A while back we shared a classic lackey moment when Matthew J. Cunningham gave former Anaheim Mayor-for-Hire and all-round sleaze Kurt Pringle a vigorous lingual lather up.
Hey, those cigars don't pay for themselves...
Not to be out done by an amateur, The Register’s in-house boot-lick-name-dropper Frank Mickadeit decided to do him one better, and offered up a sloppy tongue-job to the man the State’s Attorney general found be conflicted in his serial roles as lobbyist, mayor, and Boondoggle HSR Chairman.
Now, we all know that Pringle is and always has been in it for Pringle. But good old Frank seems perfectly willing to pass along the nonsense that Pringle is out of elective politics to focus on his business. No. Pringle is out of elective politics because there is no longer any elective office that wouldn’t be a detriment to his business.
Of course we hear from former Anaheim garbage hauler Bill Taormina, supporter of the lamest of the lame Lorri Galloway, who believes that Pringle should be California’s governor or maybe a senator. Taormina has millions of reasons to praise Pringle, but there is no more moral underpinning for his support of Pringle than there was for his giving Galloway three fake addresses in his various rental units so she could run a fraudulent campaign for County supervisor.
Which leads to the conclusion that the sooner the pathetic Register goes under for the third and final time, the better.
This post is a story about the City of Orange. Why is it relevant to Fullerton? Because the antagonist of the tale is none other than Matthew J. Cunningham who loves to pontificate about all things freedom-friendly, posing as he does as a champion of business and free enterprise, and property rights, yada yada yada; a typical OC repuglican, in fact: we all know now that Cunningham was pulling down a hefty six-figure income for many years from the ultra-liberal Children and Families Commission.
Cunningham’s loud brayings on all things conservative maybe even helped him get appointed to the Orange Planning Commission by Orange Councilman Jon Dumitru. But, alas, talk is cheap. Here’s Cunningham voting to shoot down a proposal for a cafe owner to have a live music until (gasp) midnight. Watch Mr. Friend of Freedom in action:
It also transpires that Cunningham and his wife have been lobbying in Orange, too. And that doesn’t look very good for somebody making discretionary decisions on behalf of the public of a city.
And in a rather stunning display of disloyalty Cunningham refused to support his patron, Dumitru, in his run for mayor last fall. In fact the little woman chipped in a hundred bucks to Dumitru’s opponent, Carolyn Cavecche.
It would appear that Mr. Dumitru has finally run out of patience with his appointee and has asked him step down. Word in the Orange Plaza is that Cunningham refuses to go quietly, perhaps believing he has the three votes necessary to remain on the commission despite the fact that he was personally selected by Dimitru. The F-you to his boss has instigated an effort by Dimitru to force the City Council to vote on the matter. Here’s the agenda item at this week’s council meeting.
Will Freedom Boy stay or go? And will he quit harassing business owners in Orange? Stay tuned for the fun!
Okay, we’ve had some harsh criticism of the Voice of OC in the past, but today Norberto Santana came out with a great expose about OC Fair-employed lobbyist Dick Ackerman, husband of former carpetbaggress Linda, both of whom are residents of Irvine.
I told the DA everything was on the up and up. And that's what he went with!
Last year our do-nothing DA whitewashed Ackerman’s role in the ’09 OC Fair sale matter, saying he didn’t lobby the Legislature in violation of State law. How did the DA reach this conclusion? It wasn’t through investigative work, that’s for damn sure. Naturally, Amen Corner repuglicans like Matthew J. Cunningham crowed when the whitewash came out, but they’ll be eating crow soon enough. See, Santana got hold of Ackerman’s Nossaman Law Firm’s original billing records. And even though those records were laundered through some “environmental” consulting firm called LSA, the details prove what we here at FFFF have known since the fall of 2009: Ackerman was acting as a lobbyist and that in 2010 the DA was covering it up. The Nossaman billing records show phone calls to members of the State Legislature at $500 an hour. And that was illegal.
I gotta eat the feathers, too?
We didn’t have the billing, of course. We just had Dicky-boy’s own words:
“In order for the fair to be sold, it would require budget language to authorize the state to sell it,” he said. “I did some preliminary work to get the language in the budget.”
Preliminary work? Well, that’s one way of describing it; and that pesky budget language sure wasn’t going to jump into the bill all by itself, now was it?
Well, Friends, don’t expect any legal remedies anytime soon. Just remember the name: Ackerman. When you hear it, or read it, or smell it, you can bet some monkey business is afoot.
First off, let’s get one thing clear. Some of my best friends are liberals. We go way back. They are confused and misguided, but I like them and they like me (I think).
Then there are some of the local Democrats who are no better than our OC repuglican crew – except that they inhabit a Red County and don’t get to tap into the scratch. You know who I mean: The sad sacks at Liberal OC, for for whom no idiot Democrat is too low or too stupid to dream up outlandish apologies.
Geez. He uses power tools. He's already smarter than the average Planning Commissioner.
It seems that the chief of this scabrous tribe has got it into his noggin to criticize my friend Travis Kiger for an incomplete and unsatisfactory application to the Fullerton Planning Commission. Dan Chmielewski thinks this is some sort of breech of transparency and takes Travis to task as some sort of hypocrite. Of course, the idea of anyone who prostitutes himself for Boss Agran’s crooked Irvine machine talking about transparency is downright laughable.
It was a slow month for liberal news.
Alas, Travis didn’t list an employer or a single reference. Well so what? The appointment is a recommendation from a City Councilman (Bruce Whtaker) who is personally responsible for the appointment.And that’s what we promote here: accountability. Dan C and his cohorts should try it some time.
Here’s the truth: upon assuming office Travis will have to submit a Form 700 and then Curious Dan and Jerbal Cunningham can have a look at his financial interests. And that’s transparency.
There has been some talk hereabouts regarding tonight’s election of officers for the OCGOP. Not being a Republican, I really don’t care much who these idiots elect to be their “leaders,” a funny description of what amounts to little more than a kleptocracy (thanks, nipsey). Scott Baugh, the top dog who is running for another term, has been an overseer on the plantation for years, using his political connections to get a huge lobbying contract from the County of Orange. His official bootlicker, Matthew J. Cunningham, was rewarded for all his lackeydom with a six-figure-a-year deal with the most liberal agency in California proving that the plumbers are right and shit does run downhill.
But this post is about a chap named Jonathan Fleischman who is running for 1st Vice president (or some equally lame title) really sets the the gold standard for repuglicanism. His pals like Cunningham love to tell you about how The Flash has labored in the trenches doing God’s work, blah, blah, blah. What he omits to mention is that Fleischman was crooked Sheriff Carona’s apologist for years – while on the public payroll, and all the while running his real business, an ad factory blog called The Flash Report.
You are called upon by Cunningham to believe that underneath the oleaginous surface Fleischman is true and pure, a real Tea Partier. Examples are shown to demontrate his rock-ribbed conservatism and willingness to go after even bigger crooks than he. But check the dates: Fleischman’s behavior only got tough when he was no longer on the government payroll, the S.S. Carona was sinking fast, and he evidently saw his main chance in burnishing his alleged conservative credentials.
Psst. Fleischman's left the reservation...
But the true ‘pug in Fleischman re-emerged in fine form in the fall of 2009 when he promoted the carpetbagging scampaign of the utterly lame Linda Ackerwoman over Chris Norby. See, that episode was all about the do-re-mi, too. And that’s what repuglicanism is all about: getting government influence through specious claims of conservatism and then peddling it as hard as you can.
Worst Vote 2010. For sheer, wasteful incompetence you’ve really got to hand it to Chris Norby. The judges were horrified by the deed. Politicians get so few chances to do the right thing without fear of reprisal of some sort. And when confronted with the opportunity to tell Janet Nguyen to take her stupid memorial and shove it up her Midway City, Norby gave her a big, wet $350,000 kiss. Ugh.
You want a monument?
Best Image of 2010. Was there ever any doubt? The selection committee didn’t even pause for another bong rip. You knew, too, didn’t you. Here it is:
The assclownery was complete. The deal was done. The ink was dry.
Engaging Political Mailers. This one was tough and the committee labored long and hard. And by long and hard I mean, hello bankrupt Aaron Gregg; and good-bye to any chance of winning anything:
Well, there goes the campaign. Too many consonants in all the wrong places!
Best Campaign Sign. Another no-brainer for the selection committee who by now was totally fried. In a year of outstanding campaign sign outstandatude, one entry blew the others away. And you you knew it was coming, dintcha? Bad Chi. Bad, bad Chi!
Roland's cookie toss.
Wackiest Political Stooge of the Year. Yep, the dark horse took the bait and takes the brass ring. And by brass ring I mean a coveted Fringie. And by dark horse I mean the nominee originally set up just to round out the field. The humorless, brain-washed oddball 4sd Observer, re-emerged to remind us all of the hollow Sham that was Pam and the various cretins who actually bought into her scam and continue to defend it.
Is your weiner a Collabricorn?
Most Embarrassing Political Endorsement. Hopefully you caught on by the time you reached the end of the squalid list. And if u dint u r not 2 brite. All these miscreants, dingbats, and airheads endorsed the same bozo – Hairball Sidhu. And he in turn was only too eager to publicize their support. And that means they all deserved each other – a way down there at the bottom of the slimy well.
Well, there goes the wet dream!
Worst Political Candidate. Yes, Hairbag Sidhu is an inveterate office-seeking, perjuring assclown. Lorraine Galloway is a blithering idiot. But neither of them actually poisoned anybody. Neither had to give their DNA to the DA to dodge a stay at Theo Lacy; neither’s old man was busted, in flagrante delicto, stealing campaign signs. And so the winner must be obvious. It was to the committee. Cue Roland Chi theme song.
Spit and acquit. I did!
The Committee believed it would be remiss without recognizing special contributors to the North OC Scene, and so it deemed Special Fringies to be in order. here they are:
The 2010 Don’t Know Whether to Laugh or to Cry Special Fringie goes to this collection of crooks and scammers who seem to understand the bathos of the June 2010 election night situation. All except the buffoon in the middle, of course, who seems to find the whole thing humorous:
What went wrong?
The 2010 Do As I Say Not As I Do Special Fringie Hypocrisy Award goes to none other than Matthew J. Cunningham, who rails about big government and nanny states, as well as all the other repuglican moralistic bugaboos, but who actually makes his living, such as it is, on the government crumbs his ‘pug bosses brush off their table. In 2010 we busted this fine, upstanding “conservative” gentleman for being the publicist of the Rob Reiner tax-and-redistribute OC Children and Families Commission where he was making $200 an hour handing out toothbrushes, listening to the radio, having lunch with Steve Greenhut, writing op-ed pieces for Democrats, and even filing his obscene invoices in his garage (Suite C) file cabinet.
Suddenly all of his previous behavior made a lot more sense.
It really paid off. For a while.
Best New Phrase of Invective 2010. The judges weren’t even going to award this Special Fringie in 2010. And then just last week one of the Friends coined this sparkling gem: Fullertonions. Was it intentional? Was it just a typo? The judges didn’t give a damn. The term just seems so right to describe the dismal, vegetative state of an electorate that would elevate fellow vegetables Pat McPension and Don Blankhead. And onions make you cry.
Best Hope for Fullerton’s Future. This Special Fringie goes to Bruce Whitaker and Chris Thompson, two dudes who seem to get it. In two years you will have a chance to build on these 2010 success stories. Will you? Or will you let the onions have a free ride?
Well, Friends, them there’s your 2010 Fringies. It’s been one helluva a year for you Fullertonions down there, and all I can say is you got what you deserved. But what do I know? I’m just a deceased canine and just damn glad to be up here in Dog Heaven.
The OC Register’s Tony Saavedra penned a nice little piece today exposing the Orange County Children and Families Commission Executive Director’s fabulous salary. Mike Ruane, the guy in question, pulls down a nifty $327K by the time everything is said and done. He has a grand total of 23 employees.
If you give me two hundred bucks an hour I'll defend this happy horse shit.
In the past we have explored the huge sums of money this tax-and-redistribute operation has paid out to political PR operations like Kurt Pringle; and we have detailed the idiotic $200 an hour payments to one Matthew J. Cunningham for doing thngs like listen to the radio and publicize toothbrush handouts.
It turns out that Ruane and his well-connected repuglican pals are not the only folks doing well by doing good. According to Saavedra over half of Ruane’s small posse pulls in over a hundred Gs per annum!
The bishop made me do it.
So who’s in charge? Well, nobody, of course. This is the worst kind of unaccountable government. The Board members are all appointed, but don’t answer to anybody. They can basically do any damn thing they want so long as the word “child” is mentioned somewhere. Atop the pyramid of power sits Supervisor Bill Campbell. You remember him. The one who actually wept here on the dais contemplating the good works of the Human Relations Commission. The Kids Commission is his pet project and damned if he isn’t going to do his God-ordained good works with your tax dollars.
Campbell’s respone to Saavedra is just comical and suggests that this idiot is probably just as profligate with County resources as he is handing out tobacco tax dough to kiducrats.
Oh, Ye Cruel Amethyst Plasticine Gods above! In a year full of wacky political campaigns this category just screams out “potential!”
Now, the Nominating Committee wasn’t interested in the typical collection of paid-to-blog courtesans that whore themselves as part of their quotidian life’s work: creeps like Dan Chomolungma and Matthew J. Cunningham. Oh, no no no!
This category embraces the brief shooting stars who, in their trajectories across the local political firmament, burn with an incandescent glow before vanishing into the irrelevance of lifelong mundane hackery. And by burn with an incandescent glow, I mean make utter jackasses out of themselves shamelessly bending over for cretinous political bosses. Here we find political ambition, lack of character, stupidity, and brainless tenacity sticking with people or ideals that weren’t worth sticking up for.
Motivation is not the sole factor in the category; comic spectacle is what we’re after, too.
And your nominees are:
Hey, nice shirt!
1. Thomas Anthony Gordon. This econo-size chowderhead popped up on a local blog attacking Shawn Nelson for being a defense lawyer and therefore soft on crime. Which was funny because Gordo had had his own brushes with the law!
Will work for food.
Since this goon lives in Santa Ana it wasn’t hard to surmise that he was working for somebody who had an interest in the 4th District campaign. At first we thought he was working for John Lewis and the Tom Daly Team. Well, maybe he was. But then he appeared as a petition circulator for Hairball Sidhu and we then knew whose payroll he was on.
Gordon even played victim card wackily claiming to have been intimidated by us for outing his tooling for Sidhu.
After we busted him for making anonymous comments on our blog he mercifully vanished from our radar screen.
A little man in a little crowd.
2. Little Billy Turner. ‘Lil Billy popped up last February at a Fullerton Tea Party event passing out fliers for Hairbag Sidhu. Unfortunately he ran into Chris Thompson to whom he admitted that Sidhu was going to lose and noted that he had tried to get in touch with Shawn Nelson. Not knowing that his attempted double-cross in search of a winning candidate would end up as blog fodder he passed along his name and address to Thompson.
Later, we were told that Little Billy had been ensconced in Sidhu Fake Address #2 so that it would appear lived in. And we were informed that Little Billy had also turned into a sign thief. That sure seems in character.
It didn’t seem to have occurred to Little Billy that getting an honest job in one of Sidhu’s Pollo Locos would be more honorable than working for such a creep’s bogus scampaigns; but then given his own propensity for double-dealing, maybe part-time jobs in politics is the only kind of work he will ever have, or ever want. There will always be ‘pugs looking for cheap labor so Billy may find employment once every couple of years.
Oh, well. If working for Sidhu doesn’t scare you straight, nothing can.
Find 4SD Observer. Then look for Waldo.
3. 4SD Observer. This sad Grendel-like creature emerged in 2010 to defend the indefensible – the serial miscreance of Pam Keller. 4SD withstood a systematic dismembering from the regs, continually coming back for more. There was no hypocritical, stupid, lying, featherheaded thing that her Pam could say or do that could cause this devoted acolyte to cease soldiering on.
Hilariously, the series of quotations from The Manchurian Candidate by some of our Friends went zipping right over his/her head, every time. An irrational love for budget-busting public safety union members, hatred for Supervisor Shawn Nelson and a weird fixation on cooking harmless bunny rabbits sealed the deal.
In short, 4SD Observer was the quintessential intellectual face of the Keller years: sanctimonious, humorless, and confused; but mostly just brainwashed.
Cherry-flavored, glow-in-the-dark, radioactive Jebus! Who could have supposed that 2009 could have been topped when it came to really awful and horrific political candidates? But it was. By 2010. And it wasn’t even close.
2009 brought us the spectacle of Chris Norby running for County Clerk to preserve our birth certificates from the silverfish; and the hideous Linda Ackerwoman, an Irvine claim-jumper whose appalling repuglican candidacy for State Assembly resembled a jail break though a swamp more than a political campaign.
Well, Hell! They were just getting us warmed up.
In the category Worst Political Campaign 2010 we roll out the following rogues gallery of nominees:
2. Lorri “Lorraine” Galloway. Another Anaheim Hills denizen who created at least three fake abodes (2 illegal) to run for the same seat as Sidhu. Her manifest idiocies, including the unintentionally hilarious “Lorri in 4th gear” video series (and the now world-wide youtube sensation “Poor Bella”) identified this brain-dead clothes horse as the utter lightweight she is. Her checkered past revealed all sorts of scams that would have made Elmer Gantry weep bitter tears of envy. Oh, Anaheim! I lift my leg on thee!
An apt symbol of the completely futile and humiliating 4th District supervisorial campaign of Hide and Seek Harry Sidhu, perjurer, carpetbagger, and assclown.
Sidhu started out 2010 by lying on two voter registration forms about his completely phony “residency” at the Calabria, a crappy stucco box owned by a buddy on Lincoln Avenue, in West Anaheim. We blew the whistle on that fraud.
We never even saw him...
Later we were treated to the spectacle of Hairball pretending to move into a second 4th District crib – in a marginal neighborhood across the street from Garden Grove.
Sidhu then decided that his new abode virtually required him to run for the GOP Central Committee for the 69th Assembly District – yet another district in which he didn’t live. He stashed a campaign worker into fake residence #2 to make it look legit.
The Boss filed a complaint with OC’s top cop. The DA turned a blind eye, claiming that for all he knew Sidhu meant to live there until he changed his mind, a lie made evident by Sidhu’s registration BEFORE HE EVER MOVED SO MUCH AS A FUTON INTO THE PLACE.
There was plenty of Sidhu methane to go around.
Oh how the ‘pugs tried to confuse the issue! Matthew J. Cunningham claimed the purported length of tenure was too short to matter and immediately changed the subject.
Will work for flame-broiled chicken...
Meanwhile, Sidhu assembled a veritable rogues gallery of supporters who thought they could get something out of a Sidhu victory. Other ‘pug hangers on were hired by Sidhu’s squad to attack Nelson. We had a lot of fun with one in particular, some cretin from Santa Ana named Thomas Gordon.
And Sidhu was a long way from being finished. Act II was on the way.
Let me entertain you...
Sidhu’s numerous and manifest assclowneries culminated in a performance at the GOP nominating meeting that was so jaw-droppingly pathetic that some folks were actually looking around for a humane dose of sodium pentobarbital.
The unions poured over a million bucks of their members’ dues to get Sidhu in office, but the effort was a tough sell. No matter how hard somebody tries to sell you a vehicle, sometimes you figure it’s better just to get out and walk.
The 2010 Sidhu. Take it for a spin?
The June Primary rolled around and the inevitable occurred: Fullerton’s Shawn Nelson just about cleared the field. The only thing left standing was a pathetic, grinning buffoon who was too stupid to realize he had drawn the ultimate booby prize: a runoff election in November against Nelson. And the folks who actually lived in the 69th Assembly District humiliated Sidhu by asskicking the assclown into last place in the Central Committee election.
You bet how much on that horse!?
Sidhu was mercifully quiet for a couple of months. Then his new campaign manager, Chris Jones, a tool of the worst OC repuglicans tried to salvage Curt Pringle’s and John Lewises rotten investment.
Well two jobs were lost - Sidhu's and his campaign manager's!
It didn’t work. How could it? Another drubbing. Chris Jones said it was because they just didn’t have enough money. Right. A bozo who keeps peacocks and dinosaurs on his “elegant estate” couldn’t cough up the dough. Didn’t Sidhu say that money was no object back in June? No, the real problem was the product. Unsaleable at any price.
The final numbers aren’t in, but the results are crystal clear: Shawn Nelson 63%, Hairbag Sidhu 37%. A twenty-six point break. And a wonderful public service was rendered by Nelson that is so valuable we can’t put a price on it – sending Sidhu to the electoral showers.
Nope. No assclowns in our town.
Will Sidhu be back? A pathetic egomaniac like this is hard to get rid of. But one thing we can guarantee: he will never bother the Fourth District again.
