Governor Schwarzenegger may have sided with the Democrats against Republicans on the matter of deficit spending, but he now has an opportunity to redeem himself and be a team player. If he means what he says on cutting spending next time, he ought to defend Republican State Sen. Denham against a recall effort launched as political payback by Senate Democratic leader Don Perata for Denham’s fiscal discipline.
This would be the ideal way for Schwarzenegger to show he means what he says on the budget, and begin rebuilding bridges with Republicans to boot. To me, this is the test that proves whether it’s all talk or not.
The word is that the original SimCity is going to be released freely under the GNU GPL for use with the One Laptop Per Child project.
Hey, the project is stupid, but I’ll take the game, heh.
Rudy Giuliani: 3:2
I don’t describe him as the frontrunner, so much as the guy who’s gotten a bye out of the first round. His role in the race is unique, and he gets to sit back and wait for who his leading challenger will be. It also helps that he has a good shot at pluralities in Florida and possibly New Hampshire. Had he said the right things, he might have had this nomination with the sort of dominance that Republican nominees tend to have. As it is though, he’s left openings for these other guys…
Mitt Romney: 3:1
For better or for worse, Mitt Romney is your Candidate-in-a-Can. An executive in government and private life, squeaky-clean background, saying all the right things on all the right issues, is doing well in the traditional states one has to do well in, plus has the voice and the look to match. If he hadn’t run left for Senate and Governor in Massachusetts, I think this race would be all over by now. As it is though, he’s left openings for these other guys…
Fred Thompson: 7:1
Romney and Giuliani tried their hardest to give this race to him, but clumsy speaking engagements (which of course was a big “failed to meet expectations” for a guy known as an actor) turned off some activists and left the race as open as ever, leaving the door open for these other guys…
John McCain: 7:1
Giuliani, Romney, Thompson, and Huckabee have all but handed the race to this guy, who months ago was supposed to be left for dead with the base against him, no money, and an air of death. But people are starting to walk back now, so who knows?
Mike Huckabee: 10:1
Sam Brownback dropping out was supposed to be his ticket to doubled support and huge momentum. Well, he got both, but doubled support and huge momentum only carry you so far when you’re starting at the Margin of Error. So he already shot his wad, but now comes the counter attack…
Ron Paul: 99:1
These odds aren’t nearly long enough, but to be honest he doesn’t belong up here. The only way he wins is if something happens to all of the above gentlemen.
Adam C points out that the Governor now wants spending cuts, allegedly.
Talk is cheap. The Governor had an opportunity in August to join with legislative Republicans in demanding a balanced budget this year.
Instead, he joined with legislative Democrats in attacking and pressuring those Republicans to violate the Constitution and vote for their illegal unbalanced budget, eventually himself having to be pressured by his fellow Republicans to use the line item veto properly in exchange for passing the budget. He then turned around and called for a special session of the legislature for “health care reform.”
Keep in mind this is also the governor who put billions of dollars of new debt on the ballot in lieu of cutting spending to prevent the state from defaulting on any debt.
How bad was his proposed budget this year? With his own projections it had a $2 billion deficit, and his own document says his revenue projections were beefed up. The final budget ended up (after his $700 million in Republican-demanded vetoes) with expenditures $1 billion over revenues (see page 72), with the legislative analyst predicting the structural deficit to balloon this year, not withstanding the Governor’s revenue projections. He and the Democrats are pretending this deficit is legal by doing some accounting tricks of transferring money from other accounts (which will then be transferred back later) in order to pretend that it’s a balanced budget.
Higher spending, steady taxes, budgets full of red ink. I don’t see what’s fiscally responsible about this Governor at all.
This stinks. Then again, it’s early. It’s not too late for those turnovers and that defense to shore up. I dont’ have a whole lot more than that to say, though, because I forgot about that game until the fourth quarter.
I seem to be settling in on Mondays to do my reviews of the Rasmussen tracking poll because the site updaters take the weekends off from updating, even though the polls go on over Saturdays and Sundays.
As far as I know, there have been no huge stories this week, no big events to shake things up, and it shows in the poll. There’s little movement, and that’s never good news for anyone in a race with no dominant frontrunner.
Huckabee fans may be the first to be disappointed by the last week, because what was surely looking to optimistic Huckabots to be a ramp all the way to victory, has abruptly ended with Huckabee just joining the pack.
Meanwhile for Fredheads like me, it’s a bit frustrating to look at those heady days of mid-September when Fred himself looked like he might be running away with it, only to then see Rudy’s Q3 fundraising surge and sigh.
But there is a little story, one that Red State even reflects upon. I can’t be the only one to have noticed that we had several articles lately about people’s support or willingness to vote for John McCain, either new or reiterated. It seems to be part of a trend the poll is seeing; McCain now has about doubled his suppport since his trough in mid-October.
Between McCain’s climb and Thompson’s drop, the boundary between Giuliani and Thompson versus the pack no longer exists. We now have a continuum of five candidates, all wedged in between 11 (Romney) and 23 (Giuliani) percent.
Anyone want to take a bet that Republican fundraising Q4 will continue to lag the Democrats, as Republican donors continue to wait on some structure to emerge?
This team’s better on paper, and it just might be better on the court. If Bynum, Radmanovic, Farmar have all improved as needed, and of course guys like Bryant and Fisher just bring what they’re expected to bring, then this is a credible team.
A recent Field Poll shows Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger virtually tied with Senator Barbara Boxer 44-43, were he to run against her in 2010. But the good Governor is a team player, oh yes. He will not run against her, according to a Sacramento Bee report:
Despite a Field Poll this week showing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a virtual tie with Sen. Barbara Boxer if he were to run for her seat in 2010, the Republican governor said Friday he has “no interest in that at all” during an appearance at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.
Schwarzenegger joked that he was fine with the growing speculation about what he would do after he is forced to leave the Governor’s Office in January 2011, implying that the rumors have been fueled by a desire by Boxer to raise money.
“This way she can raise more money when she says, ‘That Schwarzenschnitzel, he’s after me, he’s after me, oh my god, we’ve got to raise a lot of money!'” Schwarzenegger said. “That’s what this is all about. So, no, I have really no interest in that at all.”
Boxer is a terrible Senator, she being the one who even bought into the Diebold conspiracy theories, and challenged Ohio’s electoral votes after the 2004 election. And yet the team playing Schwarzenegger will not challenge her.
Oh, did you think I meant he was playing for the Republican team? Oh my, no. That’s not his team at all, and here we see yet more proof of that.
He won’t challenge a vulnerable Democrat, but he’s sure interested in trying to bring “health care reform” to California, calling the legislature into a special session to try to force the Democrats to pass such a bill. He even wants the Democrat-controlled body’s approval ratings to go up. What a team player indeed!
It’s late, and I don’t have anything in front of me, but this was a rout. Just a rout. The Suns played terribly: missing shots, turning the ball over, committing dumb fouls. The Lakers shot the lights out (61% in the first quarter), defended, rebounded, and got huge bench production.
I’m shocked. I’m amazed. I love it, if only for a night, heh.
Objective C 2 is out with the release of OS X 10.5, and it looks like they’re learning from Ruby. ObjC ‘properties’ look just like what you get from attr_accessor/attr_reader/attr_writer in Ruby, heh.
Likewise the new enumeration system looks great, and of course the garbage collection I’m sure will be fantastic. Not that Ruby is the only language that has those features, but with the properties, I have to think the inclusion of RubyCocoa into the OS has pushed the ObjC people into going in this direction when improving ObjC itself.
I wonder how well the GnuStep people are keeping up…