Category: California

Diebold Another Day.

“Let’s make this clear, folks. The docs Heller is accused of exposing were important evidence. First, they show that Diebold and their attorneys, Jones Day, conspired to mislead the California secretary of state, and that the lie they told was material, and resulted directly in the disenfranchisement of voters. Second, another document demonstrates that Diebold lied to the secretary of state when it represented that certain problems with its software were ‘fixed.’ This document, the release notes for the new software, showed that the problems were not fixed. Third, the documents showed that Diebold had been advised by Jones Day that what it had been doing with its uncertified software was illegal. Fourth, the documents show that Jones Day advised Diebold that it was subject to criminal prosecution. So in a nutshell, Diebold was defrauding the state government and taxpayers of California, and disenfranchising the voters of California. And the documents PROVE it.”

In keeping with recent GOP tales of hounding whistleblowers and using the long arm of government to attack critics, Stephen Heller — the man who exposed some severe shadiness on the part of voting machine maker Diebold and their corporate lawyers, Jones Day — is now facing now three felony counts for raising the alarm. “Heller’s lawyer believes the 2 year wait to file charges was due to the then-impending 2004 election, and that Diebold and their attorneys didn’t want the information to be made public in the lead up to the election.” Flashback: Diebold’s right-wing CEO guaranteed Dubya would win Ohio in the last campaign, and he may well have delivered. (Via Medley.)

Kaine is Able / Corzine stat!

Now here’s something we haven’t seen in a few years…a good election night for the Dems! Despite — or perhaps because of — Dubya’s last-minute visit to the region, Democrat Tim Kaine has won the Virginia governorship. And, after a truly ugly race against GOP stooge Doug Forrester, Senator Jon Corzine is now governor of New Jersey. On the GOP ledger and closer to home, Republican Mike Bloomberg was re-elected New York City mayor in a foregone conclusion (he was leading by 30 points in the polls.) Update: No love for Schwarzenegger, either.

Delusions of Grandeur.

“Even among many influential conservatives, there has been a growing consensus that the Bush governing theory, at least on Social Security, has been proved wrong.” 100 days into the second term, the Dubya White House starts to realize they may not have received a mandate after all. Meanwhile, on the Left Coast, the Governator is learning much the same lesson.

The Grapes of Wretchedness.

Lost in a wine-dark sea, Miles (Paul Giamatti) is withering on the vine. His wife left him two years ago and he’s still in the drunk-dialing throes of despair. His novelist aspirations are dying an ugly death in ever-smaller publishing houses. Both oenophile and alcoholic, he drinks too much, eats too much, surveys the world in furtive glances, and cringes with self-loathing every time he looks in the mirror. He’s lugubrious, pedantic, bristling with negativity to the core. In sum, Miles is almost completely beaten down by life…so of course he attracts the attention of a smart, beautiful woman (Virginia Madsen) who shares all his important interests and remains fond of him, even and despite his awful behavior.

If you can get past this one critical and wholly improbable plot point (and I did, eventually), Alexander Payne’s Sideways is a trip to California wine country well worth taking. The movie basically plays like an approaching-middle-age version of About Schmidt (right down to the unfortunate nude scene), but this seemed a more well-rounded and generous film than its predecessor. (I thought Schmidt derived too many laughs from turning Dylan McDermott’s character into a buffoon. That being said, I also think Sideways flinches from reality in the closing moments in a way About Schmidt didn’t.) And, while I’m about as far from a wine connoisseur as you can get (whites with chicken and fish, right?), Sideways also succeeds in making the subculture of oenophilia both accessible and reasonably engaging, a few ham-handed “wine-is-life” soliloquies notwithstanding.

Special nods go to all the actors involved here, and particularly Paul Giamatti for making it so easy to empathize with the easily unlikable Miles…I can’t think of many other folks who could have pulled it off so well (In fact, looking back I’d say Nicholas Cage pulled it off less well in Adaptation.) I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Thomas Haden Church, as Miles’ low-key, horny doofus of a best friend, and Virginia Madsen, as the previously noted underwritten muse of second chances, get some action come award time (which may end up meaning sour grapes for the Closer crowd.)

University Blues.

Feeling oh-so-oppressed as usual, student conservatives at Berkeley decry the 7-1 Dem-to-GOP ratio among Humanities and Social Science profs nationwide. Tsk, tsk…they say it like it’s such a bad thing. Well, if you’d prefer that we lefties work elsewhere than academia — say, in government — y’all know how to vote next time.

Immigrant Song.

“If you believe that government should be accountable to the people, not the people to the government, then you are a Republican.” If you believe that rich people deserve tax breaks while the middle-class struggle harder and the poor send their kids to war, then you are a Republican. If you believe that cutting First Responder, Homeland Security, and Nunn-Lugar funding, lying bald-faced to our allies before the UN, letting Osama Bin Laden disappear into the caverns of Afghanistan, and contriving a casus belli to start a war in Iraq that has further alienated the moderate Muslim world is sound anti-terror strategy, then you are a Republican. If you believe an extramarital blow job is an impeachable offense, but dissembling to the American people about war is hunky-dory, then you are a Republican. If you believe God loves you, but He hates gays, liberals, and foreigners, then you are a Republican. If you’re an immigrant bodybuilder who made it to the top of his field through hard work, discipline, and the judicious application of enough steroids to kill a small horse, then you are a Republican. And if you’re a serial groper who was befuddled enough to think Nixon was a good idea in 1968 and who somehow earnestly believes that the GOP hasn’t moved much further right since the days of Tricky Dick, then you are Arnold Schwarzenegger.

California Scheming.

Transcripts emerge of Enron officials bragging about “stealing money from California…to the tune of a million bucks or two a day.” Whatsmore, it appears that former chairman and Bush buddy Ken Lay, who has not yet been charged with any Enrongate malfeasance, knew full well that his company was extorting millions from the likes of “Grandma Millie from California.” Shady.