I know, I know, I'm going to offend about eight million people in one city, New York City.
But I don't care.
I am speaking for much of the rest of the United States in why I am totally outraged about the people of New York City and their continuing bitching, moaning and whining about the 9/11 memorial and museum.
A lot of this fauxtrage is being fueled by a newspaper I generally like and recommend people to read, the New York Post.
What started the latest two rounds of fauxtrage is that people did not realize that this memorial and museum is not fully funded and endowed in perpetuity. Very, and I mean very, few institutions of this nature are. Thus, at the end of the museum portion, there is-THE HORROR!-a gift shop!
Yes, a gift shop somehow can not be had at the World Trade Center site where some of the 19 jihadists declared war on the United States and destroyed both the 110 story towers with large passenger planes.
It's sacred ground.
But you know what? The reason so many New Yorkers are up in arms is because this gift shop is selling a lot of items. A lot of FDNY and NYPD stuff. Oh yeah, they are selling scarves and dog vests and charm bracelets. Pretty much what any museum gift store sells.
According to many upon many that have commented, it's just not right.
Because it's sacred ground.
Of course what many of the opponents fail to mention is after the cost of having a gift store, such as paying for employees and merchandise, the rest of the money goes right back into the museum itself.
But the latest in the Fauxtrage express is that they are going to open a restaurant as well. It is going to be called the Pavilion Cafe and will seat 80 people. And the cafe is being run by a company called Danny Meyer's Union Square Events. And as a rep from the company told the New York Post, it is not crass commercialism but “(We’re just trying to) create a thoughtful experience and bring our hospitality [to the museum and visitors].”
But if people visiting the museum should not be partaking a horrible, commercial enterprise such as a gift store, surely they should not be eating there as well.
For it is sacred ground.
One would think that the unhinged reactions of the many commenter's to the gift store and the restaurant that the terrorist attacks only happened in New York City. Only to the Twin Towers as the World Trade Center was once known as informally. That there was not a successful attack on The Pentagon that killed people. Nor the heroic passengers of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania that crashed their plane to prevent an even worse assault. Nope, only Lower Manhattan, New York City.
First, let me explain something to the people expressing the irrational fauxtrage.
The 9/11 Memorial Museum cost money to build. The cost was $350,000,000. And while the federal government does provide $20,000,000 for the annual operating budget, that is just for the basics.
All museums have multiple revenue streams and not for profit. A lot of it is to keep the lights on. All museums that I have ever been to have at the very least a gift store and many have a restaurant.
Mrs. RVFTLC works at a very well known museum, botanical garden and research library all in one.
They are in the midst of a huge building project. It includes a new bookstore/gift shop, a coffee bar and a restaurant. Again all three entities get a percentage of money spent in the institution. And another revenue stream is memberships. Guess what? The dastardly folks running the 9/11 Memorial Museum sell tier memberships starting at $70 up to $2,000. There are incentives offered for people to become members. Even the Flight 93 Memorial site asks people to be "Friends Of Flight 93" and to donate. And it is ran by the National Park Service.
Like it or not New Yorkers, it is how museums are partially funded. ALL museums and some memorial sites.
Now let me get back to my earlier point about the fact that way too many New Yorkers not only take it as a personal assault to have a memorial museum, a gift shop and a restaurant. That somehow, what happened to them is the only thing that matters. That only they can grieve and the rest of the world just has to understand.
No, I will not understand it.
The arrogance of the average and majority of New Yorkers is on display.
And it is ugly.
I will never forget 9/11/01. I will never forget as my wife and our son were at Los Angeles International Airport as he was about to embark on his study abroad program in Paris. Hearing that the second plane hit the tower. Seeing it with my own eyes. Then the attack on The Pentagon. Then the take down of Flight 93. I will not forget that my wife and son literally had to escape the airport and they made it home. All while I was at work. I will not forget on that evening we went to church and prayed. And that at least I knew we would soon be at war.
New Yorkers, the rest of the United States, the fly-over country, the hick South, the Left Coast, we all felt like it was an assault on us as well. And many people from around the world felt the same pain. And three days later, then President George W. Bush standing on top of the World Trade Center rubble said what we were all thinking. That those who knocked the buildings down would hear from all of us soon.
We were all New Yorkers in those days and for a long time after.
But now you have ended all of that with your fauxtrage. Over a place where we can all take in what was once there. Where once we spend that time, we can purchase some memento or mementos of our visit. And maybe after a long morning or afternoon, grab a bite to eat. Knowing that all we do and the money we spend will go right back into the memorial museum. You don't get to hold it in your hearts only.
Again, New York City and most of its residents think that they are the world. Everything in this vast nation is New York centered.
Our politics, economy, media, sports and many other things.
As an aside, you know many of us don't really want to see the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox on every network that shows baseball games. For a change of pace, the Mets get thrown in. Yet I believe that the MLB Network is really the YES Network for that is almost all the games they will show. It is only an awesome Super Bowl if either the Giants or Jets are in it. If the Knicks don't get to the NBA finals, which they haven't for years, they guess the peons of Miami or Chicago can win it. And if the Islanders or Rangers don't make the Stanley Cup finals, then yuck! Some other team, maybe even a Canadian team, may win it all.
No New Yorkers, your arrogance is why the rest of the United States really does not like you. Since you look down on us, we can do the same to you.
The ridiculous reaction to the 9/11 Memorial Museum, the fauxtrage, is why many of us hate New York City.
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Say, You Know What Makes An Awesome Drinking Game? Jews vs. Nazis
Yep, you read that headline right.
The most awesome new beer pong game is one called Jews vs. Nazis.
Below is how the table is set up to play the game.
Awesome!
Now for those unfamiliar with beer pong, its very simple. You bounce a ping-pong ball across a table and if you get it in a cup full of beer. Once you do that, two-teams go back and forth until all the cups of one team are gone.
Beer pong is very popular among males in college and to a much lesser extent in high school.
An obvious aside is this is very much a binge-drinking game. And you know, after enough alcohol, people get pretty stupid.
But if one thinks that some Jewish website made this up, take a peek at this link at the site BroBible.
It is complete "rules" of the Jews vs. Nazis beer pong drinking game.
And it's ugly.
Here are the rules:
Its called Jews vs the Nazis. Its 3-on-3, 30 cups per team. The Nazis shape their 30 cups into a swastika, and the Jews set up their 30 cups as the Star of David. The cups are re-racked to a smaller swastika and a smaller star when 18 cups remain on either team. The Nazis start the game off with ‘blitzkreig,’ and each player on the Nazis shoots until they miss, but this is only allowed for the first volley. The Jews have the ‘Anne Frank Cup,’ and this ability allows them to pick any one of their cups and hide it anywhere in the room, but it has to be shootable, obviously. The Jews can only do that once per game and can be used only during their turn. To equalize this slight advantage, the Nazis also have another ability called ‘Auschwitz’ (or ‘Concentration Camp’ if you don’t know what that means). With this ability the Nazis can pick any player on the Jews team and they have to sit out of the game until the other two players on the Jews team each make a cup. After that happens the 3rd person on the Jews team can play again. Also, throughout the game you are supposed to talk alot of shit and say as many racist things as possible to make it more enjoyable.
My Jewish friends actually love this game haha.
Yes! I am positive that this nit wit's Jewish "friends" just love the game. Yes, I am sure that the lucky one is the one that ends up in Auschwitz.
My question is why, why would any self-respecting Jewish person, observant or not, participate in such an insulting game?
I mean, what if the game was, I don't know, maybe Slaveholder vs. Negroes? Think that there would not be a wee bit of an outrage? A massive investigation? Of course there would be.
And one really disturbing aspect is that this game is being played not just by college students but high school students as well.
There was this post on the Anti-Defamation League that educated about this game. There was one comment that I could not resist responding to. After we went back and forth, I understood the original point the commenter was really trying to make.
That ignorant people will not care anyway and maybe, just maybe it is not worth all the time spent on such things.
Oh, and the person is Armenian and we should all know, but do not, of the Ottoman Turks genocide of Armenians during World War I. So maybe that plays a role in the frustration of dealing with ignorant people.
I get it, but can not agree totally with it. But that person just can't take trying to educate ignorant people.
Well, since I do this blog, I take the mantle.
Here is the thing.
When drinking is involved, and make no mistake this is binge drinking to boot, the potential for bad things to happen dramatically increase.
And when the Holocaust and the result of that are mocked and turned into a drinking game, nothing good can happen. I mean, in the course of the game, one should shout and say the most vile and racist things possible.
Let's see, lots of beer, a racist game and racist humor to boot. Yeah, at the end all will hug and kiss and be pals.
Not. Going. To. Happen.
Let me be clear on this point. I don't want colleges to ban this game at all. High schools, totally. After all a high school student is about three years from the legal age to consume adult beverage of any kind. But colleges can and should inform students about this game. And make the game as unacceptable as possible. I am all for free speech and it is why adult college students should be shamed but not banned from this game. The only way to do that is to make colleges alcohol-free zones. To my knowledge, there are mostly Christian colleges that are alcohol-free zones. Two that come to mind is Liberty University in Virginia and Brigham Young in Utah.
By having this hideous game and what it is all about out in the open is a start. Using this as, and I hate this term but in this case it is appropriate, a teachable moment. To not just discuss the fact that six million of the 11,000,000 + killed in Europe in World War II but discuss the Gypsies, the homosexuals, the intellectuals, the handicapped, the Freemasons, Christians that opposed the Nazis.
See, it is true that many other peoples were killed other than Jews. But it was the Nazi ideology that specifically determined that the Jews, as a group, were a huge reason of the world's ills. That is why it is sort of elevated over the others. But maybe mentioning the others that faced the wrath of the Nazi death machine will make people that have not listened before pay attention. Because the Nazis had many enemies other than the Jews. But make no mistake, the Jews were enemy number one and they had to be dealt with in the worst and most humiliating ways.
Drinking and partying is a big part of college life. I am not such a prude as to want to ban that and playing an offensive drinking game. But it's not a cool game. It's not something to mock. It is a chance to tell the story to the next generation so that, God willing, it should never happen again.
The most awesome new beer pong game is one called Jews vs. Nazis.
Below is how the table is set up to play the game.
Now for those unfamiliar with beer pong, its very simple. You bounce a ping-pong ball across a table and if you get it in a cup full of beer. Once you do that, two-teams go back and forth until all the cups of one team are gone.
Beer pong is very popular among males in college and to a much lesser extent in high school.
An obvious aside is this is very much a binge-drinking game. And you know, after enough alcohol, people get pretty stupid.
But if one thinks that some Jewish website made this up, take a peek at this link at the site BroBible.
It is complete "rules" of the Jews vs. Nazis beer pong drinking game.
And it's ugly.
Here are the rules:
Its called Jews vs the Nazis. Its 3-on-3, 30 cups per team. The Nazis shape their 30 cups into a swastika, and the Jews set up their 30 cups as the Star of David. The cups are re-racked to a smaller swastika and a smaller star when 18 cups remain on either team. The Nazis start the game off with ‘blitzkreig,’ and each player on the Nazis shoots until they miss, but this is only allowed for the first volley. The Jews have the ‘Anne Frank Cup,’ and this ability allows them to pick any one of their cups and hide it anywhere in the room, but it has to be shootable, obviously. The Jews can only do that once per game and can be used only during their turn. To equalize this slight advantage, the Nazis also have another ability called ‘Auschwitz’ (or ‘Concentration Camp’ if you don’t know what that means). With this ability the Nazis can pick any player on the Jews team and they have to sit out of the game until the other two players on the Jews team each make a cup. After that happens the 3rd person on the Jews team can play again. Also, throughout the game you are supposed to talk alot of shit and say as many racist things as possible to make it more enjoyable.
My Jewish friends actually love this game haha.
Yes! I am positive that this nit wit's Jewish "friends" just love the game. Yes, I am sure that the lucky one is the one that ends up in Auschwitz.
My question is why, why would any self-respecting Jewish person, observant or not, participate in such an insulting game?
I mean, what if the game was, I don't know, maybe Slaveholder vs. Negroes? Think that there would not be a wee bit of an outrage? A massive investigation? Of course there would be.
And one really disturbing aspect is that this game is being played not just by college students but high school students as well.
There was this post on the Anti-Defamation League that educated about this game. There was one comment that I could not resist responding to. After we went back and forth, I understood the original point the commenter was really trying to make.
That ignorant people will not care anyway and maybe, just maybe it is not worth all the time spent on such things.
Oh, and the person is Armenian and we should all know, but do not, of the Ottoman Turks genocide of Armenians during World War I. So maybe that plays a role in the frustration of dealing with ignorant people.
I get it, but can not agree totally with it. But that person just can't take trying to educate ignorant people.
Well, since I do this blog, I take the mantle.
Here is the thing.
When drinking is involved, and make no mistake this is binge drinking to boot, the potential for bad things to happen dramatically increase.
And when the Holocaust and the result of that are mocked and turned into a drinking game, nothing good can happen. I mean, in the course of the game, one should shout and say the most vile and racist things possible.
Let's see, lots of beer, a racist game and racist humor to boot. Yeah, at the end all will hug and kiss and be pals.
Not. Going. To. Happen.
Let me be clear on this point. I don't want colleges to ban this game at all. High schools, totally. After all a high school student is about three years from the legal age to consume adult beverage of any kind. But colleges can and should inform students about this game. And make the game as unacceptable as possible. I am all for free speech and it is why adult college students should be shamed but not banned from this game. The only way to do that is to make colleges alcohol-free zones. To my knowledge, there are mostly Christian colleges that are alcohol-free zones. Two that come to mind is Liberty University in Virginia and Brigham Young in Utah.
By having this hideous game and what it is all about out in the open is a start. Using this as, and I hate this term but in this case it is appropriate, a teachable moment. To not just discuss the fact that six million of the 11,000,000 + killed in Europe in World War II but discuss the Gypsies, the homosexuals, the intellectuals, the handicapped, the Freemasons, Christians that opposed the Nazis.
See, it is true that many other peoples were killed other than Jews. But it was the Nazi ideology that specifically determined that the Jews, as a group, were a huge reason of the world's ills. That is why it is sort of elevated over the others. But maybe mentioning the others that faced the wrath of the Nazi death machine will make people that have not listened before pay attention. Because the Nazis had many enemies other than the Jews. But make no mistake, the Jews were enemy number one and they had to be dealt with in the worst and most humiliating ways.
Drinking and partying is a big part of college life. I am not such a prude as to want to ban that and playing an offensive drinking game. But it's not a cool game. It's not something to mock. It is a chance to tell the story to the next generation so that, God willing, it should never happen again.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Big Primary Election Night, But No Surprises.
Today, six states went to the polls to nominate candidates for the House of Representatives, the senate and some governorships and the result is that for the most part, there are no real surprises.
The best one-stop site for complete election results is here at the Politico website.
The big news is that the senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) fended off what started off a serious challenge from Tea Party-backed Matt Bevin. But the Bevin campaign imploded on two issues. Mr. Bevin's confused and convoluted position on the TARP bailout, which I wrote about here, and holding a campaign event at a cockfighting event.
Even in Kentucky, cockfighting is not looked on in a good light.
In the end, Mr Bevin could barely muster up 35% and was trounced by Sen. McConnell, 60% to 35% and the remainder to a couple of has-beens. Sen. McConnell will face the Kentucky Secretary of State, Democrat candidate Allison Lundergan Grimes, in the general election in November.
Down Interstate 75 was the Battle of Georgia where the Republican field of candidates totalled six and the two front-runners are going to a run-off primary for the nomination on July 22.
The top two GOP candidates in the polls, businessman David Perdue and current congressman Jack Kingston came out the same in this primary round as neither could muster up the 40% plus one to avoid the runoff. FTR, I was hoping that former secretary of state, Karen Handel, would be one of the top two after Mr. Perdue essentially impugned her because she only has a high school diploma. But she could not get more than 23% and that is a respectable third place. Congressmen Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey mustered 20% between them. Art Gardner trailed the pack with only about 5,600 total votes out of about 576,500 total GOP voters.
Look for Congressman Kingston to win this one as I believe that Mrs. Handel will throw her support to the congressman.
That leaves one major race for the GOP and that is the Oregon senate primary.
In that race, Dr. Monica Wehby became the overnight front runner and has won her primary with 55% of the vote.
She won the crowded five candidate field with relative ease and her nearest opponent was state Rep. Jason Conger, who ran to her right.
Let me be very clear. To win a general election in Oregon, the GOP can't nominate a candidate like Rep. Conger for the reason of his traditional stands on social issues. After all, this is the home of Portland and it is left-wing central. And the suburbs around Portland is not all that much better for a Republican candidate. A good showing in Multnomah county (Portland) and high numbers everywhere else and Dr. Wehby has a great chance to win.
A real observation is that the Tea Party did win tonight in a way.
Because of the early strong showing of Mr. Bevin, Sen. McConnell was forced to run more to the right and will continue to do so for the general election. Both candidates in Georgia also ran more to the right, but Congressman Kingston will be more acceptable to Tea Party voters. And while Dr. Wehby is not all Tea Party, she is an outsider and a doctor that will be a great counterweight to the pro-Obamacare senator she is running against, Sen. Jeff Merkley.
Once the primary season is over, I sense that Republicans and the Tea Party will work together to elect more Republicans. Because after all, the common political enemy is the Dear Leader, President Obama, and the Democrat party.
At the end of today's voting, there were no surprises in who won key races. And that is more good news for the Republicans come November.
The best one-stop site for complete election results is here at the Politico website.
The big news is that the senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) fended off what started off a serious challenge from Tea Party-backed Matt Bevin. But the Bevin campaign imploded on two issues. Mr. Bevin's confused and convoluted position on the TARP bailout, which I wrote about here, and holding a campaign event at a cockfighting event.
Even in Kentucky, cockfighting is not looked on in a good light.
In the end, Mr Bevin could barely muster up 35% and was trounced by Sen. McConnell, 60% to 35% and the remainder to a couple of has-beens. Sen. McConnell will face the Kentucky Secretary of State, Democrat candidate Allison Lundergan Grimes, in the general election in November.
Down Interstate 75 was the Battle of Georgia where the Republican field of candidates totalled six and the two front-runners are going to a run-off primary for the nomination on July 22.
The top two GOP candidates in the polls, businessman David Perdue and current congressman Jack Kingston came out the same in this primary round as neither could muster up the 40% plus one to avoid the runoff. FTR, I was hoping that former secretary of state, Karen Handel, would be one of the top two after Mr. Perdue essentially impugned her because she only has a high school diploma. But she could not get more than 23% and that is a respectable third place. Congressmen Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey mustered 20% between them. Art Gardner trailed the pack with only about 5,600 total votes out of about 576,500 total GOP voters.
Look for Congressman Kingston to win this one as I believe that Mrs. Handel will throw her support to the congressman.
That leaves one major race for the GOP and that is the Oregon senate primary.
In that race, Dr. Monica Wehby became the overnight front runner and has won her primary with 55% of the vote.
She won the crowded five candidate field with relative ease and her nearest opponent was state Rep. Jason Conger, who ran to her right.
Let me be very clear. To win a general election in Oregon, the GOP can't nominate a candidate like Rep. Conger for the reason of his traditional stands on social issues. After all, this is the home of Portland and it is left-wing central. And the suburbs around Portland is not all that much better for a Republican candidate. A good showing in Multnomah county (Portland) and high numbers everywhere else and Dr. Wehby has a great chance to win.
A real observation is that the Tea Party did win tonight in a way.
Because of the early strong showing of Mr. Bevin, Sen. McConnell was forced to run more to the right and will continue to do so for the general election. Both candidates in Georgia also ran more to the right, but Congressman Kingston will be more acceptable to Tea Party voters. And while Dr. Wehby is not all Tea Party, she is an outsider and a doctor that will be a great counterweight to the pro-Obamacare senator she is running against, Sen. Jeff Merkley.
Once the primary season is over, I sense that Republicans and the Tea Party will work together to elect more Republicans. Because after all, the common political enemy is the Dear Leader, President Obama, and the Democrat party.
At the end of today's voting, there were no surprises in who won key races. And that is more good news for the Republicans come November.
Why I Call Disneyland Satanland-And It's Not What You Are Probably Thinking
OK, I make this confession that Facebook is not always the place to pontificate on things that actually deserve much more explanation than the immediacy of posting something on any social media for that manner.
And to double my confession, I refer to Disneyland as Satanland and the Magic Kingdom, it's other moniker, as the Devil's Kingdom.
Why would I do that? What, do I hate Disneyland? Do I hate Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and all the other magical characters? Do I hate the concept of It's A Small World? That has to be it, right.
All wrong.
Today it was announced that once again, the admission price to get into Disneyland, which is now referred to as the Disneyland Resort, will go up four percent from $92 to $96 for anyone over the age of 10 years old.
THAT is what I hate about Satanland.
I use the strongest wording that I can think of in that reference, but I was righteously called out for it today by one of my nieces who made a valid point. Actually a couple. But what got me is that she said how much both her children love Disneyland and all things Disney.
That made me realize maybe I went a little overboard in the Satan reference. But it is not about Walt Disney and his vision for Disneyland. It is how I find that a beyond very well diversified company can not keep the price at the flagship of the business empire somewhat within the reach of the average family.
People rightfully complain about how much it costs to attend a sporting event. How it is pricing them out of attending more games and thus buying food, souvenirs and the like. And it is true. But that is another post at another time.
Disneyland was the brainchild of Walt Disney, who has to go down in history as one of the greatest people the world has ever known. I mean that. He was a visionary. And Disneyland was his vision.
When you read the history of how much time he took to even come up with the idea, you realize that he wanted his baby to be something different. And that it was.
There was no other amusement park like it when it opened in 1955. And the whole concept of different "lands" was something unusual as well. When the park opened in 1955, there were four "lands":
Adventureland
Frontierland
Fantasyland
Tomorrowland
And of course there is Main Street, U. S. A., the entrance to the park.
Eventually there would be more expansion, and eventually the whole other park, California Adventure.
Personally, I am not all that impressed with California Adventure but I know they have done more to it than the last time Mrs. RVFTLC and I went about five to seven years ago.
What made the original Disneyland unique was the admission and how people went on the rides available.
A nominal admission fee was charged and if you wanted to go on rides, you bought a ticket book similar to the one below;
The famous Disneyland ticket book. You will notice how they are lettered and lettered backwards. It was best to worst rides, so to speak and depending on one's own taste. From this has come the expression, "An E-ticket ride", meaning the best of whatever any given situation is.
This is how one did Disneyland when I was growing up.
But, in 1982, after Walt Disney had long been to the Great Beyond, this whole concept was eliminated.
No ticket books. No E-ticket ride. Nothing of the sort.
One paid a flat admission fee and could go on as many rides as much as they wanted as long as the park was opened.
In 1982, the flat admission price was $12. And it was still a relative bargain. But, since the ticket books were eliminated, prices have increased 26 times to the now current $96 dollars. Oh, and because Disney considers Disneyland and California Adventure as two separate entities, you have to pay $96 each park. That would make it $192 for one person to go to both parks. Now they do offer what is called a "Park-hopper" pass in which one can go to either park for two days and that is a $42 discount and only $150 per person.
Now each price increase has been an average of about $2.62c. But in the last four years, the price has increased $20. That is a five-dollar a year hike.
So lets take the family of four scenario.
Mom, dad, two kids, both under 10 years old.
Mom and dad, to go just to one park or the other will pay $192. For the two kiddies, at $90 each, that is $180. The total to walk in? A grand total of $372. And of course, you have to pay to park. And that also went up to $17. Make that $389 to park and walk into the gate. If the same family of four wanted to squeeze in both parks, plus parking, they would have to fork out a grand total of $605.
Six-hundred and five dollars for going to Disneyland and California Adventure?
In the recent past they have totally redone the Disneyland Hotel and added a hotel in California Adventure called the Grand Californian. And added attractions as well.
But the interesting little ticketing scheme that they have added is the annual pass. A pass that started out at $99 per year. Now it is a monster.
They went from an inexpensive pass to four-tiers and no more is any of them $99.
The least expensive one starts at $289. The next level is $379. The next level is $519 and the last one is $699. The least expensive one gives you 170 days, pre-selected, to go to both parks. Usually weekends and holidays are blacked-out. The next level is 215 pre-selected dates at both parks. The next higher level gets one 315 pre-selected dates at both parks. But if one is willing to part with $699, there are no blackout dates, you can go to both parks and free parking. And if that is not enough, you can make monthly payments on a credit card.
What is wrong with this picture?
What's wrong is the vision of Disneyland was not to make it an elite park that the upper-income and wealthy people could attend. It was reasonably priced so that many people, of almost all incomes and stations in life could attend.
The Disney Company is a huge multinational concern. They are involved in more than theme parks. They have stores, media, and are almost as much penetration as humanly possible.
So why not have the flagship of the empire stay to its roots and maintain affordability for most people and families?
Because I am told, it's all business.
Wait, aren't you the defender of free enterprise? Champion of capitalism? Doesn't what you are saying sound, well a little commie?
No, it is not at all.
For it is because of the Disney studios and Disneyland that there is a behemoth called the Disney company.
All I would like to see is that the company maybe try and realize that Disneyland, the original, is a special place. It is what started it all. It is where Walt Disney's dream of a wonderful, and yes affordable, amusement park like no other spawned all that there is in the Disney empire.
I think that it would send a signal of good will to the many fans that now stay away from Disneyland because they just can't even afford to walk in the door.
Now, I bet that you thought I was going somewhere else with this post, didn't you? Nope, not in the least.
I may cut back on the Satanland and Devil's Kingdom references on Facebook. Or keep it among a select group. But I am actually looking out for the folks and the real meaning of Disneyland before it is too late.
And to double my confession, I refer to Disneyland as Satanland and the Magic Kingdom, it's other moniker, as the Devil's Kingdom.
Why would I do that? What, do I hate Disneyland? Do I hate Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and all the other magical characters? Do I hate the concept of It's A Small World? That has to be it, right.
All wrong.
Today it was announced that once again, the admission price to get into Disneyland, which is now referred to as the Disneyland Resort, will go up four percent from $92 to $96 for anyone over the age of 10 years old.
THAT is what I hate about Satanland.
I use the strongest wording that I can think of in that reference, but I was righteously called out for it today by one of my nieces who made a valid point. Actually a couple. But what got me is that she said how much both her children love Disneyland and all things Disney.
That made me realize maybe I went a little overboard in the Satan reference. But it is not about Walt Disney and his vision for Disneyland. It is how I find that a beyond very well diversified company can not keep the price at the flagship of the business empire somewhat within the reach of the average family.
People rightfully complain about how much it costs to attend a sporting event. How it is pricing them out of attending more games and thus buying food, souvenirs and the like. And it is true. But that is another post at another time.
Disneyland was the brainchild of Walt Disney, who has to go down in history as one of the greatest people the world has ever known. I mean that. He was a visionary. And Disneyland was his vision.
When you read the history of how much time he took to even come up with the idea, you realize that he wanted his baby to be something different. And that it was.
There was no other amusement park like it when it opened in 1955. And the whole concept of different "lands" was something unusual as well. When the park opened in 1955, there were four "lands":
Adventureland
Frontierland
Fantasyland
Tomorrowland
And of course there is Main Street, U. S. A., the entrance to the park.
Eventually there would be more expansion, and eventually the whole other park, California Adventure.
Personally, I am not all that impressed with California Adventure but I know they have done more to it than the last time Mrs. RVFTLC and I went about five to seven years ago.
What made the original Disneyland unique was the admission and how people went on the rides available.
A nominal admission fee was charged and if you wanted to go on rides, you bought a ticket book similar to the one below;
The famous Disneyland ticket book. You will notice how they are lettered and lettered backwards. It was best to worst rides, so to speak and depending on one's own taste. From this has come the expression, "An E-ticket ride", meaning the best of whatever any given situation is.
This is how one did Disneyland when I was growing up.
But, in 1982, after Walt Disney had long been to the Great Beyond, this whole concept was eliminated.
No ticket books. No E-ticket ride. Nothing of the sort.
One paid a flat admission fee and could go on as many rides as much as they wanted as long as the park was opened.
In 1982, the flat admission price was $12. And it was still a relative bargain. But, since the ticket books were eliminated, prices have increased 26 times to the now current $96 dollars. Oh, and because Disney considers Disneyland and California Adventure as two separate entities, you have to pay $96 each park. That would make it $192 for one person to go to both parks. Now they do offer what is called a "Park-hopper" pass in which one can go to either park for two days and that is a $42 discount and only $150 per person.
Now each price increase has been an average of about $2.62c. But in the last four years, the price has increased $20. That is a five-dollar a year hike.
So lets take the family of four scenario.
Mom, dad, two kids, both under 10 years old.
Mom and dad, to go just to one park or the other will pay $192. For the two kiddies, at $90 each, that is $180. The total to walk in? A grand total of $372. And of course, you have to pay to park. And that also went up to $17. Make that $389 to park and walk into the gate. If the same family of four wanted to squeeze in both parks, plus parking, they would have to fork out a grand total of $605.
Six-hundred and five dollars for going to Disneyland and California Adventure?
In the recent past they have totally redone the Disneyland Hotel and added a hotel in California Adventure called the Grand Californian. And added attractions as well.
But the interesting little ticketing scheme that they have added is the annual pass. A pass that started out at $99 per year. Now it is a monster.
They went from an inexpensive pass to four-tiers and no more is any of them $99.
The least expensive one starts at $289. The next level is $379. The next level is $519 and the last one is $699. The least expensive one gives you 170 days, pre-selected, to go to both parks. Usually weekends and holidays are blacked-out. The next level is 215 pre-selected dates at both parks. The next higher level gets one 315 pre-selected dates at both parks. But if one is willing to part with $699, there are no blackout dates, you can go to both parks and free parking. And if that is not enough, you can make monthly payments on a credit card.
What is wrong with this picture?
What's wrong is the vision of Disneyland was not to make it an elite park that the upper-income and wealthy people could attend. It was reasonably priced so that many people, of almost all incomes and stations in life could attend.
The Disney Company is a huge multinational concern. They are involved in more than theme parks. They have stores, media, and are almost as much penetration as humanly possible.
So why not have the flagship of the empire stay to its roots and maintain affordability for most people and families?
Because I am told, it's all business.
Wait, aren't you the defender of free enterprise? Champion of capitalism? Doesn't what you are saying sound, well a little commie?
No, it is not at all.
For it is because of the Disney studios and Disneyland that there is a behemoth called the Disney company.
All I would like to see is that the company maybe try and realize that Disneyland, the original, is a special place. It is what started it all. It is where Walt Disney's dream of a wonderful, and yes affordable, amusement park like no other spawned all that there is in the Disney empire.
I think that it would send a signal of good will to the many fans that now stay away from Disneyland because they just can't even afford to walk in the door.
Now, I bet that you thought I was going somewhere else with this post, didn't you? Nope, not in the least.
I may cut back on the Satanland and Devil's Kingdom references on Facebook. Or keep it among a select group. But I am actually looking out for the folks and the real meaning of Disneyland before it is too late.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Gov. Moonbeam Brown Is Back
Yes indeed you read it right about Gov. Jerry Moonbeam Brown.
Just as one thinks that Gov. Brown, at least on budget matters, is not as insane as his fellow Democrats in the state legislature, he pontificates on Globaloney Warming.
Specifically, that Los Angeles International Airport will be underwater as a result of Globaloney Warning.
In about 200 years.
The fact that Gov. Brown is mentioning the very distant possibility in a state budget news conference shows that he will not tone down in the least in the whole economic sellout of California to the Globaloney Warming regime.
The basis for Gov. Moonbeam's remarks are two recent reports about a large swath of glaciers in Antarctica that are collapsing irreversibly. In this report from The National Geographic, even those scientists discussing the matter admit it could take a minimum of 200 to a max of 900 years for the sea levels to rise as much as four feet around the world.
So it would take 200 years for the potential, not a guarantee, that sea levels around the world could rise up to four feet and Gov. Moonbeam feels the need to remind us of a few facts.
That LAX will be underwater. That San Francisco International Airport will be underwater. And the now closed San Onofre nuclear power plant will be underwater.
In 200 years.
Gov. Moonbeam was making the suggestion that it would cost billions to move the two airports.
Yet the reality is that no one knows what kind of modes of transportation we will actually have in 200 years.
Does anyone think that in 1800, even a small, minuscule minority thought that by the early 1900s, people would discover how to fly an airplane? That by 1950, air travel would bring much of the world together?
Or another 1800 scenario is did anyone think that cars would be the most popular form of transport for the masses?
The point is that to suggest that airplanes will still be in use as they are today is silly. And it is possible, no probable, that the San Onofre power plant that is now closed could be destroyed and the nuclear waste disposed of in a different way.
Is what Gov. Moonbeam trying to promote is a huge public works project based on so-so science? A huge project that, yes, would provide jobs that are desperately needed in California.
If the proposed bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco is any indication, I think not.
But for Gov. Moonbeam to make a possibly off-the-cuff remark makes me think that the Moonbeam is back!
Just as one thinks that Gov. Brown, at least on budget matters, is not as insane as his fellow Democrats in the state legislature, he pontificates on Globaloney Warming.
Specifically, that Los Angeles International Airport will be underwater as a result of Globaloney Warning.
In about 200 years.
The fact that Gov. Brown is mentioning the very distant possibility in a state budget news conference shows that he will not tone down in the least in the whole economic sellout of California to the Globaloney Warming regime.
The basis for Gov. Moonbeam's remarks are two recent reports about a large swath of glaciers in Antarctica that are collapsing irreversibly. In this report from The National Geographic, even those scientists discussing the matter admit it could take a minimum of 200 to a max of 900 years for the sea levels to rise as much as four feet around the world.
So it would take 200 years for the potential, not a guarantee, that sea levels around the world could rise up to four feet and Gov. Moonbeam feels the need to remind us of a few facts.
That LAX will be underwater. That San Francisco International Airport will be underwater. And the now closed San Onofre nuclear power plant will be underwater.
In 200 years.
Gov. Moonbeam was making the suggestion that it would cost billions to move the two airports.
Yet the reality is that no one knows what kind of modes of transportation we will actually have in 200 years.
Does anyone think that in 1800, even a small, minuscule minority thought that by the early 1900s, people would discover how to fly an airplane? That by 1950, air travel would bring much of the world together?
Or another 1800 scenario is did anyone think that cars would be the most popular form of transport for the masses?
The point is that to suggest that airplanes will still be in use as they are today is silly. And it is possible, no probable, that the San Onofre power plant that is now closed could be destroyed and the nuclear waste disposed of in a different way.
Is what Gov. Moonbeam trying to promote is a huge public works project based on so-so science? A huge project that, yes, would provide jobs that are desperately needed in California.
If the proposed bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco is any indication, I think not.
But for Gov. Moonbeam to make a possibly off-the-cuff remark makes me think that the Moonbeam is back!
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
A Tea Party Candidate Loseth, A Tea Party Candidate Winneth
Last week around this time, many of us Tea Party supporters were at the very least disappointed in the North Carolina race for the United States senate as Speaker of the House Thom Tillis beat back a divided challenge in the Tar Heel state.
And judging from the leftywhore media, it was a huge loss for the Tea Party and a huge win for the senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.). And it was confirmed in the usual confines of the leftywhore media. In defense of Mr. Tillis, I don't think that North Carolina Republicans exactly nominated a total RINO* in the manner of maybe Mike Castle. Mr. Tillis is a solid conservative, but not exactly a fire-breathing, tried and true Tea Party type.
But tonight, Republican voters in Nebraska gave the Tea Party a substantive win in the candidacy of Ben Sasse.
As of this writing with about 80% of precincts reporting, Mr. Sasse is handily ahead of a late rush challenge by Sid Dinsdale with 50% of the vote to Mr. Dinsdale's 22%. In third place, yes you read that right, third place is the establishment-backed candidate, Shane Osborn with 21%. The rest of the vote is scattered between two also-rans with about seven percent of the remaining vote.
This race was much more animated than the North Carolina race.
The senate minority leader, Mr. McConnell, put all of his weight behind Mr. Osborn, the former state treasurer. He was helped out by Karl Rove and his American Crossroads group. Most of the Tea Party and aligned groups backed Mr. Sasse, the president of Midland Lutheran College. These groups helped raise $2,000,000 for the Sasse campaign. In fact, Mr. Dinsdale, former chair of Pinnacle Bank, was himself pretty RINO, definitely not right of center. He was a supporter of Obamacare. And yet between two establishment types, they could not unite to defeat Mr. Sasse. A late endorsement from the Omaha World-Herald may have helped Mr. Dinsdale to end up finishing in second place.
But here's the difference in North Carolina and Nebraska.
In North Carolina, the Tea Party candidate, Greg Bannon, was weak. And there was a third candidate, Pastor Mark Harris, that took away votes from Mr. Bannon. There was division among Tea Party voters.
In Nebraska, there was no such division on the Tea Party side. Most groups were united behind Mr. Sasse. Most establishment groups backed Mr. Osborn. And, as noted Mr. Dinsdale was able to gain some establishment-like support. The establishment ended up being divided.
This is why we have primaries.
It is the only way that we can take a look at candidates and see which one will be the best in a general election.
Check that.
On the Republican side, what conservative can be the best in a general election.
The fact is that this is good for the Republican party. It is the way to see how a candidate will react in a general election campaign.
And we will see a lot of this back and forth in the upcoming primaries.
In the end, it will be a Tea Party candidate loseth, a Tea Party candidate winneth.
*RINO-Republican In Name Only
And judging from the leftywhore media, it was a huge loss for the Tea Party and a huge win for the senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.). And it was confirmed in the usual confines of the leftywhore media. In defense of Mr. Tillis, I don't think that North Carolina Republicans exactly nominated a total RINO* in the manner of maybe Mike Castle. Mr. Tillis is a solid conservative, but not exactly a fire-breathing, tried and true Tea Party type.
But tonight, Republican voters in Nebraska gave the Tea Party a substantive win in the candidacy of Ben Sasse.
As of this writing with about 80% of precincts reporting, Mr. Sasse is handily ahead of a late rush challenge by Sid Dinsdale with 50% of the vote to Mr. Dinsdale's 22%. In third place, yes you read that right, third place is the establishment-backed candidate, Shane Osborn with 21%. The rest of the vote is scattered between two also-rans with about seven percent of the remaining vote.
This race was much more animated than the North Carolina race.
The senate minority leader, Mr. McConnell, put all of his weight behind Mr. Osborn, the former state treasurer. He was helped out by Karl Rove and his American Crossroads group. Most of the Tea Party and aligned groups backed Mr. Sasse, the president of Midland Lutheran College. These groups helped raise $2,000,000 for the Sasse campaign. In fact, Mr. Dinsdale, former chair of Pinnacle Bank, was himself pretty RINO, definitely not right of center. He was a supporter of Obamacare. And yet between two establishment types, they could not unite to defeat Mr. Sasse. A late endorsement from the Omaha World-Herald may have helped Mr. Dinsdale to end up finishing in second place.
But here's the difference in North Carolina and Nebraska.
In North Carolina, the Tea Party candidate, Greg Bannon, was weak. And there was a third candidate, Pastor Mark Harris, that took away votes from Mr. Bannon. There was division among Tea Party voters.
In Nebraska, there was no such division on the Tea Party side. Most groups were united behind Mr. Sasse. Most establishment groups backed Mr. Osborn. And, as noted Mr. Dinsdale was able to gain some establishment-like support. The establishment ended up being divided.
This is why we have primaries.
It is the only way that we can take a look at candidates and see which one will be the best in a general election.
Check that.
On the Republican side, what conservative can be the best in a general election.
The fact is that this is good for the Republican party. It is the way to see how a candidate will react in a general election campaign.
And we will see a lot of this back and forth in the upcoming primaries.
In the end, it will be a Tea Party candidate loseth, a Tea Party candidate winneth.
*RINO-Republican In Name Only
How Can We Have That Race Conversation With Twits Like James Clyburn?
You know, the attorney general, Eric Holder, once that that Americans are afraid to have a serious conversation about race.
So, I bring you Congressman James Clyburn (D-SC).
Congresstool Clyburn is fourth in the Democrat party leadership in the House of Representatives.
I do not know why Congresstool Clyburn was asked about the South Carolina Senator, Tim Scott (R-SC), who is running for a full senate term. But he was asked. And here is a real starter about that race conversation:
“If you call progress electing a person with the pigmentation that he has, who votes against the interest and aspirations of 95 percent of the black people in South Carolina, then I guess that’s progress.”
Get it?
It's not that he does not vote the party line. Its that he does not vote for or promote the race line.
The implication of Congresstool Clyburn is that for the most part, about 95% of that part, Blacks think and act exactly alike.
At least in South Carolina. And keep in mind that Sen. Scott is Black.
It does seem to be the case of voting patterns at least. It is estimated that well north of 90% of Black Americans did vote twice for Democrats in general and Barack Obama in particular. And I do get the voting for the Dear Leader, President Obama, the first time. Second time, not so much. Democrats in general I do not get either. But that is not the point.
The point is that people like Congresstool Clyburn make such an absurd, and quite frankly racist statement about a fellow Black American and the way that he does or does not vote.
But in the linked article, Roger Clegg of The Center For Equal Opportunity, he does make an observation about the likes of Congresstool Clyburn and the one-sided Democrat vote of Black Americans.
It's tribalism.
“It’s tribal. … It’s a step backwards from Martin Luther King’s dream [and from] maybe a couple of millennia. He (Clyburn) is saying that not only should individual African-American politicians not be allowed to vote their consciences or for what they think is the best policy for all their constituents, he’s also saying that individual voters are shackled to their respective skin colors and can vote only after asking themselves ‘What is best for my group.”
The tribalism is not unique to Blacks. Same can be said for Hispanics, the LGBT community, Asians, women. But for these groups, it is not as uniform as Black support for the Democrat party. It would really be news if an Asian, Hispanic, LGBT, or woman Democrat were to make such an absurd statement as did Congresstool Clyburn.
But it's what is the prevailing fact of the Democrat party. That Blacks will only get more of a piece of the American dream and a seat at the table if they are Democrats and vote Democrat.
So, if we are to have a serious conversation about race as the attorney general, Eric Holder, once said, how can we if it is not only so one-sided but one-sided to the point of the ridiculous.
The fact is that Sen. Scott maybe Black, but does not see everything through the prism of a Black experience. He is a man of the New South. A South that will elect him to a full term to the United States senate. Remember, Sen. Scott is running statewide. Congresstool Clyburn is a gerrymandered district so that he can win with relative ease. I think that Sen. Scott speaks more for the progress of Blacks than Congresstool Clyburn.
And what about the Dear Leader, President Obama, himself? How did he not win one but two national elections? Was it just on the backs of Black voters? Or just on a coalition of Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, LGBT, women and labor unions? Did not some Whites vote for the Dear Leader, President Obama? Of course that is the case.
In general, Black Americans have made great advances in American life. Not just politically, but economically, in education and their general standard of living.
But there is no question that there have been horrible drawbacks.
It is a major drawback that up to seven out of ten child births among Black women are out of wedlock. And that Black women are more likely to have abortions than other groups. That Blacks are more likely than most groups to drop out of high school and thus never go to college. That Black men are more likely to spend a part of their life in jail. And yes, there is still some lingering of outright racism that reared its ugly head in the name of one Donald Sterling.
Not just electing a Black man to the presidency has even made a difference and in fact may have made the above worse.
So to have that honest conversation, especially among Blacks, why not two people like Congresstool Clyburn and Sen. Scott sitting down together and find some real common ground? Not just a photo-op session and play to their respective bases, but let it all hang out. Because I bet a dollar to a donut that they might just find out that they do agree on many things and can and should work together.
See, that is the conversation that needs to be had.
But if we have to vote our "race", then how can we expect people to talk to each other and not over each other?
So, I bring you Congressman James Clyburn (D-SC).
Congresstool Clyburn is fourth in the Democrat party leadership in the House of Representatives.
I do not know why Congresstool Clyburn was asked about the South Carolina Senator, Tim Scott (R-SC), who is running for a full senate term. But he was asked. And here is a real starter about that race conversation:
“If you call progress electing a person with the pigmentation that he has, who votes against the interest and aspirations of 95 percent of the black people in South Carolina, then I guess that’s progress.”
Get it?
It's not that he does not vote the party line. Its that he does not vote for or promote the race line.
The implication of Congresstool Clyburn is that for the most part, about 95% of that part, Blacks think and act exactly alike.
At least in South Carolina. And keep in mind that Sen. Scott is Black.
It does seem to be the case of voting patterns at least. It is estimated that well north of 90% of Black Americans did vote twice for Democrats in general and Barack Obama in particular. And I do get the voting for the Dear Leader, President Obama, the first time. Second time, not so much. Democrats in general I do not get either. But that is not the point.
The point is that people like Congresstool Clyburn make such an absurd, and quite frankly racist statement about a fellow Black American and the way that he does or does not vote.
But in the linked article, Roger Clegg of The Center For Equal Opportunity, he does make an observation about the likes of Congresstool Clyburn and the one-sided Democrat vote of Black Americans.
It's tribalism.
“It’s tribal. … It’s a step backwards from Martin Luther King’s dream [and from] maybe a couple of millennia. He (Clyburn) is saying that not only should individual African-American politicians not be allowed to vote their consciences or for what they think is the best policy for all their constituents, he’s also saying that individual voters are shackled to their respective skin colors and can vote only after asking themselves ‘What is best for my group.”
The tribalism is not unique to Blacks. Same can be said for Hispanics, the LGBT community, Asians, women. But for these groups, it is not as uniform as Black support for the Democrat party. It would really be news if an Asian, Hispanic, LGBT, or woman Democrat were to make such an absurd statement as did Congresstool Clyburn.
But it's what is the prevailing fact of the Democrat party. That Blacks will only get more of a piece of the American dream and a seat at the table if they are Democrats and vote Democrat.
So, if we are to have a serious conversation about race as the attorney general, Eric Holder, once said, how can we if it is not only so one-sided but one-sided to the point of the ridiculous.
The fact is that Sen. Scott maybe Black, but does not see everything through the prism of a Black experience. He is a man of the New South. A South that will elect him to a full term to the United States senate. Remember, Sen. Scott is running statewide. Congresstool Clyburn is a gerrymandered district so that he can win with relative ease. I think that Sen. Scott speaks more for the progress of Blacks than Congresstool Clyburn.
And what about the Dear Leader, President Obama, himself? How did he not win one but two national elections? Was it just on the backs of Black voters? Or just on a coalition of Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, LGBT, women and labor unions? Did not some Whites vote for the Dear Leader, President Obama? Of course that is the case.
In general, Black Americans have made great advances in American life. Not just politically, but economically, in education and their general standard of living.
But there is no question that there have been horrible drawbacks.
It is a major drawback that up to seven out of ten child births among Black women are out of wedlock. And that Black women are more likely to have abortions than other groups. That Blacks are more likely than most groups to drop out of high school and thus never go to college. That Black men are more likely to spend a part of their life in jail. And yes, there is still some lingering of outright racism that reared its ugly head in the name of one Donald Sterling.
Not just electing a Black man to the presidency has even made a difference and in fact may have made the above worse.
So to have that honest conversation, especially among Blacks, why not two people like Congresstool Clyburn and Sen. Scott sitting down together and find some real common ground? Not just a photo-op session and play to their respective bases, but let it all hang out. Because I bet a dollar to a donut that they might just find out that they do agree on many things and can and should work together.
See, that is the conversation that needs to be had.
But if we have to vote our "race", then how can we expect people to talk to each other and not over each other?
Wednesday, May 07, 2014
Charlie Crist A Most Loathsome Politician
The former Florida governor, Charlie Crist, is quite possibly the most loathsome politician in the United States today.
In this short piece in The Daily Caller, Mr. Crist, a former Republican, Independent and now a Democrat, claims that the real reason he left the Republican party in 2010 is . . .get ready for it . . .raaaaaacists!
Remember, there are five a's in raaaaacists.
Yes, astonishingly, Mr. Crist, now running for governor of Florida again as a Democrat, blames Republican "activists" and their sheer hatred of the Dear Leader, President Obama, as the reason he could not take it anymore being a Republican.
So let me take you back to the 2010 Florida senate campaign.
Then Gov. Crist was the Republican governor of Florida and decided that he was bored with that position and announced that he was going to run for the Republican nomination for the federal senate. No problem. He has that right. That was in May, 2009. And in the same month, Marco Rubio announced he too was going to run for the senate seat being vacated by then-Sen. Bob Martinez. And I totally endorsed Mr. Rubio's candidacy. The reasons are at the link. As it turned out, it was providential to support Mr. Rubio for once he gained steam and overtook Mr. Christ in polls, once it became clear that Mr. Rubio was going to win, Mr. Crist saw the light, the error of his ways and announced that he was running for the seat as an Independent. Mr. Crist began a clear left turn by doing so. One big issue I noted here. But as The Daily Caller notes in this link to Buzzfeed, not exactly right-wing central, ol' Charlie has spent much of his political career flip-flopping on issues to suit where the wind was blowing in the Republican party. And he gained the support of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2010. Of course until it became clear that the rank and file supported Mr. Rubio. Mr. Rubio won the nomination handily, Mr. Crist became an independent and suddenly realized, no I am not a conservative but a "Barack Obama Democrat".
May I note here that all of those raaaaacist activists were pounding the pavement and working hard to vote for and nominate the Hispanic candidate, Mr. Rubio. Why those dasterly raaaaacist Republicans!
I guess that what it was is that they saved all the venom in their cold hearts for Barack Obama. Only because he was Black. Not that many, no most, no all his policies sucked.
It would be one thing if Mr. Crist was a moderate or even liberal Republican during his tenure as Florida attorney general and governor. But he wasn't. He ran as and governed as a conservative Republican and only began the left turn while running for senate. Because he had to contrast himself somehow with Mr. Rubio. And once he lost that election, he eventually made the transition complete and is now running as a left-wing Democrat for his old office. He has changed on every position that he once had as a Republican.
And he now is totally Barack Obama's homeboy.
The complete interview with Mr. Crist is here.
Here is a quote from Mr. Crist that is, well just so fake as he is:
“I couldn’t be consistent with myself and my core beliefs, and stay with a party that was so unfriendly toward the African-American president, I’ll just go there. was a Republican and I saw the activists and what they were doing, it was intolerable to me.”
Oh, please!
Running for office as a Republican, he sure as hell did not mind trying to win these raaaaacist activists over. And more than once. And he sure as hell did not mind taking campaign money for the raaaaacist activists.
There are many other politicians that have changed parties. Ronald Reagan is a pretty famous one. The current governor of Rhode Island, Lincoln Chaffee, is another who was a liberal Republican senator, ran for governor of Rhode Island as an Independent and became a Democrat as governor.
A former Vermont senator, the last Republican one, Jim Jeffords, also was a liberal Republican and became an Independent that caucused with the Democrats. The other way was former congressman and Texas senator Phil Graham who went from Democrat to Republican. A slew of mostly Southern Democrats switched parties in 1994 after their party went down in electoral flames. One of those still in office is Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Alabama).
I don't mind honest people seeing that they no longer are comfortable in the party they once belonged to. Most of the time voters make the right judgement when they run for reelection or election to another office.
But Mr. Crist, he is just totally special. And he makes his real reason for getting out of the Republican party is because some activists, supposedly, are raaaaacists.
One only hopes that Florida Democrats see that Mr. Crist will turn on them if the political winds demand it. One hopes that the Florida Democrats will not put all their eggs in the Crist basket in an attempt to wrest the governor's office from the current Republican occupant, Rick Scott. If not, and the Florida Democrat voters nominate ol' Floppin'Charlie in their primary, they deserve what they get. A political opportunist who knows no bounds of being a worthless, loathsome politician.
In this short piece in The Daily Caller, Mr. Crist, a former Republican, Independent and now a Democrat, claims that the real reason he left the Republican party in 2010 is . . .get ready for it . . .raaaaaacists!
Remember, there are five a's in raaaaacists.
Yes, astonishingly, Mr. Crist, now running for governor of Florida again as a Democrat, blames Republican "activists" and their sheer hatred of the Dear Leader, President Obama, as the reason he could not take it anymore being a Republican.
So let me take you back to the 2010 Florida senate campaign.
Then Gov. Crist was the Republican governor of Florida and decided that he was bored with that position and announced that he was going to run for the Republican nomination for the federal senate. No problem. He has that right. That was in May, 2009. And in the same month, Marco Rubio announced he too was going to run for the senate seat being vacated by then-Sen. Bob Martinez. And I totally endorsed Mr. Rubio's candidacy. The reasons are at the link. As it turned out, it was providential to support Mr. Rubio for once he gained steam and overtook Mr. Christ in polls, once it became clear that Mr. Rubio was going to win, Mr. Crist saw the light, the error of his ways and announced that he was running for the seat as an Independent. Mr. Crist began a clear left turn by doing so. One big issue I noted here. But as The Daily Caller notes in this link to Buzzfeed, not exactly right-wing central, ol' Charlie has spent much of his political career flip-flopping on issues to suit where the wind was blowing in the Republican party. And he gained the support of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2010. Of course until it became clear that the rank and file supported Mr. Rubio. Mr. Rubio won the nomination handily, Mr. Crist became an independent and suddenly realized, no I am not a conservative but a "Barack Obama Democrat".
May I note here that all of those raaaaacist activists were pounding the pavement and working hard to vote for and nominate the Hispanic candidate, Mr. Rubio. Why those dasterly raaaaacist Republicans!
I guess that what it was is that they saved all the venom in their cold hearts for Barack Obama. Only because he was Black. Not that many, no most, no all his policies sucked.
It would be one thing if Mr. Crist was a moderate or even liberal Republican during his tenure as Florida attorney general and governor. But he wasn't. He ran as and governed as a conservative Republican and only began the left turn while running for senate. Because he had to contrast himself somehow with Mr. Rubio. And once he lost that election, he eventually made the transition complete and is now running as a left-wing Democrat for his old office. He has changed on every position that he once had as a Republican.
And he now is totally Barack Obama's homeboy.
The complete interview with Mr. Crist is here.
Here is a quote from Mr. Crist that is, well just so fake as he is:
“I couldn’t be consistent with myself and my core beliefs, and stay with a party that was so unfriendly toward the African-American president, I’ll just go there. was a Republican and I saw the activists and what they were doing, it was intolerable to me.”
Oh, please!
Running for office as a Republican, he sure as hell did not mind trying to win these raaaaacist activists over. And more than once. And he sure as hell did not mind taking campaign money for the raaaaacist activists.
There are many other politicians that have changed parties. Ronald Reagan is a pretty famous one. The current governor of Rhode Island, Lincoln Chaffee, is another who was a liberal Republican senator, ran for governor of Rhode Island as an Independent and became a Democrat as governor.
A former Vermont senator, the last Republican one, Jim Jeffords, also was a liberal Republican and became an Independent that caucused with the Democrats. The other way was former congressman and Texas senator Phil Graham who went from Democrat to Republican. A slew of mostly Southern Democrats switched parties in 1994 after their party went down in electoral flames. One of those still in office is Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Alabama).
I don't mind honest people seeing that they no longer are comfortable in the party they once belonged to. Most of the time voters make the right judgement when they run for reelection or election to another office.
But Mr. Crist, he is just totally special. And he makes his real reason for getting out of the Republican party is because some activists, supposedly, are raaaaacists.
One only hopes that Florida Democrats see that Mr. Crist will turn on them if the political winds demand it. One hopes that the Florida Democrats will not put all their eggs in the Crist basket in an attempt to wrest the governor's office from the current Republican occupant, Rick Scott. If not, and the Florida Democrat voters nominate ol' Floppin'Charlie in their primary, they deserve what they get. A political opportunist who knows no bounds of being a worthless, loathsome politician.
The War Against Dr. Eric Walsh Continues
The Pasadena, California, Director of Public Health, Dr. Eric Walsh, is being persecuted for his personal beliefs to the point that it appears he will lose his position as the pound of flesh to shut up the "social justice" fanatics.'
Let's take a walk back to last week when I first wrote about the assault on Dr. Walsh. Please make sure to read the links.
Understand that Dr. Walsh was asked to be the Pasadena City College commencement speaker as a second choice. The reason that he was second choice is because the original gentleman that was asked, Dustin Lance Black, a PCC alumnus, Academy Award winner and openly gay, was unceremoniously disinvited. I don't know if Mr. Black was going to speak about homosexuality primarily, but the college got the heebie jeebies due to the scandal involving former professor, Hugo Schwyzer. And it does not help that Mr. Black had some racy photos on the internets.
Enter Dr. Walsh.
He was invited in place of Mr. Black to deliver the commencement address.
But the "social justice" crowd, led by a group called Students For Social Justice, decided to find some dirt on Dr. Walsh.
And boy, did they.
As noted in the link above, this group found some sermons that Dr. Walsh had given as a part-time minister of the Altadena Seventh-day Adventist church. And at least one sermon was about the evils of homosexuality. Again, look at the link for more information.
And the "social justice" crowd whipped the Pasadena citizenry into self-righteous wanting to get rid of the guy. Not for anything work related, but what are his religious beliefs.
Before I continue, I have written a couple of posts calling him out by his name not for his views on homosexuality and homosexuals, but his performance as Pasadena Director of Public Health and they are here and here.http://rightviewfromtheleftcoast.blogspot.com/2013/11/pasadenas-idiocy-is-my-churchs-gain.html See, I care about what he does in his role as the Director of Public Health. What he says in his pulpit has not proven to be relevant.
But now that the "social justice" crowd has forced the city to have a full blown investigation of Dr. Walsh, of course they will find something, anything, to use when they do the inevitable and fire Dr. Walsh.
And it looks like they may have a smoking gun according to the local fish wrap, the Pasadena Star-News.
Yes, Dr. Walsh failed to file a disclosure form for outside income sources to prevent any potential conflict of interest. It is known as California form 700. It is not a bad thing, but the city had to know that he did not file the form from the time that he was hired in 2010. And it took until 2014 to discover this anomaly that could have been corrected under regular circumstances? Understand that Dr. Walsh is on administrative leave while the city manager, Michael Beck, completes an "investigation" that is supposed to focus only on whether the multiple controversial sermons affected his role as Public Health Director. But if there was no "investigation", no one would apparently know about Dr. Walsh' failure to file the California 700 form. That is what I get out of it.
I do not doubt that this is what is going to be used to rid the city of this otherwise decent employee. In this Star-News article it notes that Dr. Walsh has pretty much been an advocate for aspects of his job that probably conflicts with his religious views. Here is a money paragraph:
In contrast to his statements at the pulpit, at public events Walsh has spoken about the negative effects of discrimination and has championed progressive causes at the Public Health Department, including opening the state’s first city-run dental clinic for HIV patients.
See, his religious views did not affect his job as Public Health Director.
But the "social justice" police will have none of that.
Of course the AIDS Healthcare members chimed in at the city council meeting condemning Dr. Walsh as a pastor and saying, even though the evidence proves otherwise, that he just can't provide services unique to AIDS and or HIV positive patients.
A group from New York City, the Catholic League, weighed in on the issue because at least in one sermon, Dr. Walsh suggested that there are differences between Roman Catholics and Protestants. The Seventh-day Adventists are Protestant Christians. It may shock Bill Donohue that some Protestants still hold negative views about the Roman Catholic church, but there are. And again, I do not see any evidence that Dr. Walsh intentionally sought out Roman Catholics and openly or secretly discriminated against them due to them being Roman Catholic. But Mr. Donohue wants to discriminate as evidenced by this statement:
“The first I learned of Dr. Eric Walsh was last week when he was asked to give the commencement address at Pasadena City College. After reading some of his hateful, and astonishingly ignorant, statements on Catholicism, I wondered why anyone would invite him to speak anywhere, never mind a college. Dr. Walsh is not fit to be the head of Pasadena’s Public Health Department. It is not worth attempting to rebut the man’s bigotry, so outlandish is it. Anyone whose judgment is that impaired has no legitimate role to play in public life.”
Yes, I do agree that they are probably ignorant statements about the Roman Catholic church. But to say that because of that a person has "no legitimate role to play in public life" is also very ignorant.
Say, Mr. Donohue, what do you think of you coreligionist, actor Mel Gibson and his anti-Protestant and anti-Semitic views? Views based on his being raised a very ardent Roman Catholic. Are you happy that he has been shunned by the entertainment industry? That he cannot work and provide for his family? Get back to me, Mr Donohue.
If that is not enough, it appears that his own denomination is turning on him.
Once again in the Star-News, they report that the Southern California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists are not only saying that Dr. Walsh does not represent the views of the church, but that he is not even ordained or hold ministerial credentials of the church. Yet the Conference pays Dr. Walsh's salary.
Can I get a Whiskey? Tango? Foxtrot? on that one?!
Betty Cooney is a spokesman for the Conference and wrote this statement to the Star-News:
“He does not hold ministerial credentials from the Adventist Church, does not speak on behalf of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, and as far as we know, does not represent his views as anything other than his own.”
Maybe not completely accurate. For you see, the SDA church is pretty clear about homosexuality according to their own 28 Fundamental Beliefs. It does not explicitly come out against homosexuality in general, but it is pretty clear that marriage only is the way to have sexual relations. And in this from Wikipedia, the fount of all information, they state that the church does in fact have a very strong stand against homosexuality. And yep, they do refer to the Roman Catholic church as The Great Whore of Babylon. So me thinks that Miss Cooney needs to take a primer on her denomination's basic beliefs.
So yes, it appears that through no fault of his own, Dr. Walsh was asked to be a replacement speaker at the PCC commencement as a second choice. And because the first choice was not properly vetted by the powers that be in PCC, Dr. Walsh has been the victim of "social justice".
It does not matter that there is no, I mean no evidence, that Dr. Walsh let his clearly very traditional if not unusual Christian beliefs affect his job as the Pasadena Director of Public Health.
A question I have is this.
What if PCC had invited Dr. Walsh in the first place, would there have been such a hue and cry from the "social justice" crowd? The Roman Catholics? Gay rights activists?
I think not.
But don't worry.
In the name of "social justice" a man that appeared to meet job requirements at the time of hire in 2010 and had no complaints about his job performance in any way will be ousted because of some people that needed a pound of flesh. The "social justice" crowd.
Let's take a walk back to last week when I first wrote about the assault on Dr. Walsh. Please make sure to read the links.
Understand that Dr. Walsh was asked to be the Pasadena City College commencement speaker as a second choice. The reason that he was second choice is because the original gentleman that was asked, Dustin Lance Black, a PCC alumnus, Academy Award winner and openly gay, was unceremoniously disinvited. I don't know if Mr. Black was going to speak about homosexuality primarily, but the college got the heebie jeebies due to the scandal involving former professor, Hugo Schwyzer. And it does not help that Mr. Black had some racy photos on the internets.
Enter Dr. Walsh.
He was invited in place of Mr. Black to deliver the commencement address.
But the "social justice" crowd, led by a group called Students For Social Justice, decided to find some dirt on Dr. Walsh.
And boy, did they.
As noted in the link above, this group found some sermons that Dr. Walsh had given as a part-time minister of the Altadena Seventh-day Adventist church. And at least one sermon was about the evils of homosexuality. Again, look at the link for more information.
And the "social justice" crowd whipped the Pasadena citizenry into self-righteous wanting to get rid of the guy. Not for anything work related, but what are his religious beliefs.
Before I continue, I have written a couple of posts calling him out by his name not for his views on homosexuality and homosexuals, but his performance as Pasadena Director of Public Health and they are here and here.http://rightviewfromtheleftcoast.blogspot.com/2013/11/pasadenas-idiocy-is-my-churchs-gain.html See, I care about what he does in his role as the Director of Public Health. What he says in his pulpit has not proven to be relevant.
But now that the "social justice" crowd has forced the city to have a full blown investigation of Dr. Walsh, of course they will find something, anything, to use when they do the inevitable and fire Dr. Walsh.
And it looks like they may have a smoking gun according to the local fish wrap, the Pasadena Star-News.
Yes, Dr. Walsh failed to file a disclosure form for outside income sources to prevent any potential conflict of interest. It is known as California form 700. It is not a bad thing, but the city had to know that he did not file the form from the time that he was hired in 2010. And it took until 2014 to discover this anomaly that could have been corrected under regular circumstances? Understand that Dr. Walsh is on administrative leave while the city manager, Michael Beck, completes an "investigation" that is supposed to focus only on whether the multiple controversial sermons affected his role as Public Health Director. But if there was no "investigation", no one would apparently know about Dr. Walsh' failure to file the California 700 form. That is what I get out of it.
I do not doubt that this is what is going to be used to rid the city of this otherwise decent employee. In this Star-News article it notes that Dr. Walsh has pretty much been an advocate for aspects of his job that probably conflicts with his religious views. Here is a money paragraph:
In contrast to his statements at the pulpit, at public events Walsh has spoken about the negative effects of discrimination and has championed progressive causes at the Public Health Department, including opening the state’s first city-run dental clinic for HIV patients.
See, his religious views did not affect his job as Public Health Director.
But the "social justice" police will have none of that.
Of course the AIDS Healthcare members chimed in at the city council meeting condemning Dr. Walsh as a pastor and saying, even though the evidence proves otherwise, that he just can't provide services unique to AIDS and or HIV positive patients.
A group from New York City, the Catholic League, weighed in on the issue because at least in one sermon, Dr. Walsh suggested that there are differences between Roman Catholics and Protestants. The Seventh-day Adventists are Protestant Christians. It may shock Bill Donohue that some Protestants still hold negative views about the Roman Catholic church, but there are. And again, I do not see any evidence that Dr. Walsh intentionally sought out Roman Catholics and openly or secretly discriminated against them due to them being Roman Catholic. But Mr. Donohue wants to discriminate as evidenced by this statement:
“The first I learned of Dr. Eric Walsh was last week when he was asked to give the commencement address at Pasadena City College. After reading some of his hateful, and astonishingly ignorant, statements on Catholicism, I wondered why anyone would invite him to speak anywhere, never mind a college. Dr. Walsh is not fit to be the head of Pasadena’s Public Health Department. It is not worth attempting to rebut the man’s bigotry, so outlandish is it. Anyone whose judgment is that impaired has no legitimate role to play in public life.”
Yes, I do agree that they are probably ignorant statements about the Roman Catholic church. But to say that because of that a person has "no legitimate role to play in public life" is also very ignorant.
Say, Mr. Donohue, what do you think of you coreligionist, actor Mel Gibson and his anti-Protestant and anti-Semitic views? Views based on his being raised a very ardent Roman Catholic. Are you happy that he has been shunned by the entertainment industry? That he cannot work and provide for his family? Get back to me, Mr Donohue.
If that is not enough, it appears that his own denomination is turning on him.
Once again in the Star-News, they report that the Southern California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists are not only saying that Dr. Walsh does not represent the views of the church, but that he is not even ordained or hold ministerial credentials of the church. Yet the Conference pays Dr. Walsh's salary.
Can I get a Whiskey? Tango? Foxtrot? on that one?!
Betty Cooney is a spokesman for the Conference and wrote this statement to the Star-News:
“He does not hold ministerial credentials from the Adventist Church, does not speak on behalf of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, and as far as we know, does not represent his views as anything other than his own.”
Maybe not completely accurate. For you see, the SDA church is pretty clear about homosexuality according to their own 28 Fundamental Beliefs. It does not explicitly come out against homosexuality in general, but it is pretty clear that marriage only is the way to have sexual relations. And in this from Wikipedia, the fount of all information, they state that the church does in fact have a very strong stand against homosexuality. And yep, they do refer to the Roman Catholic church as The Great Whore of Babylon. So me thinks that Miss Cooney needs to take a primer on her denomination's basic beliefs.
So yes, it appears that through no fault of his own, Dr. Walsh was asked to be a replacement speaker at the PCC commencement as a second choice. And because the first choice was not properly vetted by the powers that be in PCC, Dr. Walsh has been the victim of "social justice".
It does not matter that there is no, I mean no evidence, that Dr. Walsh let his clearly very traditional if not unusual Christian beliefs affect his job as the Pasadena Director of Public Health.
A question I have is this.
What if PCC had invited Dr. Walsh in the first place, would there have been such a hue and cry from the "social justice" crowd? The Roman Catholics? Gay rights activists?
I think not.
But don't worry.
In the name of "social justice" a man that appeared to meet job requirements at the time of hire in 2010 and had no complaints about his job performance in any way will be ousted because of some people that needed a pound of flesh. The "social justice" crowd.
Friday, May 02, 2014
Hmm, A Lesson Not Learned In The Sterling Kerfuffle
OK, it appears that one thing about the whole Donald Sterling kerfuffle that I forgot to mention in this post is the following.
While I provided a pretty comprehensive history of Mr. Sterling's pretty public transgressions, the fact is that the revelations of his mistress, V. Stiviano, was done in private conversations that she was tape recording. In California, one can not tape a phone conversation unless both parties agree to it. Miss Stiviano claims that Mr. Sterling did approve of it. But we only have Miss Stiviano's word for it. So it is very possible that Miss Stiviano did the recording without sufficient approval of Mr. Sterling.
In other words, while there is ample history of Mr. Sterling's racism and misogyny, this is what has made the NBA seek to remove him as the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.
Now, what a Pasadena city employee does when he is not on city time is coming back to bite him in much the same way as it did Mr. Sterling.
The Pasadena director of public health, Dr. Eric Walsh, was going to give the commencement speech at Pasadena City College later this month. Now Dr. Walsh replaced one Dustin Lance Black who is an Academy Award-winning screen writer and alumnus of PCC. And he happens to be an open homosexual. And there are racy photos of Mr. Black and a former boyfriend floating around the internets. And PCC found a way to "disinvite" him as this article notes. Now to be fair, PCC has already had a scandal of sorts with now former professor Hugo Schwyzwer and his inviting a porn actress to speak at one of his controversial classes. Read the link for why it was controversial. Now when PCC decided to "disinvite" Mr. Black, one can cut the college slack due to their previous seemingly inaction in the Schwyzer affair.
But not to this student group called Students For Social Justice.
Led by fourth year student Sarah Belknap, the group decided to take to the internets to find something dirty on Dr. Walsh.
I have to digress a moment on this point about Miss Belknap.
PCC is a two-year community college and Miss Belknap is in her fourth year. Maybe if she hit the books and study a little harder, she would take her social justice wares to a four year university. Just sayin. . .
Well, Dr. Walsh is a Seventh-Day Adventist preacher and needless to say, they found plenty of his sermons that were, well not exactly politically correct.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Walsh spoke on such topics as the evils of the one-time hit television show Will And Grace. The Will character was openly gay. And Dr. Walsh, associate pastor at Altadena Seventh-Day Adventist church, said this is in a sermon:
"Today you have whole shows like 'Will & Grace' where the whole theme is around gayness -- if there is such a thing. How does the devil do it?…A slippery slope, he doesn’t give you whole lot of it all at once, it's just a little bit at a time. And you become kind of immunized to something that was once revolting to American society.”
So, he is not a fan of Will And Grace and thinks that it sets a bad example for Americans. Again, this was not said in his capacity as the Pasadena director of public health but as a minister. In fact according to this in our local fish wrap, the Pasadena Star-News, Dr. Walsh spoke in his capacity as director of public health at All Saints Episcopal Church, a very modernist Episcopal congregation that has and does perform same-sex marriages. And he has spoken at the Mayor's prayer breakfast on the need to maintain the multicultural feel of Pasadena. And that discrimination can lead to public health problems. And he even quoted Oprah Winfrey and Tupac Shakur.
However, in the pulpit, he did not care for such people and groups that he believes are bringing down America's morality, such as it is.
In other words, in Dr. Walsh's capacity as director of public health, a job he has had since 2010, he is doing and saying all the right things. But as a minister, he is not sure all about the things he comes to understand are bringing down his nation and yes, his city.
In other words, to people like Miss Belknap and the Students For Social Justice ilk, people like Dr. Walsh who do find a way to thread the needle of his primary job for the city and his belief that God wants a different world, especially regarding moral issues, can not do both.
And the response to the social justice crowd is putting Dr. Walsh on paid administrative leave by city manager, Michael Beck, while the city "investigates" whether or not what he said as a private citizen would affect his job.
I put "investigates" in quotes because I am pretty certain that the city of Pasadena will find a way to make Dr. Walsh go away. They will be more afraid of the social justice crowd rather than whether or not Dr. Walsh has done a good job.
And what does this have to do with Donald Sterling?
How we have come to find out about both Mr. Sterling and Dr. Walsh.
A private and or series of private discussions are just that. Private. It does not give the right for someone to tape record it without permission of both parties. Even if in the end it is for some good. The law in California is very clear.
In the case of Dr. Walsh, he was unfortunately a victim of a college administration that got caught with it's pants down, so to speak. They disinvited an openly gay speaker for possibly having racy photos online. They asked Dr. Walsh to be a second choice. Because Mr. Black raised the "they don't want me cause I'm gay card" and whipped up the social justice crowd, Dr. Walsh not only has been scrapped as the commencement speaker, but Mr. Black, of course, was reinstated as the commencement speaker. And because of the social justice crowd they may cost Dr. Walsh his job because when he was on HIS OWN time, he spoke honestly, as he saw it on such hot-button so called social issues.
Mr. Sterling has a record as a racist and misogynist and one who openly discriminated against minorities and families with children in his rental properties. Dr. Walsh has no such record. But as a minister of the Gospel, as he sees it homosexuality is wrong and he spoke that truth. Mr. Sterling is going to be forced to sell his basketball team not for any of the past evils, but for what he said to a mistress on tape. Dr. Walsh will possibly lose his position as director of public health not for anything job related but what he has said outside his capacity of the director of public health.
The lesson we have not learned it appears is that nothing is private anymore. Nothing.
While I provided a pretty comprehensive history of Mr. Sterling's pretty public transgressions, the fact is that the revelations of his mistress, V. Stiviano, was done in private conversations that she was tape recording. In California, one can not tape a phone conversation unless both parties agree to it. Miss Stiviano claims that Mr. Sterling did approve of it. But we only have Miss Stiviano's word for it. So it is very possible that Miss Stiviano did the recording without sufficient approval of Mr. Sterling.
In other words, while there is ample history of Mr. Sterling's racism and misogyny, this is what has made the NBA seek to remove him as the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.
Now, what a Pasadena city employee does when he is not on city time is coming back to bite him in much the same way as it did Mr. Sterling.
The Pasadena director of public health, Dr. Eric Walsh, was going to give the commencement speech at Pasadena City College later this month. Now Dr. Walsh replaced one Dustin Lance Black who is an Academy Award-winning screen writer and alumnus of PCC. And he happens to be an open homosexual. And there are racy photos of Mr. Black and a former boyfriend floating around the internets. And PCC found a way to "disinvite" him as this article notes. Now to be fair, PCC has already had a scandal of sorts with now former professor Hugo Schwyzwer and his inviting a porn actress to speak at one of his controversial classes. Read the link for why it was controversial. Now when PCC decided to "disinvite" Mr. Black, one can cut the college slack due to their previous seemingly inaction in the Schwyzer affair.
But not to this student group called Students For Social Justice.
Led by fourth year student Sarah Belknap, the group decided to take to the internets to find something dirty on Dr. Walsh.
I have to digress a moment on this point about Miss Belknap.
PCC is a two-year community college and Miss Belknap is in her fourth year. Maybe if she hit the books and study a little harder, she would take her social justice wares to a four year university. Just sayin. . .
Well, Dr. Walsh is a Seventh-Day Adventist preacher and needless to say, they found plenty of his sermons that were, well not exactly politically correct.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Walsh spoke on such topics as the evils of the one-time hit television show Will And Grace. The Will character was openly gay. And Dr. Walsh, associate pastor at Altadena Seventh-Day Adventist church, said this is in a sermon:
"Today you have whole shows like 'Will & Grace' where the whole theme is around gayness -- if there is such a thing. How does the devil do it?…A slippery slope, he doesn’t give you whole lot of it all at once, it's just a little bit at a time. And you become kind of immunized to something that was once revolting to American society.”
So, he is not a fan of Will And Grace and thinks that it sets a bad example for Americans. Again, this was not said in his capacity as the Pasadena director of public health but as a minister. In fact according to this in our local fish wrap, the Pasadena Star-News, Dr. Walsh spoke in his capacity as director of public health at All Saints Episcopal Church, a very modernist Episcopal congregation that has and does perform same-sex marriages. And he has spoken at the Mayor's prayer breakfast on the need to maintain the multicultural feel of Pasadena. And that discrimination can lead to public health problems. And he even quoted Oprah Winfrey and Tupac Shakur.
However, in the pulpit, he did not care for such people and groups that he believes are bringing down America's morality, such as it is.
In other words, in Dr. Walsh's capacity as director of public health, a job he has had since 2010, he is doing and saying all the right things. But as a minister, he is not sure all about the things he comes to understand are bringing down his nation and yes, his city.
In other words, to people like Miss Belknap and the Students For Social Justice ilk, people like Dr. Walsh who do find a way to thread the needle of his primary job for the city and his belief that God wants a different world, especially regarding moral issues, can not do both.
And the response to the social justice crowd is putting Dr. Walsh on paid administrative leave by city manager, Michael Beck, while the city "investigates" whether or not what he said as a private citizen would affect his job.
I put "investigates" in quotes because I am pretty certain that the city of Pasadena will find a way to make Dr. Walsh go away. They will be more afraid of the social justice crowd rather than whether or not Dr. Walsh has done a good job.
And what does this have to do with Donald Sterling?
How we have come to find out about both Mr. Sterling and Dr. Walsh.
A private and or series of private discussions are just that. Private. It does not give the right for someone to tape record it without permission of both parties. Even if in the end it is for some good. The law in California is very clear.
In the case of Dr. Walsh, he was unfortunately a victim of a college administration that got caught with it's pants down, so to speak. They disinvited an openly gay speaker for possibly having racy photos online. They asked Dr. Walsh to be a second choice. Because Mr. Black raised the "they don't want me cause I'm gay card" and whipped up the social justice crowd, Dr. Walsh not only has been scrapped as the commencement speaker, but Mr. Black, of course, was reinstated as the commencement speaker. And because of the social justice crowd they may cost Dr. Walsh his job because when he was on HIS OWN time, he spoke honestly, as he saw it on such hot-button so called social issues.
Mr. Sterling has a record as a racist and misogynist and one who openly discriminated against minorities and families with children in his rental properties. Dr. Walsh has no such record. But as a minister of the Gospel, as he sees it homosexuality is wrong and he spoke that truth. Mr. Sterling is going to be forced to sell his basketball team not for any of the past evils, but for what he said to a mistress on tape. Dr. Walsh will possibly lose his position as director of public health not for anything job related but what he has said outside his capacity of the director of public health.
The lesson we have not learned it appears is that nothing is private anymore. Nothing.
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
The REAL Lesson Of The Donald Sterling Kerfuffle? Hypocrisy
Before I get started, let me be very clear right up front.
This post is in no way any kind of defense of the in limbo, titular owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, Donald Sterling.
What I want to share is the real lesson from this Le Affair d' Sterling.
That is the repugnant hypocrisy shown on all sides of the reason Mr. Sterling now being banned from the National Basketball Association for life, fined $2,500,000 and will be forced to sell the team.
BTW, the latter will be harder because there is no way Mr. Sterling will sell right away. In fact, I think that he could very well drag this out in the courts and expose the NBA to owners just as awful and corrupt as Mr. Sterling.
To understand why the NBA and Mr. Sterling came to this point, we have to get a flavor of Mr. Sterling himself and we need to go to the beginning.
Mr. Sterling is, essentially, a product of Los Angeles. Sure he was born in Chicago, Illinois, but his family moved here when he was two years old. His family surname, which he changed to the current one as an adult, is Tokowitz. He graduated Roosevelt high school in 1952. Roosevelt high is in the Eastside of Los Angeles when it was where a lot of working working-class Jewish people lived. He went to and graduated Cal State University, Los Angeles in 1956 and attained his law degree from the Southwestern University School of Law in 1960.
Clearly, Mr. Sterling has had some problem of his own upbringing since he changed his very ethnic, Jewish surname to a very Anglo-sounding surname. As the link indicates, Mr. Sterling had to start in law on his own because the opportunities to join a named law firm in the early 1960s were not all that great.
In starting the practice of law, Mr. Sterling became a divorce and personal injury attorney. Nothing like starting at the bottom of the law chain I suppose. I believe today we call Mr. Sterling's type of attorney an ambulance chaser. He made enough of a living there to purchase a 26-unit apartment building in Beverly Hills. And that was the start of the real estate empire that Mr. Sterling made it rich.
And in 1979 in a business deal with the man who bought the Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Kings and the then Fabulous Forum, Dr. Jerry Buss, it became his gateway to eventually buying his own team in the NBA.
And in 1981, Mr. Sterling spent $12,500,000 and purchased the then San Diego Clippers.
A digression here.
The San Diego Clippers started life in the NBA as the Buffalo Braves. A now politically incorrect team name if there ever was one. And the Braves could not hang in Buffalo and after eight seasons, moved to San Diego. Bottom line. They sucked in Buffalo and sucked in San Diego.
After the purchase of the Clippers, the Sterling ownership era began.
And right then and there, the NBA should have known that he was going to be a handful of an owner that did not care about niceties or even following the rules.
In 1982, Mr Sterling was fined $10,000 for saying that he have no problem if the Clippers finished in last place in the overall league standings so that they would be able to to have an automatic first-round draft pick.
Openly telling the league and the fans that you don't care where you finish to get a quick-fix high draft pick is a no-no in any professional sports league. And it should be.
In 1984, Mr. Sterling decided to move the Clippers up Interstate 5 to Los Angeles.
Again, another nicety was ignored by Mr. Sterling.
He needed to get league approval to make such a move. And because he did not get league approval, the NBA fined Mr. Sterling $25,000,000 for doing what he did without league approval. Of course Mr. Sterling was going to keep the team in Los Angeles and sued the NBA for $100,000,000. Eventually, the parties involved settled and Mr. Sterling ended up paying $6,000,000. I suppose that for Mr. Sterling, forcing the NBA to fine him less was worth the legal effort.
But the Sterling era truly was major suckage.
The Clippers played in the even then dilapidated Los_Angeles_Memorial_Sports_Arena from 1984 to 1999 when they joined the Kings and Lakers and play at the Staples Center.
They did not draw all that many fans during that time. They often finished in last place in the Pacific Division and league overall standings. In fact, the first winning season the Clippers had took eight seasons as they finished the 1991-91 season with a 45-39 record. It would take another five seasons for the Clippers to have a second winning season in Los Angeles.
Mr. Sterling has been until recently one of the cheapest owners in any sport. In fact The Sporting News bestowed the honor of Mr. Sterling being one of the worst owners in basketball in decades.
Mr. Sterling did not want to pay a fan that one a contest. Being that the fan was a lawyer, he had to sue to get his money. Mr. Sterling did not help defray costs when an assistant coach, Kim Hughes had surgery for prostate cancer. It took four Clipper players to raise $70,000 to pay for the operation.
And here in the LA Weekly, are some more of the reign of error that has been Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.
In 1983, this is what he asked a prospective head coach, Rollie Massimino:
"I wanna know why you think you can coach these niggers?"
Nice. Very nice.
And here is a choice one.
Mr. Sterling was negotiating with Danny Manning and with the then NBA commissioner, David Stern, in the room, he made this comment:
"I'm offering a lot of money for a poor black kid."
Again, such a mensch.
But understand this.
Mr. Sterling was not just a basketball team owner. He still was very involved with real estate and development. And as with being a basketball team owner, he was a very immoral individual.
Again, from the LA Weekly, we read about what happened in 2002 when Mr. Sterling was sued one of many times for housing discrimination. Here is what the property manager said Mr. Sterling said. Keep in mind, this is under oath:
"That's because of all the blacks in this building, they smell, they're not clean.. And it's because of all of the Mexicans that just sit around and smoke and drink all day. I don't like Mexican men because they smoke, drink and just hang around the house. Is she one of those black people that stink?...Just evict the bitch."
Such the man. Such a compassionate landlord. Especially when he wants to evict a tenant.
And back to basketball, former Clipper general manager, Elgin Baylor, sued Mr. Sterling after he was let go by Mr. Sterling. Mr. Baylor said he wanted to fill his team with "poor black boys from the South and a white head coach". And that Mr. Sterling kept his salary at $350,000 while the White coach at the time had just been signed to a four-year, $22,000,000 contract. Somehow, Mr. Baylor lost the lawsuit.
The case against Mr. Sterling basically started from day one. It has been very important to recall some of the history because it leads to the hypocrisy that is what has occurred in current NBA commissioner, Adam Silver, and his handing down an essential death sentence to Mr. Sterling.
For many years, Mr. Sterling has basically tried to buy off all those groups that might have caused problems for him.
One is a glaring pact with the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP. He gave them money, they made him out to be a good guy. The good guy being sued for housing discrimination. The good guy that said black people smelled and attracted vermin. Before the kerfuffle of his spouting off to his mistress, one V. Stiviano, about her chumminess with Magic Johnson and why she should not show photos on Instagram and not to bring Black people to Clipper games, Mr. Sterling was to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Los Angeles NAACP on May 15.
And Mr. Sterling may have kept the Los Angeles Times from going under gracing the Sunday main news section of pages of advertising touting, himself of course, his work on all sorts of charities and some of his upscale real estate properties. Sunday is the most expensive day to advertise in any newspaper and full page ads on this day cost a pretty penny.
And yet all, I mean all, of this has been known to the powers that be since the beginning.
There is no way that people did not know what kind of cretin Mr. Sterling is. What, did it really take a mistress tape recording conversations with Mr. Sterling and somehow, somehow it mysteriously leaked to TMZ? BTW, TMZ is a horrible gossip site and I am ashamed to even link to it. But there seems to be some kind of eternal justice that Mr. Sterling was outed as a horrible human being by TMZ.
What NBA commissioner Mr. Silver is doing is playing a game of CYA*. It may just work if Mr. Sterling just sells the team and slithers away quietly.
But it will not.
For if nothing else, when Mr. Sterling is not keeping the Times afloat with all his self-promoting ads, he keeps a lot of attorneys employed and rich. I guess hopefully for him, they are not lazy Mexicans and or smelly Blacks.
He will sue his way out of this. And I do not think that I would put it past him to drag other owners dirty laundry in the mix. Something that Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban, alluded to. And Mr. Cuban is not a man without his own controversies.
So, after all of this, where is the hypocrisy?
The whole tenure of Donald Sterling being a sports team owner has been a case study in it. People like the former NBA commissioner, David Stern, and his basically helping Mr. Sterling become an NBA owner in the first place.
The same NBA that essentially allowed Mr. Sterling to break a big rule by moving the Clippers from San Diego to Los Angeles.
The same NBA that knew Mr. Sterling was a pretty in-your-face racist and misogynist. And a slumlord as the cherry on top.
All the race-huckster groups that took Mr. Sterling's money and looked the other way.
And all the sanctimonious crap that we have to hear now, thanks to everyone jumping all over to condemn what they already knew.
The lesson is not that there is a man like Donald Sterling and his racist, misogynist ways exists. Sadly, it does. But the real lesson is that when everyone knows it and does nothing to stop it until it gets real bad, is that hypocrisy reigns here.
This post is in no way any kind of defense of the in limbo, titular owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, Donald Sterling.
What I want to share is the real lesson from this Le Affair d' Sterling.
That is the repugnant hypocrisy shown on all sides of the reason Mr. Sterling now being banned from the National Basketball Association for life, fined $2,500,000 and will be forced to sell the team.
BTW, the latter will be harder because there is no way Mr. Sterling will sell right away. In fact, I think that he could very well drag this out in the courts and expose the NBA to owners just as awful and corrupt as Mr. Sterling.
To understand why the NBA and Mr. Sterling came to this point, we have to get a flavor of Mr. Sterling himself and we need to go to the beginning.
Mr. Sterling is, essentially, a product of Los Angeles. Sure he was born in Chicago, Illinois, but his family moved here when he was two years old. His family surname, which he changed to the current one as an adult, is Tokowitz. He graduated Roosevelt high school in 1952. Roosevelt high is in the Eastside of Los Angeles when it was where a lot of working working-class Jewish people lived. He went to and graduated Cal State University, Los Angeles in 1956 and attained his law degree from the Southwestern University School of Law in 1960.
Clearly, Mr. Sterling has had some problem of his own upbringing since he changed his very ethnic, Jewish surname to a very Anglo-sounding surname. As the link indicates, Mr. Sterling had to start in law on his own because the opportunities to join a named law firm in the early 1960s were not all that great.
In starting the practice of law, Mr. Sterling became a divorce and personal injury attorney. Nothing like starting at the bottom of the law chain I suppose. I believe today we call Mr. Sterling's type of attorney an ambulance chaser. He made enough of a living there to purchase a 26-unit apartment building in Beverly Hills. And that was the start of the real estate empire that Mr. Sterling made it rich.
And in 1979 in a business deal with the man who bought the Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Kings and the then Fabulous Forum, Dr. Jerry Buss, it became his gateway to eventually buying his own team in the NBA.
And in 1981, Mr. Sterling spent $12,500,000 and purchased the then San Diego Clippers.
A digression here.
The San Diego Clippers started life in the NBA as the Buffalo Braves. A now politically incorrect team name if there ever was one. And the Braves could not hang in Buffalo and after eight seasons, moved to San Diego. Bottom line. They sucked in Buffalo and sucked in San Diego.
After the purchase of the Clippers, the Sterling ownership era began.
And right then and there, the NBA should have known that he was going to be a handful of an owner that did not care about niceties or even following the rules.
In 1982, Mr Sterling was fined $10,000 for saying that he have no problem if the Clippers finished in last place in the overall league standings so that they would be able to to have an automatic first-round draft pick.
Openly telling the league and the fans that you don't care where you finish to get a quick-fix high draft pick is a no-no in any professional sports league. And it should be.
In 1984, Mr. Sterling decided to move the Clippers up Interstate 5 to Los Angeles.
Again, another nicety was ignored by Mr. Sterling.
He needed to get league approval to make such a move. And because he did not get league approval, the NBA fined Mr. Sterling $25,000,000 for doing what he did without league approval. Of course Mr. Sterling was going to keep the team in Los Angeles and sued the NBA for $100,000,000. Eventually, the parties involved settled and Mr. Sterling ended up paying $6,000,000. I suppose that for Mr. Sterling, forcing the NBA to fine him less was worth the legal effort.
But the Sterling era truly was major suckage.
The Clippers played in the even then dilapidated Los_Angeles_Memorial_Sports_Arena from 1984 to 1999 when they joined the Kings and Lakers and play at the Staples Center.
They did not draw all that many fans during that time. They often finished in last place in the Pacific Division and league overall standings. In fact, the first winning season the Clippers had took eight seasons as they finished the 1991-91 season with a 45-39 record. It would take another five seasons for the Clippers to have a second winning season in Los Angeles.
Mr. Sterling has been until recently one of the cheapest owners in any sport. In fact The Sporting News bestowed the honor of Mr. Sterling being one of the worst owners in basketball in decades.
Mr. Sterling did not want to pay a fan that one a contest. Being that the fan was a lawyer, he had to sue to get his money. Mr. Sterling did not help defray costs when an assistant coach, Kim Hughes had surgery for prostate cancer. It took four Clipper players to raise $70,000 to pay for the operation.
And here in the LA Weekly, are some more of the reign of error that has been Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.
In 1983, this is what he asked a prospective head coach, Rollie Massimino:
"I wanna know why you think you can coach these niggers?"
Nice. Very nice.
And here is a choice one.
Mr. Sterling was negotiating with Danny Manning and with the then NBA commissioner, David Stern, in the room, he made this comment:
"I'm offering a lot of money for a poor black kid."
Again, such a mensch.
But understand this.
Mr. Sterling was not just a basketball team owner. He still was very involved with real estate and development. And as with being a basketball team owner, he was a very immoral individual.
Again, from the LA Weekly, we read about what happened in 2002 when Mr. Sterling was sued one of many times for housing discrimination. Here is what the property manager said Mr. Sterling said. Keep in mind, this is under oath:
"That's because of all the blacks in this building, they smell, they're not clean.. And it's because of all of the Mexicans that just sit around and smoke and drink all day. I don't like Mexican men because they smoke, drink and just hang around the house. Is she one of those black people that stink?...Just evict the bitch."
Such the man. Such a compassionate landlord. Especially when he wants to evict a tenant.
And back to basketball, former Clipper general manager, Elgin Baylor, sued Mr. Sterling after he was let go by Mr. Sterling. Mr. Baylor said he wanted to fill his team with "poor black boys from the South and a white head coach". And that Mr. Sterling kept his salary at $350,000 while the White coach at the time had just been signed to a four-year, $22,000,000 contract. Somehow, Mr. Baylor lost the lawsuit.
The case against Mr. Sterling basically started from day one. It has been very important to recall some of the history because it leads to the hypocrisy that is what has occurred in current NBA commissioner, Adam Silver, and his handing down an essential death sentence to Mr. Sterling.
For many years, Mr. Sterling has basically tried to buy off all those groups that might have caused problems for him.
One is a glaring pact with the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP. He gave them money, they made him out to be a good guy. The good guy being sued for housing discrimination. The good guy that said black people smelled and attracted vermin. Before the kerfuffle of his spouting off to his mistress, one V. Stiviano, about her chumminess with Magic Johnson and why she should not show photos on Instagram and not to bring Black people to Clipper games, Mr. Sterling was to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Los Angeles NAACP on May 15.
And Mr. Sterling may have kept the Los Angeles Times from going under gracing the Sunday main news section of pages of advertising touting, himself of course, his work on all sorts of charities and some of his upscale real estate properties. Sunday is the most expensive day to advertise in any newspaper and full page ads on this day cost a pretty penny.
And yet all, I mean all, of this has been known to the powers that be since the beginning.
There is no way that people did not know what kind of cretin Mr. Sterling is. What, did it really take a mistress tape recording conversations with Mr. Sterling and somehow, somehow it mysteriously leaked to TMZ? BTW, TMZ is a horrible gossip site and I am ashamed to even link to it. But there seems to be some kind of eternal justice that Mr. Sterling was outed as a horrible human being by TMZ.
What NBA commissioner Mr. Silver is doing is playing a game of CYA*. It may just work if Mr. Sterling just sells the team and slithers away quietly.
But it will not.
For if nothing else, when Mr. Sterling is not keeping the Times afloat with all his self-promoting ads, he keeps a lot of attorneys employed and rich. I guess hopefully for him, they are not lazy Mexicans and or smelly Blacks.
He will sue his way out of this. And I do not think that I would put it past him to drag other owners dirty laundry in the mix. Something that Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban, alluded to. And Mr. Cuban is not a man without his own controversies.
So, after all of this, where is the hypocrisy?
The whole tenure of Donald Sterling being a sports team owner has been a case study in it. People like the former NBA commissioner, David Stern, and his basically helping Mr. Sterling become an NBA owner in the first place.
The same NBA that essentially allowed Mr. Sterling to break a big rule by moving the Clippers from San Diego to Los Angeles.
The same NBA that knew Mr. Sterling was a pretty in-your-face racist and misogynist. And a slumlord as the cherry on top.
All the race-huckster groups that took Mr. Sterling's money and looked the other way.
And all the sanctimonious crap that we have to hear now, thanks to everyone jumping all over to condemn what they already knew.
The lesson is not that there is a man like Donald Sterling and his racist, misogynist ways exists. Sadly, it does. But the real lesson is that when everyone knows it and does nothing to stop it until it gets real bad, is that hypocrisy reigns here.
Friday, April 25, 2014
A Weekend Palate Cleanser: The Assault On Home Ownership Begins
Just when one thinks that the left might want to keep certain policies to themselves, we have to thank Ryan Cooper writing in The Week for beginning the assault on home ownership.
Yes, Mr. Cooper thinks that the American Dream of striving for home ownership is pretty bad. The really bad thing about home ownership is that it separates the haves from the have nots. No really, it does.
If you want Karl Marx 101, it is right here in this one sentence:
Homeownership has long been the way American society has divided itself into a responsible, stable bourgeoisie (owners) and an undisciplined rabble (renters). The divide used to be along stark, overtly racial lines, enforced by white supremacist terrorism, but nowadays the distinction is a bit more subtle.
Yes, you who are fortunate to be home owners and myself are bourgeoisie. And dammit, we maintain our bourgeois lifestyle by overt racism and even terrorism. I'm sorry, that was before. No, no, no. It's no longer so overt.
You must read all at the link to get the flavor of Mr. Cooper and ho at a level he does not really understand why home ownership is why America is the way she is.
First, some personal background.
As I am pushing 50 years old, Mrs. RVFTLC and I are pretty new homeowners. This May 15 will be our three-year anniversary as home owners. Before that we were renters. Yes, in many ways, renting is easy. All we have to do us write a check to our landlord once a month and that is it. Maybe included in the rent are utilities. Maybe not. And when one rents, if something goes wrong, like plumbing, or any other thing that is wrong, call the landlord. When the landlord feels like it, they will call someone to go over and take a look at the problem. And that person will notify the landlord. They determine if a total repair is going to be made or not. And renting one can choose an apartment, a condominium, a town home or even a home. Why if it is a home, don't worry about how the front yard looks. The landlord will send a gardener maybe every week or more likely twice a month. But you can't do anything YOU want to the front yard. Nor the back yard. Nor inside the domicile. You can't paint any wall willy nilly. And maybe you have to use approved nails by the landlord to hang your wall coverings, pictures, photos and the like. You can't choose carpet or hardwood floors. It's up to the landlord.
See, renting is great if you don't mind having most of your freedoms at the cost of the whim of a landlord. Or if you don't mind getting things done on a landlord's schedule and not your own.
But what is the wonder of home ownership?
Well, even though you are paying a mortgage for up to 30 years, it is yours. And the most obvious is that the mortgage payment never changes. The only way it does if one chooses to refinance the loan at a lower interest rate. Which lowers one's payment. Get it. It never goes up and can go down.
Now when Mrs. RVFTLC and I bought our current abode nearly three years ago, we decided that we did not want the work of owning a single-family dwelling. So we saw our dream, a town home. It is a compromise because of the way that it is layed out. It is in eight sections of about six to eight units each. And they have a detached garage, a little back yard, the unit and a little front yard. Perfect for our needs. As I alluded to, we belong to an HOA or Home Owner's Association. So it is our monthly mortgage and HOA payment. In three years no payment hike. Our HOA has only gone up $20 or an average of about $6.75c a year. The year before we moved, our rent went up $50. And was more than our two payments here combined.
And one thing that our current federal tax system does is give tax incentive to home ownership. Whether or not that is a good thing or not is for another time and another post.
By allotting a mortgage deduction for home ownership and improvements, I can assure you we have already recouped our investment by breaking even, federal tax wise. Even Mr. Cooper acknowledges that but in a snarky, disingenuous way. From Mr. Cooper:
The most prevalent is the mortgage interest deduction, which racked up a bill of $100 billion in 2009.
Don't you like how Mr. Cooper implies a cost? There is not a cost but $100,000,000,000 that does not go into the politician's pockets in Washington. It ends up staying in the local economies and taxes end up being collected locally rather than in Washington. So there is not a cost but not a redistribution of wealth either.
Speaking of taxes, being a home owner means that one has to pay property taxes.
And in California, for a roughly $300,000 home (yeah, there are some, but this is just a figure to use) the annual property tax is roughly $3,700. And in Los Angeles county there are special districts that the property tax goes to such as flood control, county parks, our local library. There are 11 extra assessments which adds roughly about $500 more to our property tax bill. So yes, being a home owner has the perk of paying for many services that renters do not directly pay for.
Something to think about, eh Mr. Cooper?
Without homeowners, who would pay for schools? Flood control districts? Storm drain channels? Community colleges? Shall I go on?
Here is something to think about.
In the United States, as of 2009, the home ownership rate was 67%. a majority of Americans. And yes, it is true as Mr. Cooper points out, many homeowners are underwater because of the housing bubble bursting in 2007. But unlike the gloom and doom of the millions that he mentions (and I have to doubt that broad number), one of the aspects of the investment into a home is for the long run. In other words, one can buy a home at $300,000 and stay in it 20 years. And maybe in that time, the value will go down. but at 20 years, if you sell it you will more than likely sell it at a profit. Yes if one buys a home just as an investment, it does take a lot of work into researching all case scenarios.
And while Mr. Cooper bashes some of the subsidies and or federal tax breaks as for the rich, again the fact is that the Home Mortgage Deduction is why at this point many, many American families have not been victims of the housing bubble.
What Mr. Cooper fails to point out is why the last bubble occurred.
It is due to the fact that pressure was put on lenders by the federal government to provide loans to people that were not prepared for home ownership. Down payments were a bare minimum. The lenders made all kind of exceptions and were encouraged to do so. Regrettably, this was to try to get more minority families into home ownership. No, not regretting that it was aimed at minorities. The regret is that is why many of the lenders were called predatory. It would have been beneficial to have the potential home buyers have more of a down payment. It would have been a good thing for the lender to have poor credit risks clean up their credit problems before they proceeded with their loans. In many cases, they did not.
Before we continue, home ownership is NOT for everybody for a lot of reasons. One is mobility and especially among younger, generally college graduates. For many of those will have to for job prospects. Another is that for some people, home ownership is not their American dream. Many of those are single people. And they are probably more interested in long-term travelling. They do not want to be tied down with having to deal with what home ownership brings. And most of all, there are those that can not afford it and all of the above is OK.
What Mr. Cooper does not explain in his piece is who should be homeowners, What kind of society will it be if most of the homes were owned by a few and the majority were forced to be renters? Is he comfortable with maybe five people owning 95% of homes in any given substantial city?
He does not say.
What Mr. Cooper does suggest is that there really should be no difference between a home owner and the renter:
Most of all, though, there is simply no reason for home ownership to occupy the cultural perch that it does. Renting is just as legitimate a form of paying for shelter as buying.
No, a home that is bought is not just for shelter. If you put it to that level, what you end up with is something along these lines.
This is what housing looked like in the old Soviet Union. Many cities and towns have rows, rows and endless rows of this kind of simple housing. Because since it was owned by the state and it really is for shelter after all, it does not have to look like anything, oh I don't know, unique. Individual.
And the dirty secret that Mr. Cooper will not tell you is that is what his idea on home ownership lead to. The abolition of private property and that includes and is eventually home ownership.
If Mr. Cooper went that far in this piece, he would be called a socialist nut-job. What he is doing is setting up the idea that home ownership is something of a bygone era. That renting is OK. Who cares? It's just shelter after all. What is the big deal?
The big deal is that private property and home ownership are the bulwarks of the American experience.
And people like Ryan Cooper see that as an affront. And he has begun the conversation that is the assault on home ownership.
Yes, Mr. Cooper thinks that the American Dream of striving for home ownership is pretty bad. The really bad thing about home ownership is that it separates the haves from the have nots. No really, it does.
If you want Karl Marx 101, it is right here in this one sentence:
Homeownership has long been the way American society has divided itself into a responsible, stable bourgeoisie (owners) and an undisciplined rabble (renters). The divide used to be along stark, overtly racial lines, enforced by white supremacist terrorism, but nowadays the distinction is a bit more subtle.
Yes, you who are fortunate to be home owners and myself are bourgeoisie. And dammit, we maintain our bourgeois lifestyle by overt racism and even terrorism. I'm sorry, that was before. No, no, no. It's no longer so overt.
You must read all at the link to get the flavor of Mr. Cooper and ho at a level he does not really understand why home ownership is why America is the way she is.
First, some personal background.
As I am pushing 50 years old, Mrs. RVFTLC and I are pretty new homeowners. This May 15 will be our three-year anniversary as home owners. Before that we were renters. Yes, in many ways, renting is easy. All we have to do us write a check to our landlord once a month and that is it. Maybe included in the rent are utilities. Maybe not. And when one rents, if something goes wrong, like plumbing, or any other thing that is wrong, call the landlord. When the landlord feels like it, they will call someone to go over and take a look at the problem. And that person will notify the landlord. They determine if a total repair is going to be made or not. And renting one can choose an apartment, a condominium, a town home or even a home. Why if it is a home, don't worry about how the front yard looks. The landlord will send a gardener maybe every week or more likely twice a month. But you can't do anything YOU want to the front yard. Nor the back yard. Nor inside the domicile. You can't paint any wall willy nilly. And maybe you have to use approved nails by the landlord to hang your wall coverings, pictures, photos and the like. You can't choose carpet or hardwood floors. It's up to the landlord.
See, renting is great if you don't mind having most of your freedoms at the cost of the whim of a landlord. Or if you don't mind getting things done on a landlord's schedule and not your own.
But what is the wonder of home ownership?
Well, even though you are paying a mortgage for up to 30 years, it is yours. And the most obvious is that the mortgage payment never changes. The only way it does if one chooses to refinance the loan at a lower interest rate. Which lowers one's payment. Get it. It never goes up and can go down.
Now when Mrs. RVFTLC and I bought our current abode nearly three years ago, we decided that we did not want the work of owning a single-family dwelling. So we saw our dream, a town home. It is a compromise because of the way that it is layed out. It is in eight sections of about six to eight units each. And they have a detached garage, a little back yard, the unit and a little front yard. Perfect for our needs. As I alluded to, we belong to an HOA or Home Owner's Association. So it is our monthly mortgage and HOA payment. In three years no payment hike. Our HOA has only gone up $20 or an average of about $6.75c a year. The year before we moved, our rent went up $50. And was more than our two payments here combined.
And one thing that our current federal tax system does is give tax incentive to home ownership. Whether or not that is a good thing or not is for another time and another post.
By allotting a mortgage deduction for home ownership and improvements, I can assure you we have already recouped our investment by breaking even, federal tax wise. Even Mr. Cooper acknowledges that but in a snarky, disingenuous way. From Mr. Cooper:
The most prevalent is the mortgage interest deduction, which racked up a bill of $100 billion in 2009.
Don't you like how Mr. Cooper implies a cost? There is not a cost but $100,000,000,000 that does not go into the politician's pockets in Washington. It ends up staying in the local economies and taxes end up being collected locally rather than in Washington. So there is not a cost but not a redistribution of wealth either.
Speaking of taxes, being a home owner means that one has to pay property taxes.
And in California, for a roughly $300,000 home (yeah, there are some, but this is just a figure to use) the annual property tax is roughly $3,700. And in Los Angeles county there are special districts that the property tax goes to such as flood control, county parks, our local library. There are 11 extra assessments which adds roughly about $500 more to our property tax bill. So yes, being a home owner has the perk of paying for many services that renters do not directly pay for.
Something to think about, eh Mr. Cooper?
Without homeowners, who would pay for schools? Flood control districts? Storm drain channels? Community colleges? Shall I go on?
Here is something to think about.
In the United States, as of 2009, the home ownership rate was 67%. a majority of Americans. And yes, it is true as Mr. Cooper points out, many homeowners are underwater because of the housing bubble bursting in 2007. But unlike the gloom and doom of the millions that he mentions (and I have to doubt that broad number), one of the aspects of the investment into a home is for the long run. In other words, one can buy a home at $300,000 and stay in it 20 years. And maybe in that time, the value will go down. but at 20 years, if you sell it you will more than likely sell it at a profit. Yes if one buys a home just as an investment, it does take a lot of work into researching all case scenarios.
And while Mr. Cooper bashes some of the subsidies and or federal tax breaks as for the rich, again the fact is that the Home Mortgage Deduction is why at this point many, many American families have not been victims of the housing bubble.
What Mr. Cooper fails to point out is why the last bubble occurred.
It is due to the fact that pressure was put on lenders by the federal government to provide loans to people that were not prepared for home ownership. Down payments were a bare minimum. The lenders made all kind of exceptions and were encouraged to do so. Regrettably, this was to try to get more minority families into home ownership. No, not regretting that it was aimed at minorities. The regret is that is why many of the lenders were called predatory. It would have been beneficial to have the potential home buyers have more of a down payment. It would have been a good thing for the lender to have poor credit risks clean up their credit problems before they proceeded with their loans. In many cases, they did not.
Before we continue, home ownership is NOT for everybody for a lot of reasons. One is mobility and especially among younger, generally college graduates. For many of those will have to for job prospects. Another is that for some people, home ownership is not their American dream. Many of those are single people. And they are probably more interested in long-term travelling. They do not want to be tied down with having to deal with what home ownership brings. And most of all, there are those that can not afford it and all of the above is OK.
What Mr. Cooper does not explain in his piece is who should be homeowners, What kind of society will it be if most of the homes were owned by a few and the majority were forced to be renters? Is he comfortable with maybe five people owning 95% of homes in any given substantial city?
He does not say.
What Mr. Cooper does suggest is that there really should be no difference between a home owner and the renter:
Most of all, though, there is simply no reason for home ownership to occupy the cultural perch that it does. Renting is just as legitimate a form of paying for shelter as buying.
No, a home that is bought is not just for shelter. If you put it to that level, what you end up with is something along these lines.
This is what housing looked like in the old Soviet Union. Many cities and towns have rows, rows and endless rows of this kind of simple housing. Because since it was owned by the state and it really is for shelter after all, it does not have to look like anything, oh I don't know, unique. Individual.
And the dirty secret that Mr. Cooper will not tell you is that is what his idea on home ownership lead to. The abolition of private property and that includes and is eventually home ownership.
If Mr. Cooper went that far in this piece, he would be called a socialist nut-job. What he is doing is setting up the idea that home ownership is something of a bygone era. That renting is OK. Who cares? It's just shelter after all. What is the big deal?
The big deal is that private property and home ownership are the bulwarks of the American experience.
And people like Ryan Cooper see that as an affront. And he has begun the conversation that is the assault on home ownership.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
The Loss Of The Sunday Family Get Together
I can't remember if I have shared this lament at all, but if so, get ready for another round of the loss of a component of strong families.
The Sunday family get-together.
Growing up in the 1970s was very trying in so many ways. Ugly fashions, big hair, the continuing breakdown of what we now call today, traditional values.
There are two of those values that have changed are what we call with disdain the "blue laws" and the family get-together.
The "blue laws" basically limited business and or business hours primarily on Sundays. Because of the federal, decentralized nature of our republic, most "blue laws" were left to the states to decide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_laws_in_the_United_States, it is amazing to see how many are still in force in the United States. In most states, it certainly involves alcohol sales. California did not make the list because the only thing is that all liquor sales are prohibited between 2:00am and 6:00am. And while almost all "blue laws" were more or less religious in nature, the U. S. supreme court has upheld them on several occasions. And regrettably many of the strictest laws were eliminated during the 1970s. And in some states there are movements to try to rescind others. The reality is that we need more, not less.
I will explain why later.
But what does it have to do with the Sunday family get together?
Having stores open with basically unlimited hours and other non-essential business is making Sunday just another day. For many people, it is not a day off but a work day. And for the families, club sports have made a big change in the family dynamic. By club sports I mean like AYSO, baseball, basketball. Anything not played at a school level. And because most households have mom and dad working, it makes it harder to carve a big chunk of a day like a Sunday to simply be together as a family.
The loosening of the "blue laws" directly relates to this trend.
Does anyone remember the term "Banker's hours"? That is when banks did not have ATM machines, were only open Monday thru Friday and the hours were 9:00am to 3:00pm and 9:00am to 6:00pm on Fridays. Now some banks are even open on Sunday.
I get the reality that we do live in a global economy. I know that people have very busy lives. But why can't we take a stand now for restoring that day in our lives?
What I remember is that while there was little religion in my home growing up, there were those Sundays. Sundays in which we would all be together and maybe go to the park, the beach, and maybe one of those rare stores that was open 12:00noon to 6:00pm. It was not a time for getting together with friends so much because we were all doing the same thing. It was a time to talk about school and or the other events of the week. And dinner no matter what was always together.
But as the 1970s moved into the 1980s and I entered high school, my mother went to work and that changed and not for the better. But the value of making time on Sunday went on when I married and we made Sunday night a for sure family dinner night. If possible we all tried to spend time together throughout the day. But our son worked limited hours in high school as a lifeguard for the local YMCA.
What the "blue laws" did good was really force families to go to church. Then maybe brunch at home. Have some fun time after brunch. And a Sunday family dinner.
That is just not possible in today's world to many people.
I suppose that the Thanksgiving kerfuffle over stores opening on Thanksgiving night prompted my thinking about this. But it was this past Easter Sunday that really opened my eyes.
Mrs. RVFTLC and I were going to Easter Brunch at one of our favorite restaurants in Pasadena. We were walking from our parking stall to the restaurant and passed by Macy's. It was closed I told Mrs. RVFTLC. She could not believe it. But after brunch as we were going back to our car, we saw people leaving Pottery Barn for Kids and yes, they were open.
And hold on to your hats, but the anti-capitalist came out of me and I lamented that they could close for one day. Why was Pottery Barn for Kids, a SWLPL* establishment if there ever was one, open but not the behemoth Macy's? It made no sense to me.
Last night I was engaged in a long Facebook conversation that prompted lively discussion. It made me realize how shallow our society has become that people can't get that family time is most important. Really, most people can wait til noon to shop at Target. Or any store for that matter one day a week.
I would love to see a movement to having some kind of moderate "blue law" restoration. Something that yes, makes families have to spend time together. It will not solve all of the problems that modern families have, but it could be a way for some to connect and reconnect.
I do lament the loss of the Sunday Family get together and hope that this makes people think about making a positive change to bring some of it back.
*SWLPL-Stuff White Liberal People Like
The Sunday family get-together.
Growing up in the 1970s was very trying in so many ways. Ugly fashions, big hair, the continuing breakdown of what we now call today, traditional values.
There are two of those values that have changed are what we call with disdain the "blue laws" and the family get-together.
The "blue laws" basically limited business and or business hours primarily on Sundays. Because of the federal, decentralized nature of our republic, most "blue laws" were left to the states to decide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_laws_in_the_United_States, it is amazing to see how many are still in force in the United States. In most states, it certainly involves alcohol sales. California did not make the list because the only thing is that all liquor sales are prohibited between 2:00am and 6:00am. And while almost all "blue laws" were more or less religious in nature, the U. S. supreme court has upheld them on several occasions. And regrettably many of the strictest laws were eliminated during the 1970s. And in some states there are movements to try to rescind others. The reality is that we need more, not less.
I will explain why later.
But what does it have to do with the Sunday family get together?
Having stores open with basically unlimited hours and other non-essential business is making Sunday just another day. For many people, it is not a day off but a work day. And for the families, club sports have made a big change in the family dynamic. By club sports I mean like AYSO, baseball, basketball. Anything not played at a school level. And because most households have mom and dad working, it makes it harder to carve a big chunk of a day like a Sunday to simply be together as a family.
The loosening of the "blue laws" directly relates to this trend.
Does anyone remember the term "Banker's hours"? That is when banks did not have ATM machines, were only open Monday thru Friday and the hours were 9:00am to 3:00pm and 9:00am to 6:00pm on Fridays. Now some banks are even open on Sunday.
I get the reality that we do live in a global economy. I know that people have very busy lives. But why can't we take a stand now for restoring that day in our lives?
What I remember is that while there was little religion in my home growing up, there were those Sundays. Sundays in which we would all be together and maybe go to the park, the beach, and maybe one of those rare stores that was open 12:00noon to 6:00pm. It was not a time for getting together with friends so much because we were all doing the same thing. It was a time to talk about school and or the other events of the week. And dinner no matter what was always together.
But as the 1970s moved into the 1980s and I entered high school, my mother went to work and that changed and not for the better. But the value of making time on Sunday went on when I married and we made Sunday night a for sure family dinner night. If possible we all tried to spend time together throughout the day. But our son worked limited hours in high school as a lifeguard for the local YMCA.
What the "blue laws" did good was really force families to go to church. Then maybe brunch at home. Have some fun time after brunch. And a Sunday family dinner.
That is just not possible in today's world to many people.
I suppose that the Thanksgiving kerfuffle over stores opening on Thanksgiving night prompted my thinking about this. But it was this past Easter Sunday that really opened my eyes.
Mrs. RVFTLC and I were going to Easter Brunch at one of our favorite restaurants in Pasadena. We were walking from our parking stall to the restaurant and passed by Macy's. It was closed I told Mrs. RVFTLC. She could not believe it. But after brunch as we were going back to our car, we saw people leaving Pottery Barn for Kids and yes, they were open.
And hold on to your hats, but the anti-capitalist came out of me and I lamented that they could close for one day. Why was Pottery Barn for Kids, a SWLPL* establishment if there ever was one, open but not the behemoth Macy's? It made no sense to me.
Last night I was engaged in a long Facebook conversation that prompted lively discussion. It made me realize how shallow our society has become that people can't get that family time is most important. Really, most people can wait til noon to shop at Target. Or any store for that matter one day a week.
I would love to see a movement to having some kind of moderate "blue law" restoration. Something that yes, makes families have to spend time together. It will not solve all of the problems that modern families have, but it could be a way for some to connect and reconnect.
I do lament the loss of the Sunday Family get together and hope that this makes people think about making a positive change to bring some of it back.
*SWLPL-Stuff White Liberal People Like
Sunday, April 20, 2014
The Lord Is Risen! The Lord Is Risen Indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
This is the Gospel according to St. John, 20: 1-18 (KJV):
1The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. 2Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him. 3Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre. 4So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. 5And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in. 6Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, 7And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. 8Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed. 9For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.
Here is to a very Happy and Blessed Easter to you and yours. And remember:
THE LORD IS RISEN!
THE LORD IS RISEN INDEED! ALLELUIA! ALLELUIA! ALLELUIA!
1The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. 2Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him. 3Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre. 4So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. 5And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in. 6Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, 7And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. 8Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed. 9For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.
Here is to a very Happy and Blessed Easter to you and yours. And remember:
THE LORD IS RISEN!
THE LORD IS RISEN INDEED! ALLELUIA! ALLELUIA! ALLELUIA!
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Can Republicans Break Through Any State-Wide Office In California?
One office that California Republicans are really going to have a tough time winning statewide is the governor's office.
And since there is no candidate running for Lt. Governor, one has to go down ballot for the seven statewide elected constitutional offices to see hope at the end of the tunnel.
In the latest "non-partisan" Field Poll for governor, the current governor, Jerry Brown, has a commanding 40%-yes 40% lead over the nearest opponent, state assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-Hesperia), leasing by the numbers 57% to 17%. A couple of other Republicans, Laguna Hills mayor Andrew Blount and businessman Neel Kashkari can't even muster more than five percent of all voters.
In the June primary, all candidates are placed on one ballot with party identification by their name.
And while Gov. Brown has 57% votes of likely voters, it does not look good for Republicans based on his job performance. On that front, Gov. Brown has a 59% popularity rating and only 32% disapprove of his job in office. Only nine percent have no opinion.
So would appear on the surface that Republicans will have a tough time trying to unseat Gov. Brown. But there are several issues that they can highlight and maybe knock some of his popularity down some notches.
One is the issues of water for Central Valley farmers. There is a huge bone that Central Valley farmers have with both Sacramento and Washington. The main issue is regarding water.
Then there is the issue of whether or not we are, as a state, having a water shortage problem. And in another Field Poll on the topic, it shows the dyslexia of the California voter. About 88% of California likely voters do think that there is a serious water shortage in the state. But in regards as to what to do about it, one has to look at things in a regional perspective. Reading the data, there is no question it is the usual battle between the Nor Cals and the So Cals.
Another topic is the "reform" of the California prison system that has, essentially, dumped many state prisoners in county jails. The right candidate can point out the failure of this and how it will lead to more crime. If it has not already.
So now let's look at a down-ticket race.
The race for California state controller.
Here is the surprising nugget from this Field Poll on this race
A Republican woman is leading the field at this point and the Democrat vote is divided between a Nor Cal gal and a So Cal dude, it is a promising sign.
Republican Ashley Swearingen is the current Republican mayor of Fresno, the largest city in the Central Valley with well over 500,000 residents. Her two Democrat opponents are state Board of Equalization (tax board) member Betty Lee and former state assembly speaker John Perez (D-Los Angeles). Between those two it is a classic Nor Cal vs. So Cal race. Mrs. Yee is more liberal than Mr. Perez. But that is really in a matter of degree. As far as the race goes, Mrs. Swearingen is leading the race with 28% of the votes. Mrs. Yee is coming in second with 19% of the vote and Mr. Perez with 14% of the votes. The bad news for all candidates is that 38% of voters are undecided. The good news for Mrs. Swearingen is that more than likely she has the Republican vote. Now in this early stage she can try to sway some independent voters and maybe even some Democrats.
In other words, the California GOP may not win the governor's race or the Lt. governor's race, but there are races like state controller that the party needs to consider spending money to win on.
And I think that the Republicans are going to get enough seats in the state senate and assembly to stop the Democrat super-majority. And also will gain congressional seats as well.
So it looks like the California Republican party still has a lot of work to do but there is light at the end of the tunnel.
And since there is no candidate running for Lt. Governor, one has to go down ballot for the seven statewide elected constitutional offices to see hope at the end of the tunnel.
In the latest "non-partisan" Field Poll for governor, the current governor, Jerry Brown, has a commanding 40%-yes 40% lead over the nearest opponent, state assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-Hesperia), leasing by the numbers 57% to 17%. A couple of other Republicans, Laguna Hills mayor Andrew Blount and businessman Neel Kashkari can't even muster more than five percent of all voters.
In the June primary, all candidates are placed on one ballot with party identification by their name.
And while Gov. Brown has 57% votes of likely voters, it does not look good for Republicans based on his job performance. On that front, Gov. Brown has a 59% popularity rating and only 32% disapprove of his job in office. Only nine percent have no opinion.
So would appear on the surface that Republicans will have a tough time trying to unseat Gov. Brown. But there are several issues that they can highlight and maybe knock some of his popularity down some notches.
One is the issues of water for Central Valley farmers. There is a huge bone that Central Valley farmers have with both Sacramento and Washington. The main issue is regarding water.
Then there is the issue of whether or not we are, as a state, having a water shortage problem. And in another Field Poll on the topic, it shows the dyslexia of the California voter. About 88% of California likely voters do think that there is a serious water shortage in the state. But in regards as to what to do about it, one has to look at things in a regional perspective. Reading the data, there is no question it is the usual battle between the Nor Cals and the So Cals.
Another topic is the "reform" of the California prison system that has, essentially, dumped many state prisoners in county jails. The right candidate can point out the failure of this and how it will lead to more crime. If it has not already.
So now let's look at a down-ticket race.
The race for California state controller.
Here is the surprising nugget from this Field Poll on this race
A Republican woman is leading the field at this point and the Democrat vote is divided between a Nor Cal gal and a So Cal dude, it is a promising sign.
Republican Ashley Swearingen is the current Republican mayor of Fresno, the largest city in the Central Valley with well over 500,000 residents. Her two Democrat opponents are state Board of Equalization (tax board) member Betty Lee and former state assembly speaker John Perez (D-Los Angeles). Between those two it is a classic Nor Cal vs. So Cal race. Mrs. Yee is more liberal than Mr. Perez. But that is really in a matter of degree. As far as the race goes, Mrs. Swearingen is leading the race with 28% of the votes. Mrs. Yee is coming in second with 19% of the vote and Mr. Perez with 14% of the votes. The bad news for all candidates is that 38% of voters are undecided. The good news for Mrs. Swearingen is that more than likely she has the Republican vote. Now in this early stage she can try to sway some independent voters and maybe even some Democrats.
In other words, the California GOP may not win the governor's race or the Lt. governor's race, but there are races like state controller that the party needs to consider spending money to win on.
And I think that the Republicans are going to get enough seats in the state senate and assembly to stop the Democrat super-majority. And also will gain congressional seats as well.
So it looks like the California Republican party still has a lot of work to do but there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Maundy Thursday
Today is the beginning of the Great Three Days of the Christian liturgical calendar and this first of the days is Maundy Thursday.
In the simplest of explanations, it is the remembrance of The Last Supper in which Jesus Christ told the disciples that this was his last meal with them and that to always remember that meal in the celebration of the Holy Communion until his return.
The Christian Orthodox depiction of The Last Supper below is what both the Western and Eastern churches imagine the scene to be.
So what happens at a Maundy Thursday service?
For most in the Western liturgical traditions, it can begin with the blessing of the Chrism oils to be used on The Great Vigil of Easter for the newly baptised. Before celebrating the Holy Communion,
often times there will be a washing of the feet. No, it is not a pedicure, just a simple bit of water being poured on the feet of the congregants as a commemoration of what Jesus did. Then is the Holy Communion. Once that is done there is a ceremonial stripping of the altar. Everything is taken off the altar and the remaining communion bread/wafers and wine are taken to a box of reserved sacraments to be used at Good Friday services. Some stripping of the altars are more elaborate than others. A good explanation is in this link.
In the Eastern Orthodox churches, it is celebrated differently and also tweaked for local custom. Most Orthodox churches are based on ethnicity and geographically. Again a good explanation is found here.
One aspect of this day is the division in American Christianity.
There are whole Christians that have absolutely no idea of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and the Great Vigil of Easter.
Regrettably this is due to strong theological differences between fundamentalist Protestants and some evangelical Christians.
It is one of the reasons I admit I have a great deal of disagreement with by evangelical brothers and sisters.
What they miss is that the three days are true to the biblical account of the Last Supper, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the Resurrection on Sunday morning.
I suppose that a rightful objection is the bells and smells aspect for some evangelicals. I mean, if one belongs to Anglicanism, Lutheran or any other Protestant liturgical church, why is there so much ritual, especially on these days?
Speaking as an Anglican, I can say that some churches are High Churches and they emphasise the Catholic tradition. Vestments, albs, chasubles, incense and the like. In many but certainly not all Anglican/Episcopal churches today, much of this list is found in any given worship service. At this point the catholic, small c, forms of worship are predominant in worship. But the big ones, well they come out in this time of the church year.
But, many evangelical Anglican/Episcopal churches do not go all liturgical crazy. They do celebrate the Great Three Days in a more subdued manner and remember the meaning in this remembrance.
I for one consider myself a Protestant but have no fear that a little tradition and ritual will suddenly make me a papist.
Yet there are many Christians can not get past that and thus do not appreciate the whole of why there is a Christian church of any kind.
It is the Last Supper, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It would be a wonderful thing if all Christians can unite and celebrate the Great Three Days together. But alas, we can not.
As for me, it is very important to recognize the whole meaning of Jesus Christ. And the Last Supper, aka Maundy Thursday is a great way to start.
In the simplest of explanations, it is the remembrance of The Last Supper in which Jesus Christ told the disciples that this was his last meal with them and that to always remember that meal in the celebration of the Holy Communion until his return.
The Christian Orthodox depiction of The Last Supper below is what both the Western and Eastern churches imagine the scene to be.
For most in the Western liturgical traditions, it can begin with the blessing of the Chrism oils to be used on The Great Vigil of Easter for the newly baptised. Before celebrating the Holy Communion,
often times there will be a washing of the feet. No, it is not a pedicure, just a simple bit of water being poured on the feet of the congregants as a commemoration of what Jesus did. Then is the Holy Communion. Once that is done there is a ceremonial stripping of the altar. Everything is taken off the altar and the remaining communion bread/wafers and wine are taken to a box of reserved sacraments to be used at Good Friday services. Some stripping of the altars are more elaborate than others. A good explanation is in this link.
In the Eastern Orthodox churches, it is celebrated differently and also tweaked for local custom. Most Orthodox churches are based on ethnicity and geographically. Again a good explanation is found here.
One aspect of this day is the division in American Christianity.
There are whole Christians that have absolutely no idea of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and the Great Vigil of Easter.
Regrettably this is due to strong theological differences between fundamentalist Protestants and some evangelical Christians.
It is one of the reasons I admit I have a great deal of disagreement with by evangelical brothers and sisters.
What they miss is that the three days are true to the biblical account of the Last Supper, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the Resurrection on Sunday morning.
I suppose that a rightful objection is the bells and smells aspect for some evangelicals. I mean, if one belongs to Anglicanism, Lutheran or any other Protestant liturgical church, why is there so much ritual, especially on these days?
Speaking as an Anglican, I can say that some churches are High Churches and they emphasise the Catholic tradition. Vestments, albs, chasubles, incense and the like. In many but certainly not all Anglican/Episcopal churches today, much of this list is found in any given worship service. At this point the catholic, small c, forms of worship are predominant in worship. But the big ones, well they come out in this time of the church year.
But, many evangelical Anglican/Episcopal churches do not go all liturgical crazy. They do celebrate the Great Three Days in a more subdued manner and remember the meaning in this remembrance.
I for one consider myself a Protestant but have no fear that a little tradition and ritual will suddenly make me a papist.
Yet there are many Christians can not get past that and thus do not appreciate the whole of why there is a Christian church of any kind.
It is the Last Supper, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It would be a wonderful thing if all Christians can unite and celebrate the Great Three Days together. But alas, we can not.
As for me, it is very important to recognize the whole meaning of Jesus Christ. And the Last Supper, aka Maundy Thursday is a great way to start.
Why My Lack Of Blogging
I have not blogged very much lately.
The last post I had before this was March 29, 2014.
That in Blogland is a long time.
The primary reason for this is that I have had a lot of medical problems. None of them are serious but because of the several of them, I have been to doctors, labs for blood tests, poop tests, and last but not least physical therapy for my neck.
Today is the first day in quite a few weeks that I have felt well. Well enough to get back to the key board!
There is, as always, a lot to write about. But the problem is narrowing it down.
But for now I am back ready to tackle issues of the day!
The last post I had before this was March 29, 2014.
That in Blogland is a long time.
The primary reason for this is that I have had a lot of medical problems. None of them are serious but because of the several of them, I have been to doctors, labs for blood tests, poop tests, and last but not least physical therapy for my neck.
Today is the first day in quite a few weeks that I have felt well. Well enough to get back to the key board!
There is, as always, a lot to write about. But the problem is narrowing it down.
But for now I am back ready to tackle issues of the day!
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