by Victoria Taft
Greetings, West Coast, Messed Coast™ readers. I’m pairing a nice Stump Town Hair Bender coffee brew with Cheez-Its and Tums to fuel this week’s edition, where we discover once again that on the West Coast, Messed Coast™, voters like living the very definition of insanity. They’re discovering in real time that no amount of voting for the same people over and over is turning the place more sane.
Insanity Alert
Take Governor Gavin Newsom. Please. The governor has just discovered that Oakland, Calif., is getting mucho bad press for becoming a worse hellhole than it used to be in the 1960s and ’70s. Joe Biden’s performance Thursday night to talk about stealing government documents but forgetting who and where he is has buoyed Newsom’s fantasies of taking Air Force One to Davos. But he can’t paper over the rampant crime that he’s allowed to flourish since becoming governor. Even the always-open Denny’s Restaurant is closing up shop and getting out of Oakland, 54 years after it opened.
Said Governor Bystander: “I’m shocked, shocked! to discover there’s crime in Oakland. How did this happen overnight?” Kidding. He actually said much worse. “That’s unacceptable…vehicle theft, vehicle break-ins… Retailers that have their windows smashed over and over again, that’s unacceptable. I don’t like the headlines, Denny’s leaving, In-n-Out leaving.”
Governor Bystander is always the last to know. Last week, he was shocked to learn that retail thieves openly steal while he still has to pay for stuff at Target.