California Faultline

It is four days before LA County Bernard Parks and Mark Ridley-Thomas for 2nd Dist. Board of Supervisors seat, and more than a week since I wrote about the Parks campaign lifting Barack Obama’s website, and not much has changed. Here’s what updates I do have:

-A few days ago, the Parks campaign wrote me saying they had contacted Uyi Ogbeide with 2 Way Star, their web designer, who “assured” them that “he did not commit any violations.”

-The HTML code on the Parks site was changed removing links back to the Obama campaign that were leftover from when the Obama website’s HTML was copied.

-Blogger Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein writes that after the Times article appeared, a friend of his called the Parks campaign to ask about the odd links to Obama’s site:

He spoke to Domingo, the contact person for their campaign on the website, who denied any knowledge of that and insisted it was a software-related bug that he had never encountered before

(If this is true, why was I told by Bernard Parks, Jr. that they were having trouble getting ahold of anyone with the website, when, apparently, someone with the site was already speaking to the issues, albeit sloppily?)

-On Tuesday, the Parks campaign also told me that Uyi with 2 Way Star would be getting ahold of me. In spite of this and repeated emails his way, I have not been contacted by Uyi.

-The designer of Obama’s website, Scott Thomas, declined to comment and put me in touch with Barack Obama’s office who also issued a “no comment on the website.” They made no indication as to whether they had looked into the situation or not.

Both Ridley-Thomas and Parks are Obama supporters, and there is some debate as to who endorsed Obama first. The issue is important enough for the Parks campaign to write on their site that Parks was “the first prominent elected official to support his campaign for President.” Is the use of Obama’s website, including color scheme and images, implying an endorsement in return?

Over the Memorial Day weekend City Council President Eric Garcetti was visiting friends in Utah when he had the ultimate “star sighting…” by Utah standards anyway. Via Facebook, Garcetti wrote that he “saw Mitt Romney pushing a shopping cart in Albertson’s yesterday in Park City.”

On a related note, Mitt Romney sighting by SoCal residents may become more commonplace as word broke last week that the former Massachusetts governor is purchasing an ocean front home in La Jolla. It seems that in spite of his flip-flop on the issue, he can’t seem to keep away from states that legalize gay marriage.

Hey, kids - if you’re 14 years old in two years you may be able to pre-register to vote! But don’t get too excited… you’d still have to wait until you’re 18 to actually vote.

On Tuesday the L.A. City Council unanimously voted to support Assembly Bill 1819 which would allow persons at least 16 years old to pre-register to vote, so long as they meet all other voter requirements.

Pre-registration would encourage student engagement in high school civic classes, increase youth participation in political campaigns, and, hopefully improve on California’s rank as “36th in the nation for turnout among young voters.”

Councilman Richard Alarcon presented the measure to City Council. According to Becca Doten, Alarcon’s director of communications, if the bill passes it would not go into effect until 2010, the anticipated date when Secretary of State Debra Bowen “certifies a new voter registration database that will have the capability for pre-registration built-in.”

Full press release after the jump…

(more…)

UPDATE 5/29/08: After numerous complaints by customers, Amazon has made this book available via Prime. As documented on an Amazon message board, numerous customers experienced the same runaround as I did it, being told it wasn’t available for being oversized, only later to be told that the book was mistaken listed as not eligible for Amazon Prime due to a combination of computer and human errors. Considering this book rocketed to number one and has been a front page news item for days, I still find the whole situation highly suspect. The Bugliosi book is also now available for Prime.

I use Amazon.com enough that I pay an extra $80 or so per year to be a “Prime” member, allowing for free, 2 day shipping on just about anything. The exception tends to be toys, appliances, and other items that aren’t sold and/or shipped directly from Amazon, but even then it’s rare for an item to fall outside of being Prime.

However, I’ve never, ever seen a new book listed as “not eligible for Amazon Prime” at least until not over the past few days.

The two books are both high critical of the Bush Administration. The first is Vincent Bugliosi’s The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, which I wrote about a few days ago. The second is former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.

A search of other political issue related non-fiction books on Amazon’s Top 100 found no other books listed as “not eligible for Amazon Prime.” (more…)

Antelope Valley’s 93.5 The Quake is riling Atheists, non-Christians, and even Christians with an ad they’ve played for Kieffe and Sons, a Mojave Ford dealership. The spot is a rant trying to offend the 14% of Americans they believe aren’t Christian - seriously, there doesn’t seem to be any point beyond this.

The text:

Did you know that there are people in this country who want prayer out of schools, “Under God” out of the Pledge, and “In God We Trust” to be taken off our money?

But did you know that 86% of Americans say they believe in God? Now, since we all know that 86 out of every 100 of us are Christians who believe in God, we at Kieffe & Sons Ford wonder why we don’t just tell the other 14% to sit down and shut up. I guess maybe I just offended 14% of the people who are listening to this message. Well, if that is the case, then I say that’s tough, this is America folks, it’s called free speech. And none of us at Kieffe & Sons Ford are afraid to speak up. Kieffe & Sons Ford on Sierra Highway in Mojave and Rosamond: if we don’t see you today, by the grace of God, we’ll be here tomorrow.

Or listen with commentary:

…h/t Consumerist, video found the Underground Unbeliever, the blog that “broke” this story…

Good As You, a gay activism blog, discovered that a California “pro-family” organization is comparing court clerks who issue marriage licenses for gays to the Nazi gassing the Jews

Good as You posts a screen grab from the Campaign for Children and Families showing highly volatile text before it was “scrubbed” from the site (and Google’s cache), which read the following:

Remember, even if county clerks tell you they MUST follow the Supreme Court decision that’s not true and you should tell them so… Ask you county clerk if they were a Nazi officer during WWII and had been ordered to gas they Jews. Would they?

Still remaining:

History is replete with examples of doing what was right despite unjust laws and tyrannical orders… The post-WWII Nuremberg trials punishing military officers who followed orders and committed crimes against humanity.

Yes, a group that claims to be promoting values is comparing a legal union between consenting adults to the genocide of millions.

The Campaign for Children and Families is a 501(c)(3) non-profit… which is unusual, because according to the IRS, groups with this status, “may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities.” One look at the group’s homepage indicates that their main intent is to influence legislation.

—

On the not so controversial side Cal Law’s Legal Pad blog suggests that if the “California Marriage Protection Act” passes in November, the result could be the elimination of state recognition of “marriages.” In summary, they believe the legal interpretation could come down to this:

“We could hypothetically resolve this whole mess by requiring the state to call all formal unions ‘domestic partnerships’ and leave it to the churches to decide who’s ‘married.’”

That sounds rational. But would the gay Nazis approve?

Vincent Bugliosi, the former LA County prosecutor who infamously convicted Charles Manson (which he wrote about in his bestseller, Helter Skelter), is now laying out a case for murder against President Bush, suggesting no less than a sentence of death.

In an excerpt of from his new book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, on the Huffington Post, *Bugliosi criticizes left wing pundits and the average man on the street for arguing that Bush may have misled or even lied to the public to create support for the war in Iraq, but not demanding consequences beyond being more skeptical the next time around.

…in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe. That’s just common sense…

…For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did. [from HuffPo]

I get the feeling he’d take this case pro bono… imagine the amount of publicity and how it would help the book sales!

*Which is being posted as a blog entry for some odd reason.

Genius faux ad from Saturday Night Live.

Talking to the editorial board at the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, Hillary Clinton defended her decision to stay in the Presidential race by saying, “”My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it.” (NY Post)

The Obama campaign quickly decried the comments, and earlier today Clinton apologized.

However, while the comments were dumb, Clinton likely wasn’t trying to suggest she’s staying in the race because Obama risks being assassinated (or shot backstage at an NRA convention).

Instead, it appears Clinton merely fumbled the argument that further primaries could turn the tide in the campaign, such as Bobby Kennedy did against Eugene McCarthy in California in June, 1968. Just after giving a victory speech for a win that many believe cemented his nomination, Kennedy was shot and killed.

But California’s primary is no longer in January - it happened almost four months ago. So why is Clinton making the comparison now? Even if its a general statement that remaining states could give her an edge, the numbers don’t bode well: the two remaining primaries on June 3rd in Montana and Dakota have 31 delegate votes between them… even if Clinton were to win all of these, she’ll still have less than Obama.

Clinton’s comments are sloppy, if not boggling. I can’t imagine she was suggesting she needs to stay in the race just in case Obama were assassinated.

5/30/08 update to this post here.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Veronique de Turenne at LA Times “L.A. Now” blog (here and here) wrote mentioning the similarities between Barack Obama’s website and that of for L.A. Councilman Bernard Park’s site for his run for County Supervisor. It goes far beyond merely looking the same - some of the background images are pulled from the Barack Obama site, the code is a complete match, and whoever “adapted” Obama’s site for Parks’ forgot to change one prominent link that takes you to an Obama page.

Compare:

Obama’s site — Parks for Supervisor’s site

Make no mistake about it - the designer knowingly copied Obama’s page.
After reaching out to Parks office for comment, Bernard C. Parks, Jr. replied, “The Parks for Supervisor Campaign hired 2-Way Star, Inc. to do the website. And, we are actively attempting to investigate the allegations.”
I pressed for an answer as to how Parks and his campaign site didn’t notice the similarity between their site and Obama’s, especially considering Parks boasts that he was one of the first people to endorse Obama, and photos of the two together are featured on the site.

Parks, Jr: “Since we were made aware of it, we’ve been trying to make contact with the company. So far we’ve been unsuccessful.”

While Parks, Jr. did give me an email he said was for the designer, he has yet to answer how this designer was chosen, and if the site was paid for. An message sent to the email given for the designer has not been returned.