I know you're all stunned. If you're hyperventilating, take slow breaths, exhaling each, and then holding your lungs empty for 30 seconds. This will reduce the oxygen in your blood and slow your heart down.

Bass was asked if she would continue her jetsetting if elected mayor. She had a history of supporting Cuba and traveling there often. Voters wanted to know if they were voting for a part-time mayor who spent most of her time campaigning for Castroism.

She promised she would not travel internationally if elected -- she'd stay in LA, except for trips to Sacramento, SF, New York City, and DC. So she left herself room to travel to blue cities in the US, but vowed no more traveling around the world spreading Gospel of Fidel.

She lied.

It's said that Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass did no such thing -- she just took a taxpayer-funded trip to the Paris Olympics while cutting $17 million from the fire department's budget and ignoring the cries of her fire chief.

Three, actually. Three taxpayer-funded trips to the Paris Olympics that lasted two weeks. But just think of the miles she earned.

Sure, Bass was in Ghana on a White House junket when the fires broke out last week, but that was sheer dumb luck. A New York Times report today indicates that Bass views her position as part-time at best.

"A review of her public daily schedule for the past year shows that Ms. Bass has traveled out of the country at city expense at least four other times in recent months before the Ghana visit," the NYT reported. "Once to Mexico for the inauguration of President Claudia Sheinbaum and three times to France for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris."

It gets worse. Bass had explicitly promised during the 2022 mayoral race to reduce her foreign travel, even though she didn't want to.

...

Bass "spoke candidly," according to the Times, "about what she saw as a potential drawback to the job -- a lack of world travel and involvement in global affairs."

"I went to Africa every couple of months, all the time," she said in a 2021 interview. "The idea of leaving that, especially the international work and the Africa work, I was like, 'Mmm, I don't think I want to do that.'"

...

This was the promise she made then: "Not only would I of course live here, but I also would not travel internationally -- the only places I would go would be D.C., Sacramento, San Francisco, and New York, in relation to L.A."

This is what the NYT published today: "That pledge has been spectacularly broken."

As Robert Sterling put it on X, "The fact that this is the top story in the New York Times means the left is hanging her out to dry. They know she's toast, so they're sacrificing her to protect Newsom, their preferred candidate for 2028."

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is the billionaire owner of the LA Times. He's been making news lately for suggesting the paper needed to change to become more balanced and offer opinions from all sides. He plans to add a bias meter to every article to get feedback on how the paper is doing. And true to his word of looking for divergent voices, he even added Scott Jennings to the LA Times editorial board.
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So it's not a complete shock that Soon-Shiong is being criticial of how the Los Angeles wildfires are being managed. Last week he started talking about the importance of competence in elected officials.

Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong
@DrPatSoonShiong

Maybe the lesson we learned out of this catastrophe in California is to now vote not based on left or right or D versus R but perhaps based on competent or no experience in operating a job !! We have to elect based on competence... yes competence matters.

He admits he made a "mistake" in endorsing her:

Democrats now understand the ship is sinking and its their own fault. The smarter, less insane ones are heading for the lifeboats leaving the lunatics at the wheel.