FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog

Now that most blogs, including Hugh Hewitt (who converted this weekend) have RSS feeds, my readers probably want a Flap recommendation as to the appropriate RSS Reader and aggregator.

Flap uses ONFOLIO.

Here is what Onfolio can do:
Read RSS News Feeds Stay up to the minute with new information in your profession or academic discipline. News from sources you choose gets delivered to your desktop when you want it. Learn More	Collect Content Capture articles and files from the web to your computer for reliable access. With tools at hand while you browse, Onfolio won’t slow you down. Learn More	Organize Research As you collect, organize and file items, Onfolio also builds a searchable database so you or your team will have immediate access to items when you need them. Learn More	Share and Publish Be the first to share relevant news with your colleagues or customers using Onfolio’s automatic publishing tools and convenient ways to email news items and Onfolio content. Learn Mor

So, go over and download a FREE trial copy of Onfolio here.

And then you can keep up with Flap, the Bear Flag League Members and Hugh Hewitt through RSS.

Flap knows you will be glad you did.

HT: Patterico

Drudge has HILLARY CLINTON TO SUPPORT BUSH COURT NOMINEE.

Senator Hillary Clinton has confided to associates that she intends to vote FOR Bush Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Unless some unforeseen development occurs around Roberts, Clinton will throw her support behind confirmation, says a top source.

“Look, we’re not thrilled President Bush is in office and gets to make these choices,” said a top Hillary source, “but we have to make the best of the situation until the next election!”

With her support of Roberts, Clinton ignores pressure from the reactionary-activist wing of the Democrat party.

“She is simply doing what is right for the country, not MOVEON.ORG,” the Clinton insider explained.

The NEW Hillary Clinton.

Flap reckons she wants to be elected.

Heh.

The Sunday Los Angeles Times has Immigration Rising on Bush’s To-Do List.

The White House wants to build a coalition to court Latinos and marginalize hard-liners.

Worried that the tone of the immigration debate is pushing Latinos away from the Republican Party, the White House is working with political strategists to create a broad coalition of business groups and immigrant advocates to back a plan President Bush could promote in Congress and to minority voters in the 2006 elections.

The strategists say Bush is planning to make immigration a top priority as soon as this fall, once the focus on a Supreme Court vacancy has passed. The push is being planned to coincide with next year’s campaigns for the House and Senate, in which Latino voters could be crucial in several states. It is part of a broader White House strategy to forge a long-lasting majority by drawing more minority voters.

Aiming for an air of bipartisanship, the White House-backed coalition, to be called Americans for Border and Economic Security, will be led by former U.S. Reps. Cal Dooley (D-Hanford) and Dick Armey (R-Texas). The chief organizer is one of the capital’s most important White House allies: former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, who has hosted preliminary meetings at his Washington lobbying firm just blocks from the White House and has been advising the RNC on minority outreach.

This will never fly in California which is a blue state and will remain blue even with massive Latino voter recruitment for the Republicans (which would not happen for a few decades, in any case).

The President is a lame duck and this policy initiative will gather as much interest as his social security measures - NONE.

But, the President will succeed in one respect. He will force the Democrats to either put up (support his measures) or shut up (support a tighter border policy, like Hillary Clinton moaning about illegal immigration terrorist security).

Technorati Tags: illegal immigration, Dick Armey, President Bush

The Sunday Los Angeles Times has Senate Race a Symbol of GOP Woes.

Bill Mundell has carved a lonely spot for himself in California politics: The wealthy technology executive is the sole Republican openly weighing a serious run to unseat U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

“If I make a decision to go forward with this, I will give Dianne Feinstein a run for her money,” said Mundell, whose last campaign, a state Assembly race, ended in defeat 19 years ago.

Oh, Please!

Bill Mundell may be able to buy his way into a Republican nomination victory in June 2006 only because no candidate in their right mind would ever consider running against long time incumbent Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein. Nobody has come close to beating Feinstein, the former San Francisco Mayor, in a California statewide race.

The absence of a well-known candidate to run against Feinstein highlights the Republican Party’s continuing struggle to overcome the Democratic dominance of California that solidified a decade ago.

“It’s an uphill battle,” said Gary Jacobson, a UC San Diego political science professor who described prospects for a broad Republican recovery in California as bleak.

A fast rise in the ranks of independent voters — now 3.7 million in all — has eroded both major parties in California. But registered Democrats still outnumber Republicans, 7.2 million to 5.7 million.

California demographics mark the state as blue and despite what other pundits may say, Dianne Feinstein is a moderate Democrat who satisfies the needs of most independent voting Californians.

Because independents typically side with Democrats, voting patterns reflect an even stronger tilt. Democrats hold eight of 10 statewide offices. By wide margins, they outnumber Republicans in both houses of the Legislature and in California’s delegation to Congress. President Bush lost California by 1.2 million votes to Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry.

And do you think conservatives who run the California Republican Party will be able to stomach Mundell who:

Has never held public office in California or anywhere, and actually lost a California Republican Primary Assembly election almost twenty years ago.

Is not Pro-Life and supports abortion:

I’m in favor of a woman’s right to choose, provided that she makes the choice within a period of time that is consistent with, I think, consensus ethical norms,” he said. “So I am not a supporter of partial-birth abortion except in the case that the mother’s health is in danger.”

Supports Gay Marriage.

Has been married only two years and has no children.

Launched Californians for Fair Redistricting, Proposition 77, which last week was ordered off the November special election ballot because an office manager submitted the wrong copies to the California Attorney General’s office.

Fails to support agricultural subsidies for California Central Valley Farmers.

To stem illegal immigration, Mundell said, the U.S. needs to promote economic growth in Mexico. He suggests that Mexico cut taxes and give landowners the right to drill for oil on their property.

“If I was a senator from California, I’d be in Mexico visiting with [President] Vicente Fox once a month,” he said.

Feinstein strategist Bill Carrick dismissed a Mundell campaign to unseat the senator as “a suicide mission.”

“She embodies what California values are,” Carrick said, “and represents them pretty dramatically in the Senate.”

Flap has to agree with Carrick on this one.

Senator Feinstein is 72 years old and has served in the U.S. Senate since 1992. No candidate will dislodge her from her seat unless she chooses to retire or health concerns force her to step down.

Should this occur, then Republicans will certainly field a better candidate than Bill Mundell.

Stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: Bill Mundell, Dianne Feinstein, Bill Carrick, U.S. Senate

A fellow member of the California Bear Flag League, the Southern California Law Blog has begun Podcasts on his blog.

SoCal Law Blog’s First Podcast is here featuring:

1. Background on the successful lawsuit removing Proposition 77 from the November 2005 election.
2. An update on the post-conviction developments for Alejandro Avila and Gregory Haidl.
3. A report on Bell v. Blue Cross of California, a California Court of Appeal decision allowing an E.R. physician to lead a class action lawsuit against Blue Cross of California to challenge the manner in which Blue Cross reimburses E.R. physicians who have no contract with Blue Cross.
4. A report on a new gadget, the Slingbox. The Slingbox is the next evolution in tv watching following VCRs and DVRs. It will be met with the same litigation tactics that big Hollywood attempted to use against VCRs and, more successfuly, Grokster.

If Craig and Denise can podcast, why can’t I?

Flap recommends you head over there and listen.

You will be glad you did.

Is California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Gulliver, the giant prisoner of a race of little people who have tied him down or the Terminator, a human-looking, apparently unstoppable cyborg?

The pundits from the Left believe the former; the Right hopes the latter.

And how will this affect the 2005 California Special election and Election 2006 where the Governor must seek re-election?

The San Francisco Chronicle has this Sunday News Analysis piece, Sand kicked in face of strong-man governor.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has relished the role of the fearless “Terminator” armed for battle against an army of special interests, is suddenly looking more like Gulliver — besieged, tied down, and overrun by his opponents.

And no wonder: After months of campaigning, fund raising and warning of a Nov. 8 special election he insisted was “guaranteed,” the governor’s team blinked this week. Campaign adviser Mike Murphy floated a trial balloon — most likely to gauge Democratic Party as much as voter reaction — with Friday’s public acknowledgement that Team Schwarzenegger has discussed the impossible: dumping the much-heralded special ballot altogether.

The fact is this trial balloon of cancelling the November special election has been the topic of conversation for many weeks. Flap has had a number of pieces:

California Special Election Watch: Cancel the Election?

California Special Election: Deal Unlikely?

Governor Schwarzenegger: Not the Time to Turn Squishy

And the Left wishes to influence the Governor to quit. Indeed, they are trying to PUNK him.

Here are some of their comments:

But veteran Democratic strategist Garry South said there’s hardly an outpouring of pity for the GOP action-hero-turned-governor with this latest development. “He’s gotten himself into this pickle,” he said. “This was all about testosterone, and we’ll have to see whether his glands outduel his brain on how to get out of this mess.”

Democratic consultant Gale Kaufman also seemed to be enjoying the governor’s predicament. Strategy is limited, she said, when you’re hanging on the side of a cliff.

“They are in free fall here,” she said of the governor’s team. “They don’t have any good choices.”

Ha! Name calling from Gray Davis’s former political strategist. And who is now working for California Controller Steve Westly, who is also an announced candidate for Governor (running in a contested June 2006 Democrat primary against California Treasurer Phil Angelides).

Wouldn’t it be convenient for the special election to be cancelled so all of that teacher union (CTA and AFT) and SEIU money raised for a media campaign this November could be channeled into the 2006 races?

Yes, how convenient for the Democrats to save campaign resources by trying to PUNK the Governor into cancelling his own election to his own electoral demise in 2006.

But, remember Schwarzenegger has already won the 2005 election. Even if he loses every measure (very unlikely), he stays the course for California reform, maintains the status quo and depletes the resources of his opponents. Resources that cannot be used in the Democrat primary race in June and cannot be saved for television ads against him.

The Governor has been raising money and has plenty on hand for television and a Get Out the Vote campaign. Donors who have supported Proposition 77 (now off the November 2005 ballot, pending an appeal) will rally behind the Governor when the measure reappears revised (more than likely) on the November 2006 ballot. Arnold has the resources, but does he have the political will?

He now must ignore the pundits, the early polls and stay the course.

Technorati Tags: Schwarzenneger, Garry South, Steve Westly, Phil Angelides

Cross-posted to the Bear Flag League Special Election Page.