It’s Earth Day Weekend! Okay, we didn’t post anything for Earth Day. But here are a couple of things you should read by bloggers we think highly of: John Earl (previously “Surf City Voice”) with a lot of local water news, some good for the Earth, most bad, and a jeremiad from the great Rude Pundit. You need to click on both of these to read the whole things – and after that, this is your GODDAMNED WEEKEND OPEN THREAD! – V.
Climate Disaster:
‘Hope is not passive. Hope is not blah-blah-blah’
Some Padre Dam directors prefer fantasy to real water-supply solutions.
What about your local waterboard directors?
by John “Surf City Voice” Earl; cross-posted from SoCal Water Wars.
Global warming: the unusually rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature over the past century primarily due to the greenhouse gases released by people burning fossil fuels. —NASA
In the Pacific Northwest, including California, much higher than normal temperatures, extreme drought, and explosive wildfires in 2021 were “the beginning of a permanent emergency,” according to Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee.
“We have to attack the source of the problem,” the governor said, explaining how global warming is rapidly changing his state’s economy and culture. “You can’t run from climate change. You have to challenge it and defeat it.”
Climate science shows that without drastic action—now, global warming will inevitably increase by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over preindustrial times as soon as 2034, creating spiraling climate-related catastrophe.
“Beyond 1.5, we’re not going to manage on a lot of fronts,” said Maarten van Aalst, the director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center and an author of the report. “If we don’t implement changes now in terms of how we deal with physical infrastructure, but also how we organize our societies, it’s going to be bad.” — from NY Times
For decades, climate-change conferences among the world’s leaders, climate scientists, and citizens groups were held—most notably in 1992, 1997, 2015, and 2021—ostensibly to initiate collective efforts for humanity to save itself.
But Greta Thunberg, arguably the world’s most inspirational climate-justice activist, says that those rallies produced more “blah-blah-blah” than substance—and her worldly analysis at COP26 could have pointed to Southern California water districts as an example of blah-blah-blah syndrome at the local level.
This is not about some expensive politically correct, greenhouse, bunny hugging, or blah blah blah, build back better, blah blah blah, green economy. Blah blah blah. Net zero by 2050. Blah blah blah. Net zero by 2050. Net zero by blah blah blah. Climate neutral, blah, blah, blah. This is all we hear from our so-called leaders. Words. Words that sound great, but so far has led to no action.
Our hopes and dreams drown in their empty words and promises. Of course, we need constructive dialogue, but they’ve now had 30 years of blah blah blah and words and where has that led us? But, of course, we can still turn this around. It is entirely possible. It will take drastic annual emissions cuts unlike anything the world has ever seen.
And as we don’t have the technological solutions [that] alone can deliver anything close to that, that means we will have to change. We can no longer let the people in power decide what is politically possible or not. We can no longer let the people in power decide what hope is. Hope is not passive. Hope is not blah blah blah. Hope is telling the truth. Hope is taking action. And hope always comes from the people.
But what happened—or didn’t happen—at the Feb. 02 meeting of the Board of Directors of the Padre Dam Municipal Water District in Santee might be worse than “blah-blah-blah”…
(Read the rest at SoCal Water Wars!)
and…
The Rude Pundit:
“I’m So Sorry, But We Need to Talk About Climate Change.”
A couple of times a year, I write about the catastrofuck or the fuckpocalypse or the fuckageddon that will be caused by the effects of climate change. Sometimes it’s about searing temperatures somewhere in the world, the effect of which will be eventually be to cause a refugee crisis in the neighborhood of a billion people and pretty much completely upend the way in which we all exist. And that’s not even mentioning the floods, the fires, and the wildly fluctuating weather and its effects. We’re screwed. But every single time I write a climate change post, without exception, it does some of the lowest numbers of anything I put out.
We know that’s one reason why there is so little coverage of climate change even as its effects ram our asses every day: no one wants to see that we’re fucked by something so massive that it would require the entire world to do something about it. Of course, you can make the news compelling if you want, but I guess that inevitable doom is a turn-off.
But we need to talk about climate change. And I’m really sorry. I know you’d rather the political shit that goes straight to the dopamine center of the brain and floods you orgasmic satisfaction. Trust me, I’d much rather be writing about Tucker Carlson’s nut tanning or the ludicrous decision by a Trump-appointed idiot judge that overturned the mask mandate for public transportation. I’d love to spend my time mocking them and calling them horrid names. (I mean, to be fair, last Friday, I already spent a good bit of time on Tuckus.)
So fucking listen for a few minutes here because we’re fucked beyond fucked, fucked in a way where you look at everything going on and think, “Yeah, it’s horrible that such suffering goes on, but, basically, we’ve got a few decades and we’re all gonna be suffering horribly.” I know, I know, I fucking know that you know this and you try to put it out of your heads, like we good Gen Xers did with the threat of nuclear annihilation back in the 1980s. But listen…
[Read the rest at The Rude Pundit: Proudly Lowering the Level of Political Discourse.]
*Couldn’t find the news blurb from McKenzie, but what it says is…..that we to go to Net-Zero by 2025 with everything else done by 2030……or we can forget it. It was the latest findings by Environmental Scientists about Net-Zero. If we don’t fix everything by 2030, the poles will melt and the oceans will rise 160 inches……about 15 feet…..but then because of that the weather will go catastrophic. Ah, but it is Earth Day, and folks were nice and picked up the trash from various beaches. Thank you!
*Here’s the latest on the Water Wars ……and how the Coastal Commission has sold out to never ending higher water prices. Drought? Nah….that will change right? Water Quality? Nah….that will change right? “Poseidon is a dirty rotten scoundrel!”…..which means:
“Pay us more or we don’t approve of you!” Sad people. Luckily the Poseidon folks are expanding elsewhere….in Dana Point and many other areas. So, HB take your Oil Wells and start pumping that stuff from you off shore oil rigs directly into the water table and enjoy!
What did the lady say: “You can lead a horse to water…..but you can’t lead a whore to culture!”
The Poseidon folks are not “expanding in Dana Point.” That is a totally different company there, and a WAY better project.
Here’s something sort of interesting from the land of meta. As of 2:00 p.m. today, the number of hits on our home page has more than tripled from yesterday’s full-day total, which is roughly the same as every other day of the past month. So I think that we may be experiencing a DDOS attack, probably due to the Poseidon story published yesterday (as I can’t think of any other reason), and we may be off-line at various points during the day.
It’s always nice when one’s reporting deservedly strikes a nerve!.
And here’s something else:
Someone has illegally — literally in violation of federal law — hacked into Vern’s Gravatar account and has been impersonating him, using his photo as their avatar, and posting vile, obscene, and defamatory comments that drag others into the much as well, presumably so that they can take a screenshot and spread the news about the horrible comments they read on Orange Juice Blog.
That crosses a legal line. We will take appropriate action; in the meantime, please understand that if you see (or have seen) a vile comment from Vern, it wasn’t from Vern.
This sort of thing happens all the time, I have to ignore it.
I understand that it comes with being influential and a thorn in the side of the powerful.
I have a better plan. I’ll tell you sometime.
https://socaldailypulse.com/aitkens-campaign-dealt-blow-as-judge-dismisses-320-million-angels-stadium-lawsuit/
It’s always interesting seeing what sorts of outside sites quote “The ‘Liberal’ OC,” and about what. Here’s it’s about Chumley’s dream that Lorraine Galloway will again run and derail Ashleigh Aitken against Harry Sidhu.
And I’m guessing that the DPOC won’t even mutter out loud about this.
Yeah, Amelia Castro just shared that onto Facebook. I’d been thinking how I was gonna deal with it, but I got distracted looking at all their dumb posts from the last few months. It’s a newish blog.
For one thing, Dan came from the clueless place that Lorri has a chance of beating Harry and Ashleigh. Cuz she’s so “moderate” you know, just like all the Anaheim voters and Dan himself.
The Makers of this Socal blog laugh and know that a LoGal run would play out just like 2018.
When Dan wrote that piece last month, I didn’t want to respond publicly but I did send out an e-mail to about twenty people who I wanted to see it. That e-mail read:
Tired of being ignored and irrelevant down in Irvine, the ironically-named Liberal OC’s Dan Chmielewski has looked wistfully toward Anaheim where he has one friend left, one person who gives him the time of day, and that is Lorri Galloway.
So now he has composed a piece aiming to recruit Lorri to jump into the Aitken-Sidhu Mayoral race, trying his utmost to make the case that she would NOT just be a spoiler candidate taking Democrat votes away from Ashleigh (as she did in 2018 and we know she would this time), but that she really DOES have a good chance of winning this time.
Who knows if this piece was Dan’s idea or hers, but she will likely see this as a bat-signal in the sky that THIS time, the THIRD time, she is finally destined to win and become Anaheim’s “First Woman of Color Mayor.” We know how self-deluded she is.
I don’t want to respond to this piece in public (blog or social media or Dan’s comment section) but I thought I should share my thoughts on it, via e-mail, with a small group of people who care. And maybe some of you might want to comment on the story (though it’s probably better you don’t, it just gets him more readers.) Here’s the story:
https://theliberaloc.com/2022/03/18/is-galloway-entering-race-for-anaheim-mayor/
Dan fashions his argument as a stool with three shaky legs onto which he can place Lorri – the three questionable legs being 1) Harry is a conservative, 2) Ashleigh is some kind of far-left progressive (at first he says “liberal” before he begins equating her with Bernie Sanders), and 3) Anaheim is MODERATE not progressive. Then he proceeds to enthrone Lorri as The Moderate Candidate Perfect for Anaheim – the Goldilocks Solution after which Dan always seeks.
1) Harry is not a conservative in any sense, but a kleptocrat to whom money is no option when pleasing his masters. I always say this: The political divide in Anaheim is not between left and right but between a lockstep group that takes orders from the Chamber and Disney vs. thoughtful honest politicians who take their time to consider what’s best for Anaheim’s people AND treasury. (Also important to note – the former group cherishes their secrecy while the latter embraces open government. ALSO – Democrats getting this e-mail might be relieved that there are no more honest Republicans like Tait or Vanderbilt on the horizon, but you shouldn’t feel too happy about it.)
2) We don’t really know exactly what Ashleigh’s politics are, but she seems to be a standard Democrat, plus honest and aggressive, which makes her night and day better than Sidhu, but does NOT make her “progressive” or “far left” or a “Bernie Bro” as Dan insinuates. She enjoys support from across the OC’s wide Democratic spectrum (which should be a problem for Dan, and any fantasy of Lorri winning.) All we know for sure is Ashleigh is strongly against the Stadium Giveaway, which doesn’t make her any more progressive than her supporter Tom Tait, or Tom Daly. It means she has a brain and conscience.
3) Dan’s third shaky leg is that Anaheim is not conservative or progressive but MODERATE, which Dan insists is true because he WANTS it to be true, everywhere. He quickly dismisses as irrelevant that we went for Bernie in the Presidential Primary, and would rather talk about how we repeatedly elect Correa and Daly. Well, those two really haven’t had any progressive challengers till this year, and those two get re-elected not because the average Anaheim voter knows their records and positions but due to their overwhelming money and name recognition. In any case whether Anaheim is “moderate” or “progressive” is irrelevant as Ashleigh is no far-leftist, just an honest Democrat.
So having created this very unsteady stool, Dan sets his queen atop it as the Great Moderate Hope. Nobody knows what Lorri’s politics are though. They seem to be whatever suits and serves Lorri. She let herself be used four years ago to usher in 4 years of Harry, and it’ll be a pain in the ass for all of us if she does it again.
Other parts of Dan’s piece are laughable – “She is LatinX who personally relates to the population majority” as though she had ever struggled to make a living, or spoken Spanish, or was actually a Latina, or wasn’t named Lorri Galloway. His bragging about all his “sources,” which are probably Jordan Brandman and Claudio Gallegos. His chest-thumping about how much money he, Dan, gives to everybody. But I’ve taken up enough of your time. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that Lorri stays out and doesn’t muck things up again.
ONWARD WITH ASHLEIGH!
I’ll offer a few amendments, after offering my agreement that Ashleigh appears to be no Bernie Sanders, but that Anaheim doesn’t really NEED a Bernie Sanders right now. A regular old straight-and-narrow Joe Biden, willing to clean up the mess left by a rapacious predecessor, would be just fine.
Dan has more than one person who will give him the time of day. Some of them, as you mention, are from the Correa claque, like Claudia, and others and the bad kind of Republicans, like Cunningham.
Dan knows exactly what he’s doing: attempting to sabotage Ashleigh until and unless she denounces everyone to the left of moderate — despite that (as happened with acceptance of Correa’s endorsement four years ago) this would likely once again cost her the election.
(I don’t mind, by the way, if she accepted Correa’s endorsement in a in a manner that lumped it in with those of good Democrats like Katie Porter, Sharon Quirk-Silva, Jay Chen, Katrina Foley and Josh Newman — all of whom are to my right. but all of whom have my respect. That way it won’t elicit the eyerolls that it did last cycle. And if Ashleigh feels that she has to denounce me (and you may feel the same way, or may not given that you live there) to gain the approval of the people who want to see it happen, I hope that she does it — because that matters much less to me than seeing her being in a place to heal the wounds inflicted on the city by Sidhu and his majority.)
I don’t know the true mix of motives that Dan has — clearly money, influence, and ego-protection are among them, but social approval and a downright Trumpian thirst for vengeance seem to exist as well– but it would not surprise me a bit if Dan (or his business, or people willing to funnel money to him) is getting paid for puffing and fluffing for Disney, the Angels, and the Anaheim CoC.
You also don’t mention (presumably for lack of space) that the reason why Anaheim has kept voting for Correa, Daly, Umberg, Brandman, and the rest is because of the MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF BOTH DONATIONS AND INDEPENDENT EXPENDITURES coming in on behalf of those candidates. It’s not about ideology, it’s about how burying people with enough glossy mailers tends to work. That’s why they’re so expensive.
Dan clearly wants Sidhu to win — he must know that Ashleigh’s not leaving the race, and that if Lorraine had any chance without her in the race she’d have none with her in it — because he doesn’t give a damn about Anaheim hurtling towards bankruptcy. That’s just the kind of special guy he is.
“So Cal Daily Pulse” … I think that I’m shortening that to “The Lentil.”
When asked about Vern and Donna and the Orangejuiceblog.com what do you think Ashleigh’s response was????
I give up, what was it, anonymous weirdo?
My guess is that she’ll say something like: “Melahat told me not to read them.”
(Yes, Melahat is apparently her campaign manager. I’m giving Ashleigh a pass on that.)
I think that Mr. Tuaca doesn’t understand that we really don’t care. Candidates who wish to disavow us, go ahead! (Just bear in mind that we do have fans, so it behooves you to emulate those who aren’t asses about it.) We decide whom we support, based on the weird and foreign concept (to some) of supporting the common good over our own parochial interests.
WELL… Since this is our last weekend open thread, AND since we did discuss Galloway on this thread… and I don’t feel like giving this its own story until after the June 7 “primary”….
We learned today, appropriately from Cunningham’s SIDHU BLOG, that Galloway is running for Mayor for a third time.
https://www.anaheimobserver.com/2022/05/12/lorri-galloway-jumps-into-mayors-race/
In 2014 she got about 22%. In 2018 she came in third with 15%. Maybe the THIRD TIME IS THE CHARM, and she can get down to single digits. But this is still gonna make it a lot harder for Ashleigh to beat Harry, and of course that’s the whole reason she’s paid to be in this race.
More than one wealthy man admitted to me in recent years that they gave money to Lorri in 2018 because they wanted Harry to win. They both regret doing that after the Sidhu-remorse set in. I don’t think they’ll do that again.
I’ll have to put together my long-postponed “THE GALLOWAY FILES.” But I won’t worry about this until after the June 7 “primary.”
Disney, the Chamber, and Arte already have the IE’s printed.
Brilliant as it is predictable and horrifying.
You’d have to be a damn fool to have Sidhu remorse. It means you though there was something decent there to begin with.
The deal was was probably brokered by lobbyists. Then relayed to Mrs. Jerbal who excitedly called her klepto-scribe husband squeaking the Good News.
Galloway is super dumb but now we know her ego is just as prominent a characteristic.
It will be fun to see the seventy year-old fraudster do her teeny-bopper routine.
“NOW we know” about her giant ego? I guess I hadn’t been clear enough about that in the past.
Well, put it this way: I thought she was sort of delusional in a 13 year old girl sort of way until 2018, and then it started to become apparent it was a megalomania thing. Now it’s just all warped ego, egged on by people who are not nice.
I would be very surprised to learn that neither Lorraine nor her income-producing non-profit is getting paid to split the Dem vote.