The same old irrational exuberance

     This morning, I noticed the above video posted at the Orange Juice Blog. It is a brief and interesting presentation by Internet guru Jim Gilliam entitled, “The Internet is my Religion.”
     Well, I watched it and left the comment below:

     I enjoyed Gilliam’s presentation and will acknowledge that he has quite a story to tell, but I do wonder about the label “humanism” applied to him and, frankly, about his philosophy also. Humanism—yes, a notoriously ambiguous term—is often viewed as a non-theistic (godless) philosophy that embraces the notion of the power of human faculties—especially reason. Gilliam has surely abandoned theism and embraced human capability, but his embrace of reason is questionable, for he does seem to embrace “faith,” or something very like it, and it is faith (one might argue) that makes religion religion more than does embrace of the supernatural. Yes, Gilliam was saved in part by internet activists, but his rescue had more to do with medicine and the phenomenon of individuals choosing to make their organs available to others—both pre-dating the Internet. And so why does he attribute the miracle of his rescue to the Internet and not to these other things, which surely are more fundamental to the event? At a certain point, Gilliam reminds one of the charismatic preacher who, having roused his audience with stories of happy accident, human kindness, and whatnot, commits the usual non sequitur: it’s Jeeeeeesus.
     Gilliam simply replaces Jesus with the Internet. So, what we have here is not humanism but a new, but a typical, religion—a thing with an utter failure of logic at its core.

     (Note: someone with a sounder training in the Humanities would not have made Gilliam's mistake—namely, conceiving and exhorting his godless, human-centered philosophy as a religion—something relying on "faith.")

Hey, wait! Wasn’t the world supposed to end? Tom Fuentes jokes about Asian drivers

     TOM FUENTES’ final days will be noisy and difficult.
     I know nothing about his family life. I’m thinking only of his “public” life—his life as Tom Fuentes, Political Animal.
     It appears that this animal is dying fast.
     The local political machine he helped develop and maintain is in trouble.
     Some of the Fuentesphere’s more prominent champions of rectitude have fallen spectacularly, leaving decent people to wonder just who would ally themselves with them in the first place?
     And, during this endlessly-shocking post-Bell era, the system of mutually-supporting leech-leadership with which Tom is so closely associated is coming into public view. The public, still unclear about what it sees, is initially aghast.
     But there’s more: Fuentes’s curious private affairs—his peculiar “consulting” gigs and their relation to public service, and even his private business (etc.) relationships—are themselves under scrutiny, revealing, well, disturbing darkness.
     My guess is that the full Dark Serpent that is Tom will only become clear some time after his passing.

     Today, I came across a little speech Tom made about a year ago during an event of the ultra-conservative Pacific Research Institute. It reveals one head of Thomas the Hydra.
     (You remember PRI. Just a few years ago, Fuentes protégé, Raghu P. Mathur, invited PRI’s Lance Izumi to give an address during a Chancellor’s Opening Session. The address came after the prayer.)

The event:

Leechleadership: writhing &
thriving(?) in the Fuentesphere

The Politics of Aspiration
How to Bring the Gold back to the Golden State

Saturday, March 20, 2010
Island Hotel
690 Newport Center Drive
Newport Beach

Moderator: Steven Hayward

Introductory Speaker: John Eastman
. . .
Keynote Lunch Speaker:
Hugh Hewitt
Short Discussion: Can the California GOP Regroup and Save the State?

Moderator: Tom Fuentes

Panel:

Duf Sundheim
Jon Fleischman,
Bill Mundell
Brian Calle

Well, here are Tom’s remarks (listen to them yourself, starting at 6:04):

…Once again, our topic is, “Can the GOP regroup and save the state?”
     The bottom line is of course: we need to win elections.
     Presently, Republican voter registration has reached a low of near 30% in California. Less than one out of three Californians declare themselves to be members of the GOP.
     A party needs people.
     We meet today in Orange County, where our neighbors include some 800,000 Hispanics, reflective of the ever-growing Latino population statewide. You know, we know, in Orange County, when we have many, many new Asian neighbors, we Latinos begin to buy car insurance. [Uncomfortable laughter?]
     Nearly one out of three Orange Countians—some of you are little slow on [getting the joke]—nearly one out of every three Orange Countians is a Roman Catholic. Black and Hispanic voters voted “yes” on proposition 8 [i.e., the Eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry act of 2008]. Yet some suggest that our party should move way from the traditional, conservative social values so appealing to these communities and to the growing Asian population as well.
     Earlier this week, in this same county, a few here attended the first debate by the two leading Republican candidates for governor. It was hosted in an invitation-only exclusive setting at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Samueli Theater, where the public and the general membership of our party was excluded. Members of the New Majority PAC, who pay $10,000 a year as dues, were invited to the exclusion of rank and file Republicans. [The New Majority is “Orange County's group of supposedly progressive millionaire and billionaire Republicans” (see) who have sought to moderate OC’s image. Starting in the 90s, they sought to unseat Fuentes as chair of the local party. By 2004, they succeeded.]
     The state is in a fiscal and political crises as we come to the end of the failed Swarzen-Jaeger [sic] administration. [Fuentes has always hated the former Governator: See.] Unemployment is skyrocketing, businesses are leaving California every day. Multimillionaire candidates are vying to carry our party’s banner in November.
     While the Tea Parties are growing in the streets, the old specter of a boardroom-controlled Republican Party of the rich is being raised again. And all of this is happening amid the deepest recession in our memory.
     Moneyed special interests have ever-greater influence in the affair of our party. No debate between the top candidates for governor was presented at the California Republican Party convention. The control and direction of our party have left the floor of the convention, with its volunteers and activists, and founds its ways into the offices of a governor–a governor who has a liberal Democrat chief of staff. [Fuentes had his start as a grass-roots organizer, in the 60s, when OC was more notorious for its right-wing conservatism.]
     He who controls the purse strings controls the party.
     High paid consultants have their say. Outside PACs raise money from the business community and little of the money finds its way into the coffers of the official party. PAC directors collect large salaries while the candidates and the local party operations are under-funded. The Governors’s appointee for the Lieutenant Governor seeks to allow Democrats to select our Republican nominees.
     So the question that we put to you gentlemen is: can the California GOP regroup and save the state?

Back

Nearing L.A.

     Finally got back to Southern California--about 6:00 p.m. last night. Had a snafu with our shuttle service, so we didn't get home until maybe 10 or 11. Sheesh.
     Looking forward to normality. Right now, owing I suppose to all those hours in those sardine-can 757-200s, I feel like 40 miles of bad road. But it was a great trip.
     I was happy to read the news about John Williams. There are things brewing with Tom Fuentes as well. All will be revealed soon enough.
     Later.

These are the "anonymous" street musicians we happened to catch near Alexanderplatz in Berlin—on Monday. We enjoyed them very much. I'm not sure what to make of them. Some kind of world music, I guess. I hear some New Orleans Jazz, but certainly not only that. Some of their music reflected Spanish or Middle Eastern influences. (Here one finds them playing Hava Nagila.) Still more of their hotness can be experienced here.

Guardian-a-Go-Go! But Williams Still Administrates

WILLIAMS FIRED! 1 Down, 1 To Go

OC Register Reports...

Public Guardian fired by county supervisors
by Kimberly Edds, Staff Writer

excerpt:

Public Administrator John S. Williams was fired by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday from his job as the county’s public guardian, potentially sparking a legal fight by Williams to get the appointed job back. He remains the county’s elected public administrator.

Williams, who served as both the elected public administrator and appointed public guardian, has been hounded by accusations of mismanagement, dubious promotions and questions of how he does his job. The public guardian handles the affairs of Orange County’s ill and elderly who have no one else to care for them. The public administrator handles the estates of those who die without legal heirs.

The county has spent months trying to wrest control of the two departments from Williams.

He has ignored repeated calls by the Board of Supervisors to resign from both positions. Williams attended the board meeting but did not speak.

To read the rest, click here.

*

No More Secrets: new bill will force transparency for higher education foundations

via OC Watchdog:

excerpt:

...Senate Bill 8 would apply to the likes of the UC Irvine Foundation (with net assets of $255.5 million), the CSU Fullerton Philanthropic Foundation (with net assets of $51.5 million) and would “bring greater transparency and accountability to California’s public higher education institutions – University of California, California State University, and the state’s community college system,” according to its rabble-rousing author, Sen. Leland Yee (pictured below).

“SB 8 will ensure UC, CSU and the community college auxiliaries and foundations adhere to state public records laws. Under SB 8, all other financial records, contracts, and correspondence would be subject to public disclosure upon request...

To read it in its entirety, click here.

*

The folks on their last day in Berlin

Edith declared that she had ridden to the top of this thing as a little girl. "Don't think so," said Manny.

Later, I discovered that the dang thing was built by the Commies back in 1968, so there's no way.

But my mom hangs tough.

My dad and I have decided to call it the Berlin "time machine." We went to the top of thing thing today but we managed to avoid time travel.

As far as we know, at least.

Here we are with our cute Nigerian-German cabby

At an Italian restaurant in one of Berlin's many cool spots. Listened to a cool band, too.

Mom insisted on ordering a fancy chocolate desert. It arrived as a big mouse head with mouse ears made of crackers. Mom grabbed one of Mickey's ears and ate it.

"You're eating Mickey's ear!" I protested.

"Don't worry. Mickey's dead," said mom. She ate the whole damned thing.

Buffalo Springfield Again

Buffalo Springfield stunningly returns to L.A. (OC Reg)

     …Here at last, after giving its first reunion performances last October at Neil Young’s Bridge School benefit concerts, was the short-lived but mighty Buffalo Springfield — a group that literally formed in a traffic jam on Sunset Boulevard, finally playing again in the city that spawned it 43 years and a month after the (mostly) original lineup last played in Southern California, to some 5,000 people at Long Beach Arena on May 5, 1968.
. . .
     Their importance cannot be overstated: The band that locals used to call the Herd rank only behind Bob Dylan (especially with the Hawks/Band) and the Byrds (with and without Gram Parsons) as the most crucial cornerstones of what’s now called Americana music, that hard-to-define yet easy-to-spot hybrid of folk, rock, country, blues, psychedelia and lyrical poetry….