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In honor of former CA Gov. Pete Wilson's apparent return to politics, here's the lyrics to one of the best Dead Kennedys remakes ever: The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy's California Uber Alles:

I'm your governor Pete Wilson ya know The baddest governor to ever grab the mic and go BOOOM !

Gimme a budget and watch me hack it !
Gimme a beat and I'll show you how to jack it !
I give the rich a giant tax loophole
I leave the poor living in a poophole
At time when Aids is in a crisis
I cut health care and I raise prices
Sales tax, snack tax, excise tax
Information attack with a newspaper tax
Hit the pocket books of working families
Increase tuition at the universities
Some day I'll command all o' you
Even your kids are gonna pray to me in school
Soon I'm gonna be the president
You might remember the last one this state sent

Califoria ueber alles
California above all others
[Dead Kennedy's:] California ueber alles (2x)

I'm so proud to know the Great Communicator
Wanna be known as the Great Incarcerator
I'll blow environmentalists away
And I'll be the fuhrer some day
I'll keep cuttin' Public Education
even though we rang 54th in the nation
I've got a plan for all the minorities
Send'em to the California Youth Authorities
From San Francisco Urban Elementary
to Pelican Bay State Penitentiary
There they can work for the master race
and always wear a happy face
Close your eyes, it can't happen here
Big Brother in a squad car's comin' near
Come enjoy the surf and the sun
and help California number one !

Califoria ueber alles
California above all others
[Dead Kennedy's:] California ueber alles (2x)

Now it's 1992
Knock knock at your front door, yo guess who ?!
It's the suede denim secret police
They've come to your house for your longhaired niece
Gonna send her off to a camp
'cause she's been accused of growing hemp
Don't worry it's only a shower
And now for your clothes here's a pretty flower
Gonna die on malathion gas
The serpent's egg has always been hatched
People starvin' and livin' in the streets
because they tried to mess with me President Pete

Califoria ueber alles
California above all others
[Dead Kennedy's:] California ueber alles (2x)

Some things that happened in the world today while I was flying down the side of a mountain...

+ The Pentagon has completed a massive study of over 600,000 documents captured in Iraq just after the 2003 invasion. And guess what? There was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda! Any guesses what happened next? That's right... the Bush administration decided to suppress the report by releasing it only on CD-ROM. Apparently these inept fools have never heard of the Internet.

+ The Geraldine Ferraro madness apparently continued this morning on GMA and Bill O'Reilly. By the time I got off the mountain, however, Ferraro had been forced to resign from Clinton's campaign.

+ Longtime readers of this blog know that I'm fairly obsessed with the idea that 2008 could be a transformative election for the United States. It's a theory that drives much of my analysis, just as it drives my support for Obama's campaign. Obama gets that a realignment is both possible and likely this year. Clinton, meanwhile, openly denies that a realignment is possible. If you want a small modification of the status quo, vote Clinton. If you want something more, vote Obama. It really is that simple.

+ Not convinced? Here's the polling data from the 10 biggest states in the nation. Ignore the rhetoci coming from Hillaryland - Obama's got an advantage here. Then check out the smaller states. Yup, Obama's got a HUGE advantage there. Remind me again why anyone would want Hillary to be the nominee? Anyone outside of Republicans, that is.

+ There are a million different theories about what the Obama campaign wants done with Michigan and Florida, but so far no one seems to have suggested what I think is most likely to actually happen. By mid-June the primary process will be over, and with or without these two states Obama's lead will be insurmountable. And at that point he'll suggest that the delegations from both states get seated as is.

+ McMegan is absolutely right: The states should have no role whatsoever in controlling the delegate selection process of our political parties. The parties are independent, private groups that are entirely separate from our government. They are not, nor should they ever be, organs of the state. They may be more important than the Elks Lodge, but they are equally private.

+ If you want to understand the real reasons for CENTOM commander Admiral William Fallon's departure yesterday, Tom Ricks is your go-to guy. Among other things, Ricks reports that Gen. Petraeus may take over for Fallon. Also worth reading is Juan Cole. Cole reports that Fallon may have been removed because he continues to believe that the Surge is at best a temporary success. And given the news out of Iraq over the last 48 hours, he's almost certainly right.

+ Believe it or not, after six months of trying, Pelosi has managed to push through a tough new ethics package in the House of Representative. TPM highlights a great part of the long debate - Republicans begged their fellow legislators to vote against the measure out of a sense of "self-preservation."

+ Speaking of House Dems, it looks like they may have outmaneuvered the White House on FISA reform and telecomm immunity. Hard to believe, I know, but knock on wood it might be true!

+ Did partisanship play a role in the Spitzer investigation? Perhaps. Do I care? No. I'm against corruption, period. Republican, Democrat, Independent, I don't care. If they are dirty, go get 'em. Gov. Spitzer should go. So too should Sen. Vitter. Funny how inconsistent those on the right can be about these things, isn't it?

+ AFL-CIO announced today that it is set to spend $53 million this fall to elect a Democrat - any Democrat - as President of the United States.

+ Speaking of McCain, it seems he loves to compare himself to Teddy Roosevelt. Only one problem. He has no idea what TR stood for.

+ Even worse, McCain's self-proclaimed spiritual advisor, Rod Parsley, believes that America was founded in part to destroy the "false religion" of Islam founded by a man who was "a demon spirit."

+ Mark it on your calendar - today is the date on which it became obvious that W. was even more economically out of touch than his father.

BlogDad sent this along a few days back...

While walking down the street one day a US senator is tragically hit by a truck and dies.

His soul arrives in heaven and is met by St Peter at the entrance.

'Welcome to heaven,' says St. Peter. 'Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts, you see, so we're not sure what to do with you.' 'No problem, just let me in,' says the man. 'Well, I'd like to, but I have orders from higher up. What we'll do is have you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can choose where to spend eternity.' 'Really, I've made up my mind. I want to be in heaven,' says the senator.

'I'm sorry, but we have our rules.' And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell. The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a green golf course. In the distance is a clubhouse and standing in front of it are all his friends and other politicians who had worked with him. Everyone is very happy and in evening dress. They run to greet him, shake his hand, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at the expense of the people. They play a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster, caviar and champagne. Also present is the devil, who really is a very friendly guy who has a good time dancing and telling jokes. They are having such a good time that before he realizes it, it is time to go. Everyone gives him a hearty farewell and waves while the elevator rises.

The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens on heaven where St Peter is waiting for him. 'Now it's time to visit heaven.' So, 24 hours pass with the senator joining a group of contented souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing. They have a good time and, before he realizes it, the 24 hours have gone by and St. Peter returns. 'Well, then, you've spent a day in hell and another in heaven. Now choose your eternity.' The senator reflects for a minute, then he answers: 'Well, I would never have said it before, I mean heaven has been delightful, but I think I would be better off in hell.'

So St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell. Now the doors of the elevator open and he's in the middle of a barren land covered with waste and garbage. He sees all his friends, dressed in rags, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags as more trash falls from above. The devil comes over to him and puts his arm around his shoulder. 'I don't understand,' stammers the senator. 'Yesterday I was here and here was a golf course and clubhouse, and we ate lobster and caviar, drank champagne, and danced and had a great time. Now there's just a wasteland full of garbage and my friends look miserable. What happened?

The devil looks at him, smiles and says, 'Yesterday we were campaigning...... Today you voted.

Looks like the issue of public financing hasn't been settled after all.

Making this pledge was an enormous mistake for Obama, one that I always suspected he would come to regret. Aside from the short-term political implications, the only way we are going to get long-term campaign finance reform is if we can show that the current system is so thoroughly broken that it cannot be repaired. And what better way to do that than overwhelm it with money?

For the record, I'd love one day to get to the point where we have full public financing for all federal campaigns. But we're not going to get there piecemeal. Incrementalism just won't cut it here.

It's been a long time since I've quoted Sirota on what's going on out West. Time to correct that:

But which candidates win the Rocky Mountains will be less about who is Reaganesque, racially divisive or rhetorically gifted, and more about who ignores the red-versus-blue fictions and appreciates some nuanced truths about this storied place.

Consider the myth that Western "red states" reflexively support right-wing national security policies. This storyline was most famously forwarded by New York Sen. Charles Schumer (D) when in 2006 he attacked fellow Democrats working to end the Patriot Act. He said, "To let [the Patriot Act] lapse would be a disaster, particularly for our Democrats in red states."

Schumer's comments came despite legislatures in "red states" like Montana, Colorado and Idaho passing bipartisan bills condemning the Patriot Act for restricting civil liberties.

Then again, others fail to comprehend that this Western libertarianism is limited. In an overstatement typical of national pundits, New York Post columnist Ryan Sager proclaimed that Rocky Mountain voters cling to a "leave-me-alone philosophy when it comes to government." Except on lots of issues, that's false.

For example, OpenLeft.com's Paul Rosenberg discovered that when it comes to budgets, the Rocky Mountain West actually wants the government to stop leaving it alone. Specifically, he found roughly three-quarters of Westerners polled by the General Social Survey believe government spends too little on domestic priorities. In fact, many Western incumbents are re-elected on pledges to bring more government money home--a promise they largely fulfill considering most Western states receive more cash from Washington than they contribute. Meanwhile, Montana, Nevada and Arizona voters have passed ballot measures raising the minimum wage--a government mandate if ever there was one.

The fairy tales are endless. Congressional debates imply that the West's most precious resources are oil and gas. But to many locals, the area's most valuable commodity is water.

Commentators have claimed Bill Clinton's 1992 victory in four Western states is not only proof of his political genius, but also of the region's devotion to Clintonism--an ideology that sold out the middle class with initiatives like NAFTA. Somehow, everyone forgets that Ross Perot used a populist indictment of both parties' corporate sycophancy to take 1.4 million Western votes from George H. W. Bush.

But perhaps the biggest misconception is the belief that the West is a strange, Siberia-like realm--square-state "flyover" country separate from the rest of America.

Sure, had you walked among the belt buckles and boots at Denver's annual Western Stock Show last week, you certainly would have seen some unique styles. But looking at the event's diverse crowd, chatting with National Guardsmen at a recruiting stand, listening to vendors and buyers haggle--watching regular people be regular people--you would have also seen that this place is just like the rest of the nation: complex and not easily stereotyped.

The candidates who understand that fundamental reality will be the ones Westerners reward at the polls.

Watch the results from the Mountain West on Tuesday night. If Obama wins the nomination, it will be in part because he was able to turn the rural areas in Western states from purple to blue.

Via The Plank, this from today's WaPo:

With three days to go before Super Tuesday, when roughly half the delegates in the Democratic presidential contest will be awarded, Obama is racing around the country, still trying to introduce himself to voters, speed-dating style.

On Tuesday, he touched down in his grandfather's home town, El Dorado, Kan., where many residents did not realize until recently -- if at all -- that Obama has Kansas roots. From there, it was on to big rallies in Kansas City, Mo.; Denver; and Phoenix, followed by Los Angeles, where he tried during an hour in East L.A. to make an impression on Hispanic voters who know little about him. On Friday: Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Boise.

Polling and election results so far suggest that the more time Obama has to present himself to voters, the better he fares. In each of the first four states where voting was sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee, Clinton maintained essentially level support in polls in the months leading up to the contests, while Obama saw a steady upward trajectory the more he campaigned. In Florida, by contrast, where the candidates did not campaign after the DNC punished the state for moving its primary to January, Clinton soundly defeated Obama, offering a rough gauge on how much the senator from Illinois relies on voter contact.

The lack of time concerns Obama's rank-and-file supporters in the Feb. 5 states, who see him packing arenas this week -- 15,000-plus in Denver, 13,000 in Phoenix -- yet know that most of those turning out are the converted and that countless more undecided voters will not see Obama make his case in person.

"It worries me. Everyone in Arizona ought to see what we saw today," said Tim Nelson, a lawyer for the state government, after bringing his 9-year-old daughter to see the candidate in Phoenix.

If a few extra weeks would help Obama, the opposite is true for Clinton, whose advisers would be happy with just a few extra days, they said in interviews Friday.

The Clinton camp just essentially admitted that Obama is the better candidate, and as a result, that he is the most electable candidate come the general election. The more voters see Obama, the more they like him. Apparently even Clinton's own advisors are willing to admit that the opposite is true for her.

Accidental truth telling is a bitch, innit?

Ezra, Matt, and others are quite right to highlight this passage from former RI Senator Chafee's forthcoming memoir:

"The system works best when power remains in the hands of the voters," writes Chafee. "I was a casualty of the system working in 2006, and while defeat is never easy, I give the voters credit: They made the connection between electing even popular Republicans at the cost of leaving the Senate in the hands of a leadership they had learned to mistrust."

Here's Ezra's take on what this means:

There was a time when the individual standing before you, asking for your vote, actually had some autonomy, some power. If he said he was independent, there was a reasonable chance that he was. That moment is long gone. Now, voters cast ballots for tall, white-haired, charismatic power brokers who promptly return to Washington and show themselves to be meek, cowed, cogs in the larger machine. And that's basically fine, I have no problem with a more parliamentary Congress. The problem is when voters don't realize that it's the party, rather than the person, that they're voting for. As Chafee accurately notes, he was a good guy, and he opposed the administration on some genuinely crucial votes (like the authorization to go to war in Iraq), but at the end of the day, his primary impact was at the start of the session, when he cast a vote for a Republican as Senate Majority Leader.

For decades commentators and political scientists has been writing about the decline, and sometimes even death, of political parties, but clearly everyone had written the parties off much too soon. The "parliamentarization of Congress," as Ezra calls it, is something that began back in the early to mid-1990s and firmly took hold when the GOP took control of Congress in 2002. Although the change was almost immediately apparent to those who watch congress for a living, it took a bit longer for the voters to catch on. Thankfully they finally are - in some places, at least.

UPDATE: Another great quote from Linc:

“I find it surprising now, in 2008, how many Democrats are running for president after shirking their constitutional duty to check and balance this president. Being wrong about sending Americans to kill and be killed, maim and be maimed, is not like making a punctuation mistake in a highway bill. “They argue that the president duped them into war, but getting duped does not exactly recommend their leadership. Helping a rogue president start an unnecessary war should be a career-ending lapse of judgment.”

It's not enough to be ready on day one; you also have to be right.