Thank GOD!!! Henry Waxman's district remains bright BLUE!!!
WHEW!!!! Out of the bleak results nationwide, at least CA-30 didn't disappoint! Most of California didn't, for that matter.
SO relieved! The Great Mantle of the Great Waxman falls onto the shoulders of Ted Lieu. Very capable young state legislator who my son researched thoroughly when he was studying the primary ballot, and we had something like 27,115 Democrats running for the job. He came in second, in the primary, to the republi-CON elan carr. I was TERRIFIED about this! Even though there was a lot of vote splitting among all the Dems in the primary earlier this year, and that cut into the vote numbers, I was still scared. elan carr was ALL OVER TV with campaign commercials and in the last week, the tone of them got really mean. And the ratio of carr commercials to Ted Lieu commercials seemed to be something like 10-2. It was AWFUL!
Other good news I'm grateful and relieved to report: Sheila Kuehl beat Bobby Shriver for county supervisor district 3. THANK GOD!!!! I don't care if Bobby Shriver's a Dem. I don't care if he's a Kennedy. He never saw a big developer he didn't LUV-LUV-LUV. 
He frickin' RUINED Santa Monica. He's been in Santa Monica city government, including serving as mayor, for years. During that time, Santa Monica has gone severely downhill. It used to be a charming, quaint, mellow little seaside community. Now, it's Midtown Manhattan. It is so crowded and congested and overdeveloped that I just don't even bother going down there anymore. I used to spend almost every weekend down there. Nice weather, movies, fun shopping and a large variety of restaurants. There was plenty to do, plenty to see, plenty of options and choices and places to go and to hang out, and great people-watching. Now you can barely move! The streets are still the same size as 30 or 40 years ago but now the overdevelopment all over the downtown area has overwhelmed them. They're poorly marked, there's too much traffic, too many pedestrians, too many cars, too many buses, too many bicyclists, the traffic signals aren't coordinated, it's freakin' NUTS!!!!! It's a MESS!!! And you can't find parking - unless you circle endlessly in these big parking structures that spot the downtown commercial district. And it grew really bad on HIS watch.
Irritatingly enough, we have empty store fronts ALL OVER the Westside. Empty office building suites. "For Lease" signs all over the place. And we've STILL got to build more???? Why can't we make use of the empty ones we already have????? From watching Shriver over the years here, where he was extensively involved in Santa Monica city government, it was clear to me that he was as deeply in bed with as many developers as possible. And when I saw this LA Times write-up about him, sure enough, it confirmed that a majority of his campaign funding came from big real estate interests and big developers. Funny enough, the Times story even mentioned rick caruso by name - a big-ass developer and major donor to Shriver's campaign. rick caruso is the same sleazy asshole who dick cheney came out here to see every so often, to shake down and rub elbows with some big-spenders and high-rollers and other CON-supporters.
SO GLAD Sheila Kuehl beat him - AND them, and quite handily, too. Unfortunately, Sandra Fluke did not prevail over Ben Allen as I personally would have preferred, but he too is a Dem, so that keeps the 26th State Senate district blue as well. And of course, we have the Dynamic Dem Duo, Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom back in the saddle in Sacramento, too! Plus the Dems kept the Secretary of State job (IMPORTANT!!! THEY'RE THE ONES WHO START THE ACTUAL FUCKING WITH VOTER SUPPRESSION!!!!!!!!), Alex Padilla; for Controller, Democrat Betty Yee over that Ashley bimbo the GOP was pushing; Dem John Chiang for Treasurer; the fetching Dem Kamala Harris remains our Attorney General; Dem Dave Jones for Insurance Commish; Tom Torlakson for Schools Superintendent; and Goodwin Liu was rehired as an associate justice of the State Supreme Court. He should be elevated to an associate justice of the US Supreme Court, frankly. If I were president, I'd nominate him for sure!
So California's governmental infrastructure remains safely blue, THANK GOD!!! So not ALL the news from last night was horrible. Most of it, but not all.
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You'll never guess what happened. 
The repukes blocked his nomination. 
I once attended a community meeting regarding a proposed mini-mall development on the Westside referred to as the "Munger Project." He was this rich old dude who wanted to leave a "legacy" to the community. Yeah. Great legacy.
What he was pushing was to tear down this beloved legendary old book store where every kid in the area crowded in on Harry Potter nights, and every school kid at all the many schools in the earea filled their reading lists every year, for years. In its place would be developed another large open retail box with boutiques and restaurants and the prerequisite underground parking. Their "environmental impact report" on traffic, which is a HUGE, no - COLOSSAL, no - FUCKING GARGANTUAN problem all over the Westside, assured everyone that the project would generate an estimated four additional car trips per hour. FOUR car trips. Uh-HUH. Pardon the crudeness but - My Ass! So why, then, did they design multiple parking levels and spillways on either side, for arriving or departing cars to wait their turn to drive away or park below? If this was only a mere four car trips per hour? And where were the employees of all said shops and restaurants in the complex to park every day? And how would that affect the adjacent residential neighborhoods who loath the increased local traffic volume as increasing numbers of motorists use their little side streets as short cuts? And if only four car trips of customers per hour were frequenting such a retail complex, wouldn't that classify the place as a failure? That doesn't sound like any kind of draw? Hell, they got more than that every day at the book store.
It was a neat thing to see. The meeting was held in a local library - and the meeting room was jammed! Standing room only! Overflow spilling way out into the hallway and clogging the entryway. Every age group was represented, from local school kids to neighborhood dowagers. EVERYBODY was against it. There were the neighboring residents. There were people with home-made signs saying "Save Our Neighborhood". There was the older woman who sat there and intoned - "there are 42 restaurants in a five-block area around here. WHY do we need more???" There was the pissed-off middle-aged man who lived on the little side street in back of where the planned redevelopment would be, complaining that there'd be so much overflow traffic clogging his little street, parking in every open spot, and the volume of in-and-out cars would overload the side street that his street emptied into, and he'd never be able to get out of his house during business hours. Tons of people. Only a fraction had a chance to speak - there were too many of us.
Eventually, I read in the local paper that Mr. Munger had decided to withdraw the project. Instead, there's a much smaller project going into half as much of the designated property, and the book store, which closed, is now occupied by another local business - and the building the community sought to save is still standing.
But I wouldn't be surprised if ol' Charlie Munger turns up again, with yet another big development project to burnish his "legacy" around here. A legacy of greater congestion, traffic, overcrowding, overdevelopment, rising blood pressure, and overheated tempers. Sounds like a big ol' fabulous "legacy" to me.