Poor Gus’ Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Mayor Ayer

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Diamond started something along these lines, the night Gus died…but Diamond only scratched the surface.  Here’s the wit and wisdom of late Fountain Valley Mayor Gus Ayer (1949-2013) as reflected in three years of Facebook posts and blog comments:  Poor Gus’ Almanack.

February 2013 (pre-Ash Wednesday)

On his anti-Poseidon campaign:

“People ask us about our little mascot, the water drop with fists full of cash.
Is he giving money or taking money?
Well it all depends. If you are a politician running for election or a political action committee trying to determine who wins the Huntington Beach election, then he’s got a fistful of dollars for you.
On the other hand, if you have to pay a water bill in the future, that money will be picked from your pocket.”

Feb. 10:

國泰航空恭祝您蛇年行好運
We wish you good fortune in the Year of the Snake.
I hope the characters I copied say that, and not “Death to running dogs of American imperialists!”

On the Northeast’s latest super-storm:  “Well my sister Beth Ayer Garvin did not lose power, so she could email this picture of their sidewalk cleared out to the street. I’m going to go pick some oranges, tangerines and lemons from the trees in the backyard – barefoot.”

On Dorner:

• Here in Southern California, we’ve manage to expand police abuse beyond being pulled over for Driving While Black. Now cops can fire on you for Driving a Black Pickup. And god help you if you are DWB and DABP. Cops will just keep firing until they run out of bullets.

• From the manifesto of the psycho cop-killer terrorizing California, a callout to Tim Tebow:  “Tebow, I really wanted to see you take charge of an offense again and the game. You are not a good QB by todays standards, but you are a great football player who knows how to lead a team and WIN. You will be “Tebowing” when you reach your next team. I have faith in you. Get out of that circus they call the Jets and away from the reality TV star, Rex Ryan, and Mark Rapist Sanchez.”

• “Psycho cop-killer’s manifesto would have been better if it weren’t edited by Greg Diamond.”  (Apparent reference to both men’s prolixity)

On the Boy Scouts’ gay issues:  “The Boy Scouts postponed their decision on admitting gays?  What, were they not prepared?”

Best news report ever and the video outtakes are even better.  Warning. Not Safe for Work, and don’t try to watch this while you are eating or drinking.

Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker Saves Woman From Racist Jesus, Gives Profanity-Filled Interview:

OUTTAKES:

January’s fiscal “Crisis“:

Criminal gangs are already forming and plotting for the theft of our government’s proposed trillion-dollar platinum coin.

The more I think about the trillion dollar coin, I have come to the opinion that it should be made from Belgian chocolate and just wrapped in platinum foil.

On OC’s history of racism:

In my mind, a much more important part of Orange County’s current political climate begins with the Watts riots of 1965. after which Orange County’s population grew exponentially with families of young white aerospace engineers seeking safe neighborhoods.

These Suburban Warriors became the voters who were at the forefront of Goldwater’s then Reagan’s campaign – the face of the counter-counterculture The cities they built were villages or didn’t exist in the twenties when the Klan flourished and the newcomers had no ties to old Orange County.

They are old, but they still dominate voting booths in much of the county and it’s the second generation of this movement, who came of age during the Reagan years, who came to dominate Republican politics.

Gustavo Arellano prefers to focus on the more distant and less significant part of the county’s history in the older cities, but it’s a history missing a big piece of the puzzle.

December 2012:  Driving back to the OC after four days hiking in the Grand Canyon – 23 miles, over 5,000 feet in elevation loss and gain. Pictures after I get home and upload the camera. I f you ever need to hike on steep, icy, snow-packed trails, with gale force winds, pack Katoolah Microspikes.

Nov 5, 2012: 

Rush Limbaugh is projecting a Rmoney landslide. That gives me great confidence in an Obama re-election. When was the last time that this drug-addled gasbag was close to being right about anything?

Whatever happens in Anaheim, I hope that sniveling punk Jordan Brandman gets spanked by the voters instead of becoming a Master of the Universe.

In a crowded field with lots of mud being slung and multiple teams, sometimes the best candidate in the field can sneak in. Were I in Fullerton, I would bullet ballot for Jane Rands.  As Ryan Cantor aptly wrote:

“Jane Rands is, in my opinion, the best candidate running in this race. Her lack of campaign funding ought to be viewed as an asset as she’s not beholden to any special interests, but unfortunately will hinder her odds of securing a seat. If every candidate ran their council race as she’s run hers, we could have funded the year-round homeless shelter that everyone thinks is such a good idea using only the extraneous campaign funding. Think about that– we’d rather have glossy mailers and hit pieces than a real solution to a significant obstacle hindering healing in our community. A vote for Jane is a vote for change, better politics, and a bright future in Fullerton. She is against corporate welfare in Coyote Hills and is pro-police reform.”

On Agran, Nov. 1:

There are reasons to criticize Larry Agran.

Both in his campaigns and in the public relations for the Great Park, he spends far too much money, in a manner that I consider wasteful. If he spent half of what he spends, he would probably be more effective.

But most of the criticisms of Agran and Agran’s supporters have to do with the fact that he has been remarkably successful at winning elections despite a Republican voter registration advantage and higher voter turnout by Republicans. He does it by understanding the rules and following them scrupulously. He and his supporters raise vast sums of money, quite legally, that is spent by PACS supporting multiple candidates and local initiatived.

Regardless of the number of accusations, every investigation has gone nowhere, because Mayor Agran stays within the law and reports every dime that is spent.

On Costa Mesa’s October Indonesian Facebook-liking scandal:  “Hysterically funny.   See, this is one of the problems with outsourcing. If you don’t write clear specifications that anticipate every possible way of scrimping on the job you want done, the private contractor will always find some way of doing it that is less than you want.”

On Moxley’s attacks on Diamond:

I think you are over-analyzing Moxley here. Pull out the Occam’s razor and get to the core of it.

Moxley’s a loser, plain and simple, sliding into his 50′s and still stuck at a third-rate alt weekly with a lousy paycheck, a crappy condo, and a future where Republicans will slash his Social Security and screw him on Medicare.

He will never find a lucrative PR gig like Lobdell or Muir, and he can see that wingnut welfare isn’t paying off for Will Swaim.

So he’s like the geek in high school who is trying desperately to find someone even more pathetic to punch down on while he desperately seeks recognition from the jocks by being the towel boy.

August 2012:  Macchu Picchu was the way I have mentally pictured it for 50 years – the mysterious lost city of the Inca’s rising from the mist and clouds.

On the Steven Albert Chavez Lodge name controversy:  “Jordan ‘Jesus’ Brandman-Rodriguez has scheduled a news conference for tomorrow to announce that he too is reclaiming the ethnic name by which he is known in his community.”

May 2012:  “…Or was Paul Lucas merely driven mad by the petty yet bitter battles of OC Democratic politics?  He won’t be the last to have been left drooling and limping pathetically in an erratic loop by one to many encounter with the everlasting car wreck of the DPOC Central Committee.”

March 2012:  “For the first time in my life, I’m really excited about getting my electric bill, now that SCE switched my meter to Net Energy Metering on March 6th so I will be credited for the energy I produce from my solar panels. By my calculations, I am generating enough to zero out me SCE bill, including the additional power it takes to recharge my all-electric car. But the SCE website shows that they won’t send me another bill until May 1st.”

Feb. 2012:

“…it is indeed very common for elected officials and water board officials to be employed as lobbyists, consultants, or political staff members for other agencies. In many cases, they have multiple roles.

And there are networks of political contributions that bind these folks together. Curt Pringle and Scott Baugh have been the masters, but there are plenty of others who come to mind including Miguel Pulido, Denis Bilodeau, Jerry Amante, Kris Murray, Jordan Brandman, Leslie Daigle .. well the list goes on and on.

In the OC, it’s a feature, not a bug.”

January 2012:  “Today Facebook thinks I should be friends with Frank Mickadeit and Martin Wisckol. It’s like FB hasn’t paid attention to a single thing I have every posted.”

“I just love going out to my garage in the morning and seeing that my car recharged while I was sleeping. It is even better knowing that I now own the means of production of my electricity.”

Dec. 2011 – “It’s a beautiful day to install solar panels!”

Nov 2011 – USDA announces that pepper spray will now count as a vegetable.

Sept2011 – I refuse to believe that corporations are people until Texas executes one.

June 2011 – Does anyone really wonder why Congressman Weiner was stalked and attacked by Republican operatives and propagandists like the liar Breitbart? It’s because he doesn’t mince his words when he talks about gouging by the insurance industry.

June 2011 –  “I’ll always be a former Mayor.  No, they can’t take that away from me!”

May 2011 – “Dear FB Friends: You can’t find out who saw your profile. You won’t see what you’ll look like in the future. You won’t know what that man saw when he walked in on his daughter. There are no free iPads. And you can’t see the video of Osama’s death… Not on Facebook. Stop clicking the spam links and exposing yourself and friends to virus risks.”
– Mark Twain

May 2011 – “Red light cameras degrade the rights of individuals and increase the power of the surveillance state.  Judges have found that red-light tickets are unconstitutional because there is no witness. They have also found that traffic engineers shade the timing of the traffic signals to increase the number of tickets.”

Mayor Quimby on Gus Ayer, after being called out as him, March 2011:

I just talked to Gus Ayer, who writes at Calitics as OC Progressive. He said he would be updating something at Caltics ( his signature?) so it would be clear who he was. The OC Progressive blog went dormant when it lost its writers. Joe Shaw went on to run for City Council in Huntington Beach, and won. Heather Pritchard’s husband Gary was part of the CAPO recall team, and won his election to the School Board. Vern, who they had counted on to be a major contributor, decided to write for OJ.

He laughed, and said that the negative comments must be coming from a very angry guy named Roy Reynolds. Ayer said that people at Orange Juice should check out his (Ayer’s) contributions. Before he (Ayer) was first elected in 2002, and gave up on Republicans in 2006, he was a significant contributor to guys like Chris Norby, Bruce Whitaker, and Dave Sullivan. In Fountain Valley, he voted for term limits, and supported Jim Righeimer’s proposal for a development deal on “Sales Tax parkway”, going against the staff recommendation. He was most frequently aligned with Larry Crandall, a Republican Central committee member against the good old boys, Collins and Carrozo.

He admits that now he is a far-left, lefty-left progressive Democrat. He is surprised that he is still right-handed. Ayer is an Executive Board Member of the California Democratic Party, but he still agrees with Chris Norby and Larry Gilbert on redevelopment, and seems to support the outsiders in the Democratic Party.

Feb. 2011, in response to Vern’s huge piece on Dave Ellis’ misdeeds:

Cigar boy Mickadeit is gonna get right on this, just as soon as he can schedule time with the Lincoln Club to inhale some stogies.

And the District Attorney, TRACK, he’s gonna be right on the case just as soon as he has finished with some unruly terrorist sympathizers down at UCI.

And don’t forget that the courageous folks at the OCWeekly are chomping at the bit to cover this story, just as soon as they are done with the latest story about jizz in a soda bottle.

Nov 2010 – “Bottled water is one of the most egregious wastes of energy and resources of our time.”

Election Day Voting Tip:  “If at all possible, vote before work. That way, you can make smug comments to non-voters all day long.”

June 2010 – “Little known fact of the day. When you buy an inkjet printer, the first cartridges are never actually full. If they are half full, you’re lucky. And the cartridges can cost as much as the printer. This is an evil strategy invented by Carly Fiorina when she was at Hewlett Packard. So if you ever got pissed off about this, you now have a chance to get even by voting for Barbara Boxer.”

April 2010 – “My gun-toting liberal son Ethan, in front of Verna’s Prius. Does Toyota sell gun racks for Priuses?”

July 2009 – Jon Stewart slaughters these “Birthers”

Mayor Quimby’s Orange Juice Stories since March 2011