A MESSAGE FROM CALIFORNIA

Lights Out

America has engaged in some finger wagging lately because California doesn't have enough electricity to meet its needs. The rest of the country including George W. Bush's energy secretary Spencer Abraham, who wants Californians to suffer through blackouts as justification for drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) seems to be just fine with letting Californians dangle in the breeze without enough power to meet their needs. They laugh at Californians' frivolity. Well, everybody. Here's how it really is:

California ranks 48th in the nation in power consumed per person.

California grows more than half the nation's fruit, nuts and vegetables. We're keeping them. We need something to eat when the power goes out.

We grow 99 percent or more of the nation's almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, kiwifruit, olives, persimmons, pistachios, prunes, raisins and walnuts. Hope you won't miss them.

California is the nation's number one dairy state. We're keeping our dairy products. We'll need plenty of fresh ones since our refrigerators can't be relied upon. Got milk?

We Californians are gonna keep all our high-tech software in state. Silicon Valley is ours, after all. Without enough electricity, which you're apparently keeping for yourselves, we just plain don't have enough software to spare.

We're keeping all our airplanes. California builds a good percentage of the commercial airliners available to fly you people to where you want to go. When yours wear out, you'd better hope Boeing's Washington (soon to be Chicago) plant will be able to keep you supplied. There isn't enough electricity here to allow us to export any more planes than we need ourselves.

And while we're at it, we're keeping all our high-tech aerospace stuff, too, like the sophisticated weapons systems that let you sleep at night, not worried you might wake up under the rule of some foreign kook.

Oh, yeah, and if you want to make a long distance call, remember where the satellite components and tracking systems come from. Maybe you could get back in the habit of writing letters.

Want to see a blockbuster movie this weekend? Come to California. We make them here. Since we'll now have to make them with our own electricity, we're keeping them. Even if we shot them somewhere else, the labs, printing facilities, editing facilities, and sound facilities are all here.

Want some nice domestic wine? We produce over 17 million gallons per year. We'll need all it to drown our sorrows when we think about the fact that no matter how many California products we export to make the rest of America's lives better, America can't see its way clear to help us out with a little electricity. You can no longer have any of our wine.

You all complain that we don't build enough power plants. Well, you don't grow enough food, write enough software, make enough movies, build enough airplanes and defense systems or make enough wine.

This is your last warning, America. Lighten (us) up before it's too late.

Love,
The Californians

RULES FOR BEING A GOOD REPUBLICAN

(Note: I believe this list was originally written by former Texas Governor Ann Richards; this is an 'updated' version)

1. You have to believe that the nation's current 8-year prosperity was due to the work of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, but that yesterday's gas prices are all Bill Clinton's fault.

2. You have to despise government programs, but expect Social Security checks on time.

3. You have to believe that government should stay out of peoples' lives, yet you want government to regulate same-sex marriages, ending or not ending pregnancies, and what official language should be spoken by you.

4. You have to believe that pollution is okay, so long as it makes a profit. It is even better if it's in another state.

5. You have to sponsor prayer in public schools, as long as you don't pray to Allah or Buddha.

6. You have to believe that only your own teenagers are still virgins.

7. You have to believe that a woman cannot be trusted with decisions about her own body, but that large multi-national corporations should have no regulations or interference.

8. You love Jesus and Jesus loves you and you're certain that Jesus shares your hatred of people with AIDS, homosexuals, labor unions and Hillary Clinton.

9. You have to believe that society is color-blind and growing up black in America doesn't diminish your opportunities, but you still won't vote for Alan Keyes.

10. You have to believe that it was wise to allow Ken Starr to spend $50 million to attack Clinton because no other U.S. Presidents have ever been unfaithful to their wives. (see #19)

11. You have to declare that a waiting period for purchasing a handgun is bad because quick access to a new firearm is an important concern for all Americans, even children and felons.

12. You have to believe it is wise to keep condoms out of schools because, of course, if teenagers don't have condoms they won't have sex.

13. You have to believe that the ACLU is bad for defending the Constitution, while the NRA is good for defending the Constitution.

14. You have to believe the AIDS virus is not important enough to deserve federal funding proportionate to the resulting death rate and that the public doesn't need to be educated about it, because if we just ignore it, it will go away. [Or even worse, that those who get AIDS deserve it because of their "sins"!]

15. You have to believe that biology teachers are corrupting the morals of 6th graders if they teach them the basics of human sexuality, but the Bible, which is full of sex and violence, is good reading at any age.

16. You have to believe that Chinese communist missiles have killed more Americans than handguns, alcohol and tobacco.

17. You have to believe that even though governments have supported the arts for 5,000 years and that most of the great works of Renaissance art were paid for by governments, our government should shun any such support. After all, the rich can afford to buy their own and the poor don't need any.

18. You have to believe that the lumber from the last one percent of old growth U.S. forests is well worth the destruction of those forests and the extinction of the several species of plants and animals therein.

19. You have to believe that we should forgive and pray for Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, and Bob Livingston for their marital infidelities, but that that bastard Bill Clinton should never be forgiven. [Or that it was all about the "rule of law" and not sex!]

20. You have to believe that George W. Bush REALLY won the election!

Democrats.com Exclusive: Senator Specter to Propose Clinton be Tried for Treason
Distributed by the Democrats.com News Service 1 April 2001

Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the first senator to call for former President Clinton to be impeached again, will introduce a resolution in the Senate this week to charge Clinton with treason.

"Technically," asserted an aide to Specter, "Clinton can still be impeached for his misuse of presidential authority, although of course he can no longer be removed from office. We could strip him of Secret Service protection, his pension, taxpayer support for his office and his presidential library and everything down to and including his White House lapel pin."

"But a treason conviction would open up a whole new array of punishments," said the aide. "Frankly, we're kicking ourselves for not thinking of this in '98."

Specter has reportedly been searching for weeks for a way of returning former President Clinton to the news by charging him with abusing the president's power to issue pardons.

Specter's spokesman said that Republicans have come to realize that merely impeaching the former president again would not be sufficient to keep the 'Clinton has Sinned' narrative before the public indefinitely.

"Our polls show that the right-wing zealots who finance the Republican Party require an ever-escalating series of anti-Clinton thrills," said the aide. "It's a little like an addiction. The old thrills just don't deliver the same old rush. A trial in the Senate that convicts Clinton of treason would enable us to empanel a firing squad to execute the former president."

Aides to Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, were quick to add their support for charges of treason against the former president. "We're going to get the guy," said a top Lott aide, "we don't much care how we do it."

Delay's staff has confirmed that he is already asking Republican members of Congress to serve as honorary executioners, and that he would introduce an appropriations bill to build scaffolding on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol for the purpose of hanging the former president. The gallows would become a permanent public exhibit and will be named for former President Ronald Reagan.

Republican sources admitted that they were unlikely to move expeditiously to actually execute Clinton after his presumed conviction by the Senate. According to one informed source, "As the most popular opposition politician in the country, Clinton continues to serve a vital function as the far right's most important bogeyman. He is worth more to us alive than dead. Frankly, we'd be out tens of millions of dollars if he were to disappear suddenly."

However, the Republican Party has begun to explore the possibility of turning that around. Under a secret proposal leaked to Democrats.com, Republicans who donate up to $100 will receive a commemorative noose tie clasp. Donors who give up to $10,000 will be given a certificate of membership in the Neither Cruel Nor Unusual Club. Those who give up to $100,000 will be receive a special videotape of the event and become Hangman's Helpers, which entitles them to sit in bleachers nearest the gallows. Those who give up to $1 million will become members of the Executioner's Club, with reserved seats in climate-controlled luxury boxes featuring catered meals and closed-circuit, high-definition televisions for coverage and replays.

If the solicitation is less than successful, the source said, "we will return to the traditional methods of character assassination to get Clinton's approval ratings down from their alarmly high current levels," he admitted. "This could take most of the next four years," he added, "but it will draw attention away from President Bush, the real results of the presidential election in Florida, the recession, the tax cuts for the wealthy and a host of other damaging topics that have begun to creep back into the news."

Specter was clearly stung by charges that his earlier call for impeaching the former president again was an irrelevant waste of time and money. "The treason charges are new and can reunify the anti-Clinton forces," Specter's aide asserted.

He added that the previous attempt at impeaching Clinton had been such a boon for right wing fundraising it would "be irresponsible not to try again just because Clinton is no longer president."

Sources close to Specter said that if the conviction of the former president on treason charges succeeds, he will be exploring cases against other opposition politicians who threaten continued Republican control of all three branches of government.

"It really isn't personal," said the source. "According to our polls, the public execution of Democratic politicians would be wildly popular among gun owners, religious extremists and other core Republican constituencies. After our use of the Supreme Court for overtly political purposes this is just the next logical step in consolidating single party control of the government."

Specter's aide said they continue to have some doubts about the constitutionality of taking the former president's lapel pin. "But then we figured, what the hell," said the aide.

Lott's wife reportedly championed a proposal to turn Clinton into a pillar of salt but that idea was "smote as being too Biblical," according to the aide. There were also technological problems with that approach. "No one could say just how to turn someone into a pillar of salt," the aide reported, "although we did find several ambitious contractors anxious for lucrative contracts from the Pentagon to work on Star Wars who pledged to provide the human-to-salt technology," he reported.

Democratic leaders appeared confused by the Republican proposal for ritual human sacrifice. In an effort at bi-partisanship, the Democratic leaders proposed that the former president be mutilated or lobotomized instead.

"The endgame here will probably be a bi-partisan agreement to castrate the former president," according to a high ranking Democrat on Capitol Hill. "We may be able to prevent the castration from being televised live on Fox, but Fox has already paid big bucks for the TV rights, and the Republicans have the votes."

"Most of us think the whole thing is sick," he continued, "so we are urgently hoping for some kind of spontaneous public outcry so we can object to it."

The state-sponsored public execution of a former president, which would be the first in U.S. history, clearly causes problems for the U.S. Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting former presidents. However, an aide to Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, whose department controls the Secret Service, responded: "Hey, whether we cheated or not to get it, the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence is ours now, so get over it." In preparation for the fundraising component of the officially sanctioned assassination of the former president, the Republican National Committee has set up a Web site at:

http://wearereallygonnagethimthistimeboywearenotkiddingheycomebackhere.com

which contains more details. "We are outraged at the lack of outrage," said Democrats.com co-founder David Lytel. "What exactly are Democrats waiting for, an invitation to begin fighting back?" he said.
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