No matter if it's Caracas, Havana, Washington or Petaluma, once an activist group uses the democratic process to sieze power, they abandon all semblance of the democratic process in their zeal to ram their policies down everyone's throats. These gimlet-eyed Utopians are bound and determined to do what's best for all of us no matter who it harms. Seems that our compassionate, sensitive, and oh-so-very-concerned Progressive friends are no different. Best to remember that Lenin, Trotsky, Castro and Hugo Chavez were ushered into power as "progressives."

It's that time of year where traffic on 101 south directly adjacent to the annual Pumpkin Patch slows to a crawl so that drivers view the hubbub around the hay bale hill, and the corn maze which I understand is now haunted by more than just the ghosts of folks with a poor sense of direction.