Joins a Growing List of Retired Generals Urging the Defense Secretary to Give Up His Post

After a unanimous vote supporting his publicly funded election proposal, and perhaps feeling a confidence he hasn’t felt since his reelection, Mayor Ron Gonzales made a bold bid for the national spotlight Wednesday by joining with several retired generals in demanding the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Of the five major candidates, four of them—Chavez, Mulcahy, Cortese and Reed—have received more than 30 percent of their total monies from development interests, and that’s fine.  This is what you would expect, given that land use and development is central in the decisions of any mayor, as well as being crucial to the fundraising of candidates. However, we must watch how they vote on critical items.

Will San Jose ever get a professional baseball team or are we holding onto a pipe dream?  I would love nothing more than the Oakland A’s to call San Jose their home, but honestly, we need to talk about the fact that this probably will never happen in this city.  Why do I bring this up now?  Because a few of my friends, who are strongly leaning towards voting for Michael Mulcahy in the mayor’s race, said that the things that were “important to them are important to Mulcahy.”  Amongst other things, this means they want a baseball team in San Jose (join the club) and they think Mulcahy is the man to get the deal done. 

But Many Still Choose Oppressive Dictatorship Over County Government

Good news seems to beget good news.  Just days after a community poll showed that an overwhelming majority (51%) of people living in San Jose think that their city is a good place to live, another independent and unrelated survey shows that most people prefer San Jose’s amenities to those found in Iraq.

There has been a great deal of second guessing and gnashing of teeth at the massive defeat suffered by the City of San Jose in their lawsuit with the county over the Fairgrounds Theater.  It was a sad result, no doubt.  The Monday morning quarterbacks are having a field day; it’s the most fun since the 49’ers blew a commanding lead to Detroit in that title game of the late fifties. 

I think that we all ought to slow down and take stock of this impending election. There has certainly been a lot of heated debate on this site lately on the relative merits of the candidates for mayor. If I have it correctly, much of it is centered on two candidates, Cindy Chavez and David Pandori.  Now, partisans would have you believe that Cindy is a “do-nothing” council member, a pawn of dark forces, while Pandori is portrayed as a loner DA incapable of getting along with even his family.  Not surprisingly, the truth is very different.

As I drive around San Jose, it’s obvious that each of the five major candidates (not including Stanley the Modified Pig) has a chokehold on their neighborhoods; if you look around downtown near San Pedro, the place is littered with Pandori signs, over off First and Second Streets you see Chavez signs, and you cannot walk in Willow Glen without tripping over a Mulcahy sign.  The same can be said for Berryessa with Chuck Reed and Evergreen with David Cortese.  Each neighborhood resident either knows their current or former council member, or is going with the “familiarity” factor, almost saying, “____ is from my neighborhood, so I am supporting them.”  But who is going to bridge the gap to gain crossover appeal in neighborhoods they are not from?

Newly Formed “Big 6” Agree to Debate at Stephen’s Meats

Directly on the hooves of a report published in the journal “Nature Biotechnology”—stating that a cloned pig may have bacon that benefits the heart—a confident, modified Landrace pig named Stanley Pink has announced his candidacy for San Jose’s top job.

The big debate is over; the big question remains.  I think most will agree that the mayoral debate last week was one of the best political forums in recent San Jose history and a resounding success.  The venue was spectacular, the format informative and—aside from the moderator’s too active participation—the five candidates were impressive. 

I was present at the first mayoral debate at the California Theatre last Thursday because I was interested to see how each of the five candidates would cope with the pressure of having to stand up to one another while answering some potentially difficult questions. 

Copycat Reality Show in Alum Rock Park to Decide Mayoral Contest

The five lesser-known mayoral candidates have upped the ante in this year’s mayoral contest by “calling out” the Big 5, as they have been labeled, to a winner-take-all Survivor contest in Alum Rock Park.

Tomorrow evening (Thursday, March 30, 5 p.m.) at the California Theatre, there will be a first of sorts—the first big debate on who should be the next mayor.  It will be sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Association, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and the Business Journal.  Although a late attempt to make it a straw poll is apparently off now, it might yet occur; so much the better.  It is the unknown quantities and unscripted moments of these debates that really tend to enliven and inform.

So all the hubbub lately is about how good ol’ Ronny G is trying to make his mark on San Jose before he goes out of office by sitting on committees he has been expressly told not to sit on and attempting to have an impact AFTER his censure. Wouldn’t we have been better off if the council had just removed the guy from office?  Why leave someone in office with just enough power to hold up every major decision facing the city right now? 

Also Suggests Holocaust was Staged

Just days after suggesting that San Jose’s government was “as open as a French whorehouse on Bastille Day” and that “sunshine law” reforms were ridiculous and a waste of time, Mayor Ron Gonzales continued his stroll through some warm and fuzzy fictional world by attacking Sir Isaac Newton and his Universal Laws of Gravitation.

Although many were surprised when Ron Gonzales struck out at the Mercury News on KGO last week, calling the drive for more open government in San Jose “a bunch of nonsense,” I was neither shocked nor particularly interested. Most people have already formed their opinion of the mayor, as well as our local newspaper, and are not overly concerned with the former’s opinion of the latter.

The single best hidden gem in San Jose has to be Japantown, our cluster of authentic Japanese restaurants and culture located right outside of downtown on Jackson Street.  I know the area well because I grew up downtown, but most residents of San Jose still haven’t discovered all that is great about this area.