Why are newspapers dying? Because they damned well deserve to:

Good morning, California voters. Do you feel better, now that you’ve gotten that out of your system?

You wanted to show the state’s politicians just how mad you are at them. And you did. Boy, did you ever.

Proposition 1A with its taxes and its spending limit? Too much of one and not enough of the other, you said (or was it the other way around), and voted it down. Never mind that the taxes go into efffect anyway. You showed ‘em.

So, now that you’ve put those irksome politicians in their place, maybe it’s time to think about this: Since you’re in charge, exactly what do you intend to do about that pesky $25 billion hole in the budget?

Snide, sanctimonious, arrogant, elitist — all the things we’ve come to love from our journalistic betters. Ah, but (incredibly) it gets better: those acclaimed layers of editors quickly sprang into action, not just by tossing the offensive article down one of their famous memory holes — employed whenever the self-righteous cocksuckers get caught with their feet in their fat yaps — they replaced the whole thing, with an entirely different, more moderate-sounding editorial:

Good morning, members of the California Legislature. Good morning, Governor.

Feeling bruised and abused this morning? Well, you can’t say you didn’t see it coming. The polls have been saying for weeks that voters were going to do just what they did on Tuesday: Conclusively reject your slate on the ballot, Propositions 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D and 1E.

Today, on the morning after voters kicked around your best effort at fixing the state budget as if it were a deflated soccer ball, you face a decision.

You can blame the voters for reacting with uninformed and misplaced anger.

Or you can look in the mirror and admit you had it coming. And you know you did.

And in the comments, their pathetic excuse:

A note to our readers:

Many of these comments refer to an article that was posted in error. That article was a draft prepared for internal discussion among members of The Bee’s editorial board. Such discussions are a routine part of our work, and frequently lead to editorials that are considerably different from writers’ first drafts. That’s what happened in this case.

After discussion, we decided that our initial editorial about the special election should take a different tack. The result was the editorial that now appears on sacbee.com/opinion.

Uh huh, I just bet you did. Even you aren’t stupid enough not to know you can’t exactly get away with insulting the paying customers in so direct a fashion for long.

Well, sorry; too late. You let the mask slip, displaying your haughty contempt for voters who have the OUTRAGEOUS! temerity to reject any goddamned crackpot liberal notion the big-spending, heavy-taxing politicians can come up with. Then, after getting lambasted in your own comments section by the very hoi polloi you just spat on, you took the original (and more accurately representative of your actual attitudes) piece down and replaced it with something not so clearly intended to insult and demean the people you hope will buy your floundering, half-assed liberal birdcage liner — like the sniveling, despicable cowards you are.

And you wonder why so many of us aren’t just unsympathetic, but are actually pointing and laughing at seeing you go down in flames?

May the lot of you rot in Hell.