More 2011 Fringie® Follies: Scariest Ghost of Fullerton Past

When the sun rose on January 1, 2011, who could have foreseen the strange and disturbing circumstance that would produce a veritable cavalcade of scary ghosts from Fullerton’s olden days.

Sweet Baby Jebus!

And who knew that so many vaporous remnants of Fullerton’s horse and buggy days would be putting in appearances to remind us of the bad old days before talking pictures and x-rays.

Damn Recall!

Rebels Attack Fort Sumpter

1. First we heard the name A.B. “Buck” Catlin, supporter of the anti-recall crew, and inveterate staff stooge/big government RINO when he was on the City Council in the 1880s. Catlin was a proud supporter of every Redevelopment boondoggle in Fullerton’s history; and some that were so hare-brained even his pals wouldn’t support them. How frightful! Good Old Buck was recalled alongside Don Bankhead and Molly McClanahan for promoting a totally unnecessary utility tax. Wow, things don’t change much around here, do they? Shriek!

2. Another scary ghost reappeared to support the Three Dithering Dinosaurs: the hideous spectral phenomenon known as Linda LeQuire. Linda’s image does not appear in mirrors or photographs so you’ll just have to take our word for it. She also popped up to haunt Fullerton two years ago, so I guess we’re just going to have to get used to these biennial visitations! Brrrr!

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a noxious vapor.

3. Then there was the horrifying and serial re-appearances of my former, broomstick wielding mistress, Jan Flory. Like her former colleagues she too glady voted to approve an illegal 10% tax on your water bills. Even her offspring are creepy. That’s enough to make you cough up your kibble! EEK!

4. Some purists may quibble that Molly McClanahan can’t possibly be a eerie apparition since she is actually an elected member of the North Orange County Community College District Board of Trustees.  But if that isn’t an insubstantial graveyard I don’t know what is. Like Catlin, and Bankhead, McClanahan was recalled in 1994 for backing that shameful utility tax; her eerie manifestation in defense of the indefensible Three Sluggish Sloths says all that need be said about this transparent emanation.

5. And finally, in 2011 we were treated to a horrifying visitation from the Great Beyond in the vacuous form of former city councilwoman Pam Keller. Don’t be fooled by any apparent substance. There’s no there, there.

First she showed up to scream union slogans into a radio show mike; later she appeared at a city council meeting in some sort of cryogenic suit. If that don’t send you shrieking into the night then I don’t know from Milk Bones. Boo!

Feel free to run screaming into the night, yourself.

Time For Another Fundraiser? Please Do!

The End is Near!

A little over a month ago, The Dithering Dinosaurs© held a fundraiser at the Villa Del Sol in downtown Fullerton. The entrance fee was a mere $150. Until yesterday, I had been wondering what they would be spending the money on, if, in fact they netted anything at all. Well, on Friday I received this “hit” piece in the mail addressed to me and my brother.

Thanks to the knuckleheads for advertising the Recall!  Saturday was a record breaking day for signature gathering. I say it’s time for another fundraiser!

And thanks to the help of one of our intrepid Friends, the clip below shows you some highlights from the last fundraiser. Watch the big money developers silently scuttle by; listen to the slow-motion simpleminded mental unwinding by Jan Flory; and hear from two of the dinosaurs, themselves. F. “Dick” Jones gets deeply Scriptural but really shallow when it comes to facts. Don Bankhead is as confused and/or untruthful as ever – the illegal 10% water tax is still being collected. Enjoy.

They’re Having A Party!

Looks like the anti-recall sponges and parasites have decided to hold a party to raise money for the Three Blind Mice.

Well, good for them, say I. After all, we really need to see what kind of creeps will support the incompetents who created and tolerated the Culture of Corruption in the Fullerton Police Department.

Here’s the flier:

View the flyer

Of course they were going to trot out the Jurassic McClanahan and Catlin – who were both recalled alongside Bankhead in 1994 for imposing a tally unnecessary utility tax on Fullerton. Oh! And here’s Jan Flory who not only supported the utility tax, but even wished it were doubled. And all of them voted year after year to stick us with a 10% tax on our water bills for no damn good reason other than that they could get away with it. Oh, yeah, they also supported every single Redevelopment boondoggle, giveaway, disaster, and money pit.

And Dick Ackerman? Ho ho! We’re onto that slime ball’s influence peddling schemes. Just a few weeks ago the Three Desiccated Dinosaurs awarded the lobbyist Ackerman’s clint a multi-million dollar subsidy for an unnecessary housing project. Awarded for services rendered, no doubt.

Well, there’s your sad crew of anti-recall characters. Here’s a thought: let’s sweep the whole rotten Phalanx of Failure into the garbage can of Fullerton history – once and for all!

Can anybody say protest at the Villa del Sol?

 

 

 

Pat McPension Speaks! Um, Well, Spoke…

Whatchoo gonna do when they come for you?

Fullerton City Councilman and former Police Chief, Pat McPension ain’t sayin’ much these days, at least nothing that isn’t getting him in even deeper in the City’s cover-up of the Kelly Thomas homicide at the hands for six Fullerton cops on the sultry night of July 5th.

But take a quick trip to Fullerton Stories and listen to then candidate Pat McPension in the fall of 2010.

Enjoy Pat’s list of repuglican endorsements, including DA Tony Rakauckas (!) and also the rear guard of decrepit liberalism in Fullerton, Molly McClanahan and Jan Flory.

Also enjoy Pat’s observation that it’s a good thing when nobody shows up to public meetings! Check. It’s a lot easier to cover-up what you’re doing when nobody is around (except “journalists” who regurgitate City Hall press releases and toss up softball questions). And of course nobody will be there to call you out on the serial misdeeds of your police department. The one you were in charge of for 17 long years. Remember, Pat? Yes, when you hired thieves, thugs, pill-poppers, sexual predators, kidnappers, perjurers, one-eyed LAPD rejects, killers of unarmed homeless people (and who knows who else) to patrol the mean streets of Fullerton.

Suffer through McPension’s bogus concern about out-of-control public employee pensions, and reflect upon the sad fact that in eight months on the City Council he hasn’t uttered so much as a tiny squeak on the subject.

In 2010 Pat promised to “hit the ground running.” Boy, that sure turned out to be a big elephant splat on the pavement in 2011.

Things to Look For in 2011

They were large and slow with a mean streak.

The Fullerton new year brings with it a strange atavistic political regime: an elderly, under-informed, pro-staff, pro-Redevelopment, pro big government RINO majority. It sort of reminds me of the Ackerman-LeQuire-Catlin axis of ignorance that held sway in Fullerton in the 1980s. Things only got worse when Don Bankhead added his own special brand of undernourished intelligence to the equation in 1988.

So what does the new year portend? One thing to look for is the return to the old method of selection of city commissioners by committee – a committee made up of retired public employees who have the time and desire to weed out the intelligent, the skeptical, the individualistic sorts who might actually make a city commission do something besides rubber stamp whatever nonsense were being peddled by staff.

In recent years the process has been made much more accountable by having personal recommendations made by council members. And folks like Keller and Quirk-Silva who in the old days would never be able make important appointments finally had some real influence in the municipal sausage factory.

Of course this sort of accountability is anathema to the old-timers who understand the value of Fullertonion group-think, fear informed opinion, promote government “stability” and who above all else want responsibility as diffuse and elusive as possible, so that when the inevitable “mistakes were made” mantra is chanted it will be as hard as possible to assign a name to the screw-up.

Will the dinosaurs work hard to keep Bruce Whitaker and Sharon Quirk-Silva from making key appointments? Just wait and see. And just wait for the Jan Flory good-government types to come out of the woodwork to promote the Old Boy Network.

Ah! Just like the good old days!

The Few, the Proud, the Fringe: And The Fringie Goes to….

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.

Quirk Screws Silva; La Plus Ca Change…

It happened. As predicted. At the behest of the repuglican puppetmasters that helped put him on the Fullerton City Council, ex-police Chief and $215,000 a year pension puller-downer Pat McKinley bypassed Democrat Sharon Quirk-Silva for Mayor Pro Tem. Instead Fullerton’s former top cop and election winner by 90 votes went with the feeble octogenarian, Don Bankhead. Gotta keep that winning team intact, right?

Well, goddamit, the ‘pugs weren’t the only people who helped put McKinley on the council. They had help. As noted previously, many of the the Yellowing Fullerton Observers went for McKinley, too, including folks like Molly McClanahan, Jan Flory and….wait for it…Sharon Quirk-Silva! It cost Doug Chaffee the election.

Two years ago these same people helped put the cracker back in the cracker barrel.

Say, guys, hows that strategy working out for ya?

Local Boy Gets Name in Paper

The son.

And not in a way you want it to appear.

In an article yesterday, the OC Register lit up Deputy DA Mike Flory for six instances of courtroom misbehavin’ between 2001 and 2005 – more than any other prosecutor in the entire state o’ Californy.

Flory? Why does that name sound familiar? Maybe because this guy is the offspring of former Fullerton Councilmember, Jan Flory.

A study emanating from Santa Clara Law School tracked 707 cases in which Courts of Appeal cited misconduct; then they laboriously tracked down the names.

Apparently the 4th District Court of Appeals in Santa Ana has not been happy with Mr. Flory’s behavior, including his apparent dislike of artists, philosophers, and “Hispanics.”

What has been going on since 2005 is anybody’s guess. We do know that Flory tried to get himself elected judge a couple years ago with disastrous results. As the article acidly notes:

Flory once aspired to be a Superior Court judge, but received criticism during his 2008 run for a judicial seat. Presidents of both the Orange County deputy sheriff’s union and the Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association accused Flory of lying in an attempt to secure their endorsement. The Orange County Bar Association rated Flory as “not qualified” to be a judge.

Yikers!

And to cap it off the Assistant DA. Bill Feccia (which I am told is Italian for bullshit) claims the study is somehow biased. Well, let’s have Bill’s own words take us home:

“Mistakes are sometimes made in the heat of battle, and sometimes tempers get frayed,” he added. “But this is the finest class of people you’ll find anywhere.”


What Are They Doing Now?

No. You can't dig your way out.

So who really is responsible for Fullerton’s out-of-control “public safety” pension vortex?

Here’s a handy list of everyone in the history of Fullerton who’s ever voted for the public safety  3 @ 50 pension scam, and their current whereabouts:

Yay! Red jello!

Don Bankhead (R) – Fullerton City Councilmember, and Mayor.

Why not 4 @45? That's prit' near a hunnerd percent!

Dick Jones (R) – Fullerton City Councilmember.

No, I don't mind dressing up like a goddam idiot...

Chris Norby (R) – State Assemblyman, 72nd District

The bathroom is over there, behind the wig shop.

Mike Clesceri (R) – is rumored to be working security at suburban Chicago mall.

Can I vote now? I'm ready!

Jan Flory (D) – tries to remain relevant by stirring up neighborhood resentment against kids riding bikes.

And there you have it. A 5-0 vote. Motion made by Flory and seconded by Norby, to go along with the most irresponsible vote in the history of Fullerton.

Did Fullerton’s Yellowing Observers Cost Doug Chaffee the Election?

The fourth drink made me do it!

Well, technically it’s not over yet. But the trend since election day is going the wrong way for Doug Chaffee. In second place on election day and looking good for the second council opening, Chaffee has seen his slim lead shrink and then disappear in the ensuing days.

Which leads me to reflect upon Fullerton’s liberal clique, and the choices it makes. You will recall that in 2008 the Fullerton Observer endorsed the egregious Doc Heehaw, who came in ahead of dyed-in-the-wool liberal, Karen Haluza. Sure, you you remember. We wrote about it, here.

And this year? We posted a piece about how ex-Police Chief and astronomical pension-puller-downer Pat McKinley was getting support from some of Fullerton’s most prominent lefties, most notably Jan Flory and Molly McClanahan.

I'm a trustee. You can always trust me.

I visited the Fullerton Observer website and noticed that according to to its editor, second place support by the herd of Yellowing Observers was split between McKinley and Jesse la Tour! Could support for the hand-picked boy of Ed Royce and Dick Ackerman, a career cop, really have been that high among the hardest core Observers? Is Ralph Kennedy rolling over in his urn?

Of course Sharon Kennedy will blame out-of-town money used to hit Chaffee. But how many of Fullerton left-leaning tribe are starting to regret their second vote?