I heartily recommend that, having grown up in a shipyard town embedded in the second largest refinery complex in the US, and fifth generation there since "Drake struck" in 1859 and the refineries opened in our by-then-seven-generations lovely valley.
Though it's not something Levittowners can begin to comprehend.
And after all, infra/logistics/energy/ag people are just invisible hands in the machine. Collateral damage. As invisible to today's DRILL BABY DRILL voguing/posturing as we were before.
That piece doesn't even touch on things like the CORINTHOS disaster.
After which for five years every time our basement flooded, it smelled of solvents, and our tapwater for nearly two.
We drove about 8 miles to a spring west and upland to get our drinking water after that. Pity the people who didn't know to, or didn't have a car.
Tipped over the Bernz-o-Matic torch in the basement workshop once in '78. A 5 x 5 patch of the floor flared up. I knew why, and what to do. Kids raised there either did/were taught, or didn't make it to adulthood. I mean, I'd run a vent fan in the cellar window to pull the fumes through/out for an hour before working in there, as dad taught me, since any spark could cause mayhem. But it was summer, and the fumes rose more in the tropical/mid-Atlantic heat. Were still doing it when I got my mom and me out of there in '81.
Part of the problem is that California has too many Zoom meetings and not enough actual work being done. Every homeless person was a potential employee prior to influx of Socialists flooding our Nation with drugs, money and Globalism! There were almost no homeless in California in the Mid and late 20th century! A few Hobos on ocean beach or near some train tracks in the fruit packing districts, but sadly, they were primarily old WWI and WWII Vets who couldn't work inside, but would work odd jobs for food and shelter as they road the rails.
Once the money began poring in from the Tech boom, the Socialists pretending to be Democrats and the Hippy Boomers merged to grift that money every ehich way they could. Add in the growing Neo-Conservatives pushing the virtuous Environmentalists joining forces to shut down jobs in the name of saving the forests from logging, thinning and grazing and corporations outsourcing their manufacturing and Politicians doing away with teaching skills in Highschool and you have the formula for homelessness.
The stupidity just keeps growing with importing oil from the Middle East when it is literally bubbling up out of the ocean off the Central Coast! Stupidity is burning your lumber crop and importing it from other countries! Stupidity is outsourcing manufacturing and importing the Worlds poor, rather than teaching the skilled trades to your own Citizens! Why are we creating a Caste System is America? Who is benefiting? Who benefitted from the Plandemic? Who benefits from Drug sales? Who benefits from the Homeless Construct? Who benefits from destroying what our Ancestors built?
Grew up in So Cal in the 60’s through 80’s. The state is like those memes you see of mug shots of meth addicts declining. A once stunning and beautiful girl deteriorating into a toothless, scab-faced street rat. It’s only taken about 20 years for it to happen.
Same here, but 50s through 80s. My wife and I left in 1990. Ten years ago I was in LA and took a ride to my old neighborhood in Granada Hills. Growing up there I never had a key to our house because the door was never locked. By 2016 several houses had bars on the windows. I'm guessing by now most do. The same folks putting bars on their suburban windows will likely gift Karen Bass with their votes next month because, you know, Trump.
I still live in Granada Hills - you’re not wrong about idiots voting for Karen Bass but it’s still a pretty pleasant place to live and no bars on majority of windows. And the local business org has kept the old fashioned “Main Street” attractive. No homeless camped in our little corner of Los Angeles - but they are not far away.
Chatsworth between Zelzah and Louise roughly. On the west of zelzah is a pair of shopping centers with grocery stores, Michael’s, TJ MAX and Home Goods along with some other smaller retail. IOW classic suburban sprawl. But corner begins a several block area with hanging flower pots and a center island that is well landscaped and maintained. Small retail and restaurants for several blocks, parallel parking out front, little bit of parking off an alley on the backside. It has some charm. Always happy to see a new business show up there.
Glad to hear it. I'm not familiar with a "Main Street." We lived between Devonshire and Chatsworth, not far from Porter Jr. High which I attended. What is considered the old fashioned Main Street now?
My old neighborhood has actually faired pretty well. It’s in West Anaheim and is now home to an Eastern European community. Not sure how much longer that will last.
Yes. My sister lived in West Covina for decades but finally moved to Scottsdale a few years ago after our parents passed. She saw the graffiti on the wall and decided she should sell while her neighborhood was still livable.
When my employer left Walnut Creek for Houston in 1995 (I went with them), I had no idea the state was intentionally headed over a cliff. I was so sad for months after leaving, but I look back and am so grateful it happened when it did.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t find any explanations other than towering stupidity or willful malevolence (or both) for the Soviet-level incompetence with which Gabbing Nuisance continues to plunder the state that once had the eighth largest economy on the planet.
Incompetent leadership that loves to virtue signal while bureaucrats, politicians and their friends (wealthy and not so wealthy) loot.
So much looting and waste in governments.
One small example from where I live, the province of British Columbia. Our government spend several hundred thousand dollars over 1-2 years producing stickers for EV owners that identified their cars as EVs.
Well, Karen Bass is leading in the polls for mayor of LA and lots of Californians are excited about either Newsom or Kamala being the dem nominee for president in ‘28, so…. What does THAT say about the mental capability in CA? The only thing that comes to mind is,”you can’t fix stupid”. These people seem determined to push CA off a cliff! I don’t get it!
Well, Debbie, it appears to me that you DO get it. In fact, you got it in one: "You can't fix stupid."
See, California isn't like real-world places. I mean, sure...there's corruption everywhere. You can't avoid it when you let the political state masquerade as actual government. But the corruption in Californicaty is So Special™ that they had to institutionalize it.
There are huge voting blocs of parasites that rely on the state to steal wealth from productive people and transfer it to them. That's exactly what the clowns in charge want. Those are guaranteed votes that keep them in charge of the circus.
The number of people who actually produce goods and services that people voluntarily purchase from by companies that can go broke if they're unresponsive to market forces is shrinking. Yet, somehow those who demand a political climate that is increasingly hostile to business don't seem able to figure out that when there are no producers left, the source of real wealth dries up.
Meanwhile, the ever-increasing number of "public sector employees" is on track to overwhelm the private sector. When the parasites identified by DOGE were shit-canned, Gabbing Nuisance ran advertisements inviting them to come and suck California taxpayers' blood. One wonders where the vampires will get their blood when productive people have been bled white, or fled to anywhere with less legalized coercion..
It's not exactly communism (yet); commies don't hide their reliance on force. This is a different kind of coercion: legalized fraud. But it's still collectivism. Even if they don't have a true majority (yet), the electoral fraud via gerrymandering, handing out driver licenses to illegal immigrants so they can vote, and the miraculous phenomenon of people voting from the grave are all enough to make sure that it's all Perfectly Legal™.
It's the inevitable consequence of a societal structure wherein what is "right" is defined by what is legal.
The collectivist disease runs through every aspect of every level of the counterfeit called "government", from cities, to the counties, to the state, and the hordes of unelected career bureaucrats that rule every aspect of the fading remnants of everyone's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness...which evidently aren't such unalienable rights after all. They're more like suggestions, as far as the ruling commissariat is concerned.
This is what happens in a societal structure where authority is divorced from any negative consequences falling to those who misuse it. They just decree what they want, and everyone had better fall in line. That's how it got to be a one-party state, just like its historical precedents, the Soviet (so-called) "republics". Pretty good joke, innit?
...well, except for the poor bastidges who hafta live under its boot heel.
This is not government of the people, for the people, and by the people. It's government ON the people.
Newscum is a communist as is Karen Bass; I'm guessing many others are as well, as Dem party has taken over CA, using illegal methods of course, and Dem party is 100% communist now.
Actually, they’re national socialists. Communism typically relies on naked force, which is why it fails almost instantly. It’s too unstable as a social structure. Every nation that claims to be communist is forced to revert to national socialism or they collapse.
When communism failed in the Soviet Union, the result was mass starvation. The USSR quickly became a national socialist state. Their new constitution restored private property. It was limited, but it was enough to keep them from starving.
Communism relies on force; national socialism relies on fraud. The so-called Communist Manifesto is misnamed. It’s nothing like pure communism, which is what Marx advocated in Das Kapital. The more accurate name would be The National Socialist Manifesto. It has been a while since I’ve checked it, but as I recall, the U.S. had already implemented at least half of the 10-point plan outlined in the Manifesto.
We’re living under national socialism. That’s not heresy. It’s truth. Look up the Manifesto and see for yourself. The difference between what we have and what Marx specified is a difference in degree, not in essence.
Hey Zorost: Well, if you read my original comment at the top of this thread, I did acknowledge that willful malevolence is a distinct possibility.
See, here’s the problem I have with claiming that I know exactly what is the true explanation for people who consistently, reliably, and predictably demonstrate irrational and immoral behavior: I actually DON’T know. I can impute to them stupidity, incompetence, willful malice, or outright insanity, whether it’s temporary or permanent. But I simply do not know with certainty what in hell they’re thinking. Their behavior is incomprehensible. It doesn’t demonstrate that they have any concept of rational or moral principles.
I’ll tell you a little personal story. Twenty-seven years ago I was involved in a service business where I frequently came in contact with people who claimed to know what they wanted, but either didn’t really know, or they were unwilling to do what it took for their part to make it happen. In the process, I was forced to learn more about myself in order to understand their behavior.
Eventually I had an epiphany: I could never understand any personal character trait, motivation, sentiment, perspective, emotional state, outlook, frame of reference, or state of mind any better than I first understood it in myself.
Well, no one can know for certain exactly what someone else is thinking or experiencing. What that means in purely practical terms is that I can’t understand others unless I can somehow shift my perspective in such a way that I see things from their perspective.
…eewww…by which I mean everything from the irritation of mild annoyance, to the “yuck” of moderate nausea, to the “BLUUAAUUGGHH!!” of deeply accomplished, intensely focused projectile vomiting. Why would I put myself through any of that? It’s not only a tall order, but in some cases it’s like deliberately immersing yourself in a cesspool of mental and emotional excrement, because what passes for thinking in some people is the intellectual equivalent of shit, not to put too fine or nuanced a point on it.
It opens you to experiencing the most rabidly negative, dysfunctional aspects and products of the human psyche — hatred, envy, jealousy, out-of-control ego, anger, fear, deception, revenge, bitterness, resentment, malice, deliberate ignorance (i.e., stupidity), and every other reprehensible trait found in the upright monkeys of Planet Earth. What price understanding one’s fellow humanoids? …sheesh.
It’s an especially distasteful exercise if you’ve put in the work to eliminate those very same aspects of human behavior from your own interactions with others.
Nevertheless, it has been my experience that reciprocating those same behaviors and attitudes on those who’ve made them their volitional stock-in-trade is a success-proof strategy. Obviously, it’s folly to roll over and play dead or let such vermin use you as a doormat. Being submissive to their bullshit only invites more abuse.
So, what to do?
I fully agree that for those who have consistently evidenced garbage behavior, that track record has long since disqualified them from anything like “the benefit of the doubt”. But there’s another approach that works…and I’m not talking about the often misguided approach of “killing them with kindness”. Assholes generally see that as “weakness” because they’re incapable of viewing human interaction as anything other other than a conflict-based zero-sum game. “Somebody’s gotta win, and somebody else has gotta be the loser, and it ain’t gonna be me, dammit!”
The only strategy I’ve found that actually works (I mean other than just being where they aren’t) is the Reverse Golden Rule: DO NOT treat others the way you DO NOT want to be treated. You don’t take any shit from them, and you meet force with force, if necessary. ALL DEFENSE IS MORAL. But neither do you attack in any way in which you would not want to be attacked. It requires that you in no case show any disrespect to those who most likely do not respect you, and that you be willing to show respect in the event they do anything that is worthy of respect. In other words, try to catch them doing something right, and acknowledge it. That’s common ground.
The truth is that that’s the only way to get through to them. Fighting them (I mean other than self-defense) doesn’t penetrate. They expect that. They’ve set up the interaction that way.
It requires that you walk a fine line; it is definitely a nuanced approach, and it requires a level of skill that precludes an emotional response. Anger is off the table. That makes it damned hard to do, especially in the face of abusive, assholish behavior. I speak from direct personal experience, including many instances of failure, which is how I know it’s easy to say, and another matter entirely to do successfully.
Of course, you have absolutely no moral obligation whatsoever to do any of this. You don’t owe them anything, including your understanding. It’s your call as to whether it’s even worth the effort. It might not be. You should do whatever maximizes your own moral pursuit of happiness.
The moral qualifier is key. As much as you might want to eviscerate the bastidges and strangle them with their own entrails, that’s not a moral action, and it is irrational to act immorally. That’s what THEY do. You don’t want to become them. That’s the last thing the world needs.
If it was incompetence, law of averages says they'd regularly enact policies that hurt them and helped us. 99.999% of the time what they do benefits themselves at our expense.
"Anger is off the table."
It is because of this that they get away with this shit generation after generation.
Understood. But we each have to make our own choices about what to do with the limited time we have available.
I’m not saying that the insanity doesn’t piss me off; of course it does. I just don’t happen to believe that it’s possible to effect any durable positive change via politics. In my view, “political solution” is an oxymoron.
I don’t attempt to dissuade anyone from doing what they believe is right, as long as it doesn’t interfere with me. If you believe that the kind of change you want to see is obtainable through political action, go for it.
But it’s not where I think I can do the most good. Real solutions lie outside the domain of politics. I don’t hesitate to call out the corruption, and I absolutely do not intend to remain silent about it. But I’m following my own course. I trust you’re doing the same.
Hitler introduced/forced socialism in Germany; which kind or proves that socialism IS COMMUNISM. USSR (Russia) stood for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I was in Russia in 1970s, also 3 other communist countries - they were most definitely communist and that's what the Russians called it. And yes, it was forced on them starting in 1917 when they murdered the czar and his family. No one had voted for communism in any of those countries. If Russia used the term socialism but was called communist and used communist symbols, it pretty much proves socialism and communism are the same thing.
Potato, potahto, it's still basically the same thing.
Both national socialism and communism are forms of authoritarian collectivism. But they are not the same thing. The distinction is not merely a semantic one.
The “potato/potahto” analogy does not apply. Both pronunciations refer to the same vegetable. But in my lexicon, national socialism and communism refer to two very different things.
Your arguments do not address the fundamental differences between national socialism (not “socialism”; you did not acknowledge that distinction) and communism. National socialism allows private property; communism doesn’t. That fact causes two different results.
They also use very different means to obtain compliance with their authoritarian commands. Communism uses force exclusively; national socialism uses it too, but it prefers to use the threat of force rather than relying on it exclusively. In that way, the state is able to maintain the illusion of civility. As I previously said, it is coercion by fraud rather than by naked force.
Don’t get me wrong. Of course, the people who live under each system still get screwed, but the screwing is longer and slower under national socialism. In communism, they just murder you. It is vastly more unstable.
You also did not address the fact that the program in the misnamed Communist Manifesto is diametrically opposed to that proposed in Das Kapital. You can call two completely different things “the same thing”, but that does not make it true.
The fact that the Soviets called themselves communists is as much an absolute truth as the historical fact that they were not a communist nation under their new constitution.
You have not defined what you mean by “socialism/communism”. If, in your lexicon, they mean exactly the same thing, that’s fair. But I request the courtesy of your defining exactly what you mean by those two words that you insist mean the same thing. What is that one thing, exactly?
If you’re not willing to do that, there’s no point in continuing the discussion, and I recommend we drop it. We’ll only end up confused and exasperated.
Read my post again - Russia under communism, which is what the Russians themselves called it, was called the "Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics". This proves that they thought socialism was a form of communism. It's pretty simple really. I never intended on having any kind of discussion with you about this, so I'm done with this topic with you. Have a nice day.
Wow. You start a discussion by replying to a comment I made, but then assert that you “never intended on having any kind of discussion”. You refuse to define your terms, and you repeatedly make exactly the same purely semantic argument, completely ignoring any other relevant points.
I get it. You only communicate to require others to agree with you, not to understand them.
Well, at least we agree on one thing: “I’m done with this topic with you.” I assure you—I will have a very nice day. You are now muted.
I don't believe it, sounds like big media lies. Spencer Prattis wiping the floor with Bass and NO ONE likes Kamala - when she ran as vice president back in 2020, only one person came to see her when she visited East Bay, across from San Francisco - that area is heavily Dem as well. Like many if not most other states, voting was heavily rigged.
I hope you are right. The polls I saw had Bass at 25% and Pratt at 22%. Ramen was at 12%.
Other polls show Kamala ahead as the Dem nominee for President. In the end, I don’t believe she will be the nominee, but right now she has the name recognition.
The fact that either of these corruptocrats (not Pratt) would have a single vote is beyond me.
Polls have been lying MASSIVELY for decades. I've watched them. In 2020 election, I also saw on Fox and other MSM news on election night when they lowered Trump's numbers/percentage and upped Biden's numbers/percentage right on screen within 30 seconds. It was beyond brazen. Too many of these polls come mainstream media such as Fox, NBC, etc.
Ahhhh… I see. I can’t imagine what the defense would be. There is no defense or explanation that would absolve Bass of responsibility. Her culpability should be disqualifying but she’s up in the polls so here we are! 🤷🏻♀️
Actually, at one time it was the fifth largest economy on the planet. I have no idea what it is now but it's going downhill very quickly. I grew up there in 1950s.60s, 70s, it was #1 in everything then.
Yeah…as I recall, that 8th position was sometime in the 1980s, and yes—it’s absolutely going downhill. I’m starting to believe that it might not change without some very bad things happening. If that’s what is going to happen, I don’t want to be when it does.
At least I now having seen Chris’ photo of pumpjacks in an oilfield understand Governor Gruesome naming his Squaw Valley ski resort restaurant Plumpjack… adding an “l””… a play on those oil pumps.
Chris, thank you for writing about this forgotten part of California. I have lived either in Bakersfield, or within an hour's drive from it for more than fifty years now. While your article, and the linked Federalist articles are correct, they only scratch the surface of the problems eroding the Central Valley.
In those fifty or so years the population has quintupled, but the economy, the infrastructure and the long-standing family ranching, farming and industrial operations have decreased inversely to the population boom. And almost all of the decline is due to Sacramento, and DC arrogantly believing they know more about each sector of economic production than those actually doing it.
Through attrition (aka the long march), the malevolent have changed the political demographic as well. Once a solidly red town and county, many precincts saw 60%+ support for neocons, "democrats" and outright socialist candidates. The less informed, hoping for utopia, will soon be wrapped up in the blanket of dystopia, like one of the many homeless meth addicts.
If Spencer Pratt wins the L.A. mayoral election, you can bet your bottom dollar that areas like Bakersfield will respond. A win by a common-sense manager will signal that California is starting to wake from the nightmare of suicidal empathy and universal grift.
Yep - I agree, but you noticed Trump has been very effective anyway, because he doesn't care what the idiots think. The only thing I worry about is whether Pratt can get through a term without being assassinated by the people who 'hate violence'
He is the toast of the town at this point. I've watched numerous videos about him, he's taking L.A. by storm and has supporters from all over America, plus some from foreign countries. Even Dems don't like Bass any more, they're on to her now.
Can't expect Pratt to be able to accomplish much of what needs. Too many NGO's "helping" the less fortunate are closely tied to the city, county and state bureacracies, ordnances and laws. Arnold had the same problems as governor.
Will be great if he is elected for sure and maybe next term the people will have figured out they are screwing themselves every time they virtue signal their votes.
The Greeks say, roughly translated, Moderation in all things. There is nothing moderate about any current California government edict. The current California leadership is power drunk and is so used to siphoning billions from its taxpayers that they believe they are above the law and no one, including the Federal Government can stop them. They are front and center brazen in their theft. Maybe we need Judge Roy Bean.
Spencer Pratt has destroyed the leftist heart in Los Angeles. Whether they block him out or not he’s already accomplished victory with an entire exposure. He now has Angelenos supporting him, while running a local MAGA agenda , having escaped containment and satisfied said Angeleno democrats that a vote for Pratt is “just common sense.” It’s “not MAGA or anything.”
He’s the first to escape containment and fight back at the local level. And he is hardly the last.
He is MAGA. But he’s escaped branding.
What he’s accomplishing is a first. It’s an absolute first. And it comes from the beating heart of demoralization center.
I’m glad to hear that. Trump is playing his usual game of rope a dope with his opponents and we are going to see fresh energy on the national and geopolitical stage soon. It’s what he does and the third act is coming.
I attended my first two years of college at BJC (Bakersfield Junior College) in the mid-60s, living as a dormie in its small on-campus dorm. Bakersfield was then, and still is, a far bigger small hick-town than Suckatomato, famed only for its summer heat, oilfields and C&W music. Nearby Oildale was indeed an 'Oakie, Arkie, and Ozarkie' haven, full of wildcatters. This was all long before Bakersfield became the home of a full four-year state college. Still have my BJC class-ring somewhere. I was part of a small but active Bohemian resistance clique there...artsy-crafty and pseudo intellectual to da max!
We had one absolutely fascinating character in our midst named Stephen Pickering who rise to some prominence in peripheral Hollywood sci-fi circles and never used a 10-cent word when he could employ $5-words to say anything! Stephen was a true pseudo-intellectual in the most stereotypically socialist manner...a legend in his mind. He eventually ended up 'borrowing' some priceless movie artifacts from Hollywood 'Famous Monsters of Hollywood' magnate Forrest J. Ackerman and when legal action was brought against him for that, quickly submerged. Some decades later he briefly surfaced at UC Davis, but I since lost track of him. Oh yes, Pickering was a self-acclaimed celebrity on the BJC campus. Another legendary slice of 'cow-town' oil & C&W history, now.
Sadly, 'Californication' (i.e. the LA-zation of slurban sprawl) is the fate of so much of the state, these days. Skillful urban management simply doesn't exist anymore. It's another compelling reason to pack-up and head for the hills, and get out of this formerly beautiful state once and for all! As I've said so very many times, given that LA is like a malignant cancer that metastasises everywhere, now, Californica should have long ago been split into two separate states (NorCal and SoCal). It's just become too huge to govern and manage properly (a situation made even worse by pretty-boy, photo-op Gov. Gravel Noisome's incompetence).
Thanks for your incisive, surgical excisions of these sordid aspects of our state, Chris!
I'd split it east/west, and the western state would be quite narrowly coastal. Eastern California, with a little arm reaching into Pendleton and Naval Base San Diego, would be a paradise. East California gets the Sierra Nevada. I'd be sorry to lose the Lost Coast and Morro Bay, but sacrifices have to be made.
Very true, Chris. I was mostly brought up on the central Cal coast. It's absolutely lovely, but 'progressivism' is an insidious disease. Pismo, Avila, Morro & Cayocos were all favorite surfing hangouts! Ah! The good old days, when things were so MUCH simpler!
Still steeping in the blue encroaching muck of the central coast. Quite a lovely place of reddish purple when I moved down here but we the minority here under a blue curse are fighting hard to get the blue stain out. I saw them lined along the main avenue today waving sign with expletives about Trump and waving flags. Trying to be us in 2020 and 2024 for Trump. Somehow I don’t remember bad words on our signs. But these people have no decency or ideas of their own so they just copy us They can’t think on their own. They have to follow the mindless group think.
Heartening to hear that the ‘Resistance’ is alive and well in Paradise. The screaming meemees with the placarded epithets are pitiable, IMO. It’s more a demonstration of the fact that they are ‘easily misled’ by wretchedly inadequate exemplars that should never gain a listener to begin with, than a social indicator of applied astute intelligence and thoughtfulness. TDS is certainly an aptly applied acronym.
Although Trump appears to be far more impulsive and unstable than he at first appeared, at least he is working to change society for the better. The TDS crowd simply have a desperate need to rally around ANYTHING, from the looks of it.
To be part of the crowd is a noted human tendency, but as Marcus Aurelius Antoninus presciently observed, “The chief object of life is NOT to be in the majority, but to avoid joining the ranks of the insane!” (quote from his ‘MEDITATIONS’). -K2
"Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end! We'd sing and dance while getting our degrees! We lived the life we choose, we'd fight in Vietnam and never lose, for we were young and sure to lose our way!" Yeah...I WISH! Alohas, -K2 (BJC '66)
Government dependency is the point and the government and NGO party are governing in their own interest. This is normal for the world, it’s in violation of the common interest but this doesn’t occur to them.
A different poster here lamented how deep red counties have turned blue, and that is how it's done. Make people dependent on government and they begin voting for more government.
My sister went to high school (East Bakersfield HS) with Merle Haggard. At least, it was the school that Merle was assigned to. He was rarely present. Haggard really was a hoodlum. It wasn't just record company PR.
For a while, Buck Owens and my mother shared a back fence. Buck was gone for long periods, but when he was 'home' large shout fests with whomever he was living with filled the late night.
Off and on, I worked with Jelly Roll Saunders who was one of the top country fiddle players of the Bakersfield scene. Jelly had interesting views on monogamy and marital fidelity. In Jelly's mind, he had never cheated on his wife because anything that 'happened on the road' (and lots did) didn't really count. (A view that is shared by many musicians.)
And not to forgotten is Bakersfield's own local sportscaster Bob Elias with his great closing line of every broadcast, "Remember that you don't have to take part in a sport to be a good one."
If you listen to Becerra, Steyer, or Mashed Potatoes Porter, our high fuel costs are all Trump’s fault. Never mind Newsom has been shutting down our oil production for years. I read somewhere that California is sitting on 40 billion barrels of crude oil throughout the state, but we are importing 75% of our oil from overseas, especially the ME. All to fight climate change, of course.
I appreciate your visit to Bakersfield, which has always been a rough area, but it’s sad to see it sink to LA levels of despair.
This drives me nuts. We HAVE the oil. We don’t produce it cuz like you know climate change. We gets oil to drive our 13 million cars (2023 stats) from other nice places like um Azerbaijan? something like that. And the Gov taxes it so we pay lots more like for you know trains and stuff. Trump is a convicted felon btw.
Great column! In the late 70's I worked the oil rigs in North Dakota throwing chain and working the derricks, drilling 5 miles deep and tapping a few literal gushers. On the ground it appeared so crazy, but our rig had 6 people crew rotations, so sometimes I'd be working midnight-to-8 am on the derrick "tripping" 5 miles of drill pipe one 33 foot length of steel pipe out at a time, and I'd stare off at the rolling plains outside Williston -- and because I grew up in Manhattan -- I remember those nights being the first time in my first 19 years that I realized most stuff on the ground that feels like muddy, messy, mayhem up close, actually feels like near-nothing when seen under an infinite night sky with millions of low hills rolling into the horizon to the Continental Divide mountains and western Montana Rockies beyond those, and I (truly) remember thinking 2 things: the idea of man made global cooling is a giant money making scam... and I wanna get to California to work the off-shore rigs where some big money could be made... but have since come to know were being pretty much shut down cuz that first thing.
I’d be curious what the answer from Newsom and the Rail Authority would be if asked what the trains featured in the February video were actually carrying and doing.
Spencer Pratt may very well be paving the winning path to wrestling back control from the unionized Democratic Party across the nation.
If social media bears any resemblance to real life, Pratt should win in a landslide.
However, the baked in millions of votes organized labor--especially public sector unions (should be outlawed across the nation, or make every single negotiation a city, county, or state wide vote) have in voting manipulation is at least 50% of the leftist vote.
Run Spencer Run!!!!
Chris, can you register me to vote from your address? I'll mail in a vote for Pratt.
California: “We’re saving the Earth by shutting down oil drilling! We’ll just get whatever oil we need by tankers from the Middle East!”
"Now if we can just also refine it as far away from home as possible..."
I heartily recommend that, having grown up in a shipyard town embedded in the second largest refinery complex in the US, and fifth generation there since "Drake struck" in 1859 and the refineries opened in our by-then-seven-generations lovely valley.
Though it's not something Levittowners can begin to comprehend.
And after all, infra/logistics/energy/ag people are just invisible hands in the machine. Collateral damage. As invisible to today's DRILL BABY DRILL voguing/posturing as we were before.
https://hiddencityphila.org/2013/12/a-petaled-rose-of-hell-refineries-fire-risk-and-the-new-geography-of-oil-in-philadelphias-tidewater/
That piece doesn't even touch on things like the CORINTHOS disaster.
After which for five years every time our basement flooded, it smelled of solvents, and our tapwater for nearly two.
We drove about 8 miles to a spring west and upland to get our drinking water after that. Pity the people who didn't know to, or didn't have a car.
Tipped over the Bernz-o-Matic torch in the basement workshop once in '78. A 5 x 5 patch of the floor flared up. I knew why, and what to do. Kids raised there either did/were taught, or didn't make it to adulthood. I mean, I'd run a vent fan in the cellar window to pull the fumes through/out for an hour before working in there, as dad taught me, since any spark could cause mayhem. But it was summer, and the fumes rose more in the tropical/mid-Atlantic heat. Were still doing it when I got my mom and me out of there in '81.
Here, just 2012-2023, just the US:
https://pophistorydig.com/topics/125-oil-refinery-incidents/
Yeah. You damn best hope they refine it FAR from your home, bro.
signed
The BRAYSOG contributor whose first word read, on Dad's lap with the local newspaper, was "Sunoco."
+1 for the Dwight Yoakam/Buck Owens clip, Chris. What a classic.
But we must first jet to exotic locations and show concern for the environment.
lol
they've never heard of Zoom in California apparently...I wonder how far Sacramento is from San Jose?
Part of the problem is that California has too many Zoom meetings and not enough actual work being done. Every homeless person was a potential employee prior to influx of Socialists flooding our Nation with drugs, money and Globalism! There were almost no homeless in California in the Mid and late 20th century! A few Hobos on ocean beach or near some train tracks in the fruit packing districts, but sadly, they were primarily old WWI and WWII Vets who couldn't work inside, but would work odd jobs for food and shelter as they road the rails.
Once the money began poring in from the Tech boom, the Socialists pretending to be Democrats and the Hippy Boomers merged to grift that money every ehich way they could. Add in the growing Neo-Conservatives pushing the virtuous Environmentalists joining forces to shut down jobs in the name of saving the forests from logging, thinning and grazing and corporations outsourcing their manufacturing and Politicians doing away with teaching skills in Highschool and you have the formula for homelessness.
The stupidity just keeps growing with importing oil from the Middle East when it is literally bubbling up out of the ocean off the Central Coast! Stupidity is burning your lumber crop and importing it from other countries! Stupidity is outsourcing manufacturing and importing the Worlds poor, rather than teaching the skilled trades to your own Citizens! Why are we creating a Caste System is America? Who is benefiting? Who benefitted from the Plandemic? Who benefits from Drug sales? Who benefits from the Homeless Construct? Who benefits from destroying what our Ancestors built?
Where is this 'Zoom' that you speak of? Can I take my private jet to see it?
Pretty sure they have it on private jets!
It's approximately 120 miles, 2 hour drive.
And there you have it, the perfect example of liberal logic
Lol
Grew up in So Cal in the 60’s through 80’s. The state is like those memes you see of mug shots of meth addicts declining. A once stunning and beautiful girl deteriorating into a toothless, scab-faced street rat. It’s only taken about 20 years for it to happen.
Same here, but 50s through 80s. My wife and I left in 1990. Ten years ago I was in LA and took a ride to my old neighborhood in Granada Hills. Growing up there I never had a key to our house because the door was never locked. By 2016 several houses had bars on the windows. I'm guessing by now most do. The same folks putting bars on their suburban windows will likely gift Karen Bass with their votes next month because, you know, Trump.
I still live in Granada Hills - you’re not wrong about idiots voting for Karen Bass but it’s still a pretty pleasant place to live and no bars on majority of windows. And the local business org has kept the old fashioned “Main Street” attractive. No homeless camped in our little corner of Los Angeles - but they are not far away.
Chatsworth between Zelzah and Louise roughly. On the west of zelzah is a pair of shopping centers with grocery stores, Michael’s, TJ MAX and Home Goods along with some other smaller retail. IOW classic suburban sprawl. But corner begins a several block area with hanging flower pots and a center island that is well landscaped and maintained. Small retail and restaurants for several blocks, parallel parking out front, little bit of parking off an alley on the backside. It has some charm. Always happy to see a new business show up there.
Glad to hear it. I'm not familiar with a "Main Street." We lived between Devonshire and Chatsworth, not far from Porter Jr. High which I attended. What is considered the old fashioned Main Street now?
My old neighborhood has actually faired pretty well. It’s in West Anaheim and is now home to an Eastern European community. Not sure how much longer that will last.
Yes. My sister lived in West Covina for decades but finally moved to Scottsdale a few years ago after our parents passed. She saw the graffiti on the wall and decided she should sell while her neighborhood was still livable.
Excellent metaphor.
When my employer left Walnut Creek for Houston in 1995 (I went with them), I had no idea the state was intentionally headed over a cliff. I was so sad for months after leaving, but I look back and am so grateful it happened when it did.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t find any explanations other than towering stupidity or willful malevolence (or both) for the Soviet-level incompetence with which Gabbing Nuisance continues to plunder the state that once had the eighth largest economy on the planet.
We see it across the West.
Incompetent leadership that loves to virtue signal while bureaucrats, politicians and their friends (wealthy and not so wealthy) loot.
So much looting and waste in governments.
One small example from where I live, the province of British Columbia. Our government spend several hundred thousand dollars over 1-2 years producing stickers for EV owners that identified their cars as EVs.
The cost of virtue signaling.
Well, Karen Bass is leading in the polls for mayor of LA and lots of Californians are excited about either Newsom or Kamala being the dem nominee for president in ‘28, so…. What does THAT say about the mental capability in CA? The only thing that comes to mind is,”you can’t fix stupid”. These people seem determined to push CA off a cliff! I don’t get it!
Well, Debbie, it appears to me that you DO get it. In fact, you got it in one: "You can't fix stupid."
See, California isn't like real-world places. I mean, sure...there's corruption everywhere. You can't avoid it when you let the political state masquerade as actual government. But the corruption in Californicaty is So Special™ that they had to institutionalize it.
There are huge voting blocs of parasites that rely on the state to steal wealth from productive people and transfer it to them. That's exactly what the clowns in charge want. Those are guaranteed votes that keep them in charge of the circus.
The number of people who actually produce goods and services that people voluntarily purchase from by companies that can go broke if they're unresponsive to market forces is shrinking. Yet, somehow those who demand a political climate that is increasingly hostile to business don't seem able to figure out that when there are no producers left, the source of real wealth dries up.
Meanwhile, the ever-increasing number of "public sector employees" is on track to overwhelm the private sector. When the parasites identified by DOGE were shit-canned, Gabbing Nuisance ran advertisements inviting them to come and suck California taxpayers' blood. One wonders where the vampires will get their blood when productive people have been bled white, or fled to anywhere with less legalized coercion..
It's not exactly communism (yet); commies don't hide their reliance on force. This is a different kind of coercion: legalized fraud. But it's still collectivism. Even if they don't have a true majority (yet), the electoral fraud via gerrymandering, handing out driver licenses to illegal immigrants so they can vote, and the miraculous phenomenon of people voting from the grave are all enough to make sure that it's all Perfectly Legal™.
It's the inevitable consequence of a societal structure wherein what is "right" is defined by what is legal.
The collectivist disease runs through every aspect of every level of the counterfeit called "government", from cities, to the counties, to the state, and the hordes of unelected career bureaucrats that rule every aspect of the fading remnants of everyone's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness...which evidently aren't such unalienable rights after all. They're more like suggestions, as far as the ruling commissariat is concerned.
This is what happens in a societal structure where authority is divorced from any negative consequences falling to those who misuse it. They just decree what they want, and everyone had better fall in line. That's how it got to be a one-party state, just like its historical precedents, the Soviet (so-called) "republics". Pretty good joke, innit?
...well, except for the poor bastidges who hafta live under its boot heel.
This is not government of the people, for the people, and by the people. It's government ON the people.
Newscum is a communist as is Karen Bass; I'm guessing many others are as well, as Dem party has taken over CA, using illegal methods of course, and Dem party is 100% communist now.
Actually, they’re national socialists. Communism typically relies on naked force, which is why it fails almost instantly. It’s too unstable as a social structure. Every nation that claims to be communist is forced to revert to national socialism or they collapse.
When communism failed in the Soviet Union, the result was mass starvation. The USSR quickly became a national socialist state. Their new constitution restored private property. It was limited, but it was enough to keep them from starving.
Communism relies on force; national socialism relies on fraud. The so-called Communist Manifesto is misnamed. It’s nothing like pure communism, which is what Marx advocated in Das Kapital. The more accurate name would be The National Socialist Manifesto. It has been a while since I’ve checked it, but as I recall, the U.S. had already implemented at least half of the 10-point plan outlined in the Manifesto.
We’re living under national socialism. That’s not heresy. It’s truth. Look up the Manifesto and see for yourself. The difference between what we have and what Marx specified is a difference in degree, not in essence.
They aren't stupid or incompetent. It is long past the time for giving them the benefit of the doubt.
They know exactly what they are doing and why.
Hey Zorost: Well, if you read my original comment at the top of this thread, I did acknowledge that willful malevolence is a distinct possibility.
See, here’s the problem I have with claiming that I know exactly what is the true explanation for people who consistently, reliably, and predictably demonstrate irrational and immoral behavior: I actually DON’T know. I can impute to them stupidity, incompetence, willful malice, or outright insanity, whether it’s temporary or permanent. But I simply do not know with certainty what in hell they’re thinking. Their behavior is incomprehensible. It doesn’t demonstrate that they have any concept of rational or moral principles.
I’ll tell you a little personal story. Twenty-seven years ago I was involved in a service business where I frequently came in contact with people who claimed to know what they wanted, but either didn’t really know, or they were unwilling to do what it took for their part to make it happen. In the process, I was forced to learn more about myself in order to understand their behavior.
Eventually I had an epiphany: I could never understand any personal character trait, motivation, sentiment, perspective, emotional state, outlook, frame of reference, or state of mind any better than I first understood it in myself.
Well, no one can know for certain exactly what someone else is thinking or experiencing. What that means in purely practical terms is that I can’t understand others unless I can somehow shift my perspective in such a way that I see things from their perspective.
…eewww…by which I mean everything from the irritation of mild annoyance, to the “yuck” of moderate nausea, to the “BLUUAAUUGGHH!!” of deeply accomplished, intensely focused projectile vomiting. Why would I put myself through any of that? It’s not only a tall order, but in some cases it’s like deliberately immersing yourself in a cesspool of mental and emotional excrement, because what passes for thinking in some people is the intellectual equivalent of shit, not to put too fine or nuanced a point on it.
It opens you to experiencing the most rabidly negative, dysfunctional aspects and products of the human psyche — hatred, envy, jealousy, out-of-control ego, anger, fear, deception, revenge, bitterness, resentment, malice, deliberate ignorance (i.e., stupidity), and every other reprehensible trait found in the upright monkeys of Planet Earth. What price understanding one’s fellow humanoids? …sheesh.
It’s an especially distasteful exercise if you’ve put in the work to eliminate those very same aspects of human behavior from your own interactions with others.
Nevertheless, it has been my experience that reciprocating those same behaviors and attitudes on those who’ve made them their volitional stock-in-trade is a success-proof strategy. Obviously, it’s folly to roll over and play dead or let such vermin use you as a doormat. Being submissive to their bullshit only invites more abuse.
So, what to do?
I fully agree that for those who have consistently evidenced garbage behavior, that track record has long since disqualified them from anything like “the benefit of the doubt”. But there’s another approach that works…and I’m not talking about the often misguided approach of “killing them with kindness”. Assholes generally see that as “weakness” because they’re incapable of viewing human interaction as anything other other than a conflict-based zero-sum game. “Somebody’s gotta win, and somebody else has gotta be the loser, and it ain’t gonna be me, dammit!”
The only strategy I’ve found that actually works (I mean other than just being where they aren’t) is the Reverse Golden Rule: DO NOT treat others the way you DO NOT want to be treated. You don’t take any shit from them, and you meet force with force, if necessary. ALL DEFENSE IS MORAL. But neither do you attack in any way in which you would not want to be attacked. It requires that you in no case show any disrespect to those who most likely do not respect you, and that you be willing to show respect in the event they do anything that is worthy of respect. In other words, try to catch them doing something right, and acknowledge it. That’s common ground.
The truth is that that’s the only way to get through to them. Fighting them (I mean other than self-defense) doesn’t penetrate. They expect that. They’ve set up the interaction that way.
It requires that you walk a fine line; it is definitely a nuanced approach, and it requires a level of skill that precludes an emotional response. Anger is off the table. That makes it damned hard to do, especially in the face of abusive, assholish behavior. I speak from direct personal experience, including many instances of failure, which is how I know it’s easy to say, and another matter entirely to do successfully.
Of course, you have absolutely no moral obligation whatsoever to do any of this. You don’t owe them anything, including your understanding. It’s your call as to whether it’s even worth the effort. It might not be. You should do whatever maximizes your own moral pursuit of happiness.
The moral qualifier is key. As much as you might want to eviscerate the bastidges and strangle them with their own entrails, that’s not a moral action, and it is irrational to act immorally. That’s what THEY do. You don’t want to become them. That’s the last thing the world needs.
If it was incompetence, law of averages says they'd regularly enact policies that hurt them and helped us. 99.999% of the time what they do benefits themselves at our expense.
"Anger is off the table."
It is because of this that they get away with this shit generation after generation.
Understood. But we each have to make our own choices about what to do with the limited time we have available.
I’m not saying that the insanity doesn’t piss me off; of course it does. I just don’t happen to believe that it’s possible to effect any durable positive change via politics. In my view, “political solution” is an oxymoron.
I don’t attempt to dissuade anyone from doing what they believe is right, as long as it doesn’t interfere with me. If you believe that the kind of change you want to see is obtainable through political action, go for it.
But it’s not where I think I can do the most good. Real solutions lie outside the domain of politics. I don’t hesitate to call out the corruption, and I absolutely do not intend to remain silent about it. But I’m following my own course. I trust you’re doing the same.
Socialism is a form of communism.
Hitler introduced/forced socialism in Germany; which kind or proves that socialism IS COMMUNISM. USSR (Russia) stood for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I was in Russia in 1970s, also 3 other communist countries - they were most definitely communist and that's what the Russians called it. And yes, it was forced on them starting in 1917 when they murdered the czar and his family. No one had voted for communism in any of those countries. If Russia used the term socialism but was called communist and used communist symbols, it pretty much proves socialism and communism are the same thing.
Potato, potahto, it's still basically the same thing.
Both national socialism and communism are forms of authoritarian collectivism. But they are not the same thing. The distinction is not merely a semantic one.
The “potato/potahto” analogy does not apply. Both pronunciations refer to the same vegetable. But in my lexicon, national socialism and communism refer to two very different things.
Your arguments do not address the fundamental differences between national socialism (not “socialism”; you did not acknowledge that distinction) and communism. National socialism allows private property; communism doesn’t. That fact causes two different results.
They also use very different means to obtain compliance with their authoritarian commands. Communism uses force exclusively; national socialism uses it too, but it prefers to use the threat of force rather than relying on it exclusively. In that way, the state is able to maintain the illusion of civility. As I previously said, it is coercion by fraud rather than by naked force.
Don’t get me wrong. Of course, the people who live under each system still get screwed, but the screwing is longer and slower under national socialism. In communism, they just murder you. It is vastly more unstable.
You also did not address the fact that the program in the misnamed Communist Manifesto is diametrically opposed to that proposed in Das Kapital. You can call two completely different things “the same thing”, but that does not make it true.
The fact that the Soviets called themselves communists is as much an absolute truth as the historical fact that they were not a communist nation under their new constitution.
You have not defined what you mean by “socialism/communism”. If, in your lexicon, they mean exactly the same thing, that’s fair. But I request the courtesy of your defining exactly what you mean by those two words that you insist mean the same thing. What is that one thing, exactly?
If you’re not willing to do that, there’s no point in continuing the discussion, and I recommend we drop it. We’ll only end up confused and exasperated.
Peace.
Read my post again - Russia under communism, which is what the Russians themselves called it, was called the "Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics". This proves that they thought socialism was a form of communism. It's pretty simple really. I never intended on having any kind of discussion with you about this, so I'm done with this topic with you. Have a nice day.
Wow. You start a discussion by replying to a comment I made, but then assert that you “never intended on having any kind of discussion”. You refuse to define your terms, and you repeatedly make exactly the same purely semantic argument, completely ignoring any other relevant points.
I get it. You only communicate to require others to agree with you, not to understand them.
Well, at least we agree on one thing: “I’m done with this topic with you.” I assure you—I will have a very nice day. You are now muted.
Those forking bastidges! Where is Johnny Dangerously when we need him?! ;=))) -K2
I don't believe it, sounds like big media lies. Spencer Prattis wiping the floor with Bass and NO ONE likes Kamala - when she ran as vice president back in 2020, only one person came to see her when she visited East Bay, across from San Francisco - that area is heavily Dem as well. Like many if not most other states, voting was heavily rigged.
I hope you are right. The polls I saw had Bass at 25% and Pratt at 22%. Ramen was at 12%.
Other polls show Kamala ahead as the Dem nominee for President. In the end, I don’t believe she will be the nominee, but right now she has the name recognition.
The fact that either of these corruptocrats (not Pratt) would have a single vote is beyond me.
Polls have been lying MASSIVELY for decades. I've watched them. In 2020 election, I also saw on Fox and other MSM news on election night when they lowered Trump's numbers/percentage and upped Biden's numbers/percentage right on screen within 30 seconds. It was beyond brazen. Too many of these polls come mainstream media such as Fox, NBC, etc.
What is the counter to Palisades burning down on her watch? Asking for a friend. :-/
'What fire? There was a fire? Well, Good of the Mayor to put it out.'
BJC Class of '69, eh, Rich? I was BJC Class of '66! Small world! How cool is that?
Alohas, -K2
The lesbo media/ fox pissin contest outed that one
Not sure what you mean by “counter”.
as in what would a Bass supporter reply to the question "what do you think of Bass' management of the Palisades inferno?"
Ahhhh… I see. I can’t imagine what the defense would be. There is no defense or explanation that would absolve Bass of responsibility. Her culpability should be disqualifying but she’s up in the polls so here we are! 🤷🏻♀️
Bass is a sure thing. Pratt is going to win 80% of the populace capable of critic thought, which is about 40% of the voters.
Pratt will get about 32% of the vote. It will be seen as a Great Victory.
Sadly, I think you are right. It’s so disheartening.
It's not incompetence. They know exactly what they are doing and why.
You’re not. It’s both
Actually, at one time it was the fifth largest economy on the planet. I have no idea what it is now but it's going downhill very quickly. I grew up there in 1950s.60s, 70s, it was #1 in everything then.
Yeah…as I recall, that 8th position was sometime in the 1980s, and yes—it’s absolutely going downhill. I’m starting to believe that it might not change without some very bad things happening. If that’s what is going to happen, I don’t want to be when it does.
At least I now having seen Chris’ photo of pumpjacks in an oilfield understand Governor Gruesome naming his Squaw Valley ski resort restaurant Plumpjack… adding an “l””… a play on those oil pumps.
Chris, thank you for writing about this forgotten part of California. I have lived either in Bakersfield, or within an hour's drive from it for more than fifty years now. While your article, and the linked Federalist articles are correct, they only scratch the surface of the problems eroding the Central Valley.
In those fifty or so years the population has quintupled, but the economy, the infrastructure and the long-standing family ranching, farming and industrial operations have decreased inversely to the population boom. And almost all of the decline is due to Sacramento, and DC arrogantly believing they know more about each sector of economic production than those actually doing it.
Through attrition (aka the long march), the malevolent have changed the political demographic as well. Once a solidly red town and county, many precincts saw 60%+ support for neocons, "democrats" and outright socialist candidates. The less informed, hoping for utopia, will soon be wrapped up in the blanket of dystopia, like one of the many homeless meth addicts.
If Spencer Pratt wins the L.A. mayoral election, you can bet your bottom dollar that areas like Bakersfield will respond. A win by a common-sense manager will signal that California is starting to wake from the nightmare of suicidal empathy and universal grift.
Spencer Pratt will be hated as much as Trump and he will be blocked at every turn.
Yep - I agree, but you noticed Trump has been very effective anyway, because he doesn't care what the idiots think. The only thing I worry about is whether Pratt can get through a term without being assassinated by the people who 'hate violence'
He is the toast of the town at this point. I've watched numerous videos about him, he's taking L.A. by storm and has supporters from all over America, plus some from foreign countries. Even Dems don't like Bass any more, they're on to her now.
Can't expect Pratt to be able to accomplish much of what needs. Too many NGO's "helping" the less fortunate are closely tied to the city, county and state bureacracies, ordnances and laws. Arnold had the same problems as governor.
Will be great if he is elected for sure and maybe next term the people will have figured out they are screwing themselves every time they virtue signal their votes.
If he does, take stock in ole orvilles popcorn! Its going to make one helluva show,,,,oouu don't forget the body bags
The tedium of dull psychopathic chronic lying is getting to me.
The Greeks say, roughly translated, Moderation in all things. There is nothing moderate about any current California government edict. The current California leadership is power drunk and is so used to siphoning billions from its taxpayers that they believe they are above the law and no one, including the Federal Government can stop them. They are front and center brazen in their theft. Maybe we need Judge Roy Bean.
Or a bunch of horseback-riding, old West style "Regulators", LoL!
'Reaganlators'
Chuckle!
Spencer Pratt has destroyed the leftist heart in Los Angeles. Whether they block him out or not he’s already accomplished victory with an entire exposure. He now has Angelenos supporting him, while running a local MAGA agenda , having escaped containment and satisfied said Angeleno democrats that a vote for Pratt is “just common sense.” It’s “not MAGA or anything.”
He’s the first to escape containment and fight back at the local level. And he is hardly the last.
He is MAGA. But he’s escaped branding.
What he’s accomplishing is a first. It’s an absolute first. And it comes from the beating heart of demoralization center.
I supported him. I live in MN. His is the only oxygen on the political scene. Anywhere.
I’m glad to hear that. Trump is playing his usual game of rope a dope with his opponents and we are going to see fresh energy on the national and geopolitical stage soon. It’s what he does and the third act is coming.
President of Israel, that's a good damn start
Oh. Wow. Five minutes ago Israel was the president of the USA. I guess I can’t keep up.
Let's start another one!
Lol what ever trips the libtards trigger 🤪
I attended my first two years of college at BJC (Bakersfield Junior College) in the mid-60s, living as a dormie in its small on-campus dorm. Bakersfield was then, and still is, a far bigger small hick-town than Suckatomato, famed only for its summer heat, oilfields and C&W music. Nearby Oildale was indeed an 'Oakie, Arkie, and Ozarkie' haven, full of wildcatters. This was all long before Bakersfield became the home of a full four-year state college. Still have my BJC class-ring somewhere. I was part of a small but active Bohemian resistance clique there...artsy-crafty and pseudo intellectual to da max!
We had one absolutely fascinating character in our midst named Stephen Pickering who rise to some prominence in peripheral Hollywood sci-fi circles and never used a 10-cent word when he could employ $5-words to say anything! Stephen was a true pseudo-intellectual in the most stereotypically socialist manner...a legend in his mind. He eventually ended up 'borrowing' some priceless movie artifacts from Hollywood 'Famous Monsters of Hollywood' magnate Forrest J. Ackerman and when legal action was brought against him for that, quickly submerged. Some decades later he briefly surfaced at UC Davis, but I since lost track of him. Oh yes, Pickering was a self-acclaimed celebrity on the BJC campus. Another legendary slice of 'cow-town' oil & C&W history, now.
Sadly, 'Californication' (i.e. the LA-zation of slurban sprawl) is the fate of so much of the state, these days. Skillful urban management simply doesn't exist anymore. It's another compelling reason to pack-up and head for the hills, and get out of this formerly beautiful state once and for all! As I've said so very many times, given that LA is like a malignant cancer that metastasises everywhere, now, Californica should have long ago been split into two separate states (NorCal and SoCal). It's just become too huge to govern and manage properly (a situation made even worse by pretty-boy, photo-op Gov. Gravel Noisome's incompetence).
Thanks for your incisive, surgical excisions of these sordid aspects of our state, Chris!
I'd split it east/west, and the western state would be quite narrowly coastal. Eastern California, with a little arm reaching into Pendleton and Naval Base San Diego, would be a paradise. East California gets the Sierra Nevada. I'd be sorry to lose the Lost Coast and Morro Bay, but sacrifices have to be made.
Very true, Chris. I was mostly brought up on the central Cal coast. It's absolutely lovely, but 'progressivism' is an insidious disease. Pismo, Avila, Morro & Cayocos were all favorite surfing hangouts! Ah! The good old days, when things were so MUCH simpler!
Still steeping in the blue encroaching muck of the central coast. Quite a lovely place of reddish purple when I moved down here but we the minority here under a blue curse are fighting hard to get the blue stain out. I saw them lined along the main avenue today waving sign with expletives about Trump and waving flags. Trying to be us in 2020 and 2024 for Trump. Somehow I don’t remember bad words on our signs. But these people have no decency or ideas of their own so they just copy us They can’t think on their own. They have to follow the mindless group think.
Heartening to hear that the ‘Resistance’ is alive and well in Paradise. The screaming meemees with the placarded epithets are pitiable, IMO. It’s more a demonstration of the fact that they are ‘easily misled’ by wretchedly inadequate exemplars that should never gain a listener to begin with, than a social indicator of applied astute intelligence and thoughtfulness. TDS is certainly an aptly applied acronym.
Although Trump appears to be far more impulsive and unstable than he at first appeared, at least he is working to change society for the better. The TDS crowd simply have a desperate need to rally around ANYTHING, from the looks of it.
To be part of the crowd is a noted human tendency, but as Marcus Aurelius Antoninus presciently observed, “The chief object of life is NOT to be in the majority, but to avoid joining the ranks of the insane!” (quote from his ‘MEDITATIONS’). -K2
Please keep Morro Bay. Family.
BC '69
"Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end! We'd sing and dance while getting our degrees! We lived the life we choose, we'd fight in Vietnam and never lose, for we were young and sure to lose our way!" Yeah...I WISH! Alohas, -K2 (BJC '66)
Government dependency is the point and the government and NGO party are governing in their own interest. This is normal for the world, it’s in violation of the common interest but this doesn’t occur to them.
Exactly.
A different poster here lamented how deep red counties have turned blue, and that is how it's done. Make people dependent on government and they begin voting for more government.
Doesn’t help that affluent Blue voters flee the dystopia they created and repeat in Red states.
My sister went to high school (East Bakersfield HS) with Merle Haggard. At least, it was the school that Merle was assigned to. He was rarely present. Haggard really was a hoodlum. It wasn't just record company PR.
For a while, Buck Owens and my mother shared a back fence. Buck was gone for long periods, but when he was 'home' large shout fests with whomever he was living with filled the late night.
Off and on, I worked with Jelly Roll Saunders who was one of the top country fiddle players of the Bakersfield scene. Jelly had interesting views on monogamy and marital fidelity. In Jelly's mind, he had never cheated on his wife because anything that 'happened on the road' (and lots did) didn't really count. (A view that is shared by many musicians.)
And not to forgotten is Bakersfield's own local sportscaster Bob Elias with his great closing line of every broadcast, "Remember that you don't have to take part in a sport to be a good one."
All those people long dead . . .
Great memories. IIRC, San Quentin worked on Merle Haggard. It showed him where he was headed.
If you listen to Becerra, Steyer, or Mashed Potatoes Porter, our high fuel costs are all Trump’s fault. Never mind Newsom has been shutting down our oil production for years. I read somewhere that California is sitting on 40 billion barrels of crude oil throughout the state, but we are importing 75% of our oil from overseas, especially the ME. All to fight climate change, of course.
I appreciate your visit to Bakersfield, which has always been a rough area, but it’s sad to see it sink to LA levels of despair.
This drives me nuts. We HAVE the oil. We don’t produce it cuz like you know climate change. We gets oil to drive our 13 million cars (2023 stats) from other nice places like um Azerbaijan? something like that. And the Gov taxes it so we pay lots more like for you know trains and stuff. Trump is a convicted felon btw.
The official rate is 1.5 billion barrels, with shale it could be 40 billion.
Great column! In the late 70's I worked the oil rigs in North Dakota throwing chain and working the derricks, drilling 5 miles deep and tapping a few literal gushers. On the ground it appeared so crazy, but our rig had 6 people crew rotations, so sometimes I'd be working midnight-to-8 am on the derrick "tripping" 5 miles of drill pipe one 33 foot length of steel pipe out at a time, and I'd stare off at the rolling plains outside Williston -- and because I grew up in Manhattan -- I remember those nights being the first time in my first 19 years that I realized most stuff on the ground that feels like muddy, messy, mayhem up close, actually feels like near-nothing when seen under an infinite night sky with millions of low hills rolling into the horizon to the Continental Divide mountains and western Montana Rockies beyond those, and I (truly) remember thinking 2 things: the idea of man made global cooling is a giant money making scam... and I wanna get to California to work the off-shore rigs where some big money could be made... but have since come to know were being pretty much shut down cuz that first thing.
Amazing memories. My impression from a very great distance is that "throwing chain" is HARD work.
Let me speak for the rest of the country (except OR and WA): Fuck California.
Eastern OR and WA, and much of SW WA would happily give the middle finger to CA as well
I’d be curious what the answer from Newsom and the Rail Authority would be if asked what the trains featured in the February video were actually carrying and doing.
They sent me an answer, which you can find in full at that Federalist link. They're fudging and tapdancing.
No so-called journalists ever ask real questions any more. I’ve not seen a true interview in many years.
Run Spencer Run!!!
Spencer Pratt may very well be paving the winning path to wrestling back control from the unionized Democratic Party across the nation.
If social media bears any resemblance to real life, Pratt should win in a landslide.
However, the baked in millions of votes organized labor--especially public sector unions (should be outlawed across the nation, or make every single negotiation a city, county, or state wide vote) have in voting manipulation is at least 50% of the leftist vote.
Run Spencer Run!!!!
Chris, can you register me to vote from your address? I'll mail in a vote for Pratt.
bsn
I've already registered by whole mailing list, three times.
Too funny--but I've seen a few people post that they want to swoop in to vote for Pratt. The usual joke is, "What are they gonna do? Check my ID?"
Just realized 'mailed it in' doesn't have the same meaning it once had...election engineering.
bsn
The "D's" vote the comatose and near dead in the convalescent hospitals. I can't out vote whole death homes.