California


schwarzenegger Sends A Love Letter to bush, reid and pelosi

schwarzenegger’s veto of legislation that would have allowed Californians an opportunity to vote on withdrawing the troops from Iraq is exactly wrong :

“There is no louder message Californians can send to Washington on the Iraq war than who should lead our nation,” he wrote. “Placing a non-binding resolution on Iraq on the same ballot, when it carries no weight or authority, would only further divide voters and shift attention from other critical issues that must be addressed.”

Excuse me but what issues can possibly be more important than Iraq?
As for messages about who should lead the nation, what bs. It should be pretty clear to one and all that the supposed end the Iraq debacle message of the last congressional election has been ignored by the republicrats.

A somewhat louder message might be a few million Californians (along with the rest of us) getting out on the street and tossing these folks out of office. Yes, including the governator.


Enron Tapes

Ever wondered what was going on inside Enron during the California blackouts? Here is part of the answer:

“He just f—s California,” says one Enron employee. “He steals money from California to the tune of about a million.”
“Will you rephrase that?” asks a second employee.
“OK, he, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day,” replies the first.

There is a lot more so go read the rest.
Now that you have read the rest do you really think that the Justice Department and Enron lawyers didn’t want the tapes released because of the foul language?
Via Making Light.


California Governing

It is too early to tell how the second approach will play out but it is pretty clear that the first failed:
1) Gray Davis:

�In golf, they teach you to hit one shot — and you don’t think about anything but that shot. And then you go to the next shot, and hit that shot�My natural reaction is caution. I take life a step at a time.�

2) Arnold Schwarzegger:

Everything falls into place if you look at the overall picture. If you just piecemeal it, you just look at one at a time really close and you don�t look at the other things, with blinders on, that�s when you start making mistakes and start scrambling. And you don�t want to scramble.�

I certainly prefer the latter approach.
Via Daniel Weintraub.


A thought for today

The size of this country never ceases to amaze me. I know that many on the West coast were not as deeply affected by 9/11 as those of us here in East coast by virtue simply of proximity. It now amazes me how little it seems to weigh in here on the East coast that Southern California is going up in flames.

From The Kitchen Cabinet.
Update: Hanah’s answer:

The western United States has burned down once a year since I started paying attention to the news. They’ve used up their sympathy on forest wildfires, and now that it’s threatening large numbers of people, we’re innured to it.