Please stay on topic. Please don't be asses.
Are all Republicans "dots"? There sure don't seem to be any honest ones. If they aren't guilty themselves they provide cover for the rest of them.
There are so many dots, it looks like a Dalmatian Plantation.
I can't remember where I read it but I'm pretty sure Brent Wilkes & Dusty Foggo are former College Republicans out of San Diego State (though I think they're pals from HS). SDSU might be worth looking into. Also, there seems to be some sort of important Lam/Darryl Issa conflict. Now, he's calling for Abu's resignation. For out-of-staters: Issa got the whole recall thing started (supposedly). I've only lived in SD for four years but I get the feeling something's very rotten in the politics here. And probably for at least the last 100 years.
Of course the California GOP’s largest enabler and sometimes financial contributor is the California Democratic Party. Folks like Fabian Nunez, Cruze Bustamonte, Willie Brown, Jerry Brown, Ron Dellums Ellen Taucher, Diane Feinstein and the whole Blue Dog Bastard crew were instrumental in recalling Gray Davis and re-electing Ahhnold. None of them would support the democratic nominee for governor in the last election. And DiFi even attended a Beverly Hills Fund raiser for the Govenator.
San Diego is the model repub town - You've got Marine and Naval bases, lots of expensive gated communities, a golf course every three miles, lots of retirees, and lots of near-slave labor just across the border. Mexico on one side, Orange County on the other. Repub paradise.
oh, yeah, I almost forgot, lots of mega-churches, too
Being a CA native and CO resident, I would say the R strategy applies to both San Diego and Colorado Springs: if you can win those two geographies significantly you may override any Democratic gains in the rest of the state (Denver, LA). I know for a fact it works in CO due to massive R advantage in registration and voting habits.
Not sure of the San Diego demographics, but they'll probably be there one day.
Like I have been saying how about the dots connecting Bill Gates, Jack Abramoff whose biggest single client since the mid-90s was Microsoft, Karl Rove and the Justice Department's dropping of the penalty phase of the Microsoft Anti-Trust conviction.
At time nobody in the MSM said a thing.
You can't run a national party depending on dirty tricks wile failing to deliver adequate services to the public.
These GOP morons could have taken the country over if they were not so arrogantly dismissive of the non-white middle class and addicted to upper class tax cuts.
The uneducated Irish politicians who ran our cities in the 20th century had more self restraint and common sense.
John in CA:
Isn't it less certain today than in 2000 that the GOP has a lock on the military vote.
joe - I guess - Lo these many years ago when I was at MCRD the 'kids' were from all over and every economic and social strata so were mostly dems, if anything. Then 'Nam pretty much broke the brand. Maybe the same will be true after Iraq w.r.t. repubs, at least among the enlisted. I hope so.
Raw Story had some interesting coverage on Nehring a year ago, when he was involved in pushing a school privatization plan. Lots of strange connections there.
This Post in the OC Blog talks about Nehring's role in San Diego, and his bench-building.
Un-frigging-believeable. Every other day Rove and his shit-birds manage to look more slimy.
"Cartoon robot." Perfect.
If only the media weren't a cardboard caricature of itself, we might see some real coverage of these things.
Hi Digby:
Thanks for the link below. Could you paste in the content for the Times link? Not all of us have Times Select.
(Notice, also, that as more content disappears behind the paid archive walls, our quotes are often the only public record for stories -- a little noticed advantage that the reality-based community has over, say, InstaPutz; over time, our data, and our hits, are just better.)
San Diego is the Republican snakepit nonpareil.
Few if any places are so forboding and wretched.
Whenever I visit my cousins in Chula Vista, the paranoia, verging on outright fear, is palpable.
It is as if the smell of incinerated flesh in Iraq has a ghostly, premonitory presence, as one drives past the heavily armed, gated communities.
The perfume of the torture gardens seems aphrodisiacal to the neo fascist communities of pure whiteness. It is indeed, the very redolence of power in America, the sapid odor of the American Thanatos itself.
It is a community so vile one could imagine death camps looming on the edges of the cityscape.
It should be razed to the ground in a purification ritual synchonized with the ritual burning of the Guantanamo torture gardens and the Iraqi Green Zone itself.
Mike Davis' excellent book on San Diego barely scratches the surface of this tumescent, neo fascist area.
"Under The Perfect Sun:The San Diego Tourists Never See." (Verso)
http://www.amazon.com/Under-Perf...74779138&sr=1-
1
"Whenever I visit my cousins in Chula Vista, the paranoia, verging on outright fear, is palpable."
That's why I haven't visited my cousins in Chula Vista for 20 years. I grew up there, went away, then taught at SDSU for five years before escaping to NY. SoCal is the cultural & political birthplace of modern right-wing extremism, so these developments aren't surprising. There is an ugly combination of smug self-satisfaction & class anxiety, of Jesus-gnosticism & racism, of body-worship & anti-intellectualism, of wealth-worship & stark raving economic huxterism, that defines the soul of the modern Republican Party. Texas only wishes it could be as fucked-up as San Diego.
To most, it's all just "politics" isn't it? They think it's all corrupt anyway, so if you go after one side it means you're "biased," heaven forbid.
Christ, I hate these people.
Jill, that 'tumescent' smell is Tijuana - Most of the hillside barrios have outdoor plumbing - The residents cross the border every day to do the labor of San Diego, though the city is hardly lily white. It actually about 50% white, 25% Mexican-American, and African and Asian American making up the rest. The 'lily whites' aren't reproducing or are inter-marrying so SD, like the rest of Cal, will in a few decades be predominately non-white. Who will own everything is a tbd.
Anyway, as I say, those aren't death camps, just poor people in San Diego's cinderella sister city, TJ.
John, your demographic forecasts are no doubt correct, except for the fact that, as Al Gore has been trying to tell us, global warming means that sea levels will rise by several meters in the foreseeable future & the coastal plane on which San Diego is built will be underwater. The Pacific Ocean will be lapping at the foothills of the Cuyamaca Mtns.
It's LA not San Diego, but I've been been sucked in by THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ORANGE COUNTY. It's the sort of entertainment my mother used to worry about being used as communist propaganda.
They had the rap-up show this week, and the women were asked if they voted, and who for. The older women all had voted, and replied that of course we're Republicans, everyone we know is Republican. The show even showed one couple dressing up to head out to a Romney fundraiser.
Tragically, I don't think this show has caught on enough to be a point of reference, or for people to realize that it is a portrait of the Republican "base."
The thing that I slowly became aware of is that so much of the money floating around on the show is made in real estate. There's a real estate agent, a mortgage broker, real estate developer, (and an insurance saleswoman). I wonder what will become of them in the coming crash.
Communist propaganda all the way.
global warming means that sea levels will rise by several meters in the foreseeable future & the coastal plane on which San Diego is built will be underwater.
Well, part of it. A lot of San Diego is considerably more than 'several meters' above sea level.
SD is notoriously more conservative than Orange County these days. The other area you want to watch is Riverside and San Bernardino counties. (A good indication of how conservative an area of CA is, is whether Bush will visit it openly.)
Oh, San Diego is the hotbed of crooked Republican politics all right. The entire city is a mess, thanks to Republican mismanagement.
I've taken Nehring's political campaign management class, btw, since I'm a registered libertarian. Still get Leadership Institute's garbage in the mail. I can get anyone who wants their campaign strategies a nice CD with a lot of great info on it.
Oh, and one of the folks in my class was Issa's campaign manager...
The Republican mayor of San Diego was forced out in 2005 for "reckless and illegal financial management" of the pension fund...the origin of which financial woes may be traced back to the GOP convention of 1996 (according to the article.)
Lambert:
Here's the Times Select article cited by digby for prosecution stats:
http://welcome-to-pottersville.b...-
injustice.html
John in California,
Certainly you know that my use of the term 'death camps' in regards to San Diego was figurative' and 'imaginary?'
Yet the city, despite your accurate demographic description, does a more than good job of generating an eerie aura of a place, where real death camps could indeed loom on the outer borders. And no, I am not talking about Tijuana.
The 'tumescent' quality so ominous in San Diego, again, has nothing to do with the effulgence of actual sewage which you attribute to the Tijuana hills.
But on the contrary, has everything to do with the vile core of the city's Republican rotteness.
This I would characterize as the psychic stench of a kind of 'spiritual' expiration, characterized as the odor of a place of the dead souls.
All the raw effulgent that could ever be generated by the Mexican hill dwellers to the south, could ever begin to match the ghastliness of only one gated community.
San Diego does not deserve a demise by 'shifting demographic,' for that would be too kind and far too slow.
A civilized society would demand the spectacle of a ritual demolishment, similar to the purification rites performed recently by Mayan priests in Guatamala City, after a visit by George W. Bush had angered the local spirits.
For I'm sure that you realize that the remaining Maya are a civilized people, who choose to exorcise evil spirits, rather than a barbaric people, who elect them to the highest office in the land.
All of this that you've mentioned is small time shit. The coup plotters stole 2.3 TRILLION (yes, that's a "T") from the Pentagon budget the day before 9/11. Funny how you didn't hear much about it the next day, eh?
putting party above country sounds like treason to me. we should call it such...
A major source for the problems this country is having are caused by the "College Republican" organization, particularly it's past presidents.
Take a look at all the political crimes being committed, and chances are you'll find a past president of the College Republicans, or other high level official.
Rove, Reed, Norquist, Abramoff.
If I were looking to limit this corrupt institution's influence, I'd keep a very close eye on it's leaders, and I mean very close.
Glad you found this thread. I've been hammering away at this for a while at DKOS. I wonder, has Arnold already delivered the White House to the Democrats. If no moderate Republican can win the primary in CA, (under the current rules) what are their chances on the national scene with the early primary? Arnie has refused to endorse any candidate. It may be presumptious, but it looks like it's all over but the shouting, and of course the Democrats have to decide on someone.
Although I live in California, I know very little about the local GOP. This is the first I'd heard of Nehring. It dovetails in an interesting way with some information I came up on Gerry Parsky while I was digging for something else.
US Attorneys are supposed to be chosen in consultation with the local senators. But California is different since it is such a deep blue state, Arnold notwithstanding. A venture capitalist, UC regent, and long time bigshot named Gerry Parsky runs the show for the Republicans, including the California end of national campaigns and whatever the California GOP can throw against the wall. He's more of a white-shoe, moderate big business Republican and not too popular with the local fireeaters.
According to accounts I've seen, he relies on three lawyers in each jurisdiction to interview candidates, then makes a choice, gets Boxer and Feinstein to buy in, and presents it to the White House as a non-partisan choice. Apparently he was the key factor in selecting Debra Yang (a good Republican) and Carol Lam (an independent) and Kevin Ryan (Limbaugh loving GOP loyalist) for their USA slots. Since he was once a partner in Gibson, Dunn, he was most probably a factor in getting Debra Yang her colossal post-USA payday there. He went to bat for Ryan to the annoyance of the Justice Department. I haven't seen anything about him putting in a good word for Lam, however, which is probably significant.
So Parsky is not particularly doctrinaire, pretty buddy-buddy with Feinstein and Boxer, doesn't do a good job of delivering his state for the GOP, and offered up three USAs, one of whom was a whirlwind of incompetence, another a cyclone of activity against GOP corruption and defiantly uninterested in GOP priorities like illegal immigration, and one of whom was apparently a productive, uncontroversial USA who might, just might find herself making trouble for Jerry Lewis (and perhaps signalled that she would appreciate a lucrative, private sector job that would make a hard decision on pursuing Lewis moot). And Parsky has joined the McCain campaign as an economic adviser, so his sun no longer rises and sets on GW Bush, if it ever did.
In other words, I think to Karl Rove Gerry Parsky would be the poster child for why the White House should be appointing its own USAs without Senate confirmation, especially in jurisdictions where the "wrong" USA can damage the GOP, and the "right" one would find plenty of illegal immigrants, potentially corrupt Democrats (instead of Republicans), and allegedly fraudulent voting to investigate. Maybe Parsky wasn't delivering and firing three of the USAs he recommended was a kind of rebuke.
It's interesting that while a Washington man has been sent to clean up the mess in Ryan's office, the people who took over for Lam and I believe Yang are temporary. Perhaps this means that the door has been slammed on Parsky but the alternative mechanism--direct appointment using the Patriot Act loophole--has been shortcircuited by the political brouhaha.
None of the papers seem to be carrying any statements from Parsky, though he would appear to be a central figure in the controversy and a good quote. Maybe he's lying low. Feinstein would also might have some comment on what's going on with the USA selection process in California today.
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