California

Reporting from Sacramento -- As California's government continued its grinding downshift toward insolvency, efforts to close the state's nearly $42-billion budget gap hit a new snag late Tuesday as Republicans in the state Senate ousted their leader.

Around 11 p.m., a group of GOP senators, unhappy with the higher taxes that Senate leader Dave Cogdill of Modesto agreed to as part of a deal with the governor and Democrats, voted to replace him in a private caucus meeting in Cogdill's office.

They chose Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth, a staunchly antitax lawmaker from Murrieta, as their new leader.

Cogdill's ouster could be a major setback to budget negotiations. Cogdill was a lead negotiator on the budget package and had committed to voting for it. Hollingsworth will likely try to renegotiate the deal, which lawmakers spent three months forging.

These people are simply divorced from reality. Do your part to divorce them from their offices.

Quote of the Day II

Here's the facts--and we don't even talk about these things. On Thursday [September 15, 2008], at about 11 o'clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw down of money market accounts in the United States; to the tune of $550 billion, was being driven out, in the matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened up its window to help, it pumped in $105 billion into the system, and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the bank. They decided to close the operation--close down the money accounts, and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic out there; and that's what really happened.

If they had not done that, their estimation was that by 2 o'clock that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours, the world economy would have collapsed. [...] It would have been the end of our economic system and political system as we know it.

-Rep. Kanjorski, D-Pennsylvania