Editor’s note: Michael Ackley’s columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.
It hasn’t gotten much traction in the news media, but there has been some chatter about California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown’s ties to Indonesia and its oil.
What interest there has been seems traceable to the Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters, a stalwart journalist and political commentator who did some of his best work for the late, lamented Sacramento Union before skipping across town to the more-solvent Bee.
The story, in short, is that after Jerry Brown’s dad, Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, left the California governorship, the elder Brown gained Indonesia’s dictators as clients. They set him up as California broker for Indonesian oil. His fee was a rakeoff from each barrel imported by California companies – a lucrative deal from which son Jerry still benefits.
Adding to the fragrance of this deal was a ruling by the Democrat-controlled California Air Resources Board, which set the standard for sulfur content slightly below that of Alaskan crude, assuring Indonesia’s place as a monopoly supplier to Golden State power plants.
This all puts Jerry Brown in bed with dictators and Big Oil, an uncomfortable resting place for an environmentalist Democrat.
Of all the half-truths, distortions and outright lies produced in California’s election campaign perhaps the most gorgeous comes from the proponents of Proposition 27. This is the measure – backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among others – that not only would keep the state’s new Citizen Redistricting Commission from drawing congressional district lines but would eliminate the fledgling body completely. (It was created by the voters in 2008.)
The ballot argument in favor of Prop. 27 is a masterpiece of mendacity, but our favorite lie follows: “Yes on 27 will ensure that those who make the decisions (on electoral district lines) are accountable to the voters.”
Allow us to translate: “Elected officials who will draw the lines are accountable to the voters. And please never mind that those lines will assure they are accountable to their voters.”
Good news for birthers: Alaska Superior Court Judge Winston Burbank has ruled GOP Senate candidate’s personnel records must be released to the public.
The good jurist reasoned that senator was a very important job and said Miller’s right to privacy was “outweighed by the public’s significant interest in the background of a public figure who is running for the U.S. Senate.”
Well then, if the Senate is important, the presidency is even more vital. Now that Judge Burbank has set the precedent, will the courts be ordering the release of President Obama’s long-form birth certificate. You know, the one signed by the heretofore phantom attending physician.
Analyzing NPR: If any humor is to be found in Juan Williams’ dismissal by National Public Radio it lies in NPR’s assertion that Williams, as an “analyst,” shouldn’t be expressing personal opinions.
What analysts do is look at information and give their opinions about it. Apparently NPR subscribes to a different definition, from the Blind Partisan’s Dictionary:
analyst – noun, a person employed to examine data and then give his employer’s opinion about it.
The lexicographers at Blind Partisan’s Dictionary also have produced a definition for “extreme,” as the term has been among Democrats’ catchwords in this election. E.g.: “My Republican opponent has ideas that are too extreme for the American public.”
The BPD says:
extreme – adj., differing widely from one’s own point of view.
We knew this guy had to be high. The Sacramento Bee reports George Soros – excuse us – billionaire George Soros has tipped a million bucks into the Yes on 19 pot. And we mean pot. Prop. 19 is the initiative to legalize recreational marijuana.
Servile Biden-puffing ‘journalists’ loyal to the end
Tim Graham