In which my son saves my business partner. (And, I hope, the state parks.)

Radio host and comedian Stephanie Miller just came out as a lesbian. I find this very surprising, given how openly she desired me a couple of years ago when I emceed an event honoring her. I’m thinking maybe she finally just gave up.

I’m staying at a hotel on Fisherman’s Wharf with my family through Sunday. San Francisco, being very San Francisco, always gives me strange and interesting dreams. Last night before finally turning in I was reading an appreciation of Timothy Geithner in The New Yorker; I haven’t finished reading it yet, but the main thrust is that Geithner and the Obama administration took the right steps in saving the U.S. economy — and are now paying the price for it. Says Geithner:  “We saved the economy, but we kind of lost the public.” This gives succor to my fear that Tea Party bottom feeders are going to get elected in November.

In my dream, I’m at a State Department function having a discussion with a senior official. I’m telling her that I supported Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary not just because I liked him and his views, but because I couldn’t abide Hillary Clinton. “She was running on experience. But what experience did she have?” I asked. “Not much more than he did in the Senate. Before that? First Lady.” Then I went on to say that on top of that, I just didn’t like her:  she seemed brittle and humorless and overproduced and, worst of all, entitled — as though this presidency thing was supposed to be hers, and who was this guy to try to steal it away? Then I went on to tell this state department official that I had to give Clinton credit, though, because she was proving to be a good Secretary of State. But wasn’t getting much credit for her accomplishments. (You see the tie-in with the article I was reading before bed.) She smiled and nodded and then I woke up. And then I realized two things:

1. That this hadn’t really happened — it was just a dream.
2. That the woman in my dream had been Hillary Clinton.

Here’s my feeling when you’re in one of the most glorious cities in the country and you’ve been having a dream about Hillary Clinton:  It’s time to get up and get out into the day. So that’s what I did.

One more reason to hope that California voters reject Carly Failorina:  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has endorsed her.

This is a group that is so strident in its opposition to emissions control and even to acknowledging the reality of global warming that Apple, Nike, and other major corporations have famously quit it. In other words, all of Carly’s old pals in the tech sector don’t believe anything the U.S. Chamber says — and neither should we.

Economists are fretting that we’re heading into a double-dip recession. Why? Because people aren’t spending enough.

If that’s the case, we need to head down to Texas and get a certain brush-cutter off his ranch and back into the thick of things. Because as Slate points out, George W. Bush is one of the biggest spenders in history — increasing spending more than any of the six presidents before him, and more than doubling the cost of government while he was in office. All while, of course, propounding the idea of smaller government. (Hey — maybe he could handle messaging for BP, too.)

At some point or another when my Republican friends and I get together to talk things over, the discussion turns toward one person:  John McCain. We all speak wistfully of the McCain we once knew, or thought we knew, and the awful contrast with the McCain we see today.

Where we used to see someone pursuing a practical, pragmatic approach to immigration reform, one that recognized the impossibility of deporting 12 million people who are here illegally, we now see someone who is campaigning on pretty much the concept that they can indeed all be corralled and herded home. (And with no loss to the service industries that rely upon them, or the businesses that need them as consumers.)

What has become of the McCain who stood up to the “Moral” Majority, the profligate tax cutters, and the lobbyists who strip-mined the public trust? The guy currently bearing the title of Senator McCain bears no resemblance.

This piece on today’s Slate conveys one theory:  that McCain is so ashamed of his 2008 campaign that he can’t acknowledge his faults, and so has instead decided to embrace them. This is a variation on the trope that if you think I’m a monster, I may as well be one. I don’t like to indulge psychobabble, and that’s what writer Jacob Weisberg  is giving us here. But I do know that I miss the McCain I knew, or thought I knew:  the senator with principles and the guts to back them up. McCain 2.0 is just another party hack.

I don’t agree with the politics of this video — I think Obama has accomplished a lot, especially given the challenges — but I have to say, this is a clever video, and a funny one. When was the last time you could put “right wing,” “clever,” and “funny” in the same sentence? Thanks to Joe Stafford for making me aware of this.

Today’s LA Times carries a headline that reads “Brown’s frugal campaign may be too little, too late.”

Here’s what I just posted to the LA Times:

Your headline seems like editorializing: “May be too little, too late.” Says who? You?

As your own piece admits, Brown is ahead in the polls.

California has had plenty of check-writing candidates — Al Checchi, anyone? Whatever became of “Senator” Michael Huffington? — but not one of them has succeeded. That’s not to say that eMeg won’t be the first.  But she isn’t there yet, making your coronation seem not just early, but irresponsible.

My long-standing concerns about Jerry Brown’s low-key limp for the governorship have been documented here for quite a while. Most recently here, but also here and here and here (and there are others, if you’d like to search the blog). But given that he’s up against a billionaire who is trying to buy the office (despite never having even bothered to vote before), let’s at least give the guy a chance.

As we celebrate the 4th of July, I hope we’ll ponder two things:

• that all across our land, the world’s foremost economy is near bankruptcy, with states unable to pay their bills, while legislators do little or nothing about it 
• and that the nation that was founded by brave men who risked personal insolvency in doing so (Adams’ law practice and his farm suffered from his absence; Jefferson and, ironically, Hamilton, the financial genius who founded history’s most reliable currency, died near penniless) is now run for the benefit of plutocrats who plunder the treasury and manipulate the tax code for their own benefit.

I’ve mentioned here before that I’m working on the campaign for Proposition 21, an initiative here in California that will support restoring and repairing the state parks. The campaign is popularly known as “Yes for State Parks.”

Please watch this brief newscast and read the emotions on the park ranger’s face about the deteriorating conditions of state parks. Then go to Facebook and “Like” Yes for State Parks. If we want to preserve California’s great outdoors, we need your help.