You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.
KFI AM six forty Bill Handle. Here it is a Thursday morning, April seventeen. As we continue on, I want to spend a minute talking about revisiting the fires, and there's a bunch of controversy going on, primarily and the Palisades fire. Why that reservoir was empty and it held I don't know two three million gallons of water and why it wasn't used, and the lack of water pressure, and that is continuing on. I mean, lawsuits have been filed against the Department of Water and Power, and that's
one story we've been covering. Now we're not spending a whole lot of time talking about the Altadena fire, the Eaton fire, and because there's no water pressure issue, there's no Department of Water and Power. That's screwed up. Everybody ran out of water. But you know Woody in his soothe city for running out of water even when everything is going balls to the wall. That fire was just out of control. No one anticipated it. So the issue
is when was the evacuation called for? And that has reared its head because nine to one one logs show that more than a dozen calls from Altadena we were made before the evacuation or was ordered.
Twelve to fifty five.
Am, January eighth, first one Sheriff's official reports of flaming structure on the corner of Las Floris Drive, few doors down from where a seventy one year old would die in the fire two thirty three am. Now that's just a while away. I mean, this is not yet exploded. A Pasadena cop tells nine to one to one dispatcher's flame had consumed Monterrosa Drive the street.
A man would die.
Remember the guy who died, hold the garden hose in his front yard.
That's where this fire was.
Ten minutes later, a sheriff's calls that the fire was encroaching on Wapello Street.
That's where a ninety four year old Korean War veteran died.
The first evacuation order for that area came at three point twenty five am, an hour after the cop first called. And then the calls came screaming into the nine to one center call center. And the argument here is going to be how long did they wait and what was this disconnect between dispatchers receiving reports of homes on fire more than one, and the officials deciding what homes to evacuate.
When you look at the fire deaths, seventeen out of eighteen.
Of those deaths happened in West Altadena, which got the first alert eight hours.
Before the evacuation orders hits.
That is the problem, and the investigation is going on now.
A lot of this is no one.
Understood the ferocity. The ferocity of this fire. The ferociousness of this fire, I think that's the word, because it just caught everybody by surprise.
I mean, there were.
People that looked at a fire in the distance half an hour that it was half a mile away, and they turned around and they looked back, and all of a sudden, it's a quarter of a mile away. I mean, these fires were moving well, the winds were one hundred miles an hour plus, and fires were roaring at someone far faster.
You could drive away, you could run away.
So they're trying to figure out was there a disconnect there seems to be was the anticipation.
Here's I think what's going on.
Even in the lawsuit against the Department of Water and Power, where the reservoir should have been full, you should have had more water pressure. The defense is going to be not that they shouldn't have done what they should have done, not that there shouldn't have been the reservoir working, It's that it wouldn't have mattered. The fire was so ferocious, so unanticipated hurricane force winds.
That were whipping this fire. And I don't know the answer to this.
By the way, this is going to come out of trial, and if they settle, it will never come out at a trial that could anything have helped. No water pressure from the city's mains. They ran out of pressure. Well, the city main water lines are not designed to have full water.
Pressure for hour after hour after hour.
And pump up these mountains. They just aren't designed. And as a matter of fact, we go beyond that, there's no municipality on the planet that can successfully deal with a fire like this at its early stages or while it's roaring through the various housing areas.
All right, we're going to find out a whole.
Lot more than that. I mean, these are incredible stories of individuals.
What happened.
La Times went and looked at the fire logs, looked at the summaries, checked out individuals who were caught in the fire and when phone calls were made, it's some heartbreaking.
So of course the story is not going to go away any soon.
All right, Now here's a question, and this is a story that's been a massive story having to do with Kilmar Abrego Garcia. This is the l Salvadorian who was deported by accident. He was picked up and thrown on an airplane and sent down to El Salvador. And the Trump administration admitted that it was done by accident. And you would think if you were the president, you were an official, you go, okay, we blew it. We sent him down by accident. Something happened and fell between the cracks.
Now let's see what we can do to bring him back. And he was deported because he was a member of MS thirteen, which not a whole lot of proof, as in there was no proof that the government was able to come up with because now they're being the government of course, is being attacked. He has not been charged with any crime either here or in l Salvador, and he was sent to one of the most if not
the most notorious prisons in El Salvador. And no idea if he is ever going to come out and what's happening to him because even the Maryland Senator who went down on his own to at least talk to an official to talk to him.
Government of L.
Salvador said absolutely not, might as well go home nothing. So what is going to happen as a result of all this, we don't know. The government is about to be hit with a contempt charged by the judge because the judge had ordered the government to facilitate bringing him back.
And the administration said no, just ignored it.
So now we have a contempt hearing where I guess they are going to be nailed with contempt. I don't even know what you do with a contempt charge against the federal government.
And then up came this.
Weird discussion where the President, when he was sitting with the L. Salvadorian president, was somehow it came up about American American citizens being deported to L.
Salvador, and the L. Salvadorian president said.
Yeah, and you pay for it, And we're okay with that because all the prisoners are being sent down and are still being sent down to L. Salvador, those who are illegal that are being sent down properly according to law. The US is paying Salvador six million dollars so far for the two hundred that are sitting there. And when the President said, yeah, we're gonna send down American citizens,
you know, the worst of the worst. We're going to send down the criminals, the terrorists, and it really doesn't matter if they're American citizens or not.
Everybody went whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute.
The Constitution specifically says that an American citizen is basically an American citizen.
That if you live in the United States.
And you are either born here or are naturalized here, you're an American citizen and you can't be deported to another country. Because where is an American being deported too? He or she is an American. My parents, for example, when they came to the United States and had Brazilian citizenship, which I had to give up when they became US citizens, where were they going to be deported to? Okay, Brazil,
Brazil says, these aren't Brazilians. Why would we take non Brazilians just because you the United States or you Germany want to kick him out. That's not on us. And so the President is saying one of two things. First of all, getting a country that's willing to accept American citizens in this case El Salvador, that is saying, yeah, we'll accept them. You pay us well, will take them. And number two, how do you circumvent the constitution? Now,
can an American citizen have citizenship taken away? That's different because if you are a citizen and it's taken away, then you are open for deportation and the US government can in fact remove you. But it's not taking American citizens and removing them. It's making these citizens non citizens.
And how do you do that?
Well, you can do that if in an application for naturalization, for example, fraud was committed.
Lied about who I was.
There was a case of this war criminal by the name of Artukevich from Yugoslavia. My dad was involved in that trial as a witness, and he came to the United States and I think it was right after World War Two as a quote expert on communists, and he was an American citizen and he lied on his application to be an American citizen, lied about who he was,
lied about his identity. Now, it took twenty years, but his citizenship was removed and he was deported back to It wasn't even Yugoslavi at that time, it was sent back to Croatia, where he ended up dying over there in.
Prison or awaiting trial.
But that is removal of American citizenship also under very weird circumstances, convicted of treason and a few other things during wartime, but that becomes virtually impossible. So I don't know how the president is going to get around that one. I really don't. The scary part is that if he does, let's say he has ice pick up someone. All right, someone points a finger. Neil, Neil is Savedra. It is a Hispanic Latito name. Let's throw him out of here and send him to Al Salvador and Cono is copying
a plover. Yes, okay, now how is it. How do we stop the government from doing that? Well, you go to court immediately and the court say says to the government, you can't do that. Nil's an American citizen. And the administration says, fine, don't care.
What do you do with that?
And unfortunately, that is what's going on right now with kar Abuego Garcia.
So not an American citizen. No, he is not. And I was about to say he is not an American citizen.
But he was here legally, and they're bypassing that concept. You cannot deport someone who is here legally and is not committed a crime. Now the argument is going to be, but he was a member of MS thirteen, he was a member of a terrorist organization. Just based on that, we can deport him. Fine, where's the evidence? We don't have any whoa, I mean, that's the fear. So how is this going to shake out?
I have no idea.
We'll see what the judge says. I mean, the contempt order is going to be issued. But what difference does it make. The judges already ordered, the Supreme Court ordered the administration to return this guy or to facilitate his retard. The administration instead of going back and said, yeah, we've made we've made a phone call. Yeah, someone called the the embassy over here. I think that would have been enough for the judge or the Supreme Court.
Nothing crickets.
And now the argument is that the courts have no jurisdiction to tell the administration who are not to deport. That's on the administration making a decision arbitrarily and if they make a mistake, Okay, they make a mistake, don't get picked up, all right, Be really careful when you go to home depot. Don't park anywhere near the driveway.
All right. Costco.
Oh, I always talk about Costco. I live at Costco twice a week. I was at Costco a couple of days ago. I'm going to Costco this afternoon. So the bottom line is Costco does hold on.
I'm gonna a little fraud there.
Costco does stuff completely counterintuitive, unlike like any other store.
Let me give you an example.
I go to my nearest Rouse and I go there because, first fall, I'm a Rouse buyer. It's reasonably priced food as opposed to Gelson, which is even closer.
And I go there because I know where stuff is.
I know where the cheese is, the isle in the back of the store, I know if I'm looking for cookies, I know exactly what his ale is on.
If I don't, but I know, I look at those signs.
You know, there's Aisle thirteen, and it'll tell you it's cookies and crackers and chips and whatever.
It tells you what the food is. Costco doesn't do that. Costco does the exact opposite.
There is nothing on the aisles indicating what's down the aisle?
Nothing.
You go on a Tuesday and you're looking for a specific item and you find it. Okay. As you're rolling around, you're finding the item, and then a week later you go, you know what, I didn't get enough of it, so I've got to go back and I have to pick some more up. And you go to the spot where you had first purchased the item.
It's not there. It's not there.
So you go to the nearest Costco person and you ask, hey, where is and then whatever it is, you know.
Where's the luggage? You need another piece?
And you're told, oh, it's on Isle eighteen, the other end of the store. I go, wait a minute, it was here last week. Yeah, yeah, we moved it. And I've always wondering why they did that. Michelle her husband Tim, works for Costco, and they do that because they want you to walk around looking for stuff, and you're looking for something specific and it can take you twenty minutes to find it. In the meantime, you take your cart
and this is what I do all the time. I take my cart and I am walking the aisles figuring out what I'm going to look for, and then.
All of a sudden. Wow, that's a great deal.
I kind of like the idea that there's a bat I have to like shrimp chips, and there's a bad and they don't have them all the time. There's a bag of shrimp chips that's in a fifty five gallon trash bag size, and so I'm going to buy that for four dollars. So rule number one at Costco is you move the inventory around, or they do purposely so you don't know what's where, forcing you to walk around. When you walk in the door, what do you see? You see the TVs, the soundbars, the computer us that's
walking in the door. You see the jewelry walking in the door. Now, a lot of people don't know that Costco sells very high end jewelry at great prices. Clark Howard spent a fortune on buying a diamond ring for his wife, but he made sure it was from Costco because that was the best deal out there. Also, they sell caskets. I don't know if you know that. When my dad died and I was buying a casket for him, Costco. Now, the mortuary match the price, but Costco is half the price.
You can go to their website and if you need a casket, just hang around the house.
You have it all right.
So that's their rule in terms of where you walk in. Okay, next, stuff changes all the time. You never know what they're going to sell, and you go wow and know it's not going to be here next week.
You end up buying it.
For example, a hot tub for four thousand dollars that normally you would see someplace else for six thousand dollars.
Or the other day. As a matter of fact, I just bought it. I just bought it. What is it that I bought? I bought an outdoor umbrella.
At some point I was going to buy one for my backyard, but they had this Blasto five thousand umbrella. Yeah, the blast of five thousand, which only cost seven hundred dollars, where normally it's nine hundred bucks any place else. Of course, I ended up buying it. I went for a chicken. I went in for a chicken, a rotisserie chicken. At five bucks. They get you in the store and they
know what's going to happen. They have fewer items than most giant retailers, but when you do buy, you know you are getting quality and you are paying less money for it being a barbecue on Sunday. Lindsay's folks are coming, and where am I going to get the meat? I'm going to Costco. That's all I want. I'm going to Costco for some stakes. Are you guys going to be celebrating the resurrection of our Lord? H? Well, I'm not particularly going to be doing that, but yeah, I think so for the most part.
You celebrate the death and may celebrate the resurrection. Yeah, pretty much.
Matter of fact, that's going to be my next Zelman's commercial, which I have done regularly every Easter, and that is, of course indicating bad breath.
And how do I do that? Well, rolling that.
Rock you know outside the entrance three days after he died.
His breath had to be unbelievable.
Man Zelman's mint mouths so hot.
Good for you, buddy. Yeah.
But the point is all of this is done with Costco and they know exactly what they're going to get.
So I'm going to go. I'm going to look for stakes.
All I want is stakes, and then I'm going to get one of their shopping carts, which are as big as dump trucks, and walk in and fill up the cart. And I will spend three hundred dollars for stakes and a few other items. They just know what they're doing. No store maps. Anytime you want to look for something,
you're in there for forty minutes looking around. And of course where do they How do they get prices so good because they make me They get membership one hundred and forty million people paying what an average of sixty bucks. I pay one hundred dollars because I have the you know, membership executive puba membership one hundred and forty million people.
That's why their prices are so good.
And their philosophy is they are fanatic about quality. I mean fanatic. You know, you're getting good quality stuff for very very, not even reasonable inexpensive. Okay, we're done with that. KFI AM six point. You've been listening to The Bill Handle Show. Catch My Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app