William Greider gives his two cents on the recall:

Like many others, I hope Davis survives, but it won't be the end of history if he doesn't. It might even provide a new beginning if rebuked politicians absorb the message. Arnold may prove to be a clown or perhaps shrewder than people suppose. Either way, the Golden State will survive, still struggling with all of its deep problems. Given my understanding of where we are in corrupted representative democracy, we need more earthquakes -- lots of them. Who knows, maybe we will get another next year in Washington.

Two interesting, but opposing takes on the Limbaugh / McNabb controversy, by journalists David Neiwert and Allan Barra. As odious as I find Limbaugh, his politics, and his willingness to debase political commentary, I do not feel any sense of schadenfreude at his fall. Drug addiction is a disease, and I certainly hope for his recovery; I sense that neither he nor his dittoheads would feel much sympathy if the patient was Bill Clinton or Jesse Jackson.

He is not a new phenomenum, in any event. In the 30's, perhaps the most popular media figure of the day wasn't Clark Gable or F.D.R.; it was a radio priest named Father Charles Coughlin. One of the popular political writers was a gentleman named Westbrook Pegler. Like Limbaugh, each of those men had views that today would euphemistically be called "radical centrist"; that is to say, they were virulent bigots, who found easy scapegoats for the problems of society and used ad hominem attacks as a favored debating ploy. In the end, society turned their back on them, just as it has now begun to do with Rush Limbaugh.

Another woman has come forward:

Joy Browne, a psychologist whose advice program is syndicated to nearly 200 stations nationwide, described on the radio an encounter with Schwarzenegger that took place during an interview about the documentary, which was released in 1977.

Schwarzenegger fondled her legs under the table during the interview, she said. Then, she said, he left his Gold American Express card in the studio and insisted that Browne personally return it to his hotel room.

According to Browne, who was in her late 20s at the time, she took her young daughter along to return the credit card. Schwarzenegger, she said, answered the door in tight pants, wearing no shirt. He had champagne. He asked her if her daughter could "take a walk for a while?" She declined.

Rob Stutzman, a Schwarzenegger spokesman, said Thursday that the candidate had no recollection of the alleged incident.

Also, a woman who had been anonymous in yesterday's article is now on-the-record, further dispelling the myth that the Times story was based largely on anonymous sources. No word yet whether the Times will also report that Gray Davis has used the F-word on occasion.

An interesting follow-up to the piece last month on boxing: the LA Times interviews several judges about what it is they use to determine who wins a round. For anyone who follows the sport, the subjectivity involved is frightening. BTW, we may be getting the fight at my b-day bash tomorrow; all the more reason for my followers to attend.

From today's New York Times:

In a part of the interview not used in the film, Mr. Schwarzenegger was asked to name his heroes — "who do you admire most."

"It depends for what," Mr. Schwarzenegger said, according to the transcript in the book proposal. "I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker."

In addition to the transcript, Mr. Butler wrote in his book proposal that in the 1970's, he considered Mr. Schwarzenegger a "flagrant, outspoken admirer of Hitler." In the proposal, Mr. Butler also said he had seen Mr. Schwarzenegger playing "Nazi marching songs from long-playing records in his collection at home" and said that the actor "frequently clicked his heels and pretended to be an S.S. officer."

Mr. Schwarzenegger, in a telephone interview on Thursday, said he did not recall making any of the comments attributed to him or engaging in any of the behavior described by Mr. Butler.

I have just one question: Is it possible that his memory is so bad he can't recall whether he used to goosestep to the beat of his favorite "Nazi marching song"?

Garry Trudeau is right. The next recall movement starts October 8. California is either going to elect a bully who is unable to keep his hands off women, or it will retain a governor that everybody hates. Lousy choice.

The latest Field Poll shows Ahnold comfortably ahead of non-candidate Bustamante, and the recall prevailing by a wide margin. Obviously, with the events of today, particularly the revelation that A.S. one time admitted to admiring Hitler, that poll is already out-of-date. Bustamante has quit even running a semblance of a campaign; one can certainly sympathize with a mediocrity who probably never intended to be governor, and found himself completely outmatched by the responsibility. More discouraging is the fact that McClintock has lost ground: even though I disagree with almost every position he's taken, his campaign has been one of the few honorable notes in this election. Even if Ahnolt takes a hit with his newfound backers among women and moderates, I doubt McClintock will be able to capture enough of their votes to prevail.

Although I have enjoyed watching the G.O.P. ditch all semblance of principle in backing a man whose licentiousness is more like the American Spectator fantasy version of Bill Clinton, and whose politics are to the left of Zell Miller, much less every other significant Republican in the country, the end result will probably be that my home state will be governed by this leech for the next few months. Let's just get this over with, get our petitions ready, and do it right next time.

Whether it be DiFi or Riordan, ALL IS FORGIVEN !!!

Mickey Kaus has been directing people to this bit of anti-Gray Davis invective from 1998, by "journalist" Jill Stewart. Unlike the L.A. Times piece, she relied entirely on unnamed "sources" to paint a picture of a violent and ill-tempered future governor, one who used the f-word and the like in front of subordinates. Loud and abusive bosses are a pain to work for, but it's not quite as bad as having to worry about your boss groping you in public (or your boss saying that he "admired Hitler"). Ms. Stewart should go back to stalking Kevin Murray.

Another woman has come forward to claim A.S. once demanded that she and a friend get in his car, or that he would rape her. No word yet as to whether this was one of the "playful" antics referred to earlier this morning.

At this point, what's really driving this story isn't the fact that the Times published this at the last second, but that Ahnold waited until election eve to confirm that these allegations were largely true.

UPDATE: The New York Times quotes a campaign spokesman for the actor, Todd Harris, as saying that some of the allegations in the LA Times article were true, and some were not true. He did not say which. It also mentioned that the woman, above, was heckled by supporters of A.S. with shouts of "lesbian" and "liar" after she made her accusation.

Men Behaving Badly: Ahnold denied the LA Times article, but "apologized" for being on some "pretty rowdy sets". LAME !! He has now given the press license to investigate what other incidents he might be referring to beyond what the Times reported, while validating the underlying inquiry.

The Times article names names and lists witnesses, and four of the six incidents weren't even on movie sets: one was at the gym; one, in an office; one, in a restaurant; and one incident, in a hotel room during an interview. He can hardly say that this is "trash politics", as his shills suggest, if he admits that he has something to apologize for, if not those incidents. In any event, since he doesn't refer to specific events or persons, it is hard to take his "apology" seriously. My bet is that while Republicans won't care at this stage, his gains amongst moderates and women over the past two weeks will disintegrate.

The LA Times reports that our next governor is a bit of a creep !! Anyone who has lived in this town could have told you that, and named five other actors who are even worse. [link via CalPundit]

With the baseball playoffs starting, ArchPundit has a timely scoop.

RECALL UPDATE: It's over !!! Davis is toast. Bustamante is an ambulatory stiff. Pete Wilson Ahnold is our next governor.

Comments are now fixed, so flame away.

While most commentators have seen the Valerie Plame scandal for what it is, as an attempt by the White House to intimidate a foe by potentially putting his spouse in danger, there is a dissenting view, one where the real scandal is the conspiracy that has been hatched by CIA spooks, "Arabists" in the State Department, and the lib'rul news media over this incident to bring down the neo-conservatives in the Pentagon. I'm still waiting for Christopher Hitchens to call Ms. Plame a "f***ing fat slag", or Lyndon LaRouche to weigh in on the role of the Council on Foreign Relations in this whole tawdry matter.

Surest sign that Cruz Bustamante has packed it in: his schedule has no campaign events today.

In what is a blow to soccer fans the world over, FIFA has rejected the joint bid of Libya and Tunisia to host the 2010 World Cup, in spite of the best efforts of Saadi Ghadaffi, number one son of the Libyan strongman. I guess we'll have to settle for North Korea's bid.

If I've seemed morose lately, my best and only excuse is that I turn 40 a week from tonight. This blog has been a good escape for me, but lately I seem to feel that posting is a chore. I'm not that into the recall election. I would rather watch sports than write about them. My law practice, such as it is, doesn't keep me occupied often enough, and there is only so much I can write about the local bankruptcy court. As hard as I try, I just can't motivate myself to have a take on those issues that seem to obsess others, like whether the Bush Administration is deliberately exposing CIA agents, or whether Howard Kurtz is a tool.

One of the nice things about my blog is that it's small; if "Smythe's World" were to disappear tomorrow, few would notice. So maybe I'll just give this site a rest for awhile. Or maybe not; it really depends on whether my sense of outrage can triumph over my feelings of melancholy and entropy.

For those of you who are interested, a b-day party is being thrown on my behalf (dig that passive tense !!) at 14-Below, in Santa Monica this Saturday. Hopefully, the hosts are providing an open bar, and since anyone who visits this site is a friend of mine, I would be honored if you ventured out that evening. I'll be the bald man in the corner, getting blind-drunk, and picking fights with younger men.

With Ahnolt opening up a sizable post-debate lead in at least one poll, it now appears that California may replace one a-hole governor with...an even bigger a-hole. Focusing on A.S.' past in the world of bodybuilding, this article reveals the character of the new darling of state Republicans:

"Sometimes, Schwarzenegger enjoyed disgracing his targets in full public view, veteran bodybuilders said. Gold's Gym regular Norman Williams recalled the time an earnest young man walked in seeking advice from his hero. No matter how hard he worked, he told Schwarzenegger, his muscles wouldn't grow.

Schwarzenegger told him to remove his shirt and slather his body with oil used to lubricate the weight equipment. He then ordered him to start flexing and to bellow louder with each pose. Only then, Schwarzenegger said, would the muscles bulge.

'Pretty soon, the gym was filled with this guy screaming,' Williams said. 'The guys were turning their backs trying not to crack up, but Arnold kept a straight face. He loved making a fool out of people.'

The young man, exhausted, wanted to wipe off the oil. 'Oh no,' witnesses quoted Schwarzenegger as saying. 'It needs to saturate the muscles. It's the only way to get bigger.' The guy walked out with oil bleeding through his shirt.

When asked to respond, Schwarzenegger's spokesman chalked up the incident to 'locker room humor.'"

Yeah, that's a thighslapper.

CAL 34, USC 31 [3OT] : I RULE !!!!

The author of Money Ball, Michael Lewis, has a must-read piece on the recall circus, which he concludes stems from the personal dislike many people have for Gray Davis (some of its biggest supporters are literally his next-door neighbors). The highlight: his encounter with the mysterious (and all-too-human) "S. Issa".

Former Crimson Tide football coach Bill Curry pays a touching tribute to his friend (and one-time co-author) George Plimpton.

LA Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik has a fascinating piece on one of the most oft-repeated cliches in California politics, that this state has the "world's fifth largest economy":

"The main implication is that California's economy is under the state government's control, in the same sense that the U.S. economy is under Washington's control. This is patently false.

State governments can't wield the economic tools available to federal policymakers to manage economic trends. They can't raise or lower tariffs to protect domestic industries such as farming. They can't manage interest rates. They can't spur demand by generating red ink.

'If California were a country we wouldn't have these problems,' notes UCLA's [Senior Economist Tom] Leiser. 'We'd just run a deficit.'"

This goes back a few months, but it shows that California is not the only state where there are concerns that attacks on "Indian Gaming" are racist.

Matt Welch has some interesting comments about a new poll, focusing specifically on the racial/ethnic breakdown of support for the recall and the various replacement candidates. One thing to note: Bustamante is underachieving right now with the African-American vote, even though he is marginally ahead in the polls. If he starts picking up, the race could be over, regardless of whether McClintock drops out or not.

When I mentioned what I thought was the rather unsubtle racist aspect of the "Indian gaming" issue in this campaign, I believed I was going to be alone on this issue. After all, if the fact that Ahnolt was an unlicensed contractor scamming white subarbanites in the early 70's wasn't considered a big deal, why would his attacks on a relatively small ethnic group (in terms of registered voters) be noticed.

That was, until I read this posting tonight, from the "BeeBlogger" himself, Daniel Weintraub. He, after all, is a conservative, pro-A.S. columnist, who has not been afraid to attack Bustamante on everything from his qualifications to his relationship with the Latino Caucus. If even he is uncomfortable with these attacks, then maybe I'm not crazy after all. It would be almost like a vicious, wedge-issue attack on a non-WASP ethnic group offending Mickey Kaus !! Pete Wilson must be losing his magic.

Billy Beane for President?!? Not so fast....

I wonder which Pete Wilson aide had the brilliant idea to have Ahnolt use the "Terminator 4" line on Arianna Huffington tonight. Their candidate has a serious gender gap problem. He has chosen to participate in only one debate. Yet he allows himself to get baited by an also-ran into making a reference to a movie where he recently admitted he wanted to shove the face of a villainess into a toilet that had something "floating" in it. That should rally the soccer moms around their candidate !! I mean, it's not as if the misogynist voting bloc is up for grabs in this election.

In what was an entertaining evening, the clear winners of the debate on both substance and style points were Bustamante and McClintock. Cruz has been the target of a rather unsubtle attack concerning his intelligence, and just by acting mature and adult, he seemed to counter that. Other than a few throwaway lines by Arianna, the "Indian gaming" issue never came up.

And McClintock, as Aaron Brown noted on CNN, was quite impressive. Had he been the G.O.P. nominee in 2002, he might have beaten Gray Davis. He has an earnestness about him that is quite appealing; whereas A.S. can pretty much take any position on issues ranging from Prop. 13 reform to gun control to stem cell research, and not have that hurt him in any way with the Republican establishment, McClintock actually has principles. If he were to come out in favor of the Brady Bill, or in opposition to the ban on late-term abortions, it would seriously impact his public image. It's no wonder he was the only G.O.P. nominee to come close to winning last November; after all, for many liberals, Barry Goldwater has been their favorite conservative, and he didn't equivocate either.

UPDATE: If anyone has a different take on what Ahnolt meant by his Terminator reference, please feel free to respond. Is there another reference that I'm missing that would also be humorous?

Doesn't the whole issue of "Indian gaming lobby" seem, well, a bit racist? If A.S. were to begin making attacks on the "Jewish entertainment lobby" or the "Korean liquor store lobby", he would be rightly attacked. So why is there a double standard?

It sucks to be right: My office mate and crony John Byrne and I have a line that we use every time the Dodgers are in a slump. If someone isn't hitting his weight, or if a player is coasting through the season, one of us will say, "...but at least he's great in the clubhouse". It's a line that has become imbedded in the subconscious of every Dodger fan since the local media hacks chased Gary Sheffield out of town; in spite of his numbers and his absolutely-hate-to-lose attitude, he was described by local sportswriters as a "cancer" on the team, and was traded to Atlanta in 2001 for Bryan Jordan and Odalis Perez. The Braves are about to win yet another division championship, while the Dodgers have a magic number of 3 before they get eliminated from the wild card race.

One of those hacks, Bill Plaschke, is having second thoughts about his instrumental role two years ago in running Gary Sheffield out of town. Since the trade is history, I prefer that he have second thoughts about his bullying Odalis Perez into starting on Monday, which turned into a predictable disaster when Perez couldn't grip the ball properly. Rather than harping on something that can't be undone, the media needs to look at its own role in this mess, and hopefully learn from it. An athlete, an actor, a politician, can be a loathsome creature, disagreeable to the core, and yet still possess some hard-to-define talent, an ability to make the world a better place, in spite of their personality. And nice guys sometimes finish last for a reason.

"PLAY BALL !!" sayeth the Ninth Circuit. The election will go on as originally scheduled, for October 7, or for those in the know, the day after I turn 40.

It seems Ms. Stewart isn't the only truth-impaired Coulter-wannabee out there: Tapped elegantly tears a new one into former Dartmouth Review bundist Laura Ingraham, while also explaining how Regnery Publishing performs its magic.

Baseball may have once been our national pastime, and football is our national sport, but basketball truly is the American game: David Stern, commissioner extraordinaire, comes to the defense of Kobe while simultaneously ripping the Patriot Act.

The San Jose Mercury News puts more meat on the story about Ahnolt's bricklaying venture in the early-70's. Not only does the story confirm what was originally reported here about European Brick Works not ever having possessed a contractor's license, but it further explores the legal ramifications, both in terms of A.S.' immigration status at the time, and the legal requirement in California for a bricklaying company to possess a license to charge over $100 for any job. [link via Calif. Insider]

HORSE RACE UPDATE: The Washington Post reports that a poll by the non-partisan Public Policy Institute shows Bustamante continuing to lead Ahnolt, 28-26, with McClintock trailing at 14%. Since most of the stories about Cruz have been negative, the fact that he maintains a small lead over one of the most famous people on earth indicates that A.S. is dead in the water, and he may need a K.O. in the debate this week to resuscitate his campaign. Support for the recall continues to collapse, with only 53% now in favor, and 42% against, a margin that will tighten further if the Big 3 do nothing but attack each other Wednesday.

As a follow-up to yesterday's post on Jill Stewart, I thought I would post links to the actual legislation the left-coast version of Ann Coulter refers to in her article. The bills are: AB 1245, AB 1309, AB 587, AB 1742, SB 796, SB 892, and AB 231. Since fact-checking and due dilligence seem to be rare commodities in blogtopia, I thought I would at least try to make a difference.

The Ninth Circuit has agreed to rehear this week's decision on the recall. My guess is that the panel will overturn the decision but still require the District Court to set a new date for the election (poss. the first week of November) so that the appeals can be properly heard.

UPDATE: Eight of the eleven judges on the en banc panel were originally nominated by Democratic Presidents, but none of the three who made the original ruling made it.

UPDATE [2]: The oral arguments before the Court of Appeals will be televised !!

He's not just your run-of-the-mill slimy politician, he's eeeeevvvvvviiilllllll:

Jill Stewart, on Gray Davis:

If the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals delays the recall, pity the voters who will be subjected to months of Gray Davis faking he likes church...and faking he's a good man.

The rest of her article is even better, if you like mendacious summaries of legislation (which she doesn't link to) with your breakfast. She even attacks a law that would punish schools if they don't keep sanitary bathrooms after getting 30 days notice to clean up !!

Anyone who saw Oscar de la Hoya kick the ass of Shane Mosley last Saturday must have been as baffled by the media reaction after the fight as the ridiculous decision by the three judges that created the fiasco. Sports contrarian Allan Barra explains why the viewers at home have a much better seat, and a more legitimate position, in determining who won the fight than the judges and reporters at ringside. One of the reforms he'd like to see for title fights is to allow judges to have access to the same TV angles of the fighters, and the same PunchStat numbers, that the TV audience has. [link via Off-Wing Opinion] It won't stop a crooked judge from overlooking the fact that one fighter landed over a hundred more punches than his opponent, but at least it's a start.

You know it's mid-September when the evenings start to get a little cooler, the kids are back in school, and Bill Plaschke has a column blaming the Dodgers' annual collapse on a non-white player. This time it's Odalis Perez, the team's most consistent (and hardest-working) pitcher, who gets attacked because he asked for (and received) a day off because one of the cuticles on his pitching hand broke off. Seems like a minor injury, sure, for those of us who don't have to put extreme pressure on that area of our body 100 times a night. Earlier this year, he attacked Kevin Brown for trying to pitch through injuries; now he rips a player for needing a day off because of an injury. Of course, the guy who replaced him in the rotation pitched brilliantly, and the team got shut out again, a problem that wouldn't have happened had Plaschke not driven Gary Sheffield out of town two years ago.

Ever since such stories became fashionable, nothing has been more boring to me than accounts of "political correctness" at schools and universities. I usually end up sympathizing with the person or group that has been attacked for taking offense at some alleged act of bigotry, due as much to my skepticism about the truthfulness of the account, rather than any political connection I might feel. Invariably, closer scrutiny of the story will reveal that either the Wall Street Journal editorial has once again taken the incident out of context, or that the frat boy really did use the "n-word", and the entire story will be revealed as a sham created out of thin air to attack some mythical stereotype of feminism, or to minimize the reality of bigotry by drawing a false moral equivalence between institutional racism and the misguided antics of some student groups.

Therefore, I think it is incumbent on me to comment on this little bit of outrage, which as far as I know has not been commented on by the usual suspects on the right. Here, you have an attempt to boycott the L.A. Daily News being organized by the Simi Valley teachers' union, to protest the newspapers criticisms of educational policy that the union finds unacceptable. The Daily News has a policy of providing free newspapers to local schools, and the United Association of Conejo is upset that the paper's policy of using often-hysterical headlines to publicize the editorial opinion on its news pages is giving short-shrift to their positions on teacher pay and the like.

Boycotting a newspaper is a reasonable political tactic, one that can be embraced as a worthy expression of free speech by those who do not have the funds, or the megaphone, that come from publishing a newspaper. I have defended the right of college students to toss student papers in the trash as an expression of that right, and oppose the efforts of people like Nat Hentoff to criminalize or punish such conduct. And, of course, conservatives themselves have used much the same tactics, when it comes to trying to censor the BBC or CNN because they were insufficiently supportive of both U.S. foreign and Israeli domestic policy.

But the teachers union has adopted an indefensible position on this issue, one that redounds to their discredit. Rather than using the paper's position as a starting point for the discussion of education issues in the classroom, or as a way of "teaching against the text" in better educating their students, and thereby using the paper to illustrate to impressionable children that simply because someone speaks from a position of authority doesn't mean that the person or institution is correct, instead the union is using its position to censure a contrary opinion, an opinion against their pecuniary interests.

Not surprisingly, as with any banned publication, that only makes the contents more alluring to their students. It is as unconstructive an educational policy as banning Huckleberry Finn or Catcher in the Rye because of objectionable language, and it only leads to making the rather banal political positions of a newspaper seem like forbidden fruit. [link via L.A. Observed]

Good summary of the political ramifications if the Supreme Court decides to get involved in the recall fracas. I'm still waiting for Volokh Conspiracy to weigh in on this; to date, the conservative reaction has spanned the range from ad hominem attacks on the three justices (here, here, here, and here) to strained efforts (here and here) at distinguishing Bush v. Gore, none of which has redounded to their credit, either politically or intellectually. I happen to believe that the Ninth Circuit's decision was a reasonable one from a legal standpoint (in any event, I have always thought that being the "most overturned appellate court" in the era of Rehnquist, Thomas and Scalia was the highest honor that could be given to a federal circuit; no one has any problems today with the dissents of either of the Harlans, for example), but may be questionable from a factual standpoint (are the methods of counting ballots to be used in March really that more accurate than the punch card system, so much that there is no "rational basis" to hold the quickie election?) I'm no law-review rat, so I'd be happy to read more learned opinions on this issue.

WHY I'M PROUDLY PALEO: This has to be the most clueless blog posting since the recall was scheduled, from Kausfiles:

Here's an anecdote from the Recorder's account that pretty much captures the seemingly condescending, museum-quality paleoliberal mindset of at least one of the three judges on the appelate panel:

[Judge Harry] Pregerson then playfully pointed out that education [in how to avoid punch card errors] might not work on tired workers, or workers harried by trying to find their polling place. Then he said those problems might be more of a concern to minority candidates (sic) who may have more reason to be tired at the end of the day than whites.

"In L.A., if you look around, see who's working and who isn't," Pregerson said, drawing laughter from the near-capacity courtroom.

I guess the definition of a neo-liberal is someone who believes non-whites don't work.

In a not-unexpected development, a justice on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has requested that the full circuit hear the appeal of yesterday's ruling on the recall circus. They will decide sometime tomorrow or Thursday whether to hear the appeal.

As you probably know already, the Ninth Circuit postponed the recall election until such time as each of the counties has done away with the archaic punch-card voting system. There isn't really a good argument for having the election in October, anyway, other than the fact that the arbitrary deadline for scheduling it was written into state law ninety years ago. It is generally a good thing in any democracy to allow voter passions to cool, which is why the recall proponents wanted (and needed) a quickie election.

If the Court's ruling stands, the election will likely be held in March, 2004, on the same date as the Presidential primary; that should improve Davis' chances of beating the recall (more Democrats will be voting then), but diminish the hopes of Bustamante (more time until the election allows the GOP to consolidate behind one candidate, who can spend Cruz into the ground over the next seven months). Since both Bustamante and A.S. have apparently stalled in the polls, any delay only serves to help the other candidates get their campaigns off the ground, or in the case of McClintock, to continue his momentum.

BTW, what a clever touch to base their decision on Bush v. Gore !!

Everyone have a nice weekend. I'm off to Santa Monica (prob. Over/Under) for some college football, followed by Mosley-de la Hoya tonight.

UPDATE: Never again !! Anyone (besides the de la Hoya haters) who thinks Mosley won that fight should be prevented from handling sharp objects. But it was nice to see Bill Plaschke finally find an African-American athlete he could get behind.

This may not mean much of anything, but readers of Kausfiles know that one of his current obsessions is about an appearance A.S. had on the Tonight Show a couple of decades ago, in which he boasted about being a part of a chimney repair scam when he first came to the country. The nation's paper of record fills in some of the gaps. The name of the venture, European Brick Works, was formed by the candidate and his pal and fellow bodybuilder, Franco Columbu, after the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, to "repair" masonry devastated by the disaster. According to the records of the Contractor's State License Board, no entity by that name has ever been licensed in the state of California, either as a general contractor or a C-29 masonry specialist, nor do the names "Columbu" or "Schwarzenegger" appear as either officers or personnel of any licensed contractor.

Understand, I've only handled a few construction cases in my legal career, and I have only a passing knowledge of contracting law as it stands today, much less what it was like in the early-70's. "European Brick Works" may have obeyed the law in every respect, and the stories Ahnolt was telling Johnny Carson may have been apocryphal, like the now-infamous "gang-bang" story, designed to showcase the non-conformist, outlaw rep that he thought would sell his screen persona.

But I have a feeling that state law back then would have frowned on anyone, even skilled bricklayers, from falsely claiming they were licensed contractors, and I find it hard to believe that the typical Valley homeowner (or, for that matter, the homeowner's insurer covering their earthquake claim) would have employed an unlicensed business to "fix" their chimneys.

Being a friend sometimes requires you to tell someone that what they are doing is wrong; sycophancy and friendship are incompatible. It's called "tough love". If your friend has had too much to drink, and is acting in a belligerent and irrational manner, you call him a taxi, or you try to settle him down. You don't tell him he's okay to drive home.

Since September 11, 2001, Tony Blair has not been a very good friend to the United States. When we needed allies, instead we got co-dependents.

The latest L.A. Times poll is out, and it pretty much affirms the findings of the Field snap-shot earlier this week: Bustamante maintains a five-point lead, 30% to 25%, but he's pretty much hit the ceiling as far as his potential support is concerned; Ahnolt is failing to generate much excitement; and McClintock is hanging in there, with 18%. If this poll is accurate, there is absolutely no reason for McClintock to drop out. Support for the recall remains at 50%, but Davis has narrowed the gap to within the margin of error in the poll; he now trails by only 3%. If the big three in the replacement election continue to go negative on each other, the voters are going to choose the devil they know. Davis will probably survive, in spite of himself.

This is way beyond belief. How can any country that considers the Barbie doll to be a "Jewish" plot against Islamic morality be considered an ally in fighting terrorists? [link via Adam Felber]

If the blogosphere is the next big thing, then it will have to produce a writer as eloquent, as insightful, as fearless in speaking truth to power, as Prof. Krugman. We may all have to wait awhile on that one...UPDATE: My, what a stupid thing to post. Not about Krugman; he's still god. But about the blogosphere...what was I thinking? I only visit this site twice a day, this site several times, and wish that this site would resume posting. And the author of this article is what each of those blogs have in common. If the L.A. Times doesn't give him a bi-weekly column soon, their shareholders will hold them accountable.

The latest Field Poll has Bustamante maintaining a five-point lead over the pack...UPDATE: here's the actual polling data. At first glance, it appears that Bustamante may have problems getting above his current total, while A.S. continues to under-achieve, and McClintock may actually have an outside shot of pulling off a shocker. Wiser men than myself have already analyzed the significance of the ethnic and gender breakdown in the poll; what I think is interesting is the fact that almost a fifth of the self-described conservatives polled are undecided, as opposed to only 6% of the liberals polled. With his name recognition, Ahnolt should have already nailed down this group, so the fact that so many are still on the fence indicates that they have a hard time rationalizing a vote for him, but still remaining skeptical about McClintock's chances. If that attitude changes, if the State Senator actually starts running a halfway-decent media campaign, if Bustamante doesn't find a way to expand his current support beyond African-Americans, Latinos and women, and/or if A.S.' idiosyncracies become too hard for the typical Dana Point/Palos Verdes elector to stomach, McClintock could be our next governor.

TODAY'S DEBATING TOPICS:

Resolved: Any writer who continues to translate the MeChA slogan Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada as "For the Race, everything. For those outside the Race, nothing," is himself a racist.

Resolved: Anyone who says that MeChA is morally equivalent to the Nazis or the KKK, is himself sympathetic to the methods(if not the specific aims) of the Nazis and the KKK.

Resolved: Any blogger who denounces MeChA, or similar groups, as "misguided identity politics", has proven why "identity politics" is still going to be embraced by many non-WASPs.

Discuss.

Howard Owens, who's been taking me to task recently for my sympathies to MeChA and La Raza, has a lileksian piece on record collecting that's worth your time. I used to have a pretty decent and comprehensive collection of British Invasion LP's, but like the rest of my albums they all were ruined when the roof of my bedroom collapsed as a result of the Northridge Earthquake. BTW, do they even sell turntables anymore?

The usually-excellent conservative legal blog, Volokh Conspiracy, had this unfortunate cheap shot yesterday on the Alabama budget crisis. Quoting the nation's paper of record:

The Horror!

After the rally at Troy State, Lucy Skellett, a sophomore cheerleader, explained how the budget woes affected her. Last year, the cheerleading squad got to travel with the football team. This year, there is no money for away games.

"Four games," Ms. Skellett said. "That's all we get to cheer now, is four games. You know how hard we work out for that?"

If Alabamians won't vote for a $1.2 billion tax increase to help out Ms. Skellett ... well, I'm just speechless. Oh, the humanity!

As an unabashed and unapologetic fan of cheerleaders and cheerleading, I feel it incumbent to defend the honor of Lucy Skellett and the rest of her teammates on the Troy State squad. Unlike college football and basketball players, cheerleaders don't get paid for what they do. A great deal of work and practice goes into it, and their only reward (besides an improvement in their social life) is to hear the third-rate cracks from the geeks and nerds they won't go out with (like me).

More to the point, however, is the fact that this budget cutback is happening at Troy State. Not Alabama. Not Auburn. Troy State. I guarantee you, if the Crimson Tide were forced to cut back on any aspect of its football program due to budget cuts imposed by an outdated tax code, the powers-that-be in that state would rise up, and demand higher taxes !! But since the cutbacks are occurring at a "lesser" state school (no doubt similar sacrifices are going on at the historically black colleges in that state as well), well, we can laugh at the poor girl who has to work her ass off (figuratively speaking) for the honor of being treated like a joke by her home state.

One month from today, I turn 40. Another day closer to the grave, as Reid Fleming would say. Any words of consolation?

Ahnolt's not the only one who is finally answering questions about his positions. Here are some responses from Georgy Russell after a speech yesterday in Berkeley, including the promise that she will move to Sacramento should she win the election. Go Georgy Go !!!

Hud-Dogg ? Angel TV-announcer (and longtime former big league journeyman) Rex Hudler got busted in Kansas City over the weekend with possession of pot and certain drug paraphenalia, which, for anyone who has ever listened to him, explains a lot.

UPDATE: Now that I think about, Hudler was hospitalized a couple of years ago with a brain hemorrhage that almost took his life. Like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, whose usage of marijuana is tied to his problem with migraine headaches, it is entirely possible that Hudler is smoking weed for "medicinal purposes". Not that it makes it any more legal to do so in the state of Missouri, but it does add some context to this incident.

Bowing to the inevitable, Miguel Estrada withdrew his name from nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeal in D.C. His defeat may well mark a turning-point in efforts to pack the courts to reflect a certain ideological bias by Presidents, with five other nominees currently being blocked by the Senate. Liberals like myself should bear in mind that the shoe was on the other foot just a few years back, and it will be again in a few more years, so the filibuster, powerful weapon that it is, should be used as sparingly as possible. Still, a bracing defeat for Bush. Remember, it's both advice and consent.

I used to think the stories in Oui Magazine were fictitious, until recently.... Man, did he bungle this. I think like most fair-minded voters, I felt that the statute of limitations had expired on taking the "gang bang" incident seriously; Lord knows, the last thing I want is to have those all-night Spens-Black orgies from 1983-5 revisited by my many enemies. And, like some people, I even suspected that Ahnolt's participation in group sex might have been apocryphal, a story he made up to impress an interviewer from a skin mag.

But c'mon, waiting a week before you suddenly remember that you were lying back then? Let's examine the thought process here: you have this 25-year old interview with a now-defunct magazine brought to light last week. The story that gets all the play (other than a rather lame attempt to claim that A.S. was homophobic) is your boast in the interview that you took part in a high-impact group cardio exercise at Gold's Gym. Then a week later, you suddenly "remember" that the whole story was made up, in order to hype Pumping Iron and the world of bodybuilding. C'mon, have you been in so many similar activities that you forgot which ones were real? Or did it take a week for you to remember that, no, come to think of it, I've never participated in an orgy?

BTW, the first debate is at 4:00 p.m. PST.

Reporter-turned-blogger David Neiwert has the last word in the smear against Bustamante and MeChA (thank god, b/c the subject is starting to bore me), placing it in the context of similar attacks against groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP: that groups which fight discrimination and defend minorities are "secretly racist".

UPDATE: Collaborative bloggees Crooked Timber also publish a handy primer for this issue, for any of you who are still interested. [links via Atrios]

The Post-Modern Presidency: Fine Washington Monthly article by Joshua Marshall about the "revisionist mindset" at the heart of the Bush Administration, out of which has arisen the President's very unique contribution to the fine art of mendacity:

Everyone is compromised by bias, agendas, and ideology. But at the heart of the revisionist mindset is the belief that there is really nothing more than that. Ideology isn't just the prism through which we see world, or a pervasive tilt in the way a person understands a given set of facts. Ideology is really all there is. For an administration that has been awfully hard on the French, that mindset is...well, rather French. They are like deconstructionists and post-modernists who say that everything is political or that everything is ideology. That mindset makes it easy to ignore the facts or brush them aside because "the facts" aren't really facts, at least not as most of us understand them. If they come from people who don't agree with you, they're just the other side's argument dressed up in a mantle of facticity. And if that's all the facts are, it's really not so difficult to go out and find a new set of them.

Been checking out the brand-spanking-new page for the English language site for the Fox News of the Arab World, Al-Jazeera, and came upon this article; you'd think that even if they don't know if this is the legendary Nefertiti, they would still be able to figure out whether the mummy was male or female. The sports section is worthless; no mention of SC's shut-out of Auburn. Nothing on the recall, either.

One sign that Ahnolt's campaign may be bleeding from within is his decision to back out of this week's debate between the replacement candidates. Not only is it a sign of weakness, but it is a tactical blunder as well: regardless of whether he is represented by an "empty chair", each of the other candidates has an incentive to bash him, and he won't be able to defend himself. It will also be an ideal time for Cruz Bustamante to smack questions by those who've been hinting that he has dual loyalties out of the ballpark.

Did you realize that Robert Vaughn is the only surviving member of The Magnificent Seven? Charles Bronson was never my favorite actor, but he was in three of my all-time favorite movies: T.M.S., The Dirty Dozen, and, best of all, Once Upon a Time in the West. Requiescat in pacem.

One of the more troubling aspects about the "dual loyalty" charge against Cruz Bustamante is the notion that there is something insidious about ethnic pride. Like Jewish politicians who have their loyalty to America questioned any time the issue of Israel comes up, Bustamante (and, one suspects, other non-Anglo politicians) is now the target of those who pretend that there is somehow a moral equivalence between the Klan lynching blacks and burning crosses, and the slogan Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.

Translated, that slogan means "for our people, everything. Beyond our people, nothing." It has no racist connotations. It isn't meant to be hate speech. As far as I can tell, no white person has ever been dragged out of his house in the middle of the night by a hooded MeChAtista, tied up, castrated, and then burned alive because of the slogan. Stop trying to pretend otherwise.

Barring any unforeseen developments, Smythe's World will now go dark for the Labor Day weekend. My college football blog, neglected for so many months, will get the totality of my attention, at least for the period when I'm not getting hammered in Santa Monica, doing my weekly pub crawl through Gothams, Doodles, Brittanias, Hooters, and Over/Under en route to the ideal college football-watching climate. Go CAL !!

One sign that the other candidates are beginning to take Cruz Bustamante seriously is that he is now the target of some sleazy racist attacks. When I wrote my post last week about his unexpected rise to front-runner status in the recall election, I noted that he had belonged to a separatist group in college. The organization, MeChA, at one time had called for a separate Chicano nation, which for a Mexican-American in the early 70's would have been as "extreme" as it would have been for a Jewish student in the 1930's to support Zionism.

My quibble, though, was not with that aspect of MeChA. I was more concerned that a number of people close to the organization had eventually drifted off into cloud-cuckoo land, spouting an anti-everyone else ideology. The group today is essentially an ethnic pride group, as "separatist" as the Knights of Columbus, and its university charters disavow any bigotry or separatism; in fact, the group is open to all races and ethnicities. Bustamante should appropriately tell the voters what his stance is on Aztlan, and then get on with the campaign.

However, first Fox News, and now Tom McClintock, have begun calling MeChA a "racist" organization. Both have good reason to smear this organization. Fox has had to confront an embarassing story this week about a leaked memo showing that its executives were trying to bias its coverage in favor of Ahnolt. McClintock, who absurdly claimed that MeChA was just like the KKK (well, for one thing, they don't burn crosses on people's lawns), is attempting to appeal to the Republican base, which overwhelmingly supported Prop. 187, and is, shall we say, uncomfortable with the possibility that a non-white might be the next governor.

In fact, most of the criticism concerning MeChA has come from the Ann Coulter/David Duke/David Horowitz wing of the body politic. Those who have a long memory in California politics need only go back to the 1969 Mayorality election in Los Angeles, when Sam Yorty, well-behind in the polls, accused Tom Bradley of having ties to the Black Panthers, to realize that this sort of ugly politics is not unusual in California, and even has a track record of success. Anyways, expect that story to get covered as if it were as important, as, say, a candidate boasting about a gang-bang.

John Hawkins, proprietor of Right Wing News polled myself and 27 other "left wingers" (actually, I'm more of a libero than anything) as to who the 20 greatest figures in American history are. Here were mine:

Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, FDR, MLK, Jackie Robinson, U.S. Grant, Barry Goldwater, my mom and dad (tied), Cesar Chavez, George McGovern, Louis Brandeis, Clarence Darrow, Mark Twain, Dorothy Day, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Neither McGovern, Darrow, nor my parents received enough support to qualify for honorable mention, which truly signifies idiotarianism on the part of the left.

I Never Thought This Would Happen To Me: This article actually makes me more likely to support Ahnolt. I mean, how many times in one's life do you actually get to vote for a candidate who has admitted to having taken part in a "gang bang". [link via Kausfiles]

Paul Westphal has said that when he was recruited to play at USC back in the late-60's, Bob Boyd showed him the blueprints for a "new campus arena" that would soon be home to the Trojans. Thirty-five years later, SC continues to play its home games at the Sports Arena, which is, truth be told, a nice, comfortable arena, with pleasant sightlines, but is predictably empty during the team's games. In spite of their recent success under Henry Bibby, challenging UCLA for the time in almost a half-century for citywide dominance, USC's attendance was annually the worst in the conference, and one of the worst totals anywhere among big-time college basketball programs.

Finally, though, a private donor has stepped in to contribute $35 million to build the long-dreamt-of arena, and the students and alums will finally be able to see the school play its home games on campus, rather than in an ancient arena situated in the parking lot of the Coliseum, in an area thought, rightly or wrongly, to be a bad part of town. The plan is to begin construction next year, with an opening scheduled for the 2006-7 basketball season.

I would assume that once the new arena opens, the L.A. Sports Arena will no longer have a reason to be. The site of the 1960 Democratic Convention, where JFK withstood the challenge of LBJ (as well as a thrilling demonstration on the floor on behalf of Adlai Stevenson), has no other tenants, and can't really compete with Staples and the Forum for rock concerts. However, it should be seen as an opportunity for the Coliseum Commission, never known for its foresight, to removate the stadium that still dominates the area. Tearing down the Sports Arena will provide for thousands of parking spaces, as well as alleviating worries local fans have had about the neighborhood. All in all, a good day for local sports fans.

Washington Monthly has determined who the biggest liar is among U.S. Presidents of the past quarter-century, and it's no surprise. [link via CalPundit]

Fox has dropped its lawsuit against Al Franken [link via Hamster] As this case was brought in such obvious bad faith, here's hoping that Mr. Franken is not merely satisfied with the free publicity generated by Murdoch's minions, and continues to pursue the legal fees, costs and damages for malicious prosecution that he's entitiled to.

Boomshock has one of the first substantive interviews with dark horse candidate Georgy Russell. The big scoop: she didn't vote in the last election either. [link via Matt Welch at Hit & Run]

Over the years, I've kinda gotten to know two people who later became famous in the Toy Department of Life. One, as those of you visit my college football blog know, is my former law-school classmate Rick Neuheisel. Although we were mainly casual acquaintances, and didn't hang out together outside the Gould Law Center, my memories are uniformly positive. He was (and for all I know, still is) a funny, down-to-earth guy, as far away from being the stereotypical jock as a human can be. I hope he soaks U-Dub for whatever he can take.

The other athlete I knew, sort of, was Kevin Johnson. He either lived in, or palled around with/slept with someone who lived in, the same dorm unit as I, so I'd see him quite a bit. Back then, he was a talented freshman, but far from being a star; his big claim to fame was hitting a buzzer-beating jump shot to send our game with UCLA into overtime (CAL lost anyway). The closest I ever came to a substantive encounter with KJ came when I sat next to him at Kip's, one of the earliest sports bars I remember, watching an SC-UCLA basketball game one Friday night in 1985. Over the years, KJ has become a point of pride for UC graduates, a star athlete and mensch who was a legitimate student, who could quote Camus and go from baseline to baseline in four seconds, in contrast to the Bozeman Era mercenaries (Kidd, Murray, Abdul-Rahim) who had almost nothing to do with the academic side of the university.

This morning's LA Times has an interesting piece about KJ's attempt to transform his high school alma mater into a charter school run by something called the "St. HOPE Corp.". The article only hints at this, but his struggle to get this project off the ground represents everything that is wrong with the educational debate in this country.

The school, Sacramento High, has had declining test scores for years, due largely to what one audit described as a climate of low funding and administrative apathy. However, the honors section of the school has a good track record getting its students into college, and the school itself has a number of fine, experienced teachers. Wanting to incorporate that quality into the rest of the school, a number of parents led a petition drive to begin a charter school, and KJ's group won a narrow vote by the Board of Education over a proposal by the teacher's union (btw, this being California, the school board members who backed KJ are now the subjects of a recall drive).

What KJ's solution for this remains unclear. He proposes to divide the school into six charter schools, which would allow it to remain independent of administrative regulations binding to other schools. How this would be different from the way the school was run last year, or how it would be run by a more standard charter school proposal, is hard to say, except when the only idea that is being spit out is to reduce the due process rights of teachers, you know you're not dealing with someone with creative educational policies. One teacher was at first enthusiastic about the program, only to have a change-of-heart after one meeting ended with the good folks at St. HOPE leading a prayer hymn. Had KJ not had an outstanding career as a point guard, it is hard to see this project being taken seriously.

Johnson, who has no background in education, obviously has his heart in the right place, and his celebrity has attracted some deep pockets from the private sphere, including Bill Gates and the Walton Foundation, to help fund some of the more grandiose projects. It looks like he will have a shot at getting this project off the ground when schools open next week. But it is hard to see how this is any different from the vanity projects other athletes sponsor: Magic Johnson has his own theatres, TGIFridays, and 24 Hour gyms, all of which pay tribute to the glorious career of Magic; KJ has his own Starbucks and his charter school. In the long run, schools will only improve with a significant public investment, not just a hope and a prayer that philanthropy tied to a famous name will save the day.

Even I'm a bit skeptical of this poll, which shows Bustamante leading A.S. by 13 percentage points (the same poll had the recall succeeding by only 5 points). What it does indicate, however, is that the G.O.P. now has a real problem on its hands; the real story of this election isn't Ahnolt, it's the surprise showing of a heretofore obscure Latino politician, who seems to be on the verge of being the next governor of the fifth (or is it sixth) largest economy in the world. I can't imagine Karl Rove is too happy that the net result of his master plan is to replace a moderate governor with a liberal, especially one who will be an instant Vice Presidential candidate the moment he gets elected.[link via LA Observed, which gets a well-deserved write-up here]

Her campaign is going nowhere fast, but Arianna Huffington has a blog, where she eviscerates the idiotic column by former Dukakis campaign strategist Susan Estrich. That follows on the heels of Gray Davis' wife, whose blog has to be seen to be believed. No word if Ahnolt, or someone who can write, will set one up, although if the reliquary he has advising him is any indication, he might be hard-pressed to even identify what the internet is.

With the college football season starting today, that can mean only one thing: the return of Condredge's Acolytes, America's premier college sports blog. It's collaborative; anyone with an interest is invited to write. Go Bears !!

As a new poll shows Ahnolt with a slight lead over Cruz Bustamante, he will now have to confront a seething backlash brewing against him among Latino voters. In this piece, the long-time anchor of Univision news, Jorge Ramos, denounces A.S. in no uncertain terms. The money quote [translated into English by Jusiper]: "Arnold is teaching us the classic lesson of what any candidate should to lose the Hispanic vote. Being anti-immigrant in California, sadly, keeps earning votes. But there is nothing worse than when an immigrant forgets his past and turns his back on others like him. And Arnold's back sure is wide." [link via Snark Attack]

Early this year, for a couple of months, I had the honor of writing a couple of college basketball-related posts for Off-Wing Sports, Eric McErlain's terrific sports blog, and a once-a-day stop for yours truly. His post today on what makes a good sports bar is well worth the reading:

So what makes a good sports bar? It's a place you go to watch the game with like minded folks who are looking for the same thing. It's not a place where catching the score is an afterthought. It can have pool tables and arcade games, but they can't be the main attraction...Music is fine, as long as it's in the background, and not dominating the scene.

What else? How about some character? Some history -- and it helps if you're part of that history too. How about some identification with the neighborhood the bar resides in? And how about a crew of regulars, not an ever-shifting cast of twenty-somethings looking for the next hot spot.

And, apologies to my friends who have recently become parents, a sports bar is for adults only. Points off if your favorite place has a kid's menu.

It is a source of irritation that reviews of sports bars always focus on the number of big screen TV's, or the number of extra-curricular activities that go on that don't involve sports. When I go to a sports bar, I don't care about air hockey or pool tables, and I don't want to have the juke box going full blast when my team is playing; I just want to watch the damn games, hang out with my chums, and drink as much Sierra Nevada as I can afford. Anyways, if anyone from SoCal has any suggestions for what their favorite sports bar is, let me know; I intend to publish a similar post shortly.

And for any and all who care, here's Hunter S. Thompson's take on the joys of being a 'Niner fan.

It's a shame that some bloggers do not feel the need to practice the same sort of due diligence that lawyers are ethically required to do before taking on a case. Making a rare trip to Instapundit this morning, I came upon this little gem, to an article by one Austin Bay: "The usual "international human rights crowd" has been slow to condemn the current horrors perpetrated by Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. During the Cold War, Amin escaped their condemnation because he was "anti-colonialist."

Hello !! Idi Amin was one of the most vilified people on the planet while he ruled Uganda. Many of the stories about his regime, while he was in power, eventually mentioned rumors of cannibalism and the like. If, like most of the rest of the human race, his reference to the "usual human rights crowd" includes Amnesty International, they were quite outspoken about the monster, just as they have been in the forefront of the denunciation of Robert Mugabe (see also here, here, and here).

Another terrorist slaughter in Iraq, this time targeted at the U.N. This is starting to get out of control...Bush needs to start taking the war on terrorism seriously.

I reckon this is a common enough phenomenum: I can criticize the people of my state for wanting a do-over on the last election, but when it comes to the lame, warmed-over put-downs of this third-rate poor man's Peggy Noonan wannabe, I get pissed. I'm beginning to think that, like football games on a sunny New Year's Day, backyard swimming pools, and freeways, the recall is one more California innovation for which the rest of the country envies us.

With Cruz Bustamante now the front-runner, according to the most reliable poll out there, the possibility that California will elect a more liberal politician to replace Gray Davis becomes a less-remote possibility (Ed.-it didn't happen). Of greater interest to the media will no doubt be the ethnic background of the lieutenant governor: if elected, Bustamante will be Calfornia's first Latino chief executive since pre-statehood.

How an obscure, hitherto undistinguished politician with a background that can justly be called questionable (in his youth, he belonged to a Mexican nationalist group comparable to the Black Panthers, and as recently as two years ago, he let slip the n-word during a speech) can suddenly be ahead of one of the most popular, well-known figures on the planet reflects one of the key political trends in the country, the rise of the Latino as a pivotal voting bloc in Sun Belt politics.

The story of California politics in the past decade has been about the aftermath of Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigrant referendum which passed with almost 60% of the vote in 1994, carrying the G.O.P. to its strongest state-wide performance in a generation, even enabling the party to control one house of the state legislature for a term. Bustamante's lead is merely the latest sign of a trend that emerged after that election, in which the Democratic Party achieved a dominance hitherto unseen since the end of the Nineteenth Century, at the same time as the Republican Party controlled the national government.

Between 1898 and 1992, California was the largest state in the Union to consistently go Republican, both in Presidential elections and in the governor's mansion. No Republican won the Presidency without carrying California, while several Democrats (Wilson, JFK, and Carter) won office without winning the state. Before Gray Davis, only three Democrats (Culbert Olsen, for one term during the Depression, and the Browns, Pat and Jerry) were elected Governor during the 20th century. From 1950 to 1992, only three Democrats won Senate elections, and two of those served only one term. Besides LBJ, no Democratic presidiential nominee carried the state during that period.

The California Republican Party produced, among others, Hiram Johnson, Earl Warren, Richard Nixon, William K. Knowland, Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian, and Pete Wilson, all of whom were national figures who either became President or were touted for the Presidency. During that same period, besides the Browns, California Democrats produced men who were either famous for being effective legislators and mayors, such as Jesse Unruh, the Burtons, George Moscone, Alan Cranston, Tom Bradley and Willie Brown, or politicians famous for having lost (ie. William McAdoo, Upton Sinclair, Jerry Voorhies, Helen Douglas, etc.). With the exception of McAdoo (infamous for having run as the candidate of the KKK for the 1924 Democratic nomination), Cranston, and Jerry Brown, none of them were considered Presidential material, and Cranston and Brown both bombed when they pursued their national aspirations. When Pete Wilson edged Diane Feinstein in the 1990 governor's election, and then routed Kathleen Brown in 1994, it was a continuation of a trend that existed for almost a century, of Republicans beating Democrats for statewide office.

Everything changed in the '94 election. Struggling to overcome a shaky economy, and, like President Bush, having to justify a tax increase he signed into law, Governor Wilson decided to exploit the political shockwaves that emerged from the popular meme of that year, the "angry white male". Anti-immigrant feelings had been stoked by politicians in California for generations; one of the more infamous "newsreels" used in the campaign against EPIC and Upton Sinclair in 1934 showed wave upon wave of Okies entering the state, intent on electing Sinclair to impose his new-fangled Russian-tested ideas about collectivism and the like. Seizing upon the issue of "illegal aliens", Wilson and the Republicans pushed Proposition 187, an initiative that promised to restrict all government benefits to those not legally in the country, from medical services to education. And so, the vivid memory voters of this state have of that election is a campaign commercial showing people sneaking accross the border, with a narrator remind us, "they keep coming...."

According to the LA Times, only 8% of the electorate in 1994 was of Latino ancestry, and those voters tended to split their votes between the parties, with Democrats receiving only a marginal edge. The Republicans won all but two statewide offices, most by large margins, captured the State Assembly for the first time in over 25 years, gained parity in Congressional races, and nearly pulled off a stunning upset in the Senate, where Diane Feinstein barely scraped by to defeat one of the weakest candidates in memory, Michael Huffington (helped, in large part, by the late revelation that the Huffingtons had employed an undocumented nanny for their children). Republican dominance in California seemed assured for the next generation.

And then, suddenly, it ended. Over the next few years, angry over the unsubtle subtext of anti-Latino bigotry behind Prop. 187, Latino voting registration shot up. In 1992, Bill Clinton had focused on California, making it the key swing state in his bid to defeat George Bush, and had visited the state frequently enough in his first term to make it seem like a second home. By 1996, the polls showed that he had such a large lead that he didn't even bother to campaign here against Bob Dole. For the first time in a generation, a Democrat was elected to Congress from the heart of Reagan Country, Orange County. A Latina. The Democrats retook control of the state legislature.

By 1998, the percentage of the Latino vote in California had nearly doubled from where it had been four years earlier, and the Democrats captured all but two statewide offices. Barbara Boxer, one of the most liberal politicians ever elected to the U.S. Senate, who had barely beaten a weak opponent in the year of Clinton's first election, easily beat back a moderate Republican opponent. Two years later, Diane Feinstein repeated the trick.

In 2000, George Bush, en route to his Supreme Court selection, vigorously contested California, while Al Gore ignored the state. It didn't matter. Gore won the state by 13 points, helping him carry the popular vote nationwide. The Latino share of the vote stayed at 13%, which meant that even more were voting in a higher-turnout election.

Which, of course, brings us to 2002, and to the GOP's 2003 Mulligan. For the first time in a century, the Democrats were able to sweep the statewide offices. They control both houses of the state legislature by large margins, and have almost a 2-1 edge in Congressional seats, a margin that was almost certainly self-limited by the need to play it safe during redistricting by preserving the seat formerly held by Gary Condit. Loretta Sanchez, the Latina Democrat who won in Orange County back in 1996, besting "B-1 Bob" Dornan, has had no problem winning reelection since then; Orange County, far from being a Republican stronghold, is now in play. And they did it with an electorate that was apathetic, that viewed the top of the ticket with undisguised contempt, in a big year for Republicans everywhere else.

Before the release of the Field Poll yesterday, it had become trendy to disparage the notion of Latino voters being a significant voting bloc in California. Why, as one blogger noted, their total voting share in the last election was only 10%, which is only 25% higher than it was in 1994. Keeping in mind the old saw about how correlation is not causation, let me point out that the Democratic Party was not sweeping statewide offices before Prop. 187, and its recent success is probably not a result of soccer moms. In fact, the decline in Latino turnout from 1998 to 2002 is a moderate one, especially when compared with the black turnout, which went from 13% to 4% in the last election.

Bill Simon aside, the Republicans who are getting trounced, the Matt Fongs, the William Campbells, are not fire-breathing extremists. Dan Lungren, who was beaten badly by Gray Davis in 1998, had previously won reelection to the second most powerful position in the state, Attorney General, which is usually a stepping-stone to the governor's mansion. In other states, men like that win.

But not California. And now, it is apparently Ahnolt's turn to confront those trends. The only issue that we know A.S. has taken a stand on is Prop. 187; he's for it. Already, he has become the recipient of flack because of his ties to Warren Buffet, who just yesterday called for the revision of Proposition 13, the initiative passed in 1978 to limit increases in property taxes. To many conservatives, it is tantamount to a Democratic Presidential candidate calling for a reexamination of the legal reasoning behind Roe v. Wade. But A.S. may find that he needs the support of an electorate frustrated by politics-as-usual, annoyed that certain issues can't be discussed because of political correctness, whether it be from the right or the left (among those denouncing Buffet's remarks yesterday was one Gray Davis, indicating that his opportunism shows no bounds).

It is still early enough in the campaign to question the reliability of polls. Even to a partisan liberal Democrat like myself, I was surprised Cruz was leading, and it wouldn't shock me if other polls showed S'w'n'gg'r in the lead. What the Field Poll does show is that A.S. has an uphill climb. Only a day ago, it seemed that the election was his to lose, and no one besides the political pros took Bustamante seriously. To overcome the edge Democrats have in this state, he will have to be conservative enough to allow principled ideologues like Tom McClintock and Bill Simon to leave the race, but liberal enough not to alienate the rest of the human race. And, most of all, he must overcome the legacy of Prop. 187.

UPDATE: Obviously, Schwarzenegger won the election, using his status as an immigrant with a somewhat shaky past to overcome the legacy of Prop. 187, even winning a plurality of Latino votes. Any indication that this presaged a return to competive balance between the two parties was discredited, though, by John Kerry's easy win in the state the following year, as well as yet another landslide win by Senator Boxer. In the 2004 election, Latinos made up a record 14% of the electorate. Last year, Schwarzenegger's efforts to pass a series of propositions in the spirit of Prop. 13 failed badly, and he now runs behind two otherwise unknown Democrats for reelection.

The first Field Poll of the recall campaign shows the invincible Ahnolt losing to the unknown Cruz Bustamante, 25% to 22%, with Gray Davis trailing badly in his bid to avoid being terminated (sorry).

Kevin Drum of CalPundit challenges a certain Dixiecrat blogger to comment on the more pervasive phenomenum of white "affirmative action", a system of unacknowledged biases that allow unqualified people to fail upwards due to the color of their skin (the example used is that of Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent who "advanced on the career ladder despite weak performance, poor management skills and awkward relations with colleagues," while still managing to spy for the Russians for twenty years.

Unfortunately, membership does have its privileges; real affirmative action is designed to expand participation in programs, jobs, and educational slots beyond the favored class, whilst white affirmative action is geared towards limiting the applicant pool. But both get used by their detractors as examples of the unqualified receiving undeserved benefits, which is indeed a sad commentary on race relations.

Bad Timing: The Washington Post editorialized yesterday about how so, so, superior we are to the Euros, who are having a hard time adjusting to this summer's manifestation of global warning because they don't rely on air conditioning !! And, of course, the Post's headline this morning, presented without further comment.

How did I miss this? Former Princeton basketball star Nathan Whitecloud Walton is among the 135 who are running for governor. Nate, whose father Bill played in the NBA for several years with the Los Angeles Clippers and other teams, told the L.A. Times "(t)hat people are seriously considering Arnold shows you how little they think of the system we have. I actually studied politics at one of the premier institutions in the country, which gives me more qualifications than somebody who was Mr. Olympia."

But no Lazlo Toth: the entire slate of candidates for the upcoming election, complete with phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and a listing of how they will look on the ballot (current estimate: six pages !!). And, of course, an article about why A.S.' campaign is doomed.

Am I not the only person concerned that Ahnolt's campaign is shaping up to be little more than a stand-in for Pete Wilson? If anything can rally the base behind Cruz Bustamante(or even Gray Davis), it's the prospect of having that racist behind the scenes, using his Austrian beard to wage more wedge issue attacks on Latinos and blacks. Anyways, the notion that S-n-g-r is an "outsider" really won't wash anymore: like Perot, when he plunges, he will fall hard.

Proving, as always, that she's five minutes behind the cultural zeitgeist, Maureen Dowd columnizes about blogs, or rather, the blogs of Presidential hopefuls.[link via TalkLeft]

As I predicted, the kids picked the good girl over the gorgeous one last night. Dad seemed heartbroken; Ms. Fichtner's refusal to allow him one last kiss was the only honest moment on the entire series. It is not surprising that this show came out at roughly the same time as Ahnolt's campaign to be governor and Bush's "Op Gun" flight; each represents a nadir for our culture, a rejection of the authentic in favor of the manufactured moment. Which isn't to say I'm not going to need my Christy Fix real soon.

A bunch of polls are now out, with the most recent, by NBC, showing that Ahnolt has a sizable lead over Cruz Bustamante. The article emphasizes the obvious horse race numbers, but ignores the really big story, which is that the unknown Cruz Bustamante has 18% of the vote. Sw'n'g'r is known by just about everybody, but already about half the public has decided that under no circumstances will they vote for him. Besides getting the hard-core partisan Democratic vote, the "deputy governour", as the BBC referred to him the other night, stands to gain a huge boost from Latino voters, many of whom might be drawn to the polls to vote both in favor of the recall and in favor of electing California's first Latino Governor in 150 years.

Reading between the lines here, one can surmise that Ms. Fichtner lost tonight, and/or that she is about the least self-conscious bitch-on-wheels in the country. According to an article in her hometown paper, the former beauty queen admitted that she saw Who Wants to Marry My Dad? as a possible way to jump-start her career as a TV hostess: "I didn't do it as a dating opportunity...I did it as a career opportunity."

She also had a few words to say about the woman she bested in the '86 U.S.A. pageant, Halle Berry:

"I wouldn't trade my life for hers...Obviously we took very different paths in our lives. There are things I could have pursued, but chose family over a career at the time. She has yet to have children."

Meow !!

For those of you wondering, Georgy Russell filed her papers for Governor yesterday...one of the more recurrent themes that defenders of the circus have used is that with all the celebrity candidates, this election will make politics "more exciting" for the average voter. B.F.D. When Hamilton and Burr faced each other in a duel, it certainly was "exciting" politics, but I fail to see how that benefitted the public. The trick is for people to feel that politics is more relevant to their lives, not for politics to be more entertaining to the Fourth Estate.

Just saw my nephew for the first time. It is an unbelievable feeling to hold a days-old infant. His potential is limitless.


UPDATE: Charlie, and his Uncle Smythe.