ojai news at The Ojai Post :: blog, newspaper, events in Ojai, California

Ojai makes the BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7223708.stm

Most of us farmers are republicans !

Gosh Brian, don't tar honest farmers with that epithet. That's an awful thing to accuse a whole class of people of being.

The Super Bowl was pretty cool. It was good being there, but it's actually better on tv. I hope everyone is ready to vote tomorrow. How should I vote on the indian gaming things? I haven't been following that one.

Later, I'm off with my Kayak for a loop around Casitas Island and maybe a game of GPS Lake Quest with some cohorts !

spk, the gaming propositions are definitely the most confusing ones for me: the opposing sides seems to flatly claim the exact opposite of one another, so it's very hard to see around that.

i originally recommended a YES vote on the gaming compacts, but have since changed to NO based on additional input and resources from Ojai Peace Coalition members. you can read my rationale (which includes a link to one of the aforementioned resources) on the OPC Action Blog.

I recommend a "Don't Vote" on the Indian Gaming propositions. Neither side has made a case as to why we the people should or should not be weighing in on the subject. It appears that Nevada interests are on the "no" side, presumably because they don't like the competition. The "Yes" side will allow four tribes to expand slots in their existing casinos, which I am willing to bet not a-one of us Ojaians has ever been to or will ever go to. There does not appear to be any local opposition to the casino plans re the four tribes - I'd say let's vote with local communities in hopes they'd do the same for us, but looks like they aren't driving the yes or no campaigns.

Strikes me as a case of none of our business. We've got plenty of stuff that will affect us to focus on.

The Left are the new fascists of our time. They want to tell everyone how to live, think, what to eat, where to smoke, etc.

If Hillary or Obama win, freedom dies. Big Brother will be watching and telling you how to live.

It’s frightening.

Justin, what is more frightening is when people used to smoke everywhere, including on busses, trains and airplanes where nonsmokers had no choice but to breathe cancer causing cigarette fumes.

Somebody has already convinced you to think like you do. Think about that!

Very clever! "Justin Case"

gimaha (comment#1) thank you for posting Ojai makes the BBC. Priceless quote:

"South from Ventura is the peaceful Ojai Valley, famous for New Age hippies and fruit farms..."

Dear "Justin" -

one book by Jonah Goldberg does not a philosophy make. If you are so worried about Big Brother, maybe you should be following the FISA legislation in Congress, where Bushco and the Republicans want to warrantlessly wiretap everyone, make it retroactively legal and give immunity to the telcos that participated.

You're already living under Big Brother, friend, and it ain't because of the Democrats. Be thankful for Senators like Chris Dodd (D) who are doing everything they can to preserve the Constitution and the protections it affords the American people.

Maybe I would like to smoke a cigar without having the smoking police arresting me ! And I don't see any evidence that this liberal web site is suffering from wire tapping.

You are free to smoke your cigar in the privacy of your own home and tons of other places, so long as those in the immediate area don't object. Unfortunately holding my breath while you smoke is not an option. Inhaling second hand smoke gives me a severe headache. Forcing others to inhale your fumes would be like forcing you to eat what the person sitting at the table next to you has ordered.

Why don't you put a bag over your head so I don't have to look at your ugly face in public, you can take it off in the privacy of your own home.

Your intellectual position, Justin, is quite compelling. I am sure the sociofascists on this site who want to kill freedom and tell you how to think are overwhelmed by the coherence of your well-structured argument. Smoke on, Mensa friend!

Whatever! Jonah Goldberg is an ass clown, and the idea that progressives are fascists is the most historically ignorant notion I've heard this year.

Anyway, I just finished my stint volunteering at the polling place and here are my initial projections regarding turnout.

I'm projecting a 67% turnout of registered voters here in Ojai and at least a 55% turnout county wide.

Only 14% of the voters that voted in the first three hours here in Ojai were Republicans! 85% were Democrats. Big turnout of Dems is probably good for Obama, though it's way too early to tell anything definitive. The turnout among registered Democrats in Ojai will be very close to 100% and the Republicans will have a hard time breaking 25%.

Ut Oh! Stay tuned. There are reports coming in that the straight, no paper, voting machines are "malfunctioning" in Clinton's favor. Also, supposedly the machines in lots of precincts in LA weren't delivered. Lower voter turnout helps Clinton. I guess Republicans aren't the only ones who manipulate the vote (cheat). Republicans in Democrats' clothing apparently do too.

you can't POSSIBLY be calling her a Republican?!

Just kidding Anon! I knew that'd wake you up.

whew!

As people reflect on who to bless with their vote and whither goest America, I note one interesting difference where the Republican candidates seem to have it more right than the Democrats.

Republicans have harkened back to Ronald Reagan. They present the Clinton years as an aberration, and urge Americans to build on the "legacy of Reagan" by staying the course on the policies of Bush.

Democrats have presented the last 7 years of Bush as an aberration, a time when American went off the rails. Democrats present their candidacies as a chance to fix what Bush broke.

I think the Republicans have it right. The Clinton years were the aberration in an otherwise steady, incremental march toward where we are today.

When Reagan took over in 1980, the single-earner family was still the norm. Our courts functioned; our schools functioned. Good pensions were the norm. Social Security was a right; if it was broke, it must be fixed, before anything else. We did not have universal payor health care, but neither was lack of access to health care the crisis it is today. Seeing a doctor did not mean financial devastation. We still had large numbers of family farms. Large numbers of families owned family homes free and clear. As a nation, we had a fraction of the debt, both public and private, that we have today.

Reagan brought us homelessness, union-busting, international aggressiveness, "free-trade" (i.e. the triumph of oligarchic capitalism), environmental degradation as official policy, the demise of the family farm, the dismantling of public education and social welfare institutions, the dismantling of the federal courts as impartial adjudicators, "trickle-down economics," budget deficits, covert wars and the beginnings of the war on the middle class, all presented as a "philosophy" that, even then, was recognized by most astute observers as nothing more than the failed ideology of disasters past.

Bush II expanded on Reagan with the first overt resource war, a war engineered by his administration.

Then Clinton came in and changed course. He balanced the budget, set the economy on a sound footing, re-established our role as the world's leading economy by helping to foster the technology boom and bolstering our financial markets as the most transparent in the world. He worked with the international community, promoting a "first among equals" vision. He focused on environmental issues, on education, and health care reform, to varying degrees of success.

In 2000, Bush II came in, resuming the march started by Reagan. But he did it in a world where by passage of time and incrementalism, we had learned to accept the terrors of the Reagan years. Two-earner families were now the norm. Thus, continuing Reagan's march, unions today are targets of RICO suits that Reagan and Bush judges permit to continue through the courts. Pensions are a thing of the past. The damage done by Reagan to the public schools set the stage for the coup de grace of "No Child Left Behind." Our federal courts were so degraded that appointing incompetent ideologues could be acceptable. Our financial markets, once a model for the world, have become impenetrable and unaccountable. Home ownership could be turned into an ugly joke, where a person with an interest only mortgage consuming 60% of their income could be counted as a "homeowner", while fewer Americans than ever before actually owned their own home free and clear of debt.

When Clinton left office, the War on Drugs was the great holocaust of our time, the evil that future generations would condemn us for failing to stop.

Bush II brought us the War on Terrorism, a war intended to be endless, with a constantly shifting enemy that can never be defeated. The War On Drugs continued apace, its evil overshadowed. Bush II suspended habeas corpus, something so basic to Western Civilization that it could well be viewed as the very heart of our system. Bush II tortures, lies, steals, kills, and runs up debt in order to finance no-bid contracts and occupations that bring no benefit to the public commons under even the most hackneyed "Chicago-school" economics theory. Bush II has destroyed the dollar, brought us $100/barrel oil, destroyed what remained of our economic base in this country, sacrificed our very homes to feed his engine of greed, and transformed our role on the international stage from "first among equals," in it together, to public enemy number one, the enemy of the civilized world, a force for evil that the entire world has realigned to contain.

So, the Democrats are wrong, and the Republicans are right: Our place in the world today is the direct legacy of Reagan and Bush I. Clinton was an aberration, not Bush II. Bush II is just a continuation of the same Republican march.

So I think when we consider our vote today, and we consider what we mean by change, we should start being more like post-WWII Germans, and recognize: What we need "change" from is the Republican legacy, the ideology of Ronald Reagan, which is peas in a pod with Bush II. I think when we think of change, we should ask, not, are we better off now than we were seven years ago, but, for those with long enough memories, are we better off now than we were twenty-seven years ago?

So here's to election season 2008: "Si se puede!" And when we look to the opposition party, with its turnout in the teens, let's speak just as firmly:

"Never again."

We need obama girl !

Well,

So much for the much touted "racial problem" theory. The Clinton supporters continually claim that people won't vote for a black man. Obama has won Kansas AND Idaho.