…and boy are my arms tired! Zing!¹

Err, anyway. So on the flight back from Los Angeles I sat next to a rather large man. We chatted about Sports Night and 802.11b versus 802.11g, but things got a bit more interesting when I asked whether he had been in LA on vacation or business. “Business,” the man said. What kind of business? Turned out he had been a delegate at this weekend’s California Republican convention. At that point I had to ask, “So who do you like, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Tom McClintock?” Turns out he was a McClintock fan. McClintock is a “good man” who “knows what he’s talking about,” while Schwarzenegger is “way too liberal.” Hmmm. Perhaps my seatmate was, like me, unimpressed by Schwarzenegger’s platitudes about solving the state budget problem by “auditing the books and cutting waste.” After all, if you’re campaigning to yank an official from office because of his bad policy decisions, at the very least you ought to have some concrete plans on what you’d like, do differently and stuff.

I should point out that a good friend of mine has told me that I’m totally wrong about this and that concrete plans are for suckers. The argument goes like this: since everyone in the race is going to lie like hell about what they’re going to do in office, you might as well base your vote on personality alone. Pick someone who’s tough. Someone who will shake up the status quo. Send a message. Kick ass and take names! The counterargument is that media personalities are manufactured just like anything else, and that when it comes to divining a candidate’s true personality, you might as well try phrenology over press clippings. I suppose my friend and I are both back at square one.

So the key question these days is: will the Republicans split their vote and end up losing to Cruz Bustamante? One likely scenario is that Cruz Bustamante will win, but the total of the votes for McClintock and Schwarzenegger will exceed Bustamante’s. And thus we Democrats will be able to feel smug about fending off a Republican takeover, and the Republicans will be able to feel smug about how they would have won if not for that blockhead [McClintock|Schwarzenegger] staying in the race. (Of course the latter reasoning conveniently ignores the fact that V_M + V_S is almost certainly greater than V_(M+S), but hey, minor detail.) Anyway, I asked my seatmate if he was worried about this vote-splitting problem. He admitted that yes, he was, although he was hoping that Schwarzenegger would drop out. Heh. That seems unlikely — Schwarzenegger strikes me as, if nothing else, a ferocious competitor. Then again, I can’t be sure… I haven’t examined the bumps on his head.

1. Okay, so that wasn’t a tech writer joke. Nor was it much of a joke at all. Hey man — it’s my journal, back off.

My home town is having a special election on Tuesday. Tonight at precisely 6:11pm, my phone rang:

Me: Hello?

Telemarketer Lady: Hi, I’m with the Republican party, and I’m calling about Measure E.

Me: (politely) Oh, I’m sorry, I’m not a Republican —

Telemarketer Lady: (click)

In retrospect, maybe I should have said, “Oh, how interesting,” and pretended to be a Republican for as long as I could, thus tying up valuable Republican party resources just before a critical school bond referendum. Unfortunately my Mama and Papa didn’t school me in the brutal Darwinian tactics of street-level political combat. Instead, they schooled me in answering the phone politely.

Perhaps this is the essence of our problem.

And on another front, M’ris is waging psychological warfare. I make an innocent reference to “Fiddler”, which has the unfortunate side effect of embedding a few of Fiddler’s songs and catchphrases in her head. So M’ris retaliates by trying to make me associate Trinity with Christopher Walken. Yuck! Again, see? Underhanded, vicious street-level combat, for which I am totally unprepared. So the question is, does this deserve a response? On the one hand… an eye-for-an-eye leaves the whole world blind. On the other hand… it’s just this kind of namby-pamby thinking that lets Republican Telemarketer Ladies just, like, walk all over people. But on the other hand… no. No! There is no other hand!

My MOTWM class is pretty interesting these days. This quarter we’re spending much of our time focusing on fifteenth-century Italian politics and art. It seems that at the end of the fifteenth century, the Italian city-states were caught unawares by the rising power of the new political order. Florence, Venice, Milan, Naples… all thought they were just as important and powerful as the newly consolidated nation-states of England, France, and Spain. Then came 1494, King Charles VIII, and the beginning of the Italian Wars. Fascinating stuff.

Of course, I’m sure that studying ancient moldy history like this has no relevance to modern politics whatsoever.

So there I was this morning, minding my own business, when Nancy sent me an email about Howard Coble and his idiotic statements about why interning Japanese-Americans during World War II was a dandy idea after all.¹ Coble’s pathetic non-apology apology is just the icing on the cake:

“I regret that many Japanese and Arab-Americans found my choice of words
offensive because that was certainly not my intent,” Coble, R-N.C., said.

Gosh, silly us for being so sensitive.

I remember years ago, my Mom telling me that when she was a high school student in Florida, one poor brave teacher tried to teach the class that the internment camps had actually happened at all, and an outraged coalition of parents rose up to prevent their dear children from being scarred by this information. So maybe we’re making progress? At least it’s being discussed in the open, even by the troglodytes. Feh.

The really scary part is that Coble is… drumroll… chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.² I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I am not a big one for petitions. I occasionally get well-meaning letters asking me to sign an online petition for X, or copy-and-paste a Statement on Y and email it to my Representative, the President, whoever. My usual response is skim-and-delete. But this one is different. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be sending out three letters in the mail. One to Anna Eshoo (my representative), one to F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (chairman of the Judiciary Committee) and one to Dennis Hastert (the Big Cheese — in theory, anyway). Their addresses, by the way, are:

Anna Eshoo	Dennis Hastert	James Sensenbrenner
205 Cannon Building Washington, D.C. 20515, (202) 225-8104 annagram@mail.house.gov	235 Cannon HOB Washington, D.C. 20515 (202) 225-2976 dhastert@mail.house.gov	2449 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515-4905 (202) 225-5101 sensenbrenner@mail.house.gov

Who knows, if enough people write in, maybe that asshole Coble will get thrown
off the subcommittee. It’s worth a shot.

1. I’m something of a news junkie these days, and so I’m really not sure how this one slipped under my radar for over a week. (Smacks forehead)

2. While poking around, I learned that Coble had until recently been on the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property. Good thing they gave him something more important to do. And yes, that is a Frontpage-manufactured website that our former Grand Poobah of the Internet has got there. I like the kewl waving flag GIFs, myself.

3. Speaking of Coble’s website: should you visit it expecting any statements on this particular issue, as of February 13, 2003 you will come away sorely disappointed.

Here I was this morning, just minding my own business, trying to get ready for Jan and Nef’s wedding. But to my dismay, I discovered that famed warblogger R. Robot had the following to say about me:

When will Evan come clean about the way he slanders President Bush?

I suppose some notice should be paid to the performance that the bloviating Evan delivered Monday on The Late Show. “Is there any evidence that Iraq ‘thinks they might want to team up with terrorists,’ as the President said?” he said. For shame! This kind of untrustworthy hatred of America is as degenerate as it is weaseling. Evan, breathtakingly, is a formerly important loser.

Wow, pretty harsh. Still, even I have to admit that it was a well-deserved takedown. Advantage: Blogosphere!

In truth, I have a weakness for random-text scripts such as R. Robot. In fact, I’ve already installed the Dada Engine on this site — in fact, right now I’m running one of the default scripts to generate random legal jargon for Crazy Mike’s Shack-o-Law. Okay, so it is a default script, not so impressive. But I’m also currently working on my own custom scripts. Rest assured, I have big plans for the Dada Engine. Stay tuned.

M’ris responds to my response about the Greens in the 2000 campaign. Much of her commentary is not directed at me — it’s directed at other (hypothetical) Democrats who have proffered arguments that I simply would not (and did not) make. Of the points she criticizes me for, there are really just two. On the first point, we will have to respectfully disagree: while I recognize that the President is not supremely powerful, and that we are speaking about hypotheticals, in my opinion the Green-unfriendly actions, policies, and political appointments I mentioned yesterday were all direct consequences of the election of Bush… and had Gore been elected, the results from a Green perspective would have been far less odious. On the second point, M’ris quite rightly accuses me of making a specious argument about Nader and the reason why the Greens voted for him. That was my fault — it was a half-hearted, lame attempt on my part to artificially separate the Greens from Nader and dump the blame on his head rather than say something mean about the Greens in general. So I might as well come out with it: the truth is, Greens, I’m mad at all y’all. There, I’ve said it.

On to the important stuff. Timprov sends me news of Stan Jones, a 3rd-party US Senate candidate in Montana who’s actually wackier than any of the weirdos on the California ballot. Seems that in a fit of Y2K mania, this fella managed to permanently dye his face blue. (Perhaps the colors in the photograph are distorted a little… but isn’t his tie picking up that blue-gray color nicely? Or maybe it’s just me.) Of course, the really strange thing about that race isn’t Stan Jones, it’s that the incumbent Senator in that Montana race is a Democrat. Who knew? Must be all them liberal Horse-Whisperer writin’-types coming in and taking over the place. Anyway, if anyone knows of any equally-wacky candidates, particularly wacky Democratic candidates (just to show I don’t play favorites), send them my way.¹

1. Although what with the recent elimination of Cynthia McKinney, the game is now a tad more challenging.

I got a couple of reactions to yesterday’s entry. First Timprov, who chides me by email for being too narrow in my conception of economists. “Specifically, you’ve left out Richard Stallman.” Tim is quite right: Stallman is a good example of a non-traditional thinker who has had a significant effect on economic matters. For that matter, I left out Winslow Taylor, Vannevar Bush, and many others. I was just trying to make a smaller point: that simply being a well-known modern economist does not necessarily make one a philosopher also. But point taken.

M’ris had some more extended comments:

Evan’s journal entry from last night gives us a lovely run down of how pointless and silly the small party candidates for governor in California are. I can hardly wait for his assessment of how pointless and silly the major party candidates for governor in California are! California politics are such fun. Perhaps tomorrow.

Since M’ris is a devoted reader of this journal (she’s Reader Number One, if I remember correctly), she no doubt clearly recalls the numerous times that I’ve criticized one of the two major candidates. So she must be taking me to task for failing to rip on the other major candidate. Well, okay. The reason I haven’t bothered to attack Davis so far is that I simply lack the energy or enthusiasm for repeating the charges that one can find in the SJ Mercury on a daily basis. (Ditto for Simon’s corruption charges.) But should my disdain for Davis not be apparent enough, let me just say that the Simon operatives who put up eGray pretty much have Davis pegged, and they say their piece in a much more creative way than I ever could.

Anyway, M’ris continues:

At the end of the entry, he says, “Of course, there’s the fact that nearly every US government action in the last two years that that the Greens oppose is, in fact, a direct consequence of Green political activity.” Wow, Evan. Nearly every one? Are you sure? Everybody repeat after me: “A Green is not a Democrat.” Got it? Again: “A Green is not a Democrat.”

Um, where did I say that Greens are supposed to be Democrats? I simply pointed out the obvious: that Green political activity in 2000 colossally backfired. And yes, M’ris, I meant exactly what I said when I said nearly every one. I racked my brains trying to think of major Bush administration actions that don’t fall into this category, and I was able to come up with precisely three:

• The destruction of the terrorist-friendly regime in Afghanistan, which a President Gore would have certainly prosecuted with identical vigor;
• U.S. policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which probably would not have changed substantially;
• The tightening of arsenic standards in drinking water, which Bush delayed but did not ultimately eliminate.

And… that’s about it. From foreign policy (the war on Iraq, the Kyoto Protocol, cutting off population control funding) to domestic policy (ANWAR, gas mileage standards, the tax cut) to political appointments (John Ashcroft, Linda Chavez, Gale Norton) to rights and liberties (TIPS, secret military tribunals)… pretty much everything the administration has done or tried to do in the last two years has been a disaster from a Green perspective, and would have been qualitatively better under a Gore administration. Of course, I have no doubt that Gore’s higher mileage standards would have been too low for the Greens, his embrace of the Kyoto protocols too hesitant, and so on. But if we could somehow contact the Greens in the Alternate Universe where Al Gore won¹, I think we’d be able to convince most of them that the grass is indeed greener on their side of the fence.

I know, I know, I’ve heard it a million times from a million Democrats: Al Gore would supposedly have been much better for a Green agenda than George W. Bush. However much you believe this, it looks pretty clear that not everybody was sufficiently convinced of it. Several thousands of people were not convinced, actually, after eight years of an administration in which Gore was a top member.

Supposedly??? Grrr. What am I supposed to do about what “several thousands of people” believed? What they believed was patently false then, and it is false beyond a shadow of a doubt now. (Unless someone cares to refute exhibits A and B, John Ashcroft and Gale Norton, that is. Any takers?)

So. Democrats who believe the Greens were the key to Gore’s loss are left with two alternatives: blaming and haranguing (or, in Evan’s case, gently needling) Greens for the current administration, or lobbying their own political leadership to consider Green concerns more thoroughly. As a libertarian (little l!), I can tell you how helpful haranguing people is in getting them to vote as you want them to. Try it the other way, folks. Nobody owes your guys a vote.

M’ris, M’ris, you have too much faith in me. You’re being too kind. I’m not “gently needling”. I’m blaming! I’m haranguing! As for your main objection (“Nobody owes your guys a vote”): perhaps you thought I was saying that the idea of a Green party is illegitmate, or that their duty is to help Democrats at all costs, or some such nonsense. Not at all. I have no problem with Greens presenting their case in an honest way. Sure, I might think they would be counterproductive in certain close elections, but they wouldn’t make me angry. No, what makes me angry is that there’s a world of difference between saying, “Sure, Gore’s said some nice things about the environment, but he’s still wrong/an idiot/a tool of the corporations and here’s why,” and straight-up lying and claiming that Gore = Bush.

Unfortunately, in the 2000 campaign Nader chose to set Gore up as a straw man instead of bothering to grapple with the positions that Gore actually held… which is sad, because it speaks volumes about Nader’s own convictions and faith in his philosophy vis-a-vis Gore’s. Nader is the textbook case of letting the Perfect be the Enemy of the Good… except that at the same time he managed to shed his “Perfect” guise by stooping to the same despicable tactics that he’d spent so many years whinging about. A neat trick, that one. Too bad we’re all still paying for it.

1. “But wait!” I hear you cry. “This is that alternative universe!” Aw jeez, give it a rest already.

After weeks of breathless anticipation, I finally received my California Official Voter Information Guide in the mail. Occasionally informative and always entertaining, this year’s Voter Information Guide does not disappoint!

• Gary David Copeland, Libertarian candidate for Governor:

  Seeking a better alternative? Do we ignore Milton Friedman, Herbert Spencer, Gene Roddenberry — some of my favorite philosophers — at our own peril?

  Friedman? The only economist who perhaps slides over into the “philosopher” category is Adam Smith, by virtue of his economic demigod stats. I’m afraid the jury’s still out on Friedman. As for Roddenberry, not only is he not a philosopher, but he’s a particularly strange choice for a Libertarian hero. After all, in Roddenberry’s Star Trek universe, the government is large, powerful, and (yet despite that) is reasonably efficient and effective¹. Contrast the Federation with, say, the Old Republic of the Star Wars universe, and you’ll see what I mean. There are umpteen science fiction luminaries who fit the libertarian point of view far better; the generation of such a list is left as an exercise for the reader.

• Kalee Przybylak, Natural Law Party candidate for Lieutenant Governor:

  I believe that through utilizing ‘natural laws’ and creating a unity consciousness throughout our electorate, we are better able to begin to address the needs of a changing society…

  Wow, first a pro-Federation candidate… and now a pro-Borg candidate. Heavens to Betsy.

• Jim King, American Independent Party candidate for Lieutenant Governor:

  I believe in God almighty, our creator, our Lord and Savior. The founders of our land also believed in God and in Judeo-Christian values and customs… [several more lines of theocratic stuff omitted]… Secular humanists, aboritionists nor socialists need not apply at my door of the office of Lieutenant Governor. If God is with me in this effort; then who can be against me? [emphasis mine]

  I sincerely hope that for Jim King’s own sake that he has not staked his belief in God’s existence, God’s omnipotence, or God’s personal love for Jim King on the eventual outcome of the election.

• Pat Wright, Libertarian candidate for Lieutenant Governor:

  My most recent crusade is the legalization of the domestic ferret in California, one of two states to ban them. For being visible and outspoken, I’ve had one ferret confiscated at his vet and euthanized, and armed agents broke down my door to seize my other ferrets. While ferrets are not an important issue to most Californians, how government works should be.

  Here I was all distracted over John Ashcroft and the TIPS program… and all the while, the jackbooted Ferret Police were running rampant!

• Paul Jerry Hannosh, Reform Party candidate for Lieutenant Governor:

  Also, we must end the liberal public education monopoly by allowing parents a choice of any private/religious school through tax credits. Competition will bring about an educational renaissance and will help us remain one nation, under God. “Righteousness exalts a nation…” Proverbs 14:34… [emphasis his]

  I’ve always wondered whether the people who propose such policies have considered the consequences of actually getting their way. After all, this “renaissance” of educational competition would result in millions of Good Christian tax dollars flowing directly to Satanists, Wiccans, Muslims, Mormons, Jews, and other undesirables. And besides, are we not cautioned to be leery of tearing down institutions? (“Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands.” Proverbs 14:1.)

• Jeanne-Marie Rosenmeier, Green Party candidate for Treasurer:

  The Green Party has a proven record of foresight…

  Of course, there’s the fact that nearly every US government action in the last two years that that the Greens oppose is, in fact, a direct consequence of Green political activity. But hey — other than that, the Greens are batting a thousand in the foresight department.

1. Of course, the Federation bumbles in various ways. Nevertheless, one of the driving themes in Star Trek is the sunny optimism that human institutions (i.e. Starfleet and the Federation) can be Pretty Strong and Reasonably Good and Not Very Oppressive all at the same time. One could even argue that the Federation is essentially a government of New (Clintonian) Democrats, logically extrapolated 300 years out. But with alien infestation scandals instead of sex scandals.

After I started this journal back in October, I spent relatively little time talking about the September 11 atrocities — certainly not since the new year. As the months went on, this journal has evolved away from the overtly political. I’ve been focusing on trivia, humor, and keeping my friends and family entertained. I’ve decided that there are enough blowhards out there spewing their uninformed views on geopolitical issues without little ol’ me getting involved.

So I’ll just say the following. I’m worried: worried about the “other shoe dropping”. I’m disappointed: disappointed with the current administration’s bumbling, from its failure to commit to Afghan security and stability, to its inability to even try to maintain the goodwill and cooperation of our allies. I’m unnerved: unnerved to read about rampant anti-Semitic violence in France; disturbed to read the rhetoric about “Zionist media control” creeping in not just from the extreme right, but from the left as well.

All I can do is pray that things get better. It’s a New Year, the Book is still open, and maybe things will improve. Shana Tovah, all.

I recently found Mark Irons’s Patterns for Personal Web Sites. Great stuff. Words to live by. If you have a personal website, go take a look-see.

So I was listening to the radio today, and they were having a discussion about the recent fast-food lawsuit. You know, this one.

Now, I don’t like to waste my time bashing lawyers. First of all, the law is (duh) pretty complicated. These days I’m trying to learn not to shoot my mouth off about things I don’t understand. It’s kind of like physics. Unfortunately, I know a few things about physics, and when I see laypersons (usually on sites like this one) spew their opinions on physics, it drives me up the wall. I want to say things like this to them, but somehow I manage to refrain. The thing is, some people have the sense not to comment on physics. but everyone thinks they have something tremendously valuable to share about the law. And at least with physics you don’t have hordes of people screaming about how horrible and wrong physicists were to, say, discover the top quark. Somehow the Pledge of Allegiance resonates a little more with people. I’m not sure why.

Second, everyone loves to pick on lawyers. For example, take my poker buddies (please!) A few weeks ago, I threw out the timid suggestion that I maybe kinda sorta was thinking about going to law school. You’d have thought I announced I was personally responsible for Sports Night going off the air. “What are you thinking?” they cried. “You want your job to be all about destroying other people’s productivity?” When I said that rather than being a lawyer, I thought it would be interesting to be a law professor, they were even more horrified. “So you want to train other people to destroy productivity?” Sigh. Picking on lawyers. So trite.

So that said, the fast-food lawsuit really pisses me off. The one thing that freaked me out about the tobacco lawsuits all those years ago was the thought that, “uh-oh… they’re going to come for cheeseburgers and ice cream next.” And lo and behold, here we are.

As I understand it, the basic argument against the tobacco companies went something like this. A) Tobacco is very dangerous, B) tobacco is very addictive, and C) the tobacco companies actively lied and attempted to cover up evidence that pointed to A) and B). For me personally, C) was the kicker. I think C) is what made the tobacco juries so mad as well.

But the fast-food situation is totally different. Maybe you can make a case for A). But nobody’s arguing B), and as for C)… is there anyone in this country who thinks cheeseburgers are healthy? The calories and fat content is posted on the wall right next to the order counter, for crying out loud. So I’m pretty confused about the whole thing.

Certainly there are some lawsuits against fast-food companies that have merit. For example, there were a couple of suits over the issue of fast-food companies using animal fat in (nominally) vegetarian meals, such as french fries. If McDonalds is failing to disclose that their fries are cooked in beef fat, vegetarians are perfectly justified in being angry over this. But that’s a totally different issue. Nobody’s trying to cover up the health effects of cheeseburgers. How could one not be informed about this? How can you sue someone for producing a dangerous product when that danger is common knowledge? What gives?

Anyway, I was so annoyed that instead of having a sandwich for lunch today, I went out and bought a double cheeseburger Value Meal at Burger King today. A large Value Meal. That’ll show ’em.

Success! Already people are taking up the catchphrase that I suggested earlier. M’ris was even clever enough to chop off the first four syllables, leaving it at just “Moussaoui”. Not bad, although it’s still kind of long and hard to spell. Why couldn’t he have been named something simple, like Jones? Or Smith? Or Lindh? Oh, well. M’ris also has some helpful suggestions for a gender-neutral version of “mistress”. So far we have “lover” (which fails to convey that one party is married), “partner” (gender-neutral, but not sexual-orientation-neutral), “paramour” (too musty), and “love-monkey” (tee-hee! But no).

Recently I read a column by conservativish Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly where he up and apologized for not being very nice in his columns. And here it is, not even Yom Kippur. Well, I think this is a capital idea. Like Kelly, I am also ashamed of some of the not-particularly-nice things I’ve said on this site, and I so will attempt to make up for this with…

An Apology

• On July 15, 2002, I referred to our steel tariffs as “lame” and our farm bill as “even lamer”. These were rash words. I understand now that the tiny number of voters in key swing states who benefit from these policies are clearly worthy of this sort of personalized attention from the Bush administration, and the rest of us should be a little more gracious about the whole thing.

• On June 15, 2002, I called the NY Times “clueless” for not keeping permanent links to their articles on the web. Honestly, who am I to criticize their Internet strategy? I’m sure they thought about their website design very carefully, and no doubt they know a hell of a lot more than boring old Jakob Nielsen and Tim Berners-Lee do on the subject.

• On June 3, 2002, I approvingly quoted David Coursey regarding Napster’s demise, when he cited the event as “proof of a loving higher power that smites evildoers.” I also sneered at Rage Against the Machine for the same reason — for marketing themselves as revolutionaries while in reality just being exemplars of the same-old-same-old. In retrospect, this was an unfair assessment. After all, Napster and Rage Against the Machine are both against the RIAA, which makes them automatically worthy of our sympathy and support.

• On May 8, 2002, I called the Cato Institute “insufferable”, in retaliation for their reference to Californians as being “dim-bulbs” and “whiners”. This sort of tit-for-tat namecalling is uncalled for and, as good old Ben, Bryan, and Brendan would be quick to point out, degrades the level of our national discourse.

• On April 17, 2002, I accused morning DJ Don Bleu of being “deeply cynical”. This in turn was cynical of me. On the same day, I called conservative radio talk-show host Michael Savage a “frothing right-wing nutcase”… but I also said that he seems to care about what he’s doing, so I think that one’s a wash.

• On March 10, 2002, I complained that Outlook Express 6 could not export its emails to a file. This was a false charge — you can retrieve your mailboxes as files if you’re willing to familiarize yourself with the internals of Outlook Express and dig around in the depths of the Windows 2000 filesystem. You can even convert your emails to non-Microsoft formats, if you’re willing to scour the web for various cryptic open source tools. So sorry, Microsoft, my mistake.

• Waaay back in February, I implied that Chairman of the SEC Harvey Pitt was unsuited for his position because he had been the chief lobbyist for the accounting industry and had been directly responsible for halting former chairman Arthur Levitt’s attempts to protect investors. I did not mean to impugn Pitt’s ethics or integrity. Moreover, now that the danger is clear I have no doubt he’s doing a bang-up job to restore public faith in our capital markets.

• Six months ago, I had some unkind things to say about the Republican candidates for governor and their failure to provide us with an alternative and coherent energy plan. In fact, in light of their attacks on Davis on this topic, I believe I called them all “pathetic.” Clearly I spoke too soon — Bill Simon’s website, once bereft of energy policy information, now has something to say on the matter. Strangely, the outline of his plan (invest in solar/geothermal/wind, renegotiate energy contracts, fund energy research at California universities) sounds suspiciously like what the Democrats (and even the Green Party) are saying. But hey, if you can be flexible enough to satisfy your right-wing primary voters in the spring and the more left-wing general election voters in the summer… well, more power to you.

• In December 2001, I gloated over Enron’s ignominious begging of the California Department of Water and Power for electricity. It’s never nice to kick someone when they’re down… and since Enron’s corporate crew clearly had a deep respect for the needs of their fellow citizens, I can hardly fail to afford them the same courtesy.

• Finally, in November 2001, I made fun of Jonathan Franzen for his churlish behavior regarding Oprah’s book club and his pretentious claims to membership in the “high-art literary tradition.”

  Come to think of it, I’m not sorry about that last one at all.