Gary Davis and his supporters in the home stretch

Daniel Weintraub has a hilarious bit on last minute campaigning by Gray Davis and his supporters. This, of course, could only take place in San Francisco:

As [Mayor Willie] Brown spoke, a man with an oversized Arnold Schwarzenegger mask strapped to his face, money in his hands and a large blue E symbolizing Enron pursued a woman dressed in pink around the plaza, groping her between faux slaps in the face.

And here’s something that will make Davis sleep easier:

Charles Duff, 24, a student at San Francisco State University, sat with his back to the rally. I asked him what he thought of the recall.
“Crazy,” he said. “It’s crazy.”
What’s crazy about it? I asked him.
“The idea that you can take out a guy and have all these people running to replace him.”
So you’re going to vote against the recall?
“When’s the election?” he asked before answering the question himself. “Tomorrow, isn’t it? I don’t know. I have to work. I have to work most of the day.”

Jill Stewart speaks out on LA Times, Gray, & Arnold

Jill Stewart, who wrote an article on Gray Davis that I linked a couple of days ago, puts the Times story in perspective at the LA Daily News. Main thrust:

After my story ran, I waited for the Times to publish its story. It never did. When I spoke to a reporter involved, he said editors at the Times were against attacking a major political figure using anonymous sources.
Just what they did last week to Schwarzenegger.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Budweiser for Bustamante!

Let’s face it, Bud sucks anyway … but I sure as hell won’t be buying any of their beer now (third item). I wonder what all the anti-globalists and anti-corporate idiots who support Gray Davis, Algore, etc think about this corporate sponsorship. Could it be that, as opposed to Republicans who actively support businessmen and job creation, these guys spout off platitudes to hoodwink socialists while selling out to the corporate interests they supposedly oppose?
True. True.

Why the recall will win

Here’s a great article by Daniel Weintraub about why the recall came to be, and why it will win.
Money quote:

Although Davis ridiculed the recall as sour grapes from sore losers and attacked it as a right-wing coup, he realized too late that it was much more than that. The movement might have begun on the far right, but it became a deep, almost cathartic expression of frustration on the part of voters who felt cheated in the 2002 election by the governor’s meddling in the opposition party’s primary, by two unsatisfactory candidates who ran uninspiring, negative campaigns, and by a political elite who seemed to relish leaving them out of the game.

Couldn’t have put it any better.

Gray Davis: Open Mouth, Insert Foot

Oh, man … if you want to read why Gray is going down, just read this article from today’s Times. Here’s a great quote of the master at work:

“We need immigrants to pick our food and put it on our tables,” he said as the audience — middle-class Latinos, primarily — shifted uncomfortably. “We need immigrants to clean our hotels and office buildings and take care of the elderly.”
And: “That work is important…. Whether people are janitors or maids or busboys or cooks, it’s all part of the experience we enjoy when we’re at a restaurant or a hotel.”
If any of the Latinos in the studios of the Spanish-language station Univision felt patronized, they didn’t say so. But the governor’s words landed with a dull thud Monday night, creating one of many awkward moments as he fought for his political life in the final week of the recall campaign.

(courtesy of Powerline)

Makes a fella proud to be Minnesotan

Idiots. Maybe the best course of action would be to cancel next year’s homecoming. It’s one thing (still bad) when economically and socially repressed groups riot; while you don’t condone it in any way, and you prosecute those responsible, there’s some understanding of the desperation involved. What do we have in Mankato? A bunch of spoiled, rich kids who decided to piss all over their surrounding neighborhoods, beat people up, and destroy property. Everyone involved should be expelled, tried, and thrown in jail for a few weeks. It’s only at times like this that I wish we had a military draft.