High-Tech Lynching of Dave Duringer in Morro Bay

My neck hurts. While I am of course grateful to Clarence Thomas for his leadership on the Court, especially his recent opinion in NYSRPA v Bruen, I most appreciate his role in proving that high-tech lynchings are survivable.

My own lynching was supposedly in response to my holding up a piece of plastic at a public forum. You can watch me do that in the thirty second excerpt at left, entitled “Duringer Holds Up Piece of Plastic in Public.” Exciting, huh?

If you are not squeamish, you may want to view the public hanging itself in the other excerpt at left. The executioners were meekly voiced 74-year-old Linda Winters, and not-so-meekly voiced Timothy Crowley. They spoke for about a couple minutes each at the recent Morro Bay City Council meeting on October 11, 2022. I encourage you to watch the entire excerpt as both of these speakers gave masterful performances. I’m guessing they both have acting experience. I arrived at the same time as Mr. Crowley and when he saw me he smiled and blurted: “It’s the star of the show!” I had been tipped off by our Chief of Police, who encouraged me to attend, that my actions might be brought up at the meeting, as “several” city residents had complained and city staff was all abuzz about the incident. These residents had apparently enquired why there was no security at the event, and wanted security at future public events. Later in the meeting, the Mayor brought the issue up and the Chief responded that no one ever requested security.

(You can watch the entire League of Women Voters forum, and the entire city council meeting, in the YouTube videos at left.)

Who are these people?

I’m looking them up on search engines live as I write this; laughing out loud as I discover that Crowley is indeed, as predicted in the previous paragraph, an actor. At least it appears so unless there is another Tim Crowley of Morro Bay, who acted in a production of “It’s a Wonderful Life” in Cambria in 2015. I don’t know much else about Crowley. He occasionally appears at City Council meetings. In 2017, he appeared at Council to state his support for locating the new Waste Reclamation Facility (WRF) at a site east of Highway 1. (This is a situs option many consider selected at the behest of low-income housing developers, whom I repeatedly opposed at the forum; I have no clue what Crowley’s connection with the issue is, but he did speak on it.) He also occasionally writes letters to the editor of the SLO Tribune. This one from 2016 is hilarious and a little scary; in it he states he is “proud that the vast majority of citizens in my state, my county and my city were not swayed by the fear, anger and divisiveness that have consumed nearly half the country” (so if only half the country is divisive, does that mean we are divided in three?), and then very divisively proceeds in the next paragraph to say he hopes Trump is either humbled as President, or “that the lies, hatred and venom that he has spewed for nearly two years will consume the party that has inflicted him upon us all.” He called me a “real life Trump chump” in his speech and he is obviously left of center, which is fine with me (I prefer people who express strong opinions over people who don’t have opinions or pretend not to have them), but he seems to have plenty of the “fear, anger and divisiveness” he accuses the other side of having. Was Crowley paid by developers or another candidate to destroy me with this acting gig, using his professional talent? Or did he just enjoy doing this to me? I have no idea. But apparently he put a lot of effort into it as the performance was superb. Yes, great actor but the script was horrible: “I took notes, he said something about only getting a yard sign if you took firearm training, and I laughed outloud, and then the room inhaled.” [While I am sure everyone was inhaling quite a bit, video shows only a couple of people gasped audibly.] “And I looked up and he was putting a gun down on the table.” [So was he upset by the two idiots that gasped, or by my placing what he calls a “gun” on the table?] “He said it was fake, but I don’t know that, you don’t know that, nobody checked.” [Actually his favorite rag SLO Trib called me to ask whether it was fake or real, saying they had received calls and emails; as always, I told her I don’t do interviews with SLO Trib; the video is available plus she said she was there at the event, so if she cannot answer that question for herself she is worse at reporting than Crowley is at writing his own script. Don’t leftists always like to say that guns should be banned because they are DESIGNED to kill people? Well as I clearly state in the video, it’s a “red gun, a hunk of plastic” that is DESIGNED to be used legally in public places because most reasonable people would not be frightened by a colored piece of plastic. Actually, the smarter ones would realize that a criminal could always paint a real firearm any color they choose, but they also would realize that the most important factor in assessing risk is demeanor, and there was absolutely nothing threatening about my demeanor in talking about using the red gun to train people on their porches and driveways. I could be holding up a ballpoint pen and Crowley might be wondering if it’s really an illegal pen gun (even though I’d just told him it’s a pen, not a pen gun) but no one else in the room would be wondering that! No reasonable person could have been afraid of this red gun as it was obviously fake, and was not used in a threatening way. If anyone experienced momentary fear, it was because of the couple of idiots that gasped, which was tantamount to yelling fire in a crowded theater. Not a single person came up to me afterward and told me they were placed in fear.] “Duringer is a lawyer, and he probably figures he can get away with what he did.” [Basically, he admits there is no violation; was he talking with someone about this?] “And I don’t know if he has a license to carry a concealed weapon in this town. But I do know after that stunt he pulled last week if he does he shouldn’t.” [Again, was he talking with someone? This comment itself might be considered a threat.]

And who is Linda Winters? No, I don’t see any acting history (that whimper at the end, though — masterful). But she does admit to attending ALL of the City Council meetings. In a July 2020 letter to Planning Commission she calls herself “Mobile Home Linda” and claims to “have been speaking up on behalf the residents of all the Mobile Home Parks here in Morro Bay for 26 years.” Further, she states: “We can afford to stay here because we are protected by Morro Bay’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance #499 (RSO #499).” Well coincidentally, the most positive feedback I got from the event was on my clear, unambiguous opposition (as a landlord and former eviction attorney) to that same exact ordinance, and all other forms of rent control. That is what caused Linda Winters to experience the “stark terror” she says caused her to think she was going to have a heart attack, fear such as she had never experienced in her 74 years. It was not my hunk of plastic that placed her in fear, but the prospect of losing her special rent deal to a more deserving and harder-working family. She should be more afraid of garbage trucks and abstain from wearing dark clothing especially while sitting on curbs. Absolute trailer trash. And I say that as someone that respects the hard working people who live in trailer parks, most of whom have fine character, NOT to be confused with the trailer trash lurking there. The respectable residents know that voting for socialism is no different than using a gun to rob a bank. But I will never look at trailer parks the same way again, after hearing her corrosive speech.

I love Morro Bay, but it needs to know what a red gun is. And it needs to be more afraid of plastic politicians than plastic guns.

Otherwise, Biden may succeed with his plan for the Morro Bay Power Plant.