7/20/2004 04:06:33 PM|||Nathan Moore|||

To show that they are not in fact "girlie men,"  Californian Democrats have taken the high road and are adamant about completing the state's budget in time for the end of session.  In a call for civility, the Senate leadership vowed to make sure that members of its caucus would work diligently to balance the books and secure funding for government functions through cuts, and without raising taxes.
 
Yeah. And girlie men vote Republican.
 
Here's what actually happened.
 
"I was a little bit worried about whether Arnold thought he was elected God or elected governor," said Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco, venting the anger of Democrats. "The governor talks to us one day about working together and together we can get this done and then another day going out and insulting our masculinity."
 
Apparently masculinity is easily damaged in San Francisco.  More apparently, the doctrinaire Democrat from San Francisco has a rather twisted view on God, somehow surmising that God gets his joys from emasculating his subjects.  Lots of messed up things happened in the Old Testament, but I don't believe the complete emasculation of any city state opposing the Jews was one of them.  Fire from heaven maybe, trumpets turning walls to dust, sure, but mass castration....eh, don't remember that one from Sunday school.
 
In spirit,  Berkeley, the cradle of sane and critical thought, concurs
 
"He is exhibiting signs of severe confusion," said Bruce Cain, a UC Berkeley professor of political science. "He's going down the path of trying to keep the (Republican) Party happy and is squandering an unprecedented opportunity for bipartisanship." 
 
Translation: projection of one's own situation onto another - the Democrats are in a tailspin.  And in an apt analogy
 
"You can't go kick somebody in the groin and then say let's ... join hands and sing 'Kumbaya,' " Burton said. "It doesn't work that way in life, it doesn't work that way in politics and it doesn't really work that way in the Capitol."
 
Apparently not.  But if you kicked a girlie man in the groin, would he notice?  Nevertheless, the Speaker Pro Tem from San Francisco was not done showing his displeasure
 
Burton brought to his press conference his espresso machine with a "closed until further notice" sign on it. Burton, who often brought steamed milk for the governor to meetings, said the governor would have to go without the frothy beverage.
 
That'll show him.  Senator Burton is not a girlie man because he will no longer provide the governor froth.  By the end of the speech, however, froth was no longer scarce
 
"No matter what happens there will be a Democratic majority in the Assembly and the Senate," Burton promised.
 
Billions of dollars are at stake, and the California legislature makes its stand via an inapposite espresso metaphor.   Nuts abound out West.  But for all of us down South, we know a girlie man when we see it.
 

|||109035834735655288|||Girlie Men Strike Back