Dem
53
Ties
1
GOP
46
Sit back, kids, because it's story time.
This item was around halfway done when (Z) was struck by the ill effects of Mounjaro on Thursday evening. You can read more about that here, if you haven't already seen the note, and you're interested. And thanks, incidentally, to all the readers who sent kind well wishes!
By Saturday, (Z) had bounced back enough to continue work on the Friday post, with the notion that it would just become the Sunday post. He had an event to attend on Saturday evening, but wrote another 20% or so of this item before it was time to get ready to leave. While that process was underway, and about 15 minutes before it was necessary to head out, the power went out. (Z) vaguely remembered paying the electric bill, which is due every 2 months in L.A., but who can really be certain if a payment like that was 7 weeks ago or 11 weeks ago? That said, LADWP is pretty bleeding-heart about overdue electric bills, and knocks on the door before they actually shut the power off, and there was no knock. So, it probably wasn't an unpaid bill (and, in fact, the bill is indeed paid up).
Anyhow, (Z) went outside to ascertain the extent of the problem. If it's just his apartment, that is one kind of problem. If it's his whole apartment building, that's a different kind of problem (and the worst option). If it's the whole block, or some other more-than-one-apartment-building total, that's a third kind of problem (and the best option). The reason that bigger is better here is that a larger-scale outage is LADWP's problem, and they tend to get on those fast. If it's just the one building, or the one apartment, then it's a landlord problem. And landlords, including this one, tend to be rather less quick to provide service. Plus, (Z)'s landlords are observant Jews, and this was a couple of hours before official sundown.
As it turns out, it was the whole building—the worst option. For reasons that we will simply have to explain this Friday, because we've put it off long enough (teaser alert!), leaving with the apartment dark was not an option. But the other residents of the building are exceedingly un-handy. So, while (Z) is hardly an electrician, he was also the only one with any hope of somehow fixing things.
Meanwhile—and this should not be relevant, but it is—the landlord re-paved the carports last week, a task that took the workers the entire week. Why this was done was unknown; the carports were in OK shape, and landlords do not tend to make expensive repairs that are not utterly necessary. Probably the city of L.A. laid down the law. Anyhow, (Z) was completely incapacitated on Friday (due to Mounjaro), and so never went outside on the day that the workers poured the concrete. All he knows is that by Saturday, the concrete was set, and an unconnected hose the workers had used for some reason (to mix the concrete?) was left sitting in the still-vacant carports.
What happened—in the sort of sequence of events that makes people say "only in L.A."—is that a presumably unhomed person in a red track suit happened by, and saw the hose. He decided that the entire carport area needed a good hosing down (despite the fact that it was brand-new, very clean concrete). So, he got out the nozzle he carries with him in his backpack, and got to work. It is very odd that someone would be carrying a hose nozzle with them, given that backpack space is presumably precious. However, one has to imagine that choice, and the compulsion to hose down apartment carports for no good reason, are probably related.
The issue, from the point of view of someone who likes to make things "clean," is that—again—the carports weren't at all dirty. On the other hand, the ancient breakers and meters and other electrical equipment on the wall above parking space #5 are VERY dusty. Or, at least that area WAS dusty, until it got a good hosing down courtesy of Mr. Track Suit.
That is what killed the power, of course. Being in a hurry, (Z) pieced it all together with all due haste, and figured out that the master breaker had been tripped. So, he switched it back on, and lights reappeared across the apartment building. That was enough to say "Problem solved!" and so off to the event he went.
As it turns out, it wasn't quite that simple. (Z) had seen enough to see that the kitchen and living room fixtures had come back on, but he hadn't bothered to return and turn his computer back on. He got home from the event around 11:00, which was certainly enough time to do the remaining work on the Sunday post. But, as it turned out, at least two of the five circuits in the apartment, and possibly three, were not functioning.
This actually took a while to diagnose, because it initially looked like the problem was related to a power strip that was acting up. After all, it's common for a single circuit to go out, and sometimes they all go out, but half of them (give or take) is pretty rare. Once it was clear that was the case, it took a fair bit of testing to ascertain exactly which outlets were hot, and which ones were not. Then, it was necessary to make an emergency trip to the drug store. No, not for THAT. For extension cords. The computer had to be powered via the working outlet in the bathroom, and the refrigerator had to be powered via the working outlet in the dining room. All of this late-night troubleshooting and unexpected shopping took around 3 hours, and left an already-not-100% (Z) pretty sore. So, with the clock having struck 2:00 a.m. or so, the towel was thrown in.
We pass along this somewhat detailed story for four reasons. First, the California homelessness problem has been exaggerated by some people, mostly for political effect. That said, it does exist, and "unusual" events like this one do happen. Given human cognitive biases, "unusual" events loom large in the memory, and can cause people to perceive a problem as being bigger than it really is. Second, some (maybe many) readers may find the story entertaining or interesting. Third, the story explains why the Sunday posting went the way of the dodo. Fourth, the story explains why the rest of this item reads like it was written across three different days—because it was.
And now we move on to the latest desperate-and-kind-of-sad act from Donald Trump, which was "recent news" when we first started this piece. As everyone surely knows by now, last Thursday, Trump dusted off one of the small handful of items in his bag of tricks, and signed an executive order decreeing that Lake Ontario is now "Lake America." He then celebrated by posting a bunch of memes to his social media platform for imperialists, including a particularly weird AI-generated one in which he kicks over the (real) Lake Ontario sign, then plants a Lake America sign, and then dances to the first few bars of "Y.M.C.A."
We've been through this before, of course, but we'll remind readers that Trump's power to rename things unilaterally is pretty limited. An executive order compels action from executive agencies, so he can compel the various agencies under his control to update their maps, their databases, etc. He can also insist that Republican politicians "honor" the new name, which they probably will because it's not worth getting into a pi**ing contest with Trump over. And Trump can lean on corporations who want to remain in his good graces. You know, something along the lines of: "That's a nice corporation ya got there. Be a shame if a bunch of oversight happened to it." Google has already bowed to the XO, and updated its maps, while the administration is still twisting arms over at Apple. As chance would have it, Monday was the last day on the job for the generally obeisant Apple CEO Tim Cook. New CEO John Ternus might be looking to make a statement as he takes the reins, though that statement could go in either direction.
Now, let us run down some of the reasons this was an incredibly foolish move:
All of this said, the most important thing here is that it speaks to Trump's midterm "strategy," such as it is. He's clearly trying to find as many distractions as he can, so that people pay attention to the silly stuff, and maybe not so much to the really bad stuff. And hey, it kinda works. Every story about renaming the Kennedy Center is one less story about the mess in Iran. But, it's not working especially well right now, since people may think about Lake America for a day or two, but they're thinking about high grocery prices every day.
Even more obviously, and as we wrote yesterday, Trump has decided to make the midterms about him. He isn't even trying to attract voters from outside the tent; he's just doing what he did in his three presidential elections, and trying to gin up the MAGA vote as much as is possible.
Readers presumably don't need us to point out the problem here. Ginning up the MAGA base only worked well in one of Trump's elections (2024), while it barely worked in 2016, and it failed in 2020. And it's never been efficacious in elections where Trump himself was NOT on the ballot. If you then add in that Trump is very unpopular right now, and that he's slipping even with the base, then this is a recipe for disaster. As we wrote yesterday, the Republicans who ARE on the ballot know this. Democrats are praying that Trump does not figure it out. Given what we know of him, the blue team can probably rest easy. (Z)