Just who’s "underhanded" and "manipulative"? —Courtesy distortions re Fuentes vs. ubiquitous factoidal residue

     IMMEDIATELY after a guy dies, people typically adopt a kind of correctness such that a spade isn’t called a spade, if the spade’s a knave.
     But it depends on the guy, the degree and amount of knavitude. In the case of particularly industrious knaves, you just can't maintain those courtesy distortions; the truth is just gonna show up again and again, 'cause it's woven ubiquitous into the fabric of reality.
     Recently, OC Reg political reporter Martin Wisckol reported about County GOP Chief Scott Baugh’s success in “ousting” certain troublesome members of the Central Committee from positions of leadership—members who weren’t part of his “team.” Chief among these renegades was Villa Park’s Deborah Pauly, a Neanderthal among Neanderthals (and a dolt among dolts).
     This yielded the spraying of much venom at Baugh about his alleged dictatorial and undemocratic ways.
     Some Pauly fans—i.e., hard-core Tea People—even asserted that such unseemly tactics were never employed in the days of the late Tom Fuentes! (His chairmanship: 1985-2004)
     Golly, that's ridiculous. At this point, Wisckol seems to feel the need to set people straight, and so he posted the following:

Did O.C. GOP chief Baugh do something wrong? (OC Reg)

     Writes Wisckol,

     Several critics have voiced outrage over Scott Baugh‘s success in ousting foes from the county Republican Party’s governing Central Committee, but the allegations are straying far enough from reality that a fact check is in order.
     Among other things, I’d like to address the mis-impression of some that county GOP Chairman Baugh is underhanded and manipulative while his predecessor, the late Tom Fuentes, was transparent and let events take their own course.

Fuentes and Baugh

     Wiskol goes on to explain the openness with which Baugh encouraged the “slate mailer” people to favor his friends on the Committee.
     Yeah, but

     “Isn’t that what most dictators seek to do?” wrote outgoing committee members Marilyn Davenport in response to my article last week….

     Wisckol states that Baugh did not hide or lie about what he was doing, even to Wisckol. Maybe he's a creep, but he's an open creep.
     Then the Wisk Man brings up the record of former Chair Tom Fuentes:

     Let’s compare Baugh to his predecessor, Fuentes, who served as chairman from 1985 to 2004. ... Tributes and my own coverage of his death and funeral didn’t get too deeply into the hard-knuckle politics he could engage in. It seems almost inevitable that a strong leader will engage in that as a matter of course, and I intend no disrespect to the deceased by saying so.
. . .
…[S]ome apparently think Fuentes’ control of the county party came without friction or backroom arm twisting.
     “I have never heard of a party chairman using his position of authority and trust, to orchestrate a Central Committee election, to ensure he has only those on the board that support his polices 100%,” wrote Irvine Councilwoman Christina Shea in response to my article last week. “Mr Fuentes never did this and I ran with him four terms.”

"Pure unadulterated evil!"

     Oh yeah? As a reporter, Wisckol covered both Fuentes and Baugh and he “heard far more complaints about Fuentes being exclusive and domineering than” about Baugh.
     Me too.
     Wisckol notes Fuentes’ long-time reputation for discouraging certain Republicans from running for office while supporting others (especially incumbents).
     On that score, he recently heard from long-time Republican volunteer Kenneth Fisher:

     In the wake of my article last week, I got a lengthy phone message from longtime conservative activist Kenneth Fisher, who said that after he declined to vow his unqualified backing for Fuentes that he found it impossible to gain even modest leadership posts in the county party.
     “He said, ‘Are you going to be a team player?’” Fisher recounted after being elected to the Central Committee. “I said, ‘I’ll be with you when you’re right and I won’t when you’re wrong.’”
     That, according to Fisher, resulted him being turned away at each effort to advance within the party.

     Wisckol also refers to Fuentes’ “often imperious attitude” which he himself encountered “on numerous occasions.” (Me too.)
     Wisckol goes on to describe just how unsavory Pauly and her crowd is.
     But then he says:

     When pressed about Baugh’s alleged corruption, Pauly commonly cites the committee’s decision five years ago to hold a second endorsement vote for then-Sheriff Mike Carona, a month after he’d fallen one vote shy of getting the nod. She said the controversial second vote was the result of insider Carona cronies pulling strings.

Shea

     And there the story ends. Huh?
     Pauly’s right about that accusation, isn’t she? Think so.

     P.S.: The allegations that Fuentes discouraged, even bullied, certain Republicans from running for office (during primaries)—and maybe favored serious right-wingers such as himself—are quite old. The accusation comes up in a fine article about Fuentes, by Times reporter Dexter Filkins, published in 1996. Check it out:

Guiding With an Iron Hand (LA Times; July 11, 1996)

     See also

• Bagman? (DtB)
• County Chairman [Fuentes] Out of Sync With Governor-Elect The Republican leader is distrusted by the Bush team, the state party and now the Schwarzenegger camp. Dare he run again? (LA Times; October 27, 2003)

Somebody give Scott Baugh a dictionary!

      It’s another banner day for Neanderthal (i.e., Orange) County.

     LOCAL REPUB LEADERS DON'T KNOW WHAT "INTENTIONALLY" MEANS. Apegate (aka Chimpgate) opened a new and perhaps final chapter today. According to the OC Reg,

     The Orange County GOP official who sent an email portraying President Barack Obama as a chimpanzee was censured this morning by the county party’s executive committee in a 12-2 vote.

     The censure of Marilyn Davenport, an elected member of the county GOP’s governing Central Committee resulted from the finding that she violated bylaw provisions prohibiting action that “intentionally cause(s) the embarrassment” of the party. It is the strongest step the county party could take under its bylaws. According to state law, it was not an offense that qualified for her removal from the committee.

Baugh

     She intentionally caused the party embarrassment? That means that she acted, knowing that her action would cause embarrassment to the party.

     Does anyone believe that? Don’t think so.

     So either these local Repubs don’t know what “intentionally” means, or they’re just making shit up—that Davenport had an intention that, obviously, she did not have—for whatever reason. Um, what could that be?

     Luckily, Party Chair Scott Baugh explained the committee’s action:

     “She was censured because she knew the email she was sending out was controversial,” Baugh said after this morning’s vote. “After it went out, she downplayed it as a joke. Instead of owning up to her error, she immediately sought to blame others. ¶ “That resulted in a three-day barrage of negative media attention.”

     OK, there is evidence that Davenport passed around an email that she knew was controversial. Among her many goofy remarks in the days after the email surfaced, that admission was included, although, as I recall, she also said she refrained from sending the email to those among her friends she thought would be upset by it. But knowing that it is controversial and knowing that it will cause controversy and embarrassment are two very different things. Perhaps she knew that it was controversial. We have no reason to think she knew that it would cause a major controversy and that the controversy would embarrass the party.

     The Reg reminds us that, at first, Davenport was defiant, and generally pointed a finger of blame at others. A couple of days later, she issued an evidently sincere apology.

     According to Baugh (says the Reg), thing then took a turn for the worse:

“Her subsequent press conference and media tour only served to reignite the controversy,” he said.

Davenport

     Well, I guess that’s true. But reigniting controversy is not the same thing as intentionally causing embarrassment. Davenport reignited controversy because she is clueless--she clearly has trouble understanding what was offensive about her email--and she is not ready for prime time, what with her daffy loose-cannon allusions to her birther beliefs.

     According to the Reg, Davenport’s handler, Tim Whitacre, declared that Baugh and Co. had misinterpreted the GOP bylaws. How so, we’re not told.

     Whitacre takes a swipe at Baugh:

     “Once again, Baugh and company totally misuse the bylaws to extract their ounce of blood from their target,” said Whitacre, who unsuccessfully challenged Baugh for the chairmanship in January. “I think he perceives this as sending a message to people to not step out of line and that it deflects criticism of his leadership. But this censure means nothing coming from him.”

     The Reg notes that GOP anti-Muslim poster girl Deborah Pauly  and Zonya Townsend voted against censure. Natch. 

Baugh: "a three-day barrage of negative media attention."

     MORE "SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE" ACTION. The OC Reg also reports that a “local activist” in Los Alamitos—J.M. Ivler—objected Monday night to the City Council’s practice of beginning meetings with “prayers that address ‘heavenly father.’”
     According to Ivler, the prayer is pushing Christianity in a setting that is supposed to be “secular,” what with our nation’s embrace of the principle of separation of church and state:

     "We are not a Christian nation any more than we are an Islamic one, we are a secular nation," Ivler said. ¶ "I understand that you may be people of faith, and that you may rely on that faith to lead you in your decisions on the dais," he told the council during Monday's oral communications. "But public displays of piety specifically those that follow Christian dogma do not belong in this secular hall. In doing so you are teaching our children a lesson that something that is very wrong is okay and the law is to be flaunted [sic]. And our children are learning that wrong lesson."

     OC Reg readers lived up to their reputation with such comments as

• If you don't like what is going on in the room just leave the room, but don't make everyone stop what they are doing because you don't like it...
• J.M.Mer [?] should remove himself from the chamber if prayer offends him. I do believe the majority still rules.
   As far as I know America is still a Christian Country, but does not condemn other religions nor deprive them from practicing what they believe. So why does he want to deprive the Christens??
• I hope this idiot gives up all their money since it says "In God We Trust". [?]

A weak smile, the persistence of the Moon

• OFF TO POKEY. A miserable closing chapter to the Nielsen case: Sex-Abuse Victim Confronts Ex-Rohrabacher Aide Jeffrey Ray Nielsen at His Sentencing (R. Scott Moxley in the OC Weekly)

...This façade had served the 37-year-old Ladera Ranch man well, helping him get a job as a Washington, D.C., congressional aide to Representative Dana Rohrabacher, win close friendships with political heavyweights such as Orange County Republican Party bosses Scott Baugh and Tom Fuentes—oh, and lure impressionable seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade boys into sexual relationships....

• From this afternoon's What's New: ASSHOLE FEARS BLACK HOLE

Technology has changed in the 400 years since Cervantes first told the story of Don Quixote. Windmills are now particle accelerators and the knight’s lance is a federal court injunction, but the plot is the same. It begins with a befuddled lawyer in Hawaii named Walter Wagner. Having read far too much science fiction as a youth, Wagner fantasizes that he is a physicist by virtue of an undergraduate biology degree with a minor in physics. Accompanied by Sancho, his loyal TA, Wagner embarks on an adventure to slay the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a doomsday machine that he believes is poised to destroy the world by creating a black hole. He seems to have forgotten the last time he tried this. In 1999 Wagner warned that RHIC, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, must be slain lest it create a black hole. The then BNL director, Jack Marburger, named a distinguished panel of physicists to investigate. Their report noted that nature has been conducting the relevant safety test for billions of years by colliding heavy-ion cosmic rays with the moon. It concluded that creation of a black hole is "effectively ruled out by the persistence of the Moon."