You know how this works:

• Meg Whitman <3’s Van Jones? Apparently she “got to know him very well” but struggled to remember his name.  Sounds like a politician already.

• Jane Harman is really rather mildly peeved by all this wiretapping, especially when it happens to her.

• I’m trying to muster up the gumption to feel bad for Miss California, but I just can’t.  Inserting yourself into the private lives of others means that you give up the ability to be shocked when your private life becomes news.  

• Similarly, this pitying article about the downfall of Arnold Schwarzenegger does little more than make me laugh.  I guess I’m supposed to feel bad that the post-partisan action hero of the national media was “taken down.”  Of course, Schwarzenegger did it entirely to himself.  

• This may be controversial, so let me say that I, Dave, have no objection to performance-based budgeting.  Progressives should demand competent government more than anyone, because we believe that government can work to improve people’s lives.  It’s conservatives who use government as a profit-taking machine for corporate cronies.

• Pete Stark is in the hospital for a case of pneumonia.  Best wishes!  Of course, Stark is using the incident to promote health care reform.

• Apparently the OC Register thinks newly announced candidate Asm. Van Tran’s race against Loretta Sanchez will be “one of the hottest races.” The district’s PVI rating is d+4.