Flap's Blog – FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog

Mitt Romney campaigning in Florida – May 16, 2012

These are my links for May 22nd through May 23rd:

• Ten ways you know the Bain attack is bombing- Unless you’ve really drunk the Kool-Aid, you probably have the idea that the President Obama’s campaign has misfired on the Bain attack. How can you tell? Well:1. Democratic critics of the Bain attack are piling up.2. Politico, the ultimate home team paper (root for those to whom you want access), has gone pro-Romney, big time. (h/t David Freddoso)

  3. Chris Matthews is having a meltdown.

  4. The Romney team is sending around headlines with the subject: Not “The Tuesday Headlines President Obama Was Looking For…” And there are lots and lots of them.

• Cantor says Obama’s ‘hostility’ to Bain discouraging investors- House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) suggested Wednesday that the Obama campaign’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s tenure at private-equity firm Bain Capital could be discouraging others from investing in struggling companies.”I’m thinking it’s when we were talking with the president about politics and wanting to provide an incentive for entrepreneurs and investors to put capital at risk, because that’s what’s hurting right now, we don’t have enough people with confidence to put capital at risk right now, we don’t’ have people who are willing to seek a loan from a bank and take that risk because they hear the hostility coming from the White House,” Cantor said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”
• Biden: Tea Party stopped us from growing economy- Vice President Joe Biden admitted to a group of supporters in New Hampshire this afternoon that the President would have been able help the economy “much, more” if the Tea Party hadn’t taken the House.Biden showed the audience the Obama campaigns chart of job growth during the President’s first term in office and accused the Tea Party for stalling the recovery, because of the debt limit fight.”Imagine where we’d be if the Tea Party hadn’t taken control of the House of Representatives,” Biden said adding that they were “a group set on obstructionism.”

  “They have one overwhelming goal: prevent President Obama from a second term, with no – apparently no care of the consequences to the economy,” he said. Biden insisted that the president persevered in spite of their obstruction and demonstrated “important progress” that could be measured.

• Colin Powell on Obama: Is the wind shifting again?- The Associated Press reports: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell is declining to renew the endorsement he gave Barack Obama four years ago, when he called Mr. Obama “a transformational figure.” … Mr. Powell told NBC’s “Today” show, “I always keep my powder dry, as they say in the military.” He credits Mr. Obama with stabilizing the financial system and “fixing the auto industry” but said he should have spent more time on the economy. … Mr. Powell, who served under President George W. Bush,also said, “I don’t want to throw my weight behind someone” at this point in the campaign.Conservative foreign-policy gurus will have a hearty guffaw over that one. To be blunt, Powell has no real weight to throw around; it’s hard to fathom that voters are hanging on his decision.
• GOP discovers that Mitt Romney could win- Top Republicans, long privately skeptical about their presidential prospects, are coming around to a surprising new view — that Mitt Romney may well win the White House this November.Margin-of-error polling, fundraising parity last month, conservative consolidation around Romney and a still-sluggish economy has senior GOP officials increasingly bullish about a nominee many winced over during a difficult primary process.
• The Emerging Democratic Divide- Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s off-message criticism of the Obama campaign’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s background at Bain Capital gave the campaign an untimely, unwanted headache this week. But more significantly, it exposed a tension that’s developing between the Democratic Party’s centrist wing and its more-outspoken liberal base —one that threatens to fester more openly if President Obama fails to win a second term.Conversations with liberal activists and labor officials reveal an unmistakable hostility toward the pro-business, free-trade, free-market philosophy that was in vogue during the second half of the Clinton administration. Former White House Chief of Staff William Daley, who tried to steer the Obama administration in a more centrist direction, is the subject of particular derision. Discussion of entitlement reforms, at the heart of the GOP governing agenda, is a nonstarter. The fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats are now nearly extinct on Capitol Hill.
• How the Recovery Went Wrong- President Obama, in speech after speech, proudly makes the following point: Although we inherited the worst recession since the Great Depression, we have generated net new jobs every month, and while we need to do more, we are going in the right direction.Of course, recoveries always go in the right direction —that is, things get better over time. But merely going in the right direction is an incredibly low performance standard. Moreover, since deep recessions are generally followed by more robust recoveries, this should have been one of the strongest recoveries ever.So what went wrong? All the available Keynesian levers for achieving economic growth have been pulled, yet the recovery is one of the weakest since World War II. The problem lies with the way the “stimulus” was carried out, the uncertainty of looming higher taxes, and the antibusiness rhetoric and regulatory strong-arming of this administration.
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-23 – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-23
• First Read – NBC/WSJ poll: Obama, Romney locked in tight contest – RT @ErikaMasonhall: Full NBC/WSJ poll: Obama continues to hold a small – & slightly narrowing – lead over Romney
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » The Morning Flap: May 22, 2012 – The Morning Flap: May 22, 2012
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Michael Ramirez on Romney and Bain Vs. Obama’s Bane – Michael Ramirez on Romney and Bain Vs. Obama’s Bane
• Facebook Among the Worst Big U.S. IPO Starts in 5 Years – Deal Journal – WSJ – RT @WSJ: Facebook is on track to be one of the worst large U.S. IPO starts in the past 5 years.
• Flap’s Dentistry Blog: The Morning Drill: May 22, 2012 – The Morning Drill: May 22, 2012

Tags: Bain, Biden, Cantor, Democrats, Obama, Pinboard Links, Powell, Romney, Tea_Party, The Morning Flap

These are my links for May 17th through May 18th:

• Dental Abuse Seen Driven by Private Equity Investments – Isaac Gagnon stepped off the school bus sobbing last October and opened his mouth to show his mother where it hurt.
  She saw steel crowns on two of the 4-year-old’s back teeth. A dentist’s statement in his backpack showed he had received two pulpotomies, or baby root canals, along with the crowns and 10 X-rays — all while he was at school. Isaac, who suffers from seizures from a brain injury in infancy, didn’t need the work, according to his mother, Stacey Gagnon.“I was absolutely horrified,” said Gagnon, of Camp Verde, Arizona. “I never gave them permission to drill into my son’s mouth. They did it for profit.”

Isaac’s case and others like it are under scrutiny by federal lawmakers and state regulators trying to determine whether a popular business model fueled by Wall Street money is soaking taxpayers and having a malign influence on dentistry. Isaac’s dentist was dispatched to his school by ReachOut Healthcare America, a dental management services company that’s in the portfolio of Morgan Stanley Private Equity, operates in 22 states and has dealt with 1.5 million patients. Management companies are at the center of a U.S. Senate inquiry, and audits, investigations and civil actions in six states over allegations of unnecessary procedures, low-quality treatment and the unlicensed practice of dentistry.

• Democrats look to California in bid to retake House- No state figures more prominently in Democratic plans to retake the House than bright blue California.With 25 seats separating them from the speaker’s gavel, Democrats have settled on a blueprint targeting nearly a dozen seats across the Golden State — a yawning figure that highlights the emphasis party officials have placed there.
• Exit, stage Wright- Yesterday’s breathless campaign hysteria arose out of a not-really-much-of-a-scoop from the broadsheet across town: A rich guy in Omaha wants to spend a lot of money defeating Barack Obama.Stop the presses. Eek.Said rich guy sought the advice of a controversial consultant (who’d very much benefit from getting the rich guy’s commission) on a strategy. The consultant proposed reviving the 2008 controversy over Obama’s relationship with his egregious pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

  You’d have thought, from the mainstream-media tweets yesterday morning, that the mere act of mentioning Obama and Wright in the same breath was nothing less than a hate crime in itself. How dare anyone mention the president in the same breath as the anti-American demagogue who officiated at his wedding, baptized his children and gave him the title of his second book.

  For those of us who enjoy seeing such folk sputter and squirm, the idea of a Wright attack against Obama instantly seemed rather piquant. But it only took a moment’s reflection to see how senseless and even stupid such an approach would be.

• Hewlett-Packard to Cut About 30,000 Jobs – NYTimes.com – RT @TomBevanRCP: Ouch: HP to cut 30,000 jobs.
• Ricketts’ aide: Jeremiah Wright plan was DOA- The head of the Super PAC that considered a proposal to attack the president based on his associations with controversial preacher Reverend Wright said Friday that the pitch was a non-starter.“I was immediately troubled by the proposal. It surprised me,” Brian Baker, president of Ending Spending Action Fund funded by billionaire Joe Ricketts, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “We run an organization based on fiscal responsibility. They know we asked for a document based on ending spending, fiscal responsibility and jobs in the economy. This is far afield from that.”
• Mark Zuckerberg will ring NASDAQ opening bell this morning, on Facebook’s IPO day | The Verge – RT @verge: Mark Zuckerberg will ring NASDAQ opening bell this morning, on Facebook’s IPO day
• Romney Launches First General Election Ad- Mitt Romney’s campaign is out with its first television ad of the general election, describing what a Romney presidency would look like on “day one.”The spot will be launched in four swing-states –Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa and Virginia — with a $1.2 million buy, CNN reports.A generally positive ad, the narrator outlines different Romney initiatives that he would launch from the start of his time in office, which include approving the Keystone XL pipeline and replacing President Obama’s heath care reform legislation.
• Race issues return with Rev. Jeremiah Wright – Race issues return with Rev. Jeremiah Wright
• Herman Cain: Jeremiah Wright is ‘fair game’ – Herman Cain: Jeremiah Wright is ‘fair game’
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-18 – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-18
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Michael Ramirez on Fast and Furious – Michael Ramirez on Fast and Furious
• Flap’s Dentistry Blog: The Daily Extraction: May 17, 2012 – The Daily Extraction: May 17, 2012
• Explaining Why Minority Births Now Outnumber White Births | Pew Social & Demographic Trends- The changing profile of the nation’s youngest residents also stems from the fact that some groups, especially Hispanics, have higher numbers of children than do non-Hispanic whites. One illustration of this difference is in the “total fertility rate,” or the number of children the average woman is predicted to have in her lifetime, based on current age-specific birth rates. For the U.S. as a whole, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of American Community Survey data, the number is 2.0. (American Community Survey data in this posting come from a Pew Research Center analysis of the 1% sample of the 2010 ACS Integrated Public Use Microdata Series [IPUMS])Among Hispanics, the total fertility rate is 2.4. For non-Hispanic whites and for non-Hispanic Asians, it is 1.8. Non-Hispanic blacks (2.1) have higher fertility than whites but lower fertility than Hispanics.Immigration is an important contributor to higher birth rates among Hispanics, because foreign-born women tend to have more children on average than U.S.-born women. Most growth in the Hispanic population from 2000 to 2010 was due to births, not immigration, a change from the long-time pattern. But most births to Hispanic women are to those born outside the U.S.
• Flapsblog Posts / Born in Kenya, eh???? – Born in Kenya, eh????
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » The Morning Flap: May 17, 2012 – The Morning Flap: May 17, 2012
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Gallup: U.S. Unemployment Decreases Slightly to 8.2% – Gallup: U.S. Unemployment Decreases Slightly to 8.2%
• Capitol Alert: Latinos will soon be California’s largest ethnic group, Census says – Latinos will soon be California’s largest ethnic group, Census says
• Latinos will soon be California’s largest ethnic group, Census says- Latinos will become California’s largest ethnic group very soon, a new Census Bureau report indicates.The bureau issued its first post-2000 census estimates of population growth, birth rates, age cohorts, and racial and ethnic characteristics.It pegs California’s Latino population (it uses the term “Hispanic”) at 14.4 million, 38.2 percent of the state’s 37.7 million residents, while the non-Hispanic white population is just under 15 million or 39.7 percent, dropping below the 40 percent mark for the first time.

  For several years, demographers have predicted that the state’s Latino population would surpass whites by 2015, but the new Census Bureau reports indicates that the crossover may occur somewhat sooner.

  Although immigration from Latin America has slowed to almost a stop, other findings indicate, Latinos tend to be younger than the white population and have much-higher birthrate, thus expanding their population while that of whites continues to shrink..

• USC sued in deaths of 2 students- A wrongful death suit has been filed against USC by the parents of two USC graduate students slain near the campus on April 11.Wanzhi Qu and Xiaohong Fei, father and mother of Ming Qu, and Xiyong Wu and Meinan Yin, parents of Ying Wu, filed the suit Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court. They are seeking unspecified damages.Wu and Qu, both 23-year-old electrical engineering students from China, were fatally shot during a downpour about 1 a.m. while sitting in Qu’s recently purchased 2003 BMW, which was double-parked in the 2700 block of Raymond Avenue.

  Wu was found in the passenger seat and Qu on the steps of a nearby house where he collapsed while trying to summon help, Los Angeles police said.

  USC attorney Debra Wong Yang today issued a statement in response to the suit.

• Flap’s Dentistry Blog: The Morning Drill: May 17, 2012 – The Morning Drill: May 17, 2012
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Day By Day May 17, 2012 – Boom Boom – Day By Day May 17, 2012 – Boom Boom

Tags: California, Census, Democrats, Demographics, Dentistry, GOP, House, Obama, Pinboard Links, Romney, The Morning Flap, USC, Wright

These are my links for April 26th through April 30th:

• Occupy Wall Street plans mass May Day demonstration to shut down NYC – The NYPD is bracing for an attempt by Occupy Wall Street protesters to shut down traffic at arteries across the city during a mass demonstration Tuesday.

  Using websites and pamphlets, OWS organizers are urging people to help block traffic at bridge and tunnel ports to slow people going to work on May Day.

  Protesters — who also plan action in front of several financial buildings — are using the date to strengthen their numbers since the labor movement traditionally holds rallies that day.

  “No work, no school, no shopping, now housework, no compliance,” reads a posting on one OWS-related website. “If you can’t strike call in sick. If you can’t call in sick hold a slow down.”

  Other Occupy websites say protesters will try to blockade city crossings as they did the Brooklyn Bridge in October — when more than 700 people were arrested for marching on the span’s roadway.

  One website also calls for marchers to swarm financial buildings, including the offices of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and the New York Stock Exchange.

  Mayor Bloomberg said the city is prepared to thwart any actions that could cause serious delays in people’s commutes.

  He declined to discuss how authorities have been training to handle any OWS action. But sources said the NYPD conducted a major exercise at Floyd Bennett Field on Wednesday.

• Occupy Wall Street Plans Global Protests in May Day Resurgence – Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, whose anti-greed message spread worldwide during an eight-week encampment in Lower Manhattan last year, plan marches across the globe today calling attention to what they say are abuses of power and wealth.

  Organizers say they hope the coordinated events will mark a spring resurgence of the movement after a quiet winter. Calls for a general strike with no work, no school, no banking and no shopping have sprung up on websites in Toronto, Barcelona, London, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney, among hundreds of cities in North America, Europe and Asia.

  In New York, Occupy Wall Street will join scores of labor organizations observing May 1, traditionally recognized as International Workers’ Day. They plan marches from Union Square to Lower Manhattan and a “pop-up occupation” of Bryant Park on Sixth Avenue, across the street from Bank of America’s Corp.’s 55-story tower.

  “We call upon people to refrain from shopping, walk out of class, take the day off of work and other creative forms of resistance disrupting the status quo,” organizers said in an April 26 e-mail.

  Occupy groups across the U.S. have protested economic disparity, decrying high foreclosure and unemployment rates that hurt average Americans while bankers and financial executives received bonuses and taxpayer-funded bailouts. In the past six months, similar groups, using social media and other tools, have sprung up in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Day By Day April 30, 2012 – Nudge,Nudge – Day By Day April 30, 2012 – Nudge,Nudge
• After Last Night – WH Correspondent’s Dinner – Politically, the most interesting phenomenon last night was the dog jokes. The President himself made three jokes about eating dogs. This represents a victory for new media and especially for Jim Treacher, since liberal news sources like the New York Times and Jon Stewart had studiously tried to pretend that the dog controversy didn’t exist. Obama and Kimmel evidently recognized that Twitter made such pretense impossible. (The New York Times, however, is still holding out.)

  Events like last night’s always leave me feeling in need of a shower. Partly it is because there some truth to Kimmel’s joke, after noting that the room was full of politicians, members of the media and celebrities, that “Everything that is wrong with America is here in this room.” Partly is is due to the sense that everyone involved in the event is pretending. The politicians pretend to engage in self-deprecation that shows they don’t take themselves too seriously. The comics pretend that they are just trying to be funny, lampooning politicians impartially in search of laughs. But, even though some of the lines are indeed funny, the premise of the event is fundamentally false. In fact, politicians, comedians and even the celebrities present are pursuing an agenda that is both self-aggrandizing and political. That is why, I think, such events always leave me feeling unclean.

• The Auto Bailout Bust – President Barack Obama has made the auto bailout a centerpiece of his reelection campaign, using it to bash Republican nominee Mitt Romney. But the tactic may backfire as the general election heats up, public opinion surveys suggest.

  Recent polling from Rasmussen indicates that 59 percent view the bailouts as a “failure” and only 44 percent think the bailouts were “good for America.”

  The administration has already written off $7 billion in taxpayer losses in the American takeover of Chrysler and General Motors; those losses are expected to climb as high as $23 billion—27 percent of the $85 billion spent on the bailout.

  While the bailout is widely credited with saving the two companies, increasing taxpayer losses have made it nearly as unpopular in 2012 as it was when Obama was elected. More than half of Americans still disapprove of the auto bailout compared with 61 percent in 2008.

• On Second Thought, Maybe N.C. Was a Mistake – If national Democratic strategists chose Charlotte, N.C., for the party’s national convention because they liked the facilities, the hotel accommodations or the weather in early September, then I guess I can’t yet quibble with the choice.

  But if David Axelrod and the president’s other political advisers picked the Tar Heel State to make some broader political point, then they goofed.

  Simply put: North Carolina looks like a mess for Democrats.

• Barnes & Noble to spin off digital Nook business, Microsoft will invest $300 million into it | The Verge – RT @verge: Barnes & Noble to spin off digital Nook business, Microsoft will invest $300 million into it
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-04-30 – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-04-30
• Untitled (http://getglue.com/Fullosseousflap/stickers/amc/the_killing_openings?s=ts&ref=Fullosseousflap) – I unlocked the The Killing: Openings sticker on @GetGlue!
• Maybe no housing rebound for a generation: Shiller – The Housing market is likely to remain weak and may take a generation or more to rebound, Yale economics professor Robert Shiller told Reuters Insider on Tuesday.

  Shiller, the co-creator of the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index, said a weak labor market, high gas prices and a general sense of unease among consumers was outweighing low mortgage rates and would likely keep a lid on prices for the foreseeable future.

• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Day By Day April 29, 2012 – Man of Steal – Day By Day April 29, 2012 – Man of Steal
• Sweet revenge: Dentist pulls ALL of ex-boyfriend’s teeth out after getting dumped  – NY Daily News – Sweet revenge: Dentist pulls ALL of ex-boyfriend’s teeth out after getting dumped  – NY Daily News
• Sweet revenge: Dentist pulls ALL of ex-boyfriend’s teeth out after getting dumped  – NY Daily News – Sweet revenge: Dentist pulls ALL of ex-boyfriend’s teeth out after getting dumped  – NY Daily News
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-04-29 – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-04-29
• Sweet revenge: Dentist pulls ALL of ex-boyfriend’s teeth out after getting dumped  – NY Daily News – Sweet revenge: Dentist pulls ALL of ex-boyfriend’s teeth out after getting dumped 
• Sweet revenge: Dentist pulls ALL of ex-boyfriend’s teeth out after getting dumped  – Revenge is a dish best served with novocaine.

  A dentist in Poland, dumped by her boyfriend, got payback by removing all of her former lover’s teeth — leading his new lady to dump him, too.

  Anna Mackowiak could face three years in jail after she agreed to treat her ex-boyfriend, Marek Olszewski, when he asked her to help with a toothache just days after he broke up with her.

  “I tried to be professional and detach myself from my emotions,” Mackowiak, 34, told the Daily Mail. “But when I saw him lying there I just thought, ‘What a bastard.’”

  Mackowiak then allegedly gave Olszewski, 45, a massive dose of anaesthetic and coldly plucked out his teeth one by one.

  She then wrapped his jaw in bandages to prevent him from opening his mouth — and then simply walked away.

  “I knew something was wrong because when I woke up I couldn’t feel any teeth and my jaw was strapped up with bandages,” Olszewski told the British newspaper.

  But he did not realize the horror of what happened until he got back to his Wroclaw apartment.

• Political Cartoons / Obama is just too cool….. – Obama is just too cool…..
• Amazon Softens Stance on Taxes – Amazon.com Inc. reached an agreement with Texas officials Friday to begin collecting sales taxes in the state starting in July and appears to be backing away from its long-held opposition to tax collection in states where it has warehouses and other facilities.
  With the deal, the Seattle-based company is on track to collect sales taxes in 12 states, which make up about 40% of the U.S. population, by 2016. Amazon currently collects taxes in five states. Since 2011, it has reached agreements with seven other states, including Texas, to begin tax collection over the next four years.
• “Amazon tax” struck down in Illinois in boost for affiliates – GeekWire – “Amazon tax” struck down in Illinois in boost for affiliates
• Amazon settles with Texas over sales tax – Amazon has reached another settlement over state taxes, this time with Texas.

  Reuters reports that the giant e-tailer will start collecting sales tax in Texas come July 1, as part of a settlement that requires Amazon to bring 2,500 jobs and $200 million in capital investment to the state over the next four years.

  In exchange for the jobs and money, Texas State Comptroller Susan Combs is dropping the state’s demand for $269 million to cover sales taxes from 2005 to 2009, Reuters reports.

  Amazon struck a deal with the state of Nevada earlier in the week whereby it will begin collecting sales taxes there on January 1, 2014. It also reached an agreement with California last September that gave it another year before it has to begin collecting sales taxes in that state.

  Things went the other way in Illinois yesterday, when a judge there called unconstitutional a law designed to let the state collect sales tax from out-of-state, online retailers.

• “Amazon tax” struck down in Illinois in boost for affiliates – The state of Illinois has lost a lawsuit against the state’s attempt to collect sales tax from out-of-state, online retailers — a law often called the “Amazon tax.”

  The Performance Marketing Association, which represents affiliate marketers such as those working with Amazon, had challenged the 2011 law that created the Illinois Affiliate Nexus Tax. A Cook County Circuit judge ruled the law unconstitutional because, according to Crain’s Chicago Business, “simply having an affiliated company in the state that makes sales or refers customers to an online retailer doesn’t create enough of a presence, or nexus, for tax purposes.”

  The judge also said the law was unenforceable because of a federal Internet tax moratorium that is in place through 2014.

• Gregory Flap @ Ronnie’s Diner – foursquare – 8 miler in the books. Now at Ronnie’s with Alice and Nancy (@ Ronnie’s Diner)
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-04-28 – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-04-28
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » IN-Sen: Sarah Palin Endorses Richard Mourdock – IN-Sen: Sarah Palin Endorses Richard Mourdock
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Day By Day April 27, 2012 – Fantasy Friday-Public Served – Day By Day April 27, 2012 – Fantasy Friday-Public Served
• CA-26: NRCC gives 3 ‘contender’ status – The National Republican Congressional Committee has given three GOP House challengers “contender” status, the third out of four steps in the “Young Guns” program to recruit new and viable Republican candidates.

  Republicans Tony Strickland in California, Jason Plummer in Illinois and Matt Doheny in New York were all elevated to the next level of the program Thursday.

  The candidates will face new benchmarks for fundraising and recruiting before attaining “Young Guns” status.

• CA-26: Dog Is as Dog Does – How a live-free-or-die dude like Strickland came to be a born-again Nanny State zealot, however, is not so mysterious. It turns out he’s now running for a congressional seat in Ventura, and his chief Democratic rival, Julia Brownley, led the charge to ban plastic bags statewide while in the Assembly. Not only that, but Brownley is now pushing a much softer and kinder bill to define what constitutes a reusable bag. Brownley’s bill would require such bags be strong enough to carry 22 pounds more than 100 times for a distance of 175 feet. Rather than require a warning label designed to scare off possible users, Brownley’s bill would mandate bags to come with a tag identifying its country of origin and stating no lead, cadmium, other toxic heavy metals designed to sap one’s wits were used in its manufacture.

  Just remember there are 41 shopping days left between now and the June primary. I’ll do my part by shopping with a cross-contaminated, lead-based bag. You can spot me huffing by the broccoli section at Trader Joe’s. Please do not disturb. I already am.

• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » CA-26: Linda Parks and Her Cable Television ONLY Campaign Strategy – CA-26: Linda Parks and Her Cable Television ONLY Campaign Strategy
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » The Morning Flap: April 26, 2012 – The Morning Flap: April 26, 2012

Tags: Amazon, Amazon_Tax, Brownley, CA-26, Democrats, Dentistry, Economy, Housing, Kimmel, Obama, Occupy, Pinboard Links, Strickland, The Morning Flap

A US Border vehicle drives along the US and Mexico border fence in Naco, Arizona, Photo: Reuters

These are my links for April 23rd through April 24th:

• For first time since Depression, more Mexicans leave U.S. than enter – A four-decade tidal wave of Mexican immigration to the United States has receded, causing a historic shift in migration patterns as more Mexicans appear to be leaving the United States for Mexico than the other way around, according to a report from the Pew Hispanic Center.

  It looks to be the first reversal in the trend since the Depression, and experts say that a declining Mexican birthrate and other factors may make it permanent.

• Net Migration from Mexico Falls to Zero—and Perhaps Less | – The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill. After four decades that brought 12 million current immigrants—more than half of whom came illegally—the net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped—and may have reversed, according to a new analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of multiple government data sets from both countries.

  The standstill appears to be the result of many factors, including the weakened U.S. job and housing construction markets, heightened border enforcement, a rise in deportations, the growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings, the long-term decline in Mexico’s birth rates and changing economic conditions in Mexico.

  The report is based on the Center’s analysis of data from five different Mexican government sources and four U.S. government sources. The Mexican data come from the Mexican Decennial Censuses (Censos de Población y Vivienda), the Mexican Population Counts (Conteos de Población y Vivienda), the National Survey of Demographic Dynamics (Encuesta Nacional de la Dinámica Demográfica or ENADID), the National Survey of Occupation and Employment (Encuesta Nacional de Ocupación y Empleo or ENOE), and the Survey on Migration at the Northern Border of Mexico (Encuesta sobre Migración en la Frontera Norte de México or EMIF-Norte). The U.S. data come from the 2010 Census, the American Community Survey, the Current Population Survey and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

• California’s Demographic Revolution by Heather Mac Donald – California is in the middle of a far-reaching demographic shift: Hispanics, who already constitute a majority of the state’s schoolchildren, will be a majority of its workforce and of its population in a few decades. This is an even more momentous development than it seems. Unless Hispanics’ upward mobility improves, the state risks becoming more polarized economically and more reliant on a large government safety net. And as California goes, so goes the nation, whose own Hispanic population shift is just a generation or two behind.

  The scale and speed of the Golden State’s ethnic transformation are unprecedented. In the 1960s, Los Angeles was the most Anglo-Saxon of the nation’s ten largest cities; today, Latinos make up nearly half of the county’s residents and one-third of its voting-age population. A full 55 percent of Los Angeles County’s child population has immigrant parents. California’s schools have the nation’s largest concentration of “English learners,” students from homes where a language other than English is regularly spoken. From 2000 to 2010, the state’s Hispanic population grew 28 percent, to reach 37.6 percent of all residents, almost equal to the shrinking white population’s 40 percent. Nearly half of all California births today are Hispanic. The signs of the change are everywhere—from the commercial strips throughout the state catering to Spanish-speaking customers, to the flea markets and illegal vendors in such areas as MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, to the growing reach of the Spanish-language media.

• Are Hispanics moving up or down the social scale? – Arguably, Hispanics received the most benefit and the most harm from subprime lending during the Housing Bubble.

  A 2005 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York of 75,744 minority subprime loan borrowers found the largest percentage was Hispanic (15,647 loans or 20.7 percent). This study found no evidence of adverse pricing of subprime loans by race or ethnicity and minority borrowers paid lower rates.

  A 2008 study by the U.S. Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C. found Southern California was the hot spot for the most subprime loans in all of the United States in 2005. And out of the top 10 cities with the most subprime loans, six were in California (percent of Hispanic population in parentheses): Riverside (45 percent), Bakersfield (45.5 percent), Stockton (37.6 percent), Modesto (35.5 percent), Fresno (50.3 percent) and Visalia (46.0 percent). Where Hispanics got into trouble had more to do with home equity loans than primary home purchase loans.

  Hispanics were hit hardest with foreclosures after the Housing Bubble popped.

  If the Housing Bubble demonstrated anything, it is that Hispanics suffered not from too little, but too much, upward mobility by government-induced home ownership policies.

• Boston Qualifying Rate Drops by a Third – Some interesting data-crunching from Ray Charbonneau, who blogs at Y42K?: If you compare the 2011 and 2012 fields of some major marathons, you’ll find the Boston qualifying rate on average has dropped by about a third. Charbonneau excludes the results from this year’s Houston Marathon—where qualifying rates actually went up—assuming that the Olympic Marathon Trials helped attract some higher-caliber athletes than the 2011 race. He also excludes results from this year’s exceptionally warm Boston Marathon and National Marathon in Washington, D.C., where qualifying rates dropped even more than a third. The stricter qualifying standards the B.A.A. put into place for the 2013 Boston Marathon (which went into effect last September) lowered qualifying times across all age groups by five minutes and 59 seconds. Based on Charbonneau’s results, this drop should eliminate about a third of all previous qualifiers.
• Rethinking the Hispanic Vote – For Republicans, the illegal immigration litmus test, forcing conservative candidates to toe a hardline on the issue, could very well recede in the near future. A January Pew poll showed the number of Republicans considering illegal immigration as a top issue has plummeted, dropping from 69 percent in 2007 to 48 percent at the beginning of this year. The future Republican positioning on immigration could very well be closer to the policy views of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio than that of hardliners like Iowa Rep. Steve King.

  The long-term political implications are equally significant. Democrats have counted Hispanics as a pivotal part of their coalition, but there’s no guarantee that as first-generation immigrants assimilate, they will remain reliable partisan voters. Indeed, a complementary Pew Hispanic Center study, released last month, showed immigrants becoming more Republican the longer they’ve been in this country — a similar narrative to other first-generation ethnic groups.

• Protest by Catholic activists may hamper Obama reelection bid – President Obama has seen his standing among Catholic voters, a crucial segment of the electorate, slip in recent weeks, and a looming confrontation with Catholic activists could make it worse.

  Democrats want voters this year to focus on what they have branded a war on women, but the flip side of the debate — the so-called war on religion — is not going away anytime soon.

  Earlier this month, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called for two weeks of public protest in June and July against what it sees as growing government encroachment on religious freedom.

  The protests are expected to include priests and nuns and thousands of Catholic parishioners. Some activists expect civil disobedience, which could lead to powerful images of priests and nuns being led away in hand restraints.

• Capitol Alert: Measure to repeal death penalty in California qualifies for ballot – Capitol Alert: Measure to repeal death penalty in California qualifies for ballot
• Pew: immigration from Mexico drops to net zero – Immigration from Mexico has reached a net zero, with as many Mexicans moving back to Mexico as are entering the United States, according to the Pew Research Center’s Jeffrey Passel, a highly regarded demographer who used data from both countries.

  The report released Wednesday cited several possible reasons, including, “the weakened U.S. job and housing construction markets, heightened border enforcement, a rise in deportations, the growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings, the long-term decline in Mexico’s birth rates and changing economic conditions in Mexico.”

• California prisons detail plan to downsize, cut costs – The California prison system on Monday unveiled an extensive plan to cut spending by billions of dollars, close a prison and return inmates being housed out of state — all while meeting court-ordered benchmarks on medical care and overcrowding.

  In three years, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is expected to be 7.5% of the state’s total budget, down from an estimated 9.4% in the upcoming fiscal year. This is largely because of realignment, the process of sending low-level offenders to local jails instead of state prisons to comply with a court order to reduce chronic overcrowding.

  “California is finally getting its prison costs under control and taking the necessary steps to meet federal court mandates,” Gov. Jerry Brown said in a statement.

  Some parts of the state’s plan will require consent from the Legislature, and its success also hinges in part on court approval. Although the court ordered California to reduce its inmate population to 137.5% of prison capacity, the state expects to fall slightly short, at 141% — a difference of up to 6,000 inmates — by the June 2013 deadline.

  Corrections Secretary Matt Cate said the state will ask the court to raise its benchmark next year.

• Measure to repeal death penalty in California qualifies for ballot – Californians voters going to the polls in November will again decide the fate of the death penalty.

  A measure to abolish the death penalty and replace it with a maximum sentence of life behind bars without parole has qualified for the Nov. 6 ballot, the Secretary of State confirmed today. The measure, backed by a coalition that includes the American Civil Liberties Union and some law enforcement and victims rights groups, would apply to inmates currently on death row.

  Supporters say capital punishment, which voters added to the state’s books in 1978, costs California more than $100 million a year while leading to very few executions because of the time it takes to go through the appeals process.

• The politics of death penalty heads to November ballot – Almost 34 years to the day California voters decided that the state’s worst crimes should be punished by execution, the repeal of that same punishment will be back on the statewide ballot.

  State elections officials confirmed late Monday that an initiative to abolish capital punishment in California has qualified for the November ballot, with supporters having gathered more than enough voter signatures to call the question.

  The initiative would not only repeal the death penalty but would also convert the sentences of all 724 inmates currently on Death Row to life without the possibility of parole. It would further commit $30 million a year for three years to local law enforcement efforts on unsolved murder and rape crimes.

• Medscape: Medscape Access – Medscape: Medscape Access
• Poll: Obama ahead in battleground New Hampshire – CNN Political Ticker – CNN.com Blogs – RT @PoliticalTicker: Poll: Obama ahead in battleground New Hampshire -
• Doctors say teens go to hospitals after drinking hand sanitizer – Doctors are warning parents about a dangerous new trend after six teenagers drank hand sanitizer and ended up in San Fernando Valley emergency rooms with alcohol poisoning.

  Teenagers are using salt to separate the alcohol from the sanitizer, doctors said.

  “It’s essentially a shot of hard liquor,” said Cyrus Rangan, director of the toxicology bureau for the Los Angeles County public health department and a medical toxicology consultant for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. “All it takes is just a few swallows and you have a drunk teenager.”

  Although there have been only a few cases, Rangan said the practice could easily become a larger problem. Bottles of hand sanitizers are inexpensive and accessible and teens can find instructions on distillation on the Internet.

• Medscape: Medscape Access – Unexplained Infant Deaths Often Linked to Bed Sharing
• Medscape: Medscape Access – Big Tobacco Groups Fear Spread of Plain Packaging
• Humor / Not the ol’ bag over the head trick…. – Not the ol’ bag over the head trick….
• Unexplained Infant Deaths Often Linked to Bed Sharing – Among infants who have died suddenly and unexpectedly, most were sharing a sleep surface with another child or adult, and only one fourth were sleeping in a crib or on their back when found, according to a new report.

  Results were published in the American Journal of Public Health online April 19. The study was conducted by Patricia G. Schnitzer, PhD, from the Sinclair School of Nursing, University of Missouri, Columbia, and colleagues.

  According to the researchers, more than 4000 infants without prior known illness or injury die suddenly and unexpectedly each year in the United States.

  The researchers found that only about one fourth of infants were sleeping in a crib or on their back when found, but 70% were on a surface not intended for infant sleep, such as an adult bed. Of note, 64% of infants were sharing a sleep surface, and of those, nearly half were sleeping with an adult.

  One study limitation, among others, is the possible lack of generalizability because the data were as drawn from only 9 states.

  “Infants whose deaths were classified as suffocation or undetermined cause were significantly more likely than were infants whose deaths were classified as SIDS to be found on a surface not intended for infant sleep and to be sharing that sleep surface,” Dr. Schnitzer and colleagues note.

• Big Tobacco Groups Fear Spread of Plain Packaging – The world’s top tobacco groups fear if new rules on plain packaging take hold in Australia and Britain they may spread to higher-growth and potentially more lucrative emerging markets and put a curb on their future profits growth.

  Health campaigners are pushing for tobacco companies to package their cigarettes in plain packs displaying the product name in a standard typeface and with graphic health warnings as a way of discouraging youngsters from taking up smoking.

  Australia aims to become the first nation in the world to force tobacco groups to sell cigarettes in these plain, brand-free packets by December this year, while Britain this week launched a three-month consultation over the issue.

• Smoking Cessation Worth It Despite Dim Outcomes – Drugs and counseling to help patients stop smoking typically double the odds of success relative to solo cold-turkey attempts, but success rates still seldom exceed 20%, a researcher said here.

  The bottom-line message: “Keep trying,” said Michael K. Ong, MD, PhD, of the University of California Los Angeles, in a presentation at the American College of Physicians’ annual meeting.

  Existing approaches to smoking cessation will remain the best available for the foreseeable future, Ong suggested, and even though their effectiveness is modest at best, they are better than letting patients fend for themselves.

  He noted that clinicians are often reluctant to assist patients with these problems. A recent CDC survey found that only about half of smokers who saw a health professional in the previous year reported being advised to quit.

  An earlier survey identified a series of reasons that physicians had for not offering to help with smoking cessation, such as they’re too busy; the services are not billable; it’s a futile effort; and patients may be scared away.

• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Video: Rudy Giuliani Finally Endorses Mitt Romney on Eve of New York Primary Election – Video: Rudy Giuliani Finally Endorses Mitt Romney on Eve of New York Primary Election
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » President 2012 Poll Watch: Arizona in Play? – President 2012 Poll Watch: Arizona in Play?
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » CA-Sen: Conservative California Republican Assembly Endorses Al Ramirez for U.S. Senate – Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » CA-Sen: Conservative California Republican Assembly Endorses Al Ra…
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » CA-Sen: Conservative California Republican Assembly Endorses Al Ramirez for U.S. Senate – Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » CA-Sen: Conservative California Republican Assembly Endorses Al Ra…
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » CA-Sen: Conservative California Republican Assembly Endorses Al Ramirez for U.S. Senate – Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » CA-Sen: Conservative California Republican Assembly Endorses Al Ra…
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » CA-Sen: Conservative California Republican Assembly Endorses Al Ramirez for U.S. Senate – RE:  No, I don’t see much support out there for Dr. Orly.

  But, does it matter much who the candidate is, when runnin…

• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » CA-26: Linda Parks Fights Back Against Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – CA-26: Linda Parks Fights Back Against Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » The Morning Flap: April 23, 2012 – The Morning Flap: April 23, 2012
• AT&T wields enormous power in Sacramento – As the sun set behind Monterey Bay on a cool night last year, dozens of the state’s top lawmakers and lobbyists ambled onto the 17th fairway at Pebble Beach for a round of glow-in-the-dark golf.

  With luminescent balls soaring into the sky, the annual fundraiser known as the Speaker’s Cup was in full swing.

  Lawmakers, labor-union champions and lobbyists gather each year at the storied course to schmooze, show their skill on the links and rejuvenate at a 22,000-square-foot spa. The affair, which typically raises more than $1 million for California Democrats, has been sponsored for more than a decade by telecommunications giant AT&T.

  At the 2010 event, AT&T’s president and the state Assembly speaker toured Pebble Beach together in a golf cart, shaking hands with every lawmaker, lobbyist and other VIP in attendance.

  The Speaker’s Cup is the centerpiece of a corporate lobbying strategy so comprehensive and successful that it has rewritten the special-interest playbook in Sacramento. When it comes to state government, AT&T spends more money, in more places, than any other company.

• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » CA-Sen: Conservative California Republican Assembly Endorses Al Ramirez for U.S. Senate – CA-Sen: Conservative California Republican Assembly Endorses Al Ramirez for U.S. Senate
• Flap’s California Morning Collection: April 23, 2012 » Flap’s California Blog – Flap’s California Morning Collection: April 23, 2012 via @flap

Tags: Alcohol, ATT, California, California_Prisons, Catholic, Death_Penalty, Democrats, GOP, Health, Hispanics, immigration, Infants, Initiative, Jerry_Brown, Latinos, Mexico, Obama, Pinboard Links, President_2012, Running, Smoking, SUID, The Morning Flap, Tobacco

President Barack Obama speaks at the southern site of the Keystone XL pipeline, on March 22, in Cushing, Oklahoma. Obama was pressing federal agencies to expedite the section of the Keystone XL pipeline between Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast.

These are my links for April 19th through April 20th:

• Obama faces defeat on Keystone pipeline – While much of the political world obsesses over Twitter fights and Seamus the dog, Barack Obama has set himself up for a high-profile defeat on one of the most important issues of the campaign.

  The president has put his feet in cement in opposition to the Keystone oil pipeline. But on Capitol Hill, more and more Democrats are joining Republicans to force approval of the pipeline, whether Obama wants it or not.

  The latest action happened Wednesday, when the House passed a measure to move the pipeline forward. Before the vote, Obama issued a veto threat. The House approved the pipeline anyway — by a veto-proof majority, 293 to 127. Sixty-nine Democrats abandoned the president to vote with Republicans. That’s a lot of defections.

  When the House voted on the pipeline in July of last year, 47 Democrats broke with the president. Now that it’s an election year and the number is up to 69, look for Republicans to hold more pipeline votes before November. GOP leaders expect even more Democrats to join them.

• Tommy Christopher: Don’t Say Obama Is Not Working, Or You Are a Racist – Ah, good old Tommy Christopher. Don’t criticize the black president, you damn racists!

  Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney rolled out a new accessory at a speech in Ohio today, delivering his remarks in front of a black banner that said “Obama Isn’t Working,” which is also the name of a website his campaign set up several months ago (in case you didn’t get the message from the banner, it was also on the front of Romney’s podium).

  The slogan is a multiple entendre, but one of those entendres, intentionally or not, is evocative of a nasty racial stereotype about black men.

• Flap’s California Morning Collection: April 20, 2012 » Flap’s California Blog – Flap’s California Morning Collection: April 20, 2012 via @flap
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Montana Democrat Governor Brian Schweitzer Calls Out Mitt Romney’s Mormon “Polygamy” Past – Montana Democrat Governor Brian Schweitzer Calls Out Mitt Romney’s Mormon “Polygamy” Past
• Brian Schweitzer: Mitt Romney’s ‘Family Came From a Polygamy Commune in Mexico’ – The Daily Beast – Some Civility: Democrat Montana Gov Brian Schweitzer: Mitt Romney’s ‘Family Came From a Polygamy Commune in Mexico’
• Mitt Romney’s challenge: Convincing GOP he can win – An increasing number of Democrats are taking potshots at President Obama’s healthcare law ahead of a Supreme Court decision that could overturn it.

  The public grievances have come from centrists and liberals and reflect rising anxiety ahead of November’s elections.

• High Testosterone – Charlie Cook – NationalJournal.com – RT @nationaljournal: Cook: Romney’s Got Men in the Bag; Time to Focus on Women.
• Democrats expressing buyers’ remorse on Obama’s healthcare law – An increasing number of Democrats are taking potshots at President Obama’s healthcare law ahead of a Supreme Court decision that could overturn it.

  The public grievances have come from centrists and liberals and reflect rising anxiety ahead of November’s elections.

• Matthew Tully: Daniels has a few suggestions | Indianapolis Star | indystar.com – RT @chucktodd: Mitch Daniels critiques Romney for not talking enough about folks who haven’t yet “achieved.” // #of …
• RNC looks to Facebook for political edge – CNN Political Ticker – CNN.com Blogs – RT @PoliticalTicker: RNC looks to Facebook for political edge
• Romney’s Father Came from “Polygamy Commune” – Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) told the Daily Beast that Mittt Romney would have a “tall order to position Hispanics to vote for him” even though his father was born in Mexico.

  Schweitzer admitted that it is “kinda ironic given that his family came from a polygamy commune in Mexico, but then he’d have to talk about his family coming from a polygamy commune in Mexico, given the gender discrepancy.”

  Schweitzer noted that women are “not great fans of polygamy, 86 percent were not great fans of polygamy. I am not alleging by any stretch that Romney is a polygamist and approves of [the] polygamy lifestyle, but his father was born into [a] polygamy commune in Mexico.”

• Mickey Kaus: No Romney Immigration Pivot Needed – Thank You! – No Pivot Needed: Mitt Romney has taken a harder line on illegal immigration than expected, which has led many commentators to declare that the primaries have hurt his chances by drawing him too far in that direction (costing him support among Latino voters, especially). Yet today’s Quinnipiac poll finds Romney favored over Obama on the issue of … immigration (by a margin of 43% to 39%, about the same lead that Romney has on “the economy”). He’s ahead by fifteen points on the immigration issue among independents. … So why is a “pivot” on immigration needed, again? … What good is Hispandering if it wins Romney New Mexico but costs him Ohio? …
• AD-38: Scott Wilk Announces Republican Assembly Endorsements » Flap’s California Blog – AD-38: Scott Wilk Announces Republican Assembly Endorsements via @flap
• California Lottery “Lady Luck” Ad Under Fire from Legislative Women’s Caucus » Flap’s California Blog – California Lottery via @flap
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » California Fair Political Practices Commission Chairwoman Ann Ravel Calls for Blogger Political Disclosure – California Fair Political Practices Commission Chairwoman Ann Ravel Calls for Blogger Political Disclosure
• The 2012–13 California Budget: Unwinding Redevelopment – On February 1, 2012, all redevelopment agencies in California were dissolved and the process for unwinding their financial affairs began. Given the scope of these agencies’ funds, assets, and financial obligations, the unwinding process will take time. Prior to their dissolution, redevelopment agencies (RDAs) received over $5 billion in property tax revenues annually and had tens of billions of dollars of outstanding bonds, contracts, and loans.

  This report reviews the history of RDAs, the events that led to their dissolution, and the process communities are using to resolve their financial obligations. Over time, as these obligations are paid off, schools and other local agencies will receive the property tax revenues formerly distributed to RDAs.

  The report discusses these major findings:

  Although ending redevelopment was not the Legislature’s objective, the state had few practical alternatives.
  Ending redevelopment changes the distribution of property tax revenues among local agencies, but not the amount of tax revenues raised.
  Decisions about redevelopment replacement programs merit careful review.
  The decentralized process for unwinding redevelopment promotes a needed local debate over the use of the property tax.
  Key state and local choices will drive the state fiscal effect.
  The report recommends the Legislature amend the redevelopment dissolution legislation to address timing issues, clarify the treatment of pass–through payments, and address key concerns of redevelopment bond investors.

• California Recovery: No, It Is Not East vs. West – There are two reasonable measures of recovery, jobs and real estate values. You can forget the real estate values measure. Values throughout California are down from pre-recession highs. They are down a lot. Only San Francisco and Marin counties, with median home prices down 27.7 percent and 32.3 percent, respectively, have seen net median home price declines of less than 40 percent. Monterey and Madera counties top the state in median home price declines, in excess of 67 percent.

  So let’s use jobs. An area has recovered if it has as many jobs today as it had at the beginning of the recession, December 2008.

  We monitor 37 California MSAs. Combined they represent about 96 percent of California’s population. By jobs, only one of California’s larger MSAs has recovered, and that county does not fit the story. Not only is Kings County not on the ocean, it doesn’t even border or have a naturally occurring year-round piece of water. Kings County, with 37,700 jobs, has about 900 more jobs than it had at the beginning of the recession. Still, Kings County’s unemployment rate is 17 percent. Some recovery!

• Power of Direct Mail to Qualify Initiatives Highlighted in Brown’s Desperate Move – Jerry Brown’s decision to mail petitions in support of his tax Increase ballot measure, discussed by George Skelton in a recent column, was made out of fear or desperation. Fear that the street gathered signatures would fall short of those needed, or desperation because they know there will otherwise be a shortfall.

  For Brown the last minute decision to go with a compromise initiative prohibited a choice on the use of direct mail. However, foolishly for most ballot measure proponents, fear or desperation is now the moving factor in virtually all use of large-scale ballot qualification petition mailings.

  Even when time permits, ballot measure proponents rarely even test mailed petitions. Why? Because it is just so bloody easy to place one call to any of several very capable companies that handle every aspect of paid signature qualification. For the consultants, no muss, no fuss, virtually no work and probably the same fees will be realized. And it is an easy sell to the measure’s proponents, as the initial cost of paid signature gathering is often lower. Paid signatures are the conventional, accepted way to go…no need to think or act outside the box.

  But the hidden price paid is very dear indeed!

  My former partners Arnold Forde and Stu Mollrich and I started using mailed petitions as a first option, and were the first to entirely qualify ballot measures by mail. The reason we did so was simply because it so much better served our client’s interests.

• Flap’s Dentistry Blog: Periodontal Disease Causing Heart Disease: Not Worth Stressing Out About It – Periodontal Disease Causing Heart Disease: Not Worth Stressing Out About It
• Police: Woman arrested for biting during parking spot fight in San Francisco – San Jose Mercury News – Not More Dog Stuff – no, wait…Police: Woman arrested for biting during parking spot fight in San Francisco
• Christie Would Help Romney the Most – Abs. Correct RT @politicalwire: New poll finds the running mate who would help Mitt Romney the most is Chris Christie
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Video: Civility in the Wisconsin Recall of Scott Walker? Uh No… – Video: Civility in the Wisconsin Recall of Scott Walker? Uh No…
• Penis picture, gay sex descriptions among sexual harassment allegations against NC Democrat – A bombshell letter from the former North Carolina Democratic Party (NCDP) communications staffer to now-former NCDP Executive Director Jay Parmley detailing the allegations of sexual harassment has surfaced.

  In the letter, dated Dec. 8, 2011 — which local news outlet WRAL first published with redactions of alleged victim Adriadn Ortega’s name — Ortega alleges that Parmley “frequently gave me unwanted shoulder rubs despite my verbal objections” and that Parmley “often solicited my opinion on his clothes.”

  “He would point both hands to his crotch area and ask me how his crotch looked in those pants that day,” Ortega wrote, adding that Parmley “would frequently pretend to punch my crotch and make a popping noise with his mouth.”

  “On July 28, 2011, the executive director discussed, in detail, his sexual activities from the past when he was living in South Carolina,” Ortega then said. “In addition, he discussed in detail his sexual activities from when he moved to North Carolina, where he solicited sex from gay websites such as [REDACTED].”

  The next day — on July 29, 2011 — Ortega alleged that Parmley “showed me a picture of a penis.”

• Cantor: GOP will expand majority – House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Thursday he is confident that Republicans will not just hold but will expand their majority in the lower chamber in November.

  “I’m very bullish on the House,” Cantor said at an event in downtown Washington. “I am very confident that we will strengthen our majority.”

  The second-ranking House Republican said he believes the GOP will be on offense in 30 to 40 districts with the goal of adding to its 242 House seats. His comments stand in contrast to those of many political analysts, who project that Democrats will gain seats in November but fall short of wresting back control of the House.

• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » President 2012: The Coming Conservative Landslide? – President 2012: The Coming Conservative Landslide?
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » The Morning Flap: April 19, 2012 – The Morning Flap: April 19, 2012
• Marco Rubio Says He Would Turn Down VP Slot If Asked – Sen. Marco Rubio said today he would decline any offer from Mitt Romney to be a part of the GOP ticket this fall.

  “I don’t want to be the vice president,” the Florida Republican said during an interview with Major Garrett of the National Journal.

  “So, if Mitt Romney asks, you will you say no?” Garrett asked.

  “Yes. But you know he’s not going to ask. That doesn’t work. He’s watching this interview right now,” Rubio, 40, responded.

  Rubio even went as far as suggesting another U.S. Senator for Romney to consider in his VP vetting – Ohio Senator Rob Portman.

  “The bigger point is we’ve got a lot of really talented people out there that Mitt Romney can get to pick from. And I think a lot, Senator Rob Portman would be a phenomenal choice for vice president, that’s where I would encourage him to look because I’m enjoying my service in the senate.”

  Rubio’s name is often floated in the top tier list of potential vice presidential candidates, but the Florida senator has not been shy about his disinterest in the position. Rubio instead says he wants to focus on advancing policy in the senate, joking that if he were running as vice president, he’d have to answer a lot of questions about dogs, a topic which has consumed both parties in the past week.

• Obama and Romney campaigns go to dogs with canine cracks – NYPOST.com – Ha Ha Bam Bites Dog RT @jamestaranto: The Sean Delonas cartoon is sublime.
• Rubio: Arizona Immigration Law is Not Model for Nation – Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said Thursday that he did not view Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigration as a “model,’’ distancing himself from presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who has embraced the legislation.

  The Cuban-American senator, who spoke at The University of Phoenix/National Journal’s Next America’ forum in Washington, D.C., is viewed as a top name on Romney’s vice presidential shortlist.

  Rubio said he understood why frustration with illegal immigration led Arizona to pass a law allowing local police to demand proof of citizenship. He also disagreed with the Obama administration’s contention that the law is unconstitutional. But he added, “I do not believe (laws like the one in Arizona) should be a model for the country.’’

  As a Senate candidate in 2010, Rubio vacillated on the Arizona law. He initially expressed some concerns but later said he would have voted for it.

  Rubio’s reservations about the law come at a time when polls show the Republican Party facing a yawning deficit of support among Hispanic voters. Both national parties have launched national campaigns to reach out to the Hispanic community, the fastest growing part of the electorate and the key to victory in a number of swing states.

  Democrats have been zealously attacking Republican opposition to the DREAM Act, potentially popular legislation that would grant citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants who go to college or enroll in the military. In recent weeks, Rubio has started countering the criticism by proposing an alternative that would allow these children to obtain legal status but not citizenship.

• Flap’s Dentistry Blog: The Morning Drill: April 19, 2012 – The Morning Drill: April 19, 2012
• Untitled (http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/19/4425366/calderon-family-looks-to-extend.html#mi_rss=State%20Politics) – Calderon family looks to extend legacy in California Legislature #catcot
• Rasmussen Consumer Index – Rasmussen Reports™ – RT @RasmussenPoll: 13% Rate U.S. #Economy As Good or Excellent…
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Day By Day April 19, 2012 – What is it Good For? – Day By Day April 19, 2012 – What is it Good For?

Tags: #catcot, Brown, California, Cantor, Democrats, Economy, GOP, House, immigration, Initiative, Kaus, Keystone, Obama, Obamacare, of, Pinboard Links, Racist, RDA, Redevelopment, Romney, Rubio, The Morning Flap

These are my links for April 12th through April 13th:

• Obama Family Tax Shelter – First family transfers wealth, avoids taxes – President Obama and his wife, Michele, gave a total of $48,000 in tax-free gifts to their daughters, according to tax records made public on Friday.

  The president and his wife separately gave each daughter a $12,000 gift under a section of the federal tax code that exempts such donations from federal taxes.

  There is nothing illegal about the president’s taking advantage of this tax shelter, but it does raise eyebrows given that he has lamented the myriad tax exemptions used by the wealthy—“millionaires and billionaires” like himself—to pay less in taxes. He has yet to propose a comprehensive plan to reform the byzantine tax code.

  The Obama’s tax return indicates that the gifts, likely for their daughter’s college educations, began in 2007, when the maximum exemptible amount was $24,000 per couple. The maximum exemption has since increased to $26,000 per couple.

  The Obamas paid a total federal tax rate of 20.5 percent on a gross adjusted income $789,674, which would typically fall within the top federal rate of 35 percent. According to an analysis of the president’s tax return, he may have paid a lower rate than his secretary despite making more than eight times as much money as she did.

  His most recent tax proposal—the so-called “Buffett Rule”—would increase taxes on about 4,000 millionaires and raise about $4.7 billion in new revenue per year, enough to cover about 0.4 percent of the projected budget deficit in 2012. Though the rule would apparently not hit the president himself.

• Obama Releases Taxes, Does Not Qualify for Buffett Rule – President Obama earned $789,674 in 2011, the White House announced on Friday. However, with this income, he does not even qualify for the so-called Buffett Rule that he has promoted relentlessly and the Senate will take up on Monday.

  The Buffett Rule calls for those making over $1 million a year to pay a minimum tax rate, named after billionaire Warren Buffett. The president did earn over $1 million in previous years–$1.7 million in 2010 and $5.5 million in 2009.

  The president paid $162,074 in taxes with an effective federal income tax rate of 20.5 percent, according to the returns.

  The release, four days before Tuesday’s tax deadline, capped a week in which the president repeatedly spoke about the obligation of the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes. It also provided Obama’s campaign the opportunity to once again jab Republican Mitt Romney for his refusal to release more information on his tax-paying history.

  The Obamas adjusted gross income was their lowest income since 2004 when he wrote his best-selling memoir, “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.” This was the first year since 2006 that the Obama family income dipped below $1 million. In 2010, his adjusted gross income was $1.7 million; in 2009, it was $5.5 million.

• Human Rights Campaign Quietly Removes Illegally Obtained Tax Information from Website – Following the release yesterday of proof by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the source of leaked confidential donor information, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) removed from its website all reference to NOM’s un-redacted 2008 1099 tax form, which it had previously posted. The action by the Human Rights Campaign comes within a day of NOM’s attorneys contacting them and demanding they remove the material is a clear indication of the seriousness of the criminal activity that has occurred.

  “They now realize that they have done something tremendously wrong here or they would not have removed the references,” NOM President Brian Brown said today. “A felony has been committed and the Treasury Department must investigate who within the IRS has committed it, and whether people with the Obama Administration or the HRC are co-conspirators in the criminal release of our confidential tax return. We demand that federal authorities immediately launch an investigation into this crime. This is not a routine leak of some obscure document. We’re talking about someone in the Obama Administration’s IRS releasing to a group headed by President Obama’s national co-chair the private tax return containing confidential donor information of their main opponent. This is reminiscent of Watergate, and the American people are entitled to know the truth of what has occurred.”

• NC Dem official sexually harrassed staffer; Party fears credibility ‘doomed’ – A former North Carolina Democratic Party staffer was sexually harassed by a party official, made a financial settlement with the party and signed a non-disclosure agreement to keep the incident quiet.

  “If this hits the media, the Democratic Party, our candidates, and our credibility are doomed in this election,” reads one email exchange between state Democratic leaders.

  An email chain between those Democratic leaders, obtained by The Daily Caller, indicates the executive director of the North Carolina Democratic Party, Jay Parmley, and the alleged sexual harassment victim both signed non-disclosure agreements.

  The email chain does not make clear who was guilty of the harassment, the status of that individual’s employment with the Democratic Party or the identity of the victim.

  State Democratic Party spokesman Walton Robinson did not respond to The Daily Caller’s request for comment on the matter.

• Statement by ALEC in Response to the Outpouring of Support in Wake of Intimidation Campaign Against Its Members – Ron Scheberle, Executive Director of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), issued the following statement today in response to the support the organization has received in response to the intimidation campaign against its members:

  “Over the last 24 hours, ALEC has been inundated with letters of support from elected officials, community leaders and concerned citizens in response to the intimidation campaign launched by a coalition of extreme liberal activists committed to silencing anyone who disagrees with their agenda.

  “I am thankful for the support and want to take this opportunity to remind people what we are facing:

  “First, the people now attacking ALEC and its members are the same people who have always pushed for big-government solutions. Our support for free markets and limited government stands in stark contrast to their state-dependent utopia. This is not about one piece of legislation. This is an attempt to silence our organization and it has been going on for more than a year.

  “Second, ALEC is one of America’s premier ideas laboratories when it comes to advocating free market reforms. We are a target because our opponents believe they have the opportunity to attack an effective, successful organization that promotes free-market, limited government policies that they disagree with. We work to promote the Freedom of Choice in Health Care initiative against ObamaCare’s individual mandate. We support fair tax policies and tort reform. This is an all-out intimidation campaign designed to promote government-based solutions rather than the free-market principles that we have seen work.

  “Finally, now more than ever, America needs organizations like ALEC to foster the discussion and debate of policy differences in an open, transparent way and not fall back on bullying, intimidation and threats.”

• What’s Color of Change hiding about itself? – Coca Cola executives who recently decided to stop supporting the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) did so in response to demands from an obscure left-wing activist group, Color of Change (COC). So were executives of giant candy-maker Mars, Inc. when they announced a similar decision earlier today.

  That is why Color of Change may be the most powerful group in America you’ve never heard about.

  The demand that Coke, Mars and other corporate donors stop making contributions to ALEC – a long-established conservative legislative group that researches and writes model legislation that is often adopted by state legislatures – is only the latest COC campaign to hit a nerve.

  Previous COC successes include pushing advertisers on Glenn Beck’s Fox News Show to withdraw their ads, a campaign that played a role in the cable news and opinion network’a decision to drop the controversial production in June 2011.

  Others who have felt the wrath of COC include now-former MSNBC opinion analyst Patrick Buchanan, Fox Business News anchor Eric Bolling, Lou Dobbs when he was on CNN, and the late Andrew Breitbart.

• Video, Social Boost US Mobile Content Consumption – eMarketer – RT @katieharbath: 42.6% of mobile phone users will log in to social net sites via mobile at least monthly by 2014 -
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-04-13 – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-04-13
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » President 2012 Poll Watch: Mitt Romney 46 Vs. Barack Obama 44% – President 2012 Poll Watch: Mitt Romney 46 Vs. Barack Obama 44%
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Video: President Obama Throws Democratic Party Consultant Hillary Rosen Under the Bus – Video: President Obama Throws Democratic Party Consultant Hillary Rosen Under the Bus
• Axelrod expresses no qualms at targeting Rosen, a ‘friend’ – CNN Political Ticker – CNN.com Blogs – RT @PoliticalTicker: Axelrod expresses no qualms at targeting Rosen, a ‘friend’ -
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » The Morning Flap: April 12, 2012 – The Morning Flap: April 12, 2012
• Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Video: Charles Manson Parole Hearing – Parole Denied – Video: Charles Manson Parole Hearing – Parole Denied
• 72% of Americans Follow Local News Closely – Nearly three quarters of Americans (72%) report following local news closely “most of the time, whether or not something important is happening.” Local newspapers are by far the source they rely on for much of the local information they need.

  One-third of local news enthusiasts (32%) say it would have a major impact on them if their local newspaper no longer existed, compared with just 19% of those less interested in local news. Most likely to report a major impact if their newspaper disappeared are local news followers age 40 and older (35%), though even among younger local news followers 26% say losing the local paper would have a major impact on them.

  Local news enthusiasts are more likely than others to prefer newspapers for almost all of 16 topics that were asked about in a survey, with the exception of weather and breaking news. Three-in-ten or more local news enthusiasts prefer newspapers for following crime, local politics, community events, or arts and culture. About one-quarter prefer newspapers when seeking information about local schools, taxes, government activity, other local business, and housing issues. Two-in-ten primarily use newspapers for following restaurants, job openings, or local zoning issues.

  While this seems to be positive news for local newspapers, in many cases the reliance on newspapers is heaviest among local news enthusiasts age 40 and older, while younger local news followers rely more heavily on other sources. Specifically, among local news enthusiasts under age 40, the internet is the preferred source for eight of the 16 topics asked about, including:

  Local restaurants, clubs and bars
  Other local businesses
  Schools and education
  Local politics
  Jobs
  Housing
  Arts and cultural events
  Community or neighborhood events

• Barrett & Falk Won’t Say How They Would Have Balanced Wisconsin’s Budget – Democrats have hammered Wisconsin governor Scott Walker over the past year for cutting nearly one billion dollars in state aid to school districts as part of his plan to close the state’s $3.6 billion deficit. Democratic anger with Walker’s budget cuts is a huge reason why Walker is facing a recall election on June 5. But the two leading Democrats vying to replace Walker, Dane county executive Kathleen Falk and Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, were unwilling to say Wednesday night how they would have balanced the budget or even how much they would have cut from the state’s education budget.

  “Education is the top funding priority for the state budget,” Falk said at a Democratic candidate forum in Madison on Wednesday night. “I do not support public dollars for private school vouchers.”

  But when asked how much state aid to local school districts should have been cut in last year’s budget, Falk told THE WEEKLY STANDARD: “Well, nobody’s going to answer that, needless to say. But I have a track record as county executive what I’ve done, which was shared sacrifice.”

  During follow-up questioning, Falk refused to give even a ballpark figure of how much education funding she would have cut:

• COMMENTARY: Dis-United Wisconsin? – Finally, the stage is set for the June 5 production of the one-show-only recall election of Gov. Scott Walker.

  There is one problem — one the scriptwriters camping in the capitol rotunda a year ago and the producers in their union halls and party offices forgot: the all-important casting of the candidates who will take over the governor’s job if Walker is indeed recalled.

  The auditions are proving a messy affair for all involved.

  Wisconsin’s largest teacher’s union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, or WEAC, and the state chapters of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, had settled on former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk.

  Then Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett stepped up, crowding Falk for the spotlight. To add insult to his last-second entrance, Barrett — who lost to Walker 52-46 for governor in 2010 — has been racking up major endorsements from such party establishment types as former U.S. Rep. Dave Obey, D-District 7, and former Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton.

  Some are calling the Falk-Barrett showdown evidence of a Democratic Civil War, but that’s only if you include Internet videos as the modern-day equivalent of cannon fire. No, what’s going on right now is more like the beginning of a four-week knife fight. The winner will not just take on Walker in June. He or she and his or her backers will run the Democratic Party in the Badger State.

  AFSCME never wanted Barrett as a candidate, reportedly telling him not to run in a meeting between the mayor and various union leaders. It’s also furious with Barrett for deploying the very reforms Walker made available through Act 10 — making changes in City of Milwaukee employee health-care and pension contributions without having to have them collectively bargained. In doing so, he helped cut $25 million from Milwaukee’s budget over the past year, all without raising taxes.

• Obama on Why Michelle Was a Working Mom (at $316K Per Year): ‘We Didn’t Have the Luxury for Her Not to Work’ – Speaking Friday at what the administration called “The White House Forum on Women and the Economy,” President Barack Obama said that after his two daughters were born, he and his wife—both Harvard Law School graduates—could not afford the “luxury” of having her stay home with the children.

  In 2005, when Obama began serving in the U.S. Senate (and his daughters turned 4 and 7), he and his wife were earning a combined annual income of $479,062. Barack Obama was paid a salary of $162,100 by the U.S. taxpayers, and Michelle Obama was paid $316,962 to handle community affairs for the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Tags: ALEC, Buffett, COC, Democrats, IRS, News, Newspapers, NOM, Obama, Pinboard Links, Romney, Taxes, The Afternoon Flap, Walker, Wisconsin

These are my links for March 2nd through March 6th:

• Sandra Fluke Argued for Mandatory Coverage for Sex-Change Surgery – Rather belatedly, we are becoming aware that this supposedly typical Georgetown coed is not very typical at all:
  [B]irth control is not all that Ms. Fluke believes private health insurance must cover. She also, apparently, believes that it is discrimination deserving of legal action if “gender reassignment” surgeries are not covered by employer provided health insurance. She makes these views clear in an article she co-edited with Karen Hu in the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law.
  The title of the article . . . is “Employment Discrimination Against LGBTQ Persons” and was published in the Journal’s 2011 Annual Review.

  Remember, as Byron York previously reported, Fluke was rejected as a last-minute substitute witness at a Feb. 16 committee hearing because staffers for Chairman Issa were unable to discover Fluke’s claim to expertise relevant to the subject of the hearing. This law school journal article is the sort of thing that might have been discovered about Fluke’s background, had the Democrats who put Fluke forward as a witness done so with the usual 72-hour advance notice.

• Call Them Out By Name: Sandra Fluke, David Gregory and David Friend – After going to an Andrew Breitbart memorial event on Saturday, I am more inspired than ever to fight back against the Left.  Three things that were said stood out to me in that regard.  Number one, Dana Loesch said we need to follow Breitbart and hit Leftists by “calling them out by name.”  Then Brandon Darby mentioned that the Left was taking advantage of our grief and we were losing on Limbaugh.  Finally, I’m struck with the image of Breitbart himself in this tribute video looking straight at the camera and simply saying, “War.”

  This is war.  I am going to defend Limbaugh from the radical Leftists who want to take him off the air.  And I am going to call out our opponents by name.  Starting with Sandra Fluke, David Gregory and David Friend.

• Sandra Fluke, Gender Reassignment, and Health Insurance – Sandra Fluke is being sold by the left as something she’s not. Namely a random co-ed from Georgetown law who found herself mixed up in the latest front of the culture war who was simply looking to make sure needy women had access to birth control. That, of course, is not the case.

  As many have already uncovered Sandra Fluke she is, in reality, a 30 year old long time liberal activist who enrolled at Georgetown with the express purpose of fighting for the school to pay for students’ birth control. She has been pushing for mandated coverage of contraceptives at Georgetown for at least three years according to the Washington Post.

• 2011 total: 254 companies leave California – In 2011, 254 California companies moved some or all of their work and jobs out of state, 26% more than in 2010, according to Irvine business consultant Joe Vranich who has been tracking these departures since 2009.
  Twenty-eight of these companies were in Orange County. Seven of them moved or expanded to Texas, three to Mexico, two to Washington and one each to 16 other states, said Vranich, who has changed the name of his business from The Relocation Coach to Spectrum Location Solutions, which helps companies define their goals, find new locations and coordinate the move.

  The pace is accelerating, Vranich said. An average of 4.9 businesses left California each week of 2011, compared to 3.9 per week (202 total) in 2010 and one a week (51 total) in 2009. In what he calls “disinvestment events,” Vranich counts companies that move jobs, facilities or headquarters out of California and “in carefully selected instances, companies making major capital investments in plants elsewhere that in the past would have been built in California,” Vranich said.

• Contraceptive corporate welfare –
• Flip This White House! –
• GOP focus on control of Congress amid presidential doubts this fall –
• Re: Rush Limbaugh: They don’t want an apology, they want a confession – Ann Althouse gets deep into the weeds on apologies, and finds that some apologies are more equal than others in the eyes of the Democratic Commisariate (emphasis in original):

  Now, I believe in general principles, and I want to know what the general principle is about accepting apologies. I’d like to nail down people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Eric Boehlert, because their candidate, Barack Obama, is one of the greatest purveyors of apologies in the history of the world!

  There is a difference between heartfelt apology, and a political confession.  An apology would not be enough to obtain release from prison, while a confession, which is a political statement that has nothing to do with the heart, held out the possibility of getting one out of prison:

• MoveOn.Org – Carbonite CEO tied to : time for conservatives to fight blacklisting?
• Carbonite CEO tied to MoveOn.org: time for conservatives to fight blacklisting? – So. Did you hear about Carbonite and Rush Limbaugh?

  No, you didn’t. Not the way you will in a minute. But first?

  It’s time to turn the tables.

  It’s time to stand up to the bullies.

  It’s time to Rally for Rush.

  Rush Limbaugh has discussed at length — at length — what Sandra Fluke and her statist cronies are up to. Yes, he used the words “slut” and “prostitute” — using the ludicrous to make his point. Ms. Fluke, in one of the most pathetic, shamelessly whining stories in recent memory, demands to be paid for her sex life because it costs $3,000 for three years of birth control while she’s at law school. She demands that a Catholic university violate its fundamental right to religious liberty so she can have others pay for her sex life. So Rush asked the farcical obvious about somebody who demands that someone else pay her for her apparent, self-admitted prolific sex life. He spent two solid days relating her greed for other people’s money and a lack of personal responsibility to the oldest of principles.

  Right on cue, the blacklisting crowd came out of their Stalinist caves. Having driven Lou Dobbs from CNN, cut off Beck’s windpipe at Fox, severed Pat Buchanan from MSNBC, thus emboldened they have now set their sights on Rush.

• Sandra Fluke Defenders Target Rush Limbaugh, Not Bill Maher Or Ed Schultz – When the left savages the right, it’s OK. When America’s top conservative questions why taxpayers must subsidize the sex life of a coed, the sky falls in. Bill Maher, call your office.

  When the late, great Andrew Breitbart was asked in a Twitter conversation whether he’d apologize for his website’s posting of a video of a speech by Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod that led to her forced resignation, Breitbart replied, “Apologize for what?”

  Breitbart knew the sensitivities and the hypocrisy of the left when their sacred cows and double standards were under attack.

  Hell hath no fury, he knew, like a liberal whose dogma stands exposed. He wondered why those on the right always had to apologize for saying liberal emperors had no clothes, when the left never had to apologize for anything no matter how outrageous or offensive.

• Re: Rush Limbaugh – Should Conservatives Make an Example of Carbonite and ProFlowers? | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Re: Rush Limbaugh – Should Conservatives Make an Example of Carbonite and ProFlowers? | Flap’s Blog – Fullosseou…
• Video: Occupy Education Protesters “OCCUPY” the California State Capitol » Flap’s California Blog – Video: Occupy Education Protesters “OCCUPY” the California State Capitol
• Re: Rush Limbaugh – Should Conservatives Make an Example of Carbonite and ProFlowers? | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – RE:  You have a very good point…
• L.A. Times Attempting Suicide – Today the Los Angeles Times is charging for visiting its site online. This is a suicide attempt that will severely damage the paper. Its parent company, Tribune Co., long has been in bankruptcy, running up $233 million in legal fees.
• California Students Protest Education Entitlement Cuts – Middle-aged, greying 1960s radicals, pimply faced kids, teachers, throngs of SEIU members, angry Occupy protestors, and union members of all kinds descended upon the state Capitol Monday. They demanded, “Wall Street and the wealthy 1 percent, pay to refund education, jobs, essential services, and a better future.”

  The protest was sponsored by the California Teachers Association and the Occupy movement.

  The protest even included roving bands of gang-attired youth probably not connected to education, dreadlock-wearing Rastafarians, earth children and the unmistakable sweet smell of marijuana wafting about. Vapid stares, body odor, anger and an abundant use of the “F” word, some attended the rally with an express purpose in mind, while others appeared less committed and just were there for the chanting and day off of school. “Enough is enough,” came the rally cry from college student body presidents. “We stand in solidarity,” said one speaker as Che Guevara signs waived wildly.

• Conejo Valley development icon Joe Brown dies at 86 – Funeral services will be held Saturday March 10 for a fifth-generation Californian who had a hand in shaping the Conejo Valley.

  Services will begin at 12:30 p.m. at St. Paschal Baylon Catholic Church in Thousand Oaks for retired Realtor Joseph “Joe” Brown.

  Brown died Thursday in his Thousand Oaks home at age 86 with his wife, Dolly, by his side. He had been suffering from heart problems for some time, but Dolly Brown, 65, said his death was somewhat sudden.

  “He was lying in his hospital bed about a week ago and he said, ‘I’m not being very productive,’ ” she said with a smile.

  By all accounts, “productive” was an understatement when it came to Joe Brown. Among his many accomplishments was helping to establish Mary Health of the Sick Convalescent Home in Newbury Park, the Conejo Valley Association of Realtors and the Ventura County Community Foundation in Camarillo, to name a few of his efforts.

• Lenny Dykstra gets 3 years in California prison – Disgraced ex-New York Mets outfielder Lenny Dykstra on Monday was sentenced to three years in a California state prison after pleading no contest to grand theft auto and providing a false financial statement.

  Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Cynthia Ulfig sentenced Dykstra after refusing to allow him to withdraw his plea and said the scam to lease high-end automobiles from dealerships by providing fraudulent information and claiming credit through a phony business showed sophistication and extensive planning.

  “He obviously didn’t have the money to get the vehicles,” Ulfig said. “His conduct was indeed criminal.”

• New California Legislative Information Website Makes Tracking Bills Easier » Flap’s California Blog – New California Legislative Information Website Makes Tracking Bills Easier
• Thousands of Students Protest Education Cuts … Bill Would Add Options in Evaluating Schools: KQED News | KQED Public Media for Northern CA – RT @KQED: From @KQEDnews: several thousand college students protest education cuts in Sacramento #OccupyCapitol
• GOP Hopefuls Losing Ground to Obama Among Latinos, Poll Says – Despite growing disappointment in his handling of immigration issues, Latino voters favor President Barack Obama by six-to-one over any of the Republican presidential hopefuls, showed a Fox News Latino poll conducted under the direction of Latin Insights and released Monday.

  The national poll of likely Latino voters indicated that 73 percent of them approved of Obama’s performance in office, with over half those questioned looking favorably upon his handling of the healthcare debate and the economy, at 66 percent and 58 percent respectively.

  Released on the eve of the Super Tuesday primaries in the race for the GOP nomination, the Fox News Latino poll shows former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 35 percent of Latino voter support, to Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s 13 percent, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s 12 percent, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s 9 percent. 

• Re: Rush Limbaugh – Should Conservatives Make an Example of Carbonite and ProFlowers? | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Re: Rush Limbaugh – Should Conservatives Make an Example of Carbonite and ProFlowers?
• CA-26: Is NPP – No Party Preference a Passing Fad in California Elections? | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – CA-26: Is NPP – No Party Preference a Passing Fad in California Elections?
• Scott Walker Video: Promises Kept | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Scott Walker Video: Promises Kept
• Welcome to total political war – Re: Rush Limbaugh – And I’m not talking about the attempt to get advertisers to stop advertising on Rush Limbaugh’s show, or Fox News, although that would be bad enough.

  I’m talking about the second-tier of the warfare, the attempt to intimidate those removed by one or more degrees of separation from the dispute, and to use them as tools against the target.

  And I’m not talking about the attempt to get advertisers to stop advertising on Rush Limbaugh’s show, or Fox News, although that would be bad enough. I’m talking about the second-tier of the warfare, the attempt to intimidate those removed by one or more degrees of separation from the dispute, and to use them as tools against the target.

  I would not be surprised to see a similar reaction from the right to the left’s attacks on advertisers, but that would be a mistake. What is happening goes beyond Obama’s call for people to argue with their neighbors and get in their faces.  It goes far beyond Bill Clinton’s politics of personal destruction directed at accusers, and beyond name-calling by right wing pundits. This total war, in which no one is allowed to be non-political and neighbors and clients become mere pressure points, is a dangerous development.

• Breitbart.Com Relaunches | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Relaunches
• AD-44: California Assemblyman Jeff Gorell’s Welcome Home Rescheduled to April 4 » Flap’s California Blog – AD-44: California Assemblyman Jeff Gorell’s Welcome Home Rescheduled to April 4
• Day By Day March 5, 2012 – Star Wars | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Day By Day March 5, 2012 – Star Wars
• The China Threat – Increasing Defense Spending – The China Threat – Increasing Defense Spending
• Gingrich: Romney can’t ‘close the deal’ – Gingrich: Romney can’t ‘close the deal’
• GA-2012 Primary: 38% Gingrich, 24% Romney, 22% santorum, 3% Paul (Mason-Dixon 2/29-3/2) – RT @pollsterpolls: GA-2012 Primary: 38% Gingrich, 24% Romney, 22% santorum, 3% Paul (Mason-Dixon 2/29-3/2)
• OH-2012 Primary: 34% Romney 31% Santorum 15% Gingrich 12% Paul (Quinnipiac 3/2-4) – RT @pollsterpolls: OH-2012 Primary: 34% Romney 31% Santorum 15% Gingrich 12% Paul (Quinnipiac 3/2-4)
• Flap’s California Blog @ Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-03-05 » Flap’s California Blog – Flap’s California Blog @ Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-03-05
• @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-03-05 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-03-05
• foursquare :: Gregory Flap @ Starbucks Coffee – On the way to San Diego! (@ Starbucks Coffee)
• Flap’s California Blog @ Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-03-04 » Flap’s California Blog – Flap’s California Blog @ Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-03-04
• @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-03-04 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-03-04
• Rush: “I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke”; Update: Ironic tweet of the day – I think Rush did the right thing in apologizing to Fluke. However, let’s keep in mind that it was Fluke who made her sexual activity a matter of national political debate by insisting that the government pass laws and regulations forcing employers and insurers to provide her free contraception, and apparently as much as she and others demand. It’s Republicans who believe that contraception should remain a private affair, and that employers and insurers should be free to decide whether to cover contraception for their employees and customers or not. Democrats used Fluke to demand that those choices be stripped from private enterprises and instead be forced by the executive branch to entirely subsidize contraception.

  That is the argument we should be making, as Republicans and conservatives. If you want your sexual choices to remain private, don’t use the government to force other people to subsidize them. Then we won’t have to turn the sex lives of Georgetown law school students into topics for political speculation.

• A Statement from Rush – The Rush Limbaugh Show – RT @DanRiehl: A Statement from Rush RT @DavidLimbaugh:
• Flap’s California Blog @ Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-03-03 » Flap’s California Blog – Flap’s California Blog @ Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-03-03
• @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-03-03 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-03-03
• AD-38 Video: Patricia McKeon Asks the Ventura County Republican Party For an Endorsement » Flap’s California Blog – AD-38 Video: Patricia McKeon Asks the Ventura County Republican Party For an Endorsement
• Day By Day March 2, 2012 – Think Big, America | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Day By Day March 2, 2012 – Think Big, America
• Gallup’s Unadjusted Unemployment Data Suggest Increase in BLS Adjusted Figure – Gallup finds U.S. unemployment, as measured without seasonal adjustment, to be 9.1% in February, based on almost 30,000 interviews with a random sample of Americans. When Gallup applies the 0.5-percentage-point seasonal adjustment that the government applied to its unadjusted data for February last year, it produces an adjusted unemployment rate for February 2012 of 8.6% –a substantial increase from the 8.3% adjusted rate the government reported for January.
• Ohio GOP Race Going Down To The Wire- Quinnipiac University – Ohio GOP Race Going Down To The Wire- Quinnipiac University
• Sandra Fluke’s Appearance Is No Fluke – Sandra Fluke’s Appearance Is No Fluke
• Sandra Fluke is not a “slut.” She’s a femme-agogue tool; DCCC, Emily’s list fund-raise off of Rush –
• Flap’s California Blog @ Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-03-02 » Flap’s California Blog – Flap’s California Blog @ Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-03-02
• Kentucky to Settle for Compromise Methamphetamine Legislation? | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Kentucky to Settle for Compromise Methamphetamine Legislation? | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog
• @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-03-02 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-03-02

Tags: Brown, California, China, Congress, Contraception, Democrats, Dykstra, Economy, Fluke, Friend, Gingrich, GOP, Gregory, Hispanics, Latinos, LA_Times, Limbaugh, Obama, Occupy, OccupyCapitol, Ohio, Pinboard Links, Polling, President_2012, Romney, The Morning Flap, Unemployment, USA