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Has Dikeman made any kind of concession speech? A lot of people went to bat for him, and nearly half the voters who bothered to turn out supported him. I can understand holding off until the count was finished, but it’s two days later and not a peep.
Maybe he should just turn it over to this guy quoted in the North Coast Journal to speak for him:
“There really are that many dumb-asses in this county?” an incredulous Dikeman supporter wondered.
I think that guy’s been posting over at Fred’s.
Meanwhile, the NCJ contains another choice quote from a prominant local Republican, in response to local calls for impeachment of President Bush for arguably illegal wiretappings of citizen telephone calls. I use the term “arguably” because the law is more complicated than either side of the debate wants to acknowledge, but that’s the topic for another post. What I find more interesting for the moment is the following quote:
Kay Peake, a volunteer at Republican headquarters in Eureka, had not heard about the recent resolution by Tuesday, but said she is not surprised. “It’s nothing new,” she said. “This is just a political statement to undermine our president. I think he’s doing a fine job and he needs support from members of every party, especially in this time of war.”
So we’ve been at “war” now for almost 5 years. How long before we can criticize the president again?
Fourth day in a row that Blogger’s having problems. I’d move my blog somewhere else if I knew where and how to do so.
Update – almost immediately following my post, the comments function went up again.
Thanx to Kevin Hoover for including my piece against T in this week’s edition. Didn’t realize how long winded I was until I saw that it took up half a page.
And hey, he plugged this blog as well. The villagers may be on their way with torches and pitch forks!
A good part of me was relieved that Measure T passed last night. My worst nightmare was that Measure T would fail by just a few votes and figuring that maybe I’d swayed one or two people, I’d wake up with Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap’s fingers wrapped around my throat.
I have odd anxiety dreams actually. Before the Bar Exam I dreamt that they had incorporated linear algebra into the exam and everybody but me knew about it. Even worse, during our second adoption process I dreamt that the agency notified us that they were out of children and tried to persuade us to accept a penguin instead. So I imagine if I’d dreamt the above somehow after today’s Eureka Reporter photo gaff, my dream Belknap would probably transform into Bonnie Neely, then Michelle Malkin.
Like I said, my mind goes into weird places sometimes, and the randomness of my dreams tend to undermine in my eyes any Jungian notion of universal symbols or the collective unconscious.
Yes, as a matter of fact I do need some sleep.
Looks like John Pinches may have just barely pulled it out over incumbent Hal Wagenet for Mendo’s 3rd District Supervisor’s race. However, I’m told that there are still absentee ballots to be counted and it’s not inconceivable that Wagenet could make up the 200 vote difference.
Tally as it stands according to the Mendo website:
HAL WAGENET 1935 47.23%
JOHN PINCHES 2139 52.21%
Pinches of course held that office from 1994 to 1998 when he ran for State Senate in the Republican primary. His win, or near win, here doesn’t surprise me too much as he has some support from the back-to-the-land counter culture types for his libertarian social views and his anti-C.A.M.P. votes (very similar to Rodoni) – made while a couple of the liberals on the council wimped out. He’s a straightforward “old money” guy, and Wagenet ran a Clintonesque ideologically stealth campaign miscalculating that the liberals in his district would feel like they had no choice.
Certainly his view of water policy and development is more evolved than Pinches who believes that Mendo pols should focus solely on the needs of Mendocino County citizens, while Wagenet favors a more regional approach to managing the waters of the Eel River. My problem with Pinches is that he wants to extract more water from the Eel, but isn’t willing to take on the developers in Sonoma County for some of that water. So during the debate (aired on KMUD – I was called upon to take calls and provide commentary afterward) when a Humboldt County resident called to suggest that we have some rights to the water as well, he called Humboldt County residents a “bunch of hypocrits” because we go and damn up Ruth Lake but begrudge them their water.
He believes that Mendocino has a special claim on the Eel as the county of the river’s point of origin. He wants a 3 percent diversion based upon the river’s documented yield of water (he gave the figures), and stated quite candidly that Mendocino should have the water even if they don’t have anything to do with it at the moment (he didn’t want to go on record as promoting development). After all, 97 percent is still being “given” to Humboldt County to dump into the ocean.
After the debate, a woman called up who was later identified (by my engineer) to me as an organizer for Friends of the Eel River. She called Pinches on several inaccuracies. For one thing, Ruth Lake is in Trinity County, not Humboldt County. Secondly, Mendocino County does not contain the point of origin of the Eel. It’s in Lake County. Thirdly, she claimed that his figures of water flow were based on measurements taken at Scotia, downstream from large number of significant Humboldt County based tributaries, and so much of that 97 percent is hardly “given” to us.
While Wagenet’s approach to the Eel is certainly more reasonable and in tune with modern realities, he lost points by blaming the condition of the county maintained Spy Rock Road on marijuana growers, then lost it at closing when he said “you can’t govern by banging your cowboy boot on the table,” a quasi-derogatory remark that Pinches actually brushed off with class.
Classic quote from Pinches in the debate: “I’m not inta doin’ studies. I’m inta gettin the job done.”
Don’t know who I’d have voted for in that election. Sounds like a number of north Mendo voters shared my quandry.
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