How close is your state to committing Californiacide? Kevin Drum has your chart of the day.

Saturday night.

* The TSA has finally put an end to the terrorist's favorite toy: snowglobes.

* When your neighbor is unemployed: Bob Herbert has a good column in the New York Times today about the disparate rates of unemployment on different socioeconomic groups.

* 2010 will be the year of the deficit hawk.

* Poetry fight: Stephen King in Playboy vs. an ode to Megan Fox.

* "History should record that whether through unprecedented administrative incompetence or orchestrated mendacity, the American people were misled about the nation’s response to the 9/11 attacks."

* As of July 2009, California's budget shortfall was 49.3% of its general funds. States have considered drastic options to fill such gaps. "I looked as hard as I could at how states could declare bankruptcy," said Michael Genest, director of the California Department of Finance who is stepping down at the end of the year. "I literally looked at the federal constitution to see if there was a way for states to return to territory status." Via Edge of the American West, where eric asks, "Seriously, though, what does it mean—this is not a rhetorical question, I’d really like to know and don’t have an answer—when it seems more plausible to engage in constitutional shenanigans than to, for example, restore the vehicle licensing fee to its full former level, and other measures of that sort?"

Via Steve Benen, I see that Paul Krugman's column today addresses a particular concern of this blog over the last few months, the long-term consequences of a GOP "taken over by the people it used to exploit":

In the short run, this may help Democrats, as it did in that New York race. But maybe not: elections aren’t necessarily won by the candidate with the most rational argument. They’re often determined, instead, by events and economic conditions.

In fact, the party of Limbaugh and Beck could well make major gains in the midterm elections. The Obama administration’s job-creation efforts have fallen short, so that unemployment is likely to stay disastrously high through next year and beyond. The banker-friendly bailout of Wall Street has angered voters, and might even let Republicans claim the mantle of economic populism. Conservatives may not have better ideas, but voters might support them out of sheer frustration.

And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.

The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here — and it’s very bad for America.

That a radicalized GOP will degrade to permanent minority status but still retain enough power to obstruct constructive legislation is certainly a concern. But the bigger concern, as I've written a few times before, is that eventually the Democrats will have bad luck and the logic of the two party system will propel the Palinized Republicans back into power—at which time the lunatics really will be in charge of the asylum.

Is California finished? Some discussion at MeFi.

I learned on Poli-Sci-Fi Radio this week that the Canadian single-payer health-care system came about after its successful adoption in a single province, Saskatchewan. It's this fact of history that makes me think progressives should be directing much more money and support to groups like the single-payer movement in California, organized around support for SB 810.

Gov. Schwarzenegger: All class.



In fairness, I love this.

Late Sunday links.

* Rachel Maddow kicks ass on another visit to Meet the Press. They should just give Rachel Meet the Press; I hope eventually they do. It's the only version of the show I could imagine actually watching.

* The networks are apparently afraid of SF; Day One has apparently been downgraded to a miniseries and the V remake is rumored to be forbidden to use the world "alien."

* Octavia Butler's papers will go to the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, joining Christopher Isherwood's, Charles Bukowski's, and Jack London's.

* Playgrounds of the 1970s. A version of the Officer Big Mac at right was active in Ledgewood, NJ, well into the 2000s. (Is it still there?)

* Judith Butler: Save California's universities. My only quibble is that she appears to be writing in the wrong country's newspaper.

* More Nate Silver: That the conservative intelligentsia reacted giddily to news of the Americans losing is telling. It's telling of a movement that was long ago knocked off its intellectual moorings and has lost the capacity to think about what people outside the room think about. Flagged by Bitter Laughter. More thoughts along the same lines from Cogitamus and Contrary Brin.

* My happiest time was after Mao came into power. Our social status improved. People were allowed to express their views. Before, people had no right to speak out. After the founding of new China, the first parade, I was on the front row during the first parade. Foreign journalists from America and the Soviet Union took lots pictures of me. I was carrying a flower basket, walking down Huaihai road, it was very festive, and there was much excitement. I went out during the parade every year for many years, rain or shine. Why the Chinese support the Communist party.

...it’s dismaying to realize that the grandeur of Berkeley (and the remarkable success of the University of California system, of which Berkeley is the flagship) is being jeopardized by shortsighted politicians and California’s colossally dysfunctional budget processes.

Berkeley is caught in a full-blown budget crisis with nothing much in the way of upside in sight. The school is trying to cope with what the chancellor, Robert Birgeneau, described as a “severe and rapid loss in funding” from the state, which has shortchanged Berkeley’s budget nearly $150 million this year, and cut more than $800 million from the higher education system as a whole.

Bob Herbert writes up the Berkeley budget crisis in the context of America's larger infrastructural collapse on the op-ed page of The New York Times. Odd to see no reference to the recent walk-outs; that seems like it would be a part of the story worth mentioning.

The protesters, shoulder to shoulder and chanting "Education should be free. No cuts, no fees," marched through campus, passing by UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau's office, and then went off campus to Shattuck Avenue, ultimately blocking all lanes of traffic for two block.

Faculty/staff walkout at Berkeley. Eagle-eyed Durhamites may notice a former GPLer in the bottom right, walking it out. Some more background and discussion at MeFi.

Three links for this Wednesday.

* "A consensus has developed during IPY that the Greenland ice sheet will disappear." This and other terrible news on climate change from Newsweek's science editor Sharon Begley.

* California is facing a severe prison crisis, which the disastrous "three strikes" law will only make worse.

* Since Mr Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service.

Terminated: Arnold Schwarzenegger has gone out of his way to slash needed social spending in California.

The cuts include slashing $25 million from health clinics; $52 million from AIDS prevention, education and treatment programs; $16 million from domestic violence programs; $50 million from Healthy Families, which provides health insurance for poor children; and $37.6 million from In-Home Supportive Services.

That $16 million represents all state funding for domestic violence shelters.

Hard to believe the celebrity governor thing didn't work out.

Old maps! Here and here. Via MeFi.

Late-night roundup.

* Senate Republicans won't fight Sotomayor.

* Gay-rights activists are balking at taking Prop 8 to federal court; they think they'll lose at the Supremes given the courts' current composition.

* 15 Sexist Vintage Ads. So glad sexism is behind us.

The California Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a ban on same-sex marriage that state voters passed in November, but it allowed about 18,000 marriages performed before the ban to remain valid. 14th Amendment in 3...2...1...

The geography of the recession. Atrios's comment is, I think, perceptive:

I think the colors chosen for this map actually make things "look" a bit better from a national perspective. It's important to realize the second lightest color goes all the way up to 10% unemployment. And then realize a non-trivial numbers of counties are seriously into holy fuck levels of unemplomeny.

The map also demonstrates the extent to which the Northeast (and Durham and the Research Triangle, for that matter) have gotten off relatively light thus far. California and Michigan, in contrast, are looking like disaster areas.

Things I've enjoyed on the Internet today.

* A Seth tribute to Charles Schulz.

* The ruins of Detroit's abandoned Belle Island Zoo. Via MeFi.

* Spy Vibe, a blog devoted to the '60s spy aesthetic. Also via MeFi.

* Three Jane Austen sci-fi films are apparently in the pipeline: Pride, Prejudice, amp; Zombies; Pride & Predators; and Lost in Austen.. What can account for Austenmania?

* I can't believe putting a totally unqualified action-movie star in charge of the world's fifth largest economy has turned out so badly for California. More on this from Ezra Klein, who actually points the finger not at Arnold but at systemic gridlock, i.e., the California state constitution and deluded Orange County Republicans.

* Why we love gambling: almost winning is almost as good as actually winning, as far as our neurochemistry is concerned.

* Grade inflation is a feedback loop: students now expect a B just for showing up.

* Life as a tie-in novelist.

* Braid, Game of the Year 2008 by all accounts, is finally coming to the PC.

Tuesday morning links.

* If movie posters were honest. See also: if covers of marginal SF/fantasy series were honest.

* Who knew full moons had names? Via G-Lens.

* Is California the new Michigan?

* Tough times in the USA: people are eating racoon. This has nothing to do with the recession, apparently—some people are just choosing to eat it because they are gross.

* Potsdam University is offering a graduate how-to course on flirting for computer geeks.

* Arm-Chair Logic has your elementary logic test for the day.

* Solar apocalypse: NASA warns of 'Space Katrina.' My production company has already optioned the rights to this headline, don't even think about it.

* Harper's Index: Bush retrospective mega-edition.

* A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem. That's right: online sexual predators have infiltrated top-level attorneys general offices in 49 states. We must redouble our efforts.

* And Whedonesque asks, appropriately forlorn: Has it really been five years since Angel ended? That is a little hard to believe. The Armchair Critic ranks the twenty-five best episodes, and the five worst, of one of the best (and surely the most underappreciated) SF series of all time.

Proposition 8: The Musical.

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Liberal blogs are abuzz with news that California environmentalist Henry Waxman has displaced Michigan autoindustryist John Dingle as energy and commerce chair. But Yglesias worries we cede too much to the moustachioed menance.

The California Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to consider complaints by opponents of Proposition 8 that it improperly revised the constitution to ban gay marriage. The court declined to stay its enforcement in the meantime.

Court spokeswoman Lynn Holton said the court asked the parties involved to write briefs arguing three issues:

(1) Is Proposition 8 invalid because it constitutes a revision of, rather than an amendment to, the California Constitution?

(2) Does Proposition 8 violate the separation-of-powers doctrine under the California Constitution?

(3) If Proposition 8 is not unconstitutional, what is its effect, if any, on the marriages of same-sex couples performed before the adoption of Proposition 8?

Holton said the court established an expedited briefing schedule. She said oral argument could be held as early as March 2009. (via MyDD)