Pacific Strategies – My Lunch With Greenhut

This tidbit harvested from the Pacific Strategies billings to Rob Reiner’s OC Children and Families Commission was way too good to pass up.

Here we see Mr. Conservative Pundit Matthew Cunningham hard at work setting up and then eating lunch with former OC Register editorial writer Steve Greenhut back in 2008. Looks like Executive Director Micahel Ruane went along. Maybe Cunningham acted as interpreter between the libertarian Greenhut and the social services bureaucrat Ruane. I guess that’s what they call a business lunch.

I wonder if the suffocating welfare statists persuaded Greenhut of the need for their commission.

Bullhorn Berardino Backfire

Nick is that a union made garment? Too bad it doesn't hide your Rolex.

There is an old axiom that says all politics are local. Nick “Bullhorn” Berardino, chief union goon of the Orange County Employees Association seems to have forgotten that adage. Maybe he never heard it.

A week or so ago week his union sent out a mailer accusing Fullerton’s Shawn Nelson of voting to spend money on a “red-tagged” building. Too bad the building was Fullerton’s historic Fox Theater, a structure whose restoration thousands of Fullertonians support and to which hundreds, including Nelson, have made personal donations. The mailer provoked this letter that appeared in the mid-May Fullerton Observer:

Oops. Looks like Berardino has really soiled himself this time.

Retraction? Apology? Not very likely, guys. See, Nick Berardino and his crew operate in a whole different environment that you might imagine. In Comrade Nick’s world you grab and grab and keep grabbing all you can get while giving as little as possible in return.

And that’s why Orange County’s finances are so messed up, why County departments are run so poorly, and why the OCEA is absolutely terrified of a Shawn Nelson victory.

Gordo Gets Greedy

Dressed for success...

Andy Warhol once famously said that everybody gets 15 minutes of fame. Apparently Thomas Gordon got his when he popped up on the Red County blog a couple of months ago with a semi-literate attack on Fullerton’s Shawn Nelson. Gordon is a low-grade goon from Santa Ana who is evidently acting as some sort of flunky in the Hide and Seek Sidhu jailbreak. Whether he is being paid in cash or El Pollo Loco chicken has never been made abundantly clear.

Naturally, we had some fun with Gordo here, here, here and of course, here.

Later we ran into Gordon at the NUFF blogger’s forum when he tried to intimidate one of our bloggers and ended up with a face full of Chris Thompson.

Damn. Busted again.

Apparently these brushes with notoriety have not provided sufficient celebrity for Gordon. The other day he started making obnoxious and gratuitously obscene comments here under the name “Major Nelson.”  Busted. Well, hell we tolerate all sorts of stuff here, even the rantings of a useless nutjob and Sidhu stooge.

Apparently a sense of desperation is setting in on the three-wheeled Hairball Handcart, and with a fourth place finish looming on June 8th the small fry are getting agitated.

What kind of mileage will it get?

But seriously Thomas, if you want attention you’re going to have to start using your own name again, even if it results in another shower of ridicule. And another tip: if Sidhu is going to pay you to rip on Nelson you’d better be smart enough not to get busted. Of course intelligence is not an attribute widely ascribed to the Sidhu team members.

What Is An Assclown?

Update: Our new reader “Major Nelson” seems to be having comprehension trouble with the concept of “assclown.” To help out I’ve decided to repost this topical piece.

I’ve been using this phrase quite a lot lately, and I’ve gotten several e-mails from Friends, asking me about it. “Joe” they say, “what exactly is an assclown?” To make it simple I will illustrate the subject. This is an assclown:

Let me entertain you...

An assclown is obviously a co-joining of the ass – a self-important, overblown ego, and the clown, a buffoon. The former personality is almost inevitably drawn into clownishness by his inability to judge his own behavior by the same standards that everybody else does.

And to venture from the general to the specific, we find a perfect representative of the type in a man who is continually seeking political office, whose ambition and crazy inflated sense of self-worth make him believe that faking an address and lying about it on voting registration documents is okay because it is in his best interest; a man who believes carpetbagging is fine because without it the people of some district where he doesn’t live would be deprived of his “trusted, respected, and endorsed” self.

This assclown is perfectly willing to exploit his family members as stage props in his little life’s comedy no matter how foolish the spectacle may be.

To know me is to laugh at me.

And that, Friends is an assclown.

Galloway Puff

Apparently the Precious Princess has sent out a campaign mailer, and boy is it hollow. Almost as empty as her noggin. Here’s one side:

I wonder how many of these people are going to end up suing me...

Ah, the Shining Path to a brighter future runs right through Galloway and her fortune cookie. Pedicures for everybody!

Here’s the other side:

Jobs, jobs, jobs!

Oh oh! Hide and Seek Sidhu has already staked out that territory. And come on, Lorraine, you’re taking credit for the All Star game and the Kaiser expansion? Hell, Kaiser already has a medical center in Anaheim only a mile away. What’s going to happen to that? The only thing Galloway can really take credit for is the massive ARTIC boondoggle that is siphoning off $140,000,000 Measure M tax revenue into Curt Pringle’s white elephant.

I wonder if Disney is going to like the Precious Princess taking credit for their expansion. Hmm.

The Voice of OC Speaks; The Words are Nick Berardino’s

When The Voice of OC, which portentously calls itself “a non-profit investigative news agency” started, a lot of people were skeptical. Despite the “non-profit” tag that was obviously meant to make  people think that something non-partisan and even objective was going on, it was well-known that the Orange County Employees Association were putting up money to fund the effort.

After several months of posting completely inane and worthless drivel, and completely ignoring stories like Harry Sidhu’s fake addresses and perjury and Tom Daly’s serial misfeasance, the issue is no longer in doubt.

Today all the true colors of this effort and it’s puppet manager Norberto Santana were run up the mast with what amounted to a gratuitous attack on Shawn Nelson, basically parroting Berardino’s recent hit piece and including some lame ass press release by the Fullerton cops who are mad at Nelson for using pictures that he owns.

But get this: the title of the post was changed after it was first posted!

It started out as: “Who is Supporting Nelson and Who is He Defending?” and was altered to the more salacious: “Has Nelson Defended Sex Offenders? Either Way, He’s in Trouble with the Cops.”

Whatsa matta Nick? The first title not nasty enough? No problem you own the editorial board!

The plot thins...

Of course the “article” includes friendly links to Matthew J. Cunningham the Prop 10 welfare king, and the creepy Chris Prevatt, one of Berardino’s other tools.

The Voice of OCEA cannot let Shawn Nelson win this election. There is too much at stake for the union. And next time you come across Norberto Santana you may rest assured he is the proud bearer of the union label – bought and paid for. Let him know you know.

NICK – WHY NOT SEND A MAILER TELLING VOTERS ABOUT FREE-SPENDING, INCOMPETENT CAREER POLITICIAN CLERK-RECORDER TOM DALY?

Last week Nick Berardino and his goons at OCEA sent out mailers alleging that 4th District Supervisor candidate Shawn Nelson voted in his own business interest to and that he did something for the campaign contributor who owned the Fox Theatre in Fullerton. All nonsense, of course.

These were really lame pieces and probably got Nelson a lot more votes than they cost him. But this effort was quite revealing in that it demonstrates the utter hypocrisy and self-interest of “Bullhorn” Bernardino and his crew.

What? I can't hear you, Bullhorn.

While this guy is making up stories about Nelson, he has turned a blind eye to a real government miscreant, County Clerk, Tom Daly whom we have busted giving jobs and no-bid contracts to friends and relatives of contributors, as well as pitching over two million bucks into the worthless property at 433 West Civic Center Drive. Oh yeah, and then there was that $48,000 contract given to another campaign contributor to “study” a sports hall of fame.

The OCEA has watered Tom Daly campaigns with more than $4000 over the years, no doubt hoping the investment would some day flower into something that looked like a county supervisor. Instead it helped create an incompetent little emperor that has no accountability, no oversight, and whose fiefdom is rife with cronyism and kickbackery and wasted millions.

I guess he's talking about me.

I would love to believe that Berardino meant to put Tom Daly’s name on those mailers because I would love to believe that Berardino was venting his righteous anger at the wrong candidate.  Yeah, right! The County’s public employee unions are going after Nelson because they are terrified of a real Board majority that will institute permanent and meaningful pension reform and conduct responsible contract negotiations.

But who knows? Someday maybe the OCEA will stand up to real corruption – even on the part of a Democrat. If they ever do they know where to come to get all the info they need. But I’m not holding my breath.

Barney Wewak Condemns Carpetbaggers

Dear Readers, we have just received a communication from our old Friend – 1974 Troy High School exchange student and Papuan Highlands tribe Headman, B’rni “Barney” Wewak, who opines on the subject of political carpetbaggers. The text has been faithfully translated from the original Sepik dialect, as ever, by the FFFF Australo/Oceania Languages and Linguistics Department .

Barney Wewak shares the wisdom of his ancestors...

Greetings, dear friends in beautiful Southern California, where a beneficent sun shines warmly upon the succulent bosoms of your beautiful womenfolk and luscious orange fruit is plucked freely from every tree!

News has reached me that in your upcoming election for County Headman, the people of my wonderful adopted Fullerton have been plagued by a swarm of outsiders pretending to be your friends and who want to lead you. Do not be fooled for an instant! These people are like the flies on an open wound. Parasites! Interlopers! When they are done feasting on your harvest of taro and your reserve of tapir flesh, they will certainly move on, seeking other choice banquets and leaving your tribe starving and bereft.

And so I urge you to reject these foul miscreants and send them back to their own wretched tribes wherever those may be. Be always mindful to protect your honor and the honor of your ancestors who ever look down upon your deeds.

And so farewell, Friends. May the tree bark grubs fall effortlessly onto your banana leaf; may your women remain fertile and generous; and may the sweet mangoes be always plentiful.

Barney Wewak D. Lit, Cantab.

Harry Sidhu & His Gang of Supporters

Now that Harry Sidhu mailers are landing in your mailboxes like confetti I thought  it might be a good time to do a recap, just like FFFF did last fall about the cipher Linda Ackerwoman, in order to complete a character profile of the people that have lent their names to his fraudulent 4th District candidacy.

Can't be an empress without the dough-re-mi!

1. Sidhu is a perpetual office seeker. I’ve now given up trying to count the number of elective offices he has run for, or put out feelers for, in the past eight years.

2. Sidhu lives in an “elegant estate” – in the 3rd District.

3. Sidhu faked an address at the Calabria Apartments on Lincoln Avenue. Even though he never lived there he claimed he did under penalty of perjury (twice) that he did.

4. Sidhu cooked yet up another address on Lucky Way, in Anaheim, and proceeded to carpetbag the race for GOP Central Committee from that locale.

5. Sidhu is barely intelligible when he speaks; and

6. When Sidhu does speak he demonstrates that he knows absolutely nothing about County government, including defined benefits, etc. etc.

7. Sidhu has become the darling of the Sheriff Deputy’s Union that have already poured tens of thousands of dollars in mailers telling us the opposite of what we have already seen for ourselves.

8. Sidhu has accomplished zilch during his tenure on the Anaheim City Council.

9. Harry Sidhu is a rich SOB who will spend any amount of money to get himself elected something – anything.

And now Friends, let us contemplate the Harry Sidhu supporter. What self-respecting person would let his or her name be attached to such a rickety bandwagon? Of course that’s a rhetorical question. Here’s a hint: all the political connective tissue that bind these people to Sidhu attach at point #9, above.

I have my reasons. And they're all selfish.

And then there are those who also are willing to a support a non-entity like Sidhu not in spite of the fact that he is ignorant, but because of it.

The less they know the more we like it...

One fellow in particular supports Sidhu as his own personal puppet to promote his vast High Speed Rail boondoggle.

Harry Sidhu is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.

And let’s not forget the worst of the bunch. The lobbyist whose former tentacled stranglehold on the 4th District office was lost when his boy Chris Norby left town.

You'd better get to wordsmithing for Sidhu, pronto...

Then there are the ones whose own ethical problems were so embarrassing that they actually were removed from “host committee” lists – proving that even Sidhu’s well had a slimy bottom.

Actually, that whole sports hall of fame thing was a total scam. But I've decided to keep the $48,000 and all my new shoes.
D'oh!

Well, that’s certainly a rogue’s gallery. Sidhu’s campaign looks more like a jail break than a political campaign, and I apologize for having to inflict such tough love on the Friends. Still, in case anybody has any illusions about what Sidhu as a county supervisor means, just let your imaginations have at it.

The Killer Attack of The Black Magic Marker

View the full invoice

A while back I became curious as to what exactly Renee Ramirez did as County Clerk Tom Daly’s #2. I had heard lots of unflattering things about her not really doing any work and I thought would avail myself of the Public Records Request process to take a gander at some of her records, including phone calls made and text messages. We provide a typical sample of her phone records, above.

We were warned ahead of time by the County that personal phone numbers would be redacted. But never did I expect what I got: page after page after page of blacked out phone numbers.

Good God! These people want us to think Ramirez made hardly any business calls during the course of a month? During one period of several days all the numbers are blacked out. And who were these people she was talking to? That must remain speculative for unless Renee tells us we shall never know.

So what gives? Are they trying to hide something?

The Clerk-Recorder brain trust.

P.S. As a point of interest I note that for a brief shining period Ms Ramirez was Tom Daly’s hand-picked successor. Guess who was squiring her around the OC GOP Central Committee, making introductions: our old pal Brett “Hall of Fame” Barbre. Coincidence? I think not.