Sorry for the few days off. I was going completely frigging crazy. Now that I’m back to just ordinary frigging crazy, the madness continues.

Brown and Whitman

Last night, Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman, candidates for California Governor, had their first ever debate. Strangely, there has been almost no coverage on it. Even DailyKOS seems to have completely ignored it. I found it quite interesting. I had very low expectations for Whitman, but even given that, I was disappointed. She wasn’t even at the debate. She sleepwalked through it, saying nothing we haven’t already heard in her three main TV ads that have run over and over and over and over again. She seemed extremely ill at ease and made Brown’s portrait of her as an amateur who would be useless if elected easy to accept.

Here is the whole video: Brown-Whitman Debate

For his part, Brown seemed like an old college professor: a man who was very comfortable and knew it all, but had the problem of getting across all of his wisdom to an ignorant and arrogant class. Whitman hammered away on campaign donations that Brown had received from unions (you know, working people). Brown hit back repeatedly on different fronts. First, he pointed out that Whitman had received $25 million in contributions from wealthy people who stand to gain greatly from her tax cut plans. Then, he twice made reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger and his statement that since he was self-funded, he would not be beholden to special interests. “Look how well that worked out!”

In the end, I thought Brown devastated Whitman. Whitman had nothing to say beyond her commercials, and even when questioned on her deceptive (and worse) attacks on Brown, she side-stepped the issue. If Whitman becomes governor, she is going to find herself way over her head. Brown, on the other hand, has a lot of fire left in him. What’s more, he is way funnier than Whitman. She had only a single joke in the whole debate; it was canned; and it got almost no laugh. Brown got huge laughs from lines that I’m pretty sure were ad libbed.

Jerry is an old codger. It’s the first time I’ve said it, but I’m proud to say it now: you go old codger!

The Cost of War

I just found this: