When Nancy Pelosi has lost Jon Stewart...

...she's lost.

Within a week's time, her conduct in office has been the focus of "60 Minutes" and she's made a fool of herself on "The Daily Show." Not bad. Not bad at all.

Regarding the latter, former House Speaker and current Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., attacked Republicans for their opposition to debt ceiling increases, but defended President Obama for voting against a debt-ceiling increase when he was in the Senate, during an interview with Jon Stewart. Her effort to reconcile the two positions drove The Daily Show host to distraction. You can see the video below. (Note Stewart's face palm...)

Classic...

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Foot -- meet mouth

The Gaffenator strikes...again!

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona Democrat shot in the head by a gunman in January, made a dramatic entrance onto the House floor yesterday to cast her vote for the debt ceiling deal.

Predictably, her appearance brought the entire chamber to its feet and temporarily united the both sides of the aisle, which had been at odds over the debt vote for several weeks.

The moment was a tribute not only to the courageous Congresswoman who has beaten all odds to merely survive the assassination attempt against her, but also to her colleagues who were able to recognize what her presence meant.

But leave it to Vice President Joe Biden to put his special touch on the evening.

According to numerous sources, "Biden, never one to miss an opportunity to say something out of the ordinary told media, 'I told her she’s now a member of the cracked head club, like me, with two craniotomies. It was just so good to see.'”

Really, Joe? Really?

The courageous Rep. Gabrielle Giffords makes her triumphant return to Congress...

They've left their minds, in San Francisco...

Spending money that isn't there...

If you think things are bad on the public employee pensions front for California, or even the U.S., check out what's happening in The City By The Bay.

To be honest, everyone - including SF's most "out there" boosters - admit the city is in the midst of a severe financial crisis. What most people aren't aware of is just how bad things have turned for "Baghdad By The Bay."

A story in The Bay Citizen lays it out for readers: "San Francisco's public-employee pension fund is in weaker shape than many people realize, according to an analysis by Professor Joe Nation released Tuesday. It is underfunded by some $6.8 billion, Nation's report finds. The city's pension fund is officially underfunded by $1.6 billion. Nation's study argues that the pension fund is relying on a 7.75 percent annual rate of return that is unrealistic over the long term. The study argues for 6.2 percent, which it says was the average rate of return in the capital markets from 1900 through 1999."

If you want a sneak peek at what is going to happen to California, check out San Francisco. If you want an advance look at what is going to happen to the U.S., keep an eye on California. And if you'd like a real-time view of what's ahead for everyone else, look at Greece.

Public Pensions Are Killing The Golden Goose/State...

California, like most of the other states, has a bevy of problems/issues making the possibility of economic recovery look dimmer and dimmer each day.

One thing that does separate California from the rest - besides its huge economy (about the eighth largest in the world) - is the dark and expanding cloud representing “unfunded liabilities.” These are currently estimated to be somewhere between $100 billion and $650 billion-plus. In other words, that’s money the state doesn’t have yet will be obligated to pay out. (And let’s not forget - unlike the federal government, states can’t print money they don’t have.)

Most of these unfunded liabilities are (state) public employee pensions and benefits, long-promised to hundreds of thousands of retirees and their survivors. Promised by law.

So what is a state like California to do?

Calls have been going out, near and far, for the governor and legislature to cut spending. But the truth is, the huge Democratic majority - and chief executive - are beholden to so many groups benefiting from entitlement programs and what can be considered “earmarks” of sorts, that any cutting that’s being done is superficial...at best. (Governor Jerry Brown is pushing a tax increase on coming special ballot in June, which if passed will cement California’s claim as the most-taxed state in the nation. The money will help pay-down the annual debt - about $25 billion - but it won’t make a dent in the unfunded liabilities column.)

Reason has a new piece up, “Farewell, My Lovely: How public pensions killed progressive California,” which explains why all the planning, light-handed cutting and increased taxation aren’t the true solutions to the state’s fiscal woes.

“As 72-year-old Jerry Brown enters his second governorship, he has an agenda to match that power, with visions even greater than those that haunted his two-term administration of the 1970s and ’80s: building 20,000 megawatts of renewable power, laying a new high-speed rail network that will connect the state’s major cities, forging a statewide infrastructure for alternative energy, hiring thousands of green employees,” author Tim Cavanaugh, writes at Reason. “The new governor’s environmental agenda is ambitious, untenably expensive, and indelibly popular with voters and lawmakers. Yet when Brown looks out on Democrat-controlled California, he seems less like Caesar at the Rubicon than Wojciech Jaruzelski at the Gdansk Shipyard. Brown is champion of a workers’ party with monopoly control, yet all his plans are being derailed by a labor movement nobody can harness.”

And therein lies the problem.

If California ever has any hope of digging out of the mess it’s now in, everyone is going to have to feel the pinch...make sacrifices. Even groups the Democratic party is beholden to.
Especially the public employees unions.

Read the whole article here.

Bonus graphic: If you don't live in California, you can see (from the chart below) how your state's fiscal situation stacks-up against the Golden State's.