California matters

I'd rather not trust the fate of the state to a court ruling, especially since it looks like a weakish case to be honest.

Yeah, it was brought up before during Gray Davis' recall election, and was shot down then, but it's been seeing renewed interest.

Also, some guy was found passed out in his car with over 300 recall election ballots and roughly 1000 other pieces of various mail. Police took him into custody, but they say it's yet undetermined if election tampering was the goal or if it was some other mail theft scheme and there just happened to be a bunch of ballots in the mail he stole.

The recall system, like so many other American systems, was not designed with "literal fascists showing up" or "frivolous bullshit" or a combination of those things in mind. Really, it should have been reformed or abolished after Gray Davis was proven right about fixed-price energy contracts. As is, it's primarily a system for the disaster that is the CA-GOP to harass government officials they don't like.

On the other hand it seems like finally something is moving on the housing front:

By allowing two units per parcel and permitting property owners to subdivide their lots, the law would increase density to as many as four units on a single-family plot. The bill was furiously opposed by homeowners and local government groups who said it “crushes single-family zoning” and would be “the beginning of the end of homeownership in California.”

Ah, if only I were at the assembly. I would have loved to tell them "You say that like it's a bad thing."

I've noticed the NIMBYistic panic in the local papers opinion section. It's actually kind of amusing the flimsy excuses people make as to why zoning law changes to encourage denser development are actually Pure Evil(tm) and Killing the American Dream(tm). Longform and shortform complaints alike abound.

I still think that "The Sovietization of California housing is coming, and it’s coming for your neighborhood." is the winner, though. Like, O RLY?

In not so entertaining news, Using snowmaking equipment to stop forward progress of the Caldor Fire at Sierra-at-Tahoe.

Oh, those are my favorite opinion columns to gawk at. One time, one got published which was essentially "The top ten reasons everyone I don't like is a communist" Victor Davis Hanson and his ilk continue to show McCarthyism is back in fashion. Or rather, never went out of fashion.

As for the fires, I know some people who've been evacuated from them, so that's three years in a row now where I've either evacuated myself or known someone who has. But no, it's "bad forest management by the Evil Leftist Government because Communism" or "Arson by Evil Criminals Who do Arson" and not logging interests refusing to allow controlled burns and global warming.

Governor Gavin Newsom and other California leaders seek $16.7 million to help Afghan refugees settle in the state.

"These refugees gave our service members help in Afghanistan and it is only fitting we give them hope when they come to California. When I was growing up, the golden rule was that no matter how little you had, you help those in need. We are blessed to be in a position in California where we have enough funding to help ease these refugees' transition into our society."

Yeah. The right to decide how much house you want to buy is Communist. It's tyranny of the government.

We're less than a week until the last day to vote in the recall. Seems those low poll numbers earlier startled a lot of Democrats into action. Newsom is averaging 54% in the polls now and the early turnout is favoring him.

A lot of prominent national Democrats like Obama, Bernie Sanders, AOC, Elizabeth Warren, and VP Harris have come here to campaign or do ads for Newsom to reach the younger and progressive voters who probably stopped paying attention to politics after 2020. President Biden himself will be here next week to campaign for the governor.

Ironically, Newsom got an assist from Abott over in Texas as he's been able to rile up his base over the abortion bill over there and warning a Republican governor would try and do the same here.

Speaking of, I would be voting but I don't know where my ballet went. I'm too afraid to ask my Republican parents about, too.

You can get a replacement ballot or just vote vote in person starting Saturday.

Already mailed my ballot a while ago and checked to make sure it was received.

I'm going to vote in person because, honestly, I don't trust myself to get my own signature right anymore.

Not really an option for me, given I'm in Taiwan.

Oh, I know. It's just the rest of you guys have already said you voted or are going to vote soon, so I wanted to get my bit on there too.

Larry Elder, the Republican most likely to be governor if the recall succeeds, has been something of a gift to Newsom. This guy openly bragged about replacing Feinstein with a Republican if/when she dies and said reparations should go to the families of slave owners for losing their slaves.

Wait, What?. And this hasnt been played all over the news? Jesus.

I believe he's a libertarian, so I assume it's an obsession with personal property "rights" that led him to that conclusion.

Hopefully, this winds up being a case of Republicans shooting themselves in the head, rallying behind a lunatic when someone who wasn't would've won.

Pretty sure those were already recompensated - fuck knows why anybody thought they deserved any recompense in the first place.

Larry Elder is a libertarian in the sense that any other republican is a libertarian, I think. He hates big government when it's Democrats and only then. I'd say he probably said that more to appeal to people who are in a panic about the "Communists coming for our money to give it to the scary minorities who are lazy" or whatever. (That is, the Republican voter base.)

People often (not here so much, I think) talk about how it's surprising that the CA-GOP seems much worse than (or at least AS bad as) the national party here policy-wise, considering California is very left, but the thing is, we have more regular Republican-voters than Texas, so our well of awful is extremely deep. It's just that our population is so large that the Democrats are nigh-on double the amount of people. (All the more reason we should abolish the electoral college and the disproportionate senate, really.)

Only in the District of Columbia were slaveowners compensated (because Lincoln was a big fan of it). The rebel scum obviously didn't get compensated, and the border states voted down compensated emancipation.

The British approach was the same, officially the government bought all the slaves and set them free, as the importing of slaves had already been banned that meant slavery was over.

It was the most practical way to both reduce the large-scale economic shift from emancipation and get the buy-in from slave-owners so as to prevent violence.

Lincoln probably had the British model in mind when he proposed his own compensated emancipation plan. He even pointed out that buying and freeing every single slave in the border states and DC was less costly than three months of war expenses.

As Ramidel said though, the border states wouldn't bite. So Lincoln and Congress did what they could in the only place the federal government had direct authority over, buying and freeing the slaves in the capital and then flat outlawing slavery in the territories. The 13th Amendment eventually took care of the issue in the border states, while the Emancipation Proclamation took care of the rest courtesy of the Union armies.

Rose Mcgowan is supporting Larry Elder.

Some "Activist" she is....