Bob called all the Boneheads together for a family meeting. “Good news!” he declared. “We are getting a pool!”

All eight children cheered. It was all about the children, after all. Bonnie, Bob’s wife, had been after him to find a way to keep the children home, especially the teens. It would keep them out of trouble and out of gangs.

This was especially brought home after Bob had to go shopping for a shotgun. Their oldest daughter, Bella, a senior in high school, became pregnant. She had apparently failed the only lesson in her abstinence-only sex education class and the Boneheads would be grandparents soon. Bubba, the star football player at the high school, had also failed that single lesson and would be joining the Bonehead family soon, if Bob and his newly acquired shotgun had anything to say about the matter. Bob and Bonnie firmly believed that marriage should be defined as the traditional union of an unwilling boy and unwilling girl.

Bob Bonehead went to sleep listening to talk radio and after eating a bit too much pepperoni pizza. The issue on talk radio, as he drifted off, was on the horrors of the elite in charge of America. Problems needed to be solved by people more in tune with the common folk. We need leaders that we can sit and have a beer with, not elitists with fancy degrees.

Bob felt a pain in the side. He went to the doctor. His regular doctor, Dr. Smith, wasn’t in. A new doctor was covering. “Dude, what’s the prob?” asked the new doctor, who wore a Hawaiian shirt with what looked like pizza stains on it..

Having fallen through the looking glass, I found myself in the council chambers for a small community. “You cannot recuse yourself from this vote!” cried one councilman from the dais.

“Why not?” shouted another.

“You are here to vote, so you must vote!”

“But I am told to vote would be a conflict of interest. I am told by my lawyer to recuse to avoid a conflict.”

“Pishaw. What do lawyers know of the law? It is your duty to vote. You were elected to vote. You cannot leave while the rest of us vote and show ourselves to be the leading candidates for village idiot. No one will know where you stand on the list of village idiot candidates.”

After reading this morning Enterprise, i feel relieved we have three, and not only two, agree on not having the Bypass annexation. Congrat to Brooke, Mikey, and Tom F. for stepping up and using good conscience and wonderful judgement. Good job !!

All the ducks are lined up. The votes will be in August and there will be three votes for all of the annexations. If you are reading this and you are angry that three people will decide to triple the size of our town, then I need your help.

I need a line of volunteers to show up 08/06/2008 at the city council meeting at 7pm. When the public forum starts, go to the podium one at a time and simply say your name, you are a resident of Los Banos, and you are against the annexations at this time.

The current council has a circle of friends and families that believe annexation is good for the city. They need to see and hear from others who do not want the city to continue to grow at this lightning pace.

The missus insisted and I finally relented. Our oldest son, Wedgie, would get the big party, the limousine, the works, for his graduation. It is a time of celebration, I agreed. Why not splurge a little?

We rented a hall at fairgrounds, no cheap place that. Catering was ordered; bartending arranged for the adults. We spent hours with the folk downtown at the stationery store selecting just the right invitations. The school colors were incorporated into the design and the invitations suitably embossed (we were told that unless you intend to use brass or wood as the medium, one does not “engrave” an invitation).

“You need to focus on the important issues!” Bob Bonehead yelled at me the other day. “You get caught up in wrong-headed thinking too often. I saw you looking at candidate websites trying to read position papers. What are you going to learn from that?”

Bob was trying to re-educate me to help me become a better voter. As one of the few awake through my civics classes in high school (I admit to being that guy who actually participated without urging/pleading by the teacher), I had always thought it important to know how a candidate stood on economic and public health and safety issues. Bob, he was going to open my eyes.

According to the Los Banos Enterprise, despite all that was revealed about his relationship with Ranchwood Realty, the Mayor is going to vote on the annexation of nearly 1000 acres of farmland requested by Ranchwood. The paper quoted the Mayor as saying he does not know which way he is going to vote. I find this surprising because I know which way he is going to vote. The Mayor will vote for the annexation. This is just another example of the Mayor not being honest. The Mayor has also claimed that we have the highest building fees in the Valley. We do not. The City of Ripon has double our fees.

I believe we have an opportunity for humanitarian out reach in locating a rescue mission here in Los Banos. It is unfortunate we lost or allowed Alpha Pregnancy (http://www.alphapregnancy.org/ ) and the Woman’s Place (http://womansplace.org/ ) to abandon our city leaving us deficient in these needful areas.
I understand getting it right is important, and believe an accounting/business plan, as well potential funding sources are warranted. We need to establish a formal dialogue on this regardless of the chaotic way it was presented to city council on May 7th, 2008.
I believe when the program is understood it will grow by incorporating additional services to those in need...

I don't think Gene Forte got his full five minutes. I wanted to hear the letter that the Mayor wrote. If you missed what happened, Gene was presenting his reasons for recalling the Mayor and was reading the Mayor's letter to the FPPC and was about three minutes into his five minutes of public forum when the Mayor cut off his microphone. Bill Vaughn looked shocked and made a comment to the Mayor as the Chief of Police walked towards Gene and the camera was pointed to the Los Banos Logo and all audio was cut off. The event was pre-planned as evidenced by how organized the reaction was. The viewer was left to wonder what happened to Gene and why was he not allowed to speak in public forum?