Tag: orange county

Happy October, California!

We had high winds all day gusting to 60 mph. Along with the fires up in Malibu and out in Fontana, we got one of our own between Santiago Canyon and Irvine.

It’s almost 9:30 pm and the temp is 76F, wind is in the 30 mph range, and there’s a choking stench of smoke. The fire is spreading at least right now.

Of course the fire started at the edge of populated Orange County, where Foothill Ranch meets the real canyon country. Once again they put a suburb right at the mouth of the bellows where the fire will always blow hottest.

I’m lucky to be living where we just get the stench. Dad picked the house well.

This is the fourth or fifth time in my life that I’ve seen a suburban shopping mall parking lot full of tumbleweeds.

HAY GUYS REMEMBER ACADEMIC FREEDOM?

UCI UNHIRES LIBERAL LAW SCHOOL DEAN

The Chancellor thought the Regents would block it, so he said, and that the fight would somehow tarnish the new law school. Chancellor Drake, that’s your job. You are supposed to argue with the Regents on behalf of UCI. What is it, exactly, that you DO here?

Also, UCI is not Orange County University. It is an internationally known research institution and member of a statewide University. It doesn’t have to have a major in John Wayne or a Disneyland Institute. And don’t let Donald Bren tell you what to do because he gave you $20 million and you named the law school after him. What’s he gonna do, take it back?

Don’t worry, Mr. Chemerinsky. We’ll visit you on Sakhalin Island.

Bonus points: Chapman says they’ll hire him in an instant. And not just Chapman, but the Chapman legal dean, who’s a rightwinger and debates Chereminsky weekly on the radio. Oddly enough he’d very much enjoy having his debate opponent working in his office. Viva Chapman!

local politics: white supremacists, soccer, and newspapers

The publisher of our local rag, Tom Johnson, is a sensible guy, and he wrote a thoughtful editorial on Friday. He
rightly points out that one of the city’s parks has been designated a “passive park,” which is an entirely new concept, exactly to keep Mexican-Americans and other soccer fans from playing in the park.

This is of course the work of Costa Mesa’s racist-majority city council, which includes now internationally known Mexican-baiter Mayor Allan Mansour. But Johnson moves past Mansour to the real force behind the local spiral into race war.

The editorial called out our local white supremacist bile factory, Mr. Martin H. Millard. Millard straddles the border between mainstream politics and skinhead neo-Nazism adroitly. He delivered support and votes for Mansour while keeping his scarier buddies out of the picture. He’s slime. And Johnson points him out very accurately as one of Costa Mesa’s biggest problems.

The response from Millard at CMPress would be funny if he wasn’t so powerful.

Tip of the hat to Geoff West at A Bubbling Cauldron for this story.

Why yes, yes it is.

I heard a carnival barker-style bellowing ad on the car radio yesterday while listening to the all-news AM station. It was the usual mortgage broker appeal to refinance, this time with the added warning that rates were going up. The ad concluded:

“It’s the biggest no-brainer in the history of Mankind!

LOOKS LIKE THAT DOWNTURN IN HOUSING MAY BE HAPPENING NOW, FOLKS

Loan agent arrested in burglary
Placentia man arrested in Irvine is also a suspect in another copper heist, police say.
By KIMBERLY EDDS
The Orange County Register

bro-glaryIRVINE – A Placentia loan officer was arrested Wednesday after police say they caught him in the middle of stealing copper from a vacant Irvine building.

Dwayne Anthony Kelly, 45, is also suspected of stealing more than $20,000 of copper wire from a Muirlands Street building in February, Irvine police Lt. Rick Handfield said. Surveillance cameras captured a man resembling Kelly breaking into the empty building and stealing 2800 feet of copper wire in February.

Officers were called to a burglary in progress in the 2800 block of Kelvin about 3:45 p.m. Wednesday and caught Kelly with burglary tools, Handfield said.

He was arrested on suspicion of burglary and possession of burglary tools.

Kelly is scheduled to be arraigned Friday at the Harbor Justice Center. He is being held at the Orange County jail without bail.

The sea has not changed

Today a sailboat hit the rocks of the Newport Jetty and sank. If there was anyone on board they’re dead; no survivors found.

This comes a week after a couple were swept to their deaths off the same jetty.

Pleasure boating and jetty fishing aren’t North Sea fishing, but they’re deadly serious business.

Winds to 45 mph and a storm-surge sea? I’ll stay on land. All the way on land, in fact.

When I was a child, we were anchored in our little boat off Catalina Island in a cove, and we lost the dinghy off the back of the boat at night. We couldn’t be without that dinghy, so my father swam out into the black water with a flashlight in his teeth to get it. It was a long, long time before he came back. I think that was our family’s most frightening moment.

My county’s sheriffs are doing a fine imitation of Tijuana cops lately. Background here: The son of an “assistant sheriff” and major campaign donor took part in a gang rape of another teenager and the Sheriffs Office obstructed the investigation. They also let the kid go when he was smoking pot outside the courthouse. Meanwhile, it turns out that the Sheriff has been handing out Reserve Deputy status, with badge and government issued gun included, to all his buddies. Some of said buddies have criminal records, and none of them are peace officers. The State has been pressuring him to train or fire his reserve deputies.

Hey, they’re right! His taekwondo instructor turns out not to be the kind of guy you want packing heat:

O.C. Reserve Deputy Is Suspended
Four felony counts are lodged against the man who is also the sheriff’s martial arts instructor. He allegedly pulled a gun and raged at golfers.
By Christine Hanley
Times Staff Writer

August 5, 2005

An Orange County sheriff’s reserve deputy was suspended from duty after his arrest Monday for allegedly flashing his badge, pulling a gun and threatening to kill a group of golfers at a Chino Hills course.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in San Bernardino County said Thursday that they were upping the charges against the reserve officer from a single misdemeanor count of brandishing a firearm to four felonies: two counts each of assault with a firearm and making criminal threats.

conduct unbecoming