California

California governor Gavin Newsom’s recent appointment of Laphonza Butler, a black lesbian, to the late Senator Dianne Feinstein’s seat generated headlines but it wasn’t a surprise. Newsom pledged to appoint a black woman if Senator Feinstein resigned more than two years ago. And so, he was all but required to eliminate roughly 97 percent of California’s population, which is just 6.5 percent black, from consideration straight off the bat. The appointment represents mainstream orthodoxy on the left here and in Europe, where diversity has replaced quality as a primary consideration not just in politics but also in the culture.

Washington was stunned this morning to learn of the premature death of California senator Dianne Feinstein at the mere age of ninety. Feinstein was elected to the Senate in 1992 and was its longest serving female senator. She was a vocal advocate for gun control and headed the Senate Intelligence Committee for several years, leading a review of the CIA's interrogation and detention program in the aftermath of 9/11. But to Cockburn, the most iconic moment of Feinstein's storied career came in 2019, when she deployed the heft of her decades in Congress to smack down some urchins from the Sunrise Movement who were hectoring her about climate change. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

California’s derelict legions are everywhere — under bridges, near railroad tracks, blocking off-ramps and weaving unsteadily across busy avenues on bicycles.  The soft-woke rich can no longer hide in luxe enclaves. Taxpayers are fleeing the troubled state, hundreds of thousands of them since 2020. California’s fabled quality of life is taking a rapid dive, yet the cost of housing, already outlandish, goes up and up. Five years ago, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Martin v. Boise, declaring that municipal laws, “prohibiting sleeping outside against homeless individuals with no access to alternative shelter,” violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment, thus voiding local vagrancy laws.

National elections should be about contrast and choice — and those choices should offer the clearest opportunity for parity in the candidates and the parties. If the polls are to be believed, the 2024 election as it stands now, before any debates or primaries, does not offer that. Instead the country currently faces the prospect of two senior citizens clashing, both with low approval ratings, personal and legal baggage and questions of mental acuity.

Everywhere she goes, Representative Katie Porter leaves chaos in her wake. From her home to her office to her local police department, the California congresswoman leaves no one unscarred. The protégé of Senator Elizabeth Warren, who went as far as to name one of her children “Elizabeth” after the senator, is currently rolling out a new book, titled I Swear: Politics is Messier Than My Minivan, and aiming for an open US Senate seat. But her long-rumored divorce filings are getting Congresswoman Porter the wrong sort of publicity. They contain accusations from her ex-husband that she would scream “get out of my face and leave me alone!” to her children and would take a “ceramic bowl of steaming hot potatoes and dump[] it on [her husband’s] head, burning [his] scalp.

As the song in “Li’l Abner” said, “The Country’s in the Very Best of Hands.”   I wonder if Joe Biden knows the tune?   The treasury says the national debtIs climbing to the skyAnd government expendituresHave never been so highIt makes a fellow get aGleam of pride within his eye,To see how our economy expandsThe country’s in the very best of hands Please note that Joe’s got plenty of help. There are lots of hands building up that debt, opening up our southern border, proselytizing for the girls who think they are boys and vice versa.