Daily Briefs in Brief: No Jump Friday

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Krunk Meridian: California has the country’s largest economy, with a well-endowed $15 billion deficit that’s expected to grow to $42 billion by 2010. This Slate article documents its many and varied budgetary shortfalls, followed by the suggestion that legalizing and taxing marijuana would actually not be all that much help. Jesus, California is so screwed. BONUS: The headline contains a pun.

Kiss my bipartisan legislative grits, Judd Gregg. Douche Maneuver: During the presidential transition, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg campaigned for the Treasury Secretary nomination like a fat Victorian-era political job seeker with a silken waistcoat and magnificent mustache that he would smooth with one fat, bejeweled pinky between sips of port. Then, yesterday, in an announcement timed for release just as President Barack Hussein Obama was speaking to a crowd at a high-profile event in Peoria, Illinois, Gregg withdrew his nomination and rejoined a politically myopic “douche collective” that has pretty much coalesced around a day-to-day strategy of actively hoping for continued economic hardship so that they can say “told you so.” Douche Countermaneuver:

Can’t we all cooperate while we’re spiraling to our deaths in a fiscal black hole? Well, no big deal, but the City Council has had a hard time agreeing on a budget, what with City Floor Manager/Shift Supervisor Wayne Cauthen ALWAYS BEING LATE TO MEETINGS, AHEM, but now they’ve all managed to synchronize their chronometers and bang their helmets together and snap the ball through the strike zone into the three-point line for a homer and a projected $85 million 2009 shortfall. Remember the fifth season of The Wire, when Mayor Carcetti had to slash the police budget because of a shortfall in the education budget and all the cops were working two jobs and McNulty had to do some really outrageous crap to fund the special detail? I’m just glad we have a mayor as charismatic and quick-thinking as fictitious Baltimore Mayor Tommy Carcetti, because otherwise this town would be totally screwed from a fiduciary standpoint. Also, I should point out SPOILER for those of you still working through Season 2.

And finally: Via Everything is Terrible, sorry about your childhood, y’all: