It’s good to remember that Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer. I’m just putting that out there.

The Tea Party had it’s annual “why do we need to pay taxes” whine-along yesterday, and I was glad to see that there were only about 38 people who showed up in Mission Viejo. Nationwide attendance was way down. Maybe folks are starting to catch onto the fact that the problem isn’t that we pay taxes; the problem is the inequality caused by someone like Mitt Romney only paying 15% when the average working stiff pays over 20% according to the C.B.O. Maybe these tea party types have finally figured out they were nothing more than stooges for the Koch Brothers…or maybe not…after all, there were people who thought Al Capone actually dealt in used furniture.

Funny thing. When I first started to speak out in Mission Viejo about this group that was trying to recall someone 8 months before a scheduled election, people kept saying that I was “brave.” Something didn’t smell right to me. Conservatives don’t waste money, so clearly they had a lot to gain by having a special recall election 8 months before the general. Well, it turns out, in special elections only the really old vote and this group spends a lot of time in Costa Del Sol “helping” old people fill out their absentee ballots. Get it? Think about it and you will.

It’s fairly easy to steal an election if you’re in the person’s living room filling out their ballots for, I mean with, them and there isn’t an elelction official within five miles. Cheating at its finest and it turns out that is the only way Morton’s Gang of Five can get thier agenda through official channels.

“Okay”, you say, “that’s just some sleazy behaivor. Why’d they think you are brave?” Hell if I know, really. It’s not like they can shave my head, put in me in a uniform, and march me onto a plane to Vietnam. The fuckers who could do that to me didn’t scare me either. I stood up to them by joing the S.D.S. and protesting their immoral war. And I gotta say, Richard Nixon was a lot more scary and ruthless than Brad Morton or Larry Gilbert.

When my older brother Mike was young he had a friend named “Franky Welcome.” Old Franky was invisible, but a good friend who went everywhere with my brother Mike until one day our dad decided that Mike was too old to be running around talking to and associating with invisible people. Here’s how it went down: they got in the car one day and my dad started pulling out of the parking lot. Mike was alarmed because Franky Welcome was still back in the National T grocery store. My dad didn’t stop. He just left Franky Welcome to wander the aisles of the National T Grocery Store alone, invisible, and friendless.

I know that sounds cold, but, unlike Brad Morton, my brother grew up to become a nationally recognized attorney, a president of the National Lawyers Guild, a champion of Civil Rights, an expert in Constitutional law and an expert in police misconduct. Brad Morton went to law school; now he runs a blog where his and other peoples’ invisible friends routinely are the “residents” commenting on the supposed “issues” affecting Mission Viejo.

When you listen to Cathy Schlicht and Rhonda Reardon talk, it sounds like most of the city is strongly opposed to the dog park being anywhere in Mission Viejo, except for some mythical, already existing park that the city will gladly turn over to be simply fenced. A cost Francis Holtzman says he’ll shoulder.

I’ve spent the last week waiting for these legions of people to speak out. I mean besides the dozen or so that comment constantly on Brad Morton’s blog that

• a. the city is broke,
• b. we aren’t opposed to (plug in your project), and
• c. No one wants (plug in your project.)

I’m not Schlichting you…

It’d be funny if it wasn’t just so damn sad. In her three years on the Mission Viejo City Council Cathy Schlicht has not done anything that would dispel the notion that she is clinically bat-schlicht-crazy. In fact, her frequent outburst, disconnects with reality, and her spit-spewing, viscous attacks on city staff and the voters have convinced all who have watched one of her “performances” that she is the premiere rubber-room candidate for re-election. Cathy Schlicht makes the Republican candidates for President look downright sane, and intelligent.

Speak…speak…now roll over you stupid dog…

Larry Gilbert is now writing for Brad Morton in an attempt to distance himself from the stench of his association with the North American Man Boy Love Association. It’s a political move because he is “managing” Cathy Schlicht’s re-election campaign.

And why not manage Schlicht’s campaign? He’s been telling her what to say all along and when to shake, roll over, and beg. Take a look at the photos of Gilbert and Schlicht up top. Now imagine him making Schlicht beg. Makes the flesh crawl doesn’t it?

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson once said that “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” I doubt very much the good Doctor had ever met the likes of Cathy Schlicht. Oh, sure, Thompson entered the cesspool back when Richard Nixon owned it; back when Tricky Dick bathed it in daily, and then told Ed Meese to skim the fucker. Back in the good days when Republicans were Republicans and Democrats weren’t Republicans. Back before Nixon looked and sounded like a Goddamn Liberal.

Thompson ate acid, and then drove to Vegas with an ether-soaked towel at his feet, smoking hash and snorting coke while bats and other nightmares swarmed down upon him. And he never, ever, lost his cool. He lived in a more innocent time of course, and he never met Cathy Schlicht or her new boy-toy: Orange County District Attorney Tony Ruckacacus.

Following then-councilman Lance MacLean’s attempt to strangle a co-worker at UCI, a band of political types supported him in 2009. His supporters became known as “The Dark Side” for their bullying tactics and downright filthy language. MacLean’s foul-mouth bullies are back, promoting their new candidate for council, Wendy Bucknum. – Dale Tyler

Or so Dale Tyler claims on his blog. I’m assuming that I am “The Dark Side” because I was the only one who used “filthy language.” At least as far as Dale knows. Others used it in private I’m sure, but I’m the only one who shot off his foul-mouth in public. So the use of the plural “bullies” is completely misleading, as I’m sure Mr. Tyler knows.

I turned 13 on a Friday of the 13th of October. I don’t think about it much. It’s just something that happened a lot of years ago. I do remember being in a car in Northern Minnesota with my Mom and her Mom, plus my younger brother and sister. Whenever we found ourselves in a car in Minnesota under those circumstances my Grandma was driving.

Actually, my Grandma didn’t “drive,” she rocketed down country roads in her Dodge at what was then called a “breakneck speed.” I always understood that saying as being literal – like if something bad happened someone would end up with a broken neck. Quite often when Grandma was driving the trees went past so quickly they were a brown blur. So one of those times we were out driving around Nothern Minnesota, my mom noticed some cows lying down in a field. “Must be gonna rain,” my mom said, “The cows are lying down.”