Delusional Donald

Donald Trump: Greatest baseball player in NY, just ask him
Rachel Maddow shares an audio clip from biographer Michael D’Antonio 2014 interview with Donald Trump in which Trump speaks at length about his innate gifts, particularly as a baseball player.

"You know I don't rent to [the N-Word]"

Leibowitz

'Not Wanted': Black Applicants Rejected for Trump Housing Speak Out
(NBC News)

Brown

     ...[Maxine] Brown's application was taken by rental agent Stanley Leibowitz, who said there's no doubt Brown didn't get the apartment because she's black — and no doubt that Donald Trump, then just 17, knew that.

     "Mr. Trump and his son Donald came into the office. I asked what I should do with this application because she's calling constantly and his response to me was, 'You know I don't rent to the N-word. Put it in a drawer and forget about it,'" Leibowitz, 89, told NBC News....

Good grief

A Whistle Was Blown on ITT; 17 Years Later, It Collapsed
(New York Times)

     Dan Graves, a mental health aide in San Jose, Calif., had mixed feelings when he heard that ITT Educational Services had filed for bankruptcy in mid-September.
     As a former employee who had blown the whistle on ITT, an operator of some 140 for-profit schools, Mr. Graves was happy that the government had finally taken action to protect students from the company’s aggressive sales tactics, which lured them into debilitating debt and provided little in the way of an education.
     Still, he wondered what had taken the government so long. After all, it has been 17 years since Mr. Graves and another former ITT employee brought a suit alleging that the company had systematically violated the law governing compensation of sales representatives.
     The two former employees shared extensive documentation with a half-dozen federal prosecutors and regulators. These officials expressed keen interest, Mr. Graves said, and estimated that the government could recover $400 million in damages from the case. But by 2004, the lawsuit was dead and Mr. Graves’s effort to provide the government with damning evidence had come to naught.
. . .
     “It was an institutional failure by the government and a complete abdication of responsibility to enforce the Higher Education Act,” said Scott D. Levy, the Houston-based lawyer who represented Mr. Graves in his suit.
     Not everybody was a loser in this tale, of course. Going through ITT’s financial filings from 2000 to 2016, I found that the company generated over $12 billion in revenue, roughly 70 percent of it in government-backed student aid.
     ITT’s top five executives received princely compensation over the period — $117 million in total, regulatory records show. Lobbyists for ITT Educational Services also benefited. The company has spent almost $1 million on lobbying since 1998, according to the Center for Responsive Politics….

—I highly recommend that you read the entire article. —RB

Election History: The Poll Guard Incident, Yesterday and Today

A mural in the Logan neighborhood of Santa Ana, Calif., one of the city's oldest Mexican neighborhoods, bears the faces of local men who served in the armed forces. Credit Andrew Cullen for The New York Times.

Tom Fuentes

Last week the New York Times came to town and Rebel Girl couldn't help but notice the lede for their feature article on Santa Ana, "This City Is 78% Latino, and the Face of a New California." It recalled one of SOCCCD Trustees Tom Fuentes most infamous acts (and that's sayin' something). Too bad the NYT didn't identify Fuentes by name.

excerpt:

Vicente Sarmiento remembers when the local Republican Party here posted uniformed guards at polling stations in a closely fought State Assembly race three decades ago and they hoisted signs in English and Spanish warning that noncitizens were prohibited from voting. The guards were removed after state elections officials threatened legal action.

Yes, on election day in November of 1988, at 20 polling stations in Santa Ana, the local GOP posted uniformed guards. According to the LA Times: "Republican Party Chairman Thomas A. Fuentes confirmed that the security guards "were part of our Election Day security effort" in mostly Latino neighborhoods in central and south Santa Ana."

A police officer holds part of a sign seized at a polling place in Santa Ana in 1988, when uniformed guards were stationed at 20 polling sites in the city by the GOP. (Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times)

Lately, that incident has also been recalled by others in the wake of Donald Trump's persistent assertions about "rigged" elections.  This from Kurtis Lee's LAT article, "Donald Trump's call for poll watchers brings back fears of 1988 Santa Ana":

Now, nearly three decades later, as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump calls for his supporters to volunteer as election observers, concerns of voter intimidation have come to the forefront. At a rally in Pennsylvania last week, Trump used strong racial overtones to allege to his mostly white audience that “certain areas” of the state — such as Philadelphia, where almost half the residents are black — will commit voter fraud to support Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

See also:

That notorious episode: Tom's "goons"

I 5 at Avery Parkway, 1965

I 5 at Avery Parkway, 1965

View from La Paz Rd, Laguna Niguel, 1968

Avery and Marguerite Parkways, Mission Viejo, 1976

Twenty Ranch Duck Club, Barranca Rd, Irvine, 1967

El Toro Road, Aliso Viejo, circa 1965

I5 and El Toro Rd, 1958

5 just south of Oso Pkwy about 1960

1963

Trump defends himself as only he can.

Not his first choice for gropage.

     “Believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you."
     Not his first choice for groping?
     Oh.

The Stunningly Long List of Women Who've Accused Trump of Sexual Assault (Mother Jones)

He wouldn't grope Stoynoff, he said. 
“Look at her,” he said.

Banned Books Week at Saddleback College

Saddleback College performing arts students Emma Chassey and Gal Kohav perform a scene From E.B. White's "Charlotte's Web," with music from "The Last Chapter" by Scott Farthing, outside the school's Library and Learning Resource Center during "Bodies and Ink," a celebration of National Banned Books Week on Saturday evening.
JEFF ANTENORE, CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

In case you missed it (we did) here is the Register's coverage of Saddleback College's  Banned Books Week event.  Sounds wonderful.

Banned Books brought to life at Saddleback College

excerpt: 

"Members of several Saddleback College fine arts departments performed pieces inspired by works of literature in a show called “Bodies and Ink,” Saturday at the college. The show celebrated National Banned Books Week at the school’s library and Learning Resource Center. Three more shows will take place this weekend. The performing arts students, members of the dance, music, speech, theatre arts and visual arts programs, created 11 site-specific performances pieces based on works of literature in an 80-minute program."

 

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A "Trump" Face in the Crowd

In 1957, Budd Schulberg wrote "A Face in the Crowd," Elia Kazan directed it and Andy Griffith starred in it - check out how it resonates today.

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Don Wagner Fun Fact #2: Far out and far right

Seven years ago as Don Wagner sought to spring from the SOCCCD to Sacramento, OC Weekly's Matt Coker covered Wagner's base of support in this article: 

Don Wagner Kicks Off Assembly Bid With a Little Help From His Far-Out, Far-Right Friends

How far out? How far right? Read and see!

Wagner is currently a candidate for mayor of the fair city of Irvine. 

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At the #VPDebate, Mike Pence tried really, really hard to deny pretty much everything Donald Trump has said and done. Let's replay the tape: pic.twitter.com/5XNKyFX6az

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 5, 2016

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Don Wagner Fun Fact #1

Former SOCCCD trustee Don Wagner is running for mayor of Irvine. Perhaps the librarians of Irvine - and the folks who frequent them -  should check out Wagner's views about the American Library Association (ALA).

Back in 2006, as trustee Wagner led the charge to disassociate our colleges from the ALA which he characterized as "Liberal busybodies acting far outside their field of expertise."

Check out the video below to see Don in rabid action with distortions and mischaracterizations and the smug disdain many of us remember well.


By the way, if memory serves, shortly after Don's departure to Sacramento, both colleges were able to rejoin the ALA and now are members in good standing.

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He's baaaack! And running for mayor of Irvine!

Yes, we know, we know. Former SOCCCD trustee Don Wagner has been termed out of the Assembly and failed to jump to the State Senate and is now eyeing Irvine's mayoral seat. Oh dear. His main opponent is Mary Ann Gaido (former two time council member and Planning Commissioner) who has a strong support in the community, followed with Gang Chen and Katherine Daigle.

What to say about the prospect of Don doing to Irvine what he did in the SOCCCD?

Tune in for more in the coming days and weeks.

A line-up of failure and disgrace: Don Wagner (third from right, scowling) joins,
 among others, convicted felon  former sheriff Mike Carona (at podium); Raghu Mathur (resigned under pressure, to his right); John Williams (fired O.C. Public Administrator, to his left), Tom Fuentes (Where to start?).

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Quake alert issued for Southern California (OC Reg)

...The southernmost end of the fault hasn’t ruptured since 1690, and has been building up stress for 326 years. Earthquakes along the San Andreas typically occur every 300 years, said Morgan Page, a geophysicist with the U.S.G.S. Earthquake Science Center....

Cal State Fullerton's Math Department Has More Problems Than Overpriced, Mandatory Textbooks (OC Weekly)

     [Alain] Bourget is the math professor whose refusal to use the required textbook for his Math 250B course, "Introduction to Linear Algebra and Differential Equations," to instead teach from one about $100 cheaper created headlines across the nation. He earned enmity from university officials but was celebrated by colleagues across the country for standing up for academic freedom while garnering the gratitude of many students who increasingly view higher education as a high-priced shakedown.
. . .
     But the thing of it is, cost was not the reason Bourget chose the book. As he says now, the fact that the Strang book was less—significantly less—than the Goode text was merely a "happy coincidence." He would have still chosen the Strang book if it were the same price or a little more expensive than the Goode book.
     "The fact that the book was cheaper was nice," Bourget says, "but the most important thing, the reason I wanted to teach it, is that it was a better book, and I don't mean a much better book, but a much, much better book."
. . .
…Down the road at UC Irvine, that school's Academic Senate, clearly reacting to Bourget's case, recommended that faculty members forgo any profits they derive from assigning their students textbooks or other course materials they've produced....

WHO GOT RICH OFF THE STUDENT DEBT CRISIS? (The Center For Investigative Reporting)