Posts Tagged ‘California’
Driver attacks Walmart shoppers after crashing into store
A Walmart store erupted into chaos and at least four people were hurt Sunday when a man rammed an Oldsmobile Cutlass through the entrance, then attacked an employee and shoppers with a blunt object, police said.
At 11:15 a.m., the unidentified driver in the red, two-door Cutlass Salon struck two other automobiles in the Walmart Supercenter parking lot, at 777 Story Road, in East San Jose and then crashed through the pharmacy and market entrance and continued a few dozen feet until colliding into a beer display. After leaving his car, he picked up an object inside the store and assaulted people, seriously injuring at least one, said San Jose Police Officer Albert Morales…
The assailant, described as a man in his 30s, was tackled and tied up by bystanders, according to one shopper who did not want her name used. Police said the driver was arrested and is being treated at a local hospital. As of Sunday afternoon, police had not identified him, Morales said, and would only say his injuries are not life-threatening…
Paramedics treated the injured and placed them in ambulances. Police cordoned off the parking lot…
Police did not identify the victims, nor their conditions.
Or the nutball.
Karl Rove says ideological purity isn’t the best measure for GOP – he’d stick with lies!
Struggling to resuscitate the beleaguered GOP’s fortunes and finances in a solidly blue state, California Republicans received blunt advice this weekend from Republican strategist Karl Rove: “Get off your ass…”
…Rove said Republicans have grown too “comfortable talking to each other,” and they have failed to grow the party beyond its core of older white voters. Nearly 70 percent of the nation’s two fastest-growing demographics – Latinos and Asian Americans – supported Democrats in 2012.
What Rove wants – and the Tea Party bubbas reject – is coming up with more and better lies. Not only the usual agitprop of fairy dust economics; but, plain and simple denial of racism and bigotry should be sufficient – he thinks – to fool American voters.
There is soul-searching going on in every corner of the convention, which drew more than 1,000 party activists. The party confronts historically low voter registration in California – just 29 percent of state voters are registered Republicans, compared with nearly 44 percent who are Democrats. An additional 1 in 5 California voters now registers with no party preference – a growing number that threatens to turn the GOP into a minor party. Republicans hold no major statewide offices in California and are the minority party in both chambers of the state Legislature. From this position of weakness, the state GOP is also saddled with a debt that incoming chair Jim Brulte said could be as high as $800,000…
Jerrie Libby, a party delegate from Sutter County and a Tea Party organizer, watched Rove’s address wearing a red Tea Party T-shirt, which she called “a silent protest” against Rove’s efforts to back establishment candidates over grassroots favorites…
“I want to tell him, ‘Karl, we are all conservatives. Stop bashing us,’ ” said Libby, a retired teacher and almond farmer. “We are eating our own in this party…”
California cove filled to overflowing with nature’s beauty – and way too much bird poop!
Yes – the white stuff on the rock is bird poop
Photo by brianne.leary
Come here for the sights. (There is not a more majestic spot to watch the sun set over the Pacific.) Or come for the sounds. (The waves crash against the rocks, and the sea lions bark at one another on the bluffs.)
But don’t come for the smell.
In beautiful La Jolla Cove, art galleries and coffee shops meet a stretch of unspoiled cliffs and Pacific Ocean. Home to former presidential candidates (Mitt Romney has been spotted pumping his own gas here in recent days) and seal colonies alike, the neighborhood provides one of this city’s primary tourist draws.
But the smell, a pungent stench that emanates from the accumulation of bird feces on the rocks, has become a growing problem. And strict environmental regulations in the cove have stymied the city’s efforts to address the problem before it drives tourists and businesses away, effectively roping the rocks off with red tape.
“I’ve lived here my whole life, and the smell from the birds has never, ever been as bad as it is now,” said Megan Heine, the owner of Brockton Villa Restaurant, which overlooks the cove from a historic building that has been on the cliffs for more than 100 years. She said guests asked about the stench so frequently that her wait staff had become adept at explaining its cause…
Until a few years ago, the smell was never a problem because the bluffs were open for people to walk on. But since the rocks were closed off, partly because of safety concerns, sea gulls and cormorants have taken over, their droppings have piled up and the smell has grown more acrid by the day.
…Because the waters in the cove are part of a coastal area specially protected by the state, multiple state regulatory agencies would have to issue permits before the agents could be used, a process that regulators have indicated would probably take at least two years…
For the moment anyway, there seems to be little city officials can do except hope for winter rainstorms, which in years past have washed the rocks and alleviated some of the smell.
“We need to consider a range of alternatives for cleaning the rocks, and one of those could be no project, just sit and wait for rain,” said Kanani Brown, an analyst for the California Coastal Commission, one of the regulatory agencies. “I know that’s not ideal for local businesses, but that’s historically been the approach.”
Got a smile from me. I had forgotten how strong seagull poop could smell; but, I surely remember it from my kidhood.
Growing up on the New England coast, we were a family that relied on subsistence fishing to supplement my father’s civil service paycheck. At least one day of each weekend, year-round was spent either on a certain local breakwater at the entrance to the city harbor – or at the end of a pier originally built to bring visitors in from a ferryboat to a nearby amusement park.
The park is long gone. Probably the pier, too. But that breakwater survived hurricanes and I imagine it’s still there. And on a sunny summer afternoon, the favorite places for seagulls to congregate and argue and poop – could wrinkle your nose hundreds of yards away.
Surveillance photo prompts forgetful California lottery winner
The belatedly crowned winner of a $23 million California lottery jackpot says she had stuffed the lucky ticket in her car and left it there forgotten for months, until a surveillance camera photo of the ticket’s purchase surfaced on the Internet.
Only when she recognized her daughter in the picture, which state lottery officials had publicly circulated in a desperate attempt to locate the missing winner, did Julie Cervera, 69, realize to her amazement that she was a multimillionaire.
For Cervera, a resident of the high-desert town of Victorville who has been on disability for 20 years and described herself as broke, the unexpected turn of fortune could not have come at a more opportune time.
“I have maybe a dollar in my pocket, they just shut off my cable, my electric bill is $600 and my (bank) account is also overdrawn,” Cervera told reporters on Friday, a day after coming forward to claim her prize.
The ticket, purchased May 30 for Cervera by her adult daughter in a liquor store in Palmdale, north of Los Angeles, was due to expire at the end of this month.
State lottery officials said Cervera’s jackpot marks only the second time they have been forced to release a store surveillance photo to track down a winner…
It was Cervera’s daughter, Charliena, who was captured in the photo making the purchase with a dollar bill that Cervera said she had scrounged from her purse. Afterward, Cervera said, she stashed the ticket into the console of her car and never bothered to check it against the winning numbers announced later.
On Thursday of this week, another daughter texted her mother the surveillance photo of Charliena.
“I put on my 99-cent glasses, I saw it, and I thought she (Charliena) robbed a bank,” Cervera said, explaining that she initially misunderstood the meaning and purpose of the photo. It took a few moments for it to dawn on her that she had won a $23 million lottery drawing.
Great to see one of these windfall events land in the lap of someone who really needs some money.
Candy maker’s “Jolly Lollys” are marijuana-based — Busted!
With Halloween right around the corner, police said several University at Buffalo students were having a special treat of candy-flavored marijuana when they got spooked by a raid Thursday.
Alexander J. Zito was throwing a party for the students at his Delaware Avenue apartment when Buffalo narcotics detectives arrived to discover chocolate-flavored marijuana, hard candy containing marijuana, 640 “Jolly Lolly” marijuana lollipops and 5 pounds of regular marijuana…
Zito, 26, allegedly arranges to obtain the marijuana on trips to California under the guise that it is for medicinal purposes and then has it shipped here through the U.S. Postal Service. Medical marijuana in California is legal under state law, but that is not the case in New York…
Though Zito claimed to be unemployed for two or three years, he apparently was prospering. Police found records indicating his rent was paid six months in advance and the furniture in his residence was brand new. Business cards, Mulhern said, also were found stating Zito was the proprietor of a medical marijuana shop in San Diego…
But different forms of marijuana were not the only thing Zito had, police said. Hashish and crack cocaine also were found at his residence. He was charged with felony possession of marijuana and cocaine.
Now, if we were rid of the anachronistic and absurd laws making this behavior illegal, he could have turned himself into Buffalo’s Entrepreneur of the Year.
Albeit, in a decriminalized environment, Zito would have had to conform to useful business protocols – like paying taxes.
Snail ranching for fun and profit
Escargot with pesto
Even if you love eating snails, it is possible that you have never given much thought to the way they live…
But it’s hard to imagine what it actually means to care for snails unless you visit Mary Stewart, who lives in a mobile home in the agricultural area north of Bakersfield, Calif. To raise delicious snails, you apparently have to know what makes them tick, and Ms. Stewart, who turned 64 a few weeks ago, has spent a couple of decades educating herself.
She has learned that snails can move a lot faster than their reputation would suggest, especially when they pick up the lure of food. Spray them with mist, give them some crisp lettuce and “here they come, just like cows at feeding time,” she said. “You can hear them munching and crunching just like cattle. I’m serious. They’re fascinating. And they’re so strong.”
Strong? “These puppies can really push,” she said. Don’t expect to contain them in, say, a box with a screen set on top. “If enough of them get up in the corner, they can actually push that screen loose.”
They also lead erotic lives of variety and vigor. “They’re hermaphrodites,” she said. “They have orgies. I’m serious. When they mate, they’re connecting male and female, female and male.”
It may often look as if snails aren’t doing anything. Ms. Stewart has learned that they are doing quite a bit. “That’s all they’re doing, is making love,” she said.
As part of their ritual of copulation, snails shoot each other with something known as a “love dart.” “Love” is certainly a word you could use to describe how Ms. Stewart feels about her gastropod herd, but after years of caring for and harvesting thousands of snails, she has figured out that there’s nothing romantic about letting one of those love darts pierce your skin…
Nathan Myhrvold, the man behind the “Modernist Cuisine” cookbooks, has cooked with her snails. Harold Dieterle has sporadically served them at Perilla, in the West Village, with hand-cut pasta and guanciale.
At Moto, in Chicago, the chef de cuisine, Richie Farina — using branches that he collects in the nearby woods — places the snails in a row so that they appear to be crawling up the stick in a tangle of (depending on what arrives from the distributor that week) wild mushrooms, edible flowers, a variety of greens and a garlic-herb “moss.” In a less theatrical mode, Brian Leth, the chef at Vinegar Hill House in Brooklyn, pairs the snails with olive-oil-poached baby artichokes on flatbread.
RTFA for lots more about everything from snail sex to preparation for cooking – and anecdotes covering it all.
I love eating snails – though like the Italian side of my family, I prefer scungilli, the seagoing variety.
Shark falls from the sky onto California golf course
A course marshal at the San Juan Hills Golf Club found the leopard shark on Monday afternoon and brought it to the clubhouse…
It had puncture wounds where it appeared a bird had snagged it from the Pacific Ocean, about five miles away.
The marshal put the creature, which was bleeding but still alive, into his golf buggy and sped off back to the clubhouse.
They stuck the two-foot-long shark into fresh water before somebody remembered it came from the sea, so they got some sea salt from the kitchen and mixed it in.
Another employee rushed the shark to the ocean where McCormack says it was very still for a few seconds before twisting around and speeding off…
There are probably seventeen mysterioso stories about the event working their way through the California psyche at this very moment.
Toyota Prius is now the best-selling car in California
…Recent sales data shows that the world’s most popular hybrid is, in fact, the best-selling car in the state. Well, the best-selling vehicle line, at least, since the Prius now comes in four variants.
If you add up sales of the Prius Liftback (aka, the regular Prius), the C, V and Plug-In models, you get 46,380 units for the first three quarters of 2012, according to numbers from the California New Car Dealers Association and reported by Bloomberg. That’s enough to move the Prius from fourth place last year to first this year in the sales rankings in America’s most populous state. In fact, roughly a quarter of the Priuses that Toyota sold in the US were in California. Reports of $5 gallons of gas are relatively recent, but we have to assume that the state’s long-time high gas prices are playing a role in pushing the Prius to the pinnacle there. Nationwide, Bloomberg says, the Prius is in seventh place…
The Prius is already the best-selling car in Japan, and has been for years, even though the Honda Fit has been nipping at its heals. Worldwide, the Prius family was the third best-selling nameplate in the first quarter of 2012, behind the Toyota Corolla and the Ford Focus.
It helps when the firm responsible for a qualitative change in transportation – like the Prius – is more forward-looking, secure in their knowledge of technology, confident enough to last past early days of improvement and acceptance.
If this profitable project was governed by American politicians it would have been shutdown long ago as another “car whose time has not come”.
California governor signs off on driver’s licenses for migrant labor
Best new smart-ass sign in a demonstration
California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill letting an estimated 400,000 young undocumented immigrants qualify for California drivers licenses.
The bill, which Brown signed late Sunday, lets young people qualify for licenses if they are accepted by a federal program giving work permits to immigrants who came to the United States before they were 16 and are now 30 years old or younger.
The bill makes California conform with President Barack Obama’s June 15 executive action that let hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children remain in the country without fear of deportation and able to work.
“Gov. Brown believes the federal government should pursue comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship,” Brown spokesman Gil Duran was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying. “President Obama has recognized the unique status of these students, and making them eligible to apply for driver’s licenses is an obvious next step.”
Opponents argued California should be careful in giving drivers licenses because they are used as identification blah, blah, blah…
Assembly Bill 2189, introduced by Democratic state Assemblyman Gilbert Cedillo of Los Angeles, says any papers issued by the federal program are sufficient to get a license.
“I’m proud the governor chose public safety over the politics of the day,” Cedillo said.
Dealing with realities makes life a little bit easier for all of us. In this instance, easier for coppers and insurance companies.
I have a particular historic beef with illegal migrant labor used as scabs – literally replacing an entire workforce to cut wages as was done in the meat-packing industry and the laborer side of home-building here in the United States. But, the responsibility to fight that crap should be layed at the feet of the unions and politicians who rolled over for beancounters and lobbyists.
California banishes gay cure therapy to dustbin of quackery
California has become the first state in the US to ban controversial “gay cure” therapies from being administered to children and teenagers. Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed the bill into law on Saturday…
The bill, sponsored by state senator Ted Lieu, bars mental health providers “from engaging in sexual orientation change efforts”…
Brown said…This bill bans non-scientific ‘therapies’ that have driven young people to depression and suicide. These practices have no basis in science or medicine and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery.
Such therapies have been denounced by by mainstream psychiatry in the US. The American Psychiatric Association has condemned so-called “conversion therapy” and says it is unethical…
The idea that homosexuality can be cured – by therapy and/or prayer – persists in conservative Christian circles.
Surely no one expects science, history or even a minimal understanding of human behavior to alter the ideology of religious fanatics. When superstition overrules something as simple as family life, opportunities as basic as sharing love and life with the person you care for the most – there is no concern for freedom and liberty for someone outside your church.
Holler at your Congress-critter to support Bernie Sanders' bill to 
