Professional athletes need to get it through their heads that their position is not something they're entitled to. For every one of them, there's ten out there who could do the job who didn't get noticed. If professional athletes discovered that the bad behavior they were raised with was unacceptable and would result in their losing their privileges, society would be better off. Of course, the way Americans consider professional sports the national religion, this is unlikely to happen.

Michael Vick should have gotten 30 minutes of what he did to the hundreds of dogs he murdered. Maybe 30 minutes on the "rape stand" would have been sufficient. He's a scummy piece of shit and should be flushed.

You gotta love Ohanian - the man is truly relentless in his efforts to destroy the reputation of UCLA as a school that promotes intellectual rigor in a reality-based community.

And there was the other woman who pulled me aside. She had come down from Germantown, Pa., she told me, but she, too, declined to give her name -- for fear of Obama's "snitches," she explained.

My ancestors founded Germantown Pennsylvania in the second year of the colonoization of Pennsylvania, 1642. They were "Germans" from Frankfurt-am-Main, fleeing persecution by both Protestants and Catholics for the heresy of being Quakers. In 1688, they became the first group of Europeans on the planet to make the non-ownership of slaves a condition of membership in their community. Many of the descendants of those first abolitionists became "fighting Quakers" during the Revolution - and many of them gave up everything when the Loyalist traitor who ran the town confiscated their property for their rebellion.

Like most Quaker-founded communities in Pennsylvania, Germantown has obviously forgotten its heritage.

But even stranger: How is it possible to write a story about California's woes, and never mention Proposition 13, or California's government-by-initiative system, or even begin to investigate the question of whether Californians are over or under-taxed? That's the real baffler.

It would definitely be a good thing if someone were to write about how it is we are about to re-elect the guy whose incompetence and inaction led to the passage of Proposition 13, to the same office he screwed up 30 years ago.

I refer to Jerry Brown.

Back in 1974, Brown was elected governor with close to a 2/3 Democratic majority in both houses of the legislature, and two really good leaders in the Senate and Assembly, most importantly Willie Brown in the Assembly. Not only that, but this was back when there were Republicans with brains, and deals could be worked out that resulted in things working.

By 1976, as inflation set in, California residences went up in value and property taxes started rising fast, and the public started getting upset with the system. Willie Brown came up with a reform that would cap residential property rates at a lower rate with fewer increases, while keeping corporate property at the current market rates. Most of the Democrats were on board and there were persuadable Republicans. What was needed was a statement from the Governor about the problem and a call to action.

What we got was "Governor Moonbeam" hanging out with the Marin Mafia and contemplating "the future" from the mattress on the floor of his apartment (when he wasn't running off to Africa with Linda Rondstadt or deciding to run for President, since he'd been crowned "the candidate of America's future" and had so much accomplishment in his record to run on). The moment passed, the Republicans saw more political advantage in going after Democrats as the party of "tax and spend," and 2 years later Proposition 13 was passed.

Guess what? The only parties in California currently still benefiting from the "reforms" of Proposition 13 are the Corporations - the only ones who kept their property!!

Jerry Brown, the man whose incompetence and inaction led to the crisis we have, now plans to return to the Governor's office and save us?? More likely he'll sink us faster than the idiots the Republicans are running for Governor.

And of course, folks like me who were there at the time to see it all happen are few and far between, the majority of California voters were either not alive or too young to be aware, back when Brown was Governor last time.

Jerry will continue to hornswoggle the Democratic left as he has for the past 35 years. God help us.

Jerry Brown, the only Democrat since 1974 who has ever been able to get me to vote Republican - for whoever is running against that worthless, incompetent idiot.

If the Democrats would actually do something besides standing there showing us every day how bought-and-sold they are by the interests those of us who voted for them were voting against, maybe they wouldn't be in this spot.

Obama tells us he's going to "follow the science" and then appoints a Secretary of the Interior who could pass as a Republican more than he could a Democrat, with the Bush-era policies he keeps approving as he eviscerates the Endangered Species Act. Then Obama brings in scum like Larry Summers - who is responsible for creating the conditions that led to the economic mess we're in and tells us having the foxes inside the hen house is the best way to make things right. And then he has Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, an asshole who spent his whole career in Congress opposing the people he now needs for victory while bending over and spreading for The Corporate Enemy (the guy should be sent to Los Angeles to work with his brother, where the worst thing he could do is help create more worthless bullshit movies).

Democrats: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory once again.

Their one hope is they get Health Care right. Otherwise, fuck'm.