-
Day By Day by Chris Muir
-
Mayor Sam’s Sister City Blog: Mayor Sam 2
Hear Ye! Hear Ye!
Mayor Sam and Mayor Frank have a new blog: MS2- the backyard of Los Angeles politics.
Everybody needs a little extra space sometimes. This is the back yard for Mayor Sam’s Sister City where we’ll have more room for documents from our articles, further expansion on some items, open threads and occasional suprises. Check here often!
So, what are you waiting for Dum Dums? Get over there.
Flap knows you will be glad you did.
-
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bear Flag League, California, Politics, Proposition 77, Special Election 2005
California Special Election Watch: Schwarzenegger Endorses Ohio Redistricting Measure
The New York Times has Schwarzenegger Enters Debate Over Redistricting in Ohio.
Separate ballot measures in California and Ohio to remove lawmakers from the drawing of legislative districts have been dogged by accusations that they are essentially partisan power grabs.
Now Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, hopes to counter those claims by throwing his weight behind the Ohio measure, even though no prominent Republican elected official in that state has done so and many Republican lawmakers there are raising money to defeat it.
A campaign aide to Mr. Schwarzenegger, Darrel Ng, said Monday that the governor endorsed the Ohio measure, known on the Nov. 8 ballot as Issue 4, though he has not said so publicly. A top supporter of the measures in both states said Mr. Schwarzenegger would participate in a series of public events this week to signal his stance.
“He has agreed to do it,” said the supporter, Chellie Pingree, president of Common Cause, a watchdog group that is pushing for redistricting changes in more than a dozen states, including California and Ohio.
A calculated risk for the Governor that will undoubtedly rankle the House Republican leadership.
However, he, like John McCain can be viewed as a maverick who does what he thinks is RIGHT- without regard to Republican Party advantage.
Flap handicaps this to be a slight plus in California with independent voters who are now completing absentee ballots.
Technorati Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Recovery Team, California Special Election, Bear Flag League, Proposition 77, Issue 4
Cross-posted to the Bear Flag League Special Election Page
-
Dentistry Today: Fluoride – Not In My Water Supply
Time Magazine has Not in My Water Supply.
It hardens teeth and prevents cavities, but 60 years after it began, fluoridation is meeting new resistance.
Another article from the anti-fluoride folks.
Decrease or limit water fluoridation and watch the amount of dental caries increase.
American Society’s choice.
Technorati Tags: dentistry, dental, dentist, dental caries, fluoride, tooth decay
-
Harriet Miers Watch: Assurance to Overturn Roe v. Wade?
Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers (L) meets with Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) in Washington, DC, October 17, 2005.
John Fund of the Wall Street Journal has Judgment Call
Did Christian conservatives receive assurances that Miers would oppose Roe v. Wade?Two days after President Bush announced Harriet Miers’s Supreme Court nomination, James Dobson of Focus on the Family raised some eyebrows by declaring on his radio program: “When you know some of the things that I know–that I probably shouldn’t know–you will understand why I have said, with fear and trepidation, that I believe Harriet Miers will be a good justice.”
Mr. Dobson quelled the controversy by saying that Karl Rove, the White House’s deputy chief of staff, had not given him assurances about how a Justice Miers would vote. “I would have loved to have known how Harriet Miers views Roe v. Wade,” Mr. Dobson said last week. “But even if Karl had known the answer to that–and I’m certain that he didn’t because the president himself said he didn’t know–Karl would not have told me that. That’s the most incendiary information that’s out there, and it was never part of our discussion.”
It might, however, have been part of another discussion. On Oct. 3, the day the Miers nomination was announced, Mr. Dobson and other religious conservatives held a conference call to discuss the nomination. One of the people on the call took extensive notes, which I have obtained. According to the notes, two of Ms. Miers’s close friends–both sitting judges–said during the call that she would vote to overturn Roe.
Why, of course, James Dobson was given these assurances.
Harriet Miers is an Evangelical “STEALTH” candidate but the Washington PRO-ABORTION elites of the LEFT and RIGHT will never leave this alone.
James Dobson will definitley be subpoenaed to the Senate Judiciary Committee now along with a number of other Pro-Life folks.
But, little will be acknowledged beyond this piece by Fund….. a real friend of the Pro-Life movement…..NOT!
The call was moderated by the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association. Participating were 13 members of the executive committee of the Arlington Group, an umbrella alliance of 60 religious conservative groups, including Gary Bauer of American Values, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation and the Rev. Bill Owens, a black minister. Also on the call were Justice Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court and Judge Ed Kinkeade, a Dallas-based federal trial judge.
Mr. Dobson says he spoke with Mr. Rove on Sunday, Oct. 2, the day before President Bush publicly announced the nomination. Mr. Rove assured Mr. Dobson that Ms. Miers was an evangelical Christian and a strict constructionist, and said that Justice Hecht, a longtime friend of Ms. Miers who had helped her join an evangelical church in 1979, could provide background on her. Later that day, a personal friend of Mr. Dobson’s in Texas called him and suggested he speak with Judge Kinkeade, who has been a friend of Ms. Miers’s for decades.
Mr. Dobson says he was surprised the next day to learn that Justice Hecht and Judge Kinkeade were joining the Arlington Group call. He was asked to introduce the two of them, which he considered awkward given that he had never spoken with Justice Hecht and only once to Judge Kinkeade. According to the notes of the call, Mr. Dobson introduced them by saying, “Karl Rove suggested that we talk with these gentlemen because they can confirm specific reasons why Harriet Miers might be a better candidate than some of us think.”
What followed, according to the notes, was a free-wheeling discussion about many topics, including same-sex marriage. Justice Hecht said he had never discussed that issue with Ms. Miers. Then an unidentified voice asked the two men, “Based on your personal knowledge of her, if she had the opportunity, do you believe she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade?”
“Absolutely,” said Judge Kinkeade.
“I agree with that,” said Justice Hecht. “I concur.”
Flap read the smoke-signals sent by Dobson early on and blogged this piece, Harriet Miers Watch: Message to the White House From the RIGHT – NEGATIVE.
What the President and Dr. Dobson said was clear without elaboration.
This should enliven the hearings and enbolden the Left to oppose Miers…….
Stay tuned.
Update #1
Richard Reeb over at the Claremont Institute is as “shocked” as Flap calling John Fund the David Stockman of the judicial nomination process.
Technorati Tags: Supreme Court, George Bush, Harriet Miers, James Dobson, Focus on the
Family, Nathan Hecht, Ed Kinkeade -
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bear Flag League, California, Politics, Proposition 73, Proposition 74, Proposition 75, Proposition 76, Proposition 77, Proposition 78, Special Election 2005
California Special Election Watch: ROPE-A-DOPE II
Sacramento Bee columnist, Dan Walters, has Ultra-low turnout could spell semi-victory for Schwarzenegger.
By all appearances, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been set up – or has set himself up – for a sharp setback in the Nov. 8 special election, but in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of California politics being so far down could give him a leg up.
On Flap previously, California Special Election Watch: It is the TURNOUT Stupid.
Uniformly, polls indicate that voters are not impressed with Schwarzenegger’s arguments that two major ballot measures – one overhauling the redrawing of legislative districts, the other imposing new limits on state spending – are needed.
They do, however, appear to be somewhat more amenable to his teacher tenure measure and two others he has endorsed, one requiring parental notification when minors seek abortions and another to require public employee unions to ask permission before taking campaign funds from members.
More importantly, perhaps, voters are turned off by the very notion of having this special election, having been convinced by a massive, union-financed media campaign that Schwarzenegger is wrong to have launched his ballot measure war this year. The latest polling by the Public Policy Institute of California found that more than half of likely voters think the election is a bad idea, but it’s just possible that the negative reaction to Schwarzenegger’s drive could, in a perverse way, produce a better result for him than the current polls indicate, perhaps even a semi-victory.
Absolutely a correct analysis.
Even the Unions seem to be “getting it”.
The Mercury News has Unions say it’s vital for allies in Bay Area not to sit out election.
But other Democratic strategists say the turnout problem is real and the union campaign so far has fallen into a trap that may inadvertently suppress the Democratic vote.
“We’re worried,” said Steve Smith, who is managing Planned Parenthood’s campaign against Proposition 73 because the measure is dead even in polls. The initiative, another the governor is supporting, would require that parents be notified when underage girls seek abortions.
“The kind of campaign that’s been run for months is, `Say no.’ One function of saying no is staying home. That’s a problem for us.”
Now Walters discusses the bungled union media campaign in surpressing their OWN voters.
Flap has noticed a reduction in frequency of anti-Schwarzenegger television ads in the Los Angeles market.
Will the Alliance for a Better California change their message in the last weeks of the campaign?
The tens of million of dollars that are being spent by pro-and anti-sides on the eight ballot measures are aimed, of course, at influencing voters’ decisions, but they may have the auxiliary effect of depressing turnout as voters become even more confused and alienated. And this election may hinge more on how many vote and who they are, rather than on the massive media campaigns.
The PPIC poll found, not surprisingly, that anti-election sentiment is concentrated heavily among Democrats (73 percent) and independents (56 percent). In sharp contrast, 63 percent of Republicans think the election is a good idea, so it may be intrinsically more difficult for Democrats and unions to persuade their voters even to cast ballots.
And then there are the Evangelical Christians and Proposition 73 (Parental Notification for Abortion).
This important base for the Republicans and Schwarzenegger WILL turn-out to vote.
Conservative churches are, with Republican Party encouragement, marshaling turnout for the parental notification measure, Proposition 73.
“If every Christian in California voted for this initiative, it would pass by a landslide,” one pro-Proposition 73 group, the Capitol Resource Institute, says in an appeal that includes suggested church bulletin fliers. Religious conservatives are likely to support Schwarzenegger’s measures.
The Unions are worried and they should be.
Schwarzenegger could possibly win two or three of his endorsed measures, including the Paycheck Protection Initiative which would be a knife to the union’s heart.
Who will the Union bosses blame for the ROPE-A-DOPE?
Technorati Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Recovery Team, California Special Election, Bear Flag League, Proposition 74, Proposition 75, Proposition 76, Proposition 77, Proposition 73
Cross-posted to the Bear Flag League Special Election Page
-
Iran Nuclear Watch: Russians Helping with Missle Threat to Europe
The U.K’s Telegraph News has Russians help Iran with missile threat to Europe.
Former members of the Russian military have been secretly helping Iran to acquire technology needed to produce missiles capable of striking European capitals.
The Russians are acting as go-betweens with North Korea as part of a multi-million pound deal they negotiated between Teheran and Pyongyang in 2003. It has enabled Teheran to receive regular clandestine shipments of top secret missile technology, believed to be channelled through Russia.
Wonderful!
North Korea teaming up with rogue Russian military and the Iranians.
Flap supposes this was the rationale for Coni Rice’s recent trip to Russia.
Looks like U.N. Security action agaisnt Iran if they do not drop their nuclear enrichment program…… or face unilatreral American, British and/or Israeli military action.
Western intelligence officials believe that the technology will enable Iran to complete development of a missile with a range of 2,200 miles, capable of hitting much of Europe. It is designed to carry a 1.2-ton payload, sufficient for a basic nuclear device.
The revelation raises the stakes in the confrontation between Iran’s Islamic regime and the West – led by the United States and European countries including Britain.
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, clashed with Russian officials over Iran’s nuclear programme during a visit to Moscow yesterday, saying that Teheran must fulfil its obligations under the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty.
She was later expected to urge President Vladimir Putin to back a referral of Iran to the United Nations Security Council.
Clandestine services must be working overtime here.
The President has the troops and other assets in the area so Iran will capitulate or face military action.
A senior American official said Iran’s programme was “sophisticated and getting larger and more accurate. They have had very much in mind the payload needed to carry a nuclear weapon.
“I think Putin knows what the Iranians are doing.”Iran is believed to be hiding its weapons development behind its nuclear power programme, for which it receives Russian support, and has refused to suspend uranium enrichment or to allow full UN inspections.
John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, told BBC2’s Newsnight that Iran was “determined to get nuclear weapons deliverable on ballistic missiles it can then use to intimidate not only its own region but possibly to supply to terrorists”.
Iran’s longest-range missile is the Shahab 3, which, with an 800-mile range, could hit Israel. The North Korean deal will allow the Iranian missile to reach targets far into Europe – including Rome, Berlin, and much of France.
North Korea has developed a missile, the Taepo Dong 2, that could reach America’s west coast, based on the submarine-launched Soviet SSN6. Modifications allow it to be fired from a land-based transporter and this technology is being smuggled to Teheran with Russian help.
Russians have provided production facilities, diagrams and operating instruction so the missile can be built in Iran. Liquid propellant has been shipped to Iran. Russian specialists have also been sent to Iran to help development of its Shahab 5 missile project, which the Iranians hope to have operational by the end of the decade.
A threat to America’s European allies is NOT acceptable.
BTW SDI deployment in Alaska has minimized the North Korea threat of first or a terrorist/rogue strike agaisnt America’s West Coast. Moreover, the North Koreans know that President Bush would not hesitate to ‘NUKE” them back to the stone age.
Technorati Tags: Iran, North Korea, Russia, Vladimir Putin, John Bolton