Bookworm Room

Tweet It’s tempting to blame it entirely on the California legislature, but that’s not fair.  California voters elected this legislature and this governor.  I’m just in the suffering minority, and one of these days, I’ll end up voting with my feet and taking my taxes with me.  (But it’s really hard to leave the Marin [...]

14 Comments »

Tweet I believe it was Mike who commented that California, knowing itself to be “too big to fail,” is doing whatever the Hell it pleases.  (Or more accurately, the Democrats in state government, elected by feckless voters, are doing whatever the Hell they please.)  Over at Ace of Spades, you can find a perfect rundown [...]

8 Comments »

Tweet Do you remember the old Dean Martin comedy roasts?  The zingers were mean, sometimes mildly risqué, and usually funny.  Don Rickles was the acknowledged master of the genre: The California Assembly has taken the roast to a whole new level.  At a benefit to raise money for programs involving young people and politics (“It’s [...]

3 Comments »

Tweet You guys are all connected to the news, so I know that you already know about the Supreme Court decision forcing California to release up to 46,000 prisoners because of the appalling conditions in California prisons.  As a California resident, I’m less than thrilled about the fact that people who ought to be behind [...]

24 Comments »

Tweet I’m trying to think of something snarky and clever to say, but I’m actually rendered speechless by this one: Taking the lead where Washington has wavered, California on Thursday is expected to adopt the nation’s most ambitious plan yet to curb global warming. The California Air Resources Board is all but certain to vote [...]

16 Comments »

Tweet Laer Pearce is one of the sharpest political observers out there.  He blogged for many years at Cheat-Seeking Missiles, and gathered a loyal following, myself included.  He put the blog on hold, though, to write a full length book about a subject near and dear to his heart — the insanity that is California.  [...]

8 Comments »

Tweet I feel as if I should say something profound, but I don’t really have that much that is profound to say.  I do have a few observations, and then I’ll start compiling a running list of good post-election posts (so check back often): I’ll repeat what I said yesterday:  it irks me when elections [...]

13 Comments »

Tweet I wouldn’t have thought so, but AJ Strata thinks it’s an actual possibility. What’s bizarre to me, a native Californian, is that nobody in California seems to have figured out that California’s golden years coincided with Republican governance and its years of decline coincided with Democrat control of either the assembly or the governorship [...]

11 Comments »

Tweet As it’s being sold, California’s Prop. 21 is meant to gladden the hearts of all who love open space, wildlife, natural beauty, etc. I know I do. Even better, the proposition seems so reasonable: For just $18 per car per year, which is less than most people, even poor people, spend on coffee (or [...]

4 Comments »

Tweet If you’re in California, it’s easy to figure out which people should get your vote:  Fiorina over Boxer, Whitman over Brown (and yes, that’s something of a nose-holder), anyone over Pelosi, etc. It gets much more confusing when you get to the numbered items on the ballot.  Prop. 23 is easy:  Vote for that [...]

2 Comments »

Tweet If you have friends in California, send them this ad before Tuesday.  That’s all you should have to do:

1 Comment »

Tweet UPDATE from Bookworm: Poor Enrico’s. Because its name features prominently on the building, people are assuming it posted the sign. It did not. From Enrico’s facebook page: You may have received an email about a sign that says “FU (spelled out) Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina” asking you to call Enrico’s Restaurant to complain. [...]

10 Comments »

Tweet My friend Sally Zelikovsky says it in the clearest words possible:  Unless conservatives in California vote for the Republicans, we will have a Sacramento government made up entirely of San Francisco Democrats.  If that horrible outcome sounds painfully obvious to you, you don’t know California. There are two dynamics in California that are a [...]

5 Comments »

Tweet Funny, funny David Zucker video challenging Boxer’s arrogance and cavalier approach to American money: Call Me Senator from RightChange on Vimeo. If you’re in California, this year you have a real choice: vote for Carly Fiorina. She’s a true conservative and a dynamic, effective individual. My mom, who can’t quite let the MSM go, [...]

5 Comments »

Tweet I keep meaning to blog about Meg Whitman’s maid, and then I don’t.  Factually, it’s an insanely stupid story, although the lurid headlines in California’s lefty papers may be enough to confuse some independents into abandoning any vague ideas they may have been having about voting for Whitman.  In other words, the story is [...]

5 Comments »

Tweet My friend Laer, who started blogging at Cheat-Seeking Missiles (which is now on hiatus), has created a new website devoted to the insanity that is California.  It is called, appropriately enough Crazifornia, and is part of his ongoing project to document (ultimately, in best-selling book form) what happened in California.  This matters, not just [...]

5 Comments »

Tweet [To keep things clear, unless I explicitly preface a statement by saying "Bob said" or "Bob pointed out," or something similar, the opinions expressed in this post are mine, and reflect my understanding of Bob Stephen's approach to governance, as well as my view about California's myriad problems.] I went to a party last [...]

5 Comments »

Tweet Numbers can lie, but the numbers here are consistent with the same numbers I’ve seen in dozens of other places, and the numbers are consistently drawn directly from government sources. If you want to know one reason why California has gone from the most extraordinary state in the Union (something I vaguely remember from [...]

38 Comments »

Tweet In the movie Wall-E, the little robot had a task, and it did the task, long after the task’s necessity had passed.  Like a funded bureaucrat, Wall-E just kept going and going and going. In California, the Department of Transportation was given a mandate and a task, and now, long after the money has [...]

4 Comments »

Tweet One of the things the last few elections has revealed is escalating voter fraud in America, fraud of the type that aligns us more closely with a banana republic than with a traditional Western nation.  Thus, we know that groups such as ACORN have registered thousands of non-existent people.  And because America has traditionally [...]

2 Comments »

Tweet Bruce Kesler spoke with Tom Campbell directly about Israel, and the responses are more nuanced and less hostile than other reports indicate (see my earlier post, for example).  Please check it out.  The best voter is a fully informed voter.

3 Comments »

Tweet A friend emailed me with a question about an initiative poised for California’s November ballot, called the “Simple Majority” initiative.  I’ll let the Wall Street Journal explain: Two groups are pushing ballot initiatives they say would purge that chaos from Sacramento’s budget process. A bipartisan group, California Forward, is pushing a reform to let [...]

2 Comments »

Tweet One of the things I’ve been watching is the trial attacking Prop. 8 in California.  As you know, in November 2008, California voters, by a solid majority, passed Prop. 8, which states affirmatively that, in California, marriage is between a man and a woman.  Two gay couples sued in federal court, alleging discriminatory intent.  [...]

13 Comments »

Tweet California AB 118 will be going to committee on Monday, January 11, 2010. AB118 would repeal AB 32, CA’s job-killing global warming bill. We need patriots to call their Assemblymember or, if possible, attend this committee hearing in SacTo. You have the right to go up to the microphone and announce your SUPPORT to [...]

No Comments »

Tweet The UC regents voted for a steep increase in tuition.   Some have pointed to the unedifying spectacle of whining middle class students taking to the streets to protest the tuition increase, since they prefer to have California’s working class, most of whom will not attend the school, bear the financial burden.  Although I agree [...]

11 Comments »