A NOT- SO-MAHER-VELOUS STATE

WAKING UP THE DEAD

Californians are beginning to reap what they have sown with one-party control, and even members of the narcissistic, self-important celebrity crowd are sitting up and taking notice.

Bill Maher, host of the HBO talk show “Real Time,” made it a point to complain about things with U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, who was his guest on a recent show. While Schiff has little control over issues local to Maher’s home, he was a convenient target.

The host said he just need to “b---- a little bit.”

“There is an exodus,” Maher said. “California businesses are leaving the state in droves. In just 2018 and 19, which were economic boom years, 765 commercial facilities left. Thirteen thousand businesses left between 2009 and 2016. Look, I came out here in 1983, I found paradise. I love California. I do. I don’t want to leave. But I feel like I’m living in Italy in the ’ 70s or something, super high taxes, potholes in the road. I don’t know what I’m getting for my super high taxes. And I do — and this talk of exodus, I tell you, people talk about this a lot now, and people are leaving.”

Schiff, as clueless as he was in leading impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump late last year, didn’t bother to analyze the Democrat-led problems that led to the exodus. He just peddled a pablum answer, saying officials should “make every effort to make it a more business-friendly state” and that the state could be both “progressive” and a “place where businesses survive and thrive.”

COMING FOR AUNTIE MAXINE

Volatile U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, represents a Los Angeles district — the state’s 43rd — that is plagued by poverty and crime, but she’s not around it.

She lives in a different district — yes, you can legally do that — in a multimillion-dollar mansion, and her opponent in this year’s election has made a point of telling her constituents.

Challenger Joe E. Collins III, a U.S. Navy veteran, has made a fundraising video of himself in front of what he says is her “$6 million mansion,” and he tells voters that he lives in the district while she does not.

Since Waters spews the hate for President Donald Trump that is expected from Californians (even once calling for people to visit physical violence on him), and brings home the bacon, she is not likely to lose.

But her mansion certainly provides a perfect example of her good standing in the Democrats’ do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do party.

NOT QUITE HOME FREE

North Carolina Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Cal Cunningham served only one term in that state’s Senate (20012003), but he was there long enough to cast a vote to remedy a situation he soon could find himself in. But the law didn’t pass.

The married candidate, who admitted to a recent affair with a California army wife and public relations professional, voted to end the state’s homewrecker law, which allows the wronged spouse to sue the third-party paramour for “alienation of affection” and “criminal conversation.” The bill, which enjoyed near unanimous support from Democrats, passed the state House but failed in the Senate.

Now, Cunningham’s wife, Elizabeth, potentially could sue the other woman, Arlene Guzman Todd, and any other women who may come forward.

Recent such cases in the state have seen one man win a $750,000 judgment against his now ex-wife’s lover and another man have to pay $8.8 million to the husband of a woman with whom he was having an affair.

Cunningham has said he has no plans to end his campaign.

IT’S COME TO THIS

A middle school teacher in a virtual Tacoma classroom should be fired after what he did, but the parent of a child who was wronged by his actions said she doesn’t want anyone dismissed but hopes it will be a teachable moment for the educator.

The assignment by P.G. Keithly teacher Brendan Stanton, in his “question of the day,” simply asked his sixth-grade students to write: “Who is one person you admire and why?”

The boy wrote: “I admire Donald J. Trump because he is making America great again. And because he is the best president the United States of America could ever, ever have. And he built the wall so terrorists couldn’t come into in the U.S. Trump is the best person in the world. And that’s why I admire him.”

However, at reading what the boy wrote, the teacher became incensed, “almost immediately kicked the student out of the chatroom, deleted the chat, and proceeded to attack the president, while calling out the student for mentioning him,” according to a KTTH report.

The boy’s mother, Elsy Kusander, used her cellphone to film some of the response.

The teacher has not returned to the school, and the district said he has received death threats. It did not say when or if he would return but said “all parties are cooperating to reach a solution.”

Kusander said, though, the teacher has “admitted he was wrong.”