Daniela Earnest was trying to raise money for a family trip to Disneyland.

In fairness to the code officer — who technically works for the city fire department — he was responding to a complaint, and it all turned out okay because a local radio station swapped 30 cups of the beverage for tickets to the theme park.

But it does point out why the state’s budget crisis, and its resulting impact on local governments, doesn’t really bother us all that much.

First, maybe cities and counties have to take a long hard look at how their personnel are spending their time, considering that taxpayers are paying for it. We’re all for libraries; after all, the local library was dedicated with a poem written by our late father, in what he considered to be one of the proudest moments of his life. We’re not so much for people with authority who can’t find some other way to resolve a citizen complaint (!?!?) except to bully an eight-year-old girl selling lemonade on a hot summer day in the middle of the central valley.

Second, we think that cities and counties (and the state) should consider this current crisis as an opportunity for self-examination. Do we really need all those programs? Do we really need all those people wandering around nice fancy offices? Do they really add that much value to our lives?

PJ O’Rourke wrote, “The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.” That is a malady not restricted to that little piece of ground carved out of Maryland; there is a pretty solid example of it about an hour to the east-northeast of here, and one that isn’t too bad just a few minutes down Highway 49.

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There are a lot of somewhat technical things. Yes, he understood the technology available to him, and mastered it in a fashion not seen since Goldwater took the Republican party by storm in 1964. Yes, he had a masterful strategy, especially in the general election; he marshalled his superior resources and deployed them such that John McCain had to fight in states he might have otherwise expected to win easily (North Carolina, Nevada and Missouri, not to mention Florida, come to mind). And yes, he isn’t 71.

Our support for Obama came early on: he is literate, he is well-spoken, he is intelligent, he has a sense of history and context, and he questions every assumption. He passes the ball, plays defense, and can nail a three-pointer when the game is on the line. What more could one want in a President?

There was a lot of blather about his not having enough “experience” to be the President — which was hogwash in the 1800s and is hogwash now. There is NO job anywhere that prepares one for being the President — including having a father who was one.

The experience of once-every-year-and-a-half hour-long conversations with the head of state of Germany or Israel or Mexico does not prepare someone to decide to ask men and women to die in Afghanistan or Iraq.

The experience of being a Senator or Governor does not prepare one to tell the US federal bureaucracy that some of it has to go in order to reduce an out-of-control deficit — and it certainly doesn’t prepare one to face the wrath of some Congressman or Senator whose support one needs that his or her favorite government program is about to get red-lined out of the next budget.

The experience of shaking hands with factory workers and seeing how they operate their machinery does not prepare one for making the decision that because their corporate bosses made some bad decisions next month they’ll all be looking for work and by the way, that 401(k) isn’t worth much more than the paper the statement is printed on.

All the experience in the world doesn’t mean a damn thing if you don’t, can’t or won’t listen. When it gets down to it, that’s why Obama won: He paid attention.

That was most evident in the debates; when Mr McCain was speaking, Obama was intent on every word. When Obama was speaking, McCain was consulting his notes. There’s a novel idea; if you want to steal your opponent’s thunder, start by listening to what he says. If you say it before he does, there’s a good chance he’s going to be seen as saying “me, too” if he can say anything at all.

Obama, when he does speak, inspires and compels, not by blaming — but by insisting that problems can be solved. There are lots of great speechwriters out there — but Obama’s words are his, in the same way John Kennedy owned the words of Theodore Sorenson. The words are what Obama believes: “And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.”

What’s curious isn’t so much that, on the eve of Obama’s inauguration, 84 per cent of the country thinks Obama has prepared for the transition to power well, but rather that there is 16 per cent of the country that doesn’t think so. We know there are the Luddites out there who cannot imagine a Democrat of any kind — let alone a bi-racial one — who can possibly command the authority and respect that George W. Bush does. Huh? My friend Shawn thinks it has to do with either prolonged proximity to crude oil vapors or a belief that the only people you can trust are the ones who have received eight figure severance packages to please find some other company to ruin. They say you can’t fix stupid, venal or the BCS.

People need to feel like someone, somewhere is paying attention — and Obama has made us feel that way. For the past eight years, the President hasn’t been paying attention; his own agenda (actually, the Vice President’s agenda) was more important to him than the country’s, and we are all suffering the consequences. Indeed, Bush’s popularity is the lowest of any exiting President since polling data has been published, hasn’t topped 30 per cent in 18 months, and hasn’t been above 50 per cent in his second term. The most charitable thing that can be said about the Bush Presidency: we survived, we think. No wonder we all feel like we’re on the verge of a depression.

The next step begins in a few hours; the next few years will tell us just how bad the damage to our national psyche is. It is unfortunate that Obama’s turn at the head of the class will be marked by how much success he has at cleaning up the mess, or rather, convincing us that we can clean it up. But it’s not enough that we are successful; it’s that in the redesign and rebuilding of this country that our voices be heard. To Obama, we all matter.

On this evening news I watched with great pleasure the Iraqi gentleman throwing his shoes at Georgie Bush. It displeased me that the irate Iraqi missed, but other than that… The gentleman mentioned that he was motivated by the killing of hundreds of thousands of his fellow Iraqis.

The incident brought forth unto my brain an idea as to how we could pay off our horrendous national debt. At fund raising events you have no doubt seen a contraption where in, if a person has purchased the privilege, said person can throw a baseball at a small object which, if hit, causes a person in a cage to drop into a large container of water. Said persons are often school principals, politicians or town dignitaries.

Now, suppose the cage were positioned over an overflowing cesspool. And suppose the person in the cage, after January 20 of course, were none other than little Georgie Bush. And let’s say the cost per baseball thrown were one million dollars. Now, not many of us could afford to pay such a sum - not even me on my retirement income. However, groups of us could band together to purchase tickets and then a lottery could be held wherein one of us would win the privilege of throwing a baseball. And all of us who bought a chance on the lottery could were little baseball pins in our lapels or wherever to show our patriotism. This would encourage people to purchase dunking tickets in order to prove themselves to be patriots. With three quarters of the American people desiring to see Bush covered with that which for the past eight years he has thrown on us and the rest of the world, we could raise billions. And certainly a majority of the Iraqi citizens would wish to purchase a chance. In fact there would be billions in countries throughout the world who would seek to make themselves heroes.

Add to this attraction honored guests such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Gonzales, Kristol et al and the debt would be erased in a very short time. Yes, there would be untold millions throughout the countries of the world who would pay to seek to have the opportunity to watch Bush and his cohorts drop into what he’s caused our nation, Iraq and other countries to drop into. Additional money could be made between dunkings by a lottery for the privilege of cleaning off the subjects with a fire hose.

Now all I need is a slogan. DUNKING FOR DEMOCRACY? THROWING TO DECREASE THE OWING? No. I’ll keep working on it.

Stina Nygren

Mrs. Nygren — Mama — was an amazing woman. On the day I arrived at her home, she made strawberry shortcake; a couple of days later, when Åke took me to a party to meet some of his friends, I was chewed out just as he was for coming in at an ungodly hour of the morning. That set the tone for my year; I was her third son — and her expectations and aspriations for me were no different from those she had for my two brothers.

She was relentless in her insistence that I learn to use my new native language; at the same time, every Friday was the day we spoke English in the house (Papa would be notoriously less vocal those days) so she could practice. If she suffered through the rheumatism she had, you almost never heard about it; she was not a woman who was going to let that get in her way. She encouraged us to do things we had never done; on one such instance, she reminded me that I hadn’t come halfway around the world just to spend my time doing homework. When winter (Skellefteå is a coastal city not all that far from the Arctic Circle) arrived, she took me to the store to buy a couple of pairs of winter pants; the jeans a California boy takes just weren’t going to cut it.

There are always regrets when someone you haven’t seen in years dies relatively suddenly; mine is that I wasn’t able to see her, or talk with her more frequently than I did. My adopted siblings and their father are blessed to have spent their lives with her.

Tak så mycket, Mama. Jag vill missa du.

My buddy Jonathan wants me to write a blog. When there’s something to say that I haven’t said somewhere else (and when it won’t get me in too much hot water with the boss or the Flying Spaghetti Monster), I will probably oblige him, if only because he will otherwise come up with lots of things for me to do, some of which resemble work.

I’m not really much of a fan of blogs. For one thing, I’ve been a writer most of my life, and I’ve found that too many people who think they have something to say and the right to say it don’t really have anything new to add to the conversation, and should also take advantage of that truism that says that the right to say something is also the right to keep your mouth shut.

One of the exceptions is Big Ed, who has always been one of the most witty (and occasionally, most acerbic) writers I’ve ever known. I’d like to say that he learned it from me as a child, but the odds are much better that he learned from JP. Read his stuff, and give him a little bit of a break because he lives and dies with the Oakland As.

I don’t know that I have all that much to add to the conversation; all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, I have a hard time convincing myself that anything I write is all that profound. In fact there are probably a ton of people who, when they read what I write, are just as happy they don’t have to listen to me, and they will no doubt be quite glad to know there is a page they can bookmark so they never have to look at it again.

“I can’t be the one to fill your times and all your places; I can’t be the one to fill your blanks and empty spaces…”

Writing a blog is such a glorious illusion; I can envision hundreds — millions — of people pecking away in the self-delusional belief that tens of millions of others are looking there every day just to see what magic is wrought from the fingertips and keyboard of the Next Great [Insert Nationality Here] Author. I can also see the Giants in the World Series this year, but that’s another story.

I harbor no such illusions. I wrote (and still write) because there was (is) a story to tell, some information to impart, or an observation to make about whatever happens to be the subject on the table. It’s not that I’m shy about my opinions; it’s that I think most people don’t care; those who do care already know what I think; and anyone who thinks they might care can always ask. But to me, writing is largely solely for the benefit of the writer; for everyone else, it’s at best tedium and at worst what another buddy Kevin calls pollution. I have no desire to contribute to that.

I also know that most of what I’ve written that is of any value is saved only on a dead tree somewhere (or maybe on microfilm), and people were never beating the doors down to get copies of it before. I’m one of the lucky ones; I was able to write when people needed newspapers to do things like start up the barbecue and line the birdcage with. Blogs serve no such useful purpose. It’s not easy to ignore someone who wraps something in a rubber band and throws it on your doorstep; with blogs, the DELETE button becomes your friend. After all, what’s the point in committing something to words if no one is going to read them?

“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.” - T. S. Eliot

Welcome to the Monkey House. We will try to keep you entertained.

I am an American patriot and proud of it. I give my unqualified support to President Bush because I know he is a patriot as is Vice President Cheney and the members of the cabinet. And I support continuing the war in Iraq for however long it takes or how many American lives it will cost or how many Iraqis we have to kill in order to make them understand that they should form a democratic government to be under our supervision and agree to the need of 58 U. S. military bases in their country to keep the citizenry in line in a democratic fashion.

And, of course, our oil companies should control Iraq’s petroleum output. Look at all the sacrifices we have made to bring freedom to those Iraqis even after their lying to us about their having WMD’s. And, yes, I believe it may be necessary for us to wipe out the Muslim religion which those noble Crusaders failed to do. Christ would want us to do that. It says so someplace in the Bible.

And, yes, I have heard the vicious rumors coming from the Socialist left. I mean about the similarity between the Bush administration and the rise of Hitler. Look, Hitler created the Storm Troopers and then the SS in order to control the army and the populace. The SS was very effective because it did not have to follow military protocol. It was responsible only to Hitler. Now, can you believe this! Some dirty leftists are claiming that Blackwater is similar to the Nazi SS because it is an army responsible only to President Bush. It does not have to comply with U. S. military law because it is necessary to have a military force that is free of such restraints in order to follow the dictates of our President. How dumb and dense can those leftists be?

And Hitler tore up the German Constitution because it was necessary to do so what with Poland with its massive horse calvary about to attack poor near defenseless Germany. Hitler did not want to have to tear up the German Constitution, but he had to save the German people from themselves just as President Bush has had to patriotically bypass parts of our Constitution in order to save America from collapsing internally or being invaded and conquered by the Iraqis with the aid of the Iranians. How can people be so mentally limited as to not understand this?

True Hitler needed someone to blame for Germany’s problems and selected the Jews as his fall guy. And, regrettably, he found it necessary to kill a few. Six million to be exact. This was unfortunate, but probably necessary. Now we are seeing what appears to be the selection of the Muslims as the source to blame for our problems and probably rightly so. I mean, they’re not Christians, are they? Sometimes it’s necessary to do things a little wrong in order to make them right. And besides, the world is over populated, isn’t it? I cite as an example, four dollar a gallon gasoline.

I say that if we are going to preserve Democracy, we patriots are going to have to forget about a few of our so called rights in order to preserve them. Now, remember to put your hand over you lapel flag pin when those wonderful Blackwater troops march by. They are saving you from the Muslim hoards and perhaps your God damned unpatriotic Democrat neighbor who should be put in one of our camps.

Heil Bush!
jorcutt, san diego

I heard of this several years ago and to realize they’ve stuck with the
policy is heartwarming and worth widespread publicity.
Let’s all shop at Sears :
I assume you have all seen the reports about how Sears is treating its
reservist employees who are called up? By law, they are required to hold
their jobs open and available, but nothing more. Usually, people take a
big pay cut and lose benefits as a result of being called up… Sears is
voluntarily paying the difference in salaries and maintaining all
benefits, including medical insurance and bonus programs, for all called
up reservist employees for up to two years. I submit that Sears is an
exemplary corporate citizen and should be recognized for its contribution.
Suggest we all shop at Sears, and be sure to find a manager to tell them
why we are there so the company gets the positive reinforcement it well
deserves. Pass it on.
I decided to check it out before I sent it forward.
I sent the following email to the Sears Customer Service Department:
I received this email and I would like to know if it is true. If it is,
the Internet may have just become one very good source of advertisement
for your store. I know I would go out of my way to buy products from Sears
instead of another store for a like item even if it was cheaper at the
other store.
Here is their answer to my email……. ……… …..
Dear Customer:
Thank you for contacting Sears The information is factual. We appreciate
your positive feedback. Sears regards service to our country as one of
greatest sacrifices our young men and women can make. We are happy to do
our part to lessen the burden they bear at this time.
Bill Thorn
Sears Customer Care
webcenter@sears. com
1-800-349-4358
Please pass this on to all your friends, Sears needs to be recognized for
this outstanding contribution and we need to show them, as Americans, we
do appreciate what they are doing for our military!!!!
It’s Verified By Snope.Com http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/sears.

blivingston, millbrae