Tom Fuentes' advisee Tan Nguyen is indicted

Remember Tan Nguyen, the local Congressional candidate who got into hot water in 2006 over a campaign mailer that warned immigrants against voting?

You know! SOCCCD trustee Tom Fuentes was his senior campaign advisor!

(And remember that babe who sang his theme song, "Stand By Our Tan"? See also the video below.)

Well, according to the OC Register (Former GOP Congress candidate indicted over 2006 mailer),

A Federal grand jury has indicted … Tan Nguyen over a controversial 2006 mailer sent to Latino voters that warned immigrants against voting. ¶ The letter, sent out in the waning days of Nguyen's congressional campaign against Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, was written in Spanish and triggered national headlines with many observers seeing it as the direct result of a long string of GOP candidates increasingly using anti-illegal immigration sentiment to get elected.

Nguyen was never prosecuted for voter intimidation, but the feds did pursue the fellow’s alleged efforts to impede their investigation.

The Reg reminds us of the facts:

During the campaign, Nguyen at first denied knowledge of the mailer – which was sent out under the masthead of an anti-illegal immigration group called California Coalition for Immigration Reform. He then said an overzealous campaign volunteer had engineered the mailer. That campaign volunteer was later hired back when Nguyen issued another explanation of the mailer arguing that the word "emigrado" had simply been mistranslated to "immigrant." … However, the mailer also raised memories of a 1988 episode where uniformed guards were stationed by the GOP in areas with high Latino turnout to benefit the State Assembly campaign of Curt Pringle.

You know who was behind the “uniformed guards” episode, right?

—Yep, Nguyen's senior advisor—our own Tom Fuentes, then the chair of the OC GOP.


Back in 2005 (Tom Fuentes), Gustavo Arellano explained the “poll guards” incident:

You [Tom] approved the use of poll guards to stand outside polling places in Latino neighborhoods when they cast ballots for the 72nd Assembly District race. The Republican Party candidate, Curt Pringle, won the election. But the subsequent furor led to your resignation as communications director for the Catholic Diocese of Orange, an exodus of Latino voters from the GOP (the first of many, it would turn out) and various settlements of lawsuits regarding the matter totaling more than $480,000.

STAND BY OUR TAN (2006):


See also: Tello

UPDATE: the Times’ Oct. 2 story (Former candidate for Congress indicted on charges of obstructing justice) notes that Nguyen’s letter “brought national condemnation from both political parties. Local Democrats and some Republicans decried the letter, saying it was an example of racially tainted voter intimidation.” It also notes that, “If convicted, Nguyen could face up to 10 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.”

Random pics on a sunny day

AT IRVINE VALLEY COLLEGE:
Click on images to make them larger.
Frank, teaching history, as seen through safety glass. Don't know what that's for. Historiography gets kinda intense, I guess.

I like these trees, whatever they are. The fuzzy branches: you just wanna touch 'em and roll around in 'em. The flowers are nice, too.

This is the new "Beefsteak" or "Biz-Tic" building. It's sort of a boxy Quonset hut. It would be filled with business students, if we had any.

Some more angles. It's funny: Humanities & Languages--and also Social Sciences--have loads of students. But those Schools don't have a building. Gosh, what's that all about?

Rebel Girl saw this pumpkin in somebody's window. She insisted that I take a pic, don't know why. I never ask Rebel Girl why she wants what she wants.

The Performing Arts Center kinda looks like a cartoon building. Glenn picked the rust-colored paint. He's nuts about that color, they say. "Rust." That should be IVC's motto or mascot.

NEAR MODJESKA CANYON:

Here's some rust. This truck was a casualty of the fire, nearly a year ago now. That's the village of Modjeska Canyon in the background. Rebel Girl lives about a half mile up the canyon.

My Chrysler 300, up on Modjeska Grade. It's very shiny. The car, I mean.

LAMBROSE CANYON:

Back home.

REMEMBER WAYNE WARD?

Back in March of '07, wildly unpopular Director of Maintenance and Operations, Wayne Ward, left Irvine Valley College, after months of controversy regarding his conduct and his Mathurian management style.

Raghu recognizes his own kind. Naturally, when Wayne left, Raghu gave him a prize (see pic).

You'll recall that Wayne moved from IVC to UCI, just up the road, where he got a nice cushy job treating people like sh*t.

I made no great effort to keep up with the Waynster's career. But, today, a friend told me that, two or three months into his UCI gig, he was fired.

Gosh. Anybody got any details?

As Raghu would say, this is obviously "another feather in the cap" of the district.

ACCRED REPORTS FINISHED:

I do believe that the Accreditation Progress Reports (for Irvine Valley College and Saddleback College) are completed. IVC's document was sent to the printer today. They'll be sending the finished product up north to the Accreds any time now.

Isn't it exciting? The Accreds will get back to us with news.

It's like waiting for a report card!

BILL MAHER, YESTERDAY, ON THE DAILY SHOW:

His new movie is sure to offend Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Maher and his movie mostly just take cheap shots, of course. But I like what he says about stupid people in red states. I'm getting to think that we need a Constitutional Amendment, taking the vote away from 'em all.

"Religulous," PART 1:


"Religulous," PART 2:

A seriously wacked Reg article about John McCain's daughter

McCain's daughter visits Irvine:

The OC Register reports that, in Irvine today, people lined up at A Whale of a Tale Children’s Bookshoppe to meet John McCain’s daughter, 23-year-old Meghan McCain, who has written an illustrated biography of the GOP Presidential candidate entitled “My Dad, John McCain.”

The OC Register story quotes someone named Irine Barbashova. "I'm just fed up with the socialists," declares Ms. Barbashova.

OK. So I guess that means she likes McCain. Or does it mean she doesn't like 'im? (He's supporting the bailout.)

The Reg reporter explains that Barbashova arrived at the bookstore with her three daughters, who “seemed preconscious.”

They seemed preconscious? What does that mean? 

Ms. B, we’re told, has a 16-year-old who “wore a psyched smile….”

A psyched smile?

Meghan explains that her first draft of the book was too “ominous” and “intense.” Hence, “A monkey fist that John McCain may have been served as a prisoner of war was softened to a slightly less-gross chicken foot.”

OK, the Reg writer is saying that those nasty North Vietnamese jailers (a) softened prisoners’ meat and also (b) turned this monkey meat into chicken meat. Or maybe John softened and transformed the meat himself. Could be.

Evidently, Meghan was asked whether Sarah Palin would make a good subject for a bio:

"I straight up can't say I know what it's like to be a moose hunter," she said, likening Palin to ye-olde American sharpshooter Annie Oakley.

Ye-olde?

Is it just me, or is this writing seriously wacked?

THE PALIN-MCCAIN FOLLIES CONTINUE:

No Comment: What She Reads to Stay Informed

We are a nation of idiots

As you know, our nation is nuts. And so is our county: the "OC."

Yeah, and so is the city of Orange, with its wacky Orange Unified School District, one of the county’s many occasional “culture war” hot spots. Tom Fuentes and his operatives have been known to hang around OUSD board meetings, stirring up right-wing trouble.

One of the trustees of that board, Steve Rocco, is a lunatic. You don’t even have to talk to him to understand that. See his pic?

Today’s OC Register recaps Rocco’s colorful school board career:

Rocco…is known for winning his seat on the school board without campaigning, his often-present beanie and dark sunglasses during meetings, and his conspiracy rants and personal attacks on other trustees during board meetings…. An appellate court recently ruled that Rocco and his co-plaintiffs must pay the $37,000 in legal fees it cost the Orange Unified School District to respond to a lawsuit claiming the district violated his freedom of speech.

He’s a freaking train wreck. So then why was he elected?

(Why was Bush elected? Twice?)

We are a nation of idiots, is why. Voters are clueless. Politicians are worthless. Everyone has a cell phone or iPod. We see idiots on TV and smile.



Qua lunatic, Rocco just keeps improving. Here’s the latest: on Saturday, Rocco “was detained and cited for allegedly stealing a bottle of Heinz ketchup from Chapman University's cafeteria.”

That’s right. A security guard saw him take the bottle, hide it on his person, and then escape on a bike. Or so said Sgt. Dan Adams of the OPD.

No word yet on whether Trustee Rocco plans to bring the bottle to the next board meeting. I hope so.

Missed opportunity for ATEP?

I came across a story (LA Times) about the recent purchase of the Boeing plant in Long Beach. It looks like it will now be converted to an enormous film studio: a million square feet!

One of the names that came up in the story was familiar. I do believe that the people who are going forward with this project are among those turned down by our Board of Trustees in the course of development of our district’s ATEP facility on 68 acres of the old Tustin helicopter station.

As I understand it, our board was not convinced that these people were for real, moneywise.

Well, clearly they were.

So it looks like our efforts to develop ATEP will now proceed with a tad less “dearthiness” in So Cal, filmstudiowise.

KABC’s story (from a week ago: Long Beach airplane hanger goes Hollywood) includes a brief video of the Boeing facility and its new owners.

NOT LONG AGO, a reader requested that we present some Curtis Mayfield. Evidently, Mayfield's "Move On Up" has become somewhat of a semi-official Obama campaign song. Here's a performance from 1987:

MOVE ON UP


I've never been much of a soul fan, but I do have my favorites. This one could be my all-time fave:

James Carr's DARK END OF THE STREET


This one goes out to My Own Private Idaho! Be well, be happy,  ST.

Review of Arellano's "History"

Luis Alfaro reviews Gustavo Arellano’s history of the OC in the LA Times:

IF SURREALISM has an address, I think it exists in Orange County.

The fifth-largest suburban county in the U.S., and the nation's second-most expensive housing market, Orange County is framed on television shows like "The O.C." and "The Real Housewives of Orange County" as a money-grubbing, social-climbing, xenophobic enclave of the super-rich.
…
It's hard to imagine that one region could be home to Rep. Robert Dornan and Mickey Mouse, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker and extraterrestrial basketballer Dennis Rodman, not to mention the largest community of Vietnamese outside of Vietnam. Here we have but a few of the parallel universes that one experiences while exploring the county's 789 square miles.

These odd juxtapositions and contradictions exist at the center of Gustavo Arellano's warm memoir-cum-history lesson, "Orange County," a familial journey of immigration interwoven with a hilarious dissection of the region's history. Arellano, who writes the syndicated "¡Ask a Mexican!" column for OC Weekly, is a satirist at heart, and his brand of humor and bold subject matter has its critics and supporters among Latinos and non-Latinos. He is irreverent, very funny and willfully liberal—a distinct irony coming from a region once referred to by Ronald Reagan as the place where "all the good Republicans go to die."….

For the entire piece, go to 'Orange County: A Personal History' by Gustavo Arellano

GUSTAVO EXPLAINS: