I interview Matt Friedman, candidate running against liberal Susan Davis in California’s 53rd district.
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Archive for the ‘California’ Category
My latest at The Stir:
Apparently Los Angeles doesn’t like the immigration law in Arizona. Well, at least Mayor Villaraigosa and the city council don’t like it. Recently they voted 13-1 to boycott Arizona in protest over the state’s Constitutional right to enact laws that are supported by a majority of its citizens.
Um, ok.
Arizona is completely within its rights to enact a law that would enable local law enforcement to do the job that our federal government is slacking on — keeping our borders safe. The immigration law in Arizona is almost a carbon copy of the federal law. Let me sum it up — if you want to live and work in America, please do so legally.
From The Hill:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday acknowledged the “anti-incumbent mood” that’s swept through U.S. politics.
“There’s no question there is, at this moment, an anti-incumbent mood,” the Speaker said at her weekly press conference.
That’s quite a rationalization, Ms. Pelosi. Let me set you straight, because you obviously haven’t been listening to a single word that Americans have been saying.
We are not anti-incumbent. We like Coburn, Thune, DeMint, Bachmann, Smith, and many others, and want them to continue representing us in D.C.
What we don’t like is the attitude that you know better than us. We don’t like you sticking your bony fingers into our pockets so that you may be perceived as generous. We don’t like you robbing our children so that you and your cronies can live the life of Riley while telling us that we’re the greedy selfish ones. We don’t like you voting for legislation that stifles growth and suffocates business.
In other words, Ms. Pelosi, we don’t like you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go contribute a few bucks to John Dennis, because you’re one incumbent that we’d like to see gone.
I just found out about CTAP today.
The California Telephone Access Program (CTAP) distributes telecommunications equipment and services to individuals certified as having difficulty using the telephone. CTAP is a California State mandated program, under governance of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). Equipment and some network services are available at no charge to eligible consumers.
Californians who are deaf, hard of hearing, speech-disabled, cognitively-disabled, blind, or who have low vision, or restricted mobility, are eligible to receive equipment with certification by a medical doctor, a licensed audiologist, a qualified state agency, or a hearing aid dispenser.
CTAP is funded by a small surcharge that appears on all telephone bills in California. The money collected from this surcharge pays for both the California Telephone Access Program (CTAP) and the California Relay Service (CRS). This surcharge appears on your phone bill as “CA Relay Service and Communications Devices Fund.”
No wonder California is broke as a joke. No denying that being blind, deaf, or having fingers too fat to dial on a regular keypad are all tragic conditions. But why do the rest of us have to buy you a phone?
It’s almost as ridiculous as forcing tax-payers to pay for other people’s TV converter boxes.
PS- This picture makes me giggle.
"Your call could not be completed as dialed. Your fingers are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now."
The following is a conversation with my husband Leif. We were driving home from somewhere, and the car is definitely the place where all important conversations take place and difficult decisions are made.
“Someone asked why I wasn’t planning to run for elected office in the near future. I told him that my husband didn’t want me to.”
“Yeah?” He asked with an eyebrow slightly raised. “What did he say?”
“Something along the lines of ‘was I going to let that stop me?’”
“And you said…” The eyebrow shifted up even higher.
“I said of course it would stop me. Just like if you wanted to make a major career change that disrupted our entire life together, not to mention the effect on our kids, I would never expect you to go ahead with it if I weren’t completely on board.”
“So you don’t think I should quit my job and go to seminary and become a pastor?”
“Um…no. I didn’t marry a pastor, I married a software engineer.”
“So what do you have against pastors?”
“Nothing. I just don’t want to be married to one.”
“Well I don’t want to go to seminary anyway.”
“I know! So it’s totally different, because I actually want to run for Senate.”
That’s when I got the my-wife-is-ridiculous-but-adorable-so-I-love-her-quirks look.
“What?” I asked incredulously. “I could totally run for Senate. If I had a supportive husband, that is.” I tried my best to glower. I don’t think it worked very well.
“Next time someone asks you why you let your husband boss you around, just tell them it’s because I beat you.”
“You only beat me because you’re crazy good at games and never let me win.”
“If you played more, you’d get better at them and then maybe you’d really win.”
“I would, but I hate to lose.”
“And you want to run for Senate?”
“Completely different. I wouldn’t LOSE that!”
A clucked tongue and “um-hmm.” was all I got in reply.
“Well I wouldn’t.”
“Jennifer, no one’s going to let you win a Senate race.”
“You’re just scared I’ll lose and be an impossible biotchay to live with.”
“Damn straight.”
“You may have a point.”
After a moment or two of pondering, I only had one more thought to add.
“Except I wouldn’t lose.”
And then my smartypants hubby did the only thing he could to get out of his wife pestering him. He said, “I have no doubt you wouldn’t lose. But we’d miss you too much if you were a Senator.”
It’s true, you know. If I were a Senator, Leif might actually have to learn to do laundry. The horror!
“Well I’m still not ruling it out.”
And that’s when we got home and saw the neighbors struggling to bring in a new crib. Apparently they’re expecting a little girl in August. And that’s when my uterus throbbed and I thought about having another baby in a couple of years instead of running for Senate.
Except maybe I think I’ll do both.
Someone needs to explain this to me. A lawyer perhaps. Maybe a cop. Because I do. Not. Understand.
John Albert Gardner III forcefully raped and brutally murdered two beautiful teenage girls. He watched as the life drained from their terrified eyes, and hid their abused bodies in shallow graves. He took their lives and destroyed those of their family and friends. He shook the trust of a community. MY community.
He’s flat out admitted that he killed them. He raped them both. He stabbed Amber. He strangled Chelsea. He got rid of their bodies. Didn’t manage to get rid of Chelsea’s DNA though. And through a plea bargain, he led the police to Amber’s body.
The plea bargain basically said that he would avoid the death penalty if he pled guilty and revealed the location on Amber’s body.
He will now serve three life sentences, two of them without parole (The third is for an attempted attack on another woman that managed to escape). Chelsea’s parents agreed to the conditions because they knew the Dubois family needed closure, and the death penalty is an empty promise in California anyway.
Why is it an empty promise?
Why can’t we kill these demented perverts?
Why do they have more rights under the law than their victims did?
Why can’t the cops and lawyers make a plea bargain stating, “If you plead guilty and give up the location of Amber’s body, you can have a painless injection. If you don’t, we’ll fry you. Or hang you. Or chop parts of you off and let you bleed to death. Your choice.”
That’s a plea bargain I can get behind.
Life without parole isn’t good enough.
James Moore was spared the death penalty in 1962 after raping and murdering a 14 year old girl. Thanks to a change in the law, he’s now eligible for parole every two years.
In 1966, Kenneth McDuff killed a couple of teenage boys, then raped and killed one of those boy’s girlfriend. He got a life sentence. And was let out in 1989 when prisons were overflowing. He went on to rape and kill at least nine other women. We’ll never really know how many.
And many, many more.
Life without parole doesn’t cut it. Kill him.
Kill him dead.
And that’s how I feel about that.
Guess who’s speaking at a tea party this April 15th?
If you’re in Orange County, come celebrate America with us, and get fired up to keep fighting against the transformation of the greatest country on the planet.
Afternoons are crazy in my house. Just after 2, Thing 2 will wake up screaming from her nap, if she went to sleep at all. If not, then I’ll usually rescue her from her evil crib at that time. Then we fight over what she should have for a snack. She always wants a cupcake. And I always say, “No cupcake!” At which point she collapses into a fit of sobs and tears. Eventually she’ll decide that she really does want the cheese/fruit/triscuits/other tasty wholesome snack, pick it up off the floor where’s she’s thrown it and eat it.
After that debacle, it’s usually time to go pick up Thing 1 from school and run an errand or two. Today we had to get some new tires for my truck. We went to Costco because I had some giftcards, plus you can get ice cream while you wait. Into the tire center. I know I need two at least, but think, “Hmm, do I really want to be back here in 3-6 months to replace the other two? Nope!” So I order up four new tires. The very polite service guy rattles of a price of eight hundred dollars and change. I’m not sure exactly, he lost me at eight hundred. Two new tires will be just fine thankyouverymuch. I tried not faint or choke or vomit as I forked over enough money to buy a plane ticket to Hawaii. Then I spent some time day dreaming about Hawaii.
Of course I was slammed back to reality when Thing 1 tipped over Thing 2′s stroller in the tire department at Costco.*
Thankfully there was no line, so it was only a 45 minute wait. We got some ice cream to share and I got a diet coke. I haven’t been buying it regularly any more, because I can’t find find a twelve pack for less than $5, and let’s face it: that’s extortion. I blissfully sipped my chemically caffeinated goodness while Things 1 & 2 raced to see who could eat more ice cream faster. Turns out Thing 1, although she paid for it dearly with a massive brain freeze that I refused to listen to her whine about.
New tires, sugared up children, and a broke Jenny headed home. I opened up my laptop and tweetdeck, trying to ignore the cacophony of, “I don’t want to do my homework!!!” and “Cupcake!” surrounding me. And I saw avatar pics of terminator sheep with glowing red eyes. And lots of tweets with the hashtag #demonsheep.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
So I tweeted: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is with the #demonsheep??
And I was immediately rewarded with links. I love Twitter. It satisfies my impatient nature.
The evil terminator demon sheep appear in an ad for Carly Fiorina, a sometimes fiscally conservative running for the republican nod to run against Senator Please-Don’t-Call-Me-Ma’am-Boxer in California. The ad slams an even more liberal republican than herself, Tom Campbell. And for some reason, it’s filled with demon sheep.
It made my whole day.
*No toddlers were harmed in the making of this post. Unless you consider cupcake denial to be harmful. In which case, it was torturous.
I was planning on having an elaborate post for you all on why I plan to vote against all the propositions in the special election tomorrow. However, a teething baby has ruined my plans. Because my responsibility to be a good mother comes above my responsibility to be a good blogger, the post is not to be.
For the record, this conservative chica is voting a big fat NO on all the props tomorrow.
We don’t need more of our tax dollars to be poured into the infrastructure, we just need it to be better spent.
Please, can we let the sea lions go before we let the firemen go?
The money is there already, it just needs to be better budgeted.
Please vote NO tomorrow and force the CA legislature to reallocate bureaucracy bucks into bucks that will actually do some good for our bankrupt state.
During the Miss America Pageant last Sunday, Miss California Carrie Prejean may have sacrificed the crown in exchange for her honesty on a hot button topic- homosexual marriage.
Prejean was asked by celebrity blogger Perez Hilton (who is incidentally is openly gay), “Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit. Why or why not?”
The drop dead gorgeous and obviously courageous Prejean might have briefly wavered, but stuck to her convictions and replied, “Well, I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage…And you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be – between a man and a woman. Thank you very much.”
Perez has since called her a “dumb bitch” on his infamous website. Hmmm… what happened to, “Dissent is patriotic,” which was the war cry of the left for the eight year duration of the Bush Presidency? On that note, Carrie is not even technically dissenting, since she stands with the majority of Californians that voted yes on Prop 8 last fall.
I have to wonder what would have happened if she had worded her response differently, perhaps saying, “I agree with President Obama on this issue. I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian — for me — for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix… Because historically — because historically, we have not defined marriage in our constitution. It’s been a matter of state law. That has been our tradition. I mean, let’s break it down. The reason that people think there needs to be a constitutional amendment, some people believe, is because of the concern that — about same-sex marriage. I am not somebody who promotes same-sex marriage, but I do believe in civil unions. I do believe that we should not — that for gay partners to want to visit each other in the hospital for the state to say, you know what, that’s all right, I don’t think in any way inhibits my core beliefs about what marriage are. I think my faith is strong enough…that I can afford those civil rights to others, even if I have a different perspective or different view.“
Guess what? That italicized text came directly from the Chosen One’s silver tongue last summer during the Saddleback Presidential Forum.
Just some food for thought.
