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Flap’s Links and Comments for May 24th on 12:01
These are my links for May 24th from 12:01 to 19:39:
- President 2012 Video: First Anti-Jon Huntsman Web Video Appears | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012 Video: First Anti-Jon Huntsman Web Video Appears #tcot #catcot
- President 2012: Sarah Palin – “Game On?” | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012: Sarah Palin – “Game On?” #tcot #catcot
- Dilbert May 13, 2011 – Wasting | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Dilbert May 13, 2011 – Wasting #tcot #catcot
- CA-36 Video: Will “FIXED” Parking Tickets Blow Up the Race Between Janice Hahn and Craig Huey | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – CA-36 Video: Will “FIXED” Parking Tickets Blow Up the Race Between Janice Hahn and Craig Huey #tcot #catcot
- CA-36: Are Janice Hahn and Craig Huey Running for a Seat that May Disappear in California Redistricting? | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – CA-36: Are Janice Hahn and Craig Huey Running for a Seat that May Disappear in California Redistricting? #tcot #catcot
- Sarah Palin Has Aides That Like to Blab A Lot – Frank Bailey Edition | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Sarah Palin Has Aides That Like to Blab A Lot – Frank Bailey Edition #tcot #catcot
- SCOTUS and California Prisons: Were Scalia and Thomas Looking at the Same Evidence? | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – SCOTUS and California Prisons: Were Scalia and Thomas Looking at the Same Evidence? #tcot #catcot
- Pew Center: The State of Children’s Dental Health – California’s Report Card | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Pew Center: The State of Children’s Dental Health – California’s Report Card | Flap's Blog – FullosseousFlap's D…
- President 2012 Ohio Poll Watch: Obama 46% Romney 42% | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012 Ohio Poll Watch: Obama 46% Romney 42% | Flap's Blog – FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog
- President 2012: Is Tim Pawlenty A Friend of Dentists? | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012: Is Tim Pawlenty A Friend of Dentists? | Flap's Blog – FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog
- Flap’s Links and Comments for May 24th on 03:57 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Flap’s Links and Comments for May 24th on 03:57 #tcot #catcot
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President 2012 Video: First Anti-Jon Huntsman Web Video Appears
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President 2012: Sarah Palin – “Game On?”
Hannity Special “Generation Zero” Part 1, how 40 years of liberal policies have led to financial collapse – a film by Stephen K. BannonShortly after Republicans swept last November to a historic victory in which Sarah Palin was credited with playing a central role, the former Alaska governor pulled aside her close aide, Rebecca Mansour, to discuss a hush-hush assignment: Reach out to conservative filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon with a request. Ask him if he would make a series of videos extolling Palin’s governorship and laying to rest lingering questions about her controversial decision to resign from office with a year-and-a-half left in her first term. It was this abdication, Palin knew, that had made her damaged goods in the eyes of some Republicans who once were eager to get behind her potential 2012 presidential campaign.
The response was more positive than Palin could have hoped for. He’d make a feature-length movie, Bannon told Mansour, and he insisted upon taking complete control and financing it himself — to the tune of $1 million.
The fruits of that initial conversation are now complete. The result is a two-hour-long, sweeping epic, a rough cut of which Bannon screened privately for Sarah and Todd Palin last Wednesday in Arizona, where Alaska’s most famous couple has been rumored to have purchased a new home. When it premieres in Iowa next month, the film is poised to serve as a galvanizing prelude to Palin’s prospective presidential campaign — an unconventional reintroduction to the nation that she and her political team have spent months eagerly anticipating, even as Beltway Republicans have largely concluded that she won’t run.
Read all of the rest.
With the Huckabee and Daniels withdrawal, I am going out on a limb and say Sarah Palin will most probably run for the GOP Presidential nomination. She has nothing to lose, except her Fox News gig and if the stories about her and Fox News’ Roger Ailes are correct, she is dead there after her three year contract expires anyway. She also saw what happened to Glenn Beck.
Yes, Sarah’s polling is not very good against President Obama. She is hoping this film and its narrative will help set the record straight. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.
Mitt Romney and the GOP Establishment (meaning the Bush family, Karl Rove et. al.) must be going nutsoid at the prospect of her candidacy. The donors will line up three or four abreast to pour money into either Romney or Huntsman. If they start to decline in the polls, head to head with Palin, Chris Christie will be called upon to run.
Sarah Palin is the only game changer in this race and as she has said, “Mr. President, game On.”
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Dilbert May 13, 2011 – Wasting
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CA-36 Video: Will “FIXED” Parking Tickets Blow Up the Race Between Janice Hahn and Craig Huey
Perhaps and the questions are being asked of Los Angeles City Council member Janice Hahn.
The Craig Huey for Congress campaign is demanding that Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn release complete records of her office’s use of the city’s “Gold Card Desk” program. The Los Angeles City Auditor revealed that the little known program had dismissed over 1,000 tickets in a two-year period. This was also reported by ABC News in Los Angeles.
“Janice Hahn has been a Los Angeles City Council member for 10 years and for that entire time the Mayor and City Council have been secretly fixing traffic tickets through the so-called Gold Card desk,” said Huey’s consultant Dave Gilliard. “This program does not pass the smell test. The public deserves to know how many tickets Hahn’s office has helped to fix, and names of the people who have received Gold Cards from the City or Gold card desk referrals.”
Specifically, Huey’s campaign is demanding that Hahn release the following information:
1. How long that Janice Hahn has been aware of the Gold Card Desk and how long she has been using it.
2. How many people have been referred to the Gold Card Desk by Hahn’s office in each year she has held office.
3. The names of the people referred to the Gold Card Desk through Hahn’s office, and the resolution of each case.
Little things like parking ticket favoritism/corruption can swing special elections. If Janice Han is implicated, entire blocks of voters can be persuaded to abandon their party and switch over to Craig Huey.
Stay tuned….
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CA-36: Are Janice Hahn and Craig Huey Running for a Seat that May Disappear in California Redistricting?
Janice Hahn and Craig Huey will face off on July 12th in a runoff election for California’s 36th Congressional District
Perhaps or the CA-36 may be completely different in party registration demographics.When the independent redistricting commission redraws political lines this summer, experts say it’s likely that the 36th will lose its strongly Democratic northern region around the Los Angeles International Airport. In return, the district could regain the Republican-majority Palos Verdes Peninsula.
To protect incumbent Democratic Rep. Jane Harman, who resigned in February to lead a Washington think tank, the Peninsula was sliced off the district 10 years ago and connected by thin slivers of Long Beach and San Pedro to Rep. Dana Rohrbacher’s Orange County-based 46th Congressional District.
Besides a shifting border, there’s also a second scenario, where most of the current 36th District’s territory is collapsed, possibly into the 37th Congressional District of Rep. Laura Richardson, a Long Beach Democrat who represents Carson.
Such a move could be a way to account for the population shift to Riverside and San Bernardino counties in the 2010 U.S. census, according to Fernando Guerra, director of the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.
“In other words, L.A. County has to lose one seat,” Guerra said.
The nonpartisan California Citizens Redistricting Commission is set to issue draft maps on June 10, before the July election, setting up an awkward possibility for Hahn and Huey.
“You literally may be running for a seat that no longer exists,” Guerra said.
Final maps are due Aug. 15, and the first election reflecting the reapportioned boundaries will be the June 2012 primary.
If Harman’s old district does pick up the Palos Verdes Peninsula, surrendering the area around LAX, the change would be enough to make an incumbent’s path to election uncertain.
In 1998, when the Peninsula was a part of the 36th District, voters sent Republican Steve Kuykendall to the office.
The Democrat who lost?
Hahn, who ran for the seat to replace Harman when the congresswoman made a failed bid for California governor.
The California economy is very poor and especially poor in this area of Los Angeles County. Businesses have closed and moved out of the state. Real estate values have plummeted. And, most importantly, the election turnout will be low due to the July election date. This will favor an “outside” candidate and one who can turn out the GOP in the district.
Craig Huey has a definite chance in July to surprise and certainly again in 2012, if he doesn’t.
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Sarah Palin Has Aides That Like to Blab A Lot – Frank Bailey Edition
Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years by Frank Bailey, Ken Morris and Jeanne Devon
I suppose Sarah Palin probably wishes she did not share too much with Frank Bailey.The next big tell-all book about ex-Alaska Guv Sarah Palin drops Tuesday and the hook on “Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin” is juicy: It is based on Palin’s own words, in the form of thousands of emails she wrote to co-author and longtime former aide Frank Bailey, a self-described Fox News-watching Republican.
“This book is littered with her words — and we took nothing out of context,” co-author Ken Morris, a Marin County resident and self-described progressive, told Comrade Marinucci and I Monday.
“There were so many more shocking revelations that Frank wasn’t comfortable putting in,so we didn’t. He wanted to tell the story about what was wrong as opposed to things about affairs and legitimacies and diet pills. Yes, he wants people to know what kind of person Sarah Palin is like, because that is important,” Morris said.
Morris described Bailey as “a whistle-blower.” And his story is intended to be a warning about unvetted politicians slipping through the process. “I’m really critical of how we’re doing politics now.”
“Sarah Palin becomes sort of symbolic of people like Donald Trump, or of anybody out there who we don’t vet properly,” Morris said. “It’s just a searing indictment of (GOP presidential nominee) John McCain. We leave no doubt that there was zero vetting” of Palin prior to her becoming the Republican VP nominee in 2008.
Not a happy day for Sarah Palin.
But, on the other hand, Bailey did relate that the rumors about Palin not being the mother of Trig (and her daughter Bristol was): “She did have Trig,” Morris said. “(Bailey) went to see Trig the morning of his birth.”
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SCOTUS and California Prisons: Were Scalia and Thomas Looking at the Same Evidence?
I suggest my friend and reporter Timm Herdt watch MSNBC on Friday night or Saturday afternoon.
He should pay attention to the show Lockup. Obviously, Justices Scalia and Thomas have.
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Flap’s Links and Comments for May 24th on 03:57
These are my links for May 24th from 03:57 to 11:18:
- Pew Center: The State of Children’s Dental Health – California’s Report Card | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Pew Center: The State of Children’s Dental Health – California’s Report Card #tcot #catcot
- President 2012 Ohio Poll Watch: Obama 46% Romney 42% | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012 Ohio Poll Watch: Obama 46% Romney 42% #tcot #catcot
- President 2012: Is Tim Pawlenty A Friend of Dentists? | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012: IsTim Pawlenty A Friend of Dentists? #tcot #catcot
- Flap’s Dentistry Blog: Heartland Dental Care Begins Social Media Initiative – RE: I wonder if Heartland Dental has any written communications protocol to this effect?
- Attorney Gloria Allred says Arnold Schwarzenegger waiting "for the next bombshell" to land : Politics Blog – There is MORE? RT @cmarinucci: Attorney Gloria Allred says Arnold Schwarzenegger waiting "for the next bombshell"
- WTF Happened to KNBC News Anchor Chris Schauble? | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – RE: I am delighted as well. It is good to see his tweets on a daily basis.
- Flap’s Dentistry Blog: Are Elite Triathletes Compromising Their Oral Health? – RE: Additional studies and development of better energy products for these and recreational athletes are certainly wa…
- Sarah Palin Has Aides That Like to Blab A Lot – Rebecca Mansour Edition | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Sarah Palin Has Aides That Like to Blab A Lot – Rebecca Mansour Edition #tcot #catcot
- President 2012: Rep. Peter King Says Rudy Giuliani is Warming Up in the Bullpen for a Presidential Run | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012: Rep. Peter King Says Rudy Giuliani is Warming Up in the Bullpen for a Presidential Run #tcot #catcot
- Flap’s Dentistry Blog: Medicaid Study: Dentists Hesitate to Treat Children on Medicaid? – Medicaid Study: Dentists Hesitate to Treat Children on Medicaid? #Dentistry
- Flap’s Dentistry Blog: Pew Center: The State of Children’s Dental Health – Pew Center: The State of Children’s Dental Health #Dentistry
- Day By Day May 21, 2011 – Affirmative Action | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Day By Day May 21, 2011 – Affirmative Action #tcot #catcot
- Flap’s Links and Comments for May 23rd through May 24th | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Flap’s Links and Comments for May 23rd through May 24th #tcot #catcot
- @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-05-24 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-05-24 | Flap's Blog – FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog
- Pew Center: The State of Children’s Dental Health | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Pew Center: The State of Children’s Dental Health | Flap's Blog – FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog
- Flap’s Links and Comments for May 23rd on 16:38 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Flap’s Links and Comments for May 23rd on 16:38 | Flap's Blog – FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog
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Pew Center: The State of Children’s Dental Health – California’s Report Card
A grade of “C” from the Pew Center on the States.California meets half of the eight policy benchmarks for improving children’s dental health, but children in the state still face significant barriers to accessing care. A recent study by Children Now revealed that one in five California children under age 12 had never seen a dentist. To help alleviate this problem, stakeholders in the state are exploring innovative ways to expand the dental workforce. Pew is supporting a campaign in California to authorize a new type of dental provider who can offer primary care.
Although the state does not yet meet the benchmark for water fluoridation, it has improved significantly since 2006, with over half of the state now receiving the benefits of fluoridated water.
I have some problems with the criteria the Pew Center uses to judge the state of children’s dental health and really see little correlation between each of the categories to judge an overall state of health.
Let me take them one at a time.
Share of high-risk schools with sealant programs:Pew is assuming that more dental sealants mean better dental health. Over the 30 years of placing and evaluating dental sealants, I have seen little reason why having a school program in high-risk disadvanatged area would correlate to better dental health. Just because there is a program and sealants are placed, does this mean less decayed and missing teeth as adults? I would like to see a current model and study.
Hygienists can place sealants without a dentist’s prior exam:
What does this have to do with children’s dental health? Some states allow this and some don’t – big deal. How difficult is it for a school or public health based clinic to have a retired licensed dentist or dentist volunteers to at least examine the children. Or, does hygienist placement of sealants without a dentist examination mean a better outcome? This is hard to believe.
Share of residents on fluoridated community water supplies:You might expect better dental health with fluoridation. But, what abut the communities that have naturally fluoridated water? And, isn’t this really a political decision by the local communities and not the states?
Share of Medicaid-enrolled children getting dental care:More Medicaid children seeing a dentist probably means better dental health. But, what type of treatment are they receiving? Extractions, restorations or regular preventive care? Do the patients return on a regular basis? And, do the states really want to promote utilization of their resources to Medicaid recipients by marketing? I would guess not.
Share of dentists’ median retail fees reimbursed by Medicaid:
Dentists receiving more of their regular fee for treating Medicaid children might mean more dentists treating more children, right? Yes and No. Some dentists don’t participate in Medicaid regardless of the fees paid, because of the needless bureaucracy and ever present/relentless federal audits which might send them to prison for making billing errors. Some dentists just don’t like the federal government intruding on their private business decisions. So, increasing the fees for Medicaid might reward some dentists, but probably would not increase the numbers of dentists providing Medicaid treatment – unless of course, the fees approached 80-85% of their UCR. But, what states and which taxpayers will be able to afford that?
Pays medical providers for early preventive dental health care:I cannot imagine seeing general/family practice physicians, pediatricians or PA’s sitting down in a Medicaid environment either providing dietary advice, dental sealants, or oral hygiene instructions. Just because physicians can, does not mean most M.D.’s will. I would like to see a study as to which states have a goodly number of M.D.’s providing these type of services.
Authorizes new primary care dental providers:
This is, of course, the hidden agenda question for the Pew Organization who has been at the forefront in promoting the new dental therapist as an alternative to the dentist. This category has no relevance to children’s dental health, since there is no evidence that having dental therapists equates to better dental health. Most of the USA is not Alaska, remote and rural. I don’t think most private practice dentists are going to hire dental therapists, so they can see more Medicaid patients with a reimbursement of around 40% of their regular fees. Remember the “invisible hand?”
Tracks data on children’s dental health:
More government bureaucracy reporting to the federal government really equates to better dental health.
As you can see, I am not too fond of this report. But, Pew is a large, well-funded organization and one with an agenda to promote dental therapists as a way to improve access to dental care for underserved populations. This report must be viewed with this in mind.
Here is the last graph on California’s report card: