The Palo Alto Post has picked four choices for Council even though there are still two months left in the campaign. Their slate includes four of my five bottom-dwelling worst-possible candidates. The only thing Dave Price and I agree on is that Greg Tanaka would be a nightmare continued.

edit to add, an hour later: maybe I am being unkind, especially to Commissioner Templeton with a one-word dismissal: “ninny”. In all caps. 

Mainly, if she is a commissioner she is complicit in all the problems her platform would claim to address and remedy. Or, maybe she thinks Palo Alto is running very well, and that she would continue such, and ten thousands fellow citizens agree with her, and that’s what we actually want.

But I thought it odd, delving a bit into her — and with the short season and lack of events you have to do some research — to find that she lists herself as a Stanford alumna despite her credential there being the MLA masters in liberal studies*, which to me is closer to the classes I took recently — with Lynn Stegner, Michael Krasny and Andy Dolich – that were not selective or demanding and I paid my $500 and sometimes attended. If MALS finishers are considered alumnae just like people with BA’s and the GSB crowd, I stand corrected. But that she doesn’t even list a bachelors’ degree — Pat Boone who ran a couple cycles ago was similar — to me is a tell. And we live near Stanford so it is not elitist or credentialist to  call someone on this point. I don’t list Stanford Continuing Studies on my resume. I don’t list my Dick DiBiaso cerfificate from Stanford Baseketball Camp as a credential, although I put it on my wall recently, and ironically. Greg Tanaka lists or listed a similar pseudo-Stanford connection until I wrote him about it. I don’t believe, or want qualifed his connections purported to either UC Berkeley – is he a graduate, what class, et cetera? — and CalTech. 

Not to digress too far but: Greg Tanaka claims, in a taped interview with Reverend Bruce Reyes Chow that he lived three doors down from a victim of Richard Ramirez The Night Stalker – -he gets some of the facts wrong — but I don’t believe the story: can Greg Tanaka prove that the Petersons, shot in the neck and face, but survived — lived on the same street and block in Northridge, Calif.  as the Tanakas?

Regarding Cari Templeton, I noticed that in one of her videos she says something about her study of Grimm Fairy Tales but doesn’t actually say anything qualitative, smart or thoughtful other than some cliche that “Palo Alto politcal life is not a fairy tale”. 

Also: does her sudden, mid-career interest in Grimm mean she does not care that Jews feel that Grimm is anti-Semitic? What would she say about Grimm and The Jews? If her thesis actually addresses this point I will donate $500 to her campaign. Likewise, if Greg Tanaka can prove that he was living three doors down from the Petersons when Richard Ramirez shot them, I will donate to his campaign.

Why would Greg Tanaka mention this at all? 

I’ve written previously, and discussed privately, and posted and re-posted and had censored my views on why Pat Burt is a bully, why Varma’s views are Fascist, and Ed Lauing’s siding with landlords rather than citizens in the limit to constitutional rights at Lytton Plaza, which I compare to Quisling in the sense of being useful to the more powerful. Burt more obviously, wants to help Arrillaga. Burt more than Templeton is responsible for the mess we are in, and the Grand Jury Report bears this out.

I hope my fellow citizens think harder and read more about our leadership and how to improve it.

I think things are worse not better apropos of the residents versus downtown real estate interests, or the average person versus the very wealthy, compared to when Tim Gray and I ran in 2012. And America itself teeters on the edge of an abyss. 

Or as Stevie Wonder would say: heaven help us all. 

Did I mention, or do you read Plastic Alto carefully enough to know that Dave Price, the editor of the Post is a big fat idiot? In the sense of US Senator and SNL writer Tom Franken calling out Rush Limbaugh. Franken, who, according to Kirsten Gillibrand would have fought for his job if he was innocent. But still correct about Limbaugh. 

The Post did not bother to discuss two of the candidates I support. 

*here is a link to the discussion on their website about Master of Liberal Arts, MLA. It is intimiately connected to the Continuing Studies program, though it claims it is “rigorous” and “selective”. And my own mother took courses one at a time at SJSU (then full-time for her MSW at Cal) when I was a kid. But she is being a bit misleading and I am starting with not liking her performance on commission. There is a woman in Stegner’s 2019 memoir class who lists “Stanford” at the top of her social media page.  Cari Templeton also remind me of the not terrible sympathetic (we don’t like her) character — or two of them we are meant to blur, perhapss — in Coen Brothers “Inside Llewyn Davis” – -the professor’s wife and the horrible harpsichord player. If Cari can prove to me that she knows Coen Brothers I might support her. Reminds me, I will check back on which candidates answered my query on Monk. How does Thelonious Monk influence your policy?