Wonderful evening, to cap off what was otherwise a bleak and depressing day: a salon of bloggery, hosted by Mr. Armed Liberal, at Ocean Seafood in Chinatown. No fisticuffs, a little politics, some gossip, and a lot of dim sum.

I got to Chinatown from Sherman Oaks using "high speed" public transportation, a novelty in the city of Los Angeles, which extended what would normally be a half-hour to forty-five minute drive into an hour-and-ten minute commute. The Valley leg was spent on the brand-spanking-new Orange Line, a dedicated bus line that they're still working out the kinks. Last week a septuagenarian driver, allegedly talking on a cell phone, ran a couple of red lights and collided with an oncoming bus, injuring about a dozen people, and as a result the buses have to travel at ridiculously slow speeds at intersections until the locals can figure out the rudimentary elements of defensive driving.

More time gets wasted transfering to the subway (Red Line) and train (Gold Line) legs of the trip. Since the beginning of each line is also the end of the other, it would seem logical that the transit system would have it timed so that you could disembark from one and embark on the other within minutes, but that would require a level of competence heretofore not found in local government. At each stop, I waited a minimum of ten minutes for the next train to leave the station, reducing whatever time-saving benefits that would accrue if I were to use the system during rush hour.

In short, the MetroRail is going to have to elevate its game if it is going to achieve its goal of getting significant numbers of commuters out of their cars and off the freeways. Until then, the people who are going to use this system will be either residents who don't own cars, those who have time on their hands, or those who, like myself, would rather do the sudoku puzzle in the morning than sit in traffic for an hour.

Just as it would be foolish to dismiss the future electoral prospects of Ahnold Ziffel in light of the last Tuesday's electoral debacle, so too would it be a mistake to draw too many comparisons with the comeback made by his ally and advisor, Pete Wilson, a dozen years earlier. In 1993, Wilson was:

1) an even more unpopular Governor; and
2) trailed the likely Democratic nominee, the State Treasurer (Kathleen Brown), by a significant margin.

Wilson, of course, came back the following year and won a landslide over Brown, who, besides being a scion of California's great political dynasty, was also a well-known public figure in her own right.

The big difference, however, is that Wilson had no career outside of politics. As such, he was pretty much defined by whether he could win public office, and once successful at that, whether he could win reelection. Other than his adoption of xenophobia as an electoral ideology, it would be hard to state what he stood for.

Ahnold, of course, has a life that doesn't revolve around winning the next election. He can always go back to Hollywood if things don't work out in Sacramento, or smoke cigars at his restaurant in Venice. He ran as a "reformer", and staked much of his political capital on the recent initiatives that the voters decisively defeated. With the defeat of Proposition 77, which sought to re-reapportion the districts legislators run in, the Democrats will continue to maintain their large majorities in both houses. California will remain a state of the deepest Blue variety until at least 2012.

He must now realize that even if he wins reelection next year, he will be little more than a figurehead, no different than the governor of Texas, with the ability only to veto and to occasionally make speeches. The agenda will be set by the Democrats in the state legislature, no matter how decisively he wins his own election next November. He knows that, and I suspect that's not why he got into politics.

I predict he won't run in 2006.

Thought for the day:

California!
On our rugged eastern foothills
Stands our symbol, clear and bold.
"Big C" means to fight and strive
And win for Blue and Gold.
Golden Bear is ever watching.
Day by day he prowls.
And when he hears the tread of lowly
Stanford Trojan Red
From his lair he fiercely growls!

This evening, the lamentations gloating of BFT and Kevin Drum shall permeate the nightime....

UPDATE: U.S.C. 35, CAL 10: Never talk smack about an opponent when your QB's last name rhymes with "A Boob"....

Post-YBK: Here's one group that is profiting from the changeover to the new law almost as much as bankruptcy lawyers (and more so than even the credit card companies): corporate debt collectors. They buy delinquent accounts from the original lender, combine tough talk with amenable compromise, and make a profit from collecting not the entire amount due, but enough to cover their original investment. The most successful of the corporate "repo-men", Portfolio Recovery Associates, collects more than three dollars for every dollar it spends purchasing bad debt. Sweet gig, is that....

In fifteen words or less, can someone explain why I should care about this? Or rather, can someone do so without using the canard that spending money is somehow tantamount to the expression of "free speech"? Speech is speech, bribes are bribes "campaign contributions" are "campaign contributions", and never the twain shall meet.

Mark Steyn is one of the few writers who can make you sympathetic to the goals and aspirations of Al Qaeda, even after a horrific day like yesterday. You may dislike the fact that Osama sends terrorists into our country, flies planes into the Pentagon and WTC, casually murders innocent bystanders, pursues a radical fundamentalism that would make even some Red Staters cringe, and taunts our hapless government and our ineffectual leaders from his cave, but after Steyn lets loose with one of his bigoted, xenophobic rants against the A-Rabs and the French, you understand that maybe the Wassabists, in their twisted, perverted way, have a point. When the choice is between someone who desires, subconsciously or not, the extermination of all Muslims, and someone who may kill a few thousand every decade in wanton acts of futile terror, I'll go with the latter. They're both awful, but sometimes it just makes more sense to go with Stalin when the alternative is Hitler.

Juan Cole, who actually thinks for a living (Go Blue !!), flushes the Canadian Kleagle back down his hole with this post, about this week's uprising in France.

As of midnight, all eight initiatives are losing in California, although two of the measures are still too close to call. That would be Prop. 73 (mandating parental notification for minors before abortion) and 75 (prohibiting the expenditure of public employee union dues without prior consent of member). I voted against both, as well all of the various Schwarzenegger referenda save the redistricting measure (Prop. 77, which is losing decisively). The most important proposal, Prop. 76, which would impose a spending cap on the budget, is getting whomped, as are the two progressive-backed measures (limiting pharmaceutical costs and re-regulating electricity).

With half the vote counted, but almost all of Los Angeles County still to be heard from, it's going to be a very bad morning for Ahnolt Ziffel. He came into office two years ago as a "reformer" who claimed to stand above politics, but now the people have rejected his proposals, in an off-year special election that he called, and which was timed to reduce the turnout of those most likely to oppose him. Even if he wins reelection, he goes into 2006 knowing that is certain that an overwhelmingly liberal, Democratic legislature will also be elected means he would spend the next four years as a figurehead.

The magic is gone. Don't be surprised if Variety publishes a production listing for the shooting of Terminator 4 in 2007.

UPDATE: As of 1 a.m., Prop. 75 is pretty much done, trailing by 5%, with about half of L.A. County and a quarter of Alameda County (two of the biggest liberal counties in the state) to be counted. Prop. 73 is hanging in there; it is perhaps the only initiative that hasn't lost significant ground since the absentee ballots were counted, but it's still going to lose after all the ballots are counted. Good night.

Doesn't plagiarism usually entail the unauthorized passing off of another's work as one's own for pecuniary or material benefit? In this case, if the blogger in question gives its usage the old retroactive thumbs-up, how is it different than Ronald Reagan or JFK taking credit for the oratorical creations of Peggy Noonan or Ted Sorensen, respectively? Or, more to the point, the retelling of a joke one hears from a third party? Bloggers, like speechwriters, are crafting their work for a larger audience, and not only expect that our ideas are going to get ripped off by others higher up the food chain, we need that to happen to feel like we're making a difference.

The Bill Bidwill of Politics:

Bush isn’t going to make a comeback. He’s fallen and he can’t get up.

A comeback presupposes substance and ability. A worthy character who has suffered some setbacks, bad luck or simple human mistakes can make a comeback because he has it in him. Tom Brady of the New England Patriots, Michael Jordan, the Boston Red Sox can mount comebacks. The Arizona Cardinals are not making a comeback this season. They don’t have the team and the ability to straighten out what has gone wrong. They will continue to lose until the end of the season.

George Bush is the Arizona Cardinals. His team is terrible and he refuses to change any of his players. He doesn’t have the personality suited for making necessary changes. Quickly adjusting to changing circumstances is not his forte, stubbornness is. Even if he had the inclination to make a change, he doesn’t have the ability. He simply doesn’t know what the hell he is doing.

(snip)

He is lazy, uninterested and incompetent. He views the presidency as homework. He seems to enjoy politics (at least while he’s up), but he doesn’t enjoy policy. He is detached from decision making and his decision makers have led him dangerously astray. Finally and most importantly, he doesn’t care to get it right.

George W. Bush will never put in the long hours to make sure we have the right policy in Iraq, in the war on terror, in the budget or anything else that concerns actual governing. He finds these things to be tedious. In reality, they are essential to the job of being President. He is overmatched.

And when you’re overmatched, you don’t put together second half comebacks. You get crushed.

--Cenk Uygur, HuffPost

An election-eve poll (from an outfit called "Survey-USA"), shows each of the four Schwarzenegger-backed initiatives going down to defeat, albeit by narrower margins than in other polls. Since earlier versions of the same poll had the measures comfortably ahead, the trend ain't good for the Governor. Proposition 73, which will mandate parental notification before a teen can obtain an abortion, has a slight lead. [link via Daily Kos]

Marc Cooper hits the right notes in urging a Yes vote on one of the Schwarzenegger initiatives: Proposition 77, which will transfer the power to draw legislative and Congressional districts from the State Legislature to a panel of retired judges. It is a flawed plan: retired judges tend to skew conservative in California, which has mainly had Republican governors for the past twenty years; and the suggested guidelines under the proposed law could make it easier to limit the influence of urban residents by squeezing them into "compact" districts.

But it beats the status quo. The current lines were redrawn in 2001 with the intention of protecting incumbents of both parties (the large Democratic majorities in both houses of the State Legislature and in the Congressional delegation were inherited from the previous lines, which were also drawn by a judicial panel), with two underlying goals: defend the seat held by Democrat Gary Condit (remember him?); and save Representative Howard Berman from a primary challenge by a Latino opponent. The net result was a one-seat pick-up for the party in 2002, while the partisan margin in both state houses was essentially unchanged.

Berman has been a terrific Congressman, and I certainly do not wish him any misfortune in his future political career, but the result has been a disaster for the Party. In the 2004 election, Barbara Boxer, arguably the most liberal member of the Senate, won reelection by 20 percentage points, over a moderate-conservative Republican who had won several previous statewide elections. In terms of vote count, it may well have been the largest margin of victory in any contested Federal statewide election in American history. And as I've mentioned before, she lost by very small margins in the districts of two Republican congressmen of note, Duke Cunningham and Christopher Cox. John Kerry, of course, kicked the President's ass here as well, winning by ten points.

Any fairly-drawn set of districts that are designed to produce competitive races should be able to give Democrats at least 3-4 more Representatives. Of course, in a year when the Republican tide is running strong in this state, it will also benefit that party as well. Those should be the breaks in a democracy.

UPDATE [9/7]: Kash (of Angry Bear) and Kos also support 77, while Prof. Kleiman is an emphatic no. Kevin Drum is also opposed, but is not unsympathetic to the reformist argument. Of all the reasons to vote against Prop. 77, the possibility that it will create "compact" districts that will favor Republicans (besides being untrue in California, which has become a decidedly lopsided Blue State in the past fifteen years) is the least persuasive. Partisan gerrymandering should be no more acceptable if it's done to benefit Democrats then when it's done in states like Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas to benefit the GOP. And personally, I don't give a flying santorum if California's Democratic incumbents actually have to campaign in competitive districts in 2006, or even have to figure how to appeal to suburban and exurban voters in the O.C. and San Berdoo to win a swing district. This is a democracy, not the freaking Politburo.

Nothing turns me on more than the use of the term "patriarchy" by an older woman...Pandagon gives great ad for Abercrombie & Fitch. FWIW, I like the "Freshman 15" t-shirt !!!

Hasta la vista, maybe? With less than five days to go, Ahnold's "reform package" in the special election the taxpayers are spending millions on is apparently stiffing across the board. The Field Poll, which has had the best local rep in California for accurately predicting election outcomes, has every initiative trailing, including the one's (such as the requirement for parental notification before teenage girls can have abortions, and two different prescription drug measures) that are only piggy-backing on the Governor's slate, while the latest LA Times poll shows only the parental notification initiative passing, albeit by a slight amount. Both Field and the Times show Ahnold Ziffel losing head-to-head match-ups with his likely Democratic opponents in next year's election, an amazing result considering no one has ever heard of the guys.

Moreover, it appears that the biggest difficulty these measures are having is their association with the Governor. Another set of polls conducted last month had the same initiatives passing overwhelmingly, after respondents were read a brief (albeit misleading) summary. As soon as the propositions get tied to their sponsor, though, the voters seem to recoil like children from a bowl of leftover brussel sprouts. In fact, Schwarzenegger has not only been the kiss of death for his own proposals, he's also killing off the initiatives he has nothing to do with, including the two diametrically opposite propositions dealing with prescription drug reforms (one sponsored by Big Pharma, the other by consumer groups), as well as the parental notification initiative.

If things stand, not an auspicious start to his reelection campaign....

A lot of people talk about a constitutional right of privacy, but no one seems to want to do anything about it. Until now. So what would an amendment contain?

This article is rather typical of the "analysis" we're hearing in the debate over Alito's prospects in the Senate, so I think it bears repeating that whether the Democrats can successfully block the nomination has absolutely nothing to do with whether Mike DeWine or Lindsay Graham, or for that matter, any Republican member of the "Gang of 14" decides to support a filibuster. If this proves to be a particularly unpopular nominee (as polls from Gallup and ABC-Washington Post already are beginning to show), there will be plenty of other Republicans in the Senate who will be more than happy, when push comes to shove, to defend the prerogatives of the Senate.

The key is whether Harry Reid can keep 41 members of his caucus on the reservation. Then, if Bill Frist (or whoever the Majority Leader will be next January) wishes to invoke the Nuclear Option, we'll see how much support the President, who's approval rating is now hovering in the area Nixon's was at the time of the Saturday Night Massacre, has within his own caucus. If he has the votes, Alito will be confirmed, but the death of the filibuster will be at hand, and a longstanding progressive goal will be accomplished. If he doesn't have the votes, no one will care which side DeWine or Graham falls on.

UPDATE [9/7]: Rick Hertzberg comes to much the same conclusion about why an attempted filibuster may be worthwhile even if the Nuclear Option is imposed, but with bigger, fancier words, in the New Yorker.

Since I read this post on Saturday, I have been searching for something, anything, to write in response. Words just aren't adequate to describe the debt bloggers in Southern California owe to Cathy Seipp; she has been one of the prime movers (infiltrators?) within traditional media to open that institution up to bloggers, and the frequent seminars/parties/wine swigs that the LA Press Club hosts under her auspices (as well as Amy Alkon and Emmanuelle Richard) have enabled bloggers to network with those who write for a living, and vice versa. Everytime someone like myself, or Brady Westwater, or "Patterico", gets a piece published in the Sunday opinion section of the LA Times, it is the subtle influence of Ms. Seipp at work, playing a role behind the scenes to open up the Fourth Estate to freelancers, bloggers, and other miscreants throughout the Greater Los Angeles-Long Beach-Orange County metropolitan area.

She is loyal to her friends (and, as evidenced by the rollicking comments section to one of her typical blogposts, no collection of friends was ever so wildly divergent on the political spectrum as hers), a devoted mother to "Cecile", who has inherited her mother's literary gene, and is also wicked funny, both in print and in person. There aren't many websites that have this humble endeavor on its blogroll, much less websites whose politics are as politically dissimilar to mine as Cathy's World. But there is no website on which I'm prouder to be linked.

Cat Fight !! James Wolcott, on David Corn deciding to sully his good name by associating with conservatives:

...I don't understand why someone as politically keen as The Nation's David Corn would lend his name to the editorial board of Pajamas Media, the greatest assembly of conservative deadbeats since Jonah Goldberg's last fondue party. What an illustrious roster of ideological utensils make up Pajamas' masthead: Michael Barone...John Podhoretz...Tim Blair...and this inveterate stirpot, whose presence all decent men and women should shun until proper disinfectant can be found. By allowing his name to be slated on the editorial board, Corn is letting himself be used as a figleaf enabling Pajamas to pretend that it's a bipartisan effort instead of what it so flagrantly is, a neocon popstand.

David Corn, in response:

...I look forward to a new Internet enterprise that seeks to promote varying views, even if the idea came from conservatives. And if James Wolcott, whose work I admire and respect, can bring himself to be associated with a magazine (which I admire and respect) that makes mucho bucks by placing Paris Hilton's jugs in front of our mugs, perhaps I can see if being associated with rightwingers will benefit this blog, my work, and my readers. If not, I'll be happy to chuck it all for a column at Vanity Fair. James, thanks for the vote of confidence.

I'm on Corn's side on this issue. The whole notion that one should not associate with, befriend, or do business with people you disagree is offensive to me. Liberals should not fear engaging the enemy with civility.

You can't win them all? This seems to have pissed off Chris Matthews for its alleged anti-Italian undertones, but reading this, together with Alito's bizarre dissent cited below gives me the feeling that the new nominee may combine the moderation of Antonin Scalia with the cluelessness of Harriet Miers:

Federal law enforcement agencies sustained a major rebuff in their anti-mafia campaign with the August 1988 acquittal of all 20 defendants accused of making up the entire membership of the Lucchese family in the New Jersey suburbs of New York. The verdict ended what was believed to be the nation’s longest federal criminal trial and according to the Chicago Tribune, dealt the government a “stunning defeat.” Samuel Alito, the US Attorney on the case, said, “Obviously we are disappointed but you realize you can’t win them all.” Alito also said he had no regrets about the prosecution but in the future would try to keep cases “as short and simple as possible.” Alito continued, “I certainly don’t feel embarrassed and I don’t think we should feel embarrassed.” (emphasis added)

Jeez, why not nominate Marcia Clark next time? [link via TownHall]

More on Scalito: John Cole threatens to hold his breath if the opposition to the nominee gets too vehement:

If I hear one more person state that Alito is in favor of strip searching 12 year olds, or in favor requiring women to notify their husbands if they intend to have an abortion, or in favor of racial discrimination, or whatever, I am going to blow a gasket.

I don't know of anyone who has stated that Alito favors "strip searching 12 year olds" (actually, the referenced case involved the strip-search of a ten-year old girl), or "requiring women to notify their husbands if they intend to have an abortion", or "racial discrimination, or whatever"*. The problem with Bush's latest sacrifical lamb to the high court is that he supports a legal process that permits the strip-searching of children, that forces women to notify their husband before terminating a pregnancy, and that makes fighting racial discrimination harder for our society. Liberals should have no hesitancy in opposing that sort of judicial activism.

*"whatever", although undefined by Mr. Cole, may well be in reference to his eloquent dissent in Riley v. Taylor (3rd Cir.2001) 277 F.3d 261, in which he drew an analogy between a prosecutor excluding black jurors during voir dire in a death penalty case that involved a black defendant, and the election of left-handed Presidents:

According to the majority, however, the "sophisticated analysis of a statistician" is not
needed to interpret the significance of these statistics. "An amateur with a pocket calculator," the majority writes, can calculate that "there is little chance of randomly selecting four consecutive all white juries."

(snip)

The dangers in the majority's approach can be easily illustrated. Suppose we asked our "amateur with a pocket calculator" whether the American people take right- or left-handedness into account in choosing their Presidents. Although only about 10% of the population is left-handed, left-handers have won five of the last six presidential elections. Our "amateur with a calculator" would conclude that "there is little chance of randomly selecting" left-handers in five out of six presidential elections. But does it follow that the voters cast their ballots based on whether a candidate was right- or left-handed?

Ibid., at 326-7. And thus, we get to the core of the conservative argument against civil rights: preventing blacks from sitting on juries is about as worrisome as electing left-handed Presidents.

Sloppy Seconds: Well, this nomination is going to generate some fun...you can tell what a party of stiff, white men the GOP has become by the fact that they're already trumpeting the fact that Alito is a "son of immigrants" as his principal qualification, rather than defend his odious reactionary views. What should be interesting is not how many Republican Senators vote against the nominee, but how many signal their opposition before the hearings.