WHY THEY HATE US: Here’s an amusing item:

The straight-talking Hollywood action star’s election win in California has had an electrifying impact on Germany, leading to calls Friday for top politicians to voice clear ideas in simple language or be swept away at the polls. . . .

Celebrities, columnists, ordinary citizens and even some politicians have joined the chorus of calls for less talk and more action to get Germany moving again after years of economic stagnation and political standstill.

And it’s not just Germany.

UPDATE: Mark Steyn:

In the EU, that “strong but unpopular action that governments have to take” apparently extends to deciding on your behalf what constitutional entity you’ll belong to. If you want the very opposite of the raw responsiveness of Californian democracy, it’s the debate on the European Constitution. As noted over the page this week, the Brussels correspondent of the BBC worries that letting the voters express a view on their constitution risks undoing “two years of painstaking work by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing”. Can’t have that, can we? . . .

California’s problem was that it was beginning to take on the characteristics of an EU state, not just in its fiscal incoherence but in its assumption that politics was a private dialogue between a lifelong political class and a like-minded media. It would be too much to expect Le Monde and the BBC to stop being condescending about American electorates. But they might draw a lesson and cease being such snots about their own.

Read the whole thing.