Marijuana legal; fast food illegal

The White House announced today that anti-marijuana laws will no longer be enforced. But cities, counties and states are threatening to outlaw fast foods and other stuff that may make us fat. Makes sense to some, apparently.

California's legislature is back in session

Having just completed one session, the product of which was more than 700 trashy bills, the California legislature is back in session, called by the governator to iron out some water problems. Sadly, that's the triumph of hope over experience. There's no reason to expect that the legislature will solve the water problem or any problem. More likely, they'll make matters worse. At least that's what Californians have come to expect from the legislature.

Better for all concerned if the governator sent the legislature home and told them to stay home. Then the governator ought to take some time off as well -- a trip to Austria, maybe, or perhaps Iraq or Afghanistan. California could use a lot less governing.

Governator signs lots of trash

He had until yesterday to dispose of more than 700 bills that the left-wing California legislature had passed. In the end, he signed some really trashy legislation, including a bill designating May 22nd each year as Harvey Milk Day. He had previously vetoed that bill. Why the reversal? Ask the governator.

That's not all. See the LAT's description of the trash that passed here. The LAT describes a few of the 229 bills he vetoed here.

Once again, it appears that the man who promised to blow up the boxes in Sacramento has caved to the left-wing. Arnold reminds one of another Arnold -- Benedict.

California's prolific legislature

California's governator has more than 700 bills on his desk that require action (veto, sign, whatever) by Sunday. At about the same time of the year in 2007, he had more than 900. That's progress but it's still far too many.

California has 40 state senators and 80 state assemblymen and women. If each senator authored one of the 700 bills, the senators would have authored more than 17 bills each on average during the legislative year. Assemblymen and women would have authored half that.

Who can find 700 reasons to write a new bill? It must be a community endeavor, the community being legislators and lobbyist. Shelf space for 700 to 900 new bills must challenge librarians each year. Law book publishers too.

California's tax commission

Last year, California's governator, with legislative heads, formed a tax commission whose assignment was to study California's tax system and try to come up with improvements. Specifically, the commission was to solve the boom/bust cycle of tax revenues which relied in large measure on about 150,000 individual California taxpayers to pay most of California's bills.

The commission announced its findings yesterday and today there are two op-ed pieces on the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page reflecting positively on the commission's work. Californians should be so lucky.

Judging from the legislature's past work, it isn't likely that the commission's recommendations will be adopted. Lord knows, Democrats and Republicans in California's legislature can't seem to agree on the time of day. But Californians can always hope.

One thing that scares this Californian (formerly a Texan): The commission argued for a new 4 percent tax that would replace the sales tax. But 4 percent taxes have a way of becoming 5 percent taxes, then 6 percent, etc. Some way must be found to prevent this happening.

Goings on

Obama, Brown and Sarkozy paraded to the podium Friday to denounce Iran over the newly discovered or newly revealed installation that Iran is using to enrich uranium. The LAT says that Obama has had it up to here with Iran and will no longer negotiate but instead will enforce sanctions against Iran with European, Russian and Chinese help.

Which raises the question: Why is Obama so slow? Apparently the Bush administration knew about this secret installation. The Bush administration seemed to understand what kind of regime it was dealing with in Iran. Apparently it had no false hope, no false beliefs. But Obama always seems to assume that whatever the Bush administration did must have been wrong. It seems pretty stupid. Why not pick up where Bush left off instead of starting off all over from scratch? Fear of granting Bush any credit probably explains it.

Time Out

Having lost some of the old fire, this old fool took a little time off, but now intends to resume posts, not daily but perhaps once or twice a week. We'll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, little has changed. Obama, after a vacation, is back on television daily. It doesn't seem to help his popularity but it doesn't appear to hurt much either. Maybe people just tune him out.

Pelosi is on television nearly as often as Obama, and her remarks are as idiotic as ever. Her latest: she's concerned that someone will murder a gay San Francisco politician, as happened in the late 1970s. Wait! Maybe that's not what concerns her but isn't it her responsibility to make her concerns clear? Let's cut her some slack, though. She was bawling when she announced her concerns. Probably couldn't help herself. Is there no Democrat in the House who would make a more competent Speaker? If there is, why isn't that person Speaker?

Harry Reid isn't any better than he used to be. Actually, he's a laughing stock but a dangerous one. He's behind in the polls for re-election. Maybe Nevadans will solve our national problem by dumping Harry Reid. That's this old fool's fond hope, anyhow.

Then there's the Bozo who speaks for Obama before the press daily. And Ram-it-through Rahm. And a thousand czars -- well, thirty or so -- all unconfirmed. Are any better choices than Van Jones was? By the way, what does a green jobs czar actually do?

Why is Obama angry at the American people? He isn't? He appeared angry during his non-SOU speech to a joint session of Congress. Can't remember the exact words but he seemed to say that none of us is sincere when we oppose his policies and none of us is very smart, otherwise we'd do what he tells us to do.

Poor Joe Wilson, Republican Congressman from South Carolina. His party leaders forced him to take one for the team and apologize to Obama, who really did lie about health care for illegals and lots of other things. Joe got even though, by filling his re-election coffers with money, lots of it. Good for Joe.

Obama lies almost daily. You'd need a truth squad to counter all his lies. His biggest lie: We must reform health care to save money. Then we learn from the CBO that Obama's reform will cost $1 trillion in the first 10 years and more after that.

Another lie: We need a government plan to increase competition. Come again?

More later.