So candidate for governor Meg Whitman - I made a bunch of money as a crony Capitalist now let me run your state - has kind of come out sort of strongly against Marriage Equality. I quote from an article by Carla Marinucci and Joe Garofoli in today's SF Comical:

Whitman's first definitive statements on how she would handle the issue as governor came hours before she spoke at the opening of the three-day state GOP convention in San Diego, where she is facing open hostility from conservatives over her positions on illegal immigration and climate change.

"I think the governor of California and the attorney general today have to defend the Constitution and have to enable the judicial process to go along ... and an appeal to go through," Whitman said. "So if I was governor, I would give that ruling standing to be able to appeal to the circuit court."

Whitman was referring to District Judge Vaughn Walker's decision earlier this month that struck down Proposition 8, California's same-sex marriage ban, as unconstitutional. It is being appealed to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where neither Schwarzenegger, the GOP governor, nor Brown, Whitman's Democratic rival for governor, is defending it. In an unusual circumstance, the organization that sponsored Prop. 8 is defending it in court.

Now Marinucci and Garofoli are fine political reporters but I can hardly agree that the statement reproduced above is definitive. Rather it seems designed to convey some kind of vague legal posture that seeks to relegates gays to second class citizenship while placing the blame for this barbaric discrimination on California voters.

Indeed, if it were not surrounded by the context provided by our reporters, the statement would be perfectly incomprehensible.

I would do my duty and enforce this law even if I, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, think it is silly and maybe even hurtful. Because why? Because the initiative process is sacred and anyway I need to throw some red meat to the brown shirts who form my political base.

Note that Whitman never said that she thinks gays are out to destroy the family or that she supports the intent of Proposition H8. If she said that she would lose all of the gay Republican vote.

Instead Whitman would like to have it all, gays and fundamentalist fanatics.

When I am not certain if someone is lying to me or to someone else I find it a good rule of thumb to assume that they are lying to me.

        

So Judge Vaughn Walker has ruled on California's little experiment in bigotry and found, as a matter of fact and law, the Proposition H8 - remember the one that sought to prevent gays from marrying like everyone else - is unconstitutional. This is reported by John Schwartz in the NY Times

Better still the opinion is careful and devastating to the case for Prop H8. Reviewing the evidence presented by the proponents of Prop H8, Walker finds no reason for preventing same sex marriage other than personal moral disapproval of gays and lesbians by the proponents of the proposition. His task was made easier by the failure of proponents to present any case beyond "God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve and besides we are in a majority."

He rightly observes that personal moral disapproval is insufficient to enact discriminatory laws.

Now Wonks Anonymous has had some rather serious personal experiences that have led him to conclude that Christians of the sort that supported proposition H8 are immoral hypocrites who actively recruit children to their perverted cult. He prays for the day when a majority share his views.

If that day comes Wonks Anonymous will be sorely tempted to ban Christian marriages. He thanks Judge Walker for preventing this possibility and he would recommend that the proponents of Proposition H8 thank Judge Walker as well. You will not always have as many votes as you do now.

        

Every day I wake up and pray that Paul Krugman will be shown to be profoundly, spectacularly wrong.

It's not that I don't worship and adore the good professor. It's just that life would be so much better if all of his dire predictions did not have a habit of coming true.

Is it too late for the Vulcans to land with an insatiable demand for our quaint products?

        

I just noticed the final paragraphs of the piece on the revolutionary from Tuolumne County who just paid a visit to the Bay Area and got involved in a little fire fight with the Highway Patrol.

A quote from his mother, whose guns and truck he used:

Janice Williams said she kept the guns because "eventually, I think we're going to be caught up in a revolution." But she said she had told her son many times that "he didn't have to be on the front lines."

She said she had no explanation for his actions.

Read the full story by Bob Egelko and Henry K. Lee here .

        

Byron Williams of Tuolumne County was angry at left wing politicians in Washington so he put on his bullet proof vest, emptied his mom's gun locker and drove his pickup to Oakland. When the Highway patrol tried to stop him from exercising his constitutional right to speed and weave in and out of traffic on the freeway he started shooting at them.

Check out the story by Bob Egelko and Henry K Lee of the SF Comical here.

No officers were shot, thank God, Also it is nice to know that he was stopped before he could get to SF and gun down left wing voters with the handgun, rifle and shotgun he was packing.

But it gets better. This guy is a convicted felon who thanks to the NRA, has access to ample supplies of guns of all kinds from mom. Also, thanks to the NRA, no one would even think of holding mom accountable for the fact that her felon son got a hold of her guns.

Maybe when the gun advocates talk about keeping guns out of the hands of felons they mean non white, left wing felons.

Because all the white, right wing felons need their family guns to overthrow the evil, unamerican left wing government.

        

But the members of the Stanford and Harvard Economics Departments whom he quotes in today's column should just be ashamed of themselves.

Brooks has joined the crusade of "serious" people who are actively promoting fiscal austerity in the face of stable prices and 10% unemployment. Because studies by various conservative hired guns from these same economics departments show that, in the 1990's the US economy grew while fiscal policy created a surplus. Plus, in the 1980's Ireland and somewhere else had a similar experience.

Wonks Anonymous wonders where Mr. Brooks was when GW Bush and Alan Greenspan were preaching tax cuts and deficits in 2000 but let that pass.

The fact is that in the 1990s, before deficit reduction measures came into play, a large investment boom had already begun to get up steam. In these circumstances Bill Clinton did the right thing by creating a surplus which freed up funds for private investors. Likewise, in the 1980's Ireland and other nations could rely on the glorious US Supply Side budget deficits to fuel demand in their own economies. In the meantime the US manufacturing economy was going down the toilet because of these same deficits.

One would expect an opportunistic political hack, like Brooks, to get this wrong. The economists should know better. In particular Robert Hall, who argued in the 1990's editions of his Macro text that deficits do not matter, should at least try to be consistent.

        

Lies somewhere south of his stomach.

Wonks Anonymous beloved and gentle spouse has lovingly suggested that Wonks Anonymous would be ever so much sexier if he were to lose say 20 pounds.

Wonks Anonymous has lost 12 so far.

        

Back in the 1980's when the Poles were striking to save the Gdansk shipyards our government and our press were all about the right of workers in Poland to form independent unions free of government control.

So years have passed - the Iron Curtain fell, Poland is now a free market Catholic paradise and the unions and shipyards are mostly gone.

Meanwhile Keith Bradsher reports in the NY Times about workers at a Honda parts plant in China who are striking for higher wages and their fight to form - guess what - a labor union free of government control.

Wonks Anonymous awaits the outcry from our betters. Perhaps he should get his hearing checked?

        

Was an awkward kid. He was overweight and he bred dogs. He also tended to share way too much information about this process with anyone who might listen. BJ made Wonks Anonymous uncomfortable.

Then one day a story spread through Wonks Anonymous fine Catholic high school that gave BJ a new nickname. That nickname would be Blow Job.

The rest of the story is brief. A little later - a few weeks, a month, on Christmas break - BJ had an accident. His car went off some lonely California road. He was found dead.

In case you all didn't get it, all you folks who long for the days before the sexual revolution, you people who want to see gays safely back in the closet so that you can practice your religion without being offended by people who believe and act otherwise, Wonks Anonymous is signifying. You are the targets.

For all of your talk about rationality and God's plan for us, for all of your loving kindness and forgiveness, sex is a powerful, elemental drive. You cannot channel it into the narrow confines that your laws set for it without the brutal use of force. That would include physical punishment but, more important, shame, guilt and verbal abuse. There is no smart bomb to control sex the way that you want to control it.

Most of us who grew up in the golden years of sexual repression survived and carry the scars today. Mostly we carry them alone. Some did not make it. BJ was collateral damage.

        

But he is beginning to worry about the sudden mass mania for austerity - would that be an anti-bubble?

Fortunately Paul Krugman is there for you even if Wonks Anonymous is occupied elsewhere. Readers are urged to check out his blog.