We've heard quite a bit about Prop 8, of course, but Californians have 12 issues placed up for referendum on the state ballot, plus any local issues various cities and counties have, (in the city of San Francisco there's 22 more, on issues as diverse as land use and housing to some more outlandish bills like decriminalizing prostitution and naming a Sewage Treatment plant after George W. Bush.) On the thought that some folks might be interested in seeing and talking about some of the other eight, I thought I'd run through the rest of the state propositions.

I'll try to be relatively neutral in the descriptions of the measures, though I certainly won't claim to be unbiased. Anyone who wants to know more can of course look at other sources such as Calitics.

(AP) Following yesterday's criticism of Democratic candidate for President, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), for delaying a possible game 6 of the World Series 15 minutes by buying ad time on every channel in the world, RNC spokesman Alex Conant spoke out against what he called "an even greater sin against our national pastime."

Conant had been quoted as saying, "It's unfortunate that the World Series' first pitch is being delayed for Obama's political pitch, Not only is Obama putting politics before principle, he's putting it before our national pastime." Today he offered the comment that, "You know who is responsible for even more delays of baseball games? God. Not only that, but He does so by raining on them, getting hundreds of thousands of baseball fans wet every year."

"It's bad enough that Obama wants to delay a game 15 minutes so he can talk about the future of our country. What does God delay those games for? To water some plants? How degrading. I would have thought the deity who sacrificed His son for us could wait until the game's over to take care of His yardwork." The Almighty could not be reached for comment.

Clearly, sexism is an absolutely crucial issue right now. Diary after diary about it vis a vis the primary election is making the rec list. So I'm making a place for all of us to have a discussion of the topic.

Here's the catch. ONLY talk about sexism in here. Not the election. Aside from this sentence, no one's posts should contain any of the following words:

Barack
Obama
Hillary
Clinton

I will HR any post that includes any of those four words. Call it 'abuse' if you want, but frankly rec/rate isn't something I give a damn about. If I lose it, so be it. I shouldn't need to, though. If you want to discuss who was and who wasn't sexist in the election or who was or wasn't a racist or how much sexism did or didn't affect the election, there are no shortage of diaries you can jump into.

But if you want to actually discuss sexism in America today, hey, here you go. I put the over/under for comments this diary gets before falling off the front page at 12.

Being one myself, I understand why so many Obama supporters are getting to work on the whole 'unity' thing, appealing for the support of Clinton voters, but I'd like to respectfully suggest that it's far too early. I don't mean in the sense that he hasn't made it to 2118 yet, I mean in the sense that what needs to happen is healing, and healing takes time.

I know you're excited about Barack Obama. I am too. But they've been excited about Hillary Clinton, and for the past few months they've had to watch a bloody back-and-forth fight that we've been saying was won on points back in the 3rd round. That we were right doesn't mean they haven't been hoping for a knockout, and aren't still disappointed that it hasn't come.

Per Chuck Todd, the Obama campaign could have gotten a 50/50 split out of Michigan. They chose not to, instead opting for the Michigan Democratic Party proposal for a 69-59 split. Clinton supporters (and a few "supporters") here have called him "petty" for holding out over a four-delegate swing when his lead is approximately 200, but they haven't really examined the rationale behind his move beyond their anger. For a campaign that's likely going to have won the nomination largely on the back of a superior understanding of the process, they're selling Obama short.

If he was really going to be 'petty' about a four delegate swing, why would he be so magnanimous about the additional five delegate swing he could have had but chose not to receive? A conciliatory gesture of goodwill towards Senator Clinton? When has the Clinton campaign shown any sign that they would be receptive to any conciliatory gesture from the Obama campaign short of a concession speech?

I apologize for singling a poster out, but this comes in response to this post, which came in response to a call for unity. I really have trouble understanding this mindset.

Is it just going to take some time to put the more quarrelsome parts of the primary season behind us? Ok, I get that. Do all sides have to reach out and seek common ground? Makes sense to me. But what I really fail to grasp is the people for whom this is so one-sided.

Maybe it's that I've never really attached myself to a primary candidate that lost. Gore was the inevitable candidate in 2000, and I never found anything in Bradley to change that for me. I liked Dean in 2004, but not so much that I found any difficulty in voting for Kerry when California's primaries arrived.

I participated in a Zogby poll yesterday that asked who I would vote for in both an Obama/McCain election and a Clinton/McCain contest. I wouldn't consider voting for McCain, nor would I stay away from the polls, for anything short of a life-threatening illness or injury. Yet I consistently hear from Clinton supporters on here that they need...something from Obama before they'll vote for him. Are you kidding me?

Ok, I'm seeing a lot of this in comments, and it's getting irritating. There's an almost willful ignorance that's leading people to gripe about "Obama/Clinton supporters", and that's annoying enough, (I don't want to say that if "Obama/Clinton supporters" are the bane of your existence, you need to get a life but...you really probably do,) but confusing posters, bloggers, cartoonists et al with the campaigns themselves is truly ridiculous. I'm not going to name names or link to these, but you don't have to look hard to see it.

No campaign owes you an apology for anything mean that was said to you here, on DK or any other blog that isn't actually being run by the campaign. And stating that you're choosing who to vote for (or who not to vote for) because of something that happened in a blog-post flame war makes us all look like infantile morons.

Knock it off.