Dons Blog of California Politics

The stimulus bill has passed. President Obama will probably sign the bill on Monday, Feb 16 which is Presidents Day.

I’m  sure there are a lot of teachers sighing a breath of relief, though the Republicans were able to strip quite a bit of state aid from the bill. I hope they can save some of the school counselors too.

Most of all, I’m wondering if I’ll finally get to see the bullet train from Anaheim to Las Vegas in my lifetime. There’s money in the bill that was probably sponsored by Harry Reid. But if you’ve ever driven from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, you know what a relief it would be to be able to take a train and be there in two hours. Goodness, the US is almost a civilized country now.

So says California songwriter and poet Jim Becker.  Evidently his new song has struck a chord, it was featured in the Los Angeles Times. His first verse:

I can’t afford to buy a house
I can’t afford to buy a house
I make 55 thousand dollars a year
and I can’t afford to buy a house

I got no savings account
I got no savings account
I spent it on health insurance and gasoline
Now I got no savings account

Bail me out
Won’t you bail me out
Won’t you bail me out
Throw a drowning man a line

From KBR to water subsidies to the defense industries California is used to free goevernment handouts. Not to mention that since California pays more into federal taxes than it gets back, we’re funding much of the US as well.

What happens next, and how will the bailout affect you and I? This is especially important when we see the first thing the executives of AIG did with bailout money is go on a luxurious spa and golf retreat. As we’ve seen the rich get richer and the middle class disappear, government turn into an oligarchy of privilege, and rights disappear one at a time, I’ve got to wonder about the future of the country.

Hey buddy, got a dime?

I don’t think this is Sarah Palin’s favorite recipe but I used to enjoy this on Dr. Demento.

Just watching parts of the convention and listening to the talking heads. Last night Hillary gave a great speech, asking her followers if they were fighting for her or for the ideals of the party.

Geraldine Ferraro shows that she has no interest in the ideals of the party. She’s just going on and on about how unfair everyone is and keeping wounds open.

This is just too important an election to split the party. Like too many politicians, Ferraro just shows the election is about her and not the country.

It won’t be too far in the future that a woman will be elected. But it will be a lot longer if Obama doesn’t get elected this time.  A loss now will put the country in even worse shape and prove only old white guys can get elected.

So maybe it wasn’t fair, maybe it’s just politics. Maybe Obama really did run a smarter campaign.

Now it’s time to focus all our energy on getting a Democrat elected to President so the administration can be cleaned up and the country brought out of the mess we’re in.

I think Barak should announce Bill Richardson for Secretary of State right now. And i wouldn’t mind seeing Hillary for Secretary of Defense, though I don’t think she’d take it.

We’ve had a woman and two blacks for State, a latino would be good. Latinos also need to be highlighted in this election and so far they haven’t been. In addition to our native population our southern neighbors and their children have become a large part of our country. It’s time to recognize that.

Also I’d like to see an attorney general nominated, and that person start talking about cleaning some things up. Mukasey has been good at starting to clean house but is protecting Bushco’s back at any cost, especially the cost of the constitution. This is an issue for both liberal and conservative voters, neither side likes to see law enforcement corrupted.

So far the media have been controlling the Democrat’s message and that’s all been about the Obama’s vs. the Clintons. It’s time to put that to bed. Someone had to lose, let’s move on. No matter how we feel, we can’t afford a McCain administration.

The best part of the convention? The Daily Show starts show Tuesday night.

When I ask people why they don’t go to church, temple, or religious service of faith they often say they believe in a god, but don’t like organized religion.  Looking at television evangelicals  I sometimes wonder if Christianity hasn’t become the religion that Jesus railed against in his brief time on earth.

Certainly Christians, Jews, and Muslims are known around the world for fighting. Hindus and Muslims are constantly fighting as well, though here in the US we aren’t as aware of it.

But now organized religions have found a rallying cry. Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, evangelical Christians, Sikhs and Hindus are coming together to support Proposition 8 and same-sex marriages.

I think it explains a lot about modern religions that the only time they can come together is to further the prejudice on a small group of people that probably don’t even follow their particular flavour of religion.

Fighting abortion, war, disease, poverty, I could understand, but I can’t grok their need to legislate marriage especially when they spend so little time on the failure of heterosexual marriage in their own groups. Even the guru of Christian families Dr. Dobson now recognizes homosexuality as a genetic or physiological affect.

I think this issue also spotlights religious leaders focus on sex and not violence. I can watch a movie where peole are cut to pieces in the most sadistic ways, but I can’t see a woman’s breasts. In small secular countries like Turkey women would publicly expose their breasts while feeding without any embarrassment, here in the US the same act would cause a small riot.

One of the primary Bible passages used to forbid homosexuality is Leviticus 18:22.

Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.

What is interesting to me in this is that it is addressed to men. Yet in Leviticus 18:23 we have

Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.

Here in the very next line both men and women are addressed. It’ not until the Apostle Paul do we have an author against pretty much anything to do with women. Except maybe taking money. And in fact there are many ways to translate the original Hebrew of verse 22. But one meaning has been passed down and what is generally accepted, right or wrong.

There are also groups fighting this legislation if for no other reason than they don’t believe their particual beliefs should be forced on people who don’t follow their faith.

What this movement does show is that in the end we have a group of self proclaimed religious experts coming together to put their belief into legislation for an act that may or may not be sinful and probably will never affect them anyway.

To me this is more a sign of how religion has fallen than the spreading of sin in the world.

The way the Democrats have handled Senator Joe Lieberman is just embarrassing. Lieberman, an independend Democrat (whatever that is) from Connecticut, has openly supported the war in Iraq and is now campaigning for Republican John McCain for President.

Picked to run with Al Gore, endorsed by Senator Obama during Lieberman’s tough election fight, he’s turned on the Democrats and is flaunting his blind ambition in the face of Senator Harry Reid and the Democratic leadership. Left in a powerful committee chair, he’s been snarled at but left alone.

That’s not how California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass handled Bakersfield Assemblywoman Nicole Parra. The final straw was Parra’s vote against the budget last weekend. Parra says she’s holding up the vote for water works for local farmers but she’s also been openly supporting Republican Danny Gilmore over Democrat Fran Florez.

That was it for Speaker Bass. Bass gave Parra and her staff one day’s notice to vacate her office and banished her to the local broom closet. Parra’s active legislation has also been cancelled, leaving Parra the true lame duck in her last few weeks in the assembly.

No matter who’s side you take on this issue, at least Bass acted decisively and stood behind her decision. Think we can get he in the US Senate?

I was just thinking today. Stuck inside by an unforecasted rain, I had no choice.

The US has suffered the last 8 years because we elected a child of privilege that grew up with no real focus, didn’t do particularly well in school, and was a complete failure in his early life.

Now the Republicans are presenting a candidate that was the son of an admiral and grew up in privilege, almost flunked out of the academy, who’s one claim to fame was being shot down in battle, who’s first marriage was a complete failure and who’s current career probably depends on the wealth of the woman he married but despite this his early 2008 campaign almost went bankrupt.

Contrast that to Barack Obama who was born in a poor family, attended Occidental College and graduated from Columbia University, became the director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago and managed incredible program growth, went to Harvard where in his first year was appointed an editor of the Harvard Law Review and later was elected its president.  He then went on to graduate magna cum laude, is an expert on constitutional law and has in fact lectured in law at Columbia.

He’s a successful author and has put together one of the best planned and most organized election campaigns that the Democrats have ever seen.

Shall I repeat that saying about those that don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it?

California’s Medical Marijuana law and its conflict with Federal Laws took headlines again recently because of the conviction of Charles Lynch for running  a marijuana dispensary in Morro Bay.

Today the L.A. Times is running an article on the conflicts between federal and state laws regarding the use of marijuana. 12 states now have laws that allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

Currently, under the Controlled Substances Act marijuana is grouped in with heroin with no exceptions for medical use. This is clearly overkill and the federal government’s lack of flexibility is the biggest vulnerability in the federal position. If the federal administration would allow marijuana use in extreme medical conditions the only real claim pro-marijuana lobbyists would have left is recreational use, a position a much smaller percentage of voters support.

Yet the “Law and Order” group we have in government now isn’t likely to allow this. It will take a new generation of politicians to allow medical use.

But the article of the Constitution the Supreme Court says allows the federal government to regulate drug use within states it the good old interstate commerce clause. That clause is decried by conservatives as the bane of democracy because it’s used in federal civil rights, pollution, and abortion laws.

I support states rights on many issues, offshore drilling, abortion rights laws, and here in the use of medical marijuana. It’s just too bad we don’t have a political party that supports state’s rights any more.

Is there anything that Speaker of the House Nancy :Pelosi will take a principled stand on? She’s caved on domestic wiretapping, refuses to let impeachment hearings go forward, and has caved on every major bill President Bush wanted through.

She had taken a real stand on offshore drilling and stopped a vote from reaching the floor. In California we’re reminded of the offshore view of oil platforms when driving by Santa Barbara. On the east coast where they’re prone to offshore hurricanes there’s no doubt but that there will be spills.

But now CNN is reporting that the speaker has announced a flip-flop on that. Et tu Pelosi?