Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman are scheduled to debate in about an hour and a half.  The debate is sponsored by California New Majority, so you are likely to see some full-on wingnuttery on display.  Watch it on CBS2, Ustream is down.

http://cbs2.com/

The folks at the California Accountability Project have even produced a Viewer’s guide (PDF) to all of the likely (mis)statements and half-truths.

Who’s making the popcorn?

UPDATE by Robert: I’ll be liveblogging here in this thread. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments!

The debate is being held in Costa Mesa, down in my old stomping grounds of Orange County. Interestingly enough, Costa Mesa is where former mayor Allan Mansoor began bashing immigrants a few years back. Already we’re expecting this debate to have lots of immigrant and Latino bashing, as we saw at the CRP convention over the weekend.

…I’m trying to liveblog, but this ustream feed is really buggy.

…Relying on the Twitter feed, Poizner and Whitman are fighting with each other over tax cuts – not whether they’re a good idea or not given their massively negative impact on the budget deficit, but on whether theirs are big enough. Poizner says Whitman’s cuts aren’t big enough, Whitman says Poizner’s will cost too much. The fact is both offer cuts that cost too much and are merely going to benefit the rich.

…Nick Velasquez of the California Accountability Project Tweets: “Hope someone can fix this feed. It’s spottier than Meg Whitman’s voting record.”

…Still can’t follow the feed. I guess Republicans don’t want people to see what their candidates have to say! According to Twitter, Poizner is attacking NPR listeners, as well as saying he wants a part-time legislature, without mentioning that only the rich would be able to serve in such a legislature. Then again, Poizner and Whitman both seem to believe only the rich should serve as governor.

…Whitman says she plans to “pour money back into” UC and CSU, but doesn’t say how. She says she wants “more money to go into the classroom” for K-12 – but how? Giving local districts control of money isn’t enough – the fact is districts don’t get enough money period. Ah, here we go, she wants more charter schools, even though they haven’t been proven to work. Looks like she embraces merit pay as well.

…Poizner says flaws in K-12 is due to Legislature taking control from teachers and local districts. But he doesn’t say that Prop 13 took control from teachers and local districts. Will he support majority vote for school taxes?

…Now Comcast is acting up. Back again. Whitman is dishonest on regulations: they don’t cause job losses, they prevent them, as both climate crisis and financial crisis prove. She and Poizner both support suspending AB 32, despite its devastating negative impact on job creation.

…Whitman takes the immigration question. Says she opposes amnesty. Does she think those who benefited from 1986 amnesty should be kicked out? Does she think Reagan, who backed amnesty, was wrong?

…Poizner thinks immigrants come here for government incentives. Um, no. They come here for work because CEOs like you and Whitman want them to do so. What a clueless moron.

…NBC4’s Conan Nolan asking some good questions here about the inexperience of both Poizner and Whitman, and how they’ll work with a Democratic legislature they spend so much time bashing. Poizner says he’ll try to work with legislators, but will go to voters if legislature won’t play along. Yeah, because that worked SO well in 2005 for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

…Whitman says “imagine what this state will look like with Jerry Brown as governor.” Um, look around.

…Whitman now attacks Jerry Brown as some kind of tax and spend liberal. I wish he were! His record as governor was actually very fiscally conservative and he’s not proposing new taxes.