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has denied clemency to convicted killer and Crips co-founder Stanley “Tookie” Williams. Williams is scheduled to die by lethal injection early tomorrow.

I have to say that I am deeply ambivalent about capital punishment. On the one hand, I am against it on principle the way the system is now; there is no humane method used to carry out death sentences, which to my mind directly violates the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the 8th amendment, and it is cheaper for prisons to keep a prisoner for life than to kill him. On the other hand, I can’t say that I’ve never thought, “that guy should die for what he did”. I can’t say I’ve never thought that Kim Jong-Il should be made to ingest the same poisons he forces people in his concentration camps to eat for the purpose of chemical weapons-testing. Or that Saddam Hussein should be killed to pay for the thousands upon thousands of Kurds he massacred. I just don’t know.

What do you think? (Hat-tip: VodkaPundit)

winter rains have begun in earnest.* The skies are grey and Northern California has started to resemble Chicago in the springtime. It’s time to start worrying about Christmas presents, travel plans and phone tag to set up meetings with people I haven’t seen in months when I go back to Chicago for the holidays later this month (T minus 17 days and counting**).

I’m torn between a certain fin d’année melancholy and an irrepressible excitement to be spending a significant amount of time back at home for the first time in a while. I must admit, though, that the excitement is winning out; my brain’s already in vacation mode and I’m finding it increasingly hard to concentrate at work. Hell, I’m finding it increasingly hard to concentrate anywhere. I even get distracted in the middle of blog posts. Yeesh. Or maybe it’s that it’s getting perilously close to my bedtime and I haven’t been sleeping well all week.

On that note, g’night.

* Yeah, I know, boo hoo. Must be tough living in California, right?

** 17 days?! I’m not going to last 17 hours. Game over, man. Game over.

While it is great for employment purposes to be living in the middle of all these big companies, it’s not so hot for the transplanted consumer. Why? Two words: sales tax. I have to pay sales tax for stuff I didn’t have to before: e.g. anything I purchase from buy.com, or my monthly Netflix bill.

It must be the newest thing in cheap marketing, but for the last year or so, I’ve been noticing that local businesses have been hiring people to stand along major thoroughfares waving signs and arrows advertising them: Quizno’s Subs, Computer Repair, Fresh Flowers. Some of these sign-wavers really get into it; they’ll bring headphones and some portable music device and be dancing around, waving their signs, waving to passing drivers.

As a way of getting people’s attention, it’s both low tech and amazingly effective. It’s also a dangerous distraction to drivers. This may have something to do with my unfortunate tendency to look with the entire car and not just my eyes, but I can’t imagine that anything that suddenly takes a driver’s attention off the road can be good for the overall accident level.

I paid almost $40 for a tank of gas yesterday. For my 4-cylinder car. Granted, it was mid-grade gas, but still.

all of my out-of-state friends. You know, the ones I am about to make fun of.

You ever notice that people who don’t live someplace tend to give it nicknames or shorten its name? But the people who actually live there don’t do it? I don’t know what it is, but for some reason, a bunch of my out-of-state friends call California “Cali”. Now, I don’t know one person who actually lives in California who calls it Cali. It’s just not done. They’ll use the whole name more often than not, or CA, the state abbreviation, in a pinch. But never Cali.

Take San Francisco. No locals or city residents call it “Frisco” (I have met someone from the East Bay who called it Frisco once, but I put that down to a moment of insanity). Usually we just call it the city. San Francisco, sure. SF for short, or even, rarely, San Fran, but never, ever, Frisco.

What’s up with that? Weird.

Update 08/05/2005 12:15 – Case in point: The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Going Back to Cali”. He used both “Cali” and “Frisco” in that song. Where was he from? Wait for it…Brooklyn. I rest my case.

So I got a call yesterday from the California chapter of NOW. They were looking for donations to help them lobby against conservative judicial nominations for the Supreme Court by the Bush administration. Now, I’m a single female living in one of the most better-dead-than-red¹ areas of the country. I have a more-or-less solid Democratic voting record, and have been known on occasion to contribute to charity. I’m pro-choice and against the Bush administration’s attempts to get the Christian right a stronger foothold in the highest court in the land². They should have had me in the bag. Instead, the NOW representative began by reading some inflammatory and blatantly false anti-Republican rhetoric about the “false election” and “losing Roe v. Wade“. And within 5 seconds, she lost me. I was disgusted. I don’t want to keep harping on this, but here it is again. Even given my demographic information, I think it’s folly for these far-left political groups looking for my money or my vote to assume that I agree with them. It’s the complacency that kills me. If they are so good at alienating someone who is pretty close to exactly ideologically aligned with them, how will they be at getting the support of someone who’s more moderate than me?

¹ A clever turn of phrase borrowed from this Rolling Stone article mentioned in a post I linked earlier.

² For the record, I’m against the far left getting more of a foothold in the Supreme Court, also. Most of America is solidly between the two extremes and I think that ideologically, the Supreme Court justices should represent that. Besides, ideology should not make much of a difference when getting into the nuts and bolts of interpreting law.

Both liberal and conservative pundits seem to think so. I don’t know that I would agree, living as I do in that unassailable fortress of liberal thought that is northern California. Do I think liberalism is dead? No. Do I think the liberal movement is a headless, directionless mob of elitists? Hell, yes. (Via InstaPundit)

You may have seen me mention this before, but I am firmly against direct democracy, government by initiative, or whatever you want to call it. It is hugely inefficient and expensive, and it has left the government of California in a hopeless quagmire of poorly-written and poorly thought out regulations. Initiatives seem to win or lose based directly on how much money is funneled into their campaigns; the fact is that the average person is just not qualified (or in many cases, interested) to govern him/herself. Besides, that’s what we pay our elected officials for. Legislators now don’t earn their salaries, and indeed seem to delight in causing gridlock in the state senate and assembly. It’s like they’re trying not to get anything done.

That said, it is a huge responsibility being a voter in the state of California. This November, we have no less than 16 (16!) statewide initiatives on the ballot, and that’s not counting the many other local initiatives. There were 3 in my district. Here, briefly, is how I voted on each of the initiatives (I’ve already discussed my choice on the presidential election to death):

• Prop 1A – Yes. This proposition gives control of local government revenues back to local government, and not state government, which has been shamelessly raiding local coffers for years.
• Prop 59 – Yes. I’m all for more transparency in government, but I have to say it seems a bit silly to put restrictions on how the law is interpreted in legislation.
• Prop 60 – No. Prop 60 was put on the ballot solely to oppose prop 62, the open ballot initiative (more on this later); since they oppose each other, only one or the other (with the highest votes, naturally) can pass. However, it proposes no real change to how primary voting works now, so there’s no point in voting for it even if you oppose prop 62, which I do.
• Prop 60A – No. This is just the type of legislation that has crippled California’s government. It will only tie our lawmakers’ hands. Allocating revenues and expenditures in the state budget should be left in the hands of the people we hired to do this very thing.
• Prop 61 – Yes. I know California hardly needs more debt, but this is what bonds are for in the first place.
• Prop 62 – No. This is, to put it plainly, undemocratic. Allowing only the top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, to advance from the primary to the general election is just not fair. Each party should have the right to have a candidate represent it in the general election.
• Prop 63 – No. This measure unfairly targets a small portion of the tax-paying population for a specific purpose. I agree that mental health programs would be tremendously useful and could even save taxpayers a lot of money in the long run, but the way that they (Prop 63 supporters) are going about implementing them is all wrong. Again, budget allocations should be left to the discretion of our lawmakers. I cannot state this strongly enough. I am against any measure that allocates budget, raises taxes or creates budget allocation restrictions (as this one does) for any one purpose.
• Prop 64 – No. I don’t believe that the general public has the expertise necessary to effectively decide this matter. I agree that frivolous lawsuits are a problem, but if this matter is to be legislated at all (I have some doubt on this; it seems to me to be a fundamentally judicial matter), it should be left in the hands of our expert lawmakers. That’s what we pay them for.
• Prop 65 – No. A weaker version of prop 1A, this was superceded and made obsolete by prop 1A, which I am already voting for. It would be harmful to vote for this one.
• Prop 66 – Yes. I am no expert on this (which is why I was sorely tempted to vote no, just on principle), but from all I’ve learned on this subject, a lot of nonviolent multiple offenders are getting life sentences and clogging up our already overloaded jail system. Resentencing such nonviolent offenders to shorter, more reasonable periods of incarceration will reduce the load. Passing this measure promises save the state millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars, for which there are ample other good uses. However, I am very nervous about the consequence of my vote, because of my aforementioned lack fo expertise.
• Prop 67 – No. Again with the voter-decided budget restrictions. No, no, no. And again, no. Besides, to voice a purely self-interested reason, I think fees are high enough already (although the liberal side of me won’t complain (too much) if state government raises taxes for general budgetary purposes); I pay as much (seriously) in fees, surcharges and taxes ($8.00) as I do for my landline phone service ($8.50) each month. That can’t be right.
• Prop 68 – No. Even prop 68′s backers (gambling special interests) gave up on it. Gov. Schwarzenegger has already negotiated better deals with Indian tribes than are offered in either proposition 68 or 70 to get money for the state. Besides, and more importantly, Native American tribes are sovereign nations. It is not right (and when you get down to it, useless) for us to be dictating what they do on their land, and how much of a share we should get of their money.
• Prop 69 – No. This one’s a no-brainer. People who are arrested, but not necessarily charged with any crime, should by no means be forced to contribute a DNA sample to a state-wide database. No less should those who are charged but not convicted be forced to do the same. Even if this one passes, I would hope that it would be recognized to be in clear violation of Californians’ consitutional right to privacy.
• Prop 70 – No. See my entry for prop 68.
• Prop 71 – No. I was really torn on this one. I am a strong supporter of stem cell research, but again, prop 71′s backers are going about it all wrong. I would not have opposed a bond to fund the research, although I really do believe that medical research funding is a budgetary matter (yeah, yeah, you’ve heard me say this before). What clinched it for me is that these guys want to make stem cell research a cons
  titutional right (and prohibit funding of human reproductive cloning research). That is patently ridiculous. We should not be legislating on this issue! This is an issue for the courts.
• Finally, Prop 72 – Yes. I was again torn on this one. I was at first concerned that this would be cripplingly expensive to small business, until I learned that there is a tiered system of what health benefits employers, depending on size, would need to provide for employees. Although I hesitate to impose such a huge cost on employers, the cost rests better there than on the state, and leaving so many people uninsured is not a viable option. The last thing California needs is more bureaucracy. In the long run, I think this is a good plan. This is another one that I feel I am just not qualified to vote on.

Whew. That took a while. Let me say again that I feel I am severely unqualified to be voting on matters of such importance; on many of these issues, I’d need a law degree to really be able to make an informed decision. And I think I can say with some confidence that I spent more time than a lot of others learning about the issues in this election. That does not make me feel confident about the outcome.

This is why we have a representative democracy (although in this state it can be argued that it is in name only); people in this state, for the most part, have neither the time nor the inclination to learn about everything they should in order to vote informedly and effectively on these ballot measures. There’s a reason that governing anything is a full-time job. We should let our lawmakers do the jobs we pay them for; we don’t have the time or the qualifications to do it ourselves.

bit of a political identity crisis earlier this year. Never one to follow current events, I decided that before the California Democratic primary this March, I should be informed about what–and whom–I was casting my votes for. So I set out to learn. I started following the news. I devoured political commentary from the left and the right, in an effort to really think about my positions on the issues, and why I held them.

After much thought, I came to this conclusion: I am a moderate liberal. I support gay marriage. I believe in a woman’s right to choose. I am not a proponent of small government; I believe in using government to solve problems. I believe in fiscal responsibility. I am not opposed to tax hikes when necessary. I’m still feeling out my position on gun control.

Evidently I’m also moderate because I don’t unequivocally believe that Republicans are subhuman. I was at a gathering this weekend, and I found myself surrounded by the sort of unreasoning lefty-ism that is regularly derided in conservative (and moderate) circles. I was never more aware of the increasing polarization of American politics–that I had read so much about but never experienced to such a degree personally–until then. Republicans and any conservatives were described as bumpkins, provincial, and just plain stupid (because everyone knows that only stupid people are conservative). Scorn dripped from every word uttered about conservatives and anyone who subscribed to an organized religion.

But yet more scorn was reserved for the conservative political operatives in Washington. Karl Rove is apparently devoid of any shred of morality. Which is evidently ironic, because the Republicans claim they represent morality and all that is right and good. This sounded to me like nothing more than sour grapes. Now, I don’t know enough about Rove’s history, and nor should anyone who is not personally acquainted with him, to make such a statement, or refute it. What he is, in my opinion, is a skilled and savvy strategist who brought his party to power with enviable efficiency and yes, ruthlessness. He’s not called the boy genius for nothing. He’s so good, in fact, that he becomes the scapegoat for every Democratic loss, in elections or in the public eye (like the ridiculous notion that he was somehow behind the whole CBS national guard memo fiasco–which, I might add, some liberals were suggesting with perfect seriousness). Had the Democrats someone like that, someone who fought in the trenches, took ruthless advantage of every opening and mobilized the left like Rove mobilized the right in 2000, they’d be crowing about him or her today. It’s kind of like Chicago Bulls’ fans’ attitude toward Dennis Rodman when he joined the team. He was a jerk before, but now he was our jerk. We didn’t mind if he threw the occasional elbow, as long as it helped the team win.

Let’s get this straight, just for the record. I voted for Gore in 2000. I am no fan of George W. Bush. I fundamentally object to and disagree with nearly every one of his policies, be they foreign or domestic. I do not, however, believe he is the antichrist. And so while I would greatly prefer that he was not our president for the next 4 years, I don’t want him out of office enough to vote for John “Facade” Kerry, whose new campaign slogan should be “Frontin’”. I am not so virulently anti-Bush that I refuse to see what a poor candidate Kerry is. While I think it largely irrelevant what either candidate did during a 30-year old war, I do not dismiss the Swift Boat veterans’ allegations, at least one of which was proved true, out of hand.

But since I recognize that Republicans are people, too, I have to tread carefully among these unreasoning leftists, lest I be suspected of being secretly Republican, or worse, French. I more or less believe in the same things as these people do, but because I’m willing to acknowledge that the other side occasionally has a point, I must be an undercover conservative operative. It’s enough to make me pull out my hair.

If the whole Democratic party subscribes to these defeatist views (and I have reason to suspect that at least a significant portion of it does), if the whole party just complains about how the Republicans spin everything out of recognition (again, which they wouldn’t be complaining about if they were successful doing the same thing–and they’re not, even with most major media outlets shamelessly shilling for them!) and doesn’t do anything, basically, but whine about their loss of control of America’s agenda, then I am deeply doubtful that they’re going to get their act together enough to become a serious political threat before at least 2008. They’re going to have to become as desperate as the Republicans were during the Clinton years. Desperate enough that they reorganize from the ground up, get united and get inspired.