Santa Barbara Freaks 4 Peace, or SBF4P

After 6 P.M. Tuesday night the City Council reconvened and finally put forth agenda item number 20, which I referred to in my post from December 18. Holy moly what a show! Probably the only thing they were missing in that room were midgets, jugglers, and transvestites.

I jotted down some notes so I could give you folks some of the lowlights from this debacle. First the mayor took the mic and explained a little about the recommedation before she handed it over to Das. To his credit both the Mayor and Mr. Williams spoke openly and passionately about why they were endorsing this resolution. There is no doubt that they actually believe all of the things they uttered last night. In a room full of boisterous anti-war activists (and a few sweet, solemn old ladies), there wasn't a dissenting opinion to be found, which is why Mayor Blum never had to enforce her warning at the outset not to clap or boo or hiss so as not to intimidate any speakers. Noone was to be intimidated last night, as every speaker was on the same page... sort of. So when the mayor handed off the mic to the concerned citizenry, the circus began.

The first to the plate, a Phillip Martinee (sp?), was probably the least coherent of all the speakers. In his two minute mumbling diatribe he called "George Bush Senior... an accomplice to murder" and said that "Bush came in (to Iraq) with his bombs and killed everyones mother and brother and friend." Probably the best bit was one I didn't quite understand: "(George Bush) wants to put a laptop on every Iraqi childrens' stomach, or whatever he said, and then ugh, mentioned (incoherent) ugh low income children taken from the tobacco industry." What? George Bush wants to put a Quato-style robot on every Iraqi kid, and he's kidnapping deconomically isadavantaged children from JR Morris like the bad guy in the second Indiana Jones movie? I don't get it.

The second speaker was Paul Berenson. He basically re-stated all the numbers from the resolution document itself before dropping this gem of a quote: "Americans don't care about the human cost of the war." Well I am an American and I do care about the human cost of the war. Who is this guy to say what I or any other American cares about, especially when he's talking about a subject so dear to so many Americans hearts? What a jackass!

Later in the program Dinah Mason spoke. she was wearing a garish "Code Pink" jacket that Tammy Faye Baker would find over the top. At one point in her story about her military daughter's broken marriage to a Bolivian she mentioned that she herself was mis-diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. Uhhhhh, Dinah, the doctor didn't mis-diagnose you. You are crazy.

The most controversial comments came from a man named Mark McGinnes. The names of the speakers were not displayed, so having never met the Mark McGinnes from UCSB I referenced in a previous post, I can't confirm that this was the same guy. He had some strong indictments of the Bush administration and the President personally, calling for "George Bush (to be) apprehended in Baghdad tomorrow and hung by the neck for his crimes." Sedition? You decide. He also foisted his personal brand of communism on the crowd when he denounced democracy and capitalism by saying "consumption breeds terrorism." Nice, Mark. Where did you go to eat after the meeting, Mark? Did you go out to consume your dinner, you jihadist?

The citizen speakers concluded with a grandmotherly lady named Nancy Lynch. She seemed nice enough, but exhibited a misunderstanding of the chain of governmental command when she concluded by telling the council that "the President cannot veto your vote." That's probably true, Nancy, since there are about 47 levels of command between the mayor and the President.

After all of the civilians had had their say, the Councilmembers all had theirs. Here are some snippets:

"Look out for us!" - Marty Blum, to raging applause that she had declared at the beginning of the meeting would be disallowed.

"I'm a child of the 60's."
"We've become pigs."
"We can never patch up the horror of what we've done (in Iraq)." - all Brian Barnwell. To respond to the first, I wonder if Mr. Barnwell is still taking the hallucinogens he was taking in the 60's. Exactly who the pigs are I'm not sure. And to his final quote I would say this: Mr. Barnwell, we dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians to end the war in the Pacific theater. That was a pretty horrible thing to do, much worse in my estimation than deposing Saddam Hussein and liberating a country yearning for democracy, but wouldn't you agree that relations between America and the Japanese are pretty good right now? We buy Sony products from them and they buy used womens underwear on EBay, it's all good.

"I understand why we didn't go to the United Nations; we were too greedy going for oil." - Marty Blum. The mayor shows her basic misunderstanding of the impetus for the conflict with this ridiculous statement. If we were going for the oil, would gas prices in Santa Barbara county be near $4 a gallon right now? Using this argument I think I could swing the momentum of this whole Council Crusade right around and say that by staying in Iraq to fight Al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups it could only help us here, at least at the pumps, if that oil should ever come through.

Probably most disappointing to me was the fact that Helene Schneider jumped on this bandwagon, probably right about the time of the third round of applause when she realized that if she dissented from this group they might take her outside and draw and quarter her immediately following adjournment. Shame on you Helene.

And thus the show was over, and the loony lefties had felt they won this small battle against the imperialist administration we all suffer under. Just by watching this video, available on demand through the city website, confirms the very idea behind the name of this blog. There are way more crazy people in Santa Barbara than sane people, therefore we, my faithful readers, are in the minority.

Stay tuned: at the next City Council meeting they're going to put forth a resolution to stop the crisis in Darfur, right after they debate about how to turn down the heat that emanates from the sun.

Goodnight now.