THE FIRES OF WINTER:  Raging wildfires driven by winds up to 80 mph ripped through the Los Angeles area overnight including the Pacific Palisades, Altadena, Pasadena, and Sylmar. As many as 30,000 people had to flee leaving their homes to burn.

  The National Weather Service says the combination of wind and drought have created some of the worst fire conditions they’ve seen. Houses burned in the hills and right down on the Pacific. Whole neighborhoods went up in flames and firefighters were able to do nothing.

    Hundreds of people abandoned cars on canyon roads. Firefighters used  bulldozers to plow them out of the way to clear the way for firetrucks.    

  Gov. Gavin Newsom warned residents to heed the evacuation orders saying, “We’ve all been to memorials. I’ve never been to a memorial for a building.” 

  In the Palisades area, homes, a school, a theater and a grocery store all burned. Fire burned in the Palisades shopping center. Among some of the quaint old structures that burned were the Reel Inn just above the Coast Highway in Malibu and the Malibu Feed Bin, a horse and livestock supply bard.

ORANGE ALERT !!: President-elect Donald Trump in a press conference at Mar-a-Lago spoke seriously about using military force to re-acquire the Panama Canal and Greenland for reasons of national security and “economic force” to subjugate Canada.

  Trump also threatened that “all hell will break loose” if the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza are not released by the time he is inaugurated on January 20^th. He seemed to be threatening US negotiators rather than Hamas militants in Gaza.

  On the matter of Canada he said, “We’re spending hundreds of billions a year to protect it. We’re spending hundreds of billions a year to take care of Canada.” He went on, “We don’t need their cars. We don’t need their lumber.”

  Trump said, “They should be a state. That is what I told Trudeau when he came down. 

  Trump also vowed to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. “The Gulf of America,” he said, “what a beautiful name. And it’s appropriate.”  

 Asked whether he would pardon January 6^th rioters who attacked police officers, Trump dodged and complained about the FBI and the Capitol police killing of rioter Ashli Babbitt, who was shot dead as she tried to break into the House chambers. He complained that investigators found “not one gun” among the rioters although some did have guns as well as stun guns, pepper spray, baseball bats, and flagpoles wielded as clubs. 

  Trump ended his press conference promising that, “This will be the golden age of America, this is the golden age of America. We’re going to have a great country again.” 

LEGALITIES: Federal Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida, who has consistently ruled in favor of Donald Trump on his classified documents indictment, issued a temporary delay for the release of Jack Smith’s special counsel report on his investigations in the classified documents case and efforts with others to overturn the 2020 election.

  Cannon said she issued the order because her dismissal of the case is still under appeal by the Justice Department

  Special counsels are required by law to issue reports regardless of the outcome of their investigations and Smith’s report was due to be released on Friday. It could be very damaging to Trump, although it won’t stop him from taking office.

  In New York, a state appellate court declined to stop Trump’s criminal sentencing scheduled for Friday. When he is sentenced, Trump will be a certified felon.

IN FACT: Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta announced that it is ending a fact-checking program used to curtail the spread of misinformation across its social media apps Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Meta said it will rely on users themselves to fact-check the posts that may contain false or misleading information even though it is users who spread rumors and misinformation

  There’s a good chance that Meta is bowing to the new Trump administration before it takes office. Zuckerberg had dinner with Trump to kiss the ring at Mar-a-Lago following the election.

  This is like major companies getting rid of their diversity and equity initiatives under conservative pressure. Trump conservatives don’t like fact checking. Joel Kaplan, Meta’s newly installed global policy chief, said in a statement that the company wanted to “undo the mission creep that has made our rules too restrictive and too prone to over-enforcement.”

THE OBIT PAGE: Peter Yarrow, the Peter of the timeless folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary, died at home in Manhattan at age 86.

  Yarrow either wrote or co-wrote and sang the lead on some of the group’s biggest hits including, “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “Day Is Done,” and “The Great Mandala.”

  Peter, Paul and Mary hit the Billboard Top 40 12 times and six of those songs made it onto the Top 10. Their cover of John Denver’s “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane” reached No. 1. They made a hit out of Peter Seeger’s “If I Had a Hammer.”

  The trio mixed music with liberal politics, taking part in the civil rights March on Washington and performing in support of the presidential campaign of Sen. Eugne McCarthy.

  Yarrow spent three months in prison for propositioning a 14-year-old girl and was pardoned by President Jimmy Carter.

  Paul Stookey now 87, is the last survivor of the trio. Mary Travers died in 2009 at age 72. 

THE SPIN RACK: Four members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at San Diego State University are facing felony charges after a pledge was set on fire during a skit at a party last February, causing third-degree burns.

BELOW THE FOLD: Comedian Jimmy Kimmel said last night that, “Trump today suggested he’ll consider using economic force to get Canada to become part of the United States. And if that doesn’t get him the Nobel Prize, I don’t know what is going to.” 

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