SoCal Water War‘s John Earl, who, like both Greg and Vern, once called Huntington Beach home, has taken a break from water-related issues to address the disturbing developments in his home town since the MAGA sweep of their City Council last year.
This month, that majority is trying to pass three VERY EXTREME city charter changes, and we hope the vote on this will be the beginning of a SERIOUS BACKLASH to Surf City’s extremist period – it is even too much for the conservative Register, and at the bottom of this “cross-post” we will include their column against the charter changes.
Now HERE’S JOHN!
[This is one in a series of occasional articles examining rising neo-fascism in Huntington Beach, its consequences and efforts to defeat it… HB is a microcosm of the current political state of our nation, if any city is. We either learn from that and act accordingly or ignore it at our peril. – John Earl, 2024]
MAGA majority turns Surf City into a fascistic Holy Land.
Holocaust-challenged mayor leads the way in 2024
with support from her God-appointed co-ministers.
Pastor Joe Pedick rejoices because “it brings great joy.”
On December 7, 2016 I posted my article, “Surf City commissioner pushes Jewish-Marxist conspiracy theory” in Surf City Voice, the predecessor publication to SoCal Water Wars.
The article caused “a storm of criticisms” at the time that led to the forced “resignation” of Michael Hoskinson from the city planning commission on which he served under then city-councilmember Erik Peterson.
In December 2022 Gracey Van Der Mark and three other newly elected hard-core MAGA partisans, Tony Strickland, Pat Burns, and Casey McKeon, became the majority on the seven-member Huntington Beach City Council.
Strickland was chosen by his fellow partisans to be mayor for the year and Van Der Mark was chosen for mayor pro-tem, eschewing the council’s traditional (but not always followed) non-partisan rotational process for selecting the mayor.
It was the self-proclaimed Fab-4’s first of many acts of cronyism.
Van Der Mark quickly appointed Michael Hoskinson as vice-chair of the city’s Citizen Participation Advisory Board. The board advises the council on dispersion of federal Community Development Block Grant funds for housing, infrastructure, micro-businesses, and community services in low to moderate income communities.
In December 2023 Van Der Mark was chosen by her MAGA partners to take a turn as mayor. In her acceptance speech she thanked key people who helped her rise to the symbolic top of Surf City’s political hierarchy, including Hoskinson.
“I could never have made it without my family, friends and support of our amazing community, including Michael Gates, Kelly Gates, Mike Hoskinson, and Cari Swan,” she said.
Hoskinson’s political reprieve adds to our understanding of Van Der Mark’s extreme right-wing ideology. It also indicates what the future will bring for Huntington Beach if the MAGA majority, plus City Attorney Michael Gates, remains in control.
Gracey’s Trials and Tribulations
Van Der Mark’s rise to the mayor’s position brought rejoicing from her followers, many of whom came to hear their MAGA pastor, Joe Pedick, the Council’s ex-officio chaplain, praise her godliness in the invocation.
“Lord, you said in Proverbs 29, you said when the righteous are in authority the people rejoice,” he hummed. “So Lord, we rejoice. Because Lord, when the right people are in authority it brings great joy.”
Pedick, whom God regularly advises by telling him whatever he wants to hear, said that God appoints people to government as his ministers and that they must do “things that are good and not evil” according to “the sure word of God that is true,” presumably as extrapolated from the Bible by Pedick.
Thanking God for Gracey, he asked “that we as the church, we as amen people, Lord, would always remember to keep her in our prayers. Because Lord, we know that there is a battle that takes place, that we pray that you Lord would prompt us to pray that she is always doing things that are right.”
There should be no doubt, even among non-believers, that Gracey has gone through trials and tribulations—both before and after God appointed her to the city council—due to her ties to neo-fascists and at least one future Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol rioter.
Among them was “Baked Alaska” who was kicked off of Twitter in 2016 for using his account to “send out the so-called 14 Words, a popular phrase among neo-Nazis, and posed the question in December 2016: ‘Internet: Why do you want to gas the Jews?’”, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Van Der Mark celebrating her time with white supremacists “Based Stick Man”
and “Baked Alaska (Tim Gionet),” as well as Pizzagate conspiracy theorist
and “American Nationalist” Brittany Pettibone.
Van Der Mark’s son getting a tactical lesson, according to Van Der Mark,
from white supremacist and vigilante Kyle Chapman, aka Based Stick Man.
The skull decal on her son’s helmet resembles classic Nazi insignias.
Other evidence against Gracey includes video links (long since deleted) posted on her YouTube channel back in 2017 on a playlist she titled Holocaust Hoax Exposed?
The list included the videos Holocaust Hoax Exposed and Marching to Zion, according to news reports, produced by another God-knowing pastor, the notorious anti-Semite Steven Anderson…
Read the rest at SoCal Water Wars…
it’ll blow your hair back!
Editor here again. To fast-forward to the present, Gracey’s 4-member majority is currently trying to get HB voters to approve three really troubling changes to the City Charter in the upcoming primary election, and we hope that a strong NO from HB voters will mark the beginning of a massive BACKLASH against this Council majority. And you know who agrees? The conservative OC Register, who printed this column yesterday which we reprint here with a couple of random words omitted (just to be safe legally you know…)
End Huntington Beach’s comic political theater
by voting ‘No’ on all three charter amendments
Since winning a majority in 2022, Huntington Beach’s conservative Republican council members – Tony Strickland, Pat Burns, Casey McKeon and Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark – have pursued an attention-grabbing “anti-wokeness” agenda that’s divided a city that was once known for its chill surfer vibes.
Allied with elected City Attorney Michael Gates, they have downplayed the usual work of local government: infrastructure, budgets and public services. Instead, they’ve sued the state over laws that allow more housing construction, removed hate-crime references from a human-dignity statement, opposed mask and vaccine mandates, and censored library books.
City Council is “standing up” for common sense, a combative Van Der Mark told us. Aside from amassing legal expenses in quixotic fights and getting praised in The Epoch Times, it’s unclear what exactly the majority is standing up for. On March 5, voters will consider three charter amendments that represent the next stage in the majority’s political plans.
Measure A centers on this provision: “The city may verify the eligibility of electors by voter identification.” This demand for voter ID conforms to the demands of Trump-supporting voters who still claim – despite all evidence to the contrary – that U.S. elections are swamped with fraud. Van Der Mark told our editorial board that while there was no evidence of election fraud in Huntington Beach, the measure was justified because it would boost public confidence in local elections.
But the measure is in obvious conflict with state and federal election laws – something Van Der Mark wouldn’t address during our interview. California’s attorney general and secretary of state already put the city on notice that they “stand ready to take appropriate action to ensure that voters’ rights are protected.” It’s another rookie error that will lead to court rebuke.
So why vote for it? Even if one favored an election system where in-person ID is required, this measure is not a serious effort to boost election integrity. It’s a hollow political stunt, merely MAGA virtue-signaling. [MAGA virtue-signaling – we like that! – ed.]
Measure B is their convoluted way of stopping the city from flying LGBTQ flags by limiting official flag-waving to mostly governmental flags. Aside from imposing obstacles to, say, flying a sister-city or high-school flag, it’s just posturing. Council already has a reasonable flag policy. There’s no need to enshrine a flag policy in the city charter. Members of the council are adults who can figure out among themselves if or when to fly particular flags.
Measure C would create two-year budget cycles, which is fine. It requires any council vacancy be filled only until the next election – not for the remainder of the term. That’s a good change, but can be fixed in other ways. But this measure includes a poison pill – a rule letting the mayor unilaterally cancel council meetings, which can be misused to reduce public access and limit dissent.
Vote “no” on all three to encourage the council to get back to governing rather than political theater.
These loons used to have enough shame to hide themselves.
That’s the only Kraken Trump released.
As the subject of this and many other of Earl’s ramblings I can only say that I “Love Living Rent Free In His Head” !! I’m not sure why he woke from years of slumber or what I did to wake him but I must be doing something right. As they say, I’m gonna “keep that shit up”.
I followed your link. Just what I expected. A trip into conspiracy wackoville.
Just because some skepticism is good, at some point more isn’t necessarily better.
Carry on.
“Conspiracy Theorists” have a nearly unblemished record in the last decade+, it’s the new “Take it to the Bank” and “You can bet on It”. The longer flat earthers hold on to fantasy the longer they’re going to be left behind.
““Conspiracy Theorists” have a nearly unblemished record in the last decade+”
Wow Mike. THAT’S a staggering statement. How hard are you squinting?
Tell me a conspiracy theory that turned out correct this past decade, and I’ll trade you five “blemishes.”
Theories are easy. Maybe he meant an unblemished record of making them up.
As in “not a day passed without…”
Yeah, that would be supportable.
Russia, Russia Russia for one
I don’t even know what that means.
The conspiracy theory that Russia helped Trump win in 2016, and would like him to win again, and will do whatever they can to help him?
First of all, I think that was mostly correct, with the possible exception of some suspected COLLUSION on the Trump team’s part in 15-16. But that was OUR CONSPIRACY THEORY!
There was nothing unclear about Russia’s involvement getting the Rotting Yam elected. And if that donkey Robert Mueller had done his job he would have said so and criminal indictments would have followed.
Instead he mumbled about that Nixon era opinion.
“I don’t even know what that means” says everything. Every single narrative that the left, RINOs and the administrative state has thrown at Trump has proven to be false and failed, we know this because if they could have made anything stick Trump would be rotting in prison along with all the innocent J6ers. You guys do yourselves a major disservice clinging to TDS. You need to find a new schtick, this one is played out. Or as Saul Alinsky said in Rule #7 “A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues”
Well, I made the mistake of trying to follow your train of thought that “Conspiracy theorists have a nearly unblemished record this past decade,” and then you tried to illustrate that point with “Russia Russia Russia” which made no sense.
It’s charming your rose-colored Trump blinders. 90% of what’s been “thrown at Trump” is correct, and he should be rotting in jail with… what did you say, “innocent J6ers?” I guess that didn’t happen either. Or, it was an FBI FALSE FLAG, right?
I’ll have to eventually read that Alinsky book. I actually have a copy in this house somewhere.
I’ll tell you one that I used to not believe and now think is true: the Piss Tape.
This came up in a Trump campaign appearance within the past few months. He told the crowd that people knew that it wasn’t true that he had been involved in “Golden Showers” and that Melania hadn’t believed that one — Trump’s setting that one allegation apart from the others suggest that Melania herself doesn’t agree with Mr. Hoskinson — because she knew that he was a germaphobe. Ha-ha, funny tag line. And also very telling.
First, it’s obviously possible that Russia has “kompromat” (compromising evidence, often of a sexual nature) on Trump because kompromat is their stock in trade — as a Congressmember recently said was true of lots of people in the state and national politics. Second, we know — sometimes by his admissions, sometimes by testimony that has led to judgments — that Trump puts himself into a lot of compromising situations. But its being plausible doesn’t make it true.
Here’s what got my attention: Trump often has used misdirection rather than outright denial to ward off allegations against him. (This has changed recently when the court cases and potential consequences have come fast and furiously, because he has so much he needs to be straight. His statement seems like a denial, but it really isn’t, because what he is denying is not what the original charge, I think raised in the Steel Dossier, said! Trump was not accused of letting Russian prostitutes pee on him; instead, he’s accused of having had the Russians give him access to the room where President and Mrs. Obama had stayed during their own previous trip to Russia, and that he was provided with two prostitutes whom he instructed to piss on the bed where the Obamas had slept, while Trump watched. Trump himself was not going to sleeping in that room; it was simply his symbolic staining of the memory and legacy of the Obamas. (And yes, supposedly the Russians had this on tape, because of course they did.)
In other words: germaphobia did not come into play, and Melania’s supposed comment doesn’t exonerate him of the allegations about the Piss Tape, because those allegations were that he was a deeply fucked up person who wanted to politically and symbolically soil the legacy of the Obamas out of sadism and an appetite for revenge. Trump hated Obama for attacks against his racist position on the Central Park Five, for the obliteration of Trump’s attacks on Obama for supposedly having been born in Kenya — and most of all got the spanking (and not Stormy Daniels swatting his ass with a copy of Forbes, but a REAL spanking) that he experienced from Obama during the White House Correspondent’s Dinner that he attended.
With what we all now know about Trump, do I believe that Trump would take the sort of action described in the Piss Tape scenario? Absolutely.
Vern, where did you find this idiot?
Huntington Beach. We briefly got along because he and Erik Peterson were against Poseidon. If I remember correctly.
Oh and neither of us got along with Epting.
Please supply some evidence for that absurd claim.
Start with Democrat pedophiles under a Pizza Hut.
Don’t give yourself so much credit. You’re not “living there rent-free”; you’re a bug who somehow got inside and had to be flushed down the commode.
It’s hard to believe Huntington Beach has a holocaust denier as their Mayor but then again, why not? It simply adds to the rotten flavor of the rest of those MAGA mongrels on that city council. Gates is nothing more than the “8th” Councilmember – he’s the brains behind that fetid cesspool.
Other than to say that his death threat to George Soros was metaphorical and to say that he was being silenced by multiculturalists, Mr. Hoskinson hasn’t bothered to refute a single item in my stories or stories by others (mostly about his rancid Islamaphobia). That includes his use of anti-Semitic themes, liking posts by white supremacists, and disparaging affordable housing because it would allow black people to buy homes in white areas.
I think he also said that he can’t be racist because his wife is African American, which is like Gracey Van Der Mark saying she’s not racist because she’s Latina (and has broken the race barrier by being appointed as mayor by three other fascistic MAGAs) and it doesn’t matter that she’s promoted Holocaust denying bullshit and allows her son to get self-defense lessons from a neo-fascist white-supremacist thug.
Anyway, all this sick fascist cronyism bullshit is bankrupting Huntington Beach and causing staff to run off to saner cities. Note how easily Gracey and the others among the Fascistic-5 have sucked up to and got nurtured along their merry ways by St. Michael, Surf City’s self-proclaimed archangel, and the city’s king of cronyism, Tony Strickland.
The silver lining here, if there is any, is that the leaders of the Fash-5 and their followers have created an idiocracy as part of their fascistic holy land–and–there are strong indications that the majority of voters, even at least some of their previous voter-base, are pissed off and plan to vote against their ballot measures coming up and against them in general elections in 2024 and 2026.
If I’m wrong, be prepared to celebrate Financial Bankruptcy Month and fly the QAnon flag at city hall.