Election Guide, November 2018 edition

As I stated back in June 2018, I wonder if I should bother, given the four recently changed aspects of voting I mentioned last time around for the June primary, to wit:

1.  The “Top Two Open Primary”, or legally the Nonpartisan Blanket Primary, which means that the top two contenders face off against each other in the General Election of November, regardless of Party.

2.  Mass voting by mail, with the potential for outright fraud, with “late discovery” manufactured and mailed in ballots and everything else,

3.  A moribund California Republican Party, which could not get to be the #2 primary winner in all too many races, and

4.  For State ballot Propositions, the full and complete “TEXT OF PROPOSED LAW” is no longer there in the Official Voter Information Guide.

But civic duty is still civic duty!  So on I go…..

YOUR CONGRESS(WO)MAN, STATE ASSEMBLY, STATE SENATOR, OR EVEN BOARD OF EQUALIZATION (EXCISE TAX) MEMBER: 

This image says it all:

Now you are probably thinking, “But Curmudgeon, here you are just telling us to Vote 100% Republican or Die, and all of the Democrats are now Commiecrats, and yadda yadda yadda…”

Well, in California that really is the case and the choices really are that stark. In California, the “Blue Dog”, “Boll Weevil”, or “Joe Six-pack” moderate Democrats, that might exist in other Midwestern, Southern or Eastern states, are *extinct*.

Even if you think “Make America Great Again” is a trite and corny slogan, what is their response to it? Either “America Was Never Great”, or worse “Make California Mexico Again”. I am not kidding.

Is the Republican Party’s new flamboyant standard bearer, Donald Trump, uncouth? Sure, but I really don’t care, because that bar was already lowered two decades ago.  And for once, a Republican confronted by a media slanted against him *fights back*. As Abe Lincoln said of the loutish Hiram Ulysses Grant, “I can’t spare that man—he fights!”

I prefer Uncouth Patriots to false Polite Traitors. I take that back-- they NOT even polite Traitors anymore—witness the actual “AntiF(irst)A(mendment)” Mob Violence many of them have been encouraging and stirring up, from foaming at the mouth Maxine Waters to smarmy Charles Schumer. A Republican Congress candidate in the East Bay area was actually physically attacked and beaten up.

GOVERNOR:  John Cox, or Perdition. The choice is that stark.

His sadly favored by the polls opponent, Gavin Newsom, first as mayor of San Francisco and then as Lieutenant Governor, epitomizes all that is wrong and incoherent with California politics. He presided over a city that in the name of ecology bans plastic straws, yet neglects the ecology of basic sanitation, to the point where many city blocks *smell of human poop* from the defecation of homeless people.

I am not joking—try driving to an event or shopping in Union Square, looking for parking in the nearby Tenderloin District, and walking back to Union Square with block after block of this wafting odor, watching your step along the way. Or ride the mass transit into Downtown San Francisco, come up from the Market Street BART or MUNI subway routes, and smell it and watch your step for block after block. Sometimes you will even see people in the act of pooping and peeing. Someone even created a computer phone application to report the poop, “SnapCrap”.

And the solution to impoverished homeless people who cannot afford a place to sleep in that city? Not rounding up and incarceration of any of the poopers, nope, not that.  As Lieutenant Governor, Gavin Newsom offers “Sanctuary” (Sic) to more impoverished and uneducated people, who are not citizens nor legal aliens, making the housing crunch all the more severe. All. For. Votes.

Originally, in the June Primary, I had preferred Travis Allen over John Cox, and I feared that John Cox was another wealthy dilettante from another state who has not seen how legislation works its way through “the Bill Mill” (or often does not). However, John Cox is hammering hard upon the real issues, and Travis Allen is earnestly and loyally stumping for Mr. Cox. I am pleased with this Republican Team Spirit, no matter how uphill the fight.

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR:  Ed Hernandez, Older and lesser of the two Evils

Between DEM Party Stalinist apparatchik Eleni Kounalakis, and DEM Party Trotskyite Ed Hernandez, it is a matter of which one is less nauseous. Like Gavin Newsom, BOTH epitomize all that is wrong and incoherent with California politics.  

However, consider their ages. With Leftists, Youth (or the lack of it) matters. Eleni Kounalakis is 51, and with her war chest and the nod of the Party bosses, she could well entrench herself politically for years to come. 

Ed Hernandez is 61 and ten years older, has much less Party and money backing, and he might actually rub the wrong way all of the special interests that have made their Faustian bargains with the ruling Demunist Party. Like the people who supported the geriatric dissenter Bernie Sanders for President over the entrenched and younger Party apparatchik Hillary Clinton, I say that if you must vote for one of the two, vote for Hernandez instead. 

SECRETARY OF STATE: Mark Meuser.

An actual election law attorney will be very helpful here, and he is one.

CONTROLLER:  Konstantinos Roditis

TREASURER:  Greg Conlon

Greg Conlon has tried for this office before, and lost before, to John Chiang in 2014 and to Phil Angelides in 2002 before that. He has also tried for the US Senate, the State Senate, and the State Assembly. A “happy warrior”, who gets back up when he is knocked down.  Let’s give him one last hurrah.

ATTORNEY GENERAL:  Steven C. Bailey 

INSURANCE COMMISSIONER: Steve Poizner

Another veteran of the California Political Psychic Wars, like Greg Conlon for Treasurer above.

U.S. SENATOR:   Dianne Feinstein, although I know it’s hard to stomach.

“And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said, “Stick to the Devil you know….””—Rudyard Kipling

Like the Lieutenant Governor contest above, it is hard to be happy with either DEM Party Stalinist apparatchik Dianne Feinstein, or DEM Party Trotskyite Kevin DeLeon.  

Moreover, it is VERY tempting to punish Dianne Feinstein for her disgusting stunt with respect to Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh’s hearing was made into even more of a Kangaroo Court and even more of an accusation by false hearsay than the hearing for Clarence Thomas was, and I did not think that was possible. False and utterly bogus accusations not just going back to younger adult times, but to adolescent minor times. I am waiting for the Demunists to try to destroy a judge based upon alleged grade school bratty behavior next.

However, again AGE is the decisive factor.

The “Very Old Guard” Dianne Feinstein is 85 years old. There is even a chance, however unlikely, that a Governor John Cox could appoint her successor when finally she steps down, or more likely, finally makes that trip across the River Styx.

Meanwhile, her opponent Kevin DeLeon is only 51.

Better to have the Senator senile, no matter how revolting her final actions have become.

CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT, YES OR NO REFERENDUM OR PLEBISCITE:

The principle here is:  Does the judge act as an Umpire or Referee in the Game of Politics, or as a sleazy semi-permanent Player who can never be called out? With that principle in mind:

Carol Corrigan:  YES, keep her.

Leondra R. Kruger:  NO, dump her.

SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION: Marshall Tuck

His leading opponent, Tony K. Thurmond, is endorsed by Senator Kamala Harris and all the teacher unions. I will leave it at that.

On a related note, Kamala Harris is a worse Senator than even Barbara Boxer was, or Dianne Feinstein has become. At least the two old witches won their election campaigns fair and square and did their homework when pushing their agendas, however loathsome. Kamala Harris gained her first political appointments, and then election campaign backing, by taking off her clothes and spreading her legs and acting as a “sugar baby” mistress for DEM party “sugar daddy” chieftains, most notably state Party Chairman Willie Brown. I am not joking and I am not just writing that because I like to trash leftist Dems. She literally *slept* her way to the top of the California political heap.

NOVEMBER BALLOT PROPOSITIONS:

Prop 1 - Unaffordable Housing Bonds: NO.  

Bonds, meaning DEBT, are only appropriate when an actual capital intensive but long lasting public project (like a freeway, a dam, a community center) is to be built. And there is a bit of that in this.

However, government housing projects, where people live but have no sense of community, have a wretched and unhappy track record. As the old and sweetly sad reggae song went,

 “I remember, when we used to sit, in a Government Yard {British and Jamaican speak for housing project}, in Trenchtown….No Woman, No {as in don’t} Cry….”

But most of this initiative isn’t even that. It is in large part borrowing for tenant assistance programs, so they can better rent existing housing stock. And the rest of you already trying to rent housing who don’t qualify for those? You get to pay off the bonds and you get your rental market bid up!

Prop 2 – Bonds for Homeless Shelters: NO.  

On one level this *is* seductively tempting. Mentally ill Homeless pooping on the streets? Why not build places with toilets for them to be placed where they can defecate and maybe get the help that they need? And this is an initiative with bonds funding actual construction capital projects.

However, the money to pay off those bonds will come from an existing tax which is currently used to fund mental health services for those very same unfortunate people.  This measure will take some money out of mental health services and use it instead to pay off housing bonds.  Result: fewer mental health services.

Prop 3 – Bonds for Parks, AGAIN???  NO, in fact hell NO.

First, even if you like parkland watershed bonds like this, WE JUST PASSED AN INITIATIVE JUST LIKE THIS ONE LAST JUNE. Are you telling me that all those projects were already finished in a few months?

Second, nothing is more annoying than a proposition that claims to have “water supply” provisions, that does not build a single dam to store it. Acquiring more watershed park area is not truly increasing supply.

Third, the State cannot maintain the vast parkland area it already has. It probably should be selling off the parks that hardly anyone enjoys, or which have no known endangered species, and making them productive ranches or something similar again.

Fourth, Bonds, meaning DEBT, are only appropriate when an actual capital intensive but long lasting project, like a Dam, HINT HINT, is to be built. Borrowing for current maintenance of existing parks is folly.

Fifth, too many initiatives like this were approved in the past, LIKE THE ONE LAST JUNE, and we are still paying those off. Vote NO. 

Meanwhile, Governor Brown has already signed legislation aiming towards year-round water restrictions of 55 gallons per person per day – about the per capita water usage of Uganda – effective in two years, even if you’re bailing floodwaters out of your living room one future winter day because the dams were not built to trap and catch them.

Prop 4 – For the Children’s Sake Don’t: NO.  

This bond initiative, unlike other sham bond initiatives, is actually building new public goods, so there is THAT in its favor. This will mean about $1.5 billion in additional debt (about $260 per household in interest and principal) for construction of children’s hospital facilities.

However, there is an Elephant in the Room. How much of those overcrowded children’s hospitals are due to illegal alien mothers making that “anchor baby dash” to birth on American soil so they can definitely stay?  

Prop 5 – Encouraging “empty nesters” to downsize: YES.  

Proposition 13 capped property taxes at one percent of your home’s purchase price, plus two percent per year.  One problem: old people held on to bigger homes they no longer needed in order to keep their lower property tax.  Prop. 60 partially improved this, allowing seniors (older than 55) to keep their lower assessment if they moved into a smaller home.  This measure says they can keep it wherever they are moving, even if they move into one of those “Mello-Roos” special property tax assessment areas which were established as an end run around Proposition 13 of 1978. 

Prop 6 – Stop Paying Through the Nozzle: YES.  

If I saw lots of new road projects being built with the higher gasoline taxes recently imposed (thinking of the proposition passed last June attempting to restrict gas taxes to just road construction and maintenance), I could vote NO here. But I don’t. I see a useless “high speed” (sic) choo-choo getting a new lease on life.

And the existing taxes are only scheduled to soar ever higher.  When fully phased in and combined with previous taxes, you’ll be paying $2 per gallon in taxes before you buy your first drop of gas.  Californians already have the secondhighest state taxes per gallon for gas (only PA exceeding, and PA does not have environmental fuel blend costs on top of that), but we’re always at the bottom in per capita spending for roads.  That isn’t the fault of taxpayers for not paying enough taxes.

Prop 7 – Let’s change “Daylight Savings Time”: YES.  

If you are tired of the utterly pointless “spring-ahead-fall-back” ritual, this prop’s for you.  Initially it was six months of spring forward and six months of fall back, but lately it has been nearly eight months of spring forward and just over four months of fall back, ostensibly to “save” more of that precious daylight. This initiative would allow the legislature to adopt daylight savings time in California year-round.  And let’s just do that. I would rather go to work in the dark than come home in it.

Prop 8 – Price controls for Dialysis: NO.  

This is price control for dialysis – it purports to limit dialysis prices to 115 percent of costs.  Dialysis prices – in fact, all health care prices – are far too high. But does this initiative increase dialysis supply, or decrease dialysis demand? No and no. It is the same Commiecrat Rent Control Mentality (read on for Prop 10 below).  This proposition assures that any new investments in dialysis care won’t be made in California – leaving patients with fewer options to get treatment.  That’s why this measure, which promises to help kidney patients, is opposed by the National Kidney Foundation.

Prop 9 – (Not forgetting it; the courts struck it off the ballot).

Prop 10 – Allowing Local Rent Control again: NO.  

The Demunist repertoire of terrible ideas rise again.  We have not heard much of bad ideas like rent control for over two decades. That is because back in 1995, when Republican Pete Wilson was still Governor and enough Republicans could still win legislative office, The Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act was passed, which nullified local rent control initiatives and laws, on the grounds that cities and counties that passed such laws were only dumping housing problems onto adjacent cities and counties. Such laws can now only happen by state legislature level action, effectively locking them into a Political Crypt. 

What this initiative does is open the locked political crypt again, remove the wooden stakes, and allow Local Rent Control Vampires to once again rise. Keep the wooden stakes firmly in place and the crypt locked.

I live in an area with Slavic immigrants. Among them, there is an old Soviet-era saying, “What good is a free bus ticket in a city with no buses?”  The same is true of rent.  Rent controls are very effective at drying up the supply of rental housing in any community where they’re imposed. Those currently renting do very well, but they hold on to their old apartments and landlords stop building new ones.  Presto: nothing to rent – but at a very affordable price.

Prop 11 – Breaks for Ambulance workers: ???  

The argument for this is that California’s idiotic labor laws forbid ambulance crews from responding to an accident during lunch and other breaks.  However, how enforced is this actually and how many emergency personnel actually do not drop what they are doing if true tragedy strikes?

Prop 12 – Tiny Houses for Food: NO.  

Here’s the latest from the “animals are people too” crowd.  Back in 2008, Californians foolishly passed an initiative forbidding caging livestock and poultry in spaces smaller than their behavioral preferences, because, after all, who wants a grumpy steak?  Among other things, California egg production dropped, prices surged 33 percent and it still sucks to be a chicken.  This makes matters worse by imposing square footage requirements – think of it as a “Tiny House” mandate for your dinner, paid by you. Remember that the same people pushing this want you to eat like you live under Pol Pot.

Halloween pre-election day food for thought

From the Ace Of Spades blog earlier today:

215 The Left is trying to incite the whole plot point of Halloween III Season of the Witch.Posted by: Anna Puma (HQCaR) at October 31, 2018 03:51 PM (V9pqX)

Looking at their strategy of incite and smear, this really sums it up!

The Howling About Separating Illegal Immigrants From Their Kids Is Just An Attack On Enforcing Immigration Laws

Leftist liars are treasonous and dishonest. And so are so many so called "Conservatives" here:

"The Trump administration is currently under attack by people from both sides of the political aisle for trying to actually administer federal law as written by Congress. The law, of course, is federal immigration law and the problem is that an alliance of administrations, Republican and Democrat, decided, for different reasons, that ignoring illegal immigration, or making a show of enforcing it for us rubes who are concerned about it, was preferable in every way to actually enforcing the law of the land.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration seems set on carrying out President Trump’s campaign promises and that is causing angst everywhere. And predictable hyperbole.
This is, as I see it, the situation. It really isn’t complicated. It is a very basic exercise is what in military operations is known as “branches and sequels.” (Keep in mind that persons following the law and presenting themselves at border crossing points and declaring they are seeking asylum are not separated from their children. This is solely about illegal immigrants.) Actions take place that lead to either alternative steps or next steps.

When people cross and they are apprehended, what do you do? Do you send them back across the border, if they are Mexican, and let them try again at some other place? If they are other than Mexican (OTM), do you detain them or do you cite them an let them go? Or do you, as has been our policy since April 18, detain all crossers, charge them with a misdemeanor offense, get a guilty plea, and deport them?

If you are asking why anyone would bother showing up for a hearing that will result in their deportation rather than simply disappearing, then you have just identified the key reason why we are unable to control illegal immigration.

If you want to detain illegals then you have to decide what to do with them. Unaccompanied adults isn’t a problem. Unaccompanied children, like those who swamped the border during the last couple of years of the Obama administration, really aren’t a problem either. The problem is minors accompanied by adults, who may or may not be related to them, which are classified as “families.”

When a “family” is apprehended crossing illegally you have a whole new range of problems. The adults are going to be charged and processed and deported. What do you do with the children while this happens? You have three options. You can parole the children to relatives already residing in the US legally. This brings with it another array of issues. Before the government can do that, it has to do at least a cursory background check on the “relatives” to ensure they are related to the children and that the home is suitable. So you still have the “what do we do with them now?” problem. You could, in theory, establish “family” detention centers. This, of course, brings its own difficulties.

We know a non-trivial number of the adult members of these family groups aren’t actually related to the children, they are smugglers. Statistically, a certain number of the adults will be criminals. How do you run a co-ed (“mothers” and “fathers” will be detained here) facility with children and protect the vulnerable from being assaulted, sexually or otherwise? What about those cases, which exist, of children being brought across in sex trafficking operations? Do you want to house them with their captor?

This leads us to the obvious solution in which the paramount concern is the safety of the child. Your options are either a pre-certified foster care facility or a more industrial scale mass detention facility. In both cases, “families are ripped apart.”

At one time, we conservatives mocked liberals for trying to make policy based on feelings. And yet, in this case, that is exactly what is happening. If you read Laura Bush’s op-ed today, it is a triumph of feelings over reality. At no point in the op-ed does Mrs. Bush pose a solution..other than returning to the status quo ante where crossing into the US with children was a get-out-of-jail-free card if you were apprehended. What the Trump administration is doing is correct. If Congress doesn’t like the optics, Congress should act. We should not make people who drag their kids across the border into martyrs of government oppression. These people have exactly one person to blame for their kids being taken away for a few days. Themselves.

Placing adults of unknown background and children in a detention facility together is going to lead to a lot of very bad things happening. This will lead to another outcry about the inhumanity of detaining “families” altogether. This will lead to the return of the catch-and-release policy. This creates more DREAMers. And makes crossing into the US with children the preferred method of travel. 

It is difficult to view this debate, and who is saying what, and not come to the conclusion that this is more of a reaction to the Trump administration’s attempt to be serious about protecting our borders than it is about anything to do with separating children from alleged parents. It is much more about preventing the Border Patrol and Immigration from doing their job than it is about any kind of humanitarian impulse."

Leftist Lesbians Share The Truth

In light of the recent Court victory for freedom of religion in the face of the Gay Goons, one picture says it all:

Ace of Spades blogger Oregon Muse nails it:

"Look at the sign in the photo...No doubt the person holding it is a brainwashed progressive, but despite that, I actually agree with it. Because if it were "about the cake", homosexuals can easily find other bakers to design wedding cakes for them. It's not like Christians have a lock on the bakery business. It's not about baking a cake, it's about forcing your political enemies to submit to your terms and then rubbing their faces in it. Normal people can easily imagine a country that is big enough to serve both groups, where the owners of bakery 'A' do not want to do gay weddings, but bakery 'B' down the street is happy to do gay weddings, and there needn't be any quarreling about it. Everybody can live happily side by side. But progressives don't want this. The very existence of people who think differently than they do fills them with mindless fury. Even if the country were divided between 99% progressives and 1% normal people, the progressives would be constantly whining and crying about that 1%. Because in their view, forced unanimity is better than freedom."

And worse than that, in some cases, we must affirm their delusions too--OR ELSE:

For What It's Worth: California Primary Voting Guide

Election time again, although I wonder if I should bother. In the past, I always thought that if I did not vote, then I had no right to complain about the aftermath. However, FOUR recently changed aspects of voting have changed my thoughts on this:

1. The “Top Two Open Primary”, or legally the Nonpartisan Blanket Primary, which means that the top two contenders face off against each other in the General Election of November.

This system is vulnerable to chicanery and “sabotage voting”, and a well-entrenched incumbent can effectively “pick” his or her opponent for the November election, by covertly lending “Support” to whom said incumbent will easily defeat in the General Election. The corrupt weasel Governor Evin Edwards of Louisiana (another state that has such a wretched primary process) did this in 1991, allowing an otherwise inconsequential creep named David Duke his 15 minutes of fame.

We need Real Primaries again, where Republicans pick a primary Republican, Democrats pick a primary Democrat, and other parties pick whoever they pick for their party primaries.

2. Voting by mail.

The potential for outright fraud, with “late discovery” manufactured and mailed in ballots and everything else, is significant here. As if “Motor Voter”, also known as the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which made in-person registration less likely and also opened the door to more voter fraud, was not bad enough.

3. A moribund California Republican Party....

....which could not even bring itself to get a nominee on the ballot for my State Assembly district and my House of Representatives Congressional District. If I had known about this in advance and it was not too costly (in terms of either money or time) to do so, I would have thrown my own name on the ballot, even with no chance of winning, just for giggles. Maybe when I can retire—if I am still in this state and have not given up on California altogether and moved to Reno—I will see what I can do if I have time to throw at it.

On the other hand, in several races, more than one Republican is running for that office, dividing their minority party’s primary vote and insuring that it is Democrat vs. Democrat in the General Election of November, given the “Top Two” Open Primary mess described above. Moreover, in the Governor’s race, rather than champion an experienced Assemblyman or State Senator who has come up from the trenches, they chose another wealthy dilettante from another state (See Governor Endorsement below).

For many points of view, there will need to be a “Pre-Primary” in order to pick the champion of said point of view in the Official Primary. The California Republican Party could have decided which one of theirs to officially endorse in the “Political Party Endorsements” section of the Official Voter Information Guide, but could not get itself together to even do *that*.

4. For State ballot Propositions, the full and complete “TEXT OF PROPOSED LAW” is no longer there in the Official Voter Information Guide.

This former staple of ballot initiative Propositions, with the changes to (and strikeouts of) existing laws as was appropriate and necessary, is no longer presented with the summary of each ballot initiative Proposition in the Official Voter Information Guide we receive, and you have to send away for it.

While for many initiatives this is not necessary, as the initiative is simple and summed up well by the Legislative Analyst Summary and by the Official Arguments For And Against said initiative, in some cases it really does---and still no doubt will—pay to “read the fine print”, or the exact Text Of the Proposed Law, as the case may be. I sense the proverbial wool will be pulled over our eyes as a result, and perhaps we should just NOT have ballot initiatives or Propositions anymore and just go back to our representatives in the State Assembly and State Senate as was originally intended in the California Constitution, before the whole Populist idea of Initiative and Referendum plebiscites began in the late 19th and early 20th century, but that was a long time ago. We probably should repeal the 17th Amendment and no longer have direct election of Senators too, which would cause more things to be resolved at the state and local levels, but that is a done deal.

As a result, the temptation to not bother with this is strong. On the other hand, Nick has a tradition to uphold! So on I go…..

GOVERNOR: Travis Allen

Of the two major Republican candidates with an actual chance on the ballot, Mr. Allen’s stances against so much of what has ruined California are refreshing, and he is in the State Assembly 72nd District, so he understands how “The Bill Mill” in Sacramento actually works, or does not work.

Unfortunately, it appears that rather than pick Mr. Allen, the Establishment of the California Republican Party, such as it is, has decided to endorse John Cox, another wealthy dilettante from another state who has not seen how legislation works its way through “the Bill Mill” (or often does not).

And what is truly sad about this is that, had the California GOP united behind one candidate, a Republican Governor might actually finish second in the “Top Two” Primary and be a possibility, given the FOUR major contenders running in the Dem lineup dividing up their vote:

1. The utterly smarmy Gavin Newsom (Dem-Stalinist)

2. The Reconquista 5th columnist Antonio Villaraigosa (Dem-Trotskyite)

3. The slightly better Delaine Eastin, whose record as State Superintendent of Schools was lackluster at best

4. The somewhat better John Chiang, but as a former State Controller and now Treasurer, he really ought to know better about California’s rickety finances.

Leave it to the California GOP Establishment to insure defeat. But we might as well show our support for Travis Allen and make it clear to them that we do not need another wealthy dilettante parachuting into California, and what we really need is a candidate coming up from the State Assembly or State Senate, who knows how hard it can be to be a minority party, and how laws are created.

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: David R. Hernandez. NOT to be confused with Democrat Ed Hernandez who is also on the ballot.

Sadly, the Dems are lined up behind Eleni Kounalakis, while the Republicans appear to have an “Amateur Hour” going on here, with 5 different and not well known contenders, so as with the Governor’s race above, this is probably a done deal. Still, I think Mr. David R. Hernandez, NOT Ed Hernandez, is the best of the lot. His webpage here, and his Facebook here. 

Anyone with a slogan “Make California Great Again” is awesome, anyone Mexican American who has not been demagogued on the immigration issue is awesome, and anyone who brought himself up by the proverbial bootstraps from humble origins is awesome.

SECRETARY OF STATE: Mark Meuser.

An actual election law attorney will be very helpful here, and he is one.

CONTROLLER: Konstantinos Roditis

TREASURER: Greg Conlon

Greg Conlon has tried for this office before, and lost before, to John Chiang in 2014 and to Phil Angelides in 2002 before that. He has also tried for the US Senate, the State Senate, and the State Assembly. A “happy warrior”, who gets back up when he is knocked down. Let’s give him one last hurrah. Although I will say that another Republican contending on the ballot, Jack Guerrero, seems like a nice younger fellow, and I wish him luck after Greg Conlon retires.

ATTORNEY GENERAL: Eric Early.

INSURANCE COMMISSIONER: Steve Poizner

Another veteran of the California Political Psychic Wars, like Greg Conlon for Treasurer above.

U.S. SENATOR: Erin Cruz

Again it looks like “Amateur Hour” of multiple candidates from the GOP here. I wonder why GOP veterans, like Mr. Greg Conlon and Mr. Steve Poizner above, didn’t throw their hats in the ring here! And what is truly sad about this is that, had the CA GOP united behind one candidate, a Republican Governor might actually finish second in the “Top Two” Primary and be a possibility, given the two major contenders running in the Dem lineup dividing up their vote:

1. The “Very Old Guard” Dianne Feinstein (Dem-Stalinist)

2. Another Reconquista 5th columnist Kevin DeLeon (Dem-Trotskyite)

Anyway, of the amateurs, I find Ms. Cruz most appealing, and NOT because of her relative youth and beauty. She was a Tea Party activist back in 2010, and I heard her speak there first. I like her stances. And, when the Dirty Dems falsely claim that anyone with sensible border policies is somehow anti-Latino, then it is good to have a telegenic Latina lady advocating them.

SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION: Marshall Tuck

His leading opponent, Tony K. Thurmond, is endorsed by Kamala Harris and all the teacher unions. I will leave it at that.

BALLOT PROPOSITIONS:

PROPOSITION 68: Bonds for Parks - NO, in fact hell NO.

First, nothing is more annoying than a proposition that claims to have “water supply” provisions, that does not build a single dam to store it. Acquiring more watershed park area is not truly increasing supply.

Second, the State cannot maintain the vast parkland area it already has. It probably should be selling off the parks that hardly anyone enjoys, or which have no known endangered species, and making them productive ranches or something similar again.

Third, Bonds, meaning DEBT, are only appropriate when an actual capital intensive but long lasting project, like a Dam, HINT HINT, is to be built. Borrowing for current maintenance of existing parks is folly.

Fourth, too many initiatives like this were approved in the past, and we are still paying those off. Vote NO.

PROPOSITION 69: Promising to spend New Transportation Revenues for Transportation Projects – NO.

In the past, I would have voted YES. In fact, in the past, WE HAVE voted YES on initiatives like this. But it turned out those initiatives were toothless, and so is this one. Moreover, in the past, initiatives like this were “bait and switch”, where voters were promised freeway and other road improvements, but instead, were given light rail showpieces that didn’t go where most commuters needed to go. Worse, will the “high-speed” (sic) choo-choo, that won’t be high speed as it is going from SF to LA via Bakersfield, Tehachapi, Lancaster, and Palmdale, get bailed out from this?

PROPOSITION 70: Legislative Supermajority for Carbon Tax Fund spending – YES.

Sometimes, in his own special wacky way, Governor Brown takes on elements within his own Democrat Party. And this initiative is one of those times.

I like the idea of a “rainy day fund”, and a supermajority requirement for new spending, even if Governor “Moonbeam” Brown is behind this, and the carbon tax is based upon speculatively flawed “Climate Science” computer models that have been wrong for two decades now. (I remember the climate models that said water vapor from jet planes, and sulfur dioxides (besides causing “acid rain”), would block out sunlight and cause a New Ice Age).

Governor Brown has long wanted to create a “rainy day fund”, given that California’s “progressive” tax system, as burdensome as it is on most of us, still depends upon a handful of key industries and wealthy citizens for the majority of its revenue. If software apps and motion pics have a bad year, so does the state in terms of revenue. And the state economy is much less diversified than it used to be. Of course, this begs the question of how this “rainy day fund” would actually work: Money in the bank earning miniscule interest? Buying up and paying off the billions in bonds California has outstanding?

Anyway, Republican Assemblyman Chad Mayes, although he no doubt thinks the carbon tax is flawed and horrid, decided that, if there IS to be such a tax, then let it finance Governor Brown’s “Rainy Day Fund”. And so he and Governor Brown both wrote the argument for the initiative in the Voter Guide. And I LIKE IT! Let’s sequester the money from this tax and use it to buy back California bonds.

And the opposition to this initiative? Various “environmental” leftist lobbies that want the money for their pet projects.

PROPOSITION 71: Delays Effective Date For Ballot Measures – flip a coin???

Given that so many initiatives are subject to court fights after they are approved, and given the increased delays (and fraud risks) of more voting by mail, I suppose this initiative may be OK. Or may not matter. If you have a good argument for voting YES or NO, let me know.

PROPOSITION 72: Less Property Tax Assessment of “Rain Capture” systems – YES.

While “rain capture” systems are a piss-poor substitute for real dam building, they still have their place, and we should not jack up property tax assessments on people who install them.

Samantha Bee: So who really IS the "feckless c*nt"????

If anyone is a "Feckless C*nt", it would be Samantha Bee, for advocating a return to immigration policies that let gang members like MS-13 cross the border with impunity.

And if Samantha Bee was put at the tender mercies of MS-13, her c*nt would end up, well, something more than feckless.

Trump’s 'lack of decorum, dignity, and statesmanship'

Marshall Kamena is the mayor of Livermore, California:

Trump’s 'lack of decorum, dignity, and statesmanship' By Marshall Kamena, Mayor of Livermore, CA.

My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum. They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.”

Here’s my answer: We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.

We tried statesmanship.

Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain?

We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney?

And the results were always the same. This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.

I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party.

I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks.

I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent.

Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”

The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the ‘60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale.. It has been a war they’ve fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one – the violent take-over of the universities – till today.

The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety.

With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America ’s first wartime president in the Culture War.

During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming.

Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today.

Lincoln rightly recognized that, “I cannot spare this man. He fights.”

General George Patton was a vulgar-talking.. In peacetime, this might have seen him stripped of rank. But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the normal rules of decorum then, Hitler and the Socialists would barely be five decades into their thousand-year Reich.

Trump is fighting. And what’s particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommel’s, he’s shouting, “You magnificent bastards, I read your book!”

That is just the icing on the cake, but it’s wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, he’s defeating the Left using their own tactics. That book is Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals – a book so essential to the Liberals’ war against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis.

It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer.

Trump’s tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do. First, instead of going after “the fake media” — and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri — Trump isolated CNN.. He made it personal.

Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as “the most powerful weapon of all.”... Most importantly, Trump’s tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. ... They need to respond.

This leaves them with only two choices. They can either “go high” (as Hillary would disingenuously declare of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery. The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve. It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive.

Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama’s close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers & Bernardine Dohrn), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright’s church.

Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration’s weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration’s cover-up.

So, to my friends on the Left — and the #NeverTrumpers as well — do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be “collegial” and “dignified” and “proper”? Of course I do.

These aren’t those times. This is war. And it’s a war that the Left has been fighting without opposition for the past 50 years.


So, say anything you want about this president - I get it - he can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times. I don’t care. I can’t spare this man. He fights for America!

Neil Cavuto, Pantywaist

Lest you think that Fox News is pro-Trump all the time, or even most of the time, along comes Neil Cavuto with his pearl clutching and myopic virtue signaling.

Go clutch your pearls, Neil. That you even dignify trivial tacky matters from over a dozen years ago, back when "The Donald" was a private citizen and had yet to enter politics, says so much.

We know about his messy private life past, and we don't care. It has nothing to do with his actions in the White House over the last year and a half.

The Clintons set that bar over two decades ago, and frankly The Donald has undeniably raised it from where they set it.

How the Russian collusion myth was hatched by Team Hillary immediately after her loss

Larry O'Connor of The Washington Times lays it out in excruciating detail:

The Russian Collusion mythology is the most dominant story in the news media and has been for the past eighteen months… dating back to November 7, 2016. And when one examines the contemporaneous reporting by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes in their excellent book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign.

Allen and Parnes had incredible access to the entire Clinton campaign infrastructure because their book was really meant to be a historical account of the triumphant campaign for the first female president in American history.

As we know, it didn’t work out that way. And the authors’ account of the immediate aftermath tells us much about how the media were spoon-fed the collusion narrative: (emphasis added)
“She’s not being particularly self -reflective,” said one longtime ally who was on calls with her shortly after the election. Instead, Hillary kept pointing her finger at Comey and Russia. “She wants to make sure all these narratives get spun the right way,” this person said.

And if the Clinton campaign was good at anything, it was making sure narratives were “spun the right way.” So, the entire team, within 24 hours of the devastating loss, assembled to hatch the story. The scene, as painted with amazing detail by Allen and Parnes, sounds like a writers’ room for a television drama. The creative writing team throwing lots of story ideas around to see which one the consensus likes the most.

That strategy had been set within twenty-four hours of her concession speech. Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.

In Brooklyn, her team coalesced around the idea that Russian hacking was the major unreported story of the campaign, overshadowed by the contents of stolen e-mails and Hillary’s own private- server imbroglio.
Of course, the plan would only work if the media took the bait. They had that angle knitted up. All they had to do was focus their anger and ire at their friends in the press and accuse them of being at fault for Trump’s victory.

They also decided to hammer the media for focusing so intently on the investigation into her e-mail, which had created a cloud over her candidacy. “The press botched the e-mail story for eighteen months,” said one person who was in the room. “Comey obviously screwed us, but the press created the story.”

“It was all your fault,” they’d say to their pals in the press. And now, they had to make good.
Listen to the pertinent passage from the audio book that I played on my radio program on WMAL in Washington DC.

Stephon Clark and the Black Liar Marxists

Read the whole thing. The usual suspects are trying to burn the city of Sacramento to the ground and trying to make another "Dindo Nuffin" (who, in fact, DID do something) into a martyr.

Unwarranted Certainty

The Stephon Clark case is far from unambiguous.

Rafael Mangual

April 4, 2018

Public safety

Stephon Clark, holding a cell phone, was shot by police eight times and killed while in the backyard of his grandmother’s house in Sacramento. Black Lives Matter activists have seized on the story as the latest instance of a police war on young black men. But even at this early stage, facts should give us pause before rushing to judgment on the culpability of the officers involved.

Al Sharpton, not unexpectedly, disagrees. While speaking at Clark’s funeral last week, Sharpton said of police, “They have been killing black men all across the country. . . . it’s time to stop this madness.” But it’s far from clear that the officers who shot Clark acted unlawfully, or that the victim’s race played a role in the shooting.

The publicly available evidence is unclear as to whether the police who shot Clark knew of his race at the time, let alone that it influenced their decision to fire. Responding to reports that someone was smashing windows in the neighborhood, the street cops were directed by officers in a surveillance helicopter to Clark’s location. Body cam footage and helicopter video demonstrate that the incident took place in pitch darkness; it was the first night after a new moon, and the only illumination on the scene came from the officers’ flashlights. On the audio of the original 911 complaint, the operator asks the caller “is he black, white, Hispanic, Asian?” The caller responds, “He had a hoodie on. I couldn’t tell, ma’am.” The helicopter video shows that the officers weren’t face-to-face with Clark for more than a few seconds before firing, a period in which their attention was focused on what they apparently believed to be a gun that he was carrying. When the officers made their way up the driveway, Clark turned his back to run away. It wasn’t until he began walking toward officers in the backyard that they might have had an opportunity to see his face.

Most media coverage has pointed out that Clark was unarmed when he was shot. That does not preclude the possibility that officers sincerely (and reasonably) believed he was armed. What the police were thinking matters. Videos of the encounter show police entering the backyard of the house. Upon turning the corner around the back, the lead officer clearly stops short and then retreats behind the side of the house, yelling “Gun!” He pulls his partner backward into a covered position. The two cops then peer around the corner with their weapons drawn, and, from cover, fire ten rounds each, fatally striking Clark, who looked to be walking toward them. That the officers took cover after crossing the threshold into the backyard, and then fired from that position—as opposed to shooting from an exposed position—suggests that they thought Clark was armed. This chain of events weighs against the presumption that their actions were criminal. None of the media coverage has focused on either of these two points, both of which raise the possibility that the two officers (one is black) who shot Clark did so in response to what they reasonably perceived was a threat of deadly force posed by a suspect (race potentially unknown) who had been backed into a corner and was holding an object, mistaken for a gun.

Much has been made about the fact that the officers muted their body cameras after being directed to do so, seemingly by a superior officer, following the shooting. Yet once the shooting happened, the cops were under no legal obligation to make statements on the record without legal representation, given the possibility that they might face prosecution. These protections, codified in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution, are available to everyone, including officers of the law. Moreover, statements made in the immediate wake of a stressful situation can often be unreliable, as a review of relevant literature has shown.

None of this is to say that the two Sacramento police officers who shot Stephon Clark are innocent. But to speak about the March 18 shooting as if it were a clear case of murder, motivated by racial animus, is both unhelpful and unwarranted, given the facts currently available.

I don't miss George W. Bush anymore

Juliette "Baldilocks" Ochieng says it better than I can:

"A few days ago, Former President George W. Bush said this:

Americans don’t want to pick cotton at 105 degrees, but there are people who want to put food on their family’s tables and are willing to do that. We should thank them.

This brought to my mind the old slave-owner justification for black slavery. I’m not alone.

Bush put a 21st-century spin on 19th-century plantation owners’ pleas that they needed imported chattel African labor because American workers were neither acclimatized to heat nor inexpensive enough to pick cotton in scorching Southern temperatures.

Additionally, gentleman-farmer Hanson points out that there is more than one area in which the former president demonstrated his cluelessness.

To wit, cotton picking (which I used to do as a child in the 1960s on my father’s small 40-acre cotton allotment) has been widely mechanized for over 50 years. And agriculture now only accounts for about 10-20 percent of illegal alien labor. 

Mechanization has revolutionized farming, even in crops once deemed impossible to automate such as nuts, olives, raisins, and delicate Napa Valley wine grapes. New computerized and laser-calibrated breakthroughs will likely mean that even soft fruit and vegetables will soon be mechanically picked, matching ongoing labor reduction in weeding and irrigation.

Read the whole thing.

Bush’s defense of illegal aliens – essentially a criticism of Donald Trump – wasn’t a surprise to me, though his location while doing it, in Dubai, was(!) After all, as president, he advocated the proposed Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, which put many of his defenders in near revolt, including me.

Also, I remember when neither the former president nor most of his representatives would even try to rebut the Liberal/Leftist attacks on that administration and its policies. They left that up to the New Media: conservative bloggers. Stupid us.

After Barack H. Obama became president, GWB remained silent about his successor, even when the former repeatedly blamed him for bad things that happened from 2009 to 2017. I understood GWB’s stance at the time, and it also made me think that he was being consistent; he had little to say about his own predecessor, one William J. Clinton, even in the wake of the horror in 2001 which, in my own opinion, was the crowning achievement that rested on the many Islamic terror attacks on the US which occurred during the Clinton Administration and went unanswered by it. (That opinion is why I voted for George W. Bush in 2000.)

The silence during his own administration and the silence during the Obama Administration seemed characteristic of GWB. He let his actions do the talking, or so it seemed.

But now Trump's presidency seems to have loosened GWB’s tongue.

Bush's criticism of President Trump itself isn't the point; it’s where he did it, his own hypocrisy, and most importantly, what his criticism is.

I have blogged here about how hard it is to get a steady job here in the sanctuary state that is California even with skills and experience. (I’m pondering a possible 2019 escape.) What about the other Americans citizens here who don’t have skills and experience – especially the very young? I guess they don't matter.

George W. Bush thinks we should all thank the illegal aliens for picking the fruit and vegetables that I can barely afford, does he? (I’m a huge berry fan. Strawberries run over $3 a pound. But if I wanted to eat shit, literally and figuratively, pennies.)

And, it’s a safe bet that the families of Katie Steinle, Jamiel Shaw II, Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens would have two words other than 'Thank You" to say to illegal aliens and to George W. Bush.

On the other hand, one of those words *is* probably ‘you.’ Co-sign.