When Republican Senate leader Bob Dutton publicly complained that Governor Brown ignored him during budget talks – while First Lady Anne Gust Brown “yelled” at him – most Capitol insiders no doubt had a good laugh at his expense, all the while thinking, “That Bob Dutton – he’s sure a wussy wimp!”
But not Calbuzz.
No, around these parts, the immediate reaction of our Department of Emotional Intelligence and Sensitive New Age Guys was to dispatch a company-wide email urging a corporate show of sympathy for the 60-year old senator.
The reason? The aggrieved Sen. Dutton clearly suffers from one of the most tragic syndromes that can afflict a man: the heartbreak of male menopause.
“The governor never asked for my help,” Dutton told reporters Thursday, doubtless bottling up sobs as he was questioned about the collapse of budget talks. “Frankly, I was yelled at more than I was talked to…and mostly by Mrs. Brown, not even Gov. Brown.”
That really makes our blood boil: What kind of woman does such a thing?
While more insensitive souls than ours instantly and cruelly tried to change the subject back to the state’s $27 billion deficit – “the dog barked at him, too,” stone-hearted Brown flack Gil Duran said, for example – the alter cockers in our newsroom understand only too well the hurt and pain that come when other people ignore our emotional needs at a time of life when we’re at our most vulnerable.
So on behalf of those, like Dutton, who have suffered in secrecy, shame and silence for far too long, we offer some important information in hopes of building public awareness:
What are the Symptoms of Male Menopause?
Male menopause symptoms are very similar to those experienced by women during menopause, only much less intense. Common menopause symptoms include hot flashes, night sweats, fatigue, muscle and joint aches. Men also suffer from emotional symptoms like mood swings, irritability, depression, and listlessness. (emphasis ours).
The primary treatment…is Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT). Like estrogen replacement in women, testosterone replacement aims to bring hormonal levels back up to a healthy level. Once testosterone levels are increased, most men begin to experience fewer symptoms. Unfortunately, testosterone replacement doesn’t always work well to combat erectile dysfunction. Because this is such a severe symptom for most men, other treatments for erectile dysfunction should be investigated.
Take heart, Senator Dutton, and please, get some help – it doesn’t have to be this way. And know that you’re not longer any more alone any longer.
We had to destroy the party in order to save it: Dutton’s little hissy fit highlights the utter inability of the current 
crop of California Republican leaders to see the big picture about their ongoing demise as a viable political party in the state.
Handed their biggest opportunity in years to achieve some cherished policy goals, Republicans instead snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and came away from budget negotiations with zilch.
Witnessing this sorry spectacle, one mad dog GOP blogger, of course, thumped his chest and did a little touchdown dance (“there is NO public policy trade off that makes it okay to then vote to place taxes onto a special election ballot”). Less, um, excitable party types (also less prone to using CAPITAL LETTERS TO MAKE THEIR POINT), have a different view, as the LAT’s Halper and Mishak ably report:
After the collapse of those negotiations, many in the Capitol are asking whether, in declining to provide those four “ayes,” the Republicans have cemented their fate as a dying minority party in this largely Democratic state.
“These opportunities don’t come up too much in Sacramento,” said Bill Whalen, a GOP political consultant who was an advisor to former Gov. Pete Wilson.
“If I’m the Republicans … I would argue for a minimalist approach,” he said. “Be able to declare victory and retreat. … That should have been part of the calculus.”
Or not.
In addition to the Republicans, however, our friend George Skelton sees plenty of blame to go around, listing for starters Brown’s kow-towing to labor and the apparent belief of state union goons that they, alone, should be spared from any budget pain, a pox-on-all-your-houses-view made manifest today by Calbuzz cartoonist Tom Meyer.
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A leisurely stroll through the 11th hour, 53-point list of demands that Dutton presented to Brown when a deal was close, however, makes clear that giving equal weight to Krusty’s serious effort to find a compromise acceptable to Republicans on pension reform and the GOP’s unwavering irresponsibility about the state’s finances is a big-time false equivalence.
Moreover, for the CA GOP to complain now that Brown broke off negotiations — after they damn near adopted a resolution to castrate any legislator who even considered negotiating with Brown — is just nuts.
Campaign ’18 update: Lite Gov Gavin Newsom’s political advisers are miffed over a blind source item that the Chronicle’s Matier and Ross proffered the other day, reporting that Lt. Starbuck is already gearing up to run for governor.
Only weeks after Calbuzz waved the starter flag on the most important political race in California — the 2018 Democratic primary for governor — the paper’s gold dust twins tried to speed up the pace even more:
Less than three months on the job, and already Gavin Newsom is prepping to run for governor again.
A city insider who asked not to be named tells us the new lieutenant governor approached him at a charity fundraiser the other day with a request for help to start raising money for a renewed gubernatorial bid…
Newsom has opened a re-election campaign committee for 2014 – but there’s nothing to stop him from transferring any money he might raise to an exploratory gubernatorial run.
“The Matier and Ross item is silly,” counters Jason Kinney, Newsom’s political adviser. “They’re finding a story where none exists.”
Kinney, who oddly wasn’t quoted in the M&R column, told us he’s been in most of the meetings Newsom has had with political supporters, where the good lieutenant has made the point that he needs to put a political operation together for his re-election.
When Newsom’s asked, Kinney acknowledged, he discusses future options — like governor, Senate, whatever – as any other pol would do. But Newsom always makes clear that he will never run against Jerry Brown, Dianne Feinstein or Barbara Boxer, he added: “He’s talking about future plans — six, eight, ten years down the road.”
Gavin for Senate in 2028!
(Secret P.S. memo to Newsom: Dude, what’s with that whole unbuttoned second button thing, anyway? What’s next — tying up your shirttails to show off your midriff?)
Calbuzz staff psychiatrist Dr. P.J. Hackenflack greatly enhanced his reputation as the
an evening utterly bereft of the tedious, mind-numbing speechifying that characterizes most such events in Sacramento.
he GOP’s Legions of eMeg with the stones to show up) mixed and mingled with leading Democratic lights, including Tom Quinn, David Townsend, Joe Trippi, Donna Bojarsky, Jim Moore, Steve Glazer, Jason Kinney, Roger Salazar, Steve Maviglio, Karen Skelton and Garry South (whose frequent harsh criticisms of Jerry Brown’s campaign for governor make him an intraparty marked man, matched Stutz and Zak’s raw courage in taking his place at the festivities), while other hacks (widely suspected of RINO tendencies by some in the Neanderthal Caucus) including Jack Flanigan, Bob Naylor, Donna Lucas and Don Sipple, added to a gemutlicht ambience of general hilarity.
bers of the Capitol press corps that Calbuzz actually knows (apologies to Sactown hacks we don’t know), world-class media types, including New York Times L.A. bureau chief Adam Ngourney, by-God L.A. Times sage George Skelton and national political correspondent Mark Barabak, A.P. political writers Juliet Williams and Judy Lin and KCRA-TV’s inimitable Kevin Riggs sprinkled the crowd, as Greg Lucas of “California’s Capitol,” Joel Fox of “Fox and Hounds” and Torey Van Oot of “Capitol Alert” ably represented the political blogosphere and blindingly insightful eggheads and policy makers like Dan Schnur, H.D. Palmer, Dave Lesher, Nancy McFadden and Peter Schrag raised the average I.Q. of the room at least a point or two.
husband about two minutes before his swearing in.
meanwhile kept an anxious eye on Brown, lest he keel over and make incumbent Lite Gov Abel Maldonado a full-term governor before Newsom takes the oath of office.
We’re off for a spell to chill and Spend More Time With Our Families, while consuming mass quantities of cheap carbs and a wide variety of alcoholic beverages.
On behalf of our Department of Spiked Eggnog and Cooked Geese, here’s a bit of holiday cheer from our favorite yuletide poem,
Not since Vice President Dick Cheney hid out in the “secret” bunker under the old U.S. Naval Observatory following the attacks of 9/11 have we seen an act of political cowardice as brazen as the announced refusal by Meg Whitman’s lavishly paid loser consultants to show up at the upcoming post-election debriefing sponsored by the Institute of Governmental Studies at Berkeley.
Since its inception after the 1990 campaign, IGS “has brought together the state’s politicos after each gubernatorial election,” wrote Ethan Rarick in the preface to the book on the 2006 conference. “At the center of the conference are the consultants and staff members who ran the major campaigns, but the event also draws the state’s most involved and observant pollsters, political journalists and political scientists. For two days, the Berkeley campus becomes the center of the state’s political universe, a hotbed of debate and discussion about California and its voters.
Team Whitman, on the other hand, was the most self-important, impenetrable political death star we’ve ever encountered in California politics. And that includes the fact that at least one of your Calbuzzers was frozen out in 1998 by the Al Checchi campaign altogether after writing the (unchallenged) history of his (mis)management of Northwest Airlines.
Frankly, we don’t get it. It would be in Team Whitman’s interest to justify their decisions and defend their performance. Otherwise, the journalists, scholars and politicos will have to depend on Whitman’s opponents and neutral analysts to explain:
“We would be delighted if Ms. Whitman wants to attend personally. I was surprised to see Rob Stutzman quoted on the Chronicle’s blog to the effect that Ms. Whitman was not consulted on the decision to skip the conference,” he told us in an email. “I think it is incumbent upon us to make every possible effort to allow the Whitman campaign to defend itself, and thus although candidates do not normally participate directly in this conference, we have reached out this morning and invited Ms. Whitman to attend personally and participate on the panels. We’d be delighted if she would like to attend.”
