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Thursday, November 30, 2006

Thursday Thread

Okay, I think we said just about everything about dog food guy yesterday.

The L.A. Times finally caught up with the Atomic Dog Park story depicted in one of my cartoons a few days ago.

The rest of the news leaves me uninspired. Racial issues seem to be heating up, or maybe just getting more coverage (e.g., the trial in Long Beach where 20 blacks beat three whites, the high school newspaper article, dog food guy, etc.).

Is it just me, or is this a slow news day? I'm pretty sure it's not just me. I mean, Doug McIntyre is on the air now (KABC 790), in a long segment, describing a trained cat performance in his studio, interviewing a Russian who speaks no English. Seriously.

So anyhow, here's your blank canvas. Go ahead and blog, and send me ideas for a cartoon, NOW. I'm still caffenating, and I could see one about the Clowncil voting, but nothing "laugh out loud" yet.....

ADDENDUM: Speaking of newspapers catching up with us here at Mayor Sam, TODAY the Daily News ran an editorial cartoon about dog food guy, in which dalmations at a fire station are disappointed with what's in their bowl. Sound familiar? It should. I posted just such a cartoon on November 22.

We are SO cutting edge here, especially in dog-related stories

33 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Antonio wants a restraining order against EAA for not informing him when they're going to strike. No one even knew the EAA striked yesterday at the Port. Aquino better think of something else to do. Now, the EAA are looking like the idiots just like the clowncil members.

November 30, 2006 8:27 AM  

Blogger Zuma Dogg said:

It's interesting how this $2.7 million dogg food prank has become the biggest topic in this City since Monica Lewinsky or the war in Iraq. And I'm glad there was public outrage and the politicians reacted to it. However, at the end of the day, $2.7 million is a drop in the bucket regarding money being fraudulantly wasted and abused. A firefighter prank involving dogg food is one of those issues that sounds great on talk radio (and it was great, and I DID love it, and am glad the City was outraged and the politicians reacted. However, at the end of the day, $2.7 million is a diversionary drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of millions being wasted in this City. Things like loans to the CRA that are ignored and never paid back. Or the millions of dollars DWP (allegedly) fraudulantly bills people. All the tax breaks for special interests, ignoring tenant's relacation fees, those shady "transfer of funds" that diverts money from the community and into "general funds" and a whole lot of other things I will be reporting on more specifically. Like a big problem with the way construction and repair money can be spent for LAUSD under A.B. 1381.

So, HELLZ YEAH to the people of L.A. for forcing City Hall to react to public outcry regarding Pierce's settlement, and now let's move on to the bigger hundred million dollar fishes to fry.

Send me an email with your information regarding fraud, waste and abuse at www.ZumaDogg.com.

DWP is gonna be the big one, if you want it to be.

November 30, 2006 9:13 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

I was at the port yesterday and it was boisterous for awhile, at least. The ILWU honored the strike at first until an arbitrator's ruling. And CBS, Daily Breeze, Long Beach Press Telegram, LA Times, CBS all covered this. Now the Mayor wants a retraining order against the EAA. And Janice Hahn was at the port and supports revisiting the city's current offer:

"We're losing people from the port that are going to DWP because it's the same job but they're getting more money over there," Hahn said.

November 30, 2006 9:24 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Blank canvas, huh?

What's that . . . you heard what? Wendy G. doesn't plan on using that third City Council term, Prop R, or not?

"City Controller Greuel" when the office gets un-Chicked (capital "C") in '09?

At this rate, though, the office may never again be un-chicked (lowercase "c"). But then any married man can tell you who's actually, always, IN CONTROL -- no rocket science there.

November 30, 2006 9:52 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Wow. 10:15am and you've got five posts, including this one, yours and Zuma Dog's.

Who'd pay for this?

November 30, 2006 10:15 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

The folks at DWP are getting paid more money at DWP because the City Council approved all of those past contracts.

November 30, 2006 10:28 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

You forgot the $164 million in traffic fines that wasn't collected. All the corporate special event waiver fees and so on. This was a total embarrassement to our city thanks to clowncil. Maybe now they'll start questioning all the lawsuits they're just settling. They can go after Chief Bamattre but let's face it they have a huge responsibility knowing they already settled other lawsuits and not one of them questioned them. Rocky should be hiding under a rock. No way will he move up the ladder after this.

November 30, 2006 10:40 AM  

Blogger Zuma Dogg said:

Dennis Zine is saying that City Council may seek outside legal council to defend the Pierce thing in court. Claiming a lack of confidence with Rocky since Delgadillo has already stated he thinks the City will lose, so if the City DOES end up losing, Rocky can say, "See, I told you we were going to lose." (Gets him off the accountability hook.) So Zine says they want to find an attorney who says, "Hell yeah, we can win this." ZD says that's all well and good, except, now it's gonna cost the City MORE money to hire outside council when we already have a staff of 500 people in the City Attorney's office. It's like having a car, but spending money on taxis.

November 30, 2006 11:45 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Maybe Tony the Liar can take this case. Isn't he a lawyer? And a labor lawyer to boot!

November 30, 2006 11:49 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Does Walter still have his CA law license? Maybe he can try this case..

November 30, 2006 12:09 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

What type of coalition is it when Villaraigosa helped get Vignali out of jail, and Vignali's African American co defendants are still there. It's about money and race, Vignali is white.

November 30, 2006 1:29 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

If you will,

I didn't know how big this drug guy was. WorldNetNews

Carlos Vignali -- a drug kingpin and one of the largest cocaine dealers in U.S. history -- is the latest newsworthy Clinton pardonee. Yesterday's Los Angeles Times detailed Vignali's career as "the central player in a cocaine ring that stretched from California to Minnesota," delivering more than 800 pounds of cocaine. Why did Clinton pardon Vignali, who served only six years of a 15-year sentence for convictions on three counts of federal narcotics violations? Maybe because his father, rich Los Angeles entrepreneur Horacio Vignali, a la Denise Rich, donated over $160,000 to mostly Democrat politicians who wrote to Clinton and then-Attorney General Janet Reno, asking for clemency for Vignali.

November 30, 2006 1:30 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Yeah, baby. . . ADV don't waste his time with penny ante stuff. Local crack dealers and homegrown pushers couldn't get a sentence of support out of him, let along a WHOLE letter (and phone calls???) But if you got LOTS of money, and daddy help finance ADV's career path, then you can get an appeal to anybody from Mr. Consensus Builder.

It's "pay for pardon."

November 30, 2006 1:30 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

WILLIAM BENNETT, CO-DIRECTOR, EMPOWER AMERICA: Those guys were very polite, Larry. Mr. Vignali went to jail because he was involved in distributing 800 pounds of cocaine. His lawyer said, no, it wasn't that bad, just a thousand kilos of cocaine.

Do you have any idea of how much damage 1,000 kilos of cocaine can do? Well, 800 pounds of cocaine could effectively provide one rock of crack for every kid in Los Angeles. It's 1,000 kilos less, but still, a substantial amount of cocaine.

There are black co-defendants who are still in jail and will be for a long time. But Carlos Vignali is now out. He is a white man.

KING: Because he had influence...

November 30, 2006 1:31 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Once upon a time at a press conference:

"ANTONIO... then opens it up to questions from the assembled media. LAUREL Erickson of Channel 4 and LINDA Breakstone of Channel 2 go first and ask about drug dealer Carlos Vignali. ANTONIO starts his stock answer about Hahn's term being "the most investigated in city history, since the 1930s..."

LAUREL: Councilman, I asked you a direct question...

LINDA: Councilman, what about...!

Campaign press secretary Nathan James steps in, cuts off questions, and hustles ANTONIO off the set and out a side door.

CUT TO: Assembled SCRIBES looking at each other; (mouthing the words) What was that?

Puzzled SCRIBES trudge toward parking lot, making mental notes to do more digging -- if ANTONIO runs away, might there be something more down the Vignali well?"

November 30, 2006 1:32 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Advice for Aquino-

Take your complaint to the radio stations.

Try English and Spanglish stations.

November 30, 2006 1:35 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

DWP increased fees to customers.

What did we get?

November 30, 2006 1:37 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Zuma

Why don't we the people fire incompetent district attorneys along with clowncils. Hire competent and intelligent people who can handle cases & constituent work.

November 30, 2006 1:40 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Correct! Our Mayor was a labor lawyer. It says so at this site
(check out the cheezy mayor foto)

http://www.answers.com/topic/antonio-villaraigosa#copyright

November 30, 2006 1:42 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

NBC4 LOS ANGELES -- For a second day, members of the Engineers and Architects Association picketed at the Port of Los Angeles Thursday, delaying a Norwegian Star cruise ship and slowing work at two shipping terminals, a union spokesman said.

Meanwhile, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge rejected a request by the City Attorney's Office for a temporary restraining order that would prevent impromptu strikes by the EAA.

November 30, 2006 1:44 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Antonio Villar (Raigosa) wrote a letter of support for Vignali's release.

Plain and simple. Pay for Play.

Would Antonio write a letter for the average Joe, is there any record of him doing so?

November 30, 2006 1:47 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Moreover, Villaraigosa must now consider these sobering lessons:

• The political clout in Los Angeles of labor leader Miguel Contreras and the County Federation of Labor (both of whom strongly worked for Villaraigosa’s campaign) which he heads is greatly exaggerated, especially when large factions of that group are not swayed by the leadership and bolt to the other candidate.

• Villaraigosa's failure to pass the bar exam four times may indeed have been illuminating, particularly in light of the Vignali letter which he wrote after taking the father's side of the case at face value and not bothering to do the first thing most law students are instructed to do: know your client.

• You can't run for office with skeletons in the closet and not expect them to be portrayed in the worst possible way by your opponent — and not be prepared to retaliate with an attack campaign of your own.

• You can't be a candidate for office in a city with the biggest gang problems in the country and not expect that any vote or position you have taken in the past on gangs and law and order issues won't be combed over for flaws.

• The endorsements of billionaires (Villaraigosa had four), the establishment newspaper of LA, the leading Spanish newspaper of the city, the Democratic Party, organized labor are apparently not even as potent as a latte grande from Starbucks.

source: tonycastro.com

(superb information)*

November 30, 2006 1:50 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Yeah, the Mayor may be a labor lawyer, but he never passed the Bar, which means he can't practice in a court of law!

http://members.calbar.ca.gov/search/member_search.aspx?ms=villaraigosa&s=

November 30, 2006 1:52 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

To the editor:
I find it in poor taste that you would choose to endorse Antonio Villaraigosa for mayor of Los Angeles. Have you forgotten so quickly of the Vignali case? Apparently so, otherwise you would not have supported such a candidate. Villaraigosa sent a letter to former President Bill Clinton requesting that Carlos Vignali, a convicted drug trafficker, be pardoned. Here’s the catch...Carlos Vignali’s father, Horacio, donated funds to Villaraigosa.
When first asked about the letter, the mayoral candidate said he wrote one letter for Vignali in 1996 to the judge overseeing the appeal of the case, asking him to review the issue. He insisted that he never wrote to the White House. However, the letter that the former Assembly speaker wrote May 24, 1996, was addressed to the pardon secretary at the White House, and in it Villaraigosa stated that
Vignali had been “wrongly convicted” (L.A. Times, 2/20/01). So to sum it up, the Santa Monica Mirror has chosen to endorse a politician that, if given money, will pardon a convicted drug trafficker, and lie about having anything to do with it. If objectivity was part of your paper, you would have supported Steve Soboroff for mayor of L.A.
J.W.
Santa Monica

November 30, 2006 1:52 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Mr. Villaraigosa lied to the public when he said he never wrote a letter to President Clinton asking to pardon Vignali. This is no small thing! His first impulse when cornered, was to lie! How many other lies has he told that we don't know about? Hahn's "Vignali" attack on Villaraigo was labeled by Villaraigosa (and you) as dirty campaigning because he couldn't defend the accusation. The only name calling in the campaign was by Villaraigosa when he twice (at two different debates) compared Hahn to former L.A. Mayor Yorty, who used race as an issue in his campaign against Tom Bradley.



Mr. Villaraigosa may be a private citizen, but his refusal to answer the question at the Museum of Tolerance as to whether he still held the belief in forming a separate "repatriated" Chicano republic in the southwest, makes clear that as a private citizen, he still embraces his old separatist beliefs. And for Villaraigosa who characterizes himself as the champion of anti-hate, his refusal to repudiate La Voz de Aztlan, one of the most vicious antisemitic "Raza" groups, is strong evidence that Villaraigosa still ingratiates with those Raza groups. Given the evidence of Villaraigosa's corrupt leadership, MayorNo wants to make sure he stays a private citizen.

Source: Mayorno.com

November 30, 2006 1:56 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Clowncil

You got me! I say we pay him $20 thousand, tops!

Will this cover your fee?

We shall not be overcome by false prophets or claims.

November 30, 2006 2:10 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

I'm new to this blog, but am going to quit coming back to it because people post things that have nothing to do with the original post. Boring boring boring and a waste of time to boot. So long.

November 30, 2006 3:03 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Ms. Harris' Pierce atty says she can win this just on the retailiation. Big problem. Pierece wasn't demoted, wasn't passed up for a promotion and from what the firefighters are saying they have more then enough witnesses to say HE WAS the one who staged most of the pranks against white firefighters, Latinos and Asians. His credability is in question. No way will he win in court.

November 30, 2006 4:03 PM  

Blogger Walter Moore said:

THE MAYOR IS NOT, AND NEVER WAS, A LAWYER.

He took the bar exam four times.
He failed the bar exam four times.
He did not take it a fifth.
He is not licensed to practice law.

November 30, 2006 4:04 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen (winks at the solicitor):

Why should you fret about the Mayor not having a license to practice law, when he has brilliant lawyers on call that are only too happy to do his bidding? Just who is on that retainer list? A name from CD-14. It's all interconnected, savvy? Besides, who needs a lawyer when you already have a judge in the family?

Sots, the holiday goody baskets are starting to arrive. We shall soon see which barristers have been naughty and which have been nice. Although I would keep an eye out for the basket that arrives with the wine and sausage - it's the nice way of saying "Tu tienes una cabeza de chorizo!" But its the fruit baskets one must really watch out for. Those only go to the most valued favour-doers as a pear in the hand is worth nothing.

November 30, 2006 4:14 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

cAPITAN
WHAT IS A RETAINERS LISTS?

November 30, 2006 4:45 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

The Vignali thing worked for Hahn in 2001, but it didn't work for Pacheco in 2003 or Hahn in 2005. Now we have MayorSam bloggers trying to re-fight the same tired old battle in 2006 when nobody cares or is paying attention.

These are the same geniuses who did such a good job fighting Measure R.

Give it a rest. It makes debates about dog food look interesting.

December 01, 2006 5:06 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Doggone dog food guy, and his doggone dog food lawyer!

December 01, 2006 9:39 PM  

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