This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
President Jimmy Carter given an elaborate national sendoff that starts today's on his should say, the body is on its way from Georgia to Washington.
D C.
Taken to the US Navy Memorial in Downtown d C. Before the casket is delivered to the US Capital by a horse drawn casson than in the rotunda. He will lie in state for a day and a half before the formal state funeral at the Washington National Cathedral on Thursday. The other big news, politically speaking, District Judge A. Ling Cannon has temporarily blocked the Justice Department from releasing Special
Counsel Jack Smith's report on Trump's two prosecutions. This was a request from his legal team comes after Trump's two code defendants in the document's case asked her to bar the release of both sections of Smith's report, including one that dealt with the election interference case. Trump's lawyers went to Attorney General Mayrick Garland to ask him to stop this release, saying it would simply be a political move if they did so before the inauguration.
You've noticed it all morning long, probably woke you up sometime in the middle of the night if you're in the valleys. This windstorm it's been called destructive, life threatening. These gusts could last for days, up to one hundred miles an hour. We wanted to get an update from Mike Wafford with the National Weather Service about when we can expect the peaks to be, what we should be on the lookout for, and when we can put this all behind us.
Mike, what's going on today?
Well, as you see and I've heard, we have a strong wind event in the area of Santa Ana. Wind event that's been generating some winds anywhere from forty to sixty miles per hour in through the two ten corridor, including the Rose Bowl area, and upwards of eighty eighty five miles per hour up into some of the foothills
and mountains. We're expecting to continue through the day when I see a little bit of a decrease through the afternoon, but then the strongest part of the wind is supposed to be tonight.
Yeah, this has been a weird weather pattern, at least for the lay person because when I got up this morning, I was expecting to see a lot of clear skies just based on the fact that the winds were going to be kicking up. But there's plenty of clouds out there, and we saw some light rain and some snowfall up in the mountains.
That's right. This is this windstorm is coming from this particular storm system that does have a little bit of moisture with it. That's not too unusual to see something like this. We do have, as you said, some light showers, including some light snow up and right Wood, and we even had some light showers down into some of the basin and also the Animal Valley.
You bring up showers here in the areas. You did not just mention we usually start getting weather sometime around after October, a little bit of rain, not real weather, but a little bit of rain. We haven't seen anything for months. How's that playing into this.
Well, it's it's a very big factor because normally our fireweather season is over by now. But because we've had such little rain across the area, and we have very low humidities coming as we move into this event tonight and tomorrow, and that's going to play into a very strong fireweather concern. If a spark were to generate somehow,
that could take off quite quickly and spread rapidly. So we're hoping that doesn't happen, but the conditions are right for something that to that to that, What does that happen?
What does it look like in your office? Are you guys all hands on deck keeping an eye on this thing.
Yes, we've been watching this for the last week or so, this development, and yeah, we've been prepared. We've you know, put out a bunch of statements over the last few days highlighting this. So we're ready and we're hoping it doesn't you know, isn't as strong as it as it looks, but it certainly has the potential to be an event similar to what we had in twenty eleven.
Mike, have you noticed in lace recently lately with with weather coverage or maybe it's just me, but I feel like there's been this catastrophized, catastrophized catas catastrophe, catastrophizing thank you of weather events, you know, whether it's the polar vortex or the atmospheric river.
Now this week we heard.
About the Arctic outbreak going through Kansas to the east coast. I feel like this is not a crying wolf type of wind event here for this area. But have you noticed an uptick and maybe like the hysteria level when it comes to coverage for sure?
And you know, part of that is just, you know, the advent of the technology that we have out there in terms of computers and people. You know, we've got a lot of people out there who are their own meteorologists and they come up with some interesting terms, but you know, a lot of these are very valid and uh, you know, we've across the country, we've seen mini events not just during the winter, but also strong, very strong
hurricanes have been strongest that we've ever seen. So it's certainly valid, and we're certainly seeing event weather events that are stronger than we've ever recorded.
All right, Mike, we'll check in if anything happens. Mike Wafford there, National Weather Service. Thanks for your time.
Okay, you're very welcome.
A busy day in the background.
There the only debt you can kind of hear? Can I hear the energy back there?
Usually it's guys playing darts.
Darts.
I've never seen a dartboard at a National Weather Service.
Maybe ground up, ground up, waded up paper into a waste basket.
I think they're like radar people, where they're just like obsessed with the radar.
A lot of TV screens, a lot of oh yeah, a lot of beeps and boots. Can someone please please, and I mean this in all honesty, if you have any way to justify high speed rail in California, please tell me how well.
Excla, let me just walk that back a couple steps. It's not gonna be high speed. It's gonna be low speed. I love trains. I've ridden the high speed trains in Europe. I love a train. I ride the train every chance I can get. I just rode the train from Providence to Boston just for the sake of riding a train.
I love it.
But this train in California doesn't make sense for a couple reasons. Number one, there's too much bureaucracy, so this thing would never reach a high speed.
It would only be low speed, and.
It would have to go through all of the people who need their balls washed along the way from La to San Francisco or what have you. Everyone wants a little piece of the pie for their little town, and so you're gonna have way too many stops.
It's gonna take way too long.
It's much more easy to just make the drive or hop on a Southwest flight for thirty nine dollars.
Well, and even if it was high speed rail, I still don't understand it. I still don't understand the value of it in a place like California.
I do because I love high speed rail. It just wouldn't be high speed. It would take longer than it would take to drive.
Well, Gavin Newsom had a huge announcement about high speed rail yesterday. We'll talk about that and hear from good old Gaff.
I'm sorry for bringing out ball washing in the ten o'clock hour.
Well, there's no restrictions. I mean, you can do whatever you need to whenever they get gamey. Facebook and Instagram are ending there fact checking and they're going to remove restrictions on speech across their platforms.
According to Mark Zuckerberg.
He announced that they're going to be getting rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes, just like they do on x starting here in the United States. Some tech watchers are saying that this is just Zuckerberg sucking up to Trump. It comes with a million dollar donation to the inaugural fund. He's not a lot in that donation, but there have been a bunch of tech companies have stepped up with some money for that.
Let me just circle back really quick. Okay, the way political wrote this up about Trump going after Carter the day his body's lying and stayed over the Panama Canal and him saying he gave it to him for a dollar. The Politico article says that Carter signed this Treaties Act in seventy seven, setting in motion in the nineteen ninety nine transfer of the US built infrastructural wonder to the
country of Panama. And then they say no, part of those agreements included a one dollar sale, taking him literally to your point as opposed to it's just a throwaway line.
He gave it to him for a dollar. He doesn't mean they he gave it to him for a dollar, you guys.
Good lord.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin is going to launch its first orbital rocket soon. They say, no earlier than Friday, but it's called the New Glen One. Mission expected to carry a prototype of Blue Ring, which is a Defense Department spacecraft that has a satellite deployment platform it's not actually going to be deployed. They're going to actually keep it on the second stage for the duration of this
test flight. But Blue Origin says they have a three hour launch window at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida that will open just after midnight Friday morning, Florida time.
Out of the Straight to Hell folder comes the Tale of Three Women in Colton. There was an eighty five year old woman who was enjoying a relaxing Sunday afternoon sitting on her porch.
This was in Colton.
It's about two fifteen on your birthday, January fifth, so Sunday, got.
To connect it to me or Saturday Sunday Sunday. Well, because it was your birthday.
She was maybe enjoying the fact that it was your birthday, sitting on the porch joining an ice little afternoon. Margarita was and she was approached by a there on the porch. She had a ring camera and there is footage and in the footage you can see an unknown woman ask Margarita, eighty five year old Margarita questions like is someone in the house or are you alone?
Now?
Out of precaution, Margerita's Noah, dumb, dumb. She told the woman that her son was inside the house. Her daughter said, at one point, my mom said she put her hand in her purse. The woman did, and that's when mom
worried she thought she might have a weapon or something. However, instead of grabbing a weapon, the woman grabbed her phone and asked Margherita to call her son, but Margarita refused, so then she proceeded to ask about the alavera plants outside and ask for them, persistent in keeping eighty five year old Margarita in her attention, saying with specific plants
she may have wanted to purchase from Margarita. The moment she got more agree to turn away from the front door, two more women appeared from hiding behind the bushes, and one of them quickly went inside the house.
The three women didn't know that Martinez's daughter and husband were also home at the time, so at that point, the daughter starts yelling, you got to get out of this house.
Get out of my house.
The husband also started yelling, and they quickly left as Martinez in the family called police. Other than plants, they said, it wasn't clear if they were able to take anything else.
But like praying on an eighty five year old woman sitting on her porch, and women on women crime too adds another layer.
Why because girls are nasty? You went to junior high.
I know they are. They're awful.
Maybe this is sort of arrested development, these these but they're.
Awful to their contemporaries. Have a little respect for your elders. An eighty five year old woman being mean to an eighty five year old woman as a as a younger woman, that's despicable.
This may be a ring, by the way, because she know police are looking at a similar group of women that match the descriptions. They broke into a home back just before Christmas. This wasn't their first time.
You got to schedule that out. You got to work on that one. Yeah, pretty carefully.
Anyway, straight to hell.
Somebody took issue with something we said earlier.
Hey I got one for you, Gary, Yeah, like you. You started it, but you didn't finish it. As dust to dust, did you drink good booze? Your pipes won't rust.
I don't think offering up little right anecdotes to h to offer it the burial.
Of my parents, I don't think that that's on brand. For your parents. Maybe for someone else it's not, but not for yours.
It is not up next that high speed rail story.
What it is that Gavin Newsom said what he said fourteen years ago, what he said yesterday, and and other people that are trying to put it endo this debacle.
All right, We've got reports out of the Santa Monica area. We've got a brush fire in the Palisades Highlands right now. You can see the smoke. Not sure about the size of this baby. They're usually quick to step to those there near the Palisades. Also, La County and City fire crews on the scene of a fire that is spread to brush started in a structure on West Sunset in
West Hollywood. Huge gusting winds there. They say that brushfires at about a quarter acre, but now they say as the crews have been arriving, the fire has grown to more than an acre. They are using structure protection units to help prevent the flames from impacting any other buildings in the area. As you know, we've got gusts like this, it can carry those embers miles away.
Yeah, the.
We will keep an eye on both of these and hope that none no others will pop up, but that's seems pretty unlikely. Ope in one hand and the bucket of water in the other. Sure, something like that. So yesterday Gavin Newsom unveiled his annual ideal state budget.
It's a balanced budget.
It includes the modest surplus three hundred and twenty two billion dollars in propose spending. He says this is an effort at maintaining fiscal discipline in a time of deep uncertainty because he's talking about the big boogeyman that is Donald Trump.
The budget, by the way, it's kind of like crime stats. You can fudge them to get them to say what you want them to say. And their big headline yesterday was the budget has no deficit and it's the first time in a long time. And look at Gavin Newsom when he's been able to balance the budget.
Maloney, he didn't do it.
What he did was that he.
Took the what's he is reveling in the largesse of our wealthiest people in California who made a killing in the stock market in the last year.
That's how he did it.
But he's you know, he's saying that he's got to shore up the defense against the Trump administration and all the whatever whatever he thinks he's going to do. Also, yesterday he was out somewhere in the Central Valley talking about how great it is that we have high speed rail and guys, so we don't, well, we don't. He went on to say this very important thing. Apologies for the muddy audio. This came from the Governor's office. I cannot find a cleaner version of it anywhere. Good on
you tech guys. But here was here was Gavin Newsom talking about we are, I mean, on the verge of throwing open the station doors and getting people from Bakersfield.
Were said very quickly, and.
Finally, we're at the point where we're going to start laying down this track in the next couple of years. Finally the where we're gonna start laying down the high speed rail track after the track itself, that will allow us to get the equipment and the track equipment specifically to lay down that track gets moved. We're finally at that place.
You understand what he's saying.
No, he's saying, we're gonna lay down railroad tracks to bring equipment in to lay down the railroad tracks. That the tracks, they're almost almost gonna lay down. Are not even the wrath, are not even the high speed rail tracks. They're the tracks that we use for construction on the tracks right now. That's what he's saying. And he's talking about how great it is and what a wonderful thing, and why it is that this is so important.
This was the end of his speech yesterday.
And anything like this exists anywhere in the United States of America.
You want to be big, you got to be big in big things.
This is the biggest economy in the United States of America, three point eight six billion dollars. It's about damn time we have a high speed rail system in the great state of California. Thank you guys.
It would be wonderful if we at a high speed rail in the great state of California.
We don't, We're not going to.
This is a project that has been a complete, to use everybody else's word, boondoggle. For the politicians, for the friends of the politicians. Nothing has got done, has gotten done. There's too much rud tape. There's too much pork in this thing as well in terms of who's getting their genitals washed when it comes to the federal money that's been poured into this. Nothing's been done. We've been talking about this for twenty years. The tracks to the tracks to the tracks have.
Not been laid.
The way this is written up California is poised to lay down the tracks that will lead to the tracks is insane. How is a journalist? Can you write down that sentence and not realize you're just peddling their bs.
You're just you're falling for it.
Kevin Kylie, congressman out of the fullsome area alsome rancho up in the Sacramento area, we'll call it. That has introduced legislation, or at least plans to introduce legislation, to pull every dime of federal money out of high speed rail because it's going nowhere.
The high speed rail project was originally projected in two thousand and eight to cost thirty three billion dollars. It is now projected to cost up to one hundred and twenty seven point nine billion dollars. Its estimated completion date was twenty twenty. Of course, we are past twenty twenty now.
As of twenty twenty four, zero passengers have been transported. Indeed, the majority of the system has not even been fully defined, designed, and yet it has received six point eight billion dollars in federal funds and they're requesting an additional eight billion in federal funds.
Now, I'm serious when I ask if there's anybody who knows or supports continued work on high speed rail in the state of California, because we clearly see that government is awful at doing this.
That's what I was just gonna say.
If it wasn't the government in charge of this, if this was a private project, I would be one hundred and ten percent ready for.
This, like the one that's going to go to Vegas exactly. Now. Granted it's a short line.
I don't want the government, especially California government, to have any of their dirty fingerprints on what has now become a crime scene.
It's it's the end. Listen. People did leave a couple of messages.
People are like, well, they want high speed rail because they want to shuttle illegal immigrants up and down the Central Valley or whatever. Which Listen, I got it. It's an easy dig to take, But I'm serious. Is there anyone anyone that doesn't have a financial.
Stake in it?
Is there anyone who thinks that high speed rail is a good thing, a profitable thing, a necessary thing in the state of comps I do.
If it's done by a private company, but it could be very profitable. It could be great for tourism. I mean it would be wonderful. I mean I've planned trips like Paris, Madrid, different different trips I've planned, and I've gone to different cities that I would not have gone to if there wasn't train travel that went to them. If I'm somewhere in Europe and i want to come to California, I'm probably going to choose between you can't take a train, thinks I'm probably gonna I don't know.
I might choose between LA and San Francisco, just because there's so much to do in San Francisco with the Wine country and the just San Francisco alone and northern California and the Redwoods and all of that, and it's like, oh, I want to do that, but then I don't want to.
Deal with going to LA and doing all that.
If I could get on a train with all my luggage and stuff and head down to LA, then I'm going to spend some money in LA.
I mean, it works for.
Tourism, and if what we voted on in two thousand and eight.
Was exactly what it was going to be, then, yes, if.
It was that fairy tale of just running up and down I five, right.
But that's not what it's become. And that's why I'm against it.
Because it's become a slow speed rail and because there's so many stops and it would take so long.
It doesn't make sense.
And there's a point where you have to realize you just got to pull the.
Plug right, and now it's just when the body's just spits the that's it has become spike.
I mean, my point about Trump, Gavin Newsom saying that he's got to write this budget with Trump in mind, that he's got to protect the state of California and he's going to use millions of dollars to do that or whatever. I mean, it's just it's a waste of his breath to say things like that. This is that pride thing he wants to fight over high speed rail with Donald Trump, right, and Donald Trump's gonna win that one every time, because this is stupidity.
Now, yeah, this is about Gavin Newsom's genitals.
That's all it's about.
Stop with the genital Well, did you hear how he was like, it's going to be so big, it's going to be the biggest. We need a big we need to do big big in California, big big. It's like it's all about his big ego. That's what it's about. Yeah, that's all he cares about, is number one. He doesn't care about the idea that it could bring in. I mean maybe he does, maybe he wants that victory lap if it was done successfully. But when it's not done successfully and it's a mess and it's just a money pit,
you don't want that on your record. Palisades fire is what they're calling it. It is approximately ten acres, but it is burning in heavy fuel, they say, aligned with the wind. There is a potential for two hundred acres in twenty minutes. Per a La County Fire Department copter at the scene. Structures are immediately threatened. This one is a southeast of Palisades Drive at Kaye Victoria in the Palisades.
There there was another one you had mentioned over off a sunset in some place that they were trying to get a handle on as well.
And we knew this was coming.
I mean we've seen in the last couple of Santa Ana events where fires pop up, whether it's out in Malibu or out in the camerarioor moor Park area.
So this is going to be a long couple of days.
As we get through this, there's a camera right at the Temescal trailhead and you could see pretty clearly what is burning and it's just all that scrub brush the land. And the thing is it is moving be based on the direction of the wind, it is moving towards the ocean, which would put it in put through homes and neighborhoods well.
Throughout Pacific Palisades.
They do do an excellent job of structure protection in that area real everywhere in La County Fire Department is unparalleled. But yeah, this is this has the potential to be a big one.
You said again Palisades Drive in Kaye, Victoria.
Right.
Yes, it erupted in the area of Piedra Marauda Drive in the Palisades. But they say that this thing it's getting it's scary close to homes, is what it is, to be honest, and with the wind and the potential when they say it can cut it's at ten acres, but it could cover two hundred and twenty minutes.
Yeah, and for those in those the Ridgeview Country estates sort of down towards as you go back down Palisades Drive, of course, towards towards the ocean. There's one hundred there's a couple of thousand homes that are down there that are potentially threatened.
Buy this, and again this is up.
Fire that has just started, and the Palisades Drive, Kay Victoria area up north, I'm sorry, up above the Palisades in the hills there.
Multiple agencies are responding, including the Sheriff's office for evacuations in the area. Again, that was kind of the vibe this morning with people in the fire prone area saying, I'm not even going to work today because I know there's a great potential for me to be evacuated, and I just want to be able to get my stuff and go because there won't be time for you to come back home, get your stuff and go. Obviously, with the rate of speed, when you've got these gusts of winds,
how easily these things will grow and take off. And as we mentioned, we've seen those embers fly one two miles away, got the winds looking like this.
Again, this is up in the Palisades hoa area that the Summit Park area above Palisades, in the hills there. The fire itself looks like it started just to the south of a big neighborhood where Palisades Drive, kind of winds up and around, and it looks like it's moving down towards the ocean from there. But so they are, as you said, the fire crews that are in the helicopters above it have already said that there are immediate there is an immediate threat to some of the structures.
In the air.
Remember when we talked to Henry de Carlo from KTLA, he talked about how usually the winds are blowing, they're blowing from the shore inland, right, so usually we'll see a fire like this burn towards, you know, towards inland, towards that wildland area, away from homes. But because the winds are coming from the north and the east, this thing is burning towards the water, towards those homes from
atop the hill there. So that is the danger of And this thing is this thing is growing, It is growing exponentially, and they say that when he also told us that the biggest winds were going to be this evening. There is a forecast for this very area to get winds sustained winds between thirty five and fifty miles per hour sustained winds, not the gusts which we're seeing eighty miles per hour at times.
So this is going to be a fight.
Yeah, and it is.
I mean, just in a few minutes here that we've been talking about it, you can tell that it's grown quite a bit again, this fire near the palisades in the hills above it, but is burning down towards it, and you could tell, just if nothing else, by the direction of the smoke it's coming off almost horizontally. That smoke is before it rises into the air. To give you an idea of just how strong the winds are in that area.
There's just no time. When you've got winds like this. It's really hard time, really hard to get on top of things like this, despite the fact that they're usually able to get on top of things like this in this area, is so quick. Time when you've got wins like this, and then you wonder about what they can do with the air power. You know, when you've got gusts of eighty miles an hour, and just how sustainable
is an air attack at this point. Now, the winds are supposed to do, as Henry was telling us, die down in the afternoon before they pick back up again this evening, so there might be a sweet spot in there where they can come in and attack this thing from the sky. But this is going to be a lot of work for hand crews all day, maybe days.
All right, we'll keep an eye on this and again we'll come back with any of the updates that we have. This fire that's burning in the Palisades area moving down towards the Pacific Palisades.
If you're in that area, you may not have heard anything about.
We don't have any words on evacuation warnings yet, but this is one of those that they're not going to have a lot of time once they do make that decision. So if you're there, now might be the time to kind of think about backing that car into the driveway so you can get out quickly.
We'll stay on top of it to get all the information from the scene right here on Gary and Shannon.
You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show, you can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.