It’s the first weekend of April, traditionally known as “the first weekend of April.” So enjoy it. Links:
• In CA-32, Sen. Gil Cedillo has earned the endorsement of LA Police Chief Bill Bratton. Bratton is a respected voice, but precious little of the district is inside LA, so I am curious to see how much an endorsement like this will matter. Expect it to be right at the top of the mailers, however.
• The ACLU of Southern California, the National Immigration Law Center and the Paul Hastings law firm have filed suit in US District Court against the inhumane conditions at immigration detention facilities in Los Angeles. Designed as a short-term processing center, detainees are often held for weeks, without access to counsel and in conditions described as “disgusting.” Hopefully they can get an injunction.
• Allen Hoffenblum teases out an interesting stat and makes an apocaplyptic prediction about the present-day California GOP:
“The Republican (voter) registration is just going off the cliff in California,” he said. “There is not a single Assembly, state Senate or Congressional district that has a majority of Republicans. Some have a plurality, but none have 50 percent plus one. And it’s not people dying or moving out of state. They’re changing to decline to state […] The party is in serious trouble,” he said. “It’s crumbling beneath their feet, and they’re out there trying to defeat more Republicans.
“A dying party can’t beat the Democrats, so they fight among themselves. It’s what happens when parties become a cult. It becomes a regional party and not a viable statewide party.”
This is the part where everyone laughs.
• As many as 3,200 layoffs feared in the city of Los Angeles, perhaps 400 immediately, as they wrestle with a $1 billion dollar budget deficit.
but perhaps they’re misled as to their party’s health because so long as they have a tad bit more than 1/3 of the districts in the legislature locked up as Republican then they can dictate policy.
In any other state, control of 36% of seats is a disaster – in California, it puts you in the drivers seat.
If Democrats do the smart thing and increase advocate for increased competitiveness in drawing up new districts, then Republican losses will be significant…
that’s an odd choice…
…the Republican Party, national and in CA, is a terrorist organization The DHS, under direction of the President, should so classify them and have the leadership hanged and the membership sent to all those ‘relocation’ camps Haliburton built for us.
Before you dismiss my suggestion out of hand consider:
The Republican party under Bush has done more to harm this nation than Osama, the Taliban and the rest of our enemies overseas could have ever dreamed of doing.
The imprisonment of party ‘leadership’ was directed and countenanced by non other than Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. He did it to protect ‘The Union…’. I advocate as above to protect our society. To get the economy back functioning again. To punish those responsible for our current disastrous situation as a warning to others in the future.
Is it an accident that the financial markets are paralyzed by a lack of trust when alienating one citizen from another has been and continues to be the guiding principle of the Republican Party’s attempts to hold political power? If you’ve read your Robert Wright, your Bob Altemeyer and others in both the social sciences and the new field of ‘complexity’ economics the answer is quite clear.
It’s past time we,the people, and the Dems recognize that the Republican Party is the greatest danger to our nation extant at this time and that we take the steps needed to eliminate them from the polity.