He patted his bald spot. He said his opponents “committed a lot of atrocities.” At one point, he pantomimed a stabbing. The U.S. president’s Friday speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference was an old-fashioned campaign-style ramble.
I like the idea of CA pulling out of the US. I'm tired of us paying for everyone else's problems, providing their fresh food, and taking their "oooh Hollywood elite" criticism. CA provides the teat for the Red States to suck on.
6th largest economy in the world.
Here is the ranking of dependency, from #1 = most dependent on the gubmint to #50 being least. California feeds into the national coffers, not takes. Trump - the businessman - needs to be careful whom he pisses off.
Ca's going backwards. We used to be the 5th largest economy when Reagan was gov.
warning ... threadjack / rant ahead ...
But seriously, there were just around 11 million people there when I was born in 52. That's the current population of just LA county now. Its now nearly 4 times bigger, @ 40 mil. Its a whole different place now, although I haven't been back to Berzerkeley since 74, I know I can get around anywhere north of University Ave without a map. And I can take the back roads over the hills to Orinda as well. We bought a house in Lafayette when my Dad was doing Seizure World in WC (he was in charge when they broke the ground for that), but my dad got promoted and transferred south to do Laguna Niguel and start the one in NJ. OBTW, if you've never rode a bike up to the top of Mt Diablo and coasted all the way back down, you must do it before you leave. We hit 50 mph on Schwinn 3 speeds. No helmets or knee pads. But I was 10, we were young and unafraid. I rode that bike across the Bay Bridge once down on the lower deck when they still had the train tracks, by myself too, just to do it. Alcatraz was still a working prison. I could see it from my house up on Cragmont Road.
Coming back home to the Bay one more time is on my bucket list and its a real short list. Be nice to see you if you're still there if and when I ever do get back. California is pretty personal with me. I know I'm not the only one here around my age that is from there at that time. And we have different ways of looking at the same things. Most people my age out there are from somewhere else. But I can go to Berkeley and visit 5 houses that my Dad built. I can visit places that my Dad left his fingerprints on and still are there, be it the Seizure World's (and I'm now old enough to move in) or up at the old Warner Ranch in Calabasas where he got the first residential development going for Bechtel Corp. And then there is the wife who has 5 generations of her family in a cemetery in Roseville north of Sacto (where most of my family remains). So we'll be headed there, too.
Her current visit out there and the things that she is relating puts California up front in my mind now and has inspired the preceding trip down my memory lane. If there were no family ties and legacy type things out there, I would have just reduced it all to memories and said the place can go eff itself for what it has become now. But I can't and California is too big and important to ignore. It is the 6th largest economy in the world and helps feed the planet. It went from a paradise where you could find everything good in the world with abundance to a place where the opposite is true. And its spreading.
Let me bring Trump into the picture. I'm not sure how many people are aware or remember what follows so my apologies if I'm explaining the obvious ... Growing up back then and there, there was a rivalry, a huge rivalry between Ca and NY. And between Ca and Tx for that matter, cuz everything was just bigger there. Now Tx is being invaded by Ca escapees. Last number I saw was 600K in the past 10 years. Good luck with that fellow Rpeeps in Tx. Yer gonna have avocado in everything now and beans in your chilli. But the rivalry between Ca and NY got mean at times. We were the hicks, an uncivilized colony in the still wild west to NYers as the US is to GB and the competition between the two states was front and center, to us anyway. Trump is a NYer from that generation. His state was on the losing side of this long forgotten rivalry. It may seem trivial now, but there are a lot of us still around who remember it. And it might even motivate some people still, like Trump. Maybe in his mind, Ca is still a colony and everything its doing is pissing him off simply because of his wiring. We stole his Giants and Dodgers. Maybe small to anyone else, but big to those of us from Ca and NY. Now he has a chance to get back at it and teach these upstarts a long overdue lesson and a payback.
Or I could be totally wrong. Don't know on this one. But if I can imagine it, so more than likely others could too. Maybe its only a construction biz thing having grown up in that bizness. Developers have long memories of fights with politicians over zoning and permitting. I know that these fights pissed of my old man enough to fight back and get involved in politics. Nah, its probably more about the Giants and the Dodgers ... Stranger things have happened.
Thanks for letting me blow this crap out of my head so I can get back to cleaning up this house. I've got 5 days left.
Excellent question. It's like they have history, while saying they don't.
I rank this one as 'middle of the pack'. Not original or entertaining, but not flagrantly racist or misogynistic like other incarnations. Level 2 gadfly.
