I won’t go so far as to take back all the bad things I’ve ever said about the liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but at least they got it right this time.

I just read on the internet that the full 11-judge panel of the 9th circuit overturned the 3-judge panel’s earlier election stay. Our recall can go forward on October 7th as planned and as everyone—even Gray Davis—has advocated. I suppose there’ll be a U.S. Supreme Court appeal by the ACLU, but everyone thinks they’ll turn them down like a bedspread. (LATE ADDITION: The ACLU has said they will not appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court—good move…)

This is just par for the course in our contentious, unreasonable, idiotic society today. Pretty much all thoughtful political discourse is gone, replaced by polemics, polarization and extremism. Politics—like law—has gone so far away from its original purposes and is now merely a “win or lose” contest for people with big egos. It doesn’t matter how they do it or what they’ll actually do in office, it’s only important that the candidate win. This, more than anything, is why politics is such a disreputable, dirty business in my opinion.

For my part, I’m voting for Arnold Schwarzenegger . I’ve always believed that the last person to ever vote for is a professional politician. Arnold is a naturalized citizen so he knows what it’s like to be from the outside. He’ll be someone who’s moderate on social issues to appeal to our liberal citizenry, but has enough fiscal conservatism and responsibility to hopefully inject some sanity into our budgetary and spending fiasco that Gray Davis caused. Hell—even the Log Cabin Republicans have endorsed him, not that I tend to listen to them very much.

More than anything, I—like the rest of California—can’t wait until it’s finally over…