Opinion: California unlikes Arnold, Obama errs on car history, McCain vs. Lieberman

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The good news for California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is he can’t run again.

The bad news for California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is California doesn’t like him much anymore.

A new poll out last night shows that only a third of the state’s residents approve of his job performance -- and that poll by the Public Policy Institute was taken before the governor pressured fellow Republicans to approve $12.5 billion in new taxes to cover the state’s budget deficit.

Imagine how well he’d do now.

Californians also don’t like state legislators -- but even more so. They approve of them by a record low-tying 21%. Arnold’s record low was 32% in 2005.

On the other hand, Californians say they love President Obama -- 70% worth. He’s also proposing new taxes, but that seems farther away.

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‘I believe,’ Obama intoned Tuesday night in his first address to a joint session of Congress, ‘the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.’

Which would mean France must underwrite its automobile industry.

Because, oops, despite the false belief in tattered Michigan, Americans didn’t invent the automobile.

In fact, they came late to the car business in 1893, with the French claiming a steam-powered vehicle in 1771 and 1873 and the Germans arriving on the scene in the 1880s.

Mark Silva has more here on this historical hiccup in Obama’s historical address.

So, next time the president gives the same speech he can make it: ‘I believe firmly -- and former Vice President Al Gore backs me up on this -- that the nation that didn’t invent the automobile still can’t walk away from it.’

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Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman. Two different parties. Two close friends. Campaign buds. Travel companions to strange places, including St. Paul for the Republican National Convention in September.

There they were on the Senate floor Wednesday -- warring. McCain was trying to kill Lieberman’s bill to give the District of Columbia a voting member in the House. An issue that has positively riveted most Americans. Also, the bill would add another House member to Utah.

Utah?

Don’t ask.

D.C., as few people care to know, was once a worthless swamp on the bottom of Maryland, which prompted that state early on to generously offer to donate the infested dump for a neutral federal district.

Because all of the nation’s other current problems have been solved by the new White House administration and Congress, they’ve decided to fight now over this pressing local issue. The Constitution, as our blogging pal James Oliphant points out here, stipulates that the House be composed of members from ‘states,’ which D.C. is decidedly not.

So the whole skirmish will end up in court anyway, even if it passes today. Another worthy investment of deliberative time in the former swamp.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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