TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

Recent Stories

1. 

   Last standing anti-Romney still plugs away

   By Robert Price

   Saturday, May 19 2012 10:03 PM

   When Newsweek called Barack Obama America's "first gay president" last week for his embrace of same-sex marriage, Fred Karger had to have had mixed feelings.

   Karger wanted to be America's first gay president, and not simply in the sense that Newsweek's Andrew Sullivan meant it.

   Karger is seeking the Republican nomination for president, a long-shot (OK, no-shot) quest that makes him the first openly gay presidential candidate from a major party in U.S. history.

   He rolled into Bakersfield last week in a black campaign RV adorned with his smiling, larger-than-life mug and, surrounded by an entourage of one, made an effort to look up some old friends. He spoke with Stan Harper, who, like Karger, made a name for himself running political campaigns for conservative candidates and causes. Karger had hoped to meet up with old friend Ed Jagels, the former Kern County district attorney, but to no avail. Jagels led the ultimately successful 1986 effort to oust state Supreme Court Justice Rose Bird and Karger worked on the campaign.

   And Karger knows a bit about what former state legislator Roy Ashburn has been going through over the past couple of years, having publicly come out as a gay man later in life himself. Karger, who is 62, made the acknowledgement at age 58. Ashburn was 54 when the circumstances of a March 2010 DUI arrest in Sacramento essentially forced him to admit what had long been suspected by many.

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2. Thank you, bubble: We're moving on to next stage of life

   Nothing like a real estate bubble to motivate a homeowner to finally clean the garage.

3. Hakimi moves down the road (but not far)

   Ahron Hakimi's first splash into the pond of transportation policy leadership barely made a ripple.

4. Who's more patriotic? We must know

   Could Luis Alejo be any less qualified to serve in the California Assembly? He has been observed in a distracted state during the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Clearly he does not love his country. Perhaps his allegiance is somewhere else -- given over to some insidious one-world government plot, for example.
5. 

   Undoing my phantom shopping spree

   We interrupt our coverage of the predatory practices of greedy U.S. banks and financial institutions to bring you this update: Those companies aren't just looking out for themselves. They're looking out for us, too. They have to, because when it comes to credit card fraud -- a $190 billion-a-year problem for U.S. banks -- we're all in the same boat.

6. Bakersfield's tourist potential gets an airing on Californian Radio Tuesday

   David Lyman, manager of the Bakersfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, was a tad annoyed by Robert Price's April 1 column comparing two prominent U.S. music cities.
7. 

   ROBERT PRICE: We can learn a lot from Nashville

   Bakersfield has been comparing itself to Nashville for years -- and vice versa to a lesser extent. The connection, of course, is music -- the country music industry, certainly, but more so the role of each city as the incubator of a distinctive expression of American culture.
9. 

   Need a job? This one is pretty tough

   You may have heard the commercial for Fresno Pacific University that's been airing on Bakersfield radio: Consider a career in teaching, the ad suggests, because the baby boomers who've been in classrooms for the past three or four decades are getting ready to vacate.
10. 

    Finally, sex-ed may embrace state standards

    After decades at or near the top of the state's teen birth rankings, might Kern County finally be instituting some positive changes? That's quite a leap to make based on word that the Kern High School District is in the preliminary stages of aligning its sex education curriculum more closely with state guidelines. But the KHSD, as much as any other single source of information to local teens, is unquestionably in a position to effect positive change. Whether the district seizes that opportunity will be something that's worth watching over the next few months.
11. 

    We're all news producers these days

    The sad, alarming video of the American Airlines flight attendant having an apparent mental-health breakdown just as her Dallas-to-Chicago flight was about to take off Friday was striking to me for more than one reason.
12. 

    Robert Price: Pornography and the pastor it ensnared

    Had the issue been debilitating alcohol dependency, would the Rev. Dave Champness of Bakersfield's RiverLakes mega-church have felt compelled to resign, as he did in a stunning announcement from the pulpit a few weeks ago?

13. March shaping up as Red Simpson Month

    For a musician who has written enough songs to stuff a suitcase -- which, in his heyday, he famously filled with regularity -- all too little has been written about Red Simpson outside his hometown.

14. Next on 'Californian Radio': Treatment of addiction

    Editorial Page Editor Robert Price is the host on Tuesday's edition of "Californian Radio."