And then there are the Democrats

Early Sunday evening I wrote a post about Peace and Freedom Party supporters in Riverside County. But there is also an active political party in Riverside County called the Democratic Party. Perhaps you've heard of them.

Well, Riverside County Democrats are getting together:

Henry Vandermeir, President of the Democratic think tank known as the California Democratic Council, will be the featured speaker at the September 18, 2008, meeting of the Democrats of Greater Riverside.

The meeting will be held at 7:00 pm at the Riverside Democratic Headquarters, 9496 Magnolia Boulevard.

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Locals not beholden to the McBamas - Peace and Freedom Party, Riverside County

Back in August 1998, I created a Yahoo! Group called inlandempireca. Despite the fact that I rarely visit it, and despite the fact that it has primarily become a spam haven, I've never gotten around to deleting it.

Which, occasionally, is a good thing, because worthwhile information pops up in there.

If you've ever read my personal blog, mrontemp, you know how I often bemoan the fact that most people think that there are only two choices in any major election. Both the media and the two big parties persist in pushing this theory. A media outlet's usual idea of political discourse is to have someone "on the left" from the Democratic Party, and someone "on the right" from the Republican Party, and then pretend that this reflects all known opinions in the United States.

Try as they might, however, the major media and major parties can't stamp out true expressions of political opinion.

I will say up front that I am not a supporter of the Peace and Freedom Party (I personally consider Ralph Nader's plans for government control to be modern-day fascism), but I will defend their right to exist, their right to campaign, their right to be heard.

You're not going to hear the Peace and Freedom Party in the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates (the Commission on Presidential Debates has seen to that), but you can hear them on Yahoo.

This announcement was posted in my inlandempireca group.

Peace and Freedom Party-Riverside County

Contact:groups.yahoo.com/group/peaceandfreedompartyriversidecountyca


The group itself is members-only, and I wouldn't feel right claiming an interest in membership, but the following message is publicly available on the group page:

We would like to start a Chapter,of the Peace and Freedom Party in Riverside County,California.If your interested in joining us in the cause.Please Join our Website. David Wade,Chairman of Website,and George Nelson,Vice Chairman of Website.

The group started on August 20, 2008, and already has five members - not bad for a minor regional political party on Yahoo. If you are so philosophically inclined, go ahead and join them.

P.S. If you haven't heard, Peter Camejo has passed away.

Other observations on the 2008 Los Angeles County Fair

I was not the only person who went to the L.A. County Fair on Saturday.

I was not the only social media user who went to the L.A. County Fair on Saturday.

Here are a couple of tweets from Jason Lee:

Having a snowball fight at the l.a. County fair.

This is actually something that I didn't do this year. For at least the past three years, they've had an indoor room at the L.A. County Fair with a small ice skating rink, and with snow for sledding (and obviously snowball fights). Yes, I know that people in eastern Canada are turning up their noses, but to people in Pomona, snow is a novelty. Jason's second fair tweet:

Texas style bbq pit pork ribs & beef brisket ftw~

To which I say, where's Jake Kuramoto when you need him?

And Jason and I weren't the only people at the fair. Binkley was busy praising the food:

oh LA County Fair your pulled pork dishes are delicious!

Now I guess I have to stand corrected, because to my knowledge they have not yet deep-fried pulled pork and placed it on a stick. But they will. And look at what Tim Malabuyo ate (hint: it wasn't a mango):

LA county fair. Just had a deep-fried twinkie!

Yes!

However, if you think that all of us were sucking down deep-fried X on a stick, there's Shawna Benson to redeem us.

Back from L.A. County Fair. Fair food, farm animals, wine tasting. Good times.

Shawna mentioned another thing that I didn't do today - wine tasting. I actually passed by the wine tasting area, not to mention plenty of beer stands, but frankly it was so hot that I pretty much confined myself to water during the day.

And the Los Angeles County Fair wasn't the only county fair going on today. FriendFeed includes online references to the Linn County Fair, the Clay County Fair, the Santa Cruz County Fair, the Delaware County Fair, and the New Kent County Fair.

But the west is the best. Although Santa Cruz County is techincally farther west than Los Angeles County...OK, the southwest is the best. Get here and we'll do the rest.

The Blue Gate is calling us...

My observations on the 2008 Los Angeles County Fair, and the Official Method for Creating Fair Food

I am now back from my day trip to the Los Angeles County Fair. If you haven't already done so, please take the time to view my posts written before and during my fair visit:

• A post for the cartographically-challenged businesses, Um...WHERE is Fairplex again?


• A picture post from Building 9, one of the indoor exhibit halls.


• A Jersey cow picture.


• A series of three pictures of the pig races, sponsored by Ralphs, including a picture of a pig race itself.


• The descriptive post Milking a goat.


• A picture of the Hawaiian-themed home & garden exhibit.

Some additional observations:

• Parking at Fairplex is now a minimum of $10. You have to wonder - does Fairplex really need the parking revenue? One of the reasons that I haven't attended a lot of functions at Fairplex is because the parking often costs as much as the admission to the event itself.


• There are diverging opinions on the commercial exhibits. Some people love them, and to them the commercial booths are the highlight of the fair. As for me, I could easily do without them; some of the commercial hawkers are as bad as the carnies in terms of obnoxiousness.


• One of the people in our party is on a restricted diet, which pretty much means that we had to bring in outside food. Luckily, Fairplex doesn't really mind if you bring in outside food; the only things to which they object are glass bottles, metal cans, and alcohol. Some places insist that you only eat food bought within their confines; Fairplex isn't doing that.

Speaking of food, I am going to reveal (for those who don't already know) the Official Method for Creating Fair Food:

1. Take any food. And I mean ANY food. Go ahead, think of a food right now.


2. Take the words "Deep-fried" and put them BEFORE the food name.


3. Take the words "on a stick" and put them AFTER the food name.

Deep-fried snail on a stick? Deep fried oatmeal on a stick? Hey, are they any more ridiculous than deep-fried Twinkie on a stick?

[8:45 PM - THESE ARE JUST MY OBSERVATIONS. SEE THE OBSERVATIONS OF OTHERS.]

Aloha!

LA County Fair.

Milking a goat

Pig race

A Gilligan's Island race. The Porkfessor won.

Bring home the bacon!

LA County Fair pig races.

Preparing for the pig races!

LA County Fair, Pomona California.

Jersey

Actually Pomona.

Building 9, LA County Fair

Um...WHERE is Fairplex again?

According to the LA County Fair website, Fairplex is...

Conveniently located where the 10, 210 and 57 freeways meet...

I've noted this before. Some people are presumably still looking for this intersection that no longer exists.

Blood is life

Weren't you excited about the great event that happened this week?

No, I'm not talking about Steve Jobs rocking. I'm talking about important stuff.

The Blood Bank of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties plans to unveil its new name during an event on Wednesday, Sept. 10 in San Bernardino.

The event will start at 10 a.m. at 384 W. Orange Show Road, San Bernardino.

The name change reflects the blood bank's initiative to be a wellness partner in health care with the communities it serves throughout Southern California....

Well, I guess I should have taken off work to find out the exciting news, but I just checked the website instead.

Your feedback is very important to us. If you'd like to share your experiences or have comments or questions, please contact us at:

LifeStream
384 West Orange Show Road
San Bernardino, CA 92408
1.800.TRY GIVING (1.800.879.4484)

Ah, so it's LifeStream. (The visual is unpleasant, but I guess the name fits.)

However, as of early this afternoon the web page didn't talk about anything other than blood and marrow. And the last news discussed an August 29 event.

I'll give them a few hours.

Sarah Le Clear should avoid Colton too - and is she avoiding Nashville?

Last May, I noted how coyotes were appearing in Redlands and Chino Hills, and how there Sarah Le Clear might be in danger if she showed up in one of those areas.

Add Colton to the list of places Sarah Le Clear should avoid:

COLTON - The lean, mid-sized canines may not look like much of a threat, but for residents of the La Loma Hills area, coyotes are cause for real concern.
Several locals have said the coyotes have been snatching up their pets and killing them.

Now, the hillside community is not just worried about their four-legged family members but small children as well.

Hmm, makes sense. When the Coyote Ugly dancers start to gyrate, some people might end up being worried about their children.

But this begs the more important question - whatever happened to the real Sarah Le Clear, formerly of Upland, or perhaps Rancho Cucamonga, or perhaps Whittier, or perhaps Walnut Creek?

While Sarah's MySpace page is still private, the Singing Coyotes MySpace page is still there, and still accessible; however, Sarah is not an official member of this group. Not sure what's going on here, since I thought that the winner of the Ultimate Coyote Ugly Search 3 was supposed to become the sixth member of the Traveling Coyotes.

Did something happen?

Just find the boys with extreme hangovers

I never finished the story about my search for a CD laser lens cleaner.

A few minutes after leaving the Radio Shack at Holt and San Antonio (where they sold CD laser lens cleaners for $22), I found myself at the Rite Aid at Euclid and G Streets in Ontario. I pulled up to a parking place on the side of the store...

...just in time to see two boys running away from the store, big smiles on their faces, and - was that bottles of alcohol that they were carrying?

If you wonder whether the kids are going to get away with this, it should be noted that (although I didn't confirm this) I assume that Rite Aid has security cameras, so they were presumably able to get pictures of the boys' smiling faces. They may not be smiling after the police visit Vina Danks and find the culprits.

Or maybe they aren't smiling anyway. Wisdom comes with age, so these boys presumably aren't that wise. I don't think they were carrying beer or wine, and between them they were carrying between two and four bottles of whatever they had. And, being young, they weren't all that weighty. If the boys tried to dispose of the evidence all by themselves early yesterday afternoon, they are probably feeling REALLY bad right now. Perhaps bad enough that they'll become abstinence champions.

P.S. The CD laser lens cleaners at Rite Aid were $14. I probably could have searched more and gotten a better deal somewhere, but I figured that Rite Aid would appreciate a paying customer.

iGo - gone...

Apparently they don't sell iGo stuff at the Radio Shack on Holt & San Antonio any more. Good concept, but awful expensive.

Speaking of which, I was here looking for a CD laser lens cleaner. Radio Shack has 'em...for $22.

It's been a long time since I was a member of the Radio Shack Battery Club.

[8 SEPTEMBER 7:00 - FOUND A BETTER DEAL ON CD LASER LENS CLEANERS. I'LL DRINK TO THAT.]

It isn't just housing

The economic downturn has not only affected housing prices. Housing Kaboom points out that business developments are also affected:

What's going to happen to these centers? Well you need to look no farther than Moreno Valley to see what will happen. During the last boom several large centers were built. Many of those still sit empty. Right off the 60 Fwy is Canyon Springs center. Once home to a thriving retail center. When the bust hit in the early 90's roughly 70% of the stores moved out. What remained were discount shops or seasonal shops. Only Toy's R Us weathered the storm. Even well known eateries like Tony Roma's could not make it in an empty shopping center.

Let's eat

OK, so maybe we don't have restaurant reviews on the TV any more, but there certainly are restaurant reviewers in the Inland Empire blog world.

Be sure to check out Inland Empire Restaurant and Food Reviews.

This is not for the uppity - two of the recent reviews were for the Wienerschnitzel at Ontario Mills and Graziano's Pizza in Mira Loma.

Mike Wooten, hero? (or, why Ivory Webb wishes he were an Alaska State Trooper, protected by their union)

You may have seen a post in my personal blog about the Log Cabin endorsement of John McCain/Sarah Palin, based partially upon a post from local Matt Munson.

Munson has posted a follow-up:

Governor Palin in the past cut funding for pregnant teens, worked to ban books at the local public library, using government agencies against a former brother in-law. And in the church the governor belongs to, they are just as radical as Obama’s home church but with beliefs that “terrorism is god’s way to punish Israel for not converting to Christianity”, and they are hosting an ex-gay conference hoping that people in Alaska will be healed and converted to heterosexuality.

However, increasing publicity on the "former brother in-law" is bound to backfire. Palin is alleged to have claimed that Alaska state trooper disciplinary measures were not tough enough, and to have interfered in the disciplinary process. At this point some people stop reading and start screaming about abuse of government power. But tell me, what would you do if someone said this about your sister and father?

"If your dad helps you through this divorce he's gonna, he's gonna eat an F'n lead bullet."

and

"I'm gonna take your sister down. I'm gonna ruin your family. know people in all the right places, in high places. I know judges. I know attorneys. I have relationships with these guys. You guys are all going down."

Oh, and how about this?

Another set of interviews conducted later in 2005 with both Todd and Sarah Palin showed more abuses of power, this time while he was at a bar with his "girlfriend." While at the bar and off duty Mike flashed his badge and demanded that another patron be removed. There were also instances of two different DUI's one for Mike and one for his "girlfriend" which were never charged.

Colonel Julia Grimes determined that

The record clearly indicates a serious and concentrated pattern of unacceptable, and at times, illegal activity occurring over a lengthy period, which establishes a course of conduct totally at odds with the ethics of our profession.

Note that Wooten was found guilty of these activities, including illegal activities. (Can you say "rogue cop"?)

Let's take a moment and look at a local case, that of Ivory J. Webb Jr.. He was booted out of the Sheriff's Department - even though he was eventually acquitted of the charges against him.

So you'd expect a "rogue cop" who was found guilty of several questionable and illegal activities to meet a similar fate, wouldn't you?

Mike Wooten received a whopping ten day suspension. The troopers' union got the suspension cut to five days. As Investor's Business Daily stated:

If there's abuse of power in this story, it lies on the side of bureaucrats and unions protecting officers whose behavior makes them a danger to the public.

Heck, if I were Sarah Palin, I'd be mad too. And when more people investigate the story, they'll admire her rather than criticize her.

Don't expect Obama to make a joint appearance with Mike Wooten any time soon.

Perhaps this shareholder meeting will garner some attention

The Claremeont Insider, citing Matt Wrye, noted the PFF Bancorp will hold a shareholder meeting on September 25, at which the merger with FBOP Corp. will be formally presented for a vote.

I just have to ask - what happens if the merger is rejected?