The Sad Reality of Matthew Cunningham, Where Felonies Are Whitewashed

Perjury is such a fuzzy concept...

I knew it wouldn’t be long before Matthew J. Cunningham started glossing over the fact that his boy Harry Sidhu committed perjury twice when he falsified voter registration documents. After all, his boss John Lewis is now one of the piglets sucking the mama sow dry.

The one on the left...

It didn’t take very long.

He’s up to his old tricks again: diversion, obfuscation, and trying to change the subject. First he says Tony Bushala is Shawn Nelson’s neighbor. Irrelevant to anything, and of course not even true. But let’s not let facts get in the way of defending the indefensible. His point, perfectly predictable coming from this self-appointed paragon of morality, is that the whole thing is only political, as if Sidhu’s signature on an official document means, you know, nothing.

The registration was so brief that it doesn't count. Sidhu gets a re-do.

Apparently, the concept of perjury is a really flexible concept for Cunningham who seems willing to concede that his boy never lived at the beautiful Calabria Apartments. It was only a “brief registration,” you see. Brief registration? Damn, it was only 30 days! But what’s that got to do with anything? The registration was never aligned with any residency. It was a fraud. An outright lie. But are we to accept that the concept of the truth only kicks in when it’s convenient for Sidhu?

Well, good luck selling that bullshit to anybody smarter than Brett Barbre.

My word is my bond. Trust me.

A second post addresses the breathtaking revelation that Bushala’s investigation into the Sidhu scam was conducted by Sheriff candidate Bill Hunt. Wow, now there’s a great discovery, Columbus. Bushala put the guy’s letterhead in his post!  Another example of Cunningham dodge ball, having zero to do with the fact that his boy Sidhu falsified public documents. Of course Cunningham proceeds to insinuate that something fishy is going on because one of our bloggers  at FFFF has been posting positive stuff for Hunt’s Sheriff campaign.

Um, Chip, I think I have something I need to tell you...

Say what? Influence peddling, and profiting from same, is Cunningham’s line of work, not ours. Nothing to disclose here. I’m not even voting for Hunt.

Pathetic. Sorrowful. Deceitful. Hypocritical. Did I say shameful. No. That would imply a sense of shame.

It looks as if Mr. Cunningham has really decided to plumb the depths of irrelevance and hypocrisy. Let’s wait and count the hours until Cunningham spits out one of his patented “the guy’s not to be trusted” posts against someone who is running against a John Lewis candidate.

Well its a free country. And pretty soon for him, it’s going to be a really lonely one.

Painting Yourself Into A Corner. Goofball Sidhu’s Strange, Shrinking World

Buy now! It's a two for one sale.

Let’s set aside the whole trustworthiness, perjury, incarceration problems of Harry Sidhu for a moment. Well, not the trustworthy thing.

When I learned other day about Sidhu carpetbagging two different districts in the same election I was intrigued. See, he’s carpetbagging the 4th Supervisorial District as we all know. It turns out he is also carpetbagging the 69th Assembly District in order to try to get himself on the GOP Central Committee for that district.

The idea here seems to be to maximize Smilin’ Sidhu’s exposure to the electorate in the 4th District election, and hence get more votes for the universal Mayor Pro Tem.

My first thought was, gee, how much overlap is there between those two districts? How many Republican votes are there in that overlap, anyhow? Very many? But most importantly, if he gets elected to the Central Committee, what kind of living and lifestyle opportunities is that going to leave the rich dude and his family who really live in an “elegant estate” in the Anaheim Hills?

Swimmin' pools, movie stars...

The answer is not many. The only overlap is a strip of territory that extends north from where Sudhu is pretending to live now, through central Anaheim between Harbor Boulevard and East Street. It gets as far north as Sycamore. Much of this turf is commercial and industrial, and much of it, well, barrio. And all of it is pretty marginal for a guy who currently owns his own tennis court, swimming pool, aviary, and a boat called the The Taj Mahal. The shopping carts won’t impress visitors, that’s for sure.

Of course Sidhu could move into our friend Colony Rabble’s neighborhood and remodel a vintage home. But how likely is that? Harry better hope the pit bulls don’t get the peacocks.

A gift subscription?

If Sidhu wins a place on the GOP Central Committee, will he just stay put as a renter on Lucky Way (that so far hasn’t been very lucky for him)? Or, what seems a lot more likely, will he just immediately quit and head back to the hills?

Any way you slice it, it’s a pretty reasonable conclusion that his GOP Central Committee bid is just another Sidhu scam – a petty vote grubbing scheme in which the utterly arrogant Sidhu thumbs his nose at Republicans in the 69th Assembly District whom he has zero intention of representing.

If they really wanted to punish Sidhu, the Republicans in this District should elect him to the Central Committee – and roll out the welcome mat.

‘Tamnation. OC Register/News Tribune Really And Truly Hits Rock Bottom

Every week they insult my intelligence all over again. Why do they do that?

I really thought the OC Register/Fullerton News Tribune had gone about as far south as was humanly possible. I was wrong. Yesterday they produced an on-line “piece” by a “columnist” named Dennis Bode.

It was dressed up to look like an article about remodeling your house – which is about as newsworthy as tulips in the front yard. Pretty soon the article started talking about house prices and foreclosures and REO’s, etc. Upon closer inspection it turns out the thing is nothing but a real estate come-on by Bode who, it turns out, is a real estate agent.

Sweet Emancipator, are they joking? Was this an infomercial that somehow missed the “advertisement” label and got put in the news tab, instead? Or has the Register/News Tribune descended to printing ads under the guise of news? Other ads on the page are clearly labeled “advertisement.”

Did Mr. Bode pay for that ad? I have to wonder.

This is beyond incompetent and lazy. This is unethical. But what do I know? I’m just a dead dog with a bust-up eye socket and a bad under bite. Arf.

Total Buzz Fail: The Shoe Fetish

Um, too much information?

Everybody knows that traditional print journalism is on the way out. Why? Lazy citizens? Sensory overload? More convenient access? All of the above?

Dying papers like the Orange County Register are fighting a rear-guard action by turning their print edition into a dumbed-down website-looking format with lots of pictures and human interest stories for us idiots. And of course they have gone on-line with stuff like their political gossip column “Total Buzz.” Which might be better termed “Total Schmooze.”

Rather than actually dedicate itself to reporting real, relevant news, the Register has decided to dedicate its employees’ talents toward the inane, and to the political flackery of Martin Wisckol and Frank Mickadeit. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the worthies than run the Register that Orange County is a market that is starved for local news and, coincidentally, that it is run by a group of political overseers who operate the place like their own private plantation. Seems like an opportunity to do real reporting, right?

But yesterday the Register hit a new low, even for them.

I just can't help myself.

Consider this, um, monument to  cutting edge journalism as Jennifer Muir shares the embarrassing shoe fetish of Brett Barbre with her breathlessly waiting readers.

Brett Barbre’s Shoe Fetish

Huh? FFFF has recently disclosed a series of embarrassing expenditures by the County Clerk, Tom Daly, including a $48,000 contract to the very same Brett Barbre to “study” an athletic hall of fame, and who then turned around and kicked back $1000 into Daly’s political campaign.

And what about the $1700 as month retainer that has been paid out by Daly for over five years to a Sacramento “consultant” to do – nothing. And how about the County spending $2,100,000 two years ago at Daly’s behest on a tear-down building that was supposed to house County’s archives? Of any interest to the intrepid journalists at the Register? Naw.

It's not just a girl thing...

Instead we get pictures of what shoes the political hacks are wearing at the Registrar of Voters Office. They think we want to look at pictures of people’s feet. Meanwhile a lowly blog is forced to actually do a newspaper’s job.

Well, we can take a certain perverse pleasure in knowing that the Register’s days are numbered and that soon its employees will be doing (paid) PR work, or will be blogging for food.

Still, it does seem shame that nobody in the business is willing to try to fill the void where local news used to be.

Why It Sucks To Be Matthew J. Cunningham

John Lewis is my moral compass.

I can only wonder what’s it’s like to have virtually no moral bearing – to be at the whim of whichever authority figure is pushing you at a given moment. Like a leaf blown in the wind.

Today a supporter of Hugh Nguyen’s campaign to unseat the deplorably incompetent Democrat County Clerk Tom Daly passed along the news that Matthew J. Cunningham of Mauve County fame had a devoted an entire post to the untrustworthiness of Nguyen. His running buddies? The lefties at the LiberalOC blog!

First it seems that he, like his candidate Tom Daly, takes exception to Nguyen’s ballot designation.

He also makes a big harrumph about Nguyen changing the story he told some of Cunningham’s Blue County boyfriends a couple of months ago about the unsolicited ad Art Pedroza is running for him on the OJ blog.  You’re joking, right?

But here’s the kicker. Hugh Nguyen is mostly shifty and not to be trusted because when he was soliciting endorsements last summer for the Clerk-recorder job he didn’t inform those folks of the presence of his wife Laura Cunningham in the race, thereby precluding them from endorsing her!

Of course the idea that Nguyen was under any moral or legal obligation to advertise the hapless and long-defunct Mrs. Jerbal campaign is so preposterously comical that no more need be said about it.

Cunningham likes his style...

Meanwhile from the vantage of his lofty moral authority Cunningham seems unable to discern the manifest failures of his boy Tom Daly. You know, like the $48,000 Daly passed along to a campaign consultant for “studying” a sports hall of fame; like the $100,000+ he has wasted (and is still wasting) on monthly retainers for a do-nothing Sacramento “consultant;” oh yeah, and let’s not forget the $2,100,000 chunked into the toilet on the acquisition of the uninhabitable building at 433 Civic Center West. What was the issue again? Oh, yeah – trustworthiness!

On top of all that, Daly is a Democrat and Cunningham is supposed to be a conservative Republican! No bueno!

No, sir. I do not need a wordsmith.

Come to think of it, Cunningham has never said a word about the two fraudulent voting registrations of one Harry C. Sidhu, the 4th District carpetbagger who lied about living at the Calabria Apartments on two separate public documents. Which sounds a lot like voter fraud and perjury if you ask me.

And speaking of shifty, how about Sidhu’s campaign signs that advertise the carpetbagger simply as “Mayor Pro Tem” despite the fact that they are posted in cities where Sidhu is not on the city council? Hows that for shifty?

The beautiful Calabria Apartments. No furniture was ever moved in. Did Sidhu sleep on the floor?

But oh yeah, his boss John Lewis is working for Sidhu now, too; so that means that the regular rules don’t apply, see?

Jesus H., it must suck to be Cunningham.

Well, You Go With What You Know

I was describing the Sidhu for Supervisor campaign to my neighbor yesterday and she asked me why anybody with any self-respect would be associated with a carpetbagging campaign that started out with a completely phony address behind a bowling alley.

We found neither hide nor Harry...

I explained that there really is no lower class of organism than the professional political campaign parasite –  a rather shocking combination of character traits that most of us can’t even begin to fathom. And I felt constrained to point out that sadly, many politicians are in the same class of humanoid.

No crowding, please. There is plenty to go around, I assure you.

In the case of Sidhu I pointed out that although his own campaign people laugh at his carpetbagging and evident buffooneries they are there because Sidhu has a lot of cash he is willing to waste  in order to satisfy his desperate hunger for political recognition, and they will be there until it is all gone – no matter how many offices he runs for.

Fill 'er up!

Diane Harkey Tries To Drive Spike Through Heart of High Speed Rail Boondoggle

You go, girl...

I’ve never heard much good about Diane Harkey, the State Assemblywoman from, um, down there somewhere.

But that changed dramatically when a Friend of mine and a devout High Speed Rail opponent sent me a link to a  San Mateo County Times story that talks about Harkey’s attempt to kill the bond sale to raise $9.5 billion dollars and start putting it into the greasy palms of Curt Pringle and Harry Sidhu’s backroom buddies.

It seems Ms. Harkey thinks it’s a poor idea for the State to take on more debt given its current catatonic fiscal condition. And maybe she’s come to the realization that “jobs, jobs, jobs” at the cost of billions more indebtedness is not a conservative recipe for success. So she’s introducing legislation to stop the the floating o’ the bond (ambiguous St. Pat’s Day reference).

And I say good for her!

And I also say it’s time for Fullerton politicians and residents to figure out what the alignment impacts will have on Fullerton and how much that’ll cost us.

The Fullerton Observer Does It Again

Here’s a painful pill for those Yellowing Observers who offer up their criticisms about the accuracy of our blog.

Today the tattered Fullerton Observer released its Mid March bird cage liner with a front page story on the 4th district Supervisorial race. The story inexplicably claimed that candidates Harry Sidhu, Rose Espinosa and Richard Faher had dropped out of the race. Ay, caramba! Not even close! Jebus, how did that happen?

Actually, when you come to think about it, the screw up is not all that unusual for the Observer where news, editorial, and incompetency are often shot through Sharon Kennedy’s particle accelerator in opposite directions.

Anyway, the Observer elves got hard at work right away making the fix, albeit on-line:

Good Lord. And Sharon Kennedy says we are widely discredited. Hoo boy!

It should be pointed out that the Friends here at FFFF have published 721 blog posts in the last 18 months; and had my bloggers coughed up any thing this errant I would have introduced corporal punishment into our editorial board meetings.

Word From The Empress: “We Are Not Amused”

Do not you think it a matter worthy of lamentation, that, when there is such a vast multitude of worlds, we have not yet conquered one?

Apparently my ongoing exploration into the encroachment of County 1st District Supervisor Janet Nguyen into the management of the 4th District office has created some angst on the Hall of Admin 5th Floor. Apparently Her Highness is displeased with the revelation that she has hired 3 new people to occupy that office even though there is no supervisor there. She has been snooping around to find out where the “leak” is.

Leak? Why is Empress Nguyen concerned about news of her doings leaking out? Is she trying to hide something?

After all, the Imperial story has been that these additional people are needed to help inform all us poor, ignorant denizens of the 4th District learn all about the wonderful County programs available to make our lives ever so much better. Ferchrissakes you’d think she’d issue a press release, right? But no! Maybe she’s worried about being perceived as a manipulative, scheming empire builder.

She has reason to be worried about that.

Janet Nguyen Is At It Agin’!

Can't have an empire with an empress!

A few days ago I related how Board of Supervisors Chair Janet Ngyuen had hired a couple of people to occupy Chris Norby’s former 4th District office. I opined that it seemed like a real extravagance given the fact that there was no supervisor to support, and likely diminishing “constituency work” since there was no supervisor to direct and approve it. Also the replacement election is just a short 10 weeks away.

I also speculated that perhaps Nguyen was just placing her people inside the office to report back directly to her; and perhaps that she was embedding her personnel in the office in the unlikely event of A Sidhu victory in June. Did Nguyen make a deal with Sidhu to keep these people employed later? Just wondering.

The latest word from several sources is that Nguyen has hired yet another person to work in the 4th District office and that this person started today. Good grief, this is ridiculous. One of those sources informs us that Nguyen’s explanation for this idiocy is that “her” people are there to help make sure folks in the 4th District are aware of all the programs the County offers them. Oh, really?

Frankly, none of the explanations make Nguyen look like anything other than a devious empire-builder.

She should keep her hands off the 4th District. She has enough trouble in her own.