California: Barbara Boxer

It's from 6 to 8 p.m. I plan to talk about health "reform," Barbara Boxer, Paul Krugman and more. You can listen here if you're not within radio reception range....

Links a-plenty:

• Carly Fiorina has been diagnosed with breast cancer.  I know she was considering a 2010 Senate run against Barbara Boxer.  I agree with approximately none of her policy prescriptions for the country, but I wish her the best.

• It's considered a great victory that the members of the California Congressional delegation are sitting down to a meeting together.  That's because it's the first one in two years.  Maybe they can talk about that proposal to split the state in two, therefore ending the need to have such meetings!

• This is truly incredible.  You may remember that Duf Sundheim, a former chair of the Yacht Party, started a group called "California Republicans Aligned for Tomorrow" (CRAFT, a synonym for yacht) designed to recruit moderate candidates and take back California for Christ the Republicans.

A few quick updates.

First: Two great sources of Twitter updates. John Myers Capitol Notes here and Anthony Wright of Health Access here.

From the twitter updates I've seen so far, it looks like the Governor is leaning very, very hard on Cogdill, Ashburn and Dave Cox.  At this point it looks like Sen. Cox (R-Fair Oaks) is the key vote.  Incidentally, Maldanado is doing us no favors.  Good thing nobody ran against him last year.

Another interesting tidbit from the Capitol: Asm Chuck DeVore, (R-OC) and Republican candidate for Boxer's Senate seat, attempted a coup on Assembly Minority Leader Mike Villines.  It failed.

The new Energy Secretary, UC Berkeley physicist Steven Chu, has offered a chilling warning to California of the consequences of unchecked global warming - consequences we're already witnessing:
"I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen," he said. "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California." And, he added, "I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going" either....

Chu warned of water shortages plaguing the West and Upper Midwest and particularly dire consequences for California, his home state, the nation's leading agricultural producer.

In a worst case, Chu said, up to 90% of the Sierra snowpack could disappear, all but eliminating a natural storage system for water vital to agriculture.