The acerbic and smart as hell Jill Stewart goes after the race for Governor, in this week’s New Times L.A.. A sample:

I don’t normally offer campaign tips to politicians, but I can’t help it after watching gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon squirm and dodge and get blasted by the media in a week when he should have easily turned reporters’ attention back to the antics of our unpopular and slimy Governor Gray Davis.
Not that I am pro-Simon. Both candidates, whom I refer to as Icky and Creepy (you figure out who’s who), so turn me off that I am perusing candidates from the Peace and Freedom, Libertarian and Green parties in hopes that one of them may offer a non-nut.
…
News coverage made Simon look like an ass. I got my own licks in with Republican commentator Allen Hoffenblum on KCET’s Life & Times Tonight, where we marveled over the fact that Simon paid a sizable federal tax for 10 years — 24 percent — and should have looked fairly good. But, as Hoffenblum noted, “He managed to appear to be covering something up.”
It didn’t matter that the coverage of “Taxgate” was just plain wrong. Few newspapers that reported that journalists were given just three hours to examine the documents later corrected themselves to say that Russo dropped that rule, allowing reporters to peruse the documents for as long as they could stand. And few media outlets that initially reported that only one journalist per news organization was allowed into the room later correctly reported that that rule was dropped, too. Few mentioned that when rich Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Al Checchi released their massive returns, they too required journalists to stay in a room and adamantly refused to allow copying.
…

There’s more, plus an analysis of What’s Going Wrong in the Simon campaign.
I’m still worried about the woodchipper.

From the discussion below:

The only thing that will break the culture of self-destruction (suicide bombers kill the legitimate goals of the Palestinians) is an end to the occupation, removal of the settlements, and a fair settlement to the problem created in 1948. Saying “everyone occupies everyone else’s land” is completely false, no one is occupying someone else’s land to the extent is has happened to the Palestinians. Simple Zionist history (as you seem unlikely to pick up Tom Segev or Benny Morris) will clue you in to the simple facts behind this conflict: the Palestinians lost most of their land in 1948, and have had the rest occupied since 1967. There is no historical parallel for one modern society displacing another modern society and then occupying the remainder of that land for 35 years.
That being said, it will be impossible for Israel to withdraw (something a majority of Israelis, myself included want) under the terrorist bombing situations. However I disagree completely with Sharon’s response, which is only fueling the conflict. Does anyone remember in December when we had close to 20 days of quiet on the Israeli side? Immediately after that Karmi was assassinated. It is a cycle that BOTH sides are perpetuating, and BOTH sides must be “broken”. Israel must break the fanatics who are driving the settlement policy, which is really the ethnic cleansing policy in slow-motion. Palestinians must break their claims to their former land and accept fully that their country will be on the W. Bank. Only once BOTH sides have been broken, when the extremist ultra-nationalists on both sides are in the margins, will we move away from this.
— Eric Pinhas

I don’t completely agree, and obviously have some thoughts but this was a good enough comment to promote to the blog and see what other folks think. There are some other smart comments in this thread (I can’t figure out how to link to a discusson thread, sorry…), so take a look, please.

Jeff Cooper (the law one, not the gun one) has a great post at Cooped Up, setting out the political audience and opportunity waiting for someone to wake up and seize it.

Participants in the new economy, Judis and Teixeira write, tend to be fiscally moderate but socially tolerant, believers in capitalism but also in the need for government to act as a fair referee to curb capitalism’s excesses, supporters of political reform. And, Judis and Teixeira posit, as America increasingly moves to a postindustrial economy, these voters will become more numerous. They will not alone be sufficient to form a majority of voters, but they will represent an increasingly important portion of any majority coalition.
The Bush administration is in no position to benefit from the posited shift. From the large tax cuts for the richest Americans, to the refusal to do anything about American corporations relocating offshore to avoid tax liability, to the weak corporate governance reforms, to the massive giveaways in the farm bill and the energy bill, the Bush administration, at least in its domestic policy, is dedicated principally to the proposition that government of the cronies, by the cronies, and for the cronies shall not perish from this earth. Its basic outlook is therefore antithetical to the emerging center-left voters that Judis and Teixeira believe they have identified.

And he identifies the problem that the current Democrats will face:

Much of the blame must be laid at the feet of the Democratic Leadership Council, which in recent years has devolved from a useful counterweight to other factions within the party into a pure tool for business interests and the wealthy. Thanks to the influence of the DLC, Tom Daschle has refused to allow a straight vote on requiring stock options to be treated identically on tax returns (where many corporations treat them as expenses) and financial reports (where most do not treat options as expenses). Thanks to the influence of the DLC, the Democratic leadership refuses to call for repeal of the large prospective tax cuts enacted last year, cuts that redound almost exclusively to the benefit of the very wealthy. Thanks to the influence of the DLC, a number of Democrats support the egregious bankruptcy bill that, in a time of economic slowdown, would greatly favor the large banks that bombard consumers with solicitations for cards carrying usurious interest rates. And thanks to the influence of the DLC and the Democrats’ ties to the entertainment industry, Democrats are supporting dramatic expansions of copyright law that would significantly complicate the creation, dissemination, and use of content for all but the big media players. These actions on behalf of the powerful over the people, combined with the failure to articulate and advance a coherent agenda in the one branch of the federal government in which they exercise control, means that Democrats, especially Senate Democrats, are ill-suited to seize the opportunity that, according to Judis and Teixeira, presently exists.

I could not have said it better, there’s lots more, go take a look right now…

You’ve all seen this: CNN.com – Jerusalem blast kills 7; 4 Americans among dead – August 1, 2002.
Charles Johnson comments, and links us to Stefan Sharkansky.
I can make two predictions:
1) It isn’t going to stop anytime soon.
2) It’s going to come here.
This is too easy to do, and the impact is too great.
Until we break the cultures that grow the people who do this, we had best be prepared to live (and die) with it.
More tomorrow.

Arianna steps up with some common sense again, this time on the bankruptcy bill. She even piles on my newest buddy, VA Rep. Jim Moran (happily, he represents Zip Code 22304, not my son in Charlottesville).
I’m getting this warm tingly feeling…I may become an Arianna fan…hmm…me, her, Jill Stewart, a pile of legislative summaries…Dawn Olsen would be green with envy…

From today’s L.A. Times:

SACRAMENTO — The lucrative new labor pact Gov. Gray Davis signed with the state prison guards union will cost California more than half a billion dollars annually when it takes full effect, according to a critical audit released Tuesday.

(Thanks to Lean Left)
Ann Coulter visits U.W.:

Coulter was asked why she condemns the terrorists so strongly, but not those who kill abortion doctors. She said that the latter have been extremely frustrated by the fact that they can’t vote on this issue, thanks to Roe vs. Wade, and that they worked within the system for twenty years without success before turning to murder. She said that those individuals believe they had been left with no other routes for dissent in the face of an ongoing atrocity. Coulter further suggested that although she would not take it upon herself to take extreme actions on the abortion issue, she will not condemn those who do.

Here’s a good – no, great – column from John Balzar in today’s LA Times. An excerpt:

I believe in myths, or I want to–the myths of our nation and, in particular, the dauntless sagas of the West. It seems to me that a culture without legends, without ballads to sing to itself, without a dash of romance packed away in its attic, is impoverished in the worst of ways.
No doubt that’s why I was drawn to California. I cut my journalistic teeth here. This is the place where you either appreciate the fantastic or you wear rubber boots because California is knee-deep in it. So it has always seemed to me.
Just plunge into the latest installment in Kevin Starr’s vivid history of California, “Embattled Dreams.” It covers the decade from 1940 to 1950, when modern California was forged out of the sheet metal and sweat of wartime.
California’s state librarian and a scholar at large, Starr has the touch of a novelist, and he renders history as a story, not as a theory. His California is populated by zoot-suiters, cinema celebrities, women on the factory line, black Americans biting into the ripening fruits of progress, Okies making good and the transiting legions of fighting men who promise themselves a fresh start in the sunshine, if only they live long enough. Plus various Red-baiters, reactionaries, a ghostly murderer and a towering political leader named Gov. Earl Warren.
…
Yet I sense a yearning among Californians. I’m not the only one who wants to believe in destiny. I don’t know a single person who is content to allow a future Kevin Starr to describe this as the era when we gave up on our dreams.

I’m an immense fan of Kevin Starr’s histories of California, which I find the perfect anodyne to Mike Davis’ deliberately bleak ‘City of Quartz’. It is impossible to understand California history, or American history without understanding the hope that led the average people here.
I was bicycling through Death Valley one winter, and came across a series of grave markers next to the road. Children and adults who died while attempting to cross to California and their dream of a future.
It had a huge impact on me to realize how badly people wanted a better future for themselves and their children…badly enough to walk and ride ox-drawn wagons across the country and end up out of water, of food, and still to press on and cross Death Valley.
For me it was paved roads, a 25-pound bicycle and a support van driven by my girlfriend with water, food, and the promise of an air-conditioned hotel at the end of the day.
Why is it so much harder for us to hope than it was for them?
Who can look at Davis or Simon and believe for a moment that they could lead us to a dream?

Ann Salisbury lists all of Gov. “SkyBox” Davis’ accomplishments (it’s a long list).
ON THE OTHER
Bob Morris shows the Gov’s darker side:

Gray Davis, the coin operated governor, Chapter 847
Are there no depths to which Gray Davis will not stoop?
State officials allowed one of California’s largest polluters to increase toxic discharges into San Francisco Bay shortly after the company donated $70,500 to Gov. Gray Davis, a Mercury News investigation has found.

Me, I’m still voting for Gov. LePetomaine. “Think of your secretary, Governor!”

The Truth Laid Bear: War With Iraq: Don’t Do It Soon.Do it now.
A great discussion ensues…go check it out now.