[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

It looks like the Republican's favorite tax cut -- a tax cut for yacht buyers -- is going to be history. Both the Senate and Assembly Budget committees have voted for its elimination.

Only Republican Assemblymember Roger Niello struggled to make a logical argument protesting its elimination while moments before slashing benefits for the lowest-income Californians (he eventually stayed off the bill). But even GOP stalwarts like Assemblymember Chuck DeVore and four other Assembly GOP'rs ended up voting for it.
 
Kudos to Assemblymember Dave Jones and others for spearheading the drive to rid our tax code of this provision.

Image courtesy Costumzee.

by Larry Dudley [courtesy of Blog for America]

Claims the Surge is "succeeding" in Iraq appear to be confusing, even rattling some Democrats. John McCain is now mainly basing his campaign on it, and it seems to have boosted him in the Republican primaries. Meanwhile, there are growing numbers of articles like neo-con prophet Bill Kristol's in The New York Times demanding to know why Democrats "can't admit we're winning the war in Iraq." The short answer is we're not. But this uncertainty is starting to have a serious effect on the Democratic primary race.

From a long view, this race should've been in Hillary Clinton's pocket from the start-- a total non-contest. The reason it was not was because Clinton's support for the war created an opening for anti-war candidates like Obama and Edwards. The war split away the women voters who were long assumed to be Clinton stalwarts: they were repelled by her positions on Iraq.

Restoring some missing clarity on the nature of guerilla war is over due.