Gas prices go way up and my commute gets worse. Ass.

Quoted: Westsiders may note that travel times between L.A. and Santa Monica in both directions got worse in the morning, but slightly better in the afternoon.

This is a positive development towards Obama clinching.

Quoted: A Democratic Party rules committee has the authority to seat some delegates from Michigan and Florida but not fully restore the two states as Hillary Rodham Clinton wants, according to party lawyers.

Quoted: Democratic National Committee rules require that the two states lose at least half of their convention delegates for holding elections too early, the party's legal experts wrote in a 38-page memo.

This will be awesome.... when I'm retired.

Quoted: That dream appears to be coming true, thanks to work by the California High-Speed Rail Authority. After getting a green light by State environmental impact assessors, they’ve begun implementation of an 800-mile bullet-train system that will connect Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Central Valley, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, Orange County and San Diego. Trains traveling at 220 mph on the systems are forecast to carry up to 100 million passengers per year by 2030.

A comment I have heard often during this presidential primary is that there isn't much of a difference between Obama and Clinton. They're both campaigning for government health care, getting out of Iraq, yadda yadda yadda, and picking between the two is basically splitting hairs when compared to picking between one of them and McCain.

There's some truth to that comment, but it is fundamentally wrong when you consider an inconspicuous yet extremely important factor in this election cycle:

The fundamental difference between Clinton and Obama is that Obama, like the Howard Dean-lead DNC in 2006, will be using a 50-state strategy, building a Democratic base across the entire country. This is in stark contrast to the (roughly) 20 state strategy favored by Clinton's advisers, the same ones that ran the DNC during Bill's two terms. When Bill Clinton was running for President in '92, the Democrats held 267 House seats and 57 Senate seats. When Al Gore was running for President in 2000, the Democrats held 211 House seats and 46 Senate seats. Not quite the kind of coattails you want at the top of the ticket.

If you've been paying attention over the last eight years, you've witnessed possibly the most corrupt administration every, supported 100% by party representatives in congress: Warantless wiretapping before 9/11, falsifying intelligence to justify the Iraq war, torturing detainees, Abu Ghraib, revealing the identity of an undercover CIA agent, Hatch Act violations, millions of missing emails from 2003-2005, politicization of the Justice Department culminating in the US Attorney firings. Those are just the big ones. A single Democratic president can't counter the Republican party alone. He (or she) needs a mandate in the form of large congressional majorities, plus implicit mandates from having a majority of Governorships and state legislatures held by Democrats. That is not likely to happen under Clinton. That is much more likely to happen with Obama. That's the difference between the two candidates.

Enforcement by the federal government? Meaning Bush's DOJ? No way.

Quoted: The rule has state officials nervous that some of their consumer- friendly laws -- such as Massachusetts and North Carolina laws against predatory lending, a practice under which a bank tricks a consumer into signing on to a higher interest rate -- will be far less effective. The Office of the Controller of the Currency says federally chartered banks don't have to abide by all state regulations regarding banking. And in cases where federal banks do need to play by state rules, the controller's office said, it will be the federal government that enforces the laws.

Not good....

Quoted: Lastly, the thing that is really scandalous about this looming budget deficit is that Schwarzenegger was just this year projecting a surplus. He’s fiscally incompetent, as was his predecessor and Davis was booted out in an unprecedented recall election.

This is great news if it is true. However, I definitely would not put it past the Republicans to act like the initiative is dead, and then bring it back two weeks before the election.

Quoted: The proposal to change the winner-take-all electoral vote allocation to one by congressional district is virtually dead with the resignation of key supporters, internal disputes and a lack of funds.

Glad to see this is making its way onto mainstream blogs.

Quoted: You've got to give the GOP credit. They can't get a permanent Republican majority through the strength of ideas, through developing policies that work, or by providing a compelling candidates with visions for the future that a majority of Americans can support. So they resort to dirty tricks.

This is a problem for Democrats, not just in California, but nationally. The Dems can't win a close election without winning California. Now a Republican law firm is proposing changing how California gives its electoral college votes, and is estimated to give around 20 extra electoral college votes to the republican candidate. In a vacuum, I'm fine with this proposal. However, when Texas, Florida, and all of the other Red states that are balanced by California don't play by the same rules then it's a massive problem for Democrats. This is NOT something that should be done on a state-by-state basis.

Quoted: Two weeks ago, one of the most important Republican lawyers in Sacramento quietly filed a ballot initiative that would end the practice of granting all fifty-five of California’s electoral votes to the statewide winner. Instead, it would award two of them to the statewide winner and the rest, one by one, to the winner in each congressional district.