Flap's Blog – FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog

• Carly Fiorina's Absence from California GOP Convention for Breast Cancer Treatment Mocked by California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore Spokesman Joshua Trevino
  I saw this today on Twitter and really could not believe it. A spokesman and a paid one at that for California Republican Assemblyman and U.S. Senate candidate Chuck DeVore, Joshua Trevino, mocking fellow Republican Carly Fiorina for not attending this past weekend’s California GOP Convention in Indian Wells.

  James Richardson has the FLAP.

  (tags: carly_fiorina Chuck_DeVore)
• Roman Polanski: backlash as Whoopi Goldberg says director didn't commit 'rape-rape"
  Whoopi Goldberg is facing a fierce backlash after saying that film director Roman Polanski didn't commit "rape-rape" when he had unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl.
  Goldberg, star of The Color Purple and Sister Act, said: "I know it wasn't rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don't believe it was rape-rape.

  "He pled guilty to having sex with a minor and he went to jail, and when they let him out he said 'You know what, this guy's going to give me 100 years in jail. I'm not staying'. And that's why he left." Polanski was arrested in Zurich, Switzerland on Sunday and faces extradition to the United States. He fled the US in 1978 before being sentenced for the crime and has been pursued around the globe by prosecutors ever since.
  ++++++
  Of course, this is BS. If you do the crime, you have to serve the time.

  (tags: Roman_Polanski)
• A Statement From Carly Fiorina’s Campaign re: Her Cancer Treatment Schedule
  When she filed with the IRS to open a “testing the waters” committee in August, Carly indicated she would be meeting with a variety of policy makers, local leaders and business owners from around the state. Since then she has met with many people and her visit to Fresno yesterday was a continuation of that effort.

  “As you noted in your article last week, Carly is in her final weeks of radiation treatment, which is administered daily. Her schedule needs to accommodate those treatments and make allowances for the cumulative fatigue that occurs towards the end of the course of treatment. For that reason, the decision was made that she not attend the CRP convention this year but, should she run, Carly is looking forward to seeing folks at the February convention. In the meantime, she will continue to take day trips with a limited schedule, like she did in Fresno, in order to meet with people and hear first hand their concerns about our state and our country.

  (tags: carly_fiorina)
• Andrew Young – John Edward's Special Assistant: Sex, scorn and videotape
  When John Edwards returned to North Carolina in the course of his long quest for the presidency, Andrew Young always met him at the airport in Edwards’s big black Chevy Tahoe. Young drove, and Edwards rode shotgun, silently raising his left hand whenever he wanted a Diet Coke, which Young would wordlessly supply.

  When Edwards and his family arrived home, Young had made sure there was fresh milk in the fridge, a neatly trimmed lawn and neatly folded dry cleaning. When he arranged their vacation to Disney World in 2004, he naturally booked himself a ticket. And when Edwards’s mistress became pregnant, Young — at the cost of his reputation, his wife’s and his minister father’s — stepped forward to say the child was his.

  (tags: john_edwards)
• Snore Alert: Gavin Newsom challenges Jerry Brown to 11 debates – California Governor
  Just a day after Attorney General Jerry Brown announced he was forming an exploratory committee for a possible gubernatorial run, declared Democratic candidate Gavin Newsom challenged Brown to 11 debates in every media market in the state.

  "Our state is in need of real reform — we have a broken system that must be fixed," Newsom said in the news release. "And now that there are two candidates for governor, we owe the Democratic voters of California an opportunity to compare our visions and platforms side-by-side."

  Newsom suggested ground rules in the debate invitation, which his campaign faxed to Brown, the news release said. That included suggesting that 10 of the debates focus on one topic each, with the 11th dealing with a range of topics.

  (tags: gavin_newsom Jerry_Brown)
• Report: Hewlett-Packard mulls merging printer, PC units
  The move would be an about-face for the company, which combined the printer and PC units before in 2005 when then-CEO Carly Fiorina was looking to boost the company's struggling PC business. The company's printer business was so successful that some were calling for the company to spinoff the division.

  However, just five months after Hurd took over the HP helm after Fiorina's ouster by the board in 2005, he split them up again and appointed Bradley, former chief executive of PalmOne, as new leader of its personal systems group.

  Last month, HP posted a 19 percent drop in profit for the third quarter of 2009, its third straight quarter of falling profit. For the quarter ended July 31, PCs accounted for $386 million in earnings, or 12 percent of HP's profits, while the printer business generated $960 million in earnings, or 30 percent of the company's profits.

  (tags: Hewlett-Packard carly_fiorina Mark_Hurd)
• Hewlett-Packard Plans to Fuse Printer, PC Units
  Mr. Hurd's move would be a turnabout. H-P melded its printer and PC divisions once before, in 2005, when then-CEO Carly Fiorina was struggling to boost a barely-profitable PC division.
  Ms. Fiorina folded the PC unit into the healthy printer business in hopes that Mr. Joshi, who was well-regarded within the company for sustaining growth in printers, could make the PC operations more efficient.

  H-P's board fired Ms. Fiorina that same year. After Mr. Hurd took over, he separated the two divisions and hired Mr. Bradley to take over the PC business.

  Over the following years, Mr. Bradley slashed costs and made H-P's PC supply chain more efficient, especially in the fast-growing market for consumer notebook PCs. Meanwhile, Mr. Joshi's printer division hasn't kept pace with H-P's growth. While the printer business remains H-P's most profitable division, efforts to boost sales with large-scale commercial printers and consumer photo printers haven't substantially increased the division's reven

  (tags: Hewlett-Packard carly_fiorina Mark_Hurd)
• Carly Fiorina Daily Radiation Treatments for Breast Cancer an Issue?
  Fiorina didn't avoid the Republican convention, and she came to the Fresno area on Monday for one reason: because she could.

  "She has daily radiation treatments," Miller said. "She did not go to the convention because she had to be in Palo Alto for treatment every day — Friday, Saturday and Sunday."

  But when Fiorina can, Miller said, she has been taking day trips, where she is meeting with donors and policy people, and learning about the issues.

  (tags: carly_fiorina Chuck_DeVore)
• WSJ: Hewlett-Packard Plans Merger Of Printer, PC Units
  The move by Hurd would mark a turnaround. In early 2005, HP's printer division was so successful that some analysts called on then-CEO Carly Fiorina to spin it off as a separate company. She, however, combined it with HP's struggling PC division. Later in the year, after HP's board ousted Fiorina and hired Hurd as her replacement, the new CEO reversed that decision and split printing and PCs into separate divisions.

  Hurd, who completed his fourth year as HP CEO in April, has spent his tenure cutting operating costs in a bid to bolster profit. In September 2008, HP said it would cut about 24,600 jobs, or nearly 7.5% of its total work force, over the next three years as part of a restructuring program the company is going to implement while integrating the business of Electronic Data Systems that it acquired last year.
  ++++++++
  Hurd going with Fiorina's plan?

  (tags: Hewlett-Packard carly_fiorina Mark_Hurd)

From @jstrevino today on Twitter at 9:25 AM

I saw this today on Twitter and really could not believe it. A spokesman and a paid one at that for California Republican Assemblyman and U.S. Senate candidate Chuck DeVore, Joshua Trevino,  mocking fellow Republican Carly Fiorina for not attending this past weekend’s California GOP Convention in Indian Wells.

James Richardson has the FLAP.

Citing the physical demands of her ongoing treatment for breast cancer, for which she was diagnosed last March, potential GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina said her schedule of radiation treatments would not permit her attendance at the convention.

But the DeVore campaign has noted that, while Fiorina’s health curiously precluded her from attending the party gathering, she spent much of the following Monday campaigning in Fresno with ranchers and participated via satellite in Fortune’s “Most Powerful Women Summit.”

Laying the foundation for the belief that Fiorina is somehow casually exploiting her illness for the benefit of her campaign, State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore told The Fresno Bee he finds “it curious that her campaign said she was unable to make the convention for health reasons, and yet, … she was engaged in what appears to be a pretty standard, strenuous campaign day yesterday – the day after the convention.”

Indicative of his campaign’s reliance on rumor-mongering of a particularly vicious and fatuous sort, DeVore’s critics say his campaign’s latest assault on Fiorina is built on the notion that he can cobble together support among the GOP ranks by fostering the double-edged rumor that his opponent is too ill to campaign, too liberal to campaign for the Republican nomination – or, perhaps, both.

“Carly says daily treatments keep her home, yet she campaigned Monday. Conclusion: as Pluto is no longer a planet, Monday is no longer a day,” wrote campaign spokesman Josh Treviño on Twitter.

Fiorina, whose campaign is stalled in the exploratory phase, will “continue to take day trips with a limited schedule, like she did in Fresno, in order to meet with people and hear first hand their concerns about our state and our country,” said spokeswoman Beth Miller.

Sources familiar with Fiorina’s event in Fresno say it was neither “strenuous” nor absent of conservatives, contending it was a casual agricultural campaign event. Moreover, the event in Fresno was conveniently—and necessarily—located near where Fiorina receives her radiation treatment – whereas Indian Wells is roughly 400 miles away.

But, there is another tweet from PAID Chuck DeVore spokesman Joshua Trevino.

From @jstrevino today on Twitter at 3:50 PM

So, Assmblyman Chuck DeVore, a candidate for the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate implies that Carly Fiorina avoided the California GOP convention and did so by exploiting her breast cancer. Then, DeVore’s spokesman goes after Fiorina in a more forceful and direct way calling her indirectly a LIAR.

Devore’s statement and that of his paid FLACK HACK are REAL classy, right?

Here is the official statement from Carly Fiorina’s spokeswoman:

When she filed with the IRS to open a “testing the waters” committee in August, Carly indicated she would be meeting with a variety of policy makers, local leaders and business owners from around the state. Since then she has met with many people and her visit to Fresno yesterday was a continuation of that effort.

“As you noted in your article last week, Carly is in her final weeks of radiation treatment, which is administered daily. Her schedule needs to accommodate those treatments and make allowances for the cumulative fatigue that occurs towards the end of the course of treatment. For that reason, the decision was made that she not attend the CRP convention this year but, should she run, Carly is looking forward to seeing folks at the February convention. In the meantime, she will continue to take day trips with a limited schedule, like she did in Fresno, in order to meet with people and hear first hand their concerns about our state and our country.

I think this entire matter definitely says something about Chuck DeVore’s character and his questionable campaign behavior.

More later on Chuck DeVore and his violations of the GOP’s 11th Commandment.

Stay tuned…..

• Meg Whitman explains her voting record — again
  In the ongoing uproar over her scant voting record, GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has offered the latest in a string of explanations her campaign has been giving since the Bee reported last week that it couldn't find any record Whitman had registered to vote before 2002.

  Whitman told reporters today she "was not as engaged as I should have been over the last 20 or 30 years" because she "was focused on raising a family, on my husband's career, we moved many, many times."

  She made her remarks after addressing the Republican Women Federated groups of Yolo, Sacramento and Solano counties.

  (tags: Meg_Whitman)
• Shocker: Former Bill Clinton aide Stacy Parker Aab claims ex-president got touchy-feely with her
  Monica Lewinsky may not always have been the intern most likely to succeed when it came to catching Bubba's wandering eye in the White House.

  So says former political staffer Stacy Parker Aab, who claims she had her own close call, sexually, with the President in the new HarperCollins book "Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House," slated for a January release
  +++++++
  Another Bimbo Eruption

  (tags: bill_clinton)
• Obamacare: Abortion Fight Complicates Debate on Health Care
  Abortion opponents in both the House and the Senate are seeking to block the millions of middle- and lower-income people who might receive federal insurance subsidies to help them buy health coverage from using the money on plans that cover abortion. And the abortion opponents are getting enough support from moderate Democrats that both sides say the outcome is too close to call. Opponents of abortion cite as precedent a 30-year-old ban on the use of taxpayer money to pay for elective abortions.

  Abortion-rights supporters say such a restriction would all but eliminate from the marketplace private plans that cover the procedure, pushing women who have such coverage to give it up. Nearly half of those with employer-sponsored health plans now have policies that cover abortion, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

  (tags: Obamacare abortion)
• Obamacare: Senate Democrats plan to force vote on public option
  Two members of the Senate Finance Committee plan to put their Democratic colleagues on the spot on Tuesday by offering amendments on whether to give uninsured Americans the opportunity to join a government insurance program.
  While health care reform legislation in the House and an alternate plan in the Senate have included a so-called "public option," the Finance Committee's version, which Republicans haven't rejected completely, has not included a government-sponsored provision.

  Sens. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Chuck Schumer of New York planned to offer the amendments last week before the action was delayed.

  It's not clear whether the two Democrats have the votes on the committee to get their amendments passed. But it is clear that the debate could be contentious, if last week's discussion was any indication, with Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona banging his fist on the table in an effort to be heard.

  (tags: Obamacare)
• Mark Steyn: What They're Telling us – Who the LEFT Really Fears
  But, if we're talking about letting the left "set the rules", Mr Marcus' column reminded me of a larger point: Don't take your opponents at face value; listen to what they're really saying. What does the frenzy unleashed on Sarah Palin last fall tell us? What does Newsweek's "Mad Man" cover on Glenn Beck mean? Why have "civility" drones like Joe Klein so eagerly adopted Anderson Cooper's scrotal "teabagging" slur and characterized as "racists" and "terrorists" what are (certainly by comparison with the anti-G20 crowd) the best behaved and tidiest street agitators in modern history?

  They're telling you who they really fear. Whom the media gods would destroy they first make into "mad men". Liz Cheney should be due for the treatment any day now.

  (tags: mark_steyn)
• Water interests argue new state dam proposals for California
  As California grapples with an aging water-delivery network, growing population, worsening water quality, a drought and the potentially far-reaching effects of global climate change, dams are again on the table.

  Last month Schwarzenegger insisted he would not sign off on any major overhaul of the water system without money for new dams and reservoirs.

  The governor has the support of conservatives and the vast Central Valley, where many farmers are convinced that new, man-made lakes will help offset dry spells and ease the federal rulings that have cut water pumped through the ailing Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

  (tags: California California_Water)
• Meg Whitman's voting record no advantage
  In fact, as The Bee revealed and she finally acknowledged at the GOP convention, she didn't register to vote in California until 2002 and didn't declare her Republicanism until two years ago. "She misspoke, and it was wrong," her spokeswoman said.

  Whitman herself did what she usually does when faced with tough questions from reporters � she clammed up. "I've said what I'm going to say about it, so thanks for that," she responded as reporters tried to question her about why she failed to vote.

  Business moguls are often surrounded by sycophantic aides who shield them from critical questioning. Politicians can't hide, and if they try, they come across as cowardly and not ready for prime time.

  (tags: Meg_Whitman)
• Obamacare: Public option may have new life
  The public option limped out of August, battered and left to die in the Senate.

  But its supporters are working hard this week to bring it back, against the odds, with a series of high-profile votes in the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday.

  Supporters don’t expect any of versions of the public option to survive the Finance Committee votes. But the exposure is a welcome breakthrough, supporters say, after critics impugned optional, government-run health care plans all summer.

  The key now is momentum, and backers are doing everything they can to convey confidence that President Barack Obama will eventually sign a health care bill into law that includes some sort of government coverage to compete with private insurers.

  (tags: Obamacare)

Probably NOT much but Hot Air which each campaign will try to spin to their advantage.

You might have seen some buzz on Twitter or in your e-mail inbox about Senate wannabee Chuck DeVore and GOP guv-hopeful Steve Poizner crushing respective rivals Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman in the state party convention straw poll.

But as CNN’s Peter Hamby points out: “One problem: There was no official straw poll at the California Republican Party Convention.”

“We did not conduct a straw poll at this convention whatsoever,” California GOP chairman Ron Nehring said in an e-mail.

So who did? An aide to DeVore — a state Assemblyman who has actively courted the party’s conservative wing as he prepares to battle Fiorina for the Republican Senate nomination — acknowledged that Sunday’s poll was engineered by the DeVore campaign, even though it was described as a “CRP straw poll” in an e-mail to supporters.

“It was not connected to the party,” said DeVore spokesman Joshua Trevino. “We printed up the ballots, and they were distributed on Saturday night.”

Jon Fleischman, blogger and Vice Chairman, South of the California Republican Party weighed into the fray yesterday.

The reality, having observed the process is that this “straw poll” was nothing more than an orchestrated campaign event by the DeVore campaign to garner some earned media.  Good for them.  I’m all for creative thinking.

The questionable part of the process was in releasing the “results” in a way that made it non-obvious to the reader that this entire straw poll was conceived, executed, counted and released by the DeVore for Senate campaign.

This severely impeaches the credibility of the results because of the obvious conflict of interest that exists.

The Carly Fiorina United States Senate exploratory campaign had this response:

Fiorina spokeswoman Beth Miller was even more dismissive.

“Let me get this straight, you want me to comment on a Chuck DeVore straw poll that was conducted in the DeVore hospitality suite on Saturday night with a bunch of college Republicans and a lot of free beer flowing?,” Miller asked.

So, the long and short of this flap is that this DeVore vs. Fiorina California GOP Straw poll was not an officially sanctioned poll, not scientific in its methodology and the Chuck DeVore campaign unsuccessfully tried to ascribe some meaning to its results.

Sounds like no harm, no foul to me.