Duncan Hunter’s son, Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, is every bit is crazy as his father. I’m watching this guy on Hardball right now and his twisted mindset is really disturbing. He is firmly cut from the “you can’t handle the truth” mold, and is just another one of these uber patriots who “loves” the country so much he has to protect it from democracy and the citizenry.
Not sure what is up with California Republicans, but you all have distilled them down to liquid crazy.
vacuumslayer
Plus, he’s not very bright.
gex
You take a 28-percenter and hard-bake them in the sun for a while, and yeah, this is what you get.
vacuumslayer
@gex:
A John Boehner tan?
schrodinger's cat
Yes that’s what sad about the macho GOP all their foreign policy comes down to following the philosophies of fictional characters of Jack Bauer in 24 and Jack Nicholson’s character (his name escapes me at this moment) in a Few Good Men.
schrodinger's cat
I thought that color came from a bottle or a tube.
Surabaya Stew
California Republicans (with the exception of the Governator) have engaged in collective insanity for quite some time now. Just like national trends start in California 5 to 10 years ahead of everywhere else in the country, the current decrepitude of the GOP could have been predicted years ago by the prevalence of the left-coast wing-nuts.
Glidwrith
I’ve posted this before, but this guy introduced fertilized egg=person legislation into Congress. So far, he’s been the perfect little parrot and right-hand man for Cantor:
Squawk! “We should fire the bureaucrats that dare call our military guys security threats” (ie DHS report).
Squawk! “We should suspend the Endangered Species Act if there’s a drought”
Squawk! “The Gitmo prisoners are so dangerous, I won’t let the goverment use any money to transfer them to Camp Pendleton”
Needless to say, I’ve been trying to point out the error of his ways. So far I’ve gotten “I’m a father of three, so I know that an egg is a person”.
TenguPhule
I thought they mixed them up from concentrate?
Dave L
But when the Justice Dep’t had a report warning that there was some danger of right-wing extremist violence, this same crew was all over the place yammering about the Constitution and due process.
They have no principles, they just *know* who’s okay and who’s not.
Lev
I’m a lifetime Californian I have no idea what the fuck is up with California Republicans either. They effectively ran things in this state for like 50 years, from Earl Warren through Reagan and then to Wilson. Then they went completely crazy, and the only way they can get elected now is if a Democrat does such a bad job that the voters fire him during his term.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
I have a night light that is brighter than that idjit.
Now all they have to do is figure out how to deep freeze that liquid crazy and put it in long term storage.
NutellaonToast
Everything in California has been distilled down to liquid crazy. If we could harness it as an energy source, we’d bankrupt the Saudis.
TenguPhule
But this would make Utah and Arizona Republicans the craziest people on the face of the Earth.
Jim
Which may or may not be genetic, but in this case I suspect it is.
Do Tweety or any of the “liberals” who are usually paired with these people ever point out that we had more than enough evidence to prevent 9/11, without torture, what we lacked was competent, engaged leadership at the Cabinet level and up?
mcc
You know how the national Republicans are beginning this kind of death spiral feedback process where the crazier they get the more voters leave the party, and the more voters leave the party the crazier the remaining people have to get?
Well, in the case of the California Republicans, that process has completed.
Rob
Repubs: the new crazy.
gwangung
Yes? And?
joes527
John –
a while back you waxed rhapsodic over how San Diego was where you wanted to live.
With the wonderful weather, you get Duncan Hunter(s), Duke “the Duke” Cunningham, local papers that regularly print Michelle Malkin and Ollie North on the editorial page, Schools declaring “Carrie Praejan Day” …
But there were an amazing number of Obama bumper stickers on the cars driving around in November … almost as many as “Yes on 8” bumper stickers.
Ah well … at least the weather is nice.
The Moar You Know
I’m right up the road from Duncan Junior’s district, and it is composed of the biggest viper’s nest of utter and complete fucktards I’ve seen anywhere, and I’m including the Deep South in that list.
CA-52 is a complete and utter shithole, and would be number one on my list of favored targets for incoming nuclear warheads, even though I’d certainly be wiped out in the ensuing holocaust, along with the tatted-up meth-snorting alcoholics that are Hunter Junior’s “base”.
A small price to pay for the betterment of humanity.
MobiusKlein
I blame Pete Wilson for starting up the Crazy Train. There were a bunch of divisive ballot propositions that came around in that era, and Pete was in favor of them all.
Then add in the ‘kick off Supreme Court Justices who weren’t voting for the death penalty’ phase.
Regan was not so good, ask anybody who knows about the UC system and funding.
The crazy train got going too fast for pete, but he put a few shovelfuls of coal in when it benefited him.
scav
well, what makes you think that loose wingnuts wouldn’t obey gravity along with everything else in this nation? I mean, they may not believe in gravity and they may think obeying it is only for the little people, but still: If it’s not nailed down … continental tilt brings it all to the state of my birth.
gex
@Lev:
Fixed.
gex
@TenguPhule:
I see this as corroborating evidence for my theory, not a rebuttal.
joes527
@The Moar You Know:
Back the truck up.
CA-52 is paradise on earth … but unfortunately, heavily populated by some of the worst people this side of Orange County.
(and if by “up the road” you mean that you live in Orange county, then I’m on to your game!)
Bill E Pilgrim
If you grow up in California you know that all you have do is drive about five miles from say the Bay Area or Hollywood and you can suddenly be in the deep south.
I don’t know how it works exactly, I think quantum theory is involved.
Ned R.
As someone who grew up in Coronado in San Diego Bay and lives and works in OC I just have to say…yeah, odd people we have around here.
Colette
@The Moar You Know: I grew up in that district. You know how there are lots of people who never met a [fill in the blank – Jew, black, gay person, Muslim] until they were in college? Well, I didn’t know that politically sane people existed until I went off to college back east. They’re there, but they keep a low profile and wear cowboy hats as camouflage.
Glidwrith
@ Moar you know:
Hey! I gotta live here. I’ll also have you know that Poway and Scripps Ranch are very nice places to live. Poway has won the Arboreal award for nine years running and we’re currently running a “Re-forest California” fundraiser through the local Stater Bros. Have to admit that I don’t talk to the neighbors much……..
JGabriel
@gex:
Only 3/4 of 28% these days …
.
tammanycall
Jealous?…
DrDick
Yes, but for the pure essence of wingnut whackjob, you have to go to Texas or, even better, my native state of Oklahoma. There are reasons I left more than 20 years ago. Just being in the same room as those folks can cause brain damage.
gex
@JGabriel: Wow. They are even starting to repel some of the hard-core crazies? That’s just, well, impressive.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Glidwrith:
Poway has won the Arboreal award for nine years running and we’re currently running a “Re-forest California” fundraiser through the local Stater Bros.
I first misread that as “the local Statler Brothers” and I was trying to figure out who that might mean.
“Countin flowers on the wall, that don’t bother me at all”
JGabriel
@Bill E Pilgrim:
So that’s why they’re called wormholes.
.
Cerberus
You think he’s scary to you?
He’s my representative. I also grew up in that district. I have a funny story about having to for my advanced Biology class teach an underground railroad style tutoring session for the evolution sections because the wingnuts prevented the teacher from teaching it in class, even in the college-prep class. The wingnuts also protested Brave New World, the conservative version of 1984 because it talks about sex.
There’s a reason I’m currently doing my Master’s in Denmark.
demkat620
@gex: So essentially a Sun-Teabagger?
Trollhattan
I encapsulate it this way. When I axxed my bro-in-law why (my presumption) he voted for likely felon John Doolittle instead of decorated veteran Charlie Brown for congress, he replied, “Barbara Boxer wants to raise my taxes.”
Never mind that he’s maybe clearing $25-30k per year. We’re not talking enlightened self-interest here.
Doolittle–an Abramoff lackey–since resigned and the same lummox-enriched district (the far NE stretch of the state) elects SoCal carpetbagging UberWinger lunatic Tom McLintock.
There’s your California Republican Party.
Rush launched his career here, by the way.
Funkhauser
Alpine, where Mr. Hunter lives, is a nice town on the edge of the very pretty Anza-Borrego Desert. El Cajon, on the other side, is a dump.
Fulcanelli
@Bill E Pilgrim: Playin’ solitaire ’till dawn, with a deck of fifty-one…
Smokin’ cigarettes and watchin’ Captain Kangaroo…
Saw the Statlers with my Mom when I was a kid… Ah, memories.
JGabriel
gex:
Ain’t it though? I figure they can actually get down to roughly 16-17%, but probably no lower. From general observations, I’ve noticed that approximately 1 out 6 people are just batshit crazy.
Which, to be fair, is actually lower than I would have thought.
.
Zifnab
@mcc:
That depresses me because there are still enough of them to jam up the political process. Are the numbers just bad or what?
Bill E Pilgrim
@JGabriel:
So that’s why they’re called wormholes.
Yes, leading to a place so dense that no intelligent thought can escape.
I’ve thought more than once lately that astronomical metaphors work well for the GOP right now. Collapsing into a black hole and so on.
Isn’t it true that those distort everything in their vicinity, collapsing into a tiny ball a zillion times smaller than it used to be?
mcc
@Zifnab: The problem is that CA’s constitution works under Harry Reid rules and it requires 2/3 to get anything budget-related done. So if you have a 33% minority of obstructionist dead-enders and a 66% majority that is just trying to run a functional government, then every time the 33% get to decide what happens.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Fulcanelli:
I particularly liked Kurt Vonnegut’s take on them in one of his books:
“I would actually like to have the ‘Class of ’57’ become our national anthem for a little while. Everybody knows that ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ is a bust as music and poetry, and is as representative of the American spirit as the Taj Mahal.
I can see Americans singing in a grandstand at the Olympics somewhere, while one of our athletes wins a medal – for the decathlon, say. I can see tears streaming down the singers’ cheeks when they get to these lines: ‘Where Mavis fin’ly wound up is anybody’s bet.’“
If I can remember where I found that quote I’ll post it.
The Dangerman
As a lifelong Californian, all one has to do is look for the concentration of DOD facilities and contractors and you find “the crazy”. It’s entirely possible that all that rocket propellant dumped into the ground has seeped into the water supply (“can I have mine with a little lemon and extra perchlorate, please”).
DarrenG
The California GOP has been a machine operation since before even the Reagan era, and the current crop of big-money guys who have their hands on the controls are Full Metal Wingnut. Nobody gets on the ballot in machine-owned districts like CA-52 unless they drink deeply of the Kool-Aid.
And yes, what everyone above said, too. The Inland Empire and Central Valley are known as West Oklahoma for a reason. As opposed to Orange County and San Diego, which are bastions of the corporatist-oligarch/military-industrial complex/megachurch wing of the party.
Brandon T
@joes527:
Don’t forget Darrell “Democrat party” Issa (northern San Diego county/Orange). One of the most puerile politicians in the whole state.
LD50
Arguably, the beginning of the end of decades of boneheaded GOP rule in CA was when Hispanics finally started voting their numbers. So when old Pete started to use Hispanic-bashing voter initiatives to rally his base, it was basically all over.
torrentprime
I moved up to the southern Bay Area from Southern Cal for work a few years back, and at the time I remember thinking it was too close to loony San Fran for my relaxed/SoCal, more-or-less conservative self. After watching a) the Bush years, b) the wingnut (d)evolution and lastly the Prop 8 insanity, I now feel almost scared to leave. I never know how far from the safety line – 5 miles is completely right – I can go before I am in wingnuttia, and I’ll be accused of destroying a marriage or something.
The Dangerman
Oh, yeah, done my time in both places (***waxes nostalgically briefly***).
The Inland Empire, home of Fort Irwin, where they blow shit up 24/7/365 … and you really can’t tell the difference. And San Bernardino, which made the news recently, has a hard time deciding if it is the meth or crack capital of the world (it’s so bad there, the city has proposed digging up a large part of it and creating a big ol’ lake; I shit you not)…
…but the Central Valley, that’s where some real crazies hang out. I’m thinking it is from all the cropdusting.
Bill E Pilgrim
@torrentprime:
I now feel almost scared to leave.
Welcome to the cocoon. Now if you imagine growing up in that environment, just think of how unfit for habitation pretty much the entire rest of the country seems.
Some of us bravely ventured out anyway but we tend to end up in places like Greenwhich Village or Cambridge before too long. Which is sort of like taking your snail shell with you.
Sad_Dem
The crazy side of California politics has been around for a while. Nixon got his start on it. In the 50s and 60s it was the Cold warrior Bircher types, many of which had defense industry jobs, and bigots in the suburbs, together with the Okies (from Muskogee? Or is it Bakersfield? California divides, politically, about 25-50 miles inland) who gave him his base. California isn’t all liberals who drive Priuses and practice yoga–that’s the urban California coast.
WereBear
Grapes of Wrath, man!
The Okies couldn’t go any further… and there they are.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
I moved to San Francisco after growing up and attending college in San Diego. My parents still live in San Diego, and it’s nice to visit from time to time, but there’s no way I could move back there (well, maybe Hillcrest, but that’s a really small bubble).
There’s really nothing like getting in touch from my high school classmates, some of whom will go straight from discussing their kid conceived after sleeping around at 18 and the boyfriend they now live with after divorcing their first husband at 22 to ranting about how the gays and liberals are trying to destroy their religion.
LD50
The Okie legacy is so strong in the Central Valley that even people of Italian, Portuguese, Armenian, and Chinese ancestry there talk like they’re from the Dust Bowl. And this zone starts about 20-30 minutes from certain Bay Area cities.
Elliott
I’ve lived in California for a decade, in SLO county mostly. I’ve had people ask me if there are really rednecks in California. There are.
Suffice it to say that, having bumbled around looking for public river access once or twice, I was not surprised to hear about the crazies shooting at the four-by full of family in the dark of night. There are a lot of bizarre, un-informed, fringey, frontier types in the mountains and deserts, and even the machine GOP operatives would probably steer well clear of them, no matter whose base they are.
The Dangerman
@Elliott:
AKA “Paradise”, but there are some places there that can be scary, too. There’s a little community (of sorts) outside of Paso Robles that has declared it’s “independence”.
Most of SLO, though, is spectacular; Shell Beach for me, how about that end?
Martin
Well, the more that comes out, the more clear this seems to get. Bottom line seems to be that Cheney and a group of others honest and truly believe, by whatever means, that Saddam sent al Qaeda on 9/11.
So they torture these guys, who ‘confirm’ the connection, which to them isn’t fabrication of evidence, merely confirmation of what was already true to them. Cheney even asks for this information to be released by the CIA, again fully believing it to be true from end-to-end and serving as a defense for him.
The CIA gets caught between this paranoid fantasy and the realities of orders from the Vice President, OLC, and others, and combined with their pre-existing dysfunctions and shitty relationship with Congress, manage to just make a further mess of everything.
I don’t see why the GOP is even talking about this. They have an easy scapegoat that they can hang all this on, and the risk that it’ll come crashing down on all the torture defenders is pretty high. They should be cutting Cheney loose, calling for the special investigator, and shutting the fuck up.
andrea
I live in the district that was represented by peacenik/author of the endangered species act/non crazy Republican Pete McCloskey. Tom Campbell, who’s running for governor, was my rep for awhile and he’s not too nutty. Doesn’t have much of a chance against more money than God ex-ebay CEO Meg Whitman, almost as much money insurance commissioner Steve Poizner and the state Repubs crazy base. The state dems will probably figure out a way to screw it up, though.
JGabriel
Martin:
That would imply sanity. Therefore…
You can fill in rest.
.
Roger Moore
@mcc:
I don’t believe that. The Republicans still have enough votes to block the budget, which means that some of them eventually have to listen to reason (or some kind of concessions) in order for the state to function even in its current half-assed fashion. Just wait until the Democrats have 2/3 majorities in both houses of the state legislature and the Republicans are cut off from an influence of policy. Then they’ll be able to go into full crazy mode without the risk of real world consequences, and wingnut will come into full flower.
Francis
Full-metal wingnut hits next week. Six budget propositions will go down to failure on the 19th, and California will face a $21billion deficit for the fiscal year starting July 1.
That’s out of a budget of about $85 billion.
Now, as a state budget wonk once told me, the State of California essentially does three things: it Educates, Medicates and Incarcerates. Everything else is pennies on the dollar.
So, there are going to be massive layoffs in K-12 education, and class sizes will soar. But that won’t hit until next fall. In the immediate term, over 30,000 felons will get early release. (Squeezing Medicaid is harder; it requires federal waivers.)
After years of staggering along with one budget patch after another, the voters are finally going to face the consequences of a system where it’s easier to pass a constitutional amendment than it is to pass a budget.
yee haw.
Dr. Loveless
LD50 is right. Pete Wilson decided it would be good for his career to start hating on the Mexicans, the state GOP followed his lead, Latinos began registering as Democrats in huge numbers, and the fastest-growing segment of the electorate was lost to the Republicans for at least two generations. Way to go, Pete.
You’d think the national GOP would have learned from this example, but no.
Roger Moore
Of course one of the consequences of the difficulty of passing a budget is that people keep passing more and more propositions to try to “fix” the budget process. At the current rate, it will soon be technically impossible to pass a budget because all of the mandatory spending required by the various propositions will add up to >100% of revenues. California desperately needs a complete constitutional rewrite ASAP.
Bill H
Well, Hunter’s district in inland far enough that the humidity is in single digits and the climate has sucked all of the moisture out of people. They only talk to hear their dried-up brains rattle. Pretty much all of them this time around thought they were voting for Duncan Hunter’s daddy who, oddly, was also named Duncan Hunter and served in Congress for 387 years. Each of them is a half-wit, so they are living proof that two half-wits do not make a full-wit. Wits are, I believe subractive, because together they seem to make a quarter-wit.
I live in Mission Valley, near downtown San Diego, and we have Susan Davis. I take some pride in her representation. She is definitely a full-wit and a Democrat in more than name. Southern California is by no means homogenous.
Bill H
@Roger Moore:
With revenue plummeting the way it is, I believe we are already there.
Mnemosyne
@Francis:
We recalled the governor over a small hike in the fucking car tax. California is where people move if they want massive amounts of services without having to pay for them. You’d think the whole “tax revolt” idea would be discredited by now but, nope, people still cling to it with both hands, convinced that there really is a free lunch and a pony waiting for them if they just cut taxes low enough.
Martian Buddy
The “maverick Veep” angle will never fly with so many other Bush administration officials culpable to an equal or lesser degree. Not to mention that Dick’s been in politics long enough to know where a lot of bodies are buried and has a vindictive streak a parsec wide.
Shell Goddamnit
Hunter Thompson, from “Hells Angels” about the breed of drifter he dubs the Linkhorns & posits were the genesis of the outlaw motorcycle gangs:
They were not pioneers, but sleezy rearguard camp followers of the original westward movement. By the time the Linkhorns arrived anywhere the land was already taken — so they worked for a while and moved on.
Their world was a violent, boozing limbo between the pits of despair and the Big Rock Candy Mountain. They kept drifting west, chasing jobs, rumors, homestead grabs or the luck of some front-running kin. They lived off the surface of the land, like armyworms, stripping it of whatever they could before moving on. It was a day-to-day existence, and there was always more land to the west.
Some stayed behind and their lineal descendants are still there — in the Carolinas, Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee. There were dropouts all along the way: hillbillies, Okies, Arkies — they’re all the same people. Texas is a living monument to the breed. So is southern California.
asiangrrlMN
Damn. I like the Bay Area, but the rest of CA–feh. My list of states I have axed from my list of possible places to live really protests the addition of CA. However, it’s been on my list since Prop 8 passed.
randiego
California, is pretty good at Wingnuttia, but San Diego seems to have a special talent.
Randy Cunningham, Duncan Hunter Sr., now his kid, Brian Bilbray, and Darrel Issa.
Issa: douchebag. Bought the California governor recall with his millions, then had to watch as Ahnuld swept in and stole it from him.
Hunter: douchebag. Once stood in the US congress and compared Gitmo to Club Med. Also pushed through the abominable border fence in SD County that bypassed a shitload of environmental laws. You should see it, gold-plated boondoggle that won’t do shit to stop people from crossing the border.
Cunningham: nuff said.
Bilbray: Phony carpetbagger douchebag. Was once famous for casting the deciding vote on some wingnutty thing like Schiavo or some shit.
Faux News
I feel ya. Grew up in CT ( 2 hours to NYC or Boston). Moved to the south for a great job years ago. I still feel like a POW here and can’t wait to retire and go home. Maybe even get gay married too :-)
Jager
Went to school and lived in Boston for 30 years, moved to So Cal 3 years ago for the money….other than that and sitting on my patio 365 days a year, I hate it here. OC sucks…if I didn’t have an office down there I wouldn’t go south of Huntington Beach. (Surf City) If you are ever out here go to the Getty and take a look at the skyscapers sticking up out of the fucking black and tan air…I have a convertible and I never, ever put the top down and the AC is always on recycle! BTW ,”America’s Sheriff” Corona is going in the slammer for 7 years, another good conservative from OC!
Dr. Loveless
@Bill H:
I live in Hillcrest (the gayborhood, for those unfamiliar with San Diego), and Davis is my rep too. The city also has Rep. Bob Filner, whose liberal/progressive voting record is around 100 bazillion percent.
San Diego used to be solidly Republican because of all the Navy bases and defense contractors; these days, though, the whole metro area south of I-8 is just as solidly Democratic. Granted, there are still high concentrations of wingnut in North and East county, and the area will never be as liberal as the Bay Area, but I like it here.
Anphang
@DrDick: I agree with you that you can find some bizarre wingnuts in Texas – though I’ll always contend that ours are the most entertaining. But if the last time you were in Texas was 20 years ago, lemme say that you’d probably not recognize the place. The Texas Democratic Party is energized and not taking a single thing for granted, for one, but more than that I’ve lived in Fort Worth for six months, and I’ve still not exhausted the supply of good Korean, Vietnamese, and Thai restaurants in the Not Dallas parts of DFW – nor have I even really ventured into Dallas County, which is apparently socialist heathen Sweden + Ethiopian restaurants and hooka cafes now that it’s voted Democratic at the federal level (exaggeration, that’s Austin).
Then again I heard that two cops in SE Texas pulled over a car being driven by a black couple, mugged them, and then beat them up for good measure a couple months ago – so we’re still a work in progress.
I’ve never lived in Oklahoma so I’ll take your word on it on Okie pols, but for what it’s worth I think one of the reasons why Texas is known for its wingnuts – asides from Bush and the rest – is its one of the few states where both the anti-New Deal, paleocon elitists and the Dixiecrat, sneeringly condescending theocon douchebags proliferate (in West and East Texas respectively, I guess). Georgia gave us Newt Gingrich, after all, and the South Coast in general has given us Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms.
Gabe
Yeah, the Democrats have done an outstanding job running California into the ground.
Screw people who actually serve their country! We need more sane people in Congress…like Dennis Kucinich!