Just when folks thought it was safe to like Democrats again, Barbara Boxer reared her extraordinarily large head and blew that notion away, simply by being herself. Anyone who pays even cursory attention to current events has probably seen this, but for those who haven't, enjoy this link:

http://www.mydesert.com/article/20090618/NEWS01/90618024/-1/rss

While it isn't interesting enough to delve too deeply into the subject matter, Ms. Boxer was speaking with a gentleman from the Army Corps of Engineers who happens to be a Brigadier General. He was using accepted nomenclature by addressing the Senator as "ma'am", but that wasn't good enough for her. Ugh.

There probably isn't a lot of variance to public opinion on this. Whether you support her or want to chastise her for what is obviously arrogance to the extreme, this is what makes our country great, the fact that I have her e-mail right here:

http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/email/policy.cfm?CFID=627618&CFTOKEN=98650408

Unfortunately, bad politicians are like dandelions in California; there's never just one or two. They range in degrees of badness, from Gary Condit to Duke Cunningham, who stack up well next to the ones who are most prominent in our current Congress.

Jane Harman is an excellent example. She voted for the Iraq war and is generally regarded as a hawk on Capitol Hill. She also voted for warrantless wiretapping (which only bothered her when such technology revealed her dealings with Israeli spies in the notorious AIPAC case). Last year she backed a bill that would authorize domestic use of military force.

Basically, she's a House clone of Dianne Feinstein, who - like Harman and Boxer - was elected in 1992 and has much the same resume (with a couple of defense contractor connections to boot). She only co-sponsored the original Patriot Act. 'Nuff said.

The elephant in the room might well be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, first elected in 1987, who may or may not have known about the Bush administration's Saddam-esque torture policies. Either way, she signed off on the thing, and that's the least of the cover she has provided that former regime's shady list of characters.

Perhaps the lowest of all California Democrats, though, is Governor Arnold Shwarzenegger. I know, the GOP still thinks he's a Republican, and while he's certainly not the only Republican who happens to be a shameless womanizer, I'd bet he's the only one with a union card in his wallet.

Whatever he is, he needs to get a better grip on California's economy, because when California sneezes the rest of the nation gets a cold. Right now they're so bad off that the rest of us are at risk of something more along the lines of the swine flu.

It's sad to think that this needs to be said to California Democrats, as if they were from South Carolina or West Virginia, because they should be more savvy than this. Memo to the Golden State: You can vote for, y'know, someone else.

pH 6.19.o9