Overmy next few posts,in no particular order, will be a bunch of miscellaneous facts or observations from yours truly on various aspects of the state of things in Washington, D.C. today. Unlike some of my ramblings, these will all be short. I’m not sure that this is accurate to say, since this stuff emanates from the seat of the nation’s enormously bloated government, but I’ll say it anyway – Enjoy!

Apparently, Congress will not take up or pass a budget this year. The Budget Act requiring an annual budget was passed in 1974. The House has never failed to produce and pass a budget since then…until this year. The person responsible for producing that budget, Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-SC) famously remarked in 2006 "if you can’t budget, you can’t govern." I guess the Democrat majority can’t govern. Can you say dysfunctional? The so-called Financial Reform Bill has now passed both the House and the Senate. But the versions are quite different from one another,so a conference committee is currently resolving those multiple differences and it will have to pass both chambers again in … Read More

As her campaign re-tools for the general election, GOP Gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman has re-launched her website (check it out) and has launched a new ad…

… Read More

I am fond of telling people that you have to have a minimum amount of money to get your message out. You don’t have to have all the money, but enough. That amount needed has dropped dramatically. As of now pending the results of provisional ballots, Tim Donnelly leads Chris Lancaster by 40 votes in the 59th. Lancaster had the most money, endorsements and mail. He had the most baggage having been recalled for raising taxes in the early 90’s as councilman. Claremont City Councilman Corey Calaycay followed him in the balloting. And Hesperia School Board member Anthony Riley who had the endorsement of the Adams recall committee and much of the San Bernardino political establishment came in fourth. Came in fourth doesn’t quite explain it. Riley was supposed to win in the San Bernardino County portion of the district; there he came if fifth. He did better on the LA side of the hill. (Lancaster came in second … Read More

I’ve been waiting until after the election to post this special little picture I took with my iPhone on May 2 in San Francisco’s Chinatown at a shop on Grant Avenue. The shop had the usual collection of Chinese vases, furniture, silks and artifacts, but I noticed in a corner of the store a whole little section devoted to Chairman Mao and the Chinese Communist party. Being a political junkie, I gravitated to the pile there of "Little Red Books" of Mao’s communist sayings, Mao pins, a couple of Mao statues, propaganda magazines, etc., and, low- and-behold, spotted two stacks of refrigerator magnets with U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama’s picture on them. You can see them in this picture, being marketed right next to the Chairman Mao pins. I wonder if the local Democrats in San Francisco pressured the store owners to give Obama equal time?

… Read More

Sadly I received my last piece of campaign mail today, Wednesday, the day after the polls closed, at my home in Dana Point. It was a Poizner piece mailed out under an Orange, Ca bulk mail permit. If someone from that campaign wants to contact me, I’ll send you a scan of the piece. The Dana Point post office is notoriously slow in processing and delivering “red tagged” political mail, which is entitled to First Class priority handling. But arriving a day after the election just adds insult to injury.… Read More

Tuesday night the Valley News in Riverside erroneously reported that County Supervisor Jeff Stone defeated Assemblyman Joel Anderson for the 36th Senate District seat, apparently because the reporter was only looking at the Riverside portion of the results.

A new story has now been posted, without a trace of the incorrect report or a correction.

Here is the first part of the story that was…and wasn’t…and now never existed:

Supervisor Stone declared winner in 36th Senate race Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 Issue 23, Volume 14

MURRIETA –… Read More

The "California Top Two Primary Act," known as Proposition 14, passed with surprising margins in counties across the state yesterday. The campaign for the proposition should be congratulating itself; many political observers did not see this big win coming for Prop. 14.

Under Prop. 14, voters can vote in the primary election for what used to be referred to as "partisan elections" for any candidate regardless of party affiliation of either the candidate or the voter. Candidates can even chose to not disclose their party affiliation on the ballot. For example, and admittedly at the extreme, if the Communist Party qualified as a political party in California and had a candidate running for Congress in say, Congressional District #9 (Berkeley), the candidate could chose to not disclose that significant political affiliation on the ballot.

Lawyers for both political parties will now be focusing on a legal challenge to Prop. 14. I think the fact that candidates can chose to remove information from the ballot about their party affiliation is a significant line of legal attack. It emasculates the political parties. Prop.… Read More

From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail…… Read More