OPINION: CALIFORNIA, HOME OF THE DESTITUTE

◼ CALIFORNIA, HOME OF THE DESTITUTE (WITH STEVE POSTSCRIPT) - John Hinderaker/Powerline

Today, California is the most spectacular failure of our time. Its government is broke. Productive citizens have been fleeing for some years now, selling their homes at inflated prices (until recently) and moving to Colorado, Arizona, Texas and even Minnesota, like one of my neighbors. The results of California’s improvident liberalism have been tragically easy to predict: absurd public sector wage and benefit packages, a declining tax base, surging welfare enrollment, falling economic production, ever-increasing deficits. Soon, California politicians will be looking to less glamorous states for bailout money. Things have now devolved to the point where California leads the nation in poverty...

The Golden State’s poverty rate is a whopping 23.5 percent – higher than the District of Columbia, at 23.2 percent, and even Florida, and 19.5 percent.

This is based on the federal government’s new poverty measure, and California suffered a bit because of its high cost of living, but that is a minor point–by any measure, California is number one in destitution. The cause is obvious: liberal Democrats have held unimpeded sway in California, just as they have in Detroit, Illinois, Miami, the District, and so on. Everywhere, the results have been similar. Where liberal policies are implemented, productive citizens fade away and poverty follows.

Sure, there are still a few rich people in California; the rich are always best able to withstand the ravages of leftism, for a time. But California now appears to be in a death spiral, and the consequences will be devastating, not just to Californians, but to the rest of us who will be called on to pick up the tab, once again, for failed liberalism.

100 YEARS OF ELECTION MAPS

◼ How the country can change in just four years! - The Blaze

There have been rumors that Bill Clinton has been frantically trying to contact Paula Broadwell about writing his biography.

Unconfirmed, of course. (ht: frwn)

So, you heard about Texas and Louisianna....

Yeah. But I wasn't really taking it seriously.

Not a bad idea though. Let's split it in half - the libs and uber-left-wing-whackloons can run things their way on their side, with high taxation, tons of regulations, handouts for those who contribute nothing.

It will be interesting to see how they deal with property rights when they have no one to fight them. It will be interesting to see if political correctness prevails, or whether that phony pretense is finally abandoned when its value as a weapon is gone.

Will they keep the Constitution? The Bill of Rights? The Right to Bear Arms? Freedom of the Press? Will they still impose Cap and Trade?

It will be interesting to see who they choose as allies, and whether their buddy Hugo gives them cheap gas.

And if they choose to attack the red side, will Women In Black protest or be on the front lines?

I'm for splitting it right down the middle, and flipping a coin to see which side is red and which side is blue.

But other people have other ideas...

◼ Petitions to secede are filed for 23 states since election - Valerie Richardson/The Washington Times
◼ TIME TO CONSIDER SEPARATION, DIVORCE - Joseph Farah/WND

◼ Lawrence O’Donnell calls for secession … in 2004 - Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion

...“Are you calling for civil war?” To which O’Donnell replied, “You can secede without firing a shot.”

It does go without saying - they get to keep Obama. (And Biden and Pelosi and Reid and Feinstein...)