders were part of a Department of Homeland Security team comprised of volunteers from other agencies.

One said they were told to ‘discriminate against people’ and another said, ‘it was wrong to discriminate against Trump supporters when they were their most vulnerable.’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has ordered a state investigation into Washington’s directive.

“The blatant weaponization of government by partisan activists in the federal bureaucracy is yet another reason why the Biden-Harris administration is in its final days,” he said.

In western North Carolina, Hurricane Helene has left 102 people dead and caused an estimated $53 billion in damage. (Fired FEMA employee alleges Helene volunteers instructed to avoid Trump homes in WNC.)

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) supervisor fired for instructing subordinates to skip over houses with Trump signs and banners now says her actions were consistent with agency guidance and were not isolated to her team alone.

The supervisor, Marn’i Washington, was fired by FEMA after outrage erupted that she had instructed disaster relief workers canvassing in Lake Placid, Florida, after Hurricane Milton to "avoid homes advertising Trump."

The Daily Wire first reported that government employees told the outlet at least 20 homes with Trump signs or flags were bypassed from the end of October into November due to "best practices" guidance from Washington. The houses were skipped over by the workers, who wrote messages such as "Trump sign no entry per leadership" in a government system, per the outlet.

On Saturday, FEMA's administrator on employee misconduct, Deanne Criswell, confirmed to Fox News Digital that Washington had been fired and called her actions "reprehensible" and a clear violation of FEMA’s core values and principles to help people regardless of political affiliation.

A FEMA spokesperson told Fox News Friday the agency was "deeply disturbed" by Washington’s actions but insisted it was an "isolated incident."

The spokesperson said "the employee who issued this guidance had no authority and was given no direction to tell teams to avoid these homes, and we are reaching out to the people who may have not been reached as a result of this incident."

Speaking on an episode of the "Roland Martin Unfiltered" podcast Monday, Washington said her instructions complied with FEMA protocol to avoid homes determined to be hostile or dangerous to workers.

"They all allege that these actions were made in my own recognizance and that it was for my own political advances. However, if you look at the record, there is what we call a ‘community trend,’ and, unfortunately, it just so happened that the political hostility that was encountered by my team … they just so happened to have the Trump campaign signage," said Washington.

Washington claimed that her instructions were given after team members had been verbally and physically threatened by hurricane victims with signs in support of the former president. She said her instructions followed FEMA’s "avoidance" and de-escalation policy.

Speaking on an episode of the "Roland Martin Unfiltered" podcast Monday, Washington said her instructions complied with FEMA protocol to avoid homes determined to be hostile or dangerous to workers.

In contrast to FEMA’s assertion the incident was isolated, Washington said there were similar "avoidance" protocols in place not only in Florida but also in North Carolina.

"Senior leadership will lie to you and tell you that they do not know, but if you ask the DSA [disaster survivor assistance] crew leads and specialists what they are experiencing in the field, they will tell you," she said. "FEMA always preaches avoidance first and then de-escalation, so this is not isolated. This is a colossal event of avoidance not just in the state of Florida, but you will find avoidance in the Carolinas."

Last week, Republican Rep. James Comer, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, called for a hearing on the incident to be held Nov. 19. Washington said she would welcome an investigation by Republicans in Congress.

"Please do [investigate]. They will find this is not isolated. I state this over and over again. This is colossal," she said. "Demand for FEMA to give you those incident reports. They will substantiate what we are experiencing in the field."

FEMA responded to Fox News Digital’s request for comment by forwarding a Nov. 9 statement by Criswell condemning Washington’s actions.

"One FEMA employee departed from these values to advise her survivor assistance team to not go to homes with yard signs supporting President-elect Trump," Criswell said in the statement. "I want to be clear to all of my employees and the American people, this type of behavior and action will not be tolerated at FEMA, and we will hold people accountable if they violate these standards of conduct." (Fired FEMA employee says instructions to skip Trump homes part of ‘colossal avoidance’ policy.)

FEMA was notorious for its incompetence even before becoming part of the “woke” religion, and its incompetence is being displayed once again as applications from homeowners in Malibu and Palisades Hills whose homes were destroyed in the last few days are being denied automatically:

VICTIMS of the Los Angeles wildfires are reportedly having their FEMA applications denied as the destructive flames have scored 36,000 acres and displaced over 180,000 people.

The out-of-control fires, which are now thought to have killed 11 people, are responsible for the destruction of 10,000 homes and businesses in several parts of Los Angeles.

Kathryn Barger, the chair of the Los Angeles County Board, described the scenes in Altadena as "like a war zone."

"I've never seen anything like it," Barger told reporters on Friday.

"You can go blocks where there's no homes, and then you go a block you'll see a little bit of smoldering on a tree, but none of the homes been impacted.

"There's no question that, especially around Eaton County, I was absolutely... Shocked is not even the word for the destruction that it caused in that area."

Barger raised concerns when she said individuals affected by the wildfires are being denied assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

She said FEMA implemented an online form for victims of the Los Angeles fires to fill out to seek aid.

However, Barger claimed that upon completing the form, individuals instantly got denial messages.

“I’m following up on that to find out what is going on because it is completely mind-boggling to me that people who lost everything are filling out a form, as told, and then are getting an immediate denial,” she said.

However, FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell later told CNN the denials could mean the agency needs more information.

“Typically, what it is is we’re still waiting to find out what their insurance company is going to cover because we can’t duplicate those benefits,” she told the outlet.

or notifications from FEMA because "we probably just need more information."

Barger's comments came minutes after Criswell told reporters at the White House that the federal agency had enough money to assist victims affected by the wildfires.

"With the recent supplemental, FEMA received $27 billion, and so we are now able to continue to support the ongoing recovery efforts for all the disasters that we've been supporting, to include now the immediate response and the initial recovery efforts that are going to be needed here in California," Criswell said via video.

Criswell could not disclose the financial implications the wildfires would have on her agency, but she said it was "going to be billions."

"Thanks to the bipartisan support of Congress, we have enough funding to support this recovery effort and these response efforts," she added.

"There's two things — they need to register for assistance with FEMA so that they can get in our system and we can continue to work with them on a case-by-case basis because we know that everybody is going to have an individual and unique need.

"And they need to contact their insurance company because their insurance company may also provide alternate living expenses."

The U.S. Sun has reached out to Barger and FEMA for comment. (LA fire victims' 'FEMA forms denied' as death toll rises with blazes scorching 36K acres & destroying 10K buildings.

“Diversity, equity, and inclusion” really stands for ideology, incompetence, and sloth, of the Seven Capital Sins and will manifest and embed itself faster and more completely than ever the fastest moving wildfires as men who do not live for the honor and glory of the Most Blessed Trinity will, more often than not, slip into lives of utter sloth over the course of time.

Sure, there are exceptions to be found, especially among those who are motivated by disordered pride or ambition or by a desire to make as much money as possible. Such temporal motives can be powerful incentives to work hard at one's chosen work. Such temporal motives are, however, have no lasting, eternal value to them as they are directed to the pursuit of the riches and pleasures and powers of this passing world.

Most of those who lack a love of the true God of Divine Revelation as He had revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church trudge their way through their lives, refusing to work hard in their studies in school or at their jobs once they have entered upon a career. Americans have been taught that the minimum is acceptable, that they will be indemnified time and time and time again for a failure to perform competently in their assignments, that they are "owed" either a grade or a job or a promotion or some other kind of benefit because they exist, because they are who they are, that is, creatures who have become used to living for the "weekend" or for the "game" or for their favorite television program. Study and work, therefore, used to be “endured” as the means to these ends before the woke started to claim that study and work are tools of “whiteness” that are demeaning to minority groups.

A spirit of sloth has been engendered among many, although certainly not all, of those government employees who have the job security provided by the civil service system, a phenomenon that is to be found among many teachers who have tenure in the brainwashing program that passes for public schools. Civil se Error has consequences, and the errors of political ideologues steeped in one or more of the variants of the deviancy associated with the sin of Sodom have produced deadly consequences as thousands of people have been displaced from their homes after having lost most, if not all, of their worldly possessions. Someone such as Mel Gibson can see the hand of God in these events, but most of these other celebrities, other than venting their anger at the politicians who careers they have advanced and enabled in their fervent displays of fidelity to the prevailing cultural orthodoxy, are incapable of seeing that these losses, which certainly were preventable if professional competence had been valued above ideological purity, as a mercy from Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to be converted to the true Faith and to place their trust in Him and His Catholic Church, not in themselves, their fame, their money, or their possessions.

It is only natural for men to fall into incompetence and sloth while seeking some form of “faith” in which they can misplace their trust and around which they can disorganize their lives when Our Lord is not recognized as the King of all men and all nations and when men do not submit themselves with docility and humility to all that His true Church teaches pertaining to the eternal good of souls upon which a just temporal order must be founded and maintained. The matter is as simple as that.

A believing Catholic is concerned about pursuing excellence as a redeemed creature in whatever is his chosen line of work and it is to advance such excellence that takes care to due his due diligence in all that is required of him to discharge his duties professionally, responsibly, and competent. Absent that, though, secular commentators can only grasp at the problems immediately before them and not their remote and proximate causes no matter how correct their discussion of the problems immediately at hand may be.

rvice employees’ unions indemnify their members who engage in slothful behavior, making it very difficult for supervisors to correct serious problems that lead to inefficiency in the delivery of services, in competency in the performance of one's daily duties and a waste of taxpayer dollars as civil servants are paid no matter the level of their performance. As one civil servant told a graduate student who worked in the offices of a United States attorney's office in 1980s, "Honey, some days I work. Some days I don't work. Today is a day I am sitting at my desk and not working. And there's not a thing that anyone can do to me."

California—along with many other “blue” states—is an example of what happens when incompetence and sloth combine with ideology to make everyone unsafe, starting with the preborn and everyone thereafter.

Incompetence and sloth get rewarded.

Ideologues who are incompetent, ignorant, and slothful get elected.

Criminals are indemnified.

Taxpayer dollars are redistributed to make state and municipal officials secure in their jobs as they misallocate those dollars to themselves and those they believe serve their ideological purposes, such as illegal immigrants, who are more important to these officials than their own residents, taxpayers, and voters, who have now discovered their lives are as worthless in the eyes of those they have elected as the preborn have been in California ever since Governor Ronald Wilson Reagan signed the state’s permissive baby-killing law, the so-called “Therapeutic Abortion Law, o1n June 14, 1967, something that he later came to regret bitterly as he had not thought much about baby-killing until then.

While we continue to pray for the people who have been displaced and/or have lost their homes and belongings as well as praying for the safety of the firefighters and other first responders in addition to praying for the souls who have died, it is important for us all to remember that we take nothing out of this life but the state of souls upon our death. We must have a thorough Catholic detachment from the things, places, and people of this world as we are attached first to God and to His Holy Will and then, secondly, to our neighbor for love of Him.

This is something that the Peter and Jackie Halpin family of Altadena understood as they gathered to sing the Reginal Caeli very beautifully on the land where their house had stood before the Eaton Fire destroyed the day before. Only concrete statues of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Joseph remained:

When Peter and Jackie Halpin and their six adult children and some of their spouses showed up at the site of the family home in northern Los Angeles County on Thursday morning, there was almost nothing left.

One of the California wildfires had destroyed it, leaving only the foundation, debris, and singed concrete statues of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Joseph.

They said a prayer near the statue of Mary — a version of the daily consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Then someone said they should sing something. But what?

Peter ended the discussion with an intonation, setting pitch with four notes going up the scale — “La – la – la – laaaaa.” Everyone in the family knows what that means: Regina Caeli, a 12th-century Latin hymn to Mary that Peter’s mother taught all nine of her children.

The Halpin parents, their six children, and at least four spouses — about a dozen people in all — immediately sang it in harmony.

A family friend shot video of the performance. Someone posted it online, where it has caught the attention of thousands of people.

Andrew Halpin, 36, the fourth of Peter and Jackie’s six children (three boys and three girls), described to the Register on Thursday night how he felt during the family prayer.

“I was thinking, ‘I want to be strong for my folks in this moment’— for my parents. And when we started singing, it felt like we were all being strong for each other,” Halpin said in a telephone interview.

“I already feel so much healing because we were able to be there together as a family, and we were able to bond over this song that means so much to our family,” he said.

The Halpins’ performance of Regina Caeli — a seemingly effortless multipart harmony with volume and various pitches — led to a question for Andrew: How did you do that?

“We’re a very musical family. It was instilled in us from Day One, really,” said Andrew, a composer who has a wife and a toddler daughter.

When they were kids, Andrew and his siblings participated in a choir led by an accomplished choirmaster as part of a Catholic home-schooling group. They all played musical instruments from a young age. Nowadays, they also occasionally perform publicly in a family band, called The Haypenny Pigs.

“After our faith, it’s been one of the most cohesive things about my family,” he said. “There really has never been a time joyful or sad when music doesn’t play a part.”

A Home Filled With Music

The Halpins moved into the house, a Craftsman bungalow in Altadena, in 1988. It was yellow and had three bedrooms and one bathroom. The boys shared one bedroom and the girls another. About two decades ago their parents added a master bedroom with another bathroom, Andrew said.

The moment on Thursday morning was sad, even devastating.

His parents lost their home, which is where all the children grew up. One of his sisters and her daughter lost their home, which was at the rear of the same property.

But it hasn’t shaken their faith, he said.

“We have to give everything to God. And if that means our home at this time, we choose to trust that we’re in the palm of his hand,” Andrew told the Register.

Before they evacuated, Andrew’s parents, who are in their early 60s, managed to save 40 years’ worth of family photo albums and some essential documents. But Jackie’s genealogical collection, including old family photos, are gone. So is almost everything else that was in the house.

“You’re standing on the ashes of your childhood, really of your life,” Andrew said. “But you’re alive.”

Peter is a contractor who runs a concrete business. He lost a work truck in the fire, in addition to his home.

A GoFundMe page for Peter and Jackie Halpin had raised more than $60,000 as of early Friday.

Meanwhile, the family is trying to stress the positive.

“What I would want people to get out of this sadness, out of this tragedy, is that we can wring joy out of it. We can instill love,” Andrew said.

Over the years, the back yard of the family home has seen many parties for family and friends, with live music.

“You’d be hard-pressed to find a party at the old yellow house that didn’t end with a jam session,” he said.

Andrew said his dad decided even before he got married that he wanted to host a lot of parties like that.

“He wanted to create a place where his family and friends could celebrate and forget their worries,” Andrew said.

“This was home for more than just us. And that’s hard to let go of,” he said.

“People know that home as a place of faith, a place of fellowship, community and music,” Andrew said. “I tell you what, when we rebuild, there’s going to be music there again.” (Family Sings to Mary at Site of Home Burned to the Ground in California Wildfire. Here is a link to the Halpin family singing the Regina Caeli: WATCH: Halpin Family leans on faith as they visit home destroyed by Eaton Fire.)

We must have the same reliance upon Our Lady as that possessed by the Halpins, who have lost their earthly possessions except for the statues of Our Lady and saint Joseph but who have maintained a commitment to see all things and to accept all things through the eyes of the Holy Faith.

As Saint Alphonsus de Ligouri reminded us, everyone, including the great of this world, are going to find out that all ends, and it ends very quickly:

When one of the great of this world is in the full enjoyment of the riches and honours which he has acquired, death shall come, and he shall be told: "Take order with thy house; for thou shalt die, and not live"--Isa., xxxviii. 1.Oh! what doleful tidings! The unhappy man must then say: Farewell, O world! farewell, O villa! farewell, O grotto! farewell, relatives! farewell, friends! farewell, sports! farewell, balls! farewell, comedies! farewell, banquets! farewell, honours! all is over for me. "For when he shall die, he shall take nothing away; nor shall his glory descend with him"--Ps., xlviii. 18. St. Bernard says that death produces a horrible separation of the soul from the body and from all the things of this Earth. "Opus mortis horrendum divortium"-serm. xxvi., in Cant. To the great of this world, whom worldlings regard as the most fortunate of mortals, the bare name of death is so full of bitterness that they are unwilling even to hear it mentioned; for their entire concern is to find peace in their Earthly goods. "O death!" says Ecclesiasticus, "how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that hath peace in his possessions"--Eccl., xli. 1. But, how much greater bitterness shall death itself cause, when it actually comes! Miserable the man who is attached to the goods of this world! Every separation produces pain. Hence, when the soul shall be separated by the stroke of death from the goods on which she had fixed all her affections, the pain must be excruciating. It was this that made king Agag exclaim, when the news of approaching death was announced to him: "Doth bitter death separate me in this manner?"--I. Kings., xv. 32. The great misfortune of worldlings is, that when they are on the point of being summoned to judgment, instead of endeavouring to adjust the accounts of their soul, they direct all their attention to Earthly things. But, says St. John Chrysostom, the punishment which awaits sinners, on account of having forgotten God during life, is that the forget themselves at the hour of death. "hac animadversione percutitur impius, ut moriens oliviscatur sui, qui vivens oblitus est Dei.". . . .

Men know well, and believe firmly, that they shall die; but they imagine death as far ass of it if were never to arrive. But Job tells us that the life of man is short. "Man born of a woman, living fora short time, is filled with many miseries. Who cometh forth like a flower and is destroyed"--Job., xiv. 2. At present the health of men is so much impaired, that, as we see by experience, the greater number of them die before they attain the age of seventy. And what, says St. James, is our life, but a vapour, which a blast of wind, a fever, a stroke of apoplexy, a puncture, an attack of the chest, causes to disappear, and which is seen no more? "For what is your life? It is a vapour which appeareth for a little while"--St. James, iv. 15. "We all die", said the woman of Thecua to David, "and like waters that return no more, we fall down into the earth"---II. Kings, xiv. 14. She spoke the truth;--as all rivers and streams run to the sea, and as the gliding waters return no more, so our days pass away, and we approach to death.

They pass; they pass quickly. "My days", says Job, "have been swifter than a post"--Job, ix. 25. Death comes to meet us, and runs more swiftly than a post; so that every step we make, every breath we draw, we approach to death. St. Jerome felt, that even while he was writing, he was drawing nearer to death. Hence he said: 'What I write is taken away from my life". "Quod scribo de mea vita tollitur". Let us, then, say with Job: Years pass by, and with them pleasures, honours, pomps, and all things in this world pass away, "and only the rave remaineth for me"--Job, xvii. 1. In a word, all the glory of the labours we have undergone in this world, in order to acquire a large income, a high character for valour, for learning and genius, shall end in our being thrown into a pit to become the food of worms. The miserable worldling then shall say at death: My house, my garden, my fashionable furniture, my pictures and rich apparel, shall, in a short time, belong no more to me; "and only the grave remaineth for me".

But, how much soever the worldling may be distracted by his worldly affairs and by his pleasures--how much soever he may be entangled in them, St. Chrysostom says, that, when the fear of death, which sets fire to all things of the present life, begins to enter the soul, it will compel him to think and to be solicitous about his lot after death. "Cum pulsare animam incipit metus mortis (ignis instar praesentis vitae omnia succendens) philosophari eam cogit, et futura solicita mente versari" serm. in II. tim.--Isa., xxxv. 5. Then indeed shall be opened the eyes of those blind worldlings who have employed their whole life in acquiring Earthly goods, and have paid but little attention to the interests of the soul. In all these shall be verified what Jesus Christ has told them--that death shall come when they least expect it. "At what hour you think not, the Son of Man will come"--Luke, xii.--40. Thus, on these unhappy men death always comes unexpectedly. Hence, because the lovers of the world are not usually warned of their approaching dissolution till it is very near, they must, in the last few days of life, adjust the accounts of their soul for the fifty or sixty years which they lived on this Earth. They will then desire another month, or another week, to settle their accounts, and to tranquilize their conscience. But, "they will seek for peace, and there shall be none:--Ezec., vii. 25. The time which they desire is refused. The assisting priest reads the divine command to depart instantly from this world: "Proficiscere anima Christiana de hoc mundo." Depart, Christian soul, from this world. Oh! how dangerous the entrance of worldlings into eternity, dying, as they do, amid so much darkness and confusion, in consequences of the disorderly state of the accounts of their souls. . . .

All things in this world--acquisitions, applause, grandeur--must, as we have said, all end, and end very soon. "the fashion of this world passeth away"--I. Cor., vii. 31. The scene of this life passes away: happy they who, in this scene, act their part well, and save their souls, preferring the eternal interests of the soul to all the temporal interests of the body. "He that hateth his life in his world, keepeth it unto life eternal"--John, xii. 26. Worldlings say: Happy the man who hoards up money! happy they who acquire the esteem of the world, and enjoy the pleasures of this life! O folly! Happy he who loves God and saves his soul! The salvation of his soul and was the only favour which king David asked of God. "One thing have I asked of the Lord, this will I seek after"--Ps., xxvi. 4. And St. Paul said, that to acquire the race of Jesus Christ, which contains eternal life, he despised as dung all worldly goods. "I count all things as loss.......and I count them as dung, that I may gain Christ"--Phil., iii. 8.

But certain fathers of families will say: I do not labour so much for myself as for my children, whom I wish to leave in comfortable circumstances. But I answer: If you dissipate the goods which you possess, and leave our children in poverty, you do wrong, and are guilty of sin. But will you lose your soul in order to leave your children comfortable? If you call into Hell, perhaps they will come and release you from it? O folly! Listen to what David said: "I have not seen the just man forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread"--Ps., xxxvi. 25. Attend to the service of God; act according to justice; the Lord will provide for the wants of your children; and you shall save your souls, and shall lay up that eternal treasure of happiness which can never be taken from you--a treasure not like Earthly possessions, of which you may be deprived by robbers, and which you shall certainly lose at death. This is the advice which the Lord gives you--"But lay up to yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither the rust nor the moth doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal"--Matt., vi. 20. In conclusion, attend to the beautiful admonition which St. Gregory gives to all who wish to live well and to gain eternal life. "Sit nobis in intentione aeternitas, in usu temporalitats". Let the end of all our actions in this life be, the acquisition of eternal goods; and let us use temporal things only to preserve life for the little time we have to remain on this Earth. The saint continues: "Sicut nulla est proportio inter aeternitatem et nostrae vitae tempus, ita nulla debet esse proportio inter aeternitatis, et hujus, vitae curas". As this is an infinite distance between eternity and the time of our life, so there ought to be, according to our mode of understanding, an infinite distance between the attention which we should pay to the goods of eternity, which shall be enjoyed for ever, and the care we take of the goods of this life, which death shall soon take away from us. (Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost: All Ends And Soon Ends.)

If we are honest with ourselves, my friends, especially at the end of another calendar year, we must recognize that our sins, including our own sins of sloth, have worsened the state of the Church Militant on earth in this time of apostasy and betrayal and that they have worsened the state of the world-at-large. We must live more in a more penitential manner every day of our lives as we pray, fast, and make every manner of sacrifice possible as the consecrated slaves of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

We must be about the business of planting a few seeds for the restoration of the Church Militant on earth and of Christendom in the world, using Our Lady's Most Holy Weapon with confidence as we shield herself with her Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel and have confidence in the abiding miraculous properties of her Miraculous Medal.

Pray an extra set of mysteries of Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary today, remembering also to include the Halpin family and all other Catholics who have given the gift of the Holy Faith to sustain themselves after they have suffered such tremendous losses because of government mismanagement, malfeasance, incompetence, and sloth.

We must pray to Our Lady for the graces that we need be champions of Christ the King and His Most Blessed, Our Immaculate Queen and to never be content with sloth in our own lives as we pray that all those in public life eliminate it from theirs.

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and the hour of our death. Amen.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, pray for us.

Pope Saint Hyginus I, pray for us.

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"Woke" Produces Sloth, Incompetence, Malfeasance, Ignorance, and Mismanagement

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