African no longer welcome in Los Altos Hills

Although he has not been implicated in growing marijuana on the periphery of the "town" as other immigrants have, Los Altos Hills residents still want the African immigrant out of their upscale community.

"I'm getting tired of him," said Thomas Puorro, 82.

At first, the African immigrant intrigued neighbors, even though residents suspected that he was an escapee from a holding area in South San Francisco. A native to Uganda, the immigrant caught the attention of a Ugandan ambassador who sent a friendly note to "The Heights" Hills on the immigrant's behalf.

Despite international goodwill for the African, tensions are high.

Puorro added, "I'm getting closer and closer to getting myself a slingshot."


*John Rocker was unavailable for comment at press time.

For those of you looking for actual information

Perhaps out of post-Rwanda and ongoing Darfur guilt (or because its a big tourist destination), the Western media has been giving a lot of coverage to the recent violence in Kenya. However, the tendency has been to oversimplify the situation and chalk it up as just another example of horrific "tribal conflicts" in Africa. Even the regional head of the ICRC, who should certainly know better, has made ignorant statements along these lines.

The violence began after there were delays in declaring a winner in the recent presidential election. The vote counting was subsequently stopped (sound familiar?) and current president Mwai Kibaki quickly declared the winner after trailing his opponent Raila Odinga. The majority of those killed have been protestors shot by security forces, but because Odinga is Luo and Kibaki is Kikuyu, Western media outlets have quickly jumped to the conclusion that “tribal rivalries” are at the root of the conflict. However, according to an anonymous expert on ethnic conflicts in Western Kenya, the unrest stems more from disenfranchised youths and anger over years of corrupt governments.

"No one is focusing on the real cause of violence ... which is political disillusionment," she said in an exclusive interview with Nemesis of Evil. "It's the young unemployed men who were told to vote and promised change, and who en masse were voting for the opposition, despite the fact that he was Luo."

News articles on the crisis have overlooked another crucial fact: that Odinga's opposition coalition was multi-ethnic in nature.

"What Raila (Odinga) did was tap into leaders in the other provinces and into the general feeling (outside of the central province) of wanting a new political system -- federalism, which to most people on the ground literally means roads," said the expert.

Hopefully a better understanding of the causes of the conflict will lead to a more effective solution. I'm waiting for Obama, whose father is Luo, to weigh-in on the matter. It's too bad he’s got other things on his mind right now, because he’s hugely popular in Kenya and might be able to help the move towards peace.

Problem solved

Facing a severe funding shortfall, Hidden Villa is hosting a community meeting Jan. 13 to discuss how to accomplish its goal of creating a $10 million endowment. The Town Crier favors leasing some space to Bullis Charter School as a start. I have another idea.

That felt weird

Let's get back to founding principles...

The Voice is running a three-part series on the problems media consolidation poses for democracy. Part one includes the following:

"Award-winning media critic Ted Glasser says the Bay Area's media consolidation is emblematic of a larger problem and leads to three things: fewer journalists, homogenization of coverage (with the same story appearing in multiple newspapers), and poor media coverage of journalism itself."

Glass houses, guys.

The article is written by the publisher of the Pacific Sun, which was an independent paper up until a few years ago, when it was purchased by Embarcadero Publishing Company. The story has already appeared in other understaffed EPC papers, including the flagship Palo Alto Weekly (where readers had plenty of critiques of the article itself), the Pleasanton Weekly and the Danville Weekly.

I can't decide whether this is actually ironic, or if it just looks really silly.

Local holiday fund profiles

I figure we might as well kick off 2008 with a positive post.

Two days are left to donate to the Voice Holiday Fund (so named as part of the paper's ongoing War on Christmas). The paper has lined up foundation grants to match donations, so doing so is doubly worth it.

The recipients include:

• Community Health Awareness Council
• Support Network for Battered Women
• Partners for New Generations
• Community School of Music and Arts
• Mountain View Day Worker Center
• Community Services Agency, and
• RotaCare Clinic

The Town Crier's Holiday Fund, which is much older and tends to raise more money, is benefitting 17 organizations this year, including:

• EPA Kids Foundation, Truck of Love, Community Services Agency
• Help One Child, Partners for New Generations, Community Homeless Alliance Ministry
• Rotacare, Mother Branch, Community Health Awareness Council
• Sunday Friends, Challenge Learning Center and Career Closet

(The rest of the profiles either are not yet posted or I just can't find them.)

What do you have in common with residents of San Juan Court?

You haven't had a hostage crisis at your house either.

For a brief tense moment Wednesday, a Los Altos neighborhood came to a standstill as police searched for a gunman with hostages.

An emergency phone system warned residents to stay inside; police helicopters circled overhead and SWAT vans filled the street.

As it turned out, nothing had happened. It was all a hoax.

Kudos to the Town Crier for having the restraint not to blame this on Mexican nationals.

(While this is sort of a "things that are not happening in Los Altos" story, it differs from the prototypical entries in that series, because -- unlike contaminated pet food, bowling and Black Friday -- a hostage crisis would be interesting if it were to actually happen.)

Bullis Charter School: not just for poor kids anymore

The County Board of Education believes that allowing Bullis Charter School to reserve spots for the richest areas of Los Altos and Los Altos Hills will increase its minority enrollment.

Which minorities could they mean? Children of people who think Toni Casey ought to hold elected office? Gypsies?

As a sidenote, BCS board president Ken Moore cites Bullis's historical efforts to serve rich neighborhoods as a reason to let it continue to do so. Aside from the fact that appeals to tradition tend to be logical fallacies, Bullis has been around for fewer than 3.5 years. By comparison:

• This blog has been around for 2.1 years
• The Red Sox have been officially better than the Yankees for 3.2 years
• The Navy has been promising to have a final proposal on Hangar One for 3.5 years
• Major combat operations in Iraq have been over for 4.6 years
• And the "tradition" of private individuals illegally trying to reserve portions of the public-right-of-way for themselves in advance of the Festival of Lights parade has been around for 9 years

In conclusion, sucks to your history.

Booooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Below is an e-mail from the principal of Los Altos High School sent out to all coaches earlier today.

From: Satterwhite, Wynne
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 12:02 PM

To: Cave, Kim
Cc: Cave, Ralph; O'Neal, Morenike; Dawson, Cristy
Subject: Music at Athletic Events

Hi Kim,

At the Board of Managers meeting this morning, we voted that lyrics will no longer be allowed at athletic events. Please make sure that your coaches know that this rule goes into effect immediately. (Minutes to follow).

Thanks!

Wynne

The Daily Bruin violates the Best Evidence Rule

A year after repeatedly electrocuting a kid who was lying on the floor of the library in pain, UCLA has finally come out with a new policy regarding when officers can use Tasers. (This according to the Daily Bruin, which has not actually seen a copy of the new policy).

The highlights include a prohibition on Tasing people engaged in passive resistance and a requirement that police officers actually get trained by someone other than the company who makes the weapon.

Can someone please tell me why it took more than a year to come up with this?

Who owns the sidewalk?

I don't know of any studies that conclude one way or another whether there is in fact enough room in downtown Los Altos for everyone who wants to get a good view of the Festival of Lights parade. But, if there were, why would Town Crier-letter writer Anna Durante feel the need to tape off space and claim it as her own? And wasn't she just "scoring a spot" at another family's expense?

This supposed "tradition" of reserving spots has quite a few problems: it encourages private individuals to monopolize public space (for longer and longer periods of time), it creates a lot of litter, and it smacks of Los Altos's embarasingly recent efforts to exclude the poor and the brown through an unconstitutional and costly ordinance that forced day workers to cross the street and stand on the sidewalk in Mountain View.

Another letter writer, Honor Spitz, raises one other concern I didn't think to include. It makes downtown Los Altos look like "one great big outdoor emergency shelter." (Isn't "Spitz" a Jewish name? I guess Mark Zuckerberg isn't the only Member of the Tribe who wants to ruin Christmas.)

Next year, I'm going to kidnap somebody, blindfold them, drive them around for a while, and drop them off in downtown Los Altos, just to see if they think they have arrived at an emergency shelter.

Honoring our choices

Today marks one year since my friend and teammate Nate Krissoff died in Iraq. After writing and rewriting drafts of this post several times, I've decided I can not articulate what an inspiring person Nate was. Here's someone who can...

At 61, doctor joins Navy to honor his son

After his eldest child is killed in Iraq, Bill Krissoff decides to enlist. With help from the White House, he joins the medical corps.

By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

December 1, 2007

SAN DIEGO -- When Marines came to his door a year ago to tell him that his eldest son had been killed in Iraq, Bill Krissoff reacted like any father: with confusion, devastation, then numbness.

Nathan Krissoff was so young, a lover of poetry, a champion athlete, a leader whose maturity and selflessness had impressed fellow Marines.

The father in Krissoff found no resolution to his grief. The physician in him did.

At an age when many people think about retirement, Krissoff decided earlier this year that he would enlist as a doctor. He was 60 years old, decades above the military's preferred demographic.

Catching up with a former Voice intern (unfortunately not THAT one).

The Economist has apologized for plagiarizing a story that former Voice intern David Herbert wrote while in Uganda this summer. Yes, that David Herbert. (Turns out I'm not the only Voice alum who's "basically ethically bankrupt.")

Suggests Herbert, "If you reference this on your blog, try not to talk about my own indiscretions."

Sorry Dave. Maybe next time you'll think twice about telling a higher-up, "That's your lede? Why don't you print that out so I can wipe my ass with it."

Things that are not happening in Los Altos, Part III

The newest entry in the Town Crier's award-winning series on what's outside Pleasantville: Black Friday.

What part of "public right of way" doesn't Los Altos understand?

My guess is either "public" or "right."

Festival of Lights Parade-goers have taken to "reserving" their spots on downtown sidewalks days in advance of the event. This is the same mindset that led the City of Los Altos to try to ban Mexicans from its sidewalks eight years ago. It's so distasteful that even the Town Crier mentioned the conflict that it caused. (I have to think Mary Beth Hishop got reprimanded for not focusing exclusively on the smiling children.)

Next year, please join in following the lead of the Portland Mercury Civic Clean-Up Squad and reasserting the public's right to the public right of way. NOE welcomes suggestions for less fascist-sounding names.

Sad news for the reality-based community

The once great San Jose Mercury News is surreptitiously trying to poll readers on how it should destroy itself. I suppose it's better to do these things intentionally and all at once, but that hardly makes ideas like naming the sections of the paper Live, Play and Innovate or scrapping every section but Business any less tragicomic.

If they are having trouble figuring out how to support their operation, they should call Bob Novak, who somehow manages to get paid for columns like the one he wrote this weekend. It consisted of a claim that some anonymous had told Novak that some another anonymous person or people had told him that anonymous people who work for the Clinton campaign had some unknown information about Obama but weren't telling anybody what it was. I can't imagine any other profession in which you could turn out that kind of work product and still keep your job.

Or if that fails, maybe they should take the advice of my former boss and try to "make it not suck."

Dinner with Mike Gravel

I know who I am voting for.

Mike Gravel -- the man who ended the draft (and therefore the Vietnam War) and entered the Pentagon papers into the public record -- joined a small group of UCLA law students for dinner Friday night.

Gravel is the first candidate I've heard come out in support of the Wiener platform, my proposal to eliminate our country's stupidest policies. (I did not ask him not know how he feels about the penny). He has a plan to end the war (stop fighting it), and has both the best environmental record of any on candidate (he cosponsored much of our key environmental legislation in the 70's) and the best plan for new solutions (a carbon tax).

But Gravel is thinking even bigger than that. He wants to change the way we write laws and the way we tax ourselves. His real motivation for running is to draw attention to his National Initiative for Democracy, a popularly ratified constitutional amendment that would institute a version of California's initiative process at the national level. The plan eliminates the worst feature of California's system by making it a crime to spend any corporate dollars in campaigns. Of course, it still has some drawbacks, as Gravel admitted. For one, people are kind of stupid. However, unlike legislatures, they have no need to raise massive amounts of money and have more freedom to fix their mistakes.

Gravel has been shut out of recent Democratic debates, because he hasn't met the arbitrary and disturbing standard of needing a million dollars, clearly designed to keep him out. (This is a perverse reversal of spending limits that other jurisdictions employ). As he is unlikely to solve that particular problem if he keeps spending 2.5 hours with a handful of students, look for him next at a Dec. 10 afternoon rally outside NBC studios.

Good idea, bad idea

Good idea: Giving high school students a glimpse of local government by holding a meeting of a local government agency at the high school.

Bad idea: Holding out the Los Altos City Council as an example of how government works.

The Los Altos City Council is holding its Dec. 3 meeting at Los Altos High School to introduce students how the local government decision-making process works.

For those just joining us, the Los Altos City Council:

• once passed a law forcing day workers to stand on the other side of the street. (After several defeats in court, the city had to settle the case for $65,000).
• responded to a request by an LAHS student group to proclaim a Gay Pride Day in Los Altos by instead passing a proclamation that it would not issue proclamations about issues the mayor, who at the time happened to be a Mormon guy, found offensive. (In response, the students filed for a parade permit that the city legally had to grant, costing the city about $12,000 in police services).
• repealed a law against claw machines only to leave intact an anti-gypsy ordinance.

Another reason to hate your orthodontist

Congratulations on your retirement, UCLA orthodontics residency program chair Dr. Eric Ting.

The Daily Bruin came out swinging today against UCLA's school of orthodontics, documenting its practice of selling residency spots to the relatives of big donors. In one case, the admissions committe told one applicant he was in, only to call him back the next in an attempt to shake him down for $60,000.

The headline, "Donations influence admissions," was somewhat laughable until I remembered that I went to a public university. One professor called it a "mockery of the merit based traditions and social values that have made the University of California the best and most admired public university system in the world today."

Kudos to the Daily Bruin for a well-researched story.

UPDATE, 11/14: Our future dentists are crooked, too.

Evil 11 - Good 10 (overtime)

The Forces of Good were defeated 11-10 by Menlo-Atherton in overtime today in the quarterfinals of CCS.

Los Altos had the lead for most of the game (and looked to be the better team), but gave up a goal with 0:22 seconds left to allow M-A to tie the game and force overtime.

With 0:07 left in the second overtime period, M-A ran a successful play to free their star player, who got high out of the water to and shot unobstructed at four-meters, center cage. By sheer luck he missed the wide open shot. However, disaster was not averted. The ball ricocheted directly to his teammate who squeeked a meathook shot past the Los Altos goalie from an extreme weakside angle as time expired.

Truly tragic.

How will we get to Punta Del Este?

Buenos Aires -- Uruguay closed its border with Argentina yesterday in the latest move in an escalating diplomatic dispute between the two countries. The tensions began when Uruguay recently gave the green light to Finnish multinational Botnia to operate a paper mill on the banks of the Rio de la Plata river just across from Argentina. Argentina contends that the mill will seriously pollute the river which, according to a government lawyer I spoke with, the Argentine government is finally trying to clean up.

However, with the summer quickly approaching down here, if Uruguay closes its border, how will we all get to the chic summer resort town of Punta Del Este? And how will the Uruguayan government make up for all the lost income from tourists? Makes me think they'll open the border soon.

Pictures of the mill showed huge piles of logs ready to be made into paper. That made me think: This is the 21st century and we're still making paper out of trees? For all our technical advances and environmental consciousness, we haven't adopted any alternatives? A few years ago Canadian old-growth was being used to make phone books...

Forces of good march on

Fresh off recapturing the league championship by upsetting evil archrival Paly, the Los Altos boys water polo team easily dispatched #12 seed San Benito in the first round of Central Coast Section playoffs. Senior Connor Smith described the win as "not much of a game."

The starters were pulled after the first quarter. Final score 14-3.

Los Altos will face #4 seed Menlo-Atherton at Lynbrook High School no earlier than 10am* on Saturday.

(*The game is NOW scheduled to start at 11:20 am. Your reporter will be in attendance.)

Introducing NOE's newest correspondent

Please join me in welcoming Los Altos's greatest character writer to the team. Readers will remember Erik Koland as the man who stood up to Rickenbacker Collections, as well as his many informal contributions to the site since its inception.

After years of trying to talk his way onto the blog, Erik becomes the only contributor who actually resides in Los Altos. He will be responsible for our efforts to become Los Altos's leading news source on high school water polo, death, pestilence, and both legally and illegally downloaded video.

Time to sit back and wait for the federal clerkship offers to roll in

Member, City Council CITY OF LOS ALTOS
Completed Precincts 19 of 19
		Percent	Votes
DAVID CASAS		27.59%	4,435
RONALD D. PACKARD		26.41%	4,246
UCLAW alum MEGAN SATTERLEE		24.11%	3,876
RANDALL HULL		21.89%	3,519

My brother informs me that Towelie and I tied for last place with one vote apiece.

Los Altos election special (with special guest star, my mother)

Though this Tuesday's election will not inspire the attention that last year's did, we here at NOE still take seriously our duty to inform the public about local politics.

Four candidates are running for three open seats on the Los Altos city council.

Ron Packard: Readers no doubt expect us to jump at the opportunity to get rid of Packard, who is largely responsible for the most embarassing thing to happen in Los Altos this millenium and sometimes seems to think he's mayor of Pleasantville. Not so. Packard has a lot of experience, having also spent two terms on the Mountain View council. He has a reputation as a thoughtful and generous man, and serves on the board of the Day Worker Center. Of course, the real reason I'm voting for Packard is that I need material for this blog, and he provides it.

David Casas: Casas was somewhat of a shit-disurber on the VTA Board at a time when it sorely needed its shit disturbed. He also always returned my phone calls when I was looking for a comment or an interview. On the other hand, his kid was kind of a brat the one time I met him. That would likely be enough for my mom not to vote for him, but that was few years ago.

Randall Hull: Hull seems like a friend of bicycle commuting and renewable energy usage. However, he used to do some contract work for the Town Crier, so he's already got one foot in the grave.

Megan Satterlee: I know almost nothing about Satterlee other than that her ballot statement refers too frequently to "preserving" Los Altos. However, she's an alum of UCLA School of Law. The added prestige that my degree would carry with an alum on the Los Altos City Council is too great to pass up. Sorry Randall.

The only other thing on the ballot is Measure O, which would revise the city's phone tax to include cell phone and broadband users while lowering the rate from 3.5% to 3.2%.

Nobody has written a argument against this idea, though there is this:

Mom: "I don't know what this one is about. I'll probably vote yes. I usually vote yes on everything."

Me: "That one is a tax cut." [Yes, I know this is only partially true.]

Mom: "Okay, I'll vote no then. Why would they cut taxes?"

My mom's voting system for candidates: vote for women.
My mom's voting system for other measures: yes on everything (except tax cuts.)

Remembering Los Altos' war on Halloween

With the war on Halloween back in the news, I was reminiscing earlier tonight about the time the Los Altos School District nearly did away with the holiday 12 years ago.

Michael Radwin has, for reasons that I should not criticize, helpfully created a page of links to Mercury news articles about the struggle, from back when the Merc was a good paper. While it may surprise some of you to see religious fundamentalists once exercised influence in Los Altos, it should hardly suprise you to see the city earn scorn from throughout the nation by toying with a hilariously dumb idea.

(As an aside, shame on all of you who gave out Dots tonight.)

Team America: World Police

Apparently, the US military is now protecting foreign cargo ships carrying carcinogenic material near Africa. As if our armed services weren't already doing enough good in the world...

Oh yeah, we're also making it safe for ships from the Axis of Evil to operate off the Somali coast.

Los Altos's anti-gypsy ordinance

Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States guarantees citizens certain "privileges and immunities." The Supreme Court has interpreted this to mean that neither states, counties nor cities can discriminate against non-residents' economic activities without a "substantial reason" for doing so.

All of this leads to the following question:

What could possibly be the substantial reason Los Altos has for limiting fortune-telling and palm-reading permits to residents of the county? (See Title 4, chapter 16). Was there a huge problem with gypsies blowing into town and ... doing what exactly?

The offending part of the law reads:

No person shall practice the business of palmistry, fortune-telling, astrology, prediction of the future, or any similar practice for a fee or any other item of value without first having obtained a permit from the city manager.

...

Any person holding a permit pursuant to this chapter shall be a citizen of the United States, of good character, over the age of twenty-one (21) year, a resident for one year last past of the county, and have a city address wherein operations will alone be lawful.

Another part of the law excludes would-be fortunetellers who have previously been convicted of trickery or deceit.

If any non-residents out there are interested in applying for such a permit and bringing a federal court challenge when the city refuses, I am your lawyer.

Beaumont West

Dancing, pool, pinball.

Los Altos Hills finally lifted its ban on the latter after 51 years. Mayor Craig Jones, who admits to having never heard of the law until resident Steve Kalem stumbled across it, puts an amazing spin job on the story.

"Los Altos Hills, like Palo Alto, is one of those towns where people pay attention," Jones said. "We have the eyes and ears to point it out."

Somehow, despite the town's general ignorance of a criminal law that had been on the books for more than five decades, this story is about the alertness of the citizenry. This is even funnier considering the fact that, according to the Los Altos Neighborhood Network, us flatlanders once had a similar law. Presumably, at some point in time, Los Altos repealed its law, but Los Altos Hills decided that it wasn't quite ready to do so.

Vigil for Lucio Casiano

An e-mail from the Day Worker Center list:

Lucio Casiano, a leader in the ministry "Youth for Christ/ Jovenes Para Cristo" from St. Athanasuis Mountain View, was detained by ICE (immigration) on Wednesday. ICE went to his home with a warrant for someone else who no longer lived there, and took him in the process. They are currently holding him in Yolo County awaiting arraignment in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Lucio is a graduate of the Diocese's ILM program and a key leader in our parish. On Monday, we are hosting an prayer vigil in response to his unjust detainment. I invite you to join us in this vigil and request that you forward this invitation to other Just Faith alumnae.

Prayer Vigil for Lucio Caciano
Monday, October 15, 2007
7:00 PM
St. Athanasius Catholic Church
160 N. Rengstorff Avenue
Mountain View, CA

Weekend fashion advice

First, Bill Maher, in Salon.com:

New Rule: Show me a man wearing an American flag pin in his lapel, and I'll show you an asshole.

Los Altan David Mott had this to add in the Mercury's sports section:

Here in Silicon Valley, a necktie is commonly considered overcompensation for a lack of talent.

Both rather good points, but it's distressing to think what they mean in combination for those of us who choose to wear stars-and-stripes bandannas.

Taco-flavored kisses

The Los Altos City Council is now 1-for-2 in deciding whether or not it's a good idea to pass municipal ordinances preventing groups of Mexicans from using public rights of way.

Los Altos didn't change its laws Tuesday to keep a taco truck from feeding high school students, but the idea appears to be gaining support from some council members.

The city is considering a change to its municipal code that would discourage mobile unit vendors from selling food to Los Altos High School students.

One possible ordinance includes limiting to 10 minutes the amount of time a food vendor could remain in one spot during a two-hour period.

This is vintage stuff. The last time Los Altos set out to pass a racist ordinance like this, it nearly banned lemonade stands. Now it is considering making ice cream trucks illegal. This calls for a protest.

By way of background, my alma mater is an open campus with parking passes cheap enough that everyone can afford to drive his or her BMW to school. Rich kids can spend their lunch hour at Jack-in-the-Box or Maldonado's or anywhere else. Strangely, only blog whipping boy Ron Packard seems to get this.

Council Member Ron Packard said he tried out the truck's offerings and bought a burrito and taco for a bargain price of about $3 or $4. Packard said he doesn't want to be unfair to students who don't have cars and can't drive to a restaurant of their choice.

Even though he's right on about this, I am having trouble picturing him hanging out by a taco truck in the back of the high school. I know that high schoolers don't vote, especially not those from other cities, but this has a sort of Dukakis-in-a-tank kind of feel to it, not to mention a George-Bush-on-a-"ranch"/Fred-Thompson-in-a-pickup-truck kind of feel).

The puppies are "safe"

Alza is dying. Its puppies are not (at least, not until some other drug company has the chance to do some testing on them).

ALZA Responds to Inaccurate and Misleading Information Regarding Dogs Housed at Its Campus

October 4, 2007

Unfortunately, inaccurate and misleading information has been circulating on the Internet about ALZA's plans for dogs housed at its campus. There is no public adoption program. The animals will be properly cared for and relocated to a different facility when ALZA closes at the end of the year. We regret this unfortunate misunderstanding and appreciate your taking the time to share your thoughts with us.

Here are my thoughts:

1) How the hell did Alza manage to keep it out of the press not only that it was developing a premature ejaculation drug, but also that it was testing it on beagle puppies.

2) "Housed at its campus" is rather misleading, but "properly cared for and relocated to a different facility" sounds like something Tony Snow would say.

Month in review

Dear readers,

I have emerged from a September of ass-kissing. Here's a sampling of what we've missed in the last month:

The Sacramento Bee eliminated its poverty beat.

America became ever more unrecognizable.

The Town Crier turned 60.

Here's looking forward to an equally eventful October.

EDIT: To those who have asked to what purpose the Bee, in its wisdom, has decided to put my sister's talent, here's your answer.

A failed New World Napoleon, a.k.a. "Grey-eyed Man of Destiny"

Speaking of violence in Central America:

Few know about William Walker's imperial ambitions south of the border. However, folks in Nashville, certainly know about their hometown jack-of-all-trades (it was a lot easier to be all those things back then, but 2 out of 3 ain't bad, right NOE?) thanks to this sign that proudly proclaims the accomplishments of one of their native sons. Funny, the sign makes no mention of his crimes or pro-slavery motivations...

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, and $1 million keeps the rebels away ... from our bananas

Chiquita, (formerly United Fruit) the company whose name synonymous with "banana", has been fined $25 million dollars for paying over $1 million in protection money to Colombian guerrilla groups. No strangers to paying people off, Chiquita/United Fruit has a long history of fueling corruption and conflict in Latin America.

Although $25 million is peanuts to a big company like Chiquita, its certainly more than Corporate America is used to paying for its crimes. Let's hope there isn't any reduction in the fine on appeal...

Marijuana article indefensibly racist

That's what the headline on Audra Baker's letter in this week's Town Crier should have read. "Lacking key fact" is way too forgiving a way to describe blaming Mexicans for marijuana gardens. To put it in context, imagine if Eliza Ridgeway had instead blamed some unsolved crime on black people or Jews without any evidence or, for that matter, relevance.

Two people ought to be censured for this by their employers: Sergeant Ed Wise of the sheriff's department, who made the claim, and Ridgeway, who gave it a veneer of legitimacy by lazily parroting it in print.

Talking to people is hard

This weekend, we return to our roots as I avoid studying and instead make snide and unhelpful comments about coverage of the week's local news. Let's get started.

Anonymity abounds in this week's Voice, as readers never learn the names of the Old Mountain View residents who are trying to relegate day workers to the poorer parts of town. Elsewhere, a profile of a 10-yeard old rapper includes perspectives from everyone but him. (Correction: I'm an idiot.) And the second part of a two-part series on Orion Park (besides misusing the phrase "begging the question") relies largely on old Voice articles for its information.

However, since posting its original article about a nanny arrested for locking a two-year-old in a car, the Voice has added her name, Juhee Hong, and some background information. (Both articles are still online, just in case the story wasn't disturbing enough the first time.)

Bishops face their toughest choice yet: gay clergy or black bosses

After weighing their options carefully, two more US bishops have opted to serve under Africans rather than accept gays in their church. Bill Murdoch of Massachusetts and Bill Atwood of Texas have sworn allegiance to the Anglican Church of Kenya almost a year after two other Episcopal Churches aligned themselves with the similarly anti-gay Anglican Church of Nigeria.

However, the head of the Anglican Church of Kenya seems to be a bit more liberal on homosexuality than many of his Ugandan neighbors. Said Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi of gays, "We need to love them, we need to preach to them..."

Maybe he's right: instead of criticizing Larry Craig and Bob Allen, maybe we do need to love them. That seems to be all they wanted anyway, right? Of course, let's not forget the preaching to them, either.

Go to (or run a Web site that books travel to) Cuba, receive a fine. It's the law.

Unless you're NOE, Americans who travel to Cuba can expect to be fined by the Feds for Trading with the Enemy. NOE did not receive a fine for his travel to the Communist island. Perhaps it was because he wore a stars and striped bandana the whole time. Or maybe it was because he promised the government he'd never leave the country again (using his Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards to visit "underrated places" like Houston and Lincoln).

But that's not the main point of this post. This is:

Online travel agent Travelocity.com was fined by the old white guys (and one young black woman) in Washington for facilitating travel to Cuba over a six-year period. Like most big companies fined by the government, it paid a fraction of the maximum fines for its crimes.

Maybe more of us would have gone if all it took was a few clicks on Travelocity! I'm going to do a quick Travelocity search for travel to North Korea. I will let you folks in the blogosphere know if I come up with anything. Then we, too, can visit Enemy Nations like NOE.

Minnesota values

You know how I know you're gay, Senator Larry Craig?

You sit with "a wide stance when going to the bathroom," among quite a few other hilarious details.

It's not quite as funny an explanation as "Blow Job" Bob Allen's 'there were a lot of black guys around' routine, but it will still give my brother plenty of punchlines next time he torments my father with lines inspired by the video game scene in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." ("You know how I know you're gay? ... You stared at a guy through a bathroom stall for two minutes while fidgeting with your fingers and later claimed that your actions were misinterpreted.")

Meanwhile, while Minnesota grapples with the possibility that its airport is a haven for sexually deviant senior-citizen conservatives from Idaho, one of the state's native daughters is facing a firestorm of criticism in Uganda for her work as a "homo propagandist."

Former Voice intern David Herbert, about whom I've promised not to say much specific because his current employer is probably reading, sends us the story of Katherine Roubos. The two graduated from Stanford together in the spring and are working as interns for the Daily Monitor in Uganda.

It seems Roubos has made the mistake of writing about gay people in a country where homosexuality is illegal. This has raised the ire of an angry mob that hilariously calls itself the "Rainbow Coalition."

Minister for Ethics and Integrity Nsaba Buturo was also on hand to represent the ruling party. Amidst the cheers of supporters, he assured the crowd that the government has no intention of repealing the ban on homosexuality before denouncing foreign journalists who advocate for gay rights.

As the local editor, it's not my place to criticize foreign governments too much, but a Minister for Ethics and Integrity? Doesn't that sound like something the Bush Administration would have? Herbert's always had a good eye for irony, so he also gives us this:

"This is not journalism, but rather criminal propaganda," said [Pastor and former National Break Dance Champion Martin] Ssempa, who held a young boy in his arms as he rallied the crowd.

Creepy. This man, by the way, receives U.S. taxpayer dollars to spread his beliefs.

The one thing they have in common is that they both belong in jail

Hooray!

Looks like two to three years was enough. Certainly, I can't imagine how much more damage my former boss would be able to do anyway. He'd already managed to undermine the Geneva Conventions, politicize the Justice Department, and even make John Ashcroft look good.

Cable news is splitting their morning coverage between Fredo's resignation and Michael Vick's guilty plea. I have not watched cable news for months, and had forgotten how vapid it is. CNN twice referred to Bush's "stubborn Texas cowboy streak," apparently forgetting the man is from Connecticut. It also quoted Senator John Cornyn -- another Texas Republican -- to the effect that no evidence existed that any U.S. Attorneys lost their jobs for political reasons, and then failed to point to mountains of evidence.

A much-hyped and long-awaited post about parking policies in downtown Los Altos...

... is coming soon, I promise.

But first, a word from our foreign correspondent, who phoned in the following at 2:00 a.m. Saturday night.

Me: Hello.

Foreign correspondent: I have a question. Who would you think, between [four anonymous people] would ... (unintelligible) ... Club de Barcelona ... (Mexican slang) ... tapped out ... (unintelligible) ... That's why Ferdinand Marcos bought his wife 60 pairs of shoes!

Me: What?

Reefer Madness!

A second marijuana bust in the hills provides more evidence of the existence of Mexicans.

Kudos, I guess, to the Town Crier, for improving on its previous coverage by

• not making unsupported generalizations about entire nationalities,
• not speculating (at least not as much) about environmental impacts of which it has no proof
• and not quoting Costco quantities at Safeway prices.

Can't wait for the editorial

Joc's story

It has been a while since I last bragged about my sister.

For the last year, Joc has been tracking down the surviving members of an inner-city Sacramento pee wee football team from 1992 and interviewing them about how their lives have turned out. Many have been and out of jail. Others have died violently. She tells their stories in a three-part series in the Sacramento Bee that began yesterday.

It is very good.

ALZA leaving, premature ejaculation drug no longer coming quickly?

A sad development, mainly because good people will be losing their jobs, but also because the Voice may now never get to write a headline about dapoxetine hydrochloride.

Cold War Redux

While I was on the font lines of the spectacular saga of the poisoning death/assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, I didn't realize it was perhaps the first in a recent string of publicity stunts crafted by the Kremlin to signal Russia's resurgence as an international power.

Since Litvinenko, a former Russian agent, was poisoned with easily traceable Polonium-210 in London last November, Moscow (read: Putin) has (and this list is not exhaustive by any means) waged cyber attacks on Estonia, fired missiles into Georgia and just the other day sent bombers to buzz US military installations on the Pacific island of Guam. Although there is some dispute regarding how close the Russian planes actually got to Guam, the fact remains that Russia (read: Putin) is hoping to revive its standing in the world.

However, Putin hasn't let his military "exercises" do all the talking. He has also been engaging in a war of words with the UK over the continued fall-out from the Litvnenko case, refusing to negotiate on the issue of independence for Kosovo and threatening to point missiles at Europe.

So if you were a Soviet analyst and have been out of work for the last 15 years or so, well, there might be some positions opening up for you about now. And maybe we should all start worrying that every plane you hear flying overhead may be a Russian nuke. Cause that's what I did when I was 6 and I think I may start thinking that way again.

It was the Mexicans

The Town Crier's coverage of last week's drug bust at Hidden Villa blames "Mexican nationals." Writer Eliza Ridgeway attributes this claim, for which she admits having no evidence, to sheriff's Sergeant Ed Wise. You may recognize this mechanism for saying inappropriate things from Pope Benedict, Glenn Beck and my youngest brother, who, when he was little, excused his use of swear words to my mother by saying, 'I'm just quoting someone.' He would then get what she called a 'potsch.'

Dikembe's Looking for 100,00 Members

Many of you have probably heard of NBA star Dikembe Mutombo's post shot-block finger wags (or at least I hope you have) and hopefully some of you have heard about his charity work.

When I spoke with the man himself in Toronto's Pearson airport yesterday evening, he told me that the hospital he has spent ten years trying to build finally opened last week in Kinshasa, the capital of his home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo. The hospital, named for Mutombo's mother, was no doubt delayed by ongoing conflict in this country of 60 million. The $29 million project is to focus treating women and children and could not come at a better time. Currently, families of the ill beg outside Kinshasa's existing hospital hoping to raise enough money to pay for the limited treatment available.

Now that the hospital is operational, Mutombo told me he's looking for 100,000 people to become members of his foundation and donate whatever they can - $10 or $20 - to the ongoing efforts. Further, anyone with professional experience, particularly medical experience can volunteer with the foundation. More information is available at the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation website.

Weekly "Special"

While working on a post criticizing the Los Altos City Council for its downtown parking policy vote, I neglected to check out the Town Crier's Weekly section. (Frighteningly, this is the second result out of 168 million on Google for "Weekly Special").

Thanks to Miss L.I. for alerting me to the articles I almost missed:

"In new book, Los Altan claims he predicted 9/11 attacks"
You pretty much just have to read this one for yourselves.

"The agony and ecstasy of Austrian lexicography a spelling kerfuffle"
If that headline does not make any sense to you, the last paragraph will explain what this story is doing in a local paper.

So here I sit with my new speller, trying to figure out when to sharp s (ß) and when to double s (ss), when to write a word together or apart, when to lower or upper case. Turning pages, I chanced across one of my favorite German words, "ausgeflippt," the past participle of "ausflippen," which in turn is a derivative of "flipped out." Used in a sentence: "Er ist (He is) total ausgeflippt." I wonder what behind-the-scenes bartering took place for this migrant word to be permitted to join the party. Ausflippen - ja! American riffraff - nein! Riffraff - I like it! Nein! Never! Biff-bang-pow! (Sounds of a scuffle.) OK - you win! But we get to keep the triple-f in "Schifffahrt." Done.

Make sense now?

"Let's go bowling"
Nothing's particularly wrong with this article, but it does technically qualify as another installment in the "Things that are not happening in Los Altos" series.

(To those readers who would have preferred a post about parking regulations, don't worry, it's still coming, because, yes, I am that much of a nerd.)

Best bonfire ever

Wow.

State and local law enforcement officers raided a massive illegal marijuana garden estimated at 32,000 plants -- worth $128 million -- in a remote area of the Hidden Villa land Thursday, according to Santa Clara County Sgt. Ed Wise.

Besides being kind of incredible, this is actually kind of scary, considering the deadly shootout that took place two years ago under similar circumstances near Los Gatos. One loyal reader, who also came up with the title for this post when he imagined police burning the plants to destroy them, immediately zeroed in on the fact that the $4,000-per-plant estimate may be a little high. "Maybe a weed tree is worth that much," he said.

This story raises a whole lot of questions. Who was responsible for this? How did they get in there unnoticed? Does anybody really believe that the financially struggling hippies at Hidden Villa were unaware this was going on? Will this finally get people to consider decriminalization?

The one I'm most excited about, however, is whether the Town Crier will write an editorial trumpeting this as an important victory in the war on drugs, or opt not to cover it at all because it is not the kind of good news that readers expect.

Correction for the next issue of the Town Crier

The tagline on Anita Baldwin's piece about picking up trash mistakenly read, "Anita Baldwin is a Los Altos Hills resident." It should have read, "Anita Baldwin is a potentially crazy woman." The Town Crier regrets the error.

(Still, pretty damn amusing.)

It's hard out there for the filthy rich

I have been struggling to come up with an appropriate response to today's New York Times article about the poor millionaires of Menlo Park and Los Altos. An article about what it's like to be poor in Silicon Valley would have been far more helpful. Instead, the New York Times decided to make fun of my neighbors. Here's what they have to say for themselves.

"A few million doesn't go as far as it used to."
-- Menlo Park resident Hal Steger

I'm pretty sure he's just talking about inflation. But when you hear someone say this, you can never entirely rule out the possibility that they are a little bitter about the fact that slave trade no longer exists.

"I’d be rich in Kansas City. People would seek me out for boards. But here I’m a dime a dozen.”
-- Los Altos resident David Koblas

In college, I had this idea for a radio show. It would consist of me interviewing people about how they were cool in high school in hopes of getting them a date (which the show would pay for). If the interview didn't succeed, they would get a t-shirt that said, "I was cool in high school and all I got was this t-shirt. If any readers are trying to come up with programming for KFJC this fall, please consider a spin-off: "I'd be rich in Kansas City."

"We could move. But if you do that, then you’re admitting defeat."
-- Hillsborough resident Umberto Milletti

Interestingly enough, this is exactly what I tell people when they ask why I want to live in Silicon Valley. The only difference is that the defeat I'm referring to consists of abandoning the place I love to people who complain about being multi-millionaires.

Damnit

I got really excited when I saw the headline for the article "Big plans for St. Francis campus." Unfortunately, the plans do not include, as I had hoped, demolition.

Administrative president Kevin Makley tells the paper that the idea is to "add some things we haven't had before." Not surprisingly, a tolerable student population does not appear on the list.

The Voice's unrequited love

I will give the Voice that Google should be more responsive to the local newspaper. I just seriously doubt that anybody cares.

Here's a fun game to play with last week's Voice editorial complaining about the repeated brush-off: Imagine that an ex wrote it about you, and change the text accordingly. For example, the fourth paragraph becomes:

For my part, I regularly send e-mails to him, inquiring about his plans, among other things. (Like the rest of his gender, he communicates primarily through e-mail.) The most common response I've received is no response at all. The second-most common response is, "I'll get back to you" — followed by silence.

The problem with this analogy is that Google and the Voice were never dating in the first place, despite once contemplating marriage. It has always been hard to get information out of the company, and in many respects was much harder before IPO.

In any case, the jilted lover bit is unbecoming of the editorial pages of an award-winning paper like the Voice, and certainly no way to catch the Town Crier.

I would like to see a story in the Voice to the effect of "Is the GooglePlex good for Mountain View." It is an important question that the Voice is in the best position to answer. Two weeks ago, the Voice listed the tax revenues the city gets from the company, but that was about it. The story neglected to mention the other public agencies that also benefit from these funds, nor any of the other projects, large and small, for which the company should get some credit: outfitting the city with a free wireless network, spiffing up the bookmobile and sponsoring the firefighters' pancake breakfast, to name a few. (I think the Voice's critique of the company for adding to traffic is misguided: Google has long had one of the best transportation demand management programs around).

The company's success is also, it would seem, a contributing factor to Mountain View's ongoing gentrification. This is a good thing if you already own your home, unless you own your home next to the newest location for a whole bunch of luxury homes. If the Voice wants to complain about Google, it should complain about how the city's poorer residents have had to move away or crowd in with their friends and families as their apartments have become more expensive or been converted to condos. It's certainly a more compelling story to tell than the one about the company not returning reporters' e-mails.

It's almost two weeks since I read about this

and I still can't decide what's funnier: Los Altos Hills being bitter about its exclusion from Foothills Park, or Palo Altans being arrogant enough they would rather risk the park burning down than letting in outsiders.

Fredo inspires

I did a strange thing today during Alberto Gonzales's speech to us DOJ interns: I held my tongue. Had I put more thought into things beforehand, I maybe would have tried to organize a walkout, or perhaps asked him how many applicants for our jobs had been disqualified because they were not loyal Bushies.

Instead, I sat by while he fielded the following "questions":

"I just want to thank you for your service. Can you tell us who your role models are?" (Answer: His parents, because they worked hard despite a lack of education; the President, because he's disciplined, funny and has faith; I was told he mentioned God, too, but I must have been laughing too hard to hear it).

"How has your relationship with the President changed since you became Attorney General?"

"I'd like to thank you for serving our country. How did your time on the Texas Supreme Court prepare you for this job?"

The most notable one was about how he planned to lure people with mountains of debt into public service careers when the private sector offers are so enticing. Aside from the fact that the person had yet to be hired but was already asking for a raise, he had also either miscalculated the cost of law school or how he would pay back his loans. A good answer would have been something along the lines of 'we are looking for people who want to serve their country, and the country will pay them what it can afford to.'

Instead, Gonzales encouraged us to work for the private sector. I wasn't taking notes, but I'm pretty sure the quote was, "When I talk about public service, I think two or three years is enough." Apparently, when then-Governor Bush first appointed him in Texas, Gonzales promised his wife he would go back to the private sector within a few years. I have to wonder if he's regretting the decision not to follow through on that.

My birthday card to Ken Ballard

As imagined in my head Saturday while at his grave in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery.

Dear Ken,

Happy thirtieth.

You may or not remember me, seeing as how we never met when you were around. You might recognize me, though. I am the stranger who brought his cousins to see your grave last August. I am the guy who stood shyly to the side on Memorial Day while your family toasted you on the third anniversary of your death. I hope it's not weird for me to be here, but since your family couldn't be, I felt like I should.

Your family, as I'm sure you know, is again gathering at Cuesta Park today to celebrate you. I know your mother talks to you all the time, but it's my duty to let you know that she loves you very much. She's doing important work, you know, making sure that neither your town nor your country have forgotten you. I'm sure you'd be very proud of her.

I see that you have more company than the last time I was here, less than two months ago. Every time I've seen you, you've been surrounded by fresh graves. I'm sure next time I'm make the land behind me will be filled with more graves, mainly of people younger, poorer and less educated than I am.

I have to be honest: I have mixed feelings about this place. Whoever dubbed it our nation's most sacred shrine got it mostly right. John and Bobby Kennedy are buried here, immortalized by the soaring hopefulness of their speeches carved into the walls nearby. The memorial to the crew of the Challenger makes me cry the same way I did when I learned about it when I was 6. And the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, despite the throngs of tourists in obnoxious shirts, still represents the ideal that we aspire to honor all of those who gave their lives for our principles.

But despite all this, this place seems like it's ultimately a monument to the stupidity of war. It has been that way from the moment the Union Army commandeered the grounds around Robert E. Lee's mansion to bury its dead and remind Lee of what he had started. Half a million Americans died standing in lines across from each other and shooting rifles at their countrymen, over what was a political and economic dispute made ever deadlier by the pride of Virginia's generals. Many of them are buried here. Veterans of the Indian Wars, through which our nation's leaders stole a continent and nearly wiped out the remnants of a civilization, are here as well. The mast of the U.S.S. Maine, a symbol of yellow journalism and American imperialism profitting from tragedy, is preserved here. Even the graves of the Kennedys are reminders that some idiots thought they were justified in killing them.

It's true that every man thinks of less of himself for having been a soldier, and I am no different. I am humbled in the presence of you and all those who were not too afraid to have to trust my life to this nation, as part of a bargain that it would only be risked when it was necessary to defend the highest principles of this country. I wish only that we had upheld our end of the deal.

Instead, we continue to be mired in an endless war in which patriotism means slapping a flag decal on your car and going to the Tomb of an Unknown Soldier in a tank top that says "Exercise Freedom: I'd travel 8,000 miles to smoke a camel" while graves pile up.

I know I have failed to do my part as well. Even with a teammate of mine and a friend's little brother both killed in Iraq, I have made no effort to put a stop to this. I have not tried to get into a position where I could fix the mistakes we have made, nor have I organized in opposition to those that we continue to make. Instead, I have contented myself to visit Arlington and periodically vent my political beliefs to no one in particular.

I am coming here to ask you for your forgiveness. I'd tell you to rest in peace but I'm sure it must be difficult. So I will just say that we owe you better than this, and let's hope we remember before too late.

With respect,

Jon

Beating Women and Torturing Dogs

Atlanta Faclons quarterback Michael Vick's penchant for dog fighting seems to be surprising and outraging everyone, even Senator Byrd.

While Vick should be punished if found guilty, the sad fact is that when professional athletes beat or sexually assault women, no one seems to care. No old Senator stands up in Congress to rave about it it, no official investigation by the professional sports league they play for, just a simple plea bargain or out of court settlement that allows them to continue to make millions and be adored by fans. Violence against women in professional sports is like a plague - look at Kobe Bryant, Ruben Patterson (how is attempted rape a misdemeanor, by the way?), Jason Richardson, Ron Artest (who also starved his dogs, but no one cared), and that's just a few and only in the NBA! When you dig a little more you find players from pro baseball, hockey, football all assaulting women. The list goes on and on.

Perhaps the best is example of the public caring more about dogs than women is that Vick is attracting much more attention now for his "Bad Newz Kennels" venture than for his crimes as Ron Mexico.

Maybe NOE can help once he completes his legal studies?

Aiming Low

This made me laugh.

I think its the administration's way of saying "A year from now, we'd like to have less people dying in certain areas."

Nevermind

You guys remember how concerned I was when the Mercury continued cannibalizing itself in the name of high profit margins by firing 31 reporters a few weeks ago?

Nevermind.

People I'm mad at this week

Welcome to the test run of what we're hoping we'll be a new feature here on NOE. Let's get started.

Who I'm mad at: The New York State Assembly.
What they did: Rejected a plan to charge drivers for entering lower Manhattan.
Why it's a problem: $500 million in federal money is now likely to go to building new highways instead of a plan that would introduce some market mechanisms into transportation choices.
What they should have done instead: Been less petty and approved the damn thing.

Who I'm mad at: Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty
What they did: Decided to appeal the D.C. Circuit's cockamamie decision in Parker v. District of Columbia, striking down the district's gun control laws, to the Supreme Court
Why it's a problem: Given the current composition of the Supreme Court, governments around the country could soon lose much of their rights to restrict sales of guns.
What they should have done instead: Delivered the body of every shooting victim to the judge Laurence Silberman's house, perhaps with a note reading, "What part of 'A well-regulated militia being necessary' don't you understand?"

Who I'm mad at: The California Newspaper Publishers Association
What they did: Awarded the Los Altos Town Crier second place in the editorial page category of its annual Better Newspapers Contest.
Why it's a problem: This, this, this and, most of all, this.
What they should have done instead: Started a blog making fun of the Town Crier.

Another loss for the school community

This week's Town Crier has an obituary for Ken Green, who collapsed at home two weeks ago. It is the first one I've seen, and it has been sad to see so little coverage of the life of my advanced biology teacher.

Principal Wynne Satterwhite's comments about him are right on:

Satterwhite described Mr. Green as "very student centered," a big guy with a full beard who appeared gruff on the outside, but was "a teddy bear on the inside."

Mr. Green "always made time for kids," Satterwhite said. She recalled Mr. Green's helping a young man who "people pretty much gave up on" this past school year.

He was fairly reserved around his students, though he never minced words when he thought they weren't performing to your ability or putting forth full effort. He clearly cared very deeply about their development as people. When I was still in college and spending my summers coaching at the high school, he was the first and only one of my former teachers to insist that I call him by his first name. He told me that I had graduated and was therefore now an adult. I told him that I couldn't quite bring myself to do that, so he agreed I could call him "coach" until I was ready.

The only time I ever saw him show much emotion was earlier this year when he spoke at Will Sigua's service. I think, in part, he was moved by the sheer numbers of people who had come out to celebrate Will together. It reminded me of my other favorite memory of him from high school -- gruffly telling Will's older brother Jon and me that, a year after our graduation, we would be lucky to still be friends with five of our high school classmates, and that five years later, we would only be friends with one. I mentioned that to him, telling him I had never been happier to prove someone wrong.

They weren't kidding

Criticism!

I know it's not about a particularly exciting topic, but still, this is a huge step.

"Goof" vs. "fuck-up"

"Goof" -- intentionally spreading false information for purposes of a joke. Saying that the city may change its name to Mountain Dew, California, or that it is recruiting a minor league baseball team to play in McKelvey Park are both examples of goofs.

"Fuck-up" -- spreading false information while thinking it's true. Maintaining that Mountain View has made approval of Home Depot's proposal to move into San Antonio Shopping Center contingent upon the company paying the city a quarter of a million dollars to establish a permanent day worker center, or that Home Depot has given the city a quarter-million unsolicited -- that is a fuck-up.

[UPDATE 7/13: This post has been edited in response to criticism in the comments section].

Earmarks might be better

Remember how happy some of us were feeling back in November when the Democrats took control of both Congress and my liver?

That was before the new majority (in a miscalculated act of political cowardice) failed even to prevent the war's growth. It was also before loyal NOE reader Will Evans blew holes in all that Congressional bloviating about earmark-free spending bills.

The Center for Investigative Reporting is reporting today that hundreds of members of Congress have been privately pressuring federal agencies to keep feeding pork to their home districts.

Check out CIR's growing catalogue of public records to find out how your representatives have attempted to pervert the spending process. And don't worry if you don't see their names. Only five of the 13 federal agencies who received Freedom of Information Act requests actually responded. So the fact that Eshoo, Feinstein and Boxer are not currently implicated doesn't mean much -- chances are the picture this story paints of Congress is altogether too rosy.

Don't Even Think About Leaving the Country

While the middle of the country floods and the West burns, some of us may be entertaining crazy ideas of leaving the country.
However, don't do it. Don't even think about it. Let's all make like NOE and just stay put here in the good old US of A.

Washington's commitment to a weak dollar hit another high note Tuesday with both the euro and pound hitting new highs against our battered greenback. This means that traveling like Rick Steves in the safety of Western Europe is now totally unaffordable for many of us. Hell, even a burrito (a bargain for the Brits) at BigDra's place in Cambridge will seem like a fortune.

And don't even think of going to the cheaper parts of the world. I hear there are terrorists and Mexicans there.

The wrong way to fight a drought

From Wednesday's New York Times article about towns throughout the country cancelling fireworks shows because of extreme drought conditions:

In Breckenridge, Colo., the mountain resort 65 miles southwest of here, children will be treated to an afternoon of water fights by the Fire Department, but the evening fireworks have been called off. The show, which has been offered for 20 years, was canceled once before, in 2002, also because of drought.

*Sigh*

Our foreign correspondent is too polite to write about this

But we can't let it go unremarked that even a country like Mauritania -- where young girls are forcefed in order to make them obese, and in some cases tortured when they refuse -- still has far fewer overweight women than the U.S.

I can say this only because Megan is 3,000 miles away, but it sort of makes me think the Onion was right.

Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom ... of the press ... to destroy itself

The Mercury News celebrated Freedom Day by firing 31 reporters Monday, seemingly weakening our democracy once again. Together with the 15 people who voluntarily took severance packages in the last months, the Merc lost about 20 percent of an editorial staff still recovering from many rounds of cuts.

This is a shame. Many of those reporters -- S.L. Wykes, Kate Folmar and Dylan Hernandez come to mind -- are particulary good at their jobs. But the simple fact is that news is continuing to get cheaper. Consequently, the news-gathering function is worth less and less. Before anyone (Joc) replies that this is all the fault of greedy owners, please read the Mountain View Voice story about the city's lawsuit with Shoreline Amphitheater auditing firm Daoro, Zydel & Holland and ask yourself how much time it take for you to get this information yourself?

Mountain View city attorney Michael Martello "announced" the trial date.
What appears to have happened is that the judge announced the trial date, and at some point Martello told the Palo Alto Daily News (which not located in Mountain View, nor Palo Alto, for that matter), which wrote a story and thereby alerted the Voice. While I don't have a reason to think Martello's lying, I decided to confirm it with the court's Website. I timed myself. Took me two minutes.

Daoro attorney Farley Neuman "is a self-described specialist in accounting malpractice."
In fact, Neuman has written several articles on the subject, so we shouldn't be relying on his own descritpion of himself. Type his name into Google and follow the first link.

"He said he has filed a summary judgment [sic] that describes in good detail the complex accounting issues that go back over a decade."
First of all, he has filed a motion for summary judgment along with a brief in support of it, which isn't a huge error but does indicate either shoddy editing or a lack of effort to understand this (or any) case or both. More significantly, this sentence makes it clear that the reporter never even looked at the document, nor knows for sure that it exists, despite what appears to be an invitation to read it. (It doesn't appear to be on-line yet, but it's not difficult to ask the lawyer for a copy of it or go to the courthouse).

Let's not pretend like we couldn't get the same quality of information from someone getting paid half as much in Bangalore or, for that matter, somebody getting paid nothing at all and writing on their blog.

As a sidenote, the top story on the Voice's Web site right now is about 7-11 doing a promotion for the Simpsons movie.

If a child-molesting scoutmaster from Los Altos had helped President Bush trick the nation into supporting the invasion of Iraq

Would we have seen this article a year ago?

Bush spares Wagner 280-month jail term

President Bush spared Gregory Wagner from prison Monday, commuting his 23-year-and-four-month sentence while leaving intact his conviction for molesting children.

Mr. Bush’s action, announced hours after a judge sentenced Mr. Wagner, former scoutmaster for Los Altos-based Boy Scout Troop 31, came as a surprise to all but a few members of the president’s inner circle. It reignited the passions that have surrounded the case from the beginning.

The commutation brought immediate praise from conservatives, who hailed it as a courageous step to avert a miscarriage of justice, and condemnation from Democrats, who said it showed a lack of accountability and respect for the law.

The president portrayed his commutation of the sentence, which fell short of a pardon and still requires Mr. Wagner to pay a fine and be on probation, as a carefully considered compromise.

“I respect the guilty plea,” Mr. Bush said in a statement. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Wagner is excessive.”

Mr. Wagner, who was a Boy Scout leader for Troop 31, will still have to pay a fine and remain on probation for several years. He will most likely never again be able to lead Boy Scout troops.

The president’s decision means that Mr. Wagner, 43, no longer faces the prospect of leaving his wife and two children to report to prison.

...

Mr. Bush’s decision drew warm support from Mr. Wagner's friends and supporters, who had created a defense fund that drew the support of dozens of prominent Republicans, including a half dozen former ambassadors and several former government colleagues. Former Senator Fred D. Thompson, now an undeclared candidate for president, held a fund-raiser for Mr. Wagner.

“This is not a man who deserves to go to jail in any sense of the word,” said Kenneth L. Adelman, a former Defense Department official and longtime friend of Mr. Wagner, who stayed at his Colorado vacation home before his trial.

“Whatever he did wrong, he certainly paid,” Mr. Adelman said referring to Mr. Wagner's resignation from his prominent position and his public humiliation. “This is a good person who served his country very well and is a decent person,” he said.

[UPDATE: July 4 (Freedom Day), 1:27 p.m.]
Today's New York Times makes the point more clearly, and Joe Biden has the government's position in a more analogous case on his blog. Both, however, lack the local angle NOE readers expect.

John Ashcroft: Savior of the Jews

Balak was the King of Moab. Worried that the Israelites were about to overrun his lands, he hired Balaam, a prophet, offering him riches galore to put a curse on them. Balaam warned Balak that, being a prophet, he could not say anything contrary to what God told him to say. After conferring with God, Balak chose not to put a curse on the Israelites and instead blessed them three times.

This was the subject of the Torah portion my second cousin Joshua read this Saturday at his bar-mitzvah, where I had the honor of carrying the Torah as Josh's way of making fun for dropping him on his head when he was six months old. The portion ended with some whoring and impaling, and Balak's worst fears were born out, but we're not going to focus on that right now). Josh gave a thoughtful impressive sermon about listening to your own voice for guidance when faced with tempation.

Enter the rabbi. Perhaps I should say reenter. Earlier in the service he had stopped praying every time somebody walked in late, glaring at them until they sat down and he restarted. (Apparently he's never heard of "Jewish Standard Time.")

Following Josh's lead, the rabbi said prophets are like the people who make Hebrew National hot dogs: they answer to a higher authority. The same thing is true of many professions nowadays, he pointed out. Regardless of what you offer a lawyer, for example, "there are some things you can't hire a lawyer to do." To drive home his point, he told the story of a modern-day Balaam -- the Pentecostal Christian who lost his Senate seat to a dead guy.

Granted, the man did do one decent thing in his life, and the rabbi was just giving him some credit for it. But my family was hearing none of it. Whispers ran through the audience. Josh's grandmother walked out. At the reception/reunion afterward, 'What the hell was that stuff about Ashcroft?' was an even more popular question than 'How old are you now?'

My second cousin-twice-removed said it best when talking to my brother. "I've been to seven bar-mitzvahs. But this one... wow."