This just couldn't have anything to do with the ongoing LA mayoral and CA governor primaries, could it? Could it? Anyone? Buehler?

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Google Maps Just 'Unburned' the Pacific Palisades — and Infuriated Angelenos Noticed

Bob Hoge, Red State:

Angelenos have been noticing something strange: the Google Maps satellite imagery depicting the Los Angeles areas of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena now shows pristine neighborhoods untouched by the devastating fires of January 2025.

Of course, as we all know, those neighborhoods are in ruins. Why would Google pretend otherwise?

On Reddit, user TinyPinkSparkles asked, “Why is Google maps back to showing old satellite images of Altadena?" She continued:

Not too long after the fire, Google updated the satellite imagery to reflect the fire and thousands of lost structures. Now it's back to pre-fire images of houses and businesses that are no longer there. Why?

Meanwhile, someone going by the tag Lisa S. asked Google Maps Help how to get the tech giant to respond, because the gaslighting is actually affecting people:

Obviously, this is problematic for many reasons - navigation, recovery efforts, and mental health among them. I've tried using the feedback form, but would like to know if there's a more direct way to report this major error to Google.

Now, there are a lot of internet rumors and conspiracy theories out there. Is this just another example of kooky folks putting on their tin-foil hats? I decided to take a look for myself, and yep, what they’re saying appears to be correct. 

RedState Managing Editor Jennifer Van Laar took note as well:

Hmm, not a destroyed house or burn scar in sight. At the bottom of the map that I viewed, it says in very small letters: “Imagery ©2026 Airbus, Maxar Technologies, Vexcel Imaging US, Inc., Data CSUMB SFML, OA CPC, Map data ©2026 Google.” 

Well, the copyrights may be from 2026, but the satellite images certainly don’t appear to show the reality that is the Palisades at any point in the current year.

Now, let’s not get too hasty with our conclusions here. There’s nothing really big going on in California these days, is there? Oh wait. Voters have been weighing in on both the mayoral and gubernatorial races since May 4 in the crucial month-long primary, which mercifully ends on June 2. 

Oh.

…

But hey, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt — maybe they just never updated their maps after the fire?

Wait, never mind — they most certainly did. Here’s what Realtor.com reported in February 2025:

Google Maps’ satellite images have revealed the catastrophic scale of the Los Angeles wildfires as UCLA economists reveal that the two largest blazes may have caused up to $164 billion in property and financial loss.

Igniting in early January, the Palisades and Eaton fires, driven by powerful Santa Ana winds, scorched through a combined total of more than 37,000 acres. By the time the blazes were finally contained more than three weeks later, they killed at least 29 people and ravaged over 16,240 homes and businesses.

So why the change? Google has not responded to users' demands for answers.

It's not just Gov Noisome, and it's not just California

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what a load of crap

Wait Until California Taxpayers Hear About yet Another Newsom Spending Debacle

Child advocates and lawmakers are furious with Gov. Gavin Newsom as California’s pediatric hearing aid program has spent tens of millions of dollars on administrative fees while delivering only a few hundred hearing aids.

Nearly five years after Newsom pushed lawmakers toward a state-run alternative instead of requiring private insurers to cover pediatric hearing aids, California’s Hearing Aid Coverage for Children Program had around 300 active enrolled members despite spending almost $23 million, according to a report delivered last month to a state Senate budget committee. That works out to about $76,000 per person.

That’s even more expensive than the 50-cent diapers the Governor’s wife’s “non-profit” is charging state taxpayers.

If you do the math, diapers at Walmart cost $.025 cents for Huggies, $0.27 for Pampers, $0.29 for Luvs, and $0.17 for the Value Brand.

Newsom is spending $20 million to distribute 40 million diapers to 100,000 babies. That's $0.50 per diaper, twice the more expensive store brands.

It’s nothing to the billions being wasted on his and his unions’ Railroad to Nowhere, but it’s still a shitty deal for taxpayers.

And as noted, this stuff is going on in every state:

Red-state auditor reports 'explosion' of fraud tips as he targets state employees 'racking up' taxpayer waste

Auditor Mike Foley says GPS tracking revealed state vehicles going to liquor stores and personal errands on taxpayer dime

Nebraska’s top auditor says fraud complaints are surging as waste, fraud, and abuse dominate the national conversation, telling Fox News Digital that his own crackdown has uncovered alleged misuse of taxpayer resources inside state government.

"It’s just extraordinary the explosion of phone calls and allegations and emails and so forth that are pouring into my office," Nebraska State Auditor Mike Foley said as the fraud crackdown have become a national news story and the Trump administration, led by Vice President JD Vance, unleashed a task force to root out fraud. 

But here’s the key, here’s why none of this battle against fraud is doomed to fail:

"And as the media focuses on this more and more, it just makes the phone ring all the more, which is fine. We’re happy to receive those calls and try to filter through them and find out which ones are the most legitimate ones for us to pursue. But it’s clearly on the rise."

What the media covers one day, it forgets the next; and so will the public; by fall, the politicians, government employee unions, NGOs and just plain ’ol private-sector crooks will have returned to business as usual and will no longer even be trying to hide their thievery.

Try to stay healthy, but whatever you do, stay out of hospitals and away from young doctors

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Justice Dept Investigation Determines Yale’s Medical School Discriminated Based on Race in Admissions

A release from the US Dept of Justice on Thursday said Yale University’s documents show that its leadership intentionally selected applicants based on their race.

“Yale has continued its race-based admissions program despite the Supreme Court and the public’s clear mandate for reform,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmee Dhillon of the Justice Dept’s Civil Rights Division.

The release said that the  investigation showed that, in general, Black and Hispanic applicants were admitted with consistently lower academic qualifications than their White and Asian counterparts. These facts support the Department’s finding that Yale violated the law by intentionally discriminating based on race in its admissions, in clear violation of federal law.

The release also said medical schools use substantial federal financial assistance to train the next generation of doctors and that the Dept of Justice is continuing its focus on eradicating illegal race politics from admissions at medical schools, where quality and excellence are vitally important to public safety.

ALL MEDICAL SCHOOLS DID. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM:  DOJ Concludes UCLA Med School Racially Discriminated In Admissions Process.

Posted at 2:30 am by Sarah Hoyt on May 10th, 2026 15

STANDING UP TO RACISM AND DISCRIMINATION: DOJ investigates medical schools over race in admissions: Federal officials are investigating whether top medical schools are complying with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibits the use of race in admissions decisions.

Posted at 10:00 am by Glenn Reynolds on Apr 5th, 2026 31

PRETTY SURE THE ANSWER IS YES: Are medical schools still admitting students based on race? Trump wants to know.

Posted at 10:30 am by Glenn Reynolds on Mar 29th, 2026 69

I’M NOT SURPRISED: 28 Med Schools Flunk Out in Anti-Woke Medical School Rankings.

DIDN’T EARN IT: At Duke Medical School, Race-Based Promotion Guidelines Reward Doctors for Recruiting ‘BIPOC Faculty.’

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds on Jul 9th, 2025 22

PUSH HARDER: Federal bill would defund medical schools that ‘force’ DEI on students: Many medical schools are now prioritizing ‘identity politics over merit,’ doctor says.

INSTITUTIONAL RACISM IS HARD TO ERADICATE: UCLA medical school still discriminates against white, Asian students, lawsuit alleges.

THIS WILL END WELL: The Left’s war on merit comes for medical schools.

Most people don’t want diversity hires responsible for life-and-death matters. But new investigative reporting shows that the anti-meritocratic ideology of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” has even infiltrated some medical schools — to disastrous results.

These revelations come from the Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium, who just published a remarkable exposé on the University of California, Los Angeles, medical school. It alleges that the university has systemically violated laws prohibiting race-based admission and held applicants of different races to wildly different standards, all in an effort to boost diversity, while instead producing incompetent and unqualified doctors.

Based on conversations with many people inside the admissions office and the medical school, Sibarium recounts how things have gone drastically wrong ever since the appointment of DEI-obsessed Dean of Admissions Jennifer Lucero in June 2020.

“Faculty members with firsthand knowledge of the admissions process say it has prioritized diversity over merit, resulting in progressively less qualified classes that are now struggling to succeed,” he reports.

One former member of the admissions team told the Washington Free Beacon that this approach has turned the institution into a “failed medical school,” concluding, “We want racial diversity so badly, we’re willing to cut corners to get it.”

If you think this is going to end well, I’ve got a bridge in Miami to sell you.

Posted at 12:36 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 26th, 2024 142

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: ‘A Failed Medical School:’ How Racial Preferences, Supposedly Outlawed in California, Have Persisted at UCLA.

Long considered one of the best medical schools in the world, the University of California, Los Angeles’s David Geffen School of Medicine receives as many as 14,000 applications a year. Of those, it accepted just 173 students in the 2023 admissions cycle, a record-low acceptance rate of 1.3 percent. The median matriculant took difficult science courses in college, earned a 3.8 GPA, and scored in the 88th percentile on the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT).

Without those stellar stats, some doctors at the school say, students can struggle to keep pace with the demanding curriculum.

So when it came time for the admissions committee to consider one such student in November 2021—a black applicant with grades and test scores far below the UCLA average—some members of the committee felt that this particular candidate, based on the available evidence, was not the best fit for the top-tier medical school, according to two people present for the committee’s meeting.

Their reservations were not well-received.

When an admissions officer voiced concern about the candidate, the two people said, the dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, exploded in anger.

“Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?” Lucero asked the admissions officer, these people said. The candidate’s scores shouldn’t matter, she continued,  because “we need people like this in the medical school.”

Even before the Supreme Court’s landmark affirmative action ban last year, public schools in California were barred by state law from considering race in admissions. The outburst from Lucero, who discussed race explicitly despite that ban, unsettled some admissions officers, one of whom reached out to other committee members in the wake of the incident. “We are not consistent in the way we apply the metrics to these applicants,” the official wrote in an email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. “This is troubling.”

“I wondered,” the official added, “if this applicant had been [a] white male, or [an] Asian female for that matter, [whether] we would have had that much discussion.”

Since Lucero took over medical school admissions in June 2020, several of her colleagues have asked the same question. In interviews with the Free Beacon and complaints to UCLA officials, including investigators in the university’s Discrimination Prevention Office, faculty members with firsthand knowledge of the admissions process say it has prioritized diversity over merit, resulting in progressively less qualified classes that are now struggling to succeed.

Race-based admissions have turned UCLA into a “failed medical school,” said one former member of the admissions staff. “We want racial diversity so badly, we’re willing to cut corners to get it.”

In 2000, Dr. Sally Satel wrote PC, MD: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine. Unless universities can tamp down it down  dramatically, it’s negative impact risks spiraling out of control, with all too predictable catastrophic results. Or as the Victory Girls write: Never Trust A Doctor Under 30: DEI Is Going to Kill You.

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll on May 25th, 2024 158

MORE ON UCLA MEDICAL SCHOOL’S DEI DEBACLE: DEI Can Get You Killed.

Posted at 10:59 am by Glenn Reynolds on May 24th, 2024

Mead Point still has its devotees (I'm one of them, if only from wistful views from the water)

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533 Indian Field Road has a contract. With only four bedrooms, it was priced to sell at just $19,990,000 and went in 4 days (that Rob Johnson is such a canny fellow!)

The late owner (101!) Henry Grunders was quite the man:

Henry Gunders
1924 - 2025
Henry Gunders of Greenwich, CT died peacefully on September 26, 2025 at the age of 101. Henry often told those he loved that they'd already received his most important legacy; his convictions, active empathy and the guideposts of character he used to walk through good and challenging times in life.

And what a rich, full and unpredictable life it was. He would say his success was founded on principles that he called home-made wisdom; Trust people. Develop the habit of giving early. And most importantly, question what you believe, and why. In doing so, he left those he loved the ability to map their own paths in life as well as irreplaceable memories.

Henry was born in Munich, Germany to Paul Leo Gundersheimer and Rosl Chaikowsky Gundersheimer. He was an only child, his mother having died before his second birthday. His loyalty to his tight knit family was one of the foundation stones of his life. He and his family left Germany in late 1938, fleeing the brutality of Hitler's regime against the Jews. After landing in New York, he taught himself enough English in two months to be admitted to Roxbury High School, graduating before his 16th birthday.

His subsequent apprenticeship as a tool-and-die maker gave him a useful skill as well as a lifelong respect for working people. He is likely among a handful of men who fled Nazi oppression only to return to fight Hitler when the U.S. declared war in 1941. He enlisted in the newly created Ski Troops, training for mountain warfare at Camp Hale, Colorado, claiming that if it was anybody's war, it was his.

After the war, he returned to work and graduated from Boston University. He began his career at legacy Price Waterhouse in 1951, interviewing for a job that didn't yet exist but persuading the head of the MAS practice to create a position for him. It was a fortuitous partnership for both, with Henry eventually serving as Senior Partner in charge of consulting. Later, Price Waterhouse tapped him for the national firm where he served his partners as a member of the Policy Board for 13 years and Co-Chairman of the U.S. firm.

He was a member of Boards of Trustees and Boards of Overseers of several graduate schools, including: Duke University – Fuqua School, Columbia University – Uris School and University of Connecticut – Storrs

After retirement from the U.S. firm in 1984, Henry became a consultant to the Senior Partner of the World Firm for four years.
On the home front, he oversaw the rebuilding of Temple Sholom, overcoming resistance to his plan to build it without a mortgage. He remained a leader and active part of that congregation for over 50 years.

Henry was pre-deceased by his loving wife of 66 years; Elaine Schantz Gunders who he met when he was 16. She was the mother of his three children and steadfast partner in life.

Henry lived a life rich in love for people, wisdom, warmth and humor. He loved skiing the most daunting slopes, gardening, singing at the top of his lungs, practical jokes, serious discussions and most of all, his family.

Looks like smoother sailing for Ryan Fazio in the upcoming primary: one challenger down, one to go

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A timeline compiled by the Crumbie Law Group details the timeframe in which former New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart was making purchases with her city-owned credit card. The report shows that Stewart's purchases align with certain family events like births and birthdays.

Republican Erin Stewart suspends campaign for CT governor amid misconduct report

Republican Erin Stewart announced Thursday she is suspending her campaign for governor, after a new report detailed her alleged improper use of a city-issued credit card as mayor of New Britain. [Like, $200,000 improper — ED]

"I take the allegations that have been made against me very seriously," Stewart said in a statement. "And for that reason, I am suspending my gubernatorial campaign effective immediately so that I can focus on addressing those claims."

Stewart further promised to "take accountability for any mistakes," and to "make full and complete restitution to the City of New Britain — my home — for anything that I owe."

According to the new report, conducted by the Hartford-based Crumbie Law Group, Stewart's purchases "were not isolated incidents but occurred repeatedly over an extended period, nearly a decade, showing a reckless disregard for established policies governing the use of public funds" and could constitute violations of the law.

The report accuses Stewart of using her city-issued card to pay for membership in a social club, clothes for her personal use and supplies for her daughter's birthday party, among many other purchases.

The investigation, commissioned by the city of New Britain, adds additional detail to recent media reports about Stewart's improper use of public money. Before Thursday, Stewart had declined to explain what appeared to be tens of thousands of dollars in personal charges on her city-issued card, blaming the media and her opponents for the story while promising to address the specifics at a later date.

In her statement Thursday, Stewart said questions about spending "have understandably taken over this race and diverted attention away from" issues facing the state.

"It is my intention not only to suspend my campaign but also to step back from public life as I do what is necessary to address these questions and make things right," Stewart said. "I cannot change the past, but I can make the next right decision — and this is it."

Before Stewart's alleged misconduct was revealed last week, she appeared to be a favorite for the Republican nomination for governor, alongside state Sen. Ryan Fazio. Her decision to exit the race leaves Fazio and former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaugheyto face off at the party's convention this weekend.

Stewart said in her statement Thursday that Fazio has her "full support in becoming our party's nominee."

Related article:

…. The investigation by the Crumbie Law Group matches exact dates of Stewart's purchases on her city-issued credit card with evidence, including photos and receipts, alleging that thousands of dollars in goods and services the city paid for were in fact for her personal use – including maternity clothing, jewelry, parties for her children and husband, expensive meals, household items and even campaign events.

Among the items detailed in the report were party supplies and a toddler's dress for her daughter's 2nd birthday with the theme of Peppa Pig, the cartoon character.

The 18-page document, with 55 pages of exhibits supporting the claims, comes just ahead of the Republican Party's state convention at Mohegan Sun. It fleshes out the same $207,076 in charges on the city's credit card that media outlets have reported this week, starting Sunday with the Hartford Courant and WTNH-TV. 

How do we know the Democrats are worried about the coming election? They’re bringing back the six-foot rule and mass panic

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updated for 2026

CDC Official Dusts Off Familiar ‘Six Feet’ Playbook Regarding Hantavirus

…. Brendan Jackson, an official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tossed out the “6 feet” precautions.

“We talking about exposure specifically to bodily fluids. And that could include things like saliva.

So, if you are sharing eating utensils..kissing, touching…those sorts of things.

It can also mean just being really, really close to that person for a fairly long period of time. So, we’re calling that ‘six feet’. At least six feet for a cumulative number of 15 minutes.

CNN and its masters are already hinting that Trump’s to blame, and they’re just warming up.

Since the first sign of an outbreak, the reminders have come from government officials, health agencies and plenty of experts: There’s no reason to worry. Don’t panic. It’s under control.

“We have this under control, and we’re not worried about it,” US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a briefing Monday when asked about the hantavirus outbreak that has moved from cruise ship to quarantine.

“The thing about this one,” President Donald Trump said in the same briefing, “it’s much harder to catch. It’s been around for a long time. People are very familiar with it. I hope it’s fine.”

Trot out the “some experts” trope:

Still, some health experts say that at points, the messaging has been overly confident and too willing to dismiss the possibility of a threat. Statements meant to quell anxiety instead risk undermining trust if they later turn out not to be true.

Dr. David Berger, an Australian physician who is a former ship’s doctor for the same operator as the MV Hondius, asserts that assurances of a low risk to the general public are “calm mongering.”

“Well, maybe they are, but you’ve got a condition with an incubation period that appears to be up to six to eight weeks,” Berger said, noting that any control measures are going to look effective in the first few days of a hantavirus outbreak because it takes so long to show symptoms.

“When you’ve known about this situation for four or five days, you can’t then go and say, ‘Oh, yes, all the measures are effective.’ … Any informed observer looks at that and goes, ‘Well, you’re just bullshitting, because you can’t absolutely say that,’ ” he added.

Berger cites this as an example of what he and others have called “calm-mongering.”

There’s not a single institution or government agency that’s still retains credibility after the last 20 years of chicanery and fraud, and the media leads the way.