Foundation

First off, all those headlines about the Lakers are clearly making teams like Charlotte and Memphis step up and play their A game.

Secondly, I feel like I’m in a time warp. These are the Lakers of two years ago: No inside presence, too many outside shots (I did see some promising attempts by guys like Farmar at trying to get in closer, though still not nearly enough challenging of the interior defense by perimeter players free of their man), and too many losses.

Mihm working back into the rotation will help absolutely, but I have a feeling these Lakers won’t look like this year’s Lakers again until Gasol and Bynum are back.

Until then: ugh.

Now that I’m on 10.5 (for better or for worse), RegattaX is now updated for Leopard with the new version 1a. Same price, same features, new OS version.

California Republicans declare war on the state Senate Majority Leader Don Perata, says Flash Report:

In a strongly worded conference call to Republican leaders and County Chairs, California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring declared war on Senate President Don Perata. Never in the history of California politics has an elected official been recalled for casting a vote against tax increases.

Senator Jeff Denham (pictured left), SD 12, whose district includes the counties of Monterey, San Benito, Stanislaus and Madera, represents a broad agricultural region with socially conservative Democrats. The district has about 48% Democrats with 39% Republicans. After enormous pressure, Denham refused to cast his vote with Democrats on last summer’s budget bill. The recall election is set for June 3, 2008.

Read the full article for details on this radical escalation of California politics by the Democrats.

Gimp 2.4 has a perspective tool. Very handy when making the RegattaX Version 1a drive icon.

Once upon a time, California Republicans would appoint great members to the Board of UC Regents, and men like Ward Connerly would fight radical leftism from there.

Not now though. Governor Schwarzeneegger is now appointing left-wing Democrats to the body, making his administration all the more indistinguishable from what Phil Angelides’s would have been.

I blame the recall, and the progressives who created it. Down with progressivism in all forms. Up with closed political primaries and caucuses. Never again must we let a man like this be our nominee.

Here it is: Geert Wilders’s work on our enemy in the War on Terror, uncut and holding nothing back. Be warned: This movie graphically depicts the death and destruction of terrorism, including the 9/11 attacks and beheadings.

It is available on Live Leak where Wilders posted it himself.

Puerto Rico Governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, a Democratic Party superdelegate and endorser of Senator Barack Obama, was indicted today as part of a wide-ranging conspiracy to systematically violate federal campaign finance law and obstruct FBI investigations into his now apparently illegal campaign for Congress (as a non-voting member) in 2000.

So it’s official: Let’s add another Democrat to þe Olde Culture of Corruption List.

Quoting Jason Zengerle at The New Republic, my source for the CNN link above:

So, if the Democratic race is still unresolved as of June 7–when Puerto Rican Democrats go to the polls–I guess this could be an issue, especially since Acevedo has endorsed Obama.

P.S. By my count, Acevedo is now the second Democratic superdelegate under indictment, joining Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Are there any I’m missing?

Beyond the politics, though, the evidence is streaming out that Governor Acevedo, who as of now will have a vote in the 2008 Democratic National Convention, had no respect at all for the rule of law. According to Wikipedia in its article on Rosa Emilia Rodríguez, the US attorney prosecuting Acevedo:

Current Resident Commissioner Luis Fortuño accused Acevedo Vilá of using public funds to finance a lobbying campaign to prevent Ms. Rodríguez from obtaining confirmation in the United States Senate. In response, Puerto Rico Senate President Kenneth McClintock on July 20, 2007 ordered a legislative investigation into the matter. During Senate hearings, Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration director Eduardo Bhatia admitted that government resources were used to pay Republican lobbyist Charles Black to hold meetings regarding Rodríguez’ nomination.

This sounds downright Nixonian. Does anyone think that President Obama, the shining avatar of the Goddess of HopeChange, would have appointed a US Attorney to do anything about it, given that he accepted Acevedo’s endorsement?

Me neither.

As the unpledged Party Leader and Elected Official delegates to the Democratic National Convention weigh their solemn duty to decide who will be the 2008 Democratic Presidential nominee, arguably their chief job is to choose the candidate who is best equipped to win. No Democrat who has to run on the ballot (most PLEOs are elected officials) has a need to see another George McGovern.

So following is the kind of math the delegates are most likely looking at as the Democratic nomination process wears on:

Here is a table of the ten closest states in the 2004 Presidential election, their winners in the 2008 Democratic process, and the electoral votes carried by the states.

Quite a mixed bag of results. Poor superdelegates. There are more ways to grapple with this list than hands to weigh them in:

1. Obama has taken four to Clinton’s four to five (depending on how you count Michigan), with Pennsylvania likely her way, too. Point for Clinton.
2. Obama has taken the two closest states, and has won states with the largest margins. Points for Obama.
3. The close states won or will be won by Clinton add up to 72 (or 55, depending on Michigan) EVs to 35 for Obama. 20 EVs are quite a lot when your party starts behind. Point for Clinton.

I believe any smart superdelegate has to ignore the emotional appeals of the supporters of each candidate. The Democratic Party, for better or for worse, has chosen to use a nomination process less responsive to the popular will than even the US does in the general election, between the randomness of the ‘proportional’ district results in which winning some districts by a point wins you more delegates and winning others by a point will not, and the large number of superdelegates themselves who are guaranteed to have the power to choose the winner in any close race such as this one, due to the mathematics of requiring a majority on the floor.

The system is what it is, and if one believes the party is the only hope for America, the party has to win. Do delegates or popular votes in the primaries matter, or do electoral votes for November matter? I think the answer is clear, and that is why the superdelegates yet refuse to swing the election for Barack Obama. They want Clinton, and no amount of netroot whining will change that.

Over at Flash Report they’ve followed the story of Assemblyman Chuck DeVore‘s (Republican of Orange County) Assembly Bill 1940, which would allow pregnant women to get temporary placards to park their cars in handicapped parking spaces. The Assemblyman has gotten many reports of pregnant women who have trouble in large, full parking lots, particularly in the summer, when they have a long way to walk.

It seems like a simple, common-sense thing we can do to help expectant mothers, right? Think again. Democrats defeated the bill in committee, with a member who voted to defeat the bill, Assemblywoman Betty Karnette (Democrat of Long Beach) saying that instead of this, pregnant women “need a man around the house.”

Apparently Karnette, NOW, and the rest of the radical left think that pregnant women need to live their lives as helpless shut-ins, living at the whims of the men in their lives, even if it means staying home all day because the men have to go out and earn a living.

It baffles me how anyone can claim that positions like these are pro-women. How far have we sunk, that an organization gains credibility as ‘pro-woman’ by favoring unrestricted abortion on demand, but can then actively seek to hinder pregnant women like this?

I guess NOW just hates women who don’t kill their young.

I guess Mike Huckabee isn’t done talking about me, me, me, and raising his speaking fees, because he’s at it again. Apparently now the only reason various right groups didn’t all endorse him was that they all want to be kingmakers. Ego kept Christian groups from endorsing him, he says. No legitimate disagreement is possible.

What a whining crybaby. Go away, loser.