For weeks, Joe at Valley of the Shadow has been bugging me: Would I come to the California Republican Party convention?
The convention starts Friday morning in Sacramento.
But I can’t go. Don’t ask why. Just go hit Joe’s tip jar..
Category: California
Loren Burke Is a Great American!
Earlier today, talking about the California surfer dudes who hit the beach in hope of riding the tsunami, I said:
There is something distinctly American about guys who are willing to risk their lives for a super-gnarly wave.
The surge wasn’t as overwhelming as the surfers hoped — probably a good thing, too — but thanks to a reporter for the Santa Cruz Sentinel, we now have the name of one of the tsunami surfers:
Loren Burke, 23, La Selva Beach, a construction worker from the Westside, was surfing Friday morning said he went surfing with three friends. Burke grew up in the county and doesn’t remember ever hearing a tsunami warning before. He said he was excited seeing the ocean this morning, but didn’t expect to see a big wave hit.
“The waves were about 7 foot and it was a lot of fun,” Burke said after he got out of the water just after 8 a.m.
“A lot of fun.” Loren Burke, I salute you!
UPDATE: As mentioned earlier, I made a contribution to the Red Cross to help disaster-relief efforts in Japan, and they sent me an auto-reply thank-you e-mail:
The American Red Cross is acting swiftly to put your donation to work in communities affected by the earthquake in Japan and tsunami throughout the Pacific. We are supporting relief work to meet critical needs. On behalf of those we serve by our humanitarian mission, thank you.
So that’s pretty cool, and I urge all readers to go give the Red Cross what you can — $10, $20, whatever — because the folks in Japan are going to need all the help we can give them.
Let’s just hope they can get those nuclear power plants fixed, or the disaster may become even worse.
The Governor California Deserves
Wrecking the state in the name of civil rights:
Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday called education funding a civil rights issue, defending his plan to eliminate redevelopment agencies as necessary to reduce California’s yawning budget deficit and to push more tax revenue to schools and public safety.
“We take from redevelopment and we put $1 billion into schools – that’s a good thing,” Brown said at a Sacramento breakfast celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “We’ve got to make sure whatever we do, we give a chance to those who are coming along in the next generation. And that is a civil rights issue.”
Of course, that $1 billion will go to pay inflated salaries for the teachers-union goons who control the Democratic Party in California, but if you point out that Brown is just using tax dollars to pay back his party’s political special interests, you’re raaaaacist!
It’s Almost Enough to Make You Think They Don’t Want to Enforce the Law
Your taxpayer dollars at work:
A U.S. Border Patrol agent is in custody for allegedly harboring illegal immigrants, including his father, in his San Ysidro, California, home, Fox5 San Diego reported Tuesday.
Marcos Gerardo Manzano Jr., 26, was arrested Monday at the Imperial Beach Border Patrol Station, according to the FBI.
Shortly before sunrise Tuesday, a federal SWAT team raided Manzano’s house and arrested suspected undocumented immigrant Jose Alfredo Garrido-Morena, also 26.
According to a complaint unsealed in U.S. District Court in San Diego Tuesday afternoon, Garrido-Morena had been living at the residence since at least November along with Manzano and the accused agent’s 46-year-old father, Marcos Gerardo Manzano Sr.
The elder Manzano, who faces federal immigration-violation charges in the case, remains at large, the FBI said.
Great: Let’s hire the children of illegal aliens to enforce immigration law. What could possibly go wrong?
Best. Republican. Scandal. EVAH!
UPDATE: Is ‘Lurid’ Photo a Hoax?
The Party of Faith, Family and Freedom — and Famous Congresswomen Getting Their Breasts Licked by Disgraced Bankrupt Ex-Billionaires Reportedly Under Federal Investigation.
Left Coast Rebel is among the bloggers commenting on this story. I’m thinking maybe Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, Larry Craig, Mark Sanford, David Vitter and Mark Foley should form a new 527 organization, perhaps with G. Gordon Liddy as their honorary chairman:
Republicans for Reform
Bring Back the Good Old Days
When GOP Scandals Were
Slightly Less Embarrassing
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!
UPDATE II: In the comments, some readers raise the related questions (a) is this a PhotoShop? and/or (b) does the “exclusive . . . lurid photo” posted by Radar Online actually show what it claims to show?
While I don’t want to turn this into a full-on RatherGate-style photo-fisking, one commenter who suspects fakery writes: “If you really *look* at it, Mary is leaning back, and the other woman is at least a foot closer to the camera and sticking her tongue out at somebody out of frame.”
There’s definitely something odd about the lighting/perspective of the photo. And here’s Radar’s description of what it claims to show:
In a scandal set to rock Capitol Hill, RadarOnline.com has learned the image was taken at an out-of-control event four-years-ago, at Blixseth’s $75 million Porcupine Creek estate in Rancho Mirage, California.
With her head thrown back, Bono’s plunging bra is exposed as Blixseth — who now dates Dallas actor Jack Scalia after splitting from her husband Tim in 2008 — is seen diving into the politician’s cleavage with her tongue out.
“Mary was partying hard,” one source, who was at the event, told RadarOnline.com. “She was blitzed and clearly having a great time.”
This description is not, however, proven by the photo. Bono appears to be sitting on a sofa, engaged in conversation with someone seated to her left. What is described as a “plunging bra” actually looks more like a swimsuit. Was this taken at a pool party? Was Bono wearing a brown sundress over a black swimsuit? So as evidence that Bono was “partying hard” or “blitzed,” this photo just doesn’t work.
Darn it.
Mary Bono was one of the “Cap-and-Trade 8” House Republicans who voted for that job-killing Waxman-Markey bill, so I’d have no problem with her resigning from Congress. But other than getting a $1,500 contribution from Blixseth and having her on the campaign’s fund-raising committee, this scandal seems a tad overblown.
Another point: Blixseth is the one reportedly under FBI investigation, not Bono. Lots of people give money to political campaign and, while it may be embarrassing when a contributor is caught in shenanigans, this does not automatically implicate the recipient of the donation in whatever it was the contributor did wrong. See my recent American Spectator column, “The Scandal of Being Republican.”
UPDATE II: Linked by Threedonia, Uncoverage and Little Miss Atilla — thanks!
UPDATE III: Guest-blogging at Michelle Malkin’s site, Doug Powers offers a good example of how the foreground/background photo illusion works.
Props To John Dennis
by Smitty
A warm note from a true gentleman:
It goes without saying that he has demonstrated 88 miles of guts to run a credible campaign against the most powerful Representative in the country. I hope that in around 12 hours or so, when the left coast polls open, that ‘Frisco gives that blankety-blank-blank-blank lady the comeuppance that only they can.
Thanks, John: you rock.
California Screaming
My friend Stogie at Saberpoint is, alas, a victim of Californication:
The buzz is that California will be a hold out in this next Republican revolution — they will proudly and stubbornly be wrong once again. While Californians struggle with 22% unemployment, free soup kitchens and food banks, they will nevertheless vote for the party who made their poverty possible. My disgust for the California electorate knows no bounds; they are firmly, solidly and reflexively leftist.
Stogie blames the voters, but the worthlessness of the California GOP — which routinely asks voters to elect clueless Republican losers like Meg Whitman — is the true cause of this situation. Loyalty is not a one-way street, and California Republicans expect loyalty from grassroots conservatives who have been getting stabbed in the back by the state party for 20 years.
The by-now-routine spectacle of inept California Republican candidates publicly pissing all over the party’s conservative principles is not likely to persuade independent voters to vote Republican.
Remember that the geniuses who run the GOP once expected California voters to elect Arianna Huffington’s closeted gay husband to the United States Senate. Thank God he lost and please pray to God that, even in California, a majority of the electorate are not so stupid as to vote for an untrustworthy backstabber like Meg Whitman. She’s down by 10 points in the latest poll, and my only regret is that she isn’t losing by a much bigger margin.
UPDATE: Professor Donald Douglas adds his two cents to the verdict on the billionaire loser. It’s simple, really: Anybody who would pay Mike Murphy $90,000 a month deserves to lose.
DALE OGDEN for CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR
Because he’s not Jerry Brown, he’s not a billionaire
and he didn’t hire that useless loser Mike Murphy
Good-Bye, California
Despite fond hopes expressed by professional Republican “experts” — and Smitty, too — we must consider the unfortunate likelihood that the many millions spent by Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman will purchase only defeat.
Conservative friends familiar with California have praise for Fiorina. Whitman . . . eh, not so much.
Just as I hate to think a mere poll conclusively proves that GOP hopes in California are as extinct as a mastodon in the La Brea tar pits, I hesitate to judge people based on press accounts. But after reading this story about Whitman’s campaign spending, the obvious question is: Why would Republicans expect anyone to vote for such a damned fool?
Whitman has pumped more than $141 million of her own money into the campaign, and some $17 million has been spent on consultants and related expenses. . . .
Whitman has relied on a number of former eBay colleagues with limited political experience. Tokoni Inc., founded by former eBay executives Mary Lou Song and Alex Kazim, has been paid about $4 million to handle online services . . .
Henry Gomez, who oversaw public relations at eBay during Whitman’s tenure, is now a senior advisor to her campaign, overseeing speechwriting and press relations. His firm, HSG, has been paid nearly $913,940, according to campaign finance reports. Gomez and Kazim are both registered Democrats. . . .
Whitman’s team also includes veterans, such as chief strategist Mike Murphy, who once advised Mitt Romney and John McCain among other Republicans. His firm, Bonaparte Films, LLC, earns $90,000 a month. Campaign manager Jillian Hasner, the wife of Florida House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, (R-Boca Raton), earns $30,000 a month.
There’s a lot there to make your eyes roll, but just imagine: Paying your “chief strategist” three times what you pay the campaign manager, while spending millions more to pay registered Democrats to work for your Republican campaign.
And I’m sure lots of grassroots conservatives in California are lined up outside Whitman’s campaign offices awaiting their opportunity to be unpaid volunteers, knowing that Murphy collects $3,000 a day to strategize the campaign that Hasner is paid $1,000 a day to manage.
All this called to mind a post from two months ago, quoting the words of a soldier who commented on the incompetence of his commanders in a letter home: