Streamer,

I'm well aware of the use of controlled burns to mitigate or prevent subsequent wildfire damage. Your assumption appears to be that managers have the resources to do controlled burns every place and every time one might be prescribed. And not every place that needs mitigation is suited to the mitigation measures. Even you would likely understand that you can't necessarily do whatever you want everywhere. A rational person understands that sometimes catastrophic natural disasters happen, even with the best of planning, and incrementally more likely with incrementally less preparation. Total prevention is roughly more than 99% impossible, if you're at all familiar with probability.

If you watch state agencies and budgets - especially R controlled budgets - you'd know that none have the amount of personnel and funding necessary to carry out such massive mitigation. If Newsom is responsible for cutting $100 million from fire suppression - and I'll have to fact check it to believe it - then I bet he regrets it now. The fact is that every state has competing needs for funding, whether it's education, health services, or fire fighting. The end result is usually that no one gets all the money they claim to need. Saying today that CA should have spent more on preventative measures is the art of Monday morning quarterbacking. Everyone enjoys 20:20 hindsight. At the time the budget was being split up, neither of us can say what the highest priorities were. We aren't there; we weren't there.

Streamer & Krijack,

Through the 1990s the Rs and Ds were roughly similiar in their respective governing ineptitude. That changed as the Christian Right began to take over the Republican Party. Their uncompromising push to combine church and state and to govern citizens' bedrooms (abortion & gay rights) has made the Rs more extreme than even the worst of the Ds. Reagan's term ushered in the R's dedication to laying waste to the environment. In the 60s and 70s both parties seemed to want to clean up pollution and protect air and water quality and set aside special landscapes. That has changed. R's are continuously trying to reverse and deregulate environmental protection. You cannot honestly say with a straight face that Rs are better than Ds at protecting the environment.

Then came Trump. Past R leaders Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, and Steve Scalise were caught on tape admitting they thought Trump was on Putin's payroll. Is there some point, any point, where Rs will say, "that goes too far; we're out!" Apparently not. There used to be one set of facts. Since Trump, Rs routinely pull facts out of their asses. A few Republicans have drawn a line in the sand: Liz Cheney, Mike Pence (belatedly), Bill Barr, Mitch McConnell (sorta'), Mitt Romney, and a few others declared that Trump lost in 2020, and essentially called him a huge assshole for continuing to claim he didn't. Yet Barr and McConnell turned around and endorsed him for 2024. Republicans are the masters of nominating the "you've got to be fvcking kidding me" candidates: Palin, Herschel Walker, MTG, Lauren Bobert, George Santos? Is there any nutcase who couldn't run as a Republican? And now the Trump and his transition team are picking cabinet nominees based on loyalty to Trump with little to no regard for qualifications. Does it not matter at all to you that Trump doesn't give a sh!t about loyalty to the Constitution? God help us if you think Trump loyalty equals qualification.

So yeah, Ds have their faults. Wokeism has gone too far, but prosecuting men who coerced women to have sex for jobs makes America a better place. And cancel culture has descended into stupidity, only to be adopted by Rs as well. And to Krijack's point about WA governance, I'll grant you that the Ds have been pretty classic tax and spend Democrats, often with little to show for it. Other than the money successfully being spent. Tell ya' what, nominate some Rs who want the gov't to stay out of people's bedrooms and think it's a damn good idea to protect the environment that we ALL depend on, and I'll be out there hustling the votes.