Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report

Almost every summer for as long as my wife and I have been married – more than 20 years – we’ve made a trip to the Del Mar Race Track made famous by Bing Crosby, Pat O’Brien, Jimmy Durante, Charles Howard and others in the ‘30s and ‘40s. We’ve come with our friends from Northern California or met up with our friends in San Diego.

Now that our son is with us, we also go to Legoland and visit his “Toy Grandma,” a longtime family friend in Carlsbad who earned her name famously. She helps fill the void of his real grandparents, who have died in recent years, and she has visited us in Nevada City.

Our son goes to “Camp Del Mar,” a fun day-camp at the track for children, while my wife and I typically borrow the box seats that belong to some family friends, who owned horses and whose father was appointed to the California Horse Racing Board when George Deukmejian was governor.

Even if you don’t like betting, or horse racing for that matter, Del Mar is a quintessential California experience.

The track is located at the Del Mar Fairgrounds “where the turf meets the surf,” and the weather, views and people watching is ideal. There are black-and-white photos displayed with Bing, Pat and Seabiscuit, who raced there. The first race doesn’t begin until 2 p.m., so you can go to the beach.

Despite the sluggish economy, Del Mar reported a record crowd and handle for opening day on Wednesday. Opening Day is a site to behold – with the crowd dressing up to the nines, complete with big, floppy hats – but we like to go the day after on into the weekend.

On Saturday, we attended the morning workout event, which featured winning trainer Doug O’Neil, the popular female jockey Chantal Sutherland and legendary track announcer Trevor Denman in a Q&A for coffee and donuts.

Then we attended the races, watching from our seats and the paddock. We won two races and ended up about $10 for the day – fine. (Our bets are limited to $5.) But win or lose, it’s always a fun, memorable trip.

The crowd of owners, trainers and their friends in the paddock always intrigues me. Here’s a video, where you can see trainer O’Neil, announcer Denman, jockey Sutherland, as well as another award-winning trainer John Sadler (alone, with his hand on his waist in the paddock at 1:08 in the video) and a favorite local character, Betrand of Mille Fleurs restaurant at 1:04, who is always dressed to fit the part. He’s with Jenny Craig and her family and their race horse. Each town has its own social structure, and I enjoy observing this one – at least from the fence in the paddock. Bing’s “Where the turf meets the surf” is played at 1:32 as the horses come onto the track.

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“The attacks in Oslo on Friday have riveted new attention on right-wing extremists not just in Norway but across Europe, where opposition to Muslim immigrants, globalization, the power of the European Union and the drive toward multiculturalism has proven a potent political force and, in a few cases, a spur to violence,” according to the New York Times.

“The success of populist parties appealing to a sense of lost national identity has brought criticism of minorities, immigrants and in particular Muslims out of the beer halls and Internet chat rooms and into mainstream politics. While the parties themselves generally do not condone violence, some experts say a climate of hatred in the political discourse has encouraged violent individuals.

“’I’m not surprised when things like the bombing in Norway happen, because you will always find people who feel more radical means are necessary,’ said Joerg Forbrig, an analyst at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin who has studied far-right issues in Europe. ‘It literally is something that can happen in a number of places and there are broader problems behind it.’

The rest of the article is here.

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Editor’s note: The Tea Party Patriots like to admonish others for their lack of transparency. Stan Meckler, for example, is complaining about the Rood Center’s transparency in the AtPac case in an editorial in The Union this weekend. But as Mother Jones reminds us, transparency should “begin at home” for the tea party. Why doesn’t The Union write about this?

“For about nine months now, Mother Jones has been trying to get a sense of just how much money might be behind parts of the tea party movement. Specifically, I asked one of the largest umbrella groups, the Tea Party Patriots, for a copy of its federal 990 forms. As a 501 (c)(4), the group is required by law to file the form each year with the IRS and make it public. TPP did not respond to some initial requests. Finally, in January, a spokesman for the group explained that the reason we hadn’t been able to get the form is because the organization hadn’t filed a return, despite being in existence for almost two years.

“The group, which made a name for itself by calling for more government transparency, had tinkered with its filing date in order to avoid public disclosure as long as possible. As a result, it wasn’t required to file a return until April 2011—for tax year 2009. So when April rolled around, I asked again. Again, no response. I even asked Mark Meckler, the group’s chief financial officer and national coordinator, in person for a copy when he was speaking at Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Conference in DC in June. He promised that the return had been filed and that I could get a copy. So I emailed to follow up, and I waited. Still nothing.”

The rest of the article is here.

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“For days, the White House has infuriated its Democratic allies in Congress by offering House Republicans more and more in exchange for a deal to raise the debt ceiling and prevent default,” according to an editorial in the New York Times. “But it was never enough and, on Friday evening, it became clear that it may never be enough. Speaker John Boehner again walked away from the ‘grand bargain’ he had been negotiating with President Obama, leaving the country teetering on the brink of another economic collapse.

At the White House podium a few minutes later, the president radiated a righteous fury he rarely displays in public, finally placing the blame for this wholly unnecessary crisis squarely where it belongs: on Republicans who will do anything to upend his presidency and dismantle every social program they can find. “Can they say yes to anything?” he asked, noting the paradox of Republicans, who claim that financial responsibility and debt reduction are their biggest priorities, rejecting yet another deal that would have cut that debt by at least $3 trillion.

Mr. Obama, in fact, had already gone much too far in trying to make his deal palatable to House Republicans, offering to cut spending even further than the deficit plan proposed this week by the bipartisan “Gang of Six,” which includes some of the Senate’s most conservative members.

So, on the eve of economic calamity, the Republicans killed an overly generous deal largely over a paltry $400 billion in deductions. Mr. Obama was willing to take considerable heat from his liberal critics over the deal, and the Republicans were not willing to do a thing to anger their Tea Party base. As the president forcefully said, there is no evidence that House Republicans are capable of making those tough decisions. If last-ditch talks beginning Saturday fail, they will have to take responsibility if the unimaginable — a government default — happens in 10 days and the checks stop going out.”

The rest of the article is here.

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“The Norwegian police on Saturday charged a man they identified as a right-wing fundamentalist Christian in connection with a bombing in central Oslo and a shooting attack on a nearby island that killed at least 92 people,” the New York Times is reporting. “Officials said the death toll could climb as they continued to search for the missing.”

“As stunned Norwegians grappled with the deadliest attack in the country since World War II, a portrait began to emerge of the main suspect in the case as a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threat of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.

“The police have not identified the suspect, but Norwegian media have identified him as Anders Behring Breivik, 32.

“In a Facebook page and a Twitter account set up under that name days before the rampage, suggesting a conscious effort to construct a public persona, he cited philosophers from Kant to Machiavelli. Though there did not appear to be calls for violence in his Internet postings, he hinted at his will to act in his lone Twitter post, paraphrasing John Stuart Mill: ‘One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests.’

“While the motives for the rampage remained obscure, fresh details provided by witnesses on Saturday provided a clearer picture of the terror on the island of Utoya, a wooded retreat accessible only by boat about 19 miles northwest of Oslo where, the police said, at least 85 people, some as young as 16, were killed in the attack on a summer camp there.”

The rest of the article is here.

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