Follow-up Smear Email by
Former Claremont Democratic Club President.
Believes Claremont Voters are Morons
Thursday (yesterday) found Bob Gerecke (right) still hyperventilating over the Opanyi Nasiali satire piece done in the Daily Bulletin and Claremont Courier last summer.
He sent a follow-up email to some of his friends in Claremont (OMG, does he have any?) that someone forwarded to us. See below.
Apparently he thinks this is the stick he needs to beat that mad dog Nasiali and clear the way for his city council favored candidates, Joe Lyons and Robin Haulman. Gerecke is almost a one-man mudslinging machine on this subject, getting by with a little help from his friends in the original ad (see list at end of post).
As we indicated yesterday, his is a completely cock-eyed view of Nasiali's piece. In fact, in his email, he can't decide what is serious and what is satire. He ascribes an almost unbelievable cleverness to Nasiali, as if Nasiali were writing in code to some people that most of us couldn't crack. Luckily he is riding to the rescue on his hobby-horse with a decoder ring and emails blazing.
Notice the list of scandalous statements ascribed in the email to Nasiali: this time he extracts them and removes the satiric punchlines, knowing most in his audience won't bother to look at the original for context. Oh, a clever guy, that Bob is. Almost as unbelievably clever as Nasiali
This whole thing is laughable except that it does have one serious point. It shows the extent of desperate action Gerecke will take when he thinks his candidates might not make the grade. It shows his unrestrained willingness to engage in sleazy campaigning.
It's amazing he believes anybody in town will buy what he is selling. He must think the total IQ of the town is somewhere south of room temperature. Gerecke (and his fellow-travelers who signed the original ad--listed below) should be objects of scorn, or pity, or both.
Here is the email:
From: xxxxxxx xxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 7:27 PM
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com
Subject: FW: RECENT BIZARRE STATEMENTS BY A COUNCIL CANDIDATE
Buzz:
FYI. Another stinkbomb from Bob Gerecke.
------ Forwarded Message
From: Bob Gerecke
Reply-To: Bob Gerecke
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2011 17:58:38 -0800
To: xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RECENT BIZARRE STATEMENTS BY A COUNCIL CANDIDATE
Hi, [redacted]
This adds information to what was in Wednesday's Courier; it's also written for those who didn't see the Courier.
PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH ALL OF YOUR CLAREMONT FRIENDS.
As a concerned Claremont citizen, I was shocked to discover startling statements authored by Mr. Opanyi Nasiali, candidate for Claremont City Council, which were published on September 2, 2010 in the Opinion section of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. This article is available online in the newspaper’s archives and was re-printed in full in Wednesday’s Claremont Courier, page 18. Opanyi’s article, titled “Ways to Cut Government Spending,” included strange proposals that defy any definition of a responsible elected official. His proposals included the following, here extracted and quoted verbatim from his article:
· “Eliminate the police and let all citizens arm themselves.”
· “Eliminate public schools so that all children are home-schooled, if not in private schools!”
· “Get rid of Social Security.”
· “No public mass transportation facilities.”
· “Stop government subsidies to small businesses.”
· “Do not spend any money on research.”
· “Do not spend money on space exploration.”
· “Unemployment benefits? They cost too much.”
In two recent candidate forums, Opanyi said that he opposes restoring the cuts to our police department, and he repeated his preference for armed citizen self-policing – after all, it worked in the rural Kenyan village in which he was born! Despite his statement to some voters that he was writing "tongue in cheek", he really sympathizes with the most extreme of the views he expressed.
He wrote the piece quite cleverly, allowing himself to describe it as serious to those who like his proposals and as "tongue in cheek" to those who don't. Some of his points seem to come from the ultra-right agenda, but others appear to parody it. So, was Opanyi serious about some of his proposals but not about others? Or about all? Or about none? Does he himself see a distinction between ideas which are wacky and those which are simply very "small government"?
We can only imagine the chaotic effects on the work of the Claremont City Council, and the impacts on the public good of Claremont, if a person of such bizarre thinking were to be elected. I urge Claremont voters to give attention to the kind of thinking that delivered these proposals, and decide whether there is any place for it in Claremont City government.
PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH ALL OF YOUR CLAREMONT FRIENDS.
AS VOTERS, THEY HAVE A RIGHT AND A NEED TO KNOW.
THANKS VERY MUCH.
-- Bob Gerecke
Signers of the original ad:
Ann Joslin
Bob Gerecke
Cynthia Humes
Jim Antonich
Lynn Savitzky
Roy Durnal
Sally Alexander
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