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Friday, Jul. 30, 2010

Loose Lips: Councilman fancies himself a Mafia hit man

Gun-toting Atwater City Councilman Nelson Crabb, aka the Dapper Packer, seems to have found a new way to get at his inner killer.

In a previous Lips, we wrote about Crabb's penchant for gore. He'd sent bloody photos of shot-up criminals to city officials.

Now the former cop's alter ego on his Facebook page is playing "Mafia Wars." (You can play a variety of games on the social networking site.) That isn't exactly what you might expect from a law-and-order man.

In the game Nelson is a "cold-blooded killer" and has committed just about every bad and nefarious act you can imagine. He's "iced" people (his body count stands at 1,159), he's helped extort a corrupt judge and he's become a master burglar. If that's not enough, in Crabb's imaginary world he's opened up a chop shop.

And they say video games are corrupting the kids.

Not in Crabb's case.

Cardoza on a rampage

If Congressman Dennis Cardoza was a Viking, not a lawmaker, he might be bludgeoning heads with a sword instead of using words.

Just this week Cardoza has been whacking, rhetorically, the Obama Administration's man in charge of dealing with the foreclosure crisis.

"Cardoza, whose district has been hard-hit by the housing crisis, said he wanted to cause Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan 'a little personal pain' by gutting his travel budget," noted The Hill newspaper.

Cardoza thinks Donovan, whose resignation Cardoza has called for, is doing a lousy job in stemming the Valley's foreclosure rates. Now Cardoza has backed an effort to stop Donovan from gallivanting around the globe to places like Rio de Janeiro while people lose their homes.

Donovan has been fighting back, saying Cardoza has been inflating the numbers when it comes to foreclosures in his district.

Obviously, Cardoza disagrees.

He's not using a battle axe, but it does appear Cardoza is causing Donovan some pain, even if it's only in his eardrums.

Business as usual?

When the business community won't endorse a Republican candidate for the state's 17th assembly district, you know it's time to throw in the towel.

So when news reached us that the Greater Merced Chamber of Commerce gave Cathleen Galgiani its backing instead of Jack Mobley, her opponent, we took notice.

"That's their call," said Mobley. "I think that I'm probably the stronger pro-business candidate."

At least there's another chamber in Merced -- Mobley sits on its board. Maybe when the Merced County Chamber votes to endorse someone he'll have a better chance.

Bunkering down

Mike Berryhill, Congressman Cardoza's Republican opponent for the 18th district, seems to have gone missing.

At least that's what it looks like from his campaign website. Lips can't find all the press releases they send out attacking Democrats and their "red" agenda.

When we called Berryhill's spokesman, we were told that new missives are still being shot into cyberspace weekly. Bombs Away Berryhill's website is just undergoing some work.

Lips doesn't know if Berryhill is working on the website from his bunker or another undisclosed location. But we do wonder what else happens underneath the rich soil of Ceres. Maybe Berryhill is communing with his crops -- or maybe he's waiting to hear the thump of a mama grizzly bear coming to save his campaign.

Don't count on it. The Sarah Palin train already got what it needed from Stanislaus County. Oh, and last time we checked, the grizzly bear was extinct in this state.