Flutterby™! : California politics

In linking to Xeney looking at some of the law behind the recall, Medley says:

I'm so depressed at how the Republican party is corrupting our democracy every chance they get and aghast at what a circus the politics of the state of California (whose economy is larger than that of many nations) is becoming.

Nope, it's been this way for a long time. California is a schizophrenic state, with at least three distinct regions that have three completely different sets of politics, and those politics don't map cleanly onto a two party system. The primary process is such that the electable candidates from either party don't actually make it to the final election, and our dependence on ballot initiatives means that our legislature gets overruled and second guessed to the point where they just don't try any more.

And yes, parts of our political system are completely beholden to Hollywood, but it's the bits that are aligned with the wacko wing of the Republican Party.

So a rundown of my favorites:

• Gary Coleman has a following
• as Jay points out, Georgy Russell is a total hottie
• my favorite remains Larry Flynt, especially because I think he'll run the right sort of ad campaigns
• I can't find the web site of the guy who promises to resign immediately so that the lieutenant governor can step in

Yes, I'm taking this lightly. It's government, and it's government without much of an armed force to back it up, so it's hard to take it seriously. I'd love to see Larry Flynt in there because of the candidates I think he's the one with the most good ideas and the most experience, but I also understand that he won't have a mandate to actually do anything, so it'll be a novelty governorship. But even if Davis avoids the recall it'll be a novelty anyway, better that we should descend into postmodern self-parody and start citizens thinking about politics than that we should continue this farce we've got going.