• Pinboard Links,  The Afternoon Flap

    The Afternoon Flap: November 25, 2011

    November 25, 2011 /

    These are my links for November 23rd through November 25th:

    • An Electronic Eye on Hospital Hand-Washing – Beeps and blinking lights are the constant chatter of a hospital intensive care unit, but at the I.C.U.’s in North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y., the conversation has some unusual contributors. Two L.E.D. displays adorn the wall across from each nurses’ station. They show the hand hygiene rate achieved: last Friday in the surgical I.C.U., the weekly rate was 85 percent and the current shift had a rate of 91 percent. “Great Shift!!” the sign said. At the medical I.C.U. next door, the weekly rate was 81 percent, and the current shift 82 percent.

      That’s too low for a “Great Shift!!” message. But by most standards, both I.C.U.’s are doing well. Those L.E.D. displays are very demanding — health care workers must clean their hands within 10 seconds of entering and exiting a patient’s room, or it doesn’t count. Three years ago, using the same criteria, the medical I.C.U.’s hand hygiene rate was appalling — it averaged 6.5 percent. But a video monitoring system that provides instant feedback on success has raised rates of hand-washing or use of alcohol rubs to over 80 percent, and kept them there.

    • First 5 LA chief to get sizable severance despite having quit – The board of First 5 LA will give its former chief executive officer an expensive severance package even after she resigned earlier this month following a critical audit of the agency.

      Evelyn V. Martinez submitted a letter on Nov. 10, saying the commissioners had required her to resign instead of being fired without cause from the independent Los Angeles County agency, which uses state cigarette taxes to fund health, safety and educational programs for children from birth to age 5.

      In her letter, Martinez said she was entitled to a lump sum payment equal to 12 months of salary and health benefits and her unused vacation. Martinez, who earned more than $240,000 annually, also said she should receive an additional month of pay and health benefit costs because she was not given a 30-day written notice.

    • Push against California’s redistricting maps moves forward – Republican activists trying to overturn some new voting districts cleared a significant hurdle toward putting the issue on the ballot by turning in petitions bearing hundreds of thousands of signatures.

      But the next step — verification of those names by county elections officials — could take long enough to stymie the proponents’ goal of getting new state Senate districts drawn by the state Supreme Court in time for next year’s elections.

      Secretary of State Debra Bowen has said that vetting all the signatures could take until mid-March, after the Feb. 23 deadline for some candidates to file for the June primary. The timing could mean that the maps drawn by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission would be used until voters could weigh in on the November ballot.

      The referendum would allow voters the final word on the Senate maps. Dave Gilliard, a consultant who oversaw the $2.5-million signature drive for a group called Fairness and Accountability in Redistricting (FAIR), said the activists believe the state’s high court could act in time for the June elections. He said FAIR’s attorneys believe current redistricting law gives the court the authority to create new maps once signed petitions for the referendum have been filed.

    • NYT Claims Increasing Bipartisan Support for Plans that Could Raise the Cost of Medicare Policies by $34 Trillion – The NYT claims that plans that could raise the cost of Medicare equivalent policies for seniors by $34 trillion are gaining increasing support in Congress. These plans involve replacing Medicare with a voucher. This leads to higher costs both because the administrative costs of private plans are far higher than Medicare and they are likely to be less effective in controlling costs.

      The Congressional Budget Official projected that a Republican plan along these lines, that was approved by House earlier in this year, would raise the cost of Medicare equivalent polices by $34 trillion over the program’s 75-year planning horizon. While this plan would save the government money by reducing its payments for Medicare, it would mean that future generations of workers would pay far more for health care in their retirement. The cost of Medicare equivalent policies would far exceed the typical retiree’s income by 2050.

    • Support Builds for Premium Support Plan for Medicare – Though it reached no agreement, the special Congressional committee on deficit reduction built a case for major structural changes in Medicare that would limit the government’s open-ended financial commitment to the program, lawmakers and health policy experts say.

      Members of both parties told the panel that Medicare should offer a fixed amount of money to each beneficiary to buy coverage from competing private plans, whose costs and benefits would be tightly regulated by the government.

      Republicans have long been enamored of that idea. In the last few weeks, two of the Republican candidates for president, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, have endorsed variations of it.

      The idea faces opposition from many Democrats, who say it would shift costs to beneficiaries and eliminate the guarantee of affordable health insurance for older Americans. But some Democrats say that — if carefully designed, with enough protections for beneficiaries — it might work.

      The idea is sometimes known as premium support, because Medicare would subsidize premiums charged by private insurers that care for beneficiaries under contract with the government.

      “This is an idea that could easily resurface in the future as Congress seeks additional Medicare savings for deficit reduction,” said Patricia H. Neuman, senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

    • @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-25 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-25 #tcot #catcot
    • foursquare :: Gregory Flap @ Chez Bev Webb – Alice’s mom’s home for Thanksgiving – watching football (@ Chez Bev Webb)
    • foursquare :: Gregory Flap’s Badges :: Superstar – I just unlocked the “Superstar” badge on @foursquare!
    • U.S. ranks 28th in life expectancy while we pay the MOST for health care | Mail Online – U.S. ranks 25th in life expectancy — lower than Chile and Greece…
    • @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-24 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-24 #tcot #catcot
    • News from The Associated Press – RT @AP: #Bachmann receives apology from NBC after off-color song was played during her appearance on ‘Late Night’:
    • NationalJournal.com –
    • Wishing You a Happy Thanksgiving: November 24, 2011 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Wishing You a Happy Thanksgiving: November 24, 2011 #tcot #catcot
    • NationalJournal.com – Timeline of 2012 Presidential Primaries and Caucuses – Kenneth Chamberlain –
    • Medscape: Medscape Access – Medscape: Medscape Access
    • Timeline of 2012 Presidential Primaries and Caucuses – Kenneth Chamberlain – NationalJournal.com – RT @nationaljournal: TIMELINE: 2012 Presidential Primaries and Caucuses:
    • Medscape: Medscape Access – Coffee Linked to Lower Endometrial Cancer Risk
    • The Afternoon Flap: November 23, 2011 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – The Afternoon Flap: November 23, 2011 #tcot #catcot
  • Pinboard Links,  The Afternoon Flap

    The Afternoon Flap: November 23, 2011

    November 23, 2011 /

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

    • The Gingrich Amnesty – By Mark Krikorian – Missed the debate because of wrestling practice, but it’s hardly surprising that Newt would support amnesty for illegal aliens. After the Pelosi global-warming ad and Dede Scozzafava and “right-wing social engineering,” is it any surprise he’d adopt the left’s line on immigration too? He earned a career grade of D from Numbers USA (they calculate back to 1989). Heck, even Barbara Boxer has a career grade of D+.

      But a couple more points are in order. First, there just aren’t very many illegal aliens who have been here 25 years, the duration Gingrich specified as warranting amnesty. The old INS estimated that there were about 5 million illegal aliens in 1996, and the growth rate had been about 300,000 a year, which means that 10 years earlier (i.e., 25 years ago), there would have been about 2 million illegal aliens. Of those, I would guess the majority have in the intervening quarter-century either gone home, died, or finagled a green card (at least one-quarter of each year’s green-card recipients — new “legal” immigrants — are illegal aliens using the federal immigration program to launder their status). So that’s fewer than 1 million people out of the current 11 million illegals who would be covered by the Gingrich Amnesty, and probably fewer than half a million.

      But wait — 25 years ago. Hmmmmm. That rings a bell. Did something happen back in 1986 with regard to immigration? Oh, yeah, I remember — Congress passed the one and only amnesty for illegal immigrants, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), that legalized close to 3 million illegals (there had been about 5 million, so about 2 million remained after the amnesty, because they didn’t meet the law’s requirements). That was supposed to be followed by tough enforcement to prevent future illegal immigration and to throw out the resident illegals who didn’t qualify for the amnesty (or who failed to lie their way to a green card, since a large share of those successfully claiming amnesty, perhaps as many as one-quarter, did so fraudulently — among the liars was Mahmud “The Red” Abouhalima, a leader of the first World Trade Center attack).

      So the Gingrich Amnesty would cover illegal immigrants here when Congress passed IRCA. That is to say, it would pick up where the previous amnesty left off, legalizing precisely those people who didn’t qualify for IRCA. This just underlines what a chump you have to be to support any deal offered you by amnesty supporters.

    • GOP Smackdown: Gingrich v. Romney – Whether the matchup between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney is the final bout on the GOP primary card is impossible to know. The whole season has been more like professional wrestling than boxing, with weird characters sporting implausible hair appearing out of nowhere to talk smack and explain why they are the greatest in the world. (I’m looking at you in particular, Mr. Trump.)

      Still, let’s assume for the moment that it’s a Gingrich-Romney contest.

      It’s quite a matchup. Romney has been brutalized for having too little personality, Gingrich for having way, way too much. Romney looks like the picture that comes with the frame. Gingrich looks like he should be ensconced in royal velvet as he gestures at you with a half-eaten turkey leg in one hand and a sloshing goblet of wine in the other. Romney seems terrified of fully committing to any idea. Gingrich speaks as if he just text-messaged with God.

    • Coffee Linked to Lower Endometrial Cancer Risk – Drinking at least 4 cups of coffee per day is associated with a lower risk for endometrial cancer, according to new data from the Nurses’ Health Study.

      Youjin Je, a doctoral candidate in the lab of Edward Giovannucci, MD, ScD, from the Department of Nutrition and Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues published their findings online November 22 in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

      “Coffee consumption may be related to endometrial cancer development due to the potential role of caffeine,” Dr. Giovannucci and colleagues write. “Several epidemiologic studies have reported an inverse association between coffee intake and endometrial cancer risk, but data from prospective studies are limited.”

      Therefore, the researchers prospectively examined the link between drinking coffee and endometrial cancer risk, using prospective data from the Nurses’ Health Study.

      The analysis included data from 67,470 women aged 34 to 59 years in 1980. Cumulative average coffee intake was determined by questionnaire. During 26 years of follow-up, researchers documented 672 cases of endometrial cancer.

    • Acetaminophen: Repeated Use of Slightly Too Much Can Be Fatal – Repeated doses of slightly too much acetaminophen (known as paracetamol in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe) can be fatal, according to the results of a large, single-center cohort study published online November 22 in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.

      “On admission, these staggered overdose patients were more likely to have liver and brain problems, require kidney dialysis or help with breathing and were at a greater risk of dying than people who had taken single overdoses,” senior author Kenneth J. Simpson, MBChB (Hons), MD, FRCP (Edin), from the University of Edinburgh and Scottish Liver Transplant Unit in the United Kingdom, said in a news release.

      “They haven’t taken the sort of single-moment, one-off massive overdoses taken by people who try to commit suicide, but over time the damage builds up, and the effect can be fatal,” he adds.

      In the United Kingdom, acetaminophen hepatotoxicity is the leading cause of acute liver failure (ALF). However, the effect of a staggered overdose pattern or delayed hospital presentation on mortality or need for emergency liver transplantation was previously unknown.

    • Romney’s Mormon Faith Likely a Factor in Primaries, Not in a General Election – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life – Many Americans continue to see the Mormon faith as unfamiliar and different. Half say they know little or nothing about Mormonism, half say it is a Christian religion while a third say it is not, and roughly two-thirds believe Mormonism is “very different” from their own beliefs. There has been virtually no change in these impressions over the past four years.

      About half of all voters, and 60% of evangelical Republicans, know that Mitt Romney is a Mormon. The former Massachusetts governor’s religion has implications for his nomination run but not for the general election, should he be nominated as his party’s standard bearer.

      White evangelical Protestants – a key element of the GOP electoral base – are more inclined than the public as a whole to view Mormonism as a non-Christian faith. And this view is linked to opinions about Romney: Republicans who say Mormonism is not a Christian religion are less likely to support Romney for the GOP nomination and offer a less favorable assessment of him generally. But they seem prepared to overwhelmingly back him in a run against Obama in the general election.

    • President 2012: Senator Thune Endorses Mitt Romney – Senator John Thune of South Dakota endorsed Mitt Romney’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination on Wednesday, making him the second conservative United States senator to declare support for Mr. Romney’s candidacy this week.

      Mr. Thune, who in February decided against running for president himself, made the announcement during a morning campaign stop in downtown Des Moines with Mr. Romney. The endorsement comes as Mr. Romney is intensifying his effort to compete in the Iowa caucuses, now less than six weeks away.

      “I’m so lucky he didn’t run,” Mr. Romney said, noting that more than a year ago his advisers warned that Mr. Thune could be one of the toughest potential Republican rivals. Mr. Thune was among the first in a long line of Republicans who decided against jumping into the 2012 presidential race.

    • @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-23 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-23 #tcot #catcot
    • Log In – The New York Times – Log In – The New York Times
    • Log In – The New York Times – Log In – The New York Times
    • Log In – The New York Times – RT @HotlineReid: RT @NYTObits: George Gallup Jr., of Polling Family, Dies at 81
    • Map of Flap’s Twitter followers – 62% of my followers are from #United States,11% from #California & 3% from #New York. . Where are yours?
    • RealClearPolitics – Gingrich May Have Inside Track on Palin’s Endorsement – Gingrich May Have Inside Track on Palin’s Endorsement
    • Fallon apologizes to Bachmann – CNN Political Ticker – CNN.com Blogs – TV show host Jimmy Fallon apologized to GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann via Twitter Tuesday
    • Video: President 2012 GOP Debate: Newt Gingrich on Immigration | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Video: President 2012 GOP Debate: Newt Gingrich on Immigration #tcot #catcot
    • Breitbart.tv » Bachmann: Newt Soft On Immigration – RT @allahpundit: Breitbart TV has Newt answer on immigration
    • Writers strike out not choosing Matt Kemp as MVP – latimes.com – Baseball Writers strike out not choosing Matt Kemp as MVP
    • New Major League Baseball Contract Limits Smokeless Tobacco Use | Smiles For A Lifetime – Temporary (Locum Tenens) Dentistry – New Major League Baseball Contract Limits Smokeless Tobacco Use
    • The Afternoon Flap: November 22, 2011 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – The Afternoon Flap: November 22, 2011 #tcot #catcot
  • Pinboard Links,  The Afternoon Flap

    The Afternoon Flap: November 22, 2011

    November 22, 2011 /

    These are my links for November 22nd from 08:26 to 15:01:

    • 10,000 Expected To Line Up For Free Turkey Dinners In South Los Angeles – Low-income residents and seniors are lining up for free turkey dinners from a local car company.As many as 10,000 people are expected to show up for the “23rd Annual Jackson Limousine Service Turkey Dinner Give-Away”, which started at 8 a.m. Tuesday.Sky2 was overhead Monday night as a line wrapped around the company’s service fleet yard at 3669 West Slauson Ave.Yvette Freeman, one of the first people to pick up a meal Tuesday morning, waited in line for two days with a group of family and friends.

      “It feels good. It feels really good,” says Freeman, who realized she couldn’t afford her own Thanksgiving dinner when she went to the grocery store last weekend.

      “It’s a lot of people, a lot of families from all walks of life,” EJ Jackson, founder and president of Jackson Limousine, told CBS2. “You’ll see them. We love them, but that’s what we are here for; to help one another.”

      Turkey and all the dinner fixings, including cornbread, yams and cranberry sauce, are being given out on a first-come, first-served basis.

    • Blago ally Tony Rezko gets 10 1/2 years, minus time served – A former top fundraiser for Rod Blagojevich was sentenced Tuesday to 10 1/2 years in prison for pressuring businesses for millions in kickbacks, an unusually stiff penalty that could portend a tough day for the former governor when he is sentenced for his own corruption convictions.Antoin “Tony” Rezko spent 3 1/2 years in custody awaiting sentencing on his 2008 convictions for fraud, money laundering and plotting to squeeze $7 million in kickbacks from companies that wanted to do business with the state during Blagojevich’s tenure. He will get credit for time served and will serve 85 percent of his total sentence.Attorneys for the former Chicago real estate developer and fast-food entrepreneur had asked that he be set free, saying he had served more time than others convicted as part of the federal investigation of Blagojevich.But U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve told Rezko his “selfish and corrupt actions” had damaged the trust people have in their government and cited his repeated lies about his role in the schemes.
    • Obama heckled by protesters at New Hampshire speech – The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room – President Obama was heckled on Tuesday during an appearance at a New Hampshire high school.Obama had traveled north to the Granite State, which holds the nation’s first presidential primary, to discuss the economy and his proposal to extend a current payroll tax cut.Just as the president started his speech, protesters, apparently from the Occupy Wall Street protest movement, used the “human mic” technique to amplify their voices. It was unclear what the protesters were saying, or what point they were attempting to make.The president smiled through the disruption, saying: “No, it’s OK,” as other parts of the crowd sought to hush the protesters by chanting his name and old campaign slogan, “Yes We Can.”
    • More hacked climate emails surface ahead of UN conference – What’s a United Nations climate conference without an email controversy?A second trove of hacked emails among climate scientists has surfaced, marking the second time in three years that internal emails from a prominent U.K. research institute have been made public ahead of international global warming talks.A file with 5,000 emails that was anonymously posted on the Internet earlier Tuesday appears to have been hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.
      The documents include emails from Michael Mann, a prominent climatologist that currently works at Pennsylvania State University, and other scientists that were at the center of the 2009 email release, the BBC reported Tuesday.A link to the emails went dead Tuesday afternoon.
    • My Radio Assessment of Gingrich’s Chances Against Obama – Last week on my “Hillyer Time” radio show, my opening monologue explained why I think it’s ludicrous to think Newt Gingrich could possible win a general-election battle against Barack Obama – analysis that stands regardless of whether one personally likes the idea of Gingrich in the Oval Office if he should pull off the miracle and win anyway. Some people wanted to be able to read what I said.
      So, slightly adapted from radio notes for reading ease, here’s what I said:  Welcome to Hillyer Time….

      For now, I really need to vent. I am absolutely flabbergasted at what I see in the latest Republican polls for president. What I see looks like a mass political suicide attempt — so determined to commit suicide that it uses too many pills, plus a slit wrist, plus a gun, on the ledge of a 1,000-foot building, just to make sure that at least one of the methods succeeds.

      What I’m talking about is the rise of Newt Gingrich to the front of the Republican pack. If this isn’t mass suicide, is mass amnesia of a particularly dangerous variety. And, politically speaking, if it continues it will be an absolute guarantee of Barack Obama’s re-election next Fall.

      Why? Well, for months I’ve said… … that Mitt Romney was the only legitimate contender the Republicans could choose who could NOT make a case against Obama’s biggest area of weakness, which is Obamacare, because Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health plan was almost the exact model for Obamacare. It doesn’t matter how he spins it, Romney can’t make a cogent case against it.

      But the reason I said Romney was the only one was because I didn’t consider Gingrich a legitimate contender. Well, if he is a serious contender, he becomes the second person who can’t make a case against Obamacare, especially against its individual mandate. Gingrich has supported an individual mandate for almost 18 years, has written in favor of it as recently as 2008, and even several times this year has defended it in concept.

      So Gingrich can’t make a case against Obamacare.

    • Obama’s Economic Quackery – Sometimes the wrong medicine can make a struggling patient far sicker than he would have been had he been allowed to recover naturally. Western medicine began with the premise that the physician either must know how to cure the patient or simply leave him alone — but above all not make him worse through harmful treatment.As 2011 ends, we have discovered how to turn a natural recovery from a near-record recession into a serial slowdown. Almost every haphazard, ad hoc attempt by Barack Obama to jumpstart the economy has only further stalled it. The president has never articulated a diagnosis of why the economy was stalled, never outlined a coherent treatment plan, and so cannot offer a prognosis. If we have a sick budget, a Byzantine tax code, bankrupting entitlements and long-term debt burden, and a costly imported-oil bill, one would never know all that from the president, who has never offered any sort of plan for addressing these crises.
    • Marines Over Medicaid – To the great surprise of nobody, another blue-ribbon panel of Washington’s A-list nabobs has failed at its task: In this case, it is the so-called supercommittee charged with nudging the federal government away from the edge of the debt abyss. Investors despaired at the news, and there was talk of a second downgrade of U.S. Treasury debt.The failure of the supercommittee is a testament to Democrats’ tax obsession. With the supercommittee having fizzled, the next step is the automatic sequestration process, which imposes 50 percent of the cuts on a program that accounts for only 20 percent of spending (national defense) while leaving the entitlements largely untouched. But the country needs the Marines more than it needs Medicaid.
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: California Dental Association Sues the California Department of Healthcare Services Over Medicaid Payments to Dentists – California Dental Association Sues the California Department of Healthcare Services Over Medicaid Payments to Dentists
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: The Morning Drill: November 22, 2011 – The Morning Drill: November 22, 2011
    • President 2012 Poll Watch: Newt Gingrich Now Leading in Positive Intensity | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012 Poll Watch: Newt Gingrich Now Leading in Positive Intensity #tcot #catcot
    • Capitol Alert: Rick Perry to raise money at private fundraiser in Sacramento – Money for nothing…..RT @CapitolAlert: Rick Perry to raise money at private fundraiser in Sacramento
    • Who’s More Likely to Beat Obama? – t’s becoming increasingly hard to say whether Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney, the two leading Republican presidential candidates, would fare better against Barack Obama. The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows Gingrich trailing Obama by just 6 percentage points — 46 to 40 percent. Less than a month and a half ago, Gingrich trailed Obama by 15 points (49 to 34 percent). Meanwhile, Romney trails Obama by just 1 point — 43 to 42 percent.Taking the longer view, Romney has been remarkably consistent in his matchups with Obama. Across 11 Rasmussen surveys of likely voters over the past six months, Romney has always been within a 6-point range versus Obama — between 38 and 44 percent. Likewise, Obama has always been within a 6-point range versus Romney — between 40 and 46 percent. However, with his slightly higher levels of support, Obama has gone 7-4 versus Romney in these matchups.  Moreover, while Romney and Obama split the first six matchups, Obama has won four of the past five.
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    • President 2012 GOP Poll Watch: Gingrich 26% Vs. Romney 22% Vs. Cain 14% Vs. Paul 6% Vs. Perry 6% | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012 GOP Poll Watch: Gingrich 26% Vs. Romney 22% Vs. Cain 14% Vs. Paul 6% Vs. Perry 6% #tcot #catcot
    • Doctors amputate frostbitten feet of Alaska runner – An All-American distance runner who spent more than two days in freezing winter temperatures without winter gear has had his legs amputated just above the ankles.Marko Cheseto, 28, is one of several Kenyan runners who competed for the University of Alaska Anchorage in cross-country and track. The amputations were reported Monday on the UAA Athletic Department website.Cheseto was seen at about 7 p.m. in a UAA building on Nov. 6, a Sunday night, as two snow storms started to blanket the city. His roommates reported him missing the next morning. The disappearance prompted a citywide search.
    • Occupy L.A. receives offer to decamp – Los Angeles officials have offered Occupy L.A. protesters a package of incentives that includes downtown office space and farmland in an attempt to persuade them to abandon their camp outside of City Hall, according to several demonstrators who have been in negotiations with the city.The details of the proposal were revealed Monday during the demonstration’s nightly general assembly meeting by Jim Lafferty, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild who has been advocating on behalf of the protest since it began seven weeks ago.Lafferty said city officials have offered protesters a $1-a-year lease on a 10,000-square-foot office space near City Hall. He said officials also promised land elsewhere for protesters who wish to farm, as well as additional housing for the contingent of homeless people who joined the camp.
    • Mitt Romney Is First GOP Presidential Hopeful to Book Hollywood Fundraiser – Polls show that Mitt Romney is first in the hearts of California Republicans, and he’ll be the first of the party’s presidential hopefuls to visit Los Angeles for a fundraiser Dec. 6 at the Beverly Hills Hotel.Hedge fund manager Josh Friedman and his wife, Beth, are the hosts, along with Eva and Marc Stein and Tracy and Gene Sykes of Goldman Sachs.
    • Romney coming after L.A. money – LA Observed – RT @LAObserved: Romney coming after L.A. money.
    • Should Dentists Be Vaccinated Against Influenza and Pertussis? | Smiles For A Lifetime – Temporary (Locum Tenens) Dentistry – Should Dentists Be Vaccinated Against Influenza and Pertussis?
    • Rising to top of GOP polls, Gingrich beefs up campaign staff – The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room – RT @briefingroom: Rising to top of GOP polls, Gingrich beefs up campaign staff
    • The Morning Flap: November 22, 2011 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – The Morning Flap: November 22, 2011 #tcot #catcot
  • Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: November 22, 2011

    November 22, 2011 /

    Michele Bachmann enters at 22:00

    These are my links for November 21st through November 22nd:

    • Michele Bachmann’s Entrance Music On Jimmy Fallon Was Fishbone’s ‘Lyin’ Ass Bitch’ | Mediaite – Earlier this morning, our own Nando Di Fino critiqued Michele Bachmann’s appearance on last night’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon by saying that that the first half of her segment, when she discussed her family life and Thanksgiving, was much better than her second, where she attempted to make “stale, rehearsed political humor.” However, it now seems that her spot on the show was tainted from the very beginning thanks to a sly commentary from Fallon’s house band, The Roots. In case anyone watching the show was curious why Bachmann’s entrance music appeared to be a rocking ska song, the song’s title, “Lyin’ Ass Bitch,” might explain things.

      Shameful…..

    • MF Global Trustee Says Shortfall Could Exceed $1.2 Billion – The amount of customer money missing from the collapsed trading firm MF Global may be more than $1.2 billion — double previous estimates — the trustee dismantling the firm’s brokerage unit said on Monday.

      But the surprise finding, which caught regulators off guard, may be overstated, according to a person briefed on the investigation. Some regulators say they believe that the trustee double-counted $220 million that had been transferred between units of MF Global, this person said.

      Still, the much higher number highlights the disarray of MF Global’s records and raises significantly the hurdle for tens of thousands of customers seeking to get their money back. The trustee’s estimate represents a significant portion of customer funds held by MF Global.

      Regulators suspect that as investors and customers fled MF Global in the last week of October, the firm used some of the customer money for its own needs — violating Wall Street rules that customers’ money be kept separate from the firm’s funds. Much of that money may never return.

    • Gingrich seeks to show staying power – Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich touched down in New Hampshire on Monday to assume the title of surging presidential candidate — and to try to impart to it a staying power that has eluded those who have risen and stumbled before.

      The fifth Republican contender to climb to the top of public polls this year, Gingrich took advantage of the moment to again announce his plans to reform Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and various programs for the poor. Campaign money is coming in, he said, and a staff that shrank to a dozen after an implosion in June has grown to 40. Gingrich is even allowing himself to look ahead to a general-election contest against President Obama, because, he said, “one of the reasons people support me is because they can see me debating Obama.”

    • Mike Huckabee says conservatives may have to get behind Romney – Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa presidential caucus with the backing of social conservatives in 2008, is hinting that it may be time for conservative Republicans to get behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s candidacy.

      “Mitt Romney may not be their first choice, but Mitt Romney every day of the week and twice on Sunday is going to be a much more effective president for issues that they care about than Barack Obama,” Huckabee said Sunday in an interview with WABC. “I think sometimes there is this anxiety within the Republican Party of who is the perfect candidate. The answer is there isn’t one.”

      He continued to say that conservatives have to decide “who can survive” the campaign process. “And whoever that is, if it’s Mitt Romney, then I think Republicans and conservatives and the Tea Party need to get behind him and say, ‘You may not be our first choice, but between you and Obama, I’ll vote 40 times to get you elected.'”

    • THE RETURN OF DEBTORS PRISONS: Collection Agencies Now Want Deadbeats Arrested And Sent To The Big House – As if life wasn’t already tense enough for Americans who can’t pay their debts, collection agencies are now taking advantage of archaic state laws to have some debtors arrested and sent to jail.

      More than one-third of US states allow debtors to be arrested and jailed, says Jessica Silver-Greenberg in the Wall Street Journal.

      Judges typically grant arrest warrants when the debtors have failed to show up for court dates or failed to make court-ordered payments.

      Of course, the reason debtors have failed to make court-ordered payments is often the same reason they didn’t pay their debts in the first place: They don’t have any money.

    • The consequences of presidential weakness – The supercommittee is not so much a failure of the legislative branch as it is of the president’s ability to lead the country. Each side in Congress represented its constituents well. It is, however, a very good argument indeed for dumping Obama. As Samuelson puts it, “The president won’t talk specifics, but government consists of specifics. The reason we cannot have a large budget deal is that Americans haven’t been prepared for one. The president hasn’t educated them, and so they can’t support what they don’t understand.”

      Republicans and Democrats in Congress should be crystal-clear: The president’s been AWOL from the most important domestic challenge we face. Frankly, I suspect that a stronger Democratic president would have been able to broker a deal. Actually, a stronger and more courageous president would have embraced Simpson-Bowles. But not Obama. Maybe we should get a president who doesn’t run overseas or finger-point but who leads.

    • Senate Democrats Blame Uber-Lobbyist Grover Norquist For Super Committee Failure – The super committee failed and Senate Democrats are lining up to blame Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist for the committee’s inability to reach a deal.

      In a video, Democrats warn “You didn’t elect Grover Norquist, but he blocked a deficit compromise, pressuring Republicans not to defy him.” It follows with clips of Norquist on 60 Minutes and other news shows taking credit for Republicans opposing a tax increase.

    • Sarah Palin Got Scolded by Roger Ailes for Not Announcing Her Non-Candidacy on Fox News – Sarah Palin’s announcement that she wouldn’t run for president disappointed her legions of admirers — but it infuriated Roger Ailes. The Fox News chief wasn’t angry about the decision itself. Rather, he was livid that Palin made the October 5 announcement on Mark Levin’s conservative talk-radio program, robbing Fox News of an exclusive and a possible ratings bonanza. Fox was relegated to getting a follow-up interview with Palin on Greta Van Susteren’s 10 p.m. show, after the news of Palin’s decision had been drowned out by Steve Jobs’s death. Ailes was so mad, he considered pulling her off the air entirely until her $1 million annual contract expires in 2013.
    • @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-22 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-22 #tcot #catcot
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: Fewer Americans Dying from Oral and Throat Cancer? – Fewer Americans Dying from Oral and Throat Cancer?
    • Photo of the Day: Democrat California Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi’s Booking Photo » Flap’s California Blog – Photo of the Day: Democrat California Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi’s Booking Photo
    • Super Committee Fails to Reach Deficit Agreement – Billy House – NationalJournal.com – Super Committee Fails to Reach Deficit Agreement
    • The Afternoon Flap: November 21, 2011 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – The Afternoon Flap: November 21, 2011 #tcot #catcot
  • Pinboard Links,  The Afternoon Flap

    The Afternoon Flap: November 21, 2011

    November 21, 2011 /

    These are my links for November 21st from 08:13 to 14:38:

    • Boehner blames Obama for failure of supercommittee to reach a deal – House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is blaming President Obama for the failure of the congressional supercommittee to reach a deal for cutting the federal deficit.The Speaker’s office sent out a memo Monday morning that says the supercommittee “was unable to reach agreement because President Obama and Washington Democrats insisted on dramatic tax hikes on American job creators, which would make our economy worse.”The memo from Boehner’s office says Obama set the deficit panel up for failure by demanding it become the vehicle for economic stimulus.

      “The President designed a political strategy that doomed the committee to failure first by insisting the committee include $450 billion of his failed stimulus policies in any agreement, making deficit reduction much harder and second by issuing a veto threat warning he would not accept an agreement that did not include a job-killing tax increase,” the memo obtained by The Hill states.

      The memo was not signed by the Speaker, as is customary for messages that come directly from him.

    • Super Committee Fails to Reach Deficit Agreement – The bipartisan congressional committee tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction announced on Monday it cannot reach agreement by the Wednesday deadline, a stark if not unexpected admission that its efforts have ended in failure.”After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline,” the co-chairs, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said.The declaration came late Monday afternoon in a written statement from the 12-member Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction despite last-second discussions in closed-door meetings.

      The committee, in the end, could not resolve that Republicans would not go as far as Democrats wanted on allowing more revenue raisers, and Democrats did not want to move on entitlement reforms. Intense messaging by both political parties on which was more to blame is surely to spill out for days, if not months.

      The super panel was created with extraordinary, fast-track powers this summer under the law agreed to by Republicans and Democrats during the debt ceiling crisis. That same law now says its failure will trigger $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts over 10 years, starting in 2013. That so-called sequestration is to include cuts to Pentagon spending.

    • When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable? – If we trace liberal disappointment with President Obama to its origins, to try to pinpoint the moment when his crestfallen supporters realized that this was Not Change They Could Believe In, the souring probably began on December 17, 2008, when Obama announced that conservative Evangelical pastor Rick Warren would speak at his inauguration. “Abominable,” fumed John Aravosis on AmericaBlog. “Obama’s ‘inclusiveness’ mantra always seems to head only in one direction—an excuse to scorn progressives and embrace the Right,” seethed Salon’s Glenn Greenwald. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow rode the story almost nightly: “I think the problem is getting larger for Barack Obama.” Negative 34 days into the start of the Obama presidency, the honeymoon was over.Since then, the liberal gloom has only deepened, as Obama compromise alternated with Obama failure. Liberals speak of Obama in unceasingly despairing terms. “I’m exhausted [from] defending you,” one supporter confessed to Obama at a town-hall meeting last year.“We are all incredibly frustrated,” Justin Ruben, MoveOn’s executive director, told the Washington Post in September. “I’m disappointed in Obama,” complained Steve Jobs, according to Walter Isaacson’s new biography. The assessments appear equally morose among the most left-wing and the most moderate of Obama’s supporters, among opinion leaders and rank-and-file voters. In early 2004, Democrats, by a 25-point margin, described themselves as “more enthusiastic than usual about voting.” At the beginning of 2008, the margin had shot up to over 60 percentage points. Now as many Democrats say they’re less enthusiastic about voting as say they’re more enthusiastic.
    • We’ve All Gone Crazy – Unlike David Brooks — I walk out of room the minute he starts talking — David Frum is someone I consider a friend, which causes me to get a lot of heat from some of my conservative friends, including those friends whom Frum has attacked by name.Frum stubbornly believes he’s right (and also, Right), and any attempt to argue him out of his position is doomed to failure, simply because it’s his position and he feels honor-bound to defend it. Being rather mule-headed myself, I can relate to that, even when I know Frum is wrong, wrong, wrong (as is anyone who disagrees with me). However, I believe the point of arguments among conservatives is always to find the best way to stomp liberalism into smithereens. And I wish Frum would stop carping so much about conservatives, and start stomping some liberals.Read it all
    • David Frum on the GOP’s Lost Sense of Reality – It’s a very strange experience to have your friends think you’ve gone crazy. Some will tell you so. Others will indulgently humor you. Still others will avoid you. More than a few will demand that the authorities do something to get you off the streets. During one unpleasant moment after I was fired from the think tank where I’d worked for the previous seven years, I tried to reassure my wife with an old cliché: “The great thing about an experience like this is that you learn who your friends really are.” She answered, “I was happier when I didn’t know.”It’s possible that my friends are right. I don’t think so—but then, crazy people never do. So let me put the case to you.I’ve been a Republican all my adult life. I have worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, at Forbes magazine, at the Manhattan and American Enterprise Institutes, as a speechwriter in the George W. Bush administration. I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation, and limited government. I voted for John ­McCain in 2008, and I have strongly criticized the major policy decisions of the Obama administration. But as I contemplate my party and my movement in 2011, I see things I simply cannot support.
    • Gallup poll: Is the Gingrich surge overrated? – In the latest Gallup GOP national poll, Mitt Romney (21 percent) and Newt Gingrich (22 percent) are in a statistical tie among registered Republican and Republican-leaning voters. Herman Cain has dropped to third (16 percent), with Texas Gov. Rick Perry (8 percent) now behind even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) (9 percent).What is interesting is the Gingrich surge at the onset of his first round of rigorous scrutiny has him much lower than the peak for Perry (29 percent). A GOP operative says he’s not surprised. “[Gingrich is] more of a known commodity, and not always in a good sense. Therefore he’s less likely to see a full-scale swoon.” Republican consultant Tony Fratto says the terrain is also different now than when Perry entered with a splash. He tells me, “Perry and Cain haven’t lost all of their elevated support, just part. So there’s less for Gingrich to capture. And Romney’s support stays fairly consistent.”Probably……
    • Will GOP NLRB Member Resign to Shut Down Labor Agency? – On November 30, the National Labor Relations Board is scheduled to vote on proposed rule changes that would speed up union elections by disallowing some appeals until after a workplace vote occurs. Employers typically aim to delay an election so that they can use the time to intimidate employees to voting against a union.But that vote may never take place, because some conservative members of Congress are pushing a plan that would force the NLRB, which is an independent federal agency tasked with enforcing labor law, to shut down. There are currently three people serving on the NLRB; if that is reduced by one, the body will be unable to issue valid rulings.In New Process Steel, L.P. vs National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that the NLRB cannot decide cases with only two members on the NLRB. For 27 months, during the last year of President Bush’s term and the first 14 months of the Obama administration, the NLRB only had two members (a Democrat and a Republican). The two members agreed to work together on common sense cases where they could easily agree on a ruling; they passed judgment in nearly 600 cases.

      But the Supreme Court invalidated all those rulings because they were made with only two members. Therefore, some conservative politicians such as South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and prominent right-wing blogs such as RedState.com are pushing for Republican NLRB Board Member Brian Hayes to resign before the vote for the rules is issued on November 30, which would effectively shut down the agency.

    • Spirit Airlines’ deceptive Tweets land a U.S. fine – MarketWatch – Oh MY! | RT @WSJ:Spirit Airlines has been fined $50,000 for tweets advertising $9 fares that didn’t disclose add’l fees
    • Federal lawmakers restore $12.5 million to program for methamphetamine lab cleanup – The war on methamphetamine has gotten some support from Congress — millions of dollars to clean up the toxic waste generated by clandestine meth labs.President Barack Obama signed a wide-ranging appropriations bill Friday that included the restoration of $12.5 million for meth lab cleanup.0

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      “It’s an awesome thing,” said Tommy Farmer, state meth task force coordinator for Tennessee, the state that led the nation in the number of meth labs in 2010. “It keeps us in the fight so we can combat these things.”

      The measure restores funding lost in February, when federal meth lab cleanup money through the Community Oriented Policing Services program ran out, and was not renewed. The program provided $19.2 million for meth lab cleanup in 2010.

    • Why Can’t Newspapers Make Money Online? – The bottom line is this: the reason that newspapers can’t make money is because they’re pricing themselves out of the market. It’s true that newspaper circulation has declined due to competition of various new media (check out Newspaper Death Watch if you really want to get depressed), and newspaper ad expenditures have declined along with them since 2001. But the real problem seems to be that newspapers have been way too slow in responding to competitive pressures by lowering their ad rates to a competitive level. Lulled into complacency by decades (if not centuries) of dominating the advertising industry, they’ve failed to recognize that when it comes to advertiser value, they’ve long since fallen from the top spot. The advantages they once had based on geographic exclusivity, readership, and exclusive content have been eliminated by the rise of the web. Today you can get your news from a huge number of sources other than the local bundle of papers tossed on your doorstep; and you (as a consumer) can get it for free. Craigslist and Facebook and Yelp and blogs and job listing sites and myriad other sources of local content have drained away readership and, more importantly, have all but negated the exclusive lock that newspapers used to have on local content. Advertisers who want to reach local audiences now have a huge amount of options and don’t have to be held hostage to the rates newspapers got used to charging.“News” has now become a commodity, yet the papers continue to charge premium prices. Unless they can figure out how to pare down costs, price themselves competitively, and, more importantly, offer content that’s worth paying for (see The Wall Street Journal), desperation tactics such as paywalls are only going to hasten the inevitable decline.
    • Dilbert November 20, 2011 – To Catch a Thief » Flap’s California Blog – Dilbert November 20, 2011 – To Catch a Thief
    • President 2012: Newt Gingrich – Really? | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012: Newt Gingrich – Really? #tcot #catcot
    • George Will | Newt Gingrich | Ron Paul | Mediaite – George Will Dismisses Newt Gingrich, Scoffs At Idea That He Is A ‘Historian’ #tcot
    • Democrats Pray for Newt – Democrats Pray for Newt #tcot
    • (500) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/conservatives-shouldnt-kid-themselves-about-newt/2011/11/20/gIQA9RhhhN_blog.html – Conservatives shouldn’t kid themselves about Newt #tcot #teaparty
    • Only 12% Expect Value of Their Home To Increase In Next Year – Rasmussen Reports™ – Poll Watch: Only 12% Expect Value of Their Home To Increase In Next Year #tcot
    • Untitled (http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/us/politics/deficit-deal-fell-apart-after-seeming-agreement.html&OQ=_rQ3D4Q26adxnnlQ3D1Q26pagewantedQ3DallQ26adxnnlxQ3D1321891541-qqfPM1wiKQ51yi2VQ2BBJWqRqAQ26utm_sourceQ3Dtwitt – Deficit Deal Fell Apart After Seeming Agreement
    • Do Overweight People Eat LESS Often? | Smiles For A Lifetime – Temporary (Locum Tenens) Dentistry – Do Overweight People Eat LESS Often?
    • Where Michigan stands on 2012 race for president | Detroit Free Press | freep.com – President 2012 Michigan Poll Watch: Romney 46% Vs. Obama 41%
    • The Morning Flap: November 21, 2011 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – The Morning Flap: November 21, 2011 #tcot #catcot

  • Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: November 21, 2011

    November 21, 2011 /

    These are my links for November 18th through November 21st:

    • Parties brace for ‘super’ fallout – Now, both parties are quickly trying to figure out how to turn the committee’s embarrassing failure into a political win for their side.

      The Democratic message: We stood up to Republicans looking to gut Social Security, slash Medicare and permanently extend the Bush-era tax cuts for high income Americans.

      The Republican counterattack: Democrats wanted little more than tax increases and refused to consider changes to deficit-driving health care entitlements. Both sides are positioning themselves as the party that compromised and sought a middle-ground.

      But will this political posturing work for a Congress that had a 9 percent approval rating in one recent poll? Or will it just back fire with voters? Many lawmakers are worried about what the supercommittee has wrought for both sides.

    • Lawmakers already taking aim at auto-cuts – Failure by Congress’ debt-cutting supercommittee to recommend $1.2 trillion in savings by Wednesday is supposed to automatically trigger spending cuts in the same amount to accomplish that job.
      But the same legislators who concocted that budgetary booby trap just four months ago could end up spending the 2012 election year and beyond battling over defusing it.

      Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., say they are writing legislation to prevent what they say would be devastating cuts to the military. House Republicans are exploring a similar move. Democrats maintain they won’t let domestic programs be the sole source of savings.

    • Deficit Deal Fell Apart After Seeming Agreement – Called away from dinner tables, the Jets-Patriots game on television and, in one case, a soccer team party, several Democratic members of the special Congressional committee on deficit reduction raced to the office of Senator Patty Murray for a hasty 8:30 meeting to discuss the outlines of a potential agreement. Crucially, it appeared to have the backing of at least one Republican on the 12-member panel even though it included a tax increase.

      As the members spoke, they began to see the outlines of a deal, tentatively agreeing on tax rates, revenues, spending cuts and changes to Social Security and Medicare, according to interviews with members of the committee and their aides.

    • Supercommittee blame everywhere – A full-scale blame game erupted into public view Sunday after nearly three months of secretive negotiations on the supercommittee that failed to resolve an impasse to cut at least $1.2 trillion in deficits over the next decade.

      Fanning out across the Sunday talk shows just hours before the supercommittee’s deadline, Republicans insisted that Democrats wanted to institute a $1 trillion tax hike, while Democrats argued that the GOP wanted to gut popular entitlements and protect the rich. And both sides insisted they were willing to compromise when the other refused to move off their partisan positions.

    • Where in the world is Obama? – The president was in Hawaii while the supercommittee hit stall speed. What is new about this? Very little.

      Throughout his term, President Obama has avoided leading on the issue of fiscal responsibility. He walked away from his own commission, the one led by former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, when he found its report filled with inconvenient choices.

      Now in a week when leadership is needed to push this critical committee to do something big and bring the nation’s fiscal house back into order, the president once again disappears. It causes one to wonder, why?

    • Obama has work cut out for him in order to win Michigan in 2012 – President Barack Obama says he saved Michigan’s auto industry, but that isn’t helping his 2012 re-election bid in Macomb and Oakland counties, where Republican front-runner Mitt Romney’s strength helps give him a 5-point lead in the state a year before the election, a Free Press poll shows.

      There’s time for the president to woo voters, but without the two key suburban Detroit counties, it would be difficult for Obama to win Michigan, a state whose voters have backed Democratic candidates in the last five presidential elections.

      In a head-to-head matchup statewide, Romney tops Obama 46%-41% in the poll.

      In Macomb, where Obama received 53% of the vote in 2008, the president trails Romney, 68%-20%. Even controlling for a high margin of error because of a small sample size in the county, Obama trails Romney in Macomb by at least 20 percentage points.

    • Methamphetamine Use Linked to Schizophrenia – Heavy methamphetamine use may be associated with an increased risk for schizophrenia, new research suggests.

      A large cohort study of California inpatients without a history of psychiatric disorders found that those with methamphetamine-related conditions were 9 times more likely to have a subsequent schizophrenia diagnosis than non–drug users, and an almost 1.5- to 3-fold diagnosis risk compared with heavy users of cocaine and opioids, but not cannabis.

      “This provides the first world-wide evidence for a long-standing debate that suggests that methamphetamines may facilitate the development of schizophrenia in a small subset of users,” lead author Russell C. Callaghan, PhD, research scientist at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, Canada, told Medscape Medical News.

      “Methamphetamine users often present to clinical and emergency department settings with psychosis. And our findings suggest that these people need to be monitored closely for an attenuation of their psychotic symptoms. Also, given the side effects with antipsychotic medications, I think we really need to prescribe those treatments judiciously,” said Dr. Callaghan.

      He added that the study findings do not apply to patients who take lower and controlled doses of amphetamines for medical purposes, such as for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

    • How I ended up leaving Poynter JIMROMENESKO.COM – “How did this go off the rails?” Poynter’s attorney asked me during a Nov. 12 phone conversation about my threat to file a cease and desist order against the institute for using my name on their website after being taken off the payroll.

      Read it all

    • @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-20 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-20 #tcot #catcot
    • Capitol Alert: Think Long coalition to propose California tax overhaul – California Think Long Tax Increase = Think STUPID and will fail at polls. Think Long = bipartisan #FAIL
    • Rep. Elton Gallegly: Our Friends in Israel Deserve Better | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Rep. Elton Gallegly: Our Friends in Israel Deserve Better #tcot #catcot
    • foursquare :: Gregory Flap @ Ronnie’s Diner – With LA Roadrunner’s Alice, Nancy, Tara, Mary after 13 Miles (@ Ronnie’s Diner)
    • Off soon to Venice Beach with the LA Roadrunner’s & … on Twitpic – Off soon to Venice Beach with the LA Roadrunner’s & LA Marathon Training. Today = 13 miles and then Ronnie’s Diner
    • @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-19 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-19 #tcot #catcot
    • U.S. Facing What Some Call a Dental Crisis – Roughly half of all Americans don’t have dental insurance, and PBS NewsHour correspondent Betty Ann Bowser is calling it a dental crisis. She states in the report that:

      The federal government has identified more than 4,500 areas of this country, like Grundy, Va., where there are not enough dentists. It says nearly 10,000 new providers are needed to meet the need.

      The state of dentistry today is at a point where many are calling for change, and soon.

    • Video: Millions of Americans Face Life Without Dental Care – The lack of access to dental care is a problem that affects millions of Americans. Health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser reports.
    • Is General Dentistry Dead? – Correct. The ADA has been, and still is against a mid-level provider. Feeling that the patient deserves treatment by a dentist.

      The push for a mid-level has come from a combination of legislators being pushed by “patient advocacy groups” (then again one can ask them the question if they’ve ever actually asked the folks their apparently advocating for if THEY want to be treated by a “second tier” provider or a dentist – answer – they haven’t). Groups such a Kellog and Pew who tend to fund many of these studies when looked at closely, aren’t exactly the most impartial of groups (remember who with a research paper one of the 1st things yu should do is not look at the results, but look at who is funding the research in the 1st place to see if from the start the potential for bias exists).

      Additionally on the legislative front, if you ever have the chance to talk with one of your elected officials about this (and I would encourage you to, since they like to listen) is that what dentistry needs to do is not get into the whole “access to care” issue, but the UTILIZATION of care discussion. Access to care in theory would provide access to 100% of people. However, the reality is that even with *cough*free*cough* care the UTILIZATION rate is at best about 60%. The reality is that unless your talking a military style system where going to the dentist is mandatory, there is a very significant portion of the populaton that will not seek out dental care (unless its an EXTREME emergency situation) no matter what. There is plenty of dentists available to handle to demands of the populatin with its current utilizaton rates. Trying to develop a system for 100% access will just end up wasting dollars on that significant population that won’t seek care. If those dollars are directed at existing providers to make the reimbursement rates FAIR, that will have a much greater impact on access. The bottomline is that the overhead for a mid level won’t be any less than that for a dentist, and if a midlevel is getting the same rates for a procedure as a dentist is (and one would sumise that would be the case since in the medical world a nurse practitioner gets the same reimbursement for suturing up a laceration as an MD/DO does) then they’ll have te same problems meeting overhead as a dentist would. The key is that dentistry, when talking about this issue needs to stick to the objective data, which can be tough when the opposing side tends to have mor emtoional “data” than objective data

    • The Afternoon Flap: November 18, 2011 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – The Afternoon Flap: November 18, 2011 #tcot #catcot
  • Pinboard Links,  The Afternoon Flap

    The Afternoon Flap: November 18, 2011

    November 18, 2011 /

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

    • Poll: Romney, Gingrich in statistical dead heat in N.H. – Two things are true about New Hampshire Republican primary voters. They vote for people they know. And they love an underdog with a comeback story.Four years ago it was the weathered but feisty veteran John McCain who revived his once hanging-by-a-thread campaign to win the nation’s leadoff primary.And so it seems almost fated that after political observers have scratched their heads for months wondering who will emerge as the non-Romney candidate in the Granite State, the voters’ eyes should turn to Newt Gingrich, a man who was Speaker of the House during the previous century and whose own campaign was left for dead last summer.

      The latest NH Journal poll of likely Republican primary voters conducted by Magellan Strategies shows Romney and Gingrich in a statistical dead heat for the January 10th primary. If the election were held today, Romney would earn 29% of the vote and Gingrich would earn 27%. Texas Congressman Ron Paul continues to show resolve by earning 16%. Herman Cain gets 10%. No other candidate is in double digits.

    • Big Labor shells out for GOP friends – For House Republicans, it pays to be a friend of Big Labor.Major unions are giving a heftier slice of campaign donations than usual to pro-labor Republicans this election cycle, even as overall union contributions to members of Congress lags.Labor insiders say there’s extra incentive to support their GOP friends this cycle as unions look to reward lawmakers who rebuff their leadership on key votes, ingratiate themselves to freshman Republicans and ward off primary challengers as many tea party candidates campaign on anti-union platforms.

      Overall this cycle, about 13 percent of labor groups’ political action committee contributions — just over $2 million — have gone toward GOP candidates, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s still dwarfed by the nearly $14 million in union cash that’s gone to Democrats this cycle, but the GOP appears to be gaining ground with union donors after receiving only 6 percent of total contributions in 2010 and 8 percent in the 2008 cycle.

    • Occupy Wall Street: Anne Hathaway joins protesters but surely she’s in the 1%? – She is one of Hollywood’s highest paid actresses and lives a very privileged lifestyle that 99 per cent of people can only dream of.Still, Anne Hathaway acted as an average Joe and accompanied hundreds of protestors as she joined the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in Manhattan’s Union Square.The 29-year-old, who is worth a reported $58 million, was pictured marching with protesters and sticking it to the man yesterday in The Big Apple.
    • Sarah Palin: How Congress Occupied Wall Street – Mark Twain famously wrote, “There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” Peter Schweizer’s new book, “Throw Them All Out,” reveals this permanent political class in all its arrogant glory. (Full disclosure: Mr. Schweizer is employed by my political action committee as a foreign-policy adviser.)Mr. Schweizer answers the questions so many of us have asked. I addressed this in a speech in Iowa last Labor Day weekend. How do politicians who arrive in Washington, D.C. as men and women of modest means leave as millionaires? How do they miraculously accumulate wealth at a rate faster than the rest of us? How do politicians’ stock portfolios outperform even the best hedge-fund managers’? I answered the question in that speech: Politicians derive power from the authority of their office and their access to our tax dollars, and they use that power to enrich and shield themselves.
    • Ventura County Official Announces Bid in New California District – Ventura County Supervisor Steve Bennett (D) announced on Wednesday that he will seek California’s new 26th district seat.“I am running for Congress because Ventura County residents deserve common sense leadership that is not locked into rigid ideology at the expense of the common good,” Bennett said in a statement. “I have demonstrated that leadership for Ventura County residents here at the county level for 10 years. We have made major improvements in the fiscal health of Ventura County.”The Ventura-based district race is not expected to feature a current incumbent next year, as Rep. Elton Gallegly (R) was drawn into the neighboring 25th district and has yet to say where or whether he will run.

      No Republicans have announced for the seat yet, but two other Democrats have: Moorpark City Councilman David Pollock and former professional tennis player David Cruz Thayne.

    • 26th District Democratic Town Hall – The first Congressional Candidates Town Hall meeting is being held tonight for the new 26th district.The Ventura City Democratic Club is hosting the event at the E.P. Foster Library at 7pm.The declared candidates include businessman David Cruz Thayne, Moorpark City Councilman David Pollock and Ventura County Supervisor Steve Bennett.
    • The 10 states that will determine control of the House in 2012 – 2. California: The nation’s biggest state has been an electoral afterthought for some time, going a nearly a decade with only one congressional seat changing hands between 2002 and 2010. That won’t happen again. At least three GOP-held seats are likely to go Democratic in the newly reshuffled map crafted by the state’s new citizen’s redistricting commission. But Democrats think they can run up the score even more, while the GOP strategists believe they can win Democratic-held seats elsewhere to even the score. We could see the results spanning from a total wash to Democrats gaining eight seats. Anything on the top end of that scale would be a major Democratic win.
    • @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-18 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-18 #tcot #catcot
    • foursquare :: Gregory Flap @ Los Angeles Chinatown – Heading home after an afternoon at LA auto show (@ Los Angeles Chinatown)
    • California Proposition 8 Sponsors Protect Marriage Legally Entitled to Defend Measure » Flap’s California Blog – California Proposition 8 Sponsors Protect Marriage Legally Entitled to Defend Measure
    • Lockerz.com : Los Angeles Dodgers’s Photo – RT @Dodgers: Congrats to Clayton Kershaw on winning the #CyYoung! Enjoy your celebratory champagne!
    • House Leaders Plan Facebook Hackathon – While House Republican and Democratic leaders are finding it difficult to agree on spending cuts, they are coming together next month for Capitol Hill’s first-ever Facebook Hackathon. The goal is to find new ways to use the social network to make information about the legislative process more transparent and to help members of the public more easily engage with lawmakers.Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican leader, and Representative Steny Hoyer, a Democrat from Maryland and his party’s whip, are co-hosting the event, scheduled for Dec. 7 in the U.S. Capitol, which will include Facebook engineers, independent software developers, advocates for the open data movement and members of Congress.Hackathon is a term used to describe an event where programmers come together to build applications in a collaborative process.

      “There is a lot of opportunity to improve the process,” said Matt Lira, digital director for Mr. Cantor. “We are going to sit down in a bipartisan way and look at how we can tackle some of these problems. We are hoping to get as many engineers as possible. They will have a unique opportunity to help make democracy work better.”

    • Untitled (http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/20111115econToplines.pdf) – President 2012 GOP Poll Watch: Gingrich 23% Vs. Cain 21% Vs. Romney 19% Vs. Paul 7% Vs. Perry 6%
    • In Debates, Newt Gingrich’s Real Target Is Obama – It’s an open question whether Gingrich can defeat Obama in 2012. It’s taken as a truism that he has “too much baggage.” Well, some of the baggage is lighter than it appears. He was cleared by the Clinton-era Internal Revenue Service of wrongdoing in alleged ethics violations stemming from a college course he taught in the 1990s. The charge that he surprised his cancer-stricken first wife with divorce papers has been, at the least, exaggerated.
    • (500) http://flapsblog.com/2011/11/17/poll-watch-u-s-unemployment-rate-increases-in-mid-november/ – Poll Watch: U.S. Unemployment Rate Increases in Mid-November #tcot #catcot
    • (500) http://smilesforalifetime.com/index.php/2011/11/poll-watch-smoking-rates-range-from-a-high-of-29-in-kentucky-to-low-of-11-in-utah/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=poll-watch-smoking-rates-range-from-a-high-of-29-in-kentucky-to-low-of-11-i – Poll Watch: Smoking Rates Range From a High of 29% in Kentucky to Low of 11% in Utah
    • Occupy Wall Street | Liveblog live blogging | Reuters.com – RT @Reuters: Live coverage of Occupy Wall Street #OWS
    • Ruling on Prop 8, Same Sex Marriage to Come From California Supreme Court | TheBlaze.com – RT @theblaze: Calif. Supreme Court to Issue Pivotal Gay Marriage Ruling Today via @theblaze
    • AD-66: Former California Governor George Deukmejian Endorses Nathan Mintz » Flap’s California Blog – AD-66: Former California Governor George Deukmejian Endorses Nathan Mintz
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: The Morning Drill: November 17, 2011 – The Morning Drill: November 17, 2011
    • (500) http://flapsblog.com/2011/11/17/the-morning-flap-november-17-2011/ – The Morning Flap: November 17, 2011 #tcot #catcot
  • Occupy Protests,  Occupy Wall Street,  Pinboard Links

    The Morning Flap: November 17, 2011

    November 17, 2011 /

    These are my links for November 15th through November 17th:

    • Berkeley police break up Occupy Cal; tents removed, 2 arrested – Police moved in early Thursday to break up the Occupy Cal protest at UC Berkeley, arresting at least two protesters.

      Scores of officers conducted the raid, removing the tents and clearing the area.

      On Tuesday, more than 1,200 singing, sign-waving students and faculty members rallied for much of the day on Sproul Plaza, a site of the 1960s Free Speech Movement.

      At one point, the demonstrators chanted “Hey, hey, ho, ho, police violence has got to go,” a reference to an incident last week in which baton-wielding police officers stopped an Occupy camp from being set up on the campus. Dozens of protesters were arrested in last week’s confrontation, and several were injured.

    • Protesters prepare to take over downtown L.A. intersection – Organizers of a demonstration planned Thursday morning in downtown Los Angeles say protesters are prepared to be arrested by police for committing acts of civil disobedience — including shutting down an intersection.

      The march, which is timed to coincide with other demonstrations across the country to protest the imbalance of wealth and power in the country, is set to begin at 7 a.m. at Bank of America Plaza on Hope Street. It will then make its way through the Financial District to the corner of Figueroa and 4th streets, where demonstrators plan to shut down traffic by erecting tents in the middle of the street.

      Jacob Hay, a leader of the coalition of labor and community groups that helped organize the march, said the group has secured police permits, but that protesters are prepared to be arrested for blocking traffic.

    • Perry challenges Pelosi to debate part-time Congress plan – Rick Perry has challenged House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to debate him next week about his plan for a part-time Congress.

      In a letter to Pelosi (D-Calif.) obtained by The Hill, the Texas governor wrote: “I am in Washington Monday and would love to engage you in a public debate about my Overhaul Washington plan versus the congressional status quo.

      “I think it would be a tremendous service to the American people to see a public airing of these differences,” he continued. “Let the people decide. If Monday doesn’t work, perhaps we could find a time in Iowa over the course of the next month to discuss these issues in front of the people of America’s heartland.”

    • San Franciso police arrest 100 in Bank of America protest – Protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement seized a Bank of America branch in the city’s financial district Wednesday, a demonstration that forced jittery customers and employees to flee and ended in nearly 100 arrests.

      It took about 40 police officers in riot gear nearly four hours to clear the bank, but no one was injured. Police said many of those arrested were UC Santa Cruz students who were protesting fee increases and budget cuts.

      Police removed the protesters methodically, placing them in plastic handcuffs, citing them for misdemeanor trespassing and sending them off in police wagons for further processing.

    • Wall Street clashes start Occupy’s day of action – Police arrested protesters who sat on the ground and blocked traffic into New York’s financial district on Thursday, part of a day of mass gatherings in response to efforts to break up Occupy Wall Street camps nationwide.

      Police in riot helmets hauled several protesters to their feet and handcuffed them one block from Wall Street.

      “All day, all week, shut down Wall Street!” the crowd chanted.

    • Occupy Wall Street protesters vow to wear suits, blend in and get revenge for the Zuccotti Park raid – Occupy Wall Street hoped to show there was life after Zuccotti Thursday by staging a series of marches and rallies – starting with a sneak attack on the Stock Exchange itself.

      As the city braced for a “sizeable” crowd, observers on both sides said the scale of the protest would show whether the two-month-old movement could regain momentum after Tuesday’s demoralizing defeat.

      OWS hoped anger over the NYPD raid that razed their iconic tent city at Zuccotti Park would breathe new life into a cause that had begun to sputter.

      The “day of action” is to begin early, with protesters converging on Wall Street camouflaged in business suits hoping to blend in with office workers trooping out of the subway.

    • Zuccotti Park protester Nkrumah Tinsley arrested after threatening to burn down city – A protester was arrested in Zuccotti Park Wednesday after he threatened to fire bomb the city — and his rant went viral on YouTube, police said.

      Nkrumah Tinsley, 29, was busted after cops saw a video of him claiming he would torch the city during Thursday’s mass protest posted online, police said.

      “On the 17th (of Nov.), we’re going to burn New York City to the f—ing ground,” an angry Tinsley told a crowd of demonstrators in the video posted on Tuesday.

      “In a few days, you’re going to see what a Molotov cocktail can do to Macy’s.”

      When officers from the NYPD’s intelligence division saw the video, they immediately began working on trying to identify the raging man, police said.

      “We didn’t want him out there [Thursday]. We wanted him in our custody,” said Paul Browne, top spokesman for the NYPD. “He was specific as to date, location and method for the fire bombing …maybe it was just a rant, but we didn’t want to take that chance.”

      Cops later spotted Tinsley at Zuccotti Park Wednesday and collared him about 5 p.m., police said. He was charged with making terroristic threats.

    • Romenesko Leaves Poynter After Conflict Over Quotes – Jim Romenesko, the blogger who developed a large and loyal following by chronicling and summarizing news in the media world, quit his post on Thursday evening after a bizarre spat with the institute that hosts his writing.

      An editor at Poynter, which purchased Mr. Romenesko’s blog 12 years ago, had questioned his failure to use quotation marks when summarizing articles in his daily round-ups of media stories — summaries that Mr. Romenesko never claimed credit for as his original work.

      In an e-mail to the institute on Thursday night, Mr. Romenesko said, “I’ve had a great dozen years at Poynter, and I look forward to my next chapter.”

    • Felix • A couple of points about Romeneskogate, for those who aren’t completely bored of it by now – The original Julie Moos post was highly misleading in one respect — she made it seem as though Romenesko hadn’t blockquoted two full paragraphs in this post, when in fact he had used blockquote. I know Moos was misleading because Jack Shafer said that she “pointed to a recent example from Romenesko’s work in which he ran whole sentences from a Chicago Tribune story in his summary of it without placing the words in quotation marks or block quotation”. I suspect that the problem here is that Poynter’s CSS has problems with blockquotes-within-blockquotes, but in any case Moos should have been much clearer that only a minority of the text in question was outside quote marks or blockquotes.
      Justin Peters managed to commit exactly the same sin that Moos did, when he reminisced about freelancing on Today’s Papers. “I knuckled down and found a way to say things in my own words, because I am a journalist, and that is my job,” he writes, managing to to completely miss the point of what an aggregator does. It’s not the job of a journalist, saying things in his own words: instead, it’s the job of a curator, linking to great content. If Peters thinks that Romenesko’s job was that of a journalist, writing things in his own words, he’s missing the point entirely.
    • Holding aggregators to journalistic standards – Moos is using the standards of original journalism, here, to judge a blogger who was never about original journalism. Copy-and-pasting other people’s stories is what Romenesko did, at high volume, and with astonishing speed and reliability, for many years. And the media community, including Poynter, loved him for it.

      Moos might have “spent weeks in 2004 developing explicit publishing guidelines with the understanding and expectation that they would be adopted”, but guidelines are always reverse-engineered from already-existing best practice. And Romenesko is a shining example of best practice in the aggregation world. If he’s violating the guidelines, then it’s the guidelines which are at fault, not Romenesko.

      Petty bureaucrats like Moos love to codify things, so that they can cite chapter and verse when telling people off. But if you’re running a grown-up media organization, please: follow Paton’s lead, and not Moos’s. Journalists will behave unethically, sometimes. When they do, they should be reprimanded or even fired. But basic common sense is always the best guide to whether a journalist has done something wrong. And when Julie Moos presumes to judge Jim Romenesko by the standards of a Moos-written rulebook, it’s right and proper that the wrath of the Twittersphere come down on her as a result.

    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: Connecticut Mall Teeth-Whitening Entrepreneurs Sue the Connecticut Dental Commission – Connecticut Mall Teeth-Whitening Entrepreneurs Sue the Connecticut Dental Commission
    • Wisconsin’s Governor: Recall Drive Is About Unions Seeking ‘Power’ – Many of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s citizens may be signing petitions for his recall in reaction to the battle he led earlier in the year to weaken his state’s public-employee unions.

      But Walker doesn’t appear to be backing off one inch from his stance that he did what was right for his state.

      Indeed, in a conversation with Tell Me More host Michel Martin, Walker essentially blamed outside agitators in organized labor for the recall effort.

      He accused his political foes of really being after “power” while presumably camouflaging their true intent with platitudes about workers’ rights, among other things.

      Unions are in particular coming after him, Walker said, because the new budget law he and the the Republican-controlled state legislature in Madison enacted, gave workers a choice about whether or not to belong to a union.

    • California Appeals Court Rules: Cell Phones at Red Lights Are Not OK » Flap’s California Blog – California Appeals Court Rules: Cell Phones at Red Lights Are Not OK
    • The Cease and Desist Letter From the Smile Center of San Antonio and Dr. Stephen Simpton | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – The Cease and Desist Letter From the Smile Center of San Antonio and Dr. Stephen Simpton #tcot #catcot
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: Updated: The Cease and Desist Letter From the Smile Center of San Antonio and Dr. Stephen Simpton – The Cease and Desist Letter From the Smile Center of San Antonio and Dr. Stephen Simpton
    • CA-26: Ventura County Supervisor Steve Bennett to Announce Candidacy for Congress | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – CA-26: Ventura County Supervisor Steve Bennett to Announce Candidacy for Congress #tcot #catcot
    • Is the Gingrich Bubble Already Popping? – Is the Gingrich Bubble Already Popping?
    • Gingrich Said to Be Paid $1.6M by Freddie Mac- Bloomberg – Gingrich Said to Be Paid at Least $1.6 Million by Freddie Mac
    • Is the Gingrich Bubble Already Popping? – Joe Klein says news of Newt Gingrich’s ties to Freddie Mac threaten to halt his recent recent rise in the polls.

      “You must understand: to Republican stalwarts, a relationship with Freddie Mac is the moral equivalent of satanism. Gingrich was a paid helper — and, believe me, he didn’t get paid $1.6 million to lecture the organization on the failures of government intervention in the market — in a ‘socialist’ effort to make home-buying easier for people who ordinarily wouldn’t be able to afford houses, an effort that famously went off the rails when the government began supporting sub-prime and other highly questionable mortgages.”

      “In other words, Gingrich was supporting — the best guess was that Gingrich was hired to win some Republican support for Freddie — the very sort of program that he routinely excoriates. This sort of hypocrisy is astounding but, sadly, not unknown to Newt. After all, this was the guy who led the Republican Impeachment of Bill Clinton while having an extra-marital affair of his own.”

    • Gingrich Said to Be Paid at Least $1.6 Million by Freddie Mac – Newt Gingrich made between $1.6 million and $1.8 million in consulting fees from two contracts with mortgage company Freddie Mac, according to two people familiar with the arrangement.

      The total amount is significantly larger than the $300,000 payment from Freddie Mac that Gingrich was asked about during a Republican presidential debate on Nov. 9 sponsored by CNBC, and more than was disclosed in the middle of congressional investigations into the housing industry collapse.

      Gingrich’s business relationship with Freddie Mac spanned a period of eight years. When asked at the debate what he did to earn a $300,000 payment in 2006, the former speaker said he “offered them advice on precisely what they didn’t do,” and warned the company that its lending practices were “insane.” Former Freddie Mac executives who worked with Gingrich dispute that account.

      Gingrich’s first contract with the mortgage lender was in 1999, five months after he resigned from Congress and as House speaker, according to a Freddie Mac press release.

      His primary contact inside the organization was Mitchell Delk, Freddie Mac’s chief lobbyist, and he was paid a self- renewing, monthly retainer of $25,000 to $30,000 between May 1999 until 2002, according to three people familiar with aspects of the business agreement.

    • Poll Watch: Americans Favor Repealing ObamaCare 47% Vs. 42% | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Poll Watch: Americans Favor Repealing ObamaCare 47% Vs. 42% #tcot #catcot
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: Has the MAGIC Mouthwash to Fight Tooth Decay Arrived? – Has the MAGIC Mouthwash to Fight Tooth Decay Arrived?
    • Dilbert November 16, 2011 – Goals for the Year » Flap’s California Blog – Dilbert November 16, 2011 – Goals for the Year
    • U.K Doctors Call for Car Smoking Ban | Smiles For A Lifetime – Temporary (Locum Tenens) Dentistry – U.K Doctors Call for Car Smoking Ban
    • Day By Day November 15, 2011 – Rule | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Day By Day November 15, 2011 – Rule #tcot #catcot
    • Untitled (http://www.businessweek.com/pdf/poll11-16-11.pdf) – RT @ByronYork: Bloomberg NH: Romney 40, Paul 17, Gingrich 11, Cain 8, Huntsman 7, Perry 3, Bachmann 2, Santorum 1.
    • @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-16 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-16 #tcot #catcot
    • AD-66: Huey, Mintz and Muratsuchi Will Face Off In 2012 South Bay Assembly Race » Flap’s California Blog – AD-66: Huey, Mintz and Muratsuchi Will Face Off In 2012 South Bay Assembly Race
    • Amazon.com: Gregory Cole: Flap’s Wish List – I just wished for: ‘Covenant of Liberty: The Ideological Origins of the Tea Party Movement’ by Michael… via @amazon
    • Covenant of Liberty: The Ideological Origins of the Tea Party Movement – Due Out in March | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Covenant of Liberty: The Ideological Origins of the Tea Party Movement – Due Out in March #tcot #catcot
    • Terror three plead not guilty – 38-year-old Iraqi-Kurd Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak, Uzbek David Jakobsen, 33, and alleged Uighur (China) mastermind 40-year-old Mikael Davud, pleaded not guilty to planning an assault using explosives on Danish paper Jyllands-Posten at today’s opening of their trial in Oslo District Court.
      All also denied their guilt relating to charges of trying to obtain bomb ingredients, as well as plotting to assassinate Danish cartoonist and author of the contentious Prophet Mohammed caricatures, Kurt Westergaard.
      Police Security Service (PST) officials arrested now indicted Bujak, Jakobsen, and Davud  in Norway and Germany last year on suspicion of planning to blow up the Chinese Embassy in Oslo.
      The case is also believed to be connected with plans to bomb a New York subway and a shopping mall in Manchester, UK, in 2009.
      According to NRK, Prosecutor Geir Evanger said today that, “There is no doubt that David Jakobsen ordered hydrogen peroxide at a pharmacy on Jernbanetorget [in Oslo] on 02 September 2009. There is [also] no doubt that this can be used to make explosives.”
      “He picked it up on 04 September, and the bottle was handed over to Mikael Davud in his Oslo apartment the same evening. However, police had already replaced the contents of the bottle contents with something harmless,” he continued.
      All three men also have suspected links with al-Qaida. Officials believe Mr Davud had travelled to Pakistan and was trained by the extremist group how to make explosives, as well as agreeing he would commit acts of terror.
      “He made a deal with Bujak and Jakobsen to hit Jyllands-Posten’s offices when he came back to Norway,” alleged Geir Evanger.
    • Gallegly Has Decision To Make – Last November voters elected Elton Gallegly to a 13th term in the US. House of Representatives.

      Today the 24th District Representative told Key News he was humbled by phone calls urging him to run again.

      But redistricting being challenged in Federal court puts his Simi Valley hometown in the 25th district represented by Republican Buck McKeon.

      McKeon has already announced his run for re-election.

      Now Gallegly must decide whether to run against McKeon in the 25th or run again in the 24th, something he can legally do.

      To make an informed decision the Congressman wants to see what happens with the Federal lawsuit challenging redistricting.

      Members of the Camarillo Los Posas Republican Womans Federated group hope he will continue to represent them.

      Many business owners hope so too.

      Although would be challengers are anxious to see Gallegy will do, he has time to decide.

    • 3 plead not guilty as terror trial opens in Norway – Three men accused in Norway of an al-Qaida-linked plot to attack a Danish newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad pleaded not guilty Tuesday to terror charges as their trial began.

      The trial of Mikael Davud, Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak and David Jakobsen is being seen as a key test of Norway’s anti-terror laws. The men had been under surveillance for more than a year when authorities moved to arrest them in July 2010.

      Norwegian investigators, who worked with their U.S. counterparts, say the defendants were building a bomb in a basement laboratory — a plot linked to the same al-Qaida planners behind 2009 schemes to blow up New York’s subway and a British shopping mall.

      The men deny the terror charges. Prosecutors must prove they worked together in a conspiracy, because a single individual plotting an attack is not covered by Norway’s anti-terror laws.

      Prosecutor Geir Evanger told the Oslo district court that Davud, the alleged ringleader, received explosives training in Pakistan. They said he conspired with al-Qaida operatives to attack the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper, whose 12 cartoons of Muhammad triggered furious protests in Muslim countries in 2006.

    • Herdt: Opportunity knocks; is anyone home? – In the national struggle for control of Congress next year, both Democrats and Republicans acknowledge that Ventura County’s new 26th Congressional District will be an important battlefield.

      It has all the key elements: voter registration that is closely divided, a healthy percentage of independents and a history of split results.

      It has all the elements, that is, except for this: very few warriors.

      There are two announced Democratic candidates, Moorpark City Councilman David Pollock and Westlake Village businessman David Cruz Thayne. Most observers are waiting for another to emerge — Supervisor Steve Bennett, or perhaps Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, or perhaps some other surprise candidate with proven fundraising ability.

      There are no announced Republican candidates because everyone is waiting on Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, to publicly reveal his intentions.

      The growing frustration over that uncertainty last week led Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, to issue what appeared to be a calculated poke at Gallegly to make up his mind. McKeon told his hometown newspaper that “as near as I can pin him down,” Gallegly intends to run in the 25th District against McKeon.

      Gallegly actually lives in the 25th District, but his Simi Valley home is only a couple hundred yards from the boundary, and most of the 26th District is made up of areas he now represents. As long as the 26th District remains an option for Gallegly, other Republicans are frozen out by the political protocol that frowns on challenging an incumbent in a primary.

    • AD-66: Craig Huey Will Run for California State Assembly » Flap’s California Blog – AD-66: Craig Huey Will Run for California State Assembly
    • Grow Elect and Rebuilding the California Republican Pary By Electing Local Latinos » Flap’s California Blog – Grow Elect and Rebuilding the California Republican Pary By Electing Local Latinos
    • Why Do Two-Thirds of Online U.S. Adults Use Social Media? | Smiles For A Lifetime – Temporary (Locum Tenens) Dentistry – Why Do Two-Thirds of Online U.S. Adults Use Social Media?
    • President 2012 GOP Poll Watch: As Cain Crashes – Newt Rises | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012 GOP Poll Watch: As Cain Crashes – Newt Rises #tcot #catcot
    • President 2012 GOP California Poll Watch: Gingrich 33% Vs. Romney 23% Vs. Cain 22% Vs. Perry 6% Vs. Paul 5% » Flap’s California Blog – President 2012 GOP California Poll Watch: Gingrich 33% Vs. Romney 23% Vs. Cain 22% Vs. Perry 6% Vs. Paul 5%
    • Day By Day November 14, 2011 – School’s Out | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Day By Day November 14, 2011 – School’s Out #tcot #catcot
    • Election 2012: Generic Presidential Ballot – Rasmussen Reports™ – RT @RasmussenPoll: Election 2012: Generic Republican 46%, Obama 42%…
    • (404) http://t.co/tTc – RT @AP: AP Video: Sen. John McCain, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta spar over decision to pull all U.S. troops from Iraq: …
    • » Sen. Feinstein Loaded up on Biotech Stock Just Before Company Received $24 Million Gov’t Grant – Big Government – RT @AndrewBreitbart: Sen. Feinstein Loaded up on Biotech Stock Just Before Company Received $24 Million Gov’t Grant:
    • President 2012: Rick Perry Proposes Making Congress Part-Time and Ending Lifetime Tenure for Federal Judges | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012: Rick Perry Proposes Making Congress Part-Time and Ending Lifetime Tenure for Feder… #tcot #catcot
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: The Morning Drill: November 15, 2011 – The Morning Drill: November 15, 2011
    • The Morning Flap: November 15, 2011 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – The Morning Flap: November 15, 2011 #tcot #catcot
  • Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: November 15, 2011

    November 15, 2011 /

    These are my links for November 14th through November 15th:

    • Dr. Coburn Releases Report Exposing Billions in Giveaways for Millionaires – U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) today released a new report “Subsidies of the Rich and Famous” illustrating how, under the current tax code, the federal government is giving billions of dollars to individuals with an Annual Gross Income (AGI) of at least $1 million, subsidizing their lavish lifestyles with the taxes of the less fortunate.

      “All Americans are facing tough times, with many working two jobs just to make ends meet and more families turning to the government for financial assistance. From tax write-offs for gambling losses, vacation homes, and luxury yachts to subsidies for their ranches and estates, the government is subsidizing the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Multi-millionaires are even receiving government checks for not working.

      “This welfare for the well-off – costing billions of dollars a year – is being paid for with the taxes of the less fortunate, many who are working two jobs just to make ends meet, and IOUs to be paid off by future generations. We should never demonize those who are successful. Nor should we pamper them with unnecessary welfare to create an appearance everyone is benefiting from federal programs,” Dr. Coburn said.

      These billions of dollars for millionaires include $74 million of unemployment checks, $316 million in farm subsidies, $89 million for preservation of ranches and estates, $9 billion of retirement checks, $75.6 million in residential energy tax credits, and $7.5 million to compensate for damages caused by emergencies to property that should have been insured. All and all, over $9.5 billion in government benefits have been paid to millionaires since 2003. Additionally, millionaires borrowed $16 million in government backed education loans to attend college. On average, each year, this report found that millionaires enjoy benefits from tax giveaways and federal grant programs totaling $30 billion. As a result, almost 1,500 millionaires paid no federal income tax in 2009.

    • ObamaCare and the Limits of Government – The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether ObamaCare is constitutional, granting certiorari in a case brought by 26 states shortly after that law was enacted in March of last year. In so doing, it will be ruling upon the very nature of our federal union.

      The Constitution limits federal power by granting Congress authority in certain defined areas, such as the regulation of interstate and foreign commerce. Those powers not specifically vested in the federal government by the Constitution or, as stated in the 10th Amendment, “prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The court will now determine whether those words still have meaning.

      As we argued two years ago in these pages, the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (aka ObamaCare) is unconstitutional. First and foremost, the law requires virtually every American to have health insurance. Congress purported to impose this unprecedented “individual mandate” pursuant to its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, but the requirement is not limited to those who engage in any particular commercial or economic activity (or any activity at all). Rather, the mandate applies to everyone lawfully present in the United States who does not fall within one of the law’s narrow exclusions.

    • Dems fear Supreme Court will rule against Obama on healthcare reform – Democrats on Capitol Hill are worried that the Supreme Court will rule against President Obama’s healthcare reform law. 

      Over the last couple weeks, congressional Democrats have told The Hill that the law faces danger in the hands of the Supreme Court, which The New York Times editorial page recently labeled the most conservative high court since the 1950s.

      While the lawmakers are not second-guessing the administration’s legal strategy, some are clearly bracing for defeat.

      “Of course I’m concerned,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). The justices “decide for insurance companies, they decide for oil companies, they decide for the wealthy too often.”

      The pessimism is fueled in part by the John Roberts court’s decision in the 2010 Citizens United case on corporate spending in elections, which Brown has called the “worst” in his memory.

      The comments underscore the gamble the White House took when it opted not to seek to delay the high court’s review until after the 2012 election. That decision leaves the fate of Democrats’ signature domestic achievement in the hands of a right-leaning court that has consistently ruled against liberals on everything from campaign finance to the District of Columbia’s gun ban to Bush v. Gore.

    • Kagan to Tribe on Day Obamacare Passed: ‘I Hear They Have the Votes, Larry!! – On Sunday, March 21, 2010, the day the House of Representatives passed President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan and famed Supreme Court litigator and Harvard Law Prof. Laurence Tribe, who was then serving in the Justice Department, had an email exchange in which they discussed the pending health-care vote, according to documents the Department of Justice released late Wednesday to the Media Research Center, CNSNews.com’s parent organization, and to Judicial Watch.

      “I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing,” Kagan said to Tribe in one of the emails.

      The Justice Department released a new batch of emails on Wednesday evening as its latest response to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by CNSNews.com and Judicial Watch. Both organizations filed federal lawsuits against DOJ after the department did not initially respond to the requests. CNSNews.com originally filed its FOIA request on May 25, 2010–before Elena Kagan’s June 2010 Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

      The March 2010 email exchange between Kagan and Tribe raises new questions about whether Kagan must recuse herself from judging cases involving the health-care law that Obama signed–and which became the target of legal challenges–while Kagan was serving as Obama’s solicitor general and was responsible for defending his administration’s positions in court disputes.

      According to 28 USC 455, a Supreme Court justice must recuse from “any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” The law also says a justice must recuse anytime he has “expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy” while he “served in governmental employment.”

    • Occupy Wall Street – How Long, How Many, Which Cities? – How is Occupy Wall Street faring—not broadly, but at this very moment? Below, we’ve compiled a few indicators that attempt to answer this question, from conditions in Zuccotti Park to the movement’s global spread. The metrics, which update every five minutes, are admittedly imperfect and far from comprehensive, but we hope they give you a sense of how things are going. If you would like to see a particular datapoint included, let us know in the comments.
    • The real Wall Street occupation is online – The Occupy Wall Street movement, now that it has broadened in scope beyond the financial district of Manhattan to attain a truly national — even global — scale has the potential to lay the groundwork for a new generation of start-ups capable of reshaping the financial system in radically new ways. These tech start-ups, while officially unaffiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement, are nonetheless responding to the unmet needs of these protesters, individuals who feel abandoned by the current financial system.

      The breakout company of the Occupy Wall Street movement thus far has been Palo Alto-based WePay, a start-up largely unknown until the protest movement began September 17. Over the past 45 days, WePay has become the de facto official way to send money to the “Occupy” protesters while simultaneously bypassing the largest financial institutions. At a time when many payment alternatives already exist, it’s more than a coincidence that an unknown technology player, free of any associations with the banking establishment, has emerged as the financial intermediary of choice. Just a few months ago, the obvious choice for sending money to an organization like Occupy Wall Street would have been PayPal, but that was before the company decided to cooperate with the financial embargo against WikiLeaks.

    • Immigration from Mexico in fast retreat, data show – North of the U.S.-Mexico border, Republican presidential candidates are talking tough on illegal immigration, with one proposing — perhaps in jest — an electrified fence to deter migrants.

      But data from both sides of the border suggest that illegal immigration from Mexico is already in fast retreat, as U.S. job shortages, tighter border enforcement and the frightening presence of criminal gangs on the Mexican side dissuade many from making the trip.

      Mexican census figures show that fewer Mexicans are setting out and many are returning — leaving net migration at close to zero, Mexican officials say. Arrests by the U.S. Border Patrol along the southwestern frontier, a common gauge of how many people try to cross without papers, tumbled to 304,755 during the 11 months ended in August, extending a nearly steady drop since a peak of 1.6 million in 2000.

      The scale of the fall has prompted some to suggest that a decades-long migration boom may be ending, even as others argue that the decline is only momentary.

      “Our country is not experiencing the population loss due to migration that was seen for nearly 50 years,” Rene Zenteno, a deputy Mexico interior secretary for migration matters, has said.

      Douglas Massey, an immigration scholar at Princeton University, said surveys of residents in Mexican migrant towns he has studied for many years found that the number of people making their first trip north had dwindled to near zero.

    • Some Residents Cheer the Clearing of Zuccotti Park – Some Residents Cheer Clearing of Zuccotti Park
      As residents and office workers woke to a Zuccotti Park cleared of its protest encampment, some cheered the removal while others objected to the tough police action that brought it about, my colleague Cara Buckley reports:

       

      One young father, pushing his toddler son in a stroller, gave police officers guarding Zuccotti Park a thumbs up. Another man, rushing by in a cream suit, flashed them a mega-watt grin. The sight of the park, freshly cleared and washed, stopped a blonde woman walking by in her tracks. “Ooooooh, good,” she cooed.

      The clearing of Zuccotti Park struck a deep blow to the Occupy Wall Street movement, which had used the site as its physical and spiritual heart. But as the newly ousted protesters gathered in Foley Square to decide what to do next, many residents, workers and business owners near the park felt deep relief. ” Super ecstatic,” said a young office worker. “Definitely relieved,” said a young woman working behind the counter at Panini & Co., a cafe overlooking the park.

      Paul Bruno, 54, who lives in the Bronx but has serviced elevators in Lower Manhattan for 30 years, had lunched daily in the park. He agreed with the protesters’ message, he said, but not their means. “The movement is the right movement,” he said, “but the movement got lost.”

      Another man, who worked nearby and said he could not give his name because it was against his company’s rules, said it was time for the park to be cleared.

      “It started out as a cool grassroots movement, he said, ” and then it turned into a big homeless camp.”

      Still residents described a frightening scene last night, with police rushing into the park, bright lights glaring and helicopters whirring above. Mark Scherzer, a lawyer who lives half a block from the park, said he found the clearing deeply upsetting.

      “I think the protesters were doing a valuable service,” he said, “And I think it was lawful for them to be there.”

    • More Republicans say Cain allegations are “serious matter” – Most Republicans now see the allegations of sexual harassment against Herman Cain as a serious matter, according to a new Post-ABC poll, a switch from a poll taken just after the charges were first reported. And while two-thirds continue to say the accusations are not going to determine their vote, there’s also still a deep split between GOP men and women.

      Just after the harassment allegations surfaced publicly, 54 percent of all Republicans were skeptical of their seriousness. Now, by contrast, 64 percent assess the situation as a serious one, with the biggest shift among women.

      Fully 74 percent of Republican women call the charges serious, up from 39 percent in early November. Men are also reflecting the trend, but less dramatically so, rising from 36 to 53 percent.

    • Why Do I Need a Google+ Business Page? – Yesterday Google+ rolled out the much-anticipated Google+ Page feature, and now businesses, brands, products, entertainers, and lots of other entities can have their own accounts.

      I know what you’re thinking: Great, another social media page I have to manage for my company.

      Hey, I’m with you — just when you think you’ve figured out how to make business gains from Twitter and Facebook, along comes Google+, another widespread social tool that’s a big, wide-open question mark.

      But you know what? Reserving your spot for your brand now is probably a good idea, even if you haven’t figured out what you’re doing with it. I did.

      You can register a Google+ business page here, but keep in mind that you have to have a personal Google+ account first. Only one user per account so far, and vanity URLs are not available yet. But why?

    • Court order allows Occupy Wall St. protesters back – Hundreds of police officers in riot gear raided Zuccotti Park early Tuesday, evicting dozens of Occupy Wall Street protesters from what has become the epicenter of the worldwide movement protesting corporate greed and economic inequality.

      Hours later, the National Lawyers Guild obtained a court order allowing Occupy Wall Street protesters to return with tents to the park. The guild said the injunction prevents the city from enforcing park rules on Occupy Wall Street protesters.

      At a morning news conference at City Hall, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city knew about the court order but had not seen it and would go to court to fight it. He said the city wants to protect people’s rights, but if a choice must be made, it will protect public safety.

      About 70 people were arrested overnight, including some who chained themselves together, while officers cleared the park so that sanitation crews could clean it.

      By 9 a.m., the park was power-washed clean. Police in riot gear still ringed the public space, waiting for orders to reopen it.

    • Gingrich: I’m auditioning to be “conservative alternative” to Romney – On Fox News this morning, Newt Gingrich jabbed Mitt Romney while responding to polls showing him vaulting into the top-tier.

      “I think you’ve had a series of people — it started with Tim Pawlenty, and then Michele Bachmann, and then Rick Perry, then Herman Cain — there’ve been a series of people who’ve, sort of, auditioning for being the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.

      And Mitt Romney’s being very stable and very steady, and now, we’re in a situation where — to some extent — people are looking at Newt Gingrich and having to decide: do they like the solutions I’m offering?”

      So far, Gingrich has shown great restraint in hitting Romney, but this might be the beginnings of his case.

      Yesterday, a Public Policy Polling survey showed Newt leading Romney by 10%, while a CNN poll had Romney up by 2%.

      That earned Gingrich the rare distinction of being the lead story on both The Drudge Report and Huffington Post at the same time.

    • Twitter Can Predict Who’s Winning the GOP Presidential Race [Study] – Political candidates do better in the polls when they gain more Twitter followers, new research reveals. National polls happen all the time but it’s possible to predict when certain candidates will climb in the rankings based the rate they are followed.

      Zach Green, CEO of Twitter election researcher 140elect, wrote in a blog post Friday that he anticipated this trend, but now has the stats to prove it.

      “A lot of people were surprised [Newt] Gingrich is now in second place, but we’ve seen that coming since Sep. 7,” Green told Mashable. “Twitter indicates he’ll continue to pick up.”

      Gingrich (visualized below) gained a slew of new followers when he announced his candidacy on May 11 and on Sept. 7 after an impressive GOP debate performance. Both events led to poll gains. The candidate’s Twitter momentum has steadily increased over the last two months, which Green predicts will lead to continued poll gains.

    • Day By Day November 13, 2011 – Zombies | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Day By Day November 13, 2011 – Zombies #tcot #catcot
    • @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-15 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-15 #tcot #catcot
    • Dilbert November 13, 2011 – The Invisible Man » Flap’s California Blog – Dilbert November 13, 2011 – The Invisible Man
    • The Afternoon Flap: November 14, 2011 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – The Afternoon Flap: November 14, 2011 #tcot #catcot
  • The Afternoon Flap

    The Afternoon Flap: November 14, 2011

    November 14, 2011 /

     

    These are my links for November 14th from 06:42 to 16:16:

    • USC enrolls the most international students in the nation – For the 10th year in a row, USC held on to a championship that has nothing to do with sports: The Los Angeles campus once again enrolled the most foreign students of any college or university in the United States, according to a new study. UCLA had the sixth-highest international enrollment, up from seventh place the year before.

      Across the country, the ranks of international students enrolled in American higher education last year increased 5%, to 723,277, according to the annual report by the Institute of International Education, a New York nonprofit, in partnership with the U.S. State Department.

      China, for the second consecutive year, sent the largest group, which was up 22% to about 158,000. Indian students were the next-biggest contingent, followed by those from South Korea, Canada, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Vietnam, Mexico and Turkey, the report found.

      USC enrolled 8,615 international students last year, up from 7,987 the previous year, said the study, “Open Doors,” which is being released Monday. UCLA enrolled 6,249 international students, compared with 5,685 the prior year. Aside from the Los Angeles campuses, the other schools in the top 10 were: the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, New York University, Purdue University, Columbia University, Ohio State University, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Michigan State University and Harvard University.

      USC has recruiting offices in Shanghai; Seoul; Mumbai, India; Taipei, Taiwan; and Mexico City, said Timothy Brunold, the university’s admission dean. About 70% of international students at USC are in graduate programs, heavily concentrated in engineering, computer science and business, he added.

    • Herman Cain collapsing in new CNN poll – For weeks, polls have shown former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain holding strong despite the revelation of sexual harassment allegations against him. Now, his support is starting to collapse.

      A new CNN poll finds Cain dropping 11 points among Republicans, from 25 percent in October to 14 percent on Monday. That puts him in a statistical tie for third place in the GOP nominating contest with Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

      Even as most Republicans continue to say that the allegations have no effect on their vote, Cain is sliding downward.

      “Roughly four in 10 Republicans think this is a serious matter and tend to believe the women who made those charges,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.

      The likely explanation: Cain supporters were looking for a viable conservative alternative before jumping ship. Polls had shown growing concern over the allegations for weeks, even as the Republican’s overall numbers stayed strong.

      Those supporters appear to have settled on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich , who jumped from 8 percent to 22 percent in the CNN poll.

      Other polls found Cain slipping, although not as dramatically as in the CNN survey.

    • Newt Gingrich vs. debt supercommittee on campaign trail – Newt Gingrich is a major player in the GOP presidential contest again, and he’s using that platform to position himself as the biggest critic of the congressional debt-reduction “supercommittee.”

      Gingrich, who placed second nationally in a poll released Monday by CNN and Opinion Research, said at an event here this morning that the supercommittee is “maniacally stupid” and “an invitation to economic catastrophe.”

      The former House speaker said the panel should drop the provision passed by Congress during the summer that would trigger broad cuts if it can’t reach a deal by its Nov. 23 deadline. He said that Americans should be skeptical of any plan produced by the supercommittee and shouldn’t settle for a halfway measure just because of the trigger provision.

      “We should reject any effort to blackmail us into accepting a dumb idea on the grounds that in July we accepted an even dumber idea,” Gingrich said.

      Gingrich said a threat of massive cuts to defense and domestic program was totally artificial anyway and that the creation of the special debt-reduction panel in the first place is a reflection of Washington’s problems.

    • Bialek’s ex-boyfriend, Victor Zuckerman, speaks about Herman Cain – The ex-boyfriend of Sharon Bialek corroborated the sexual harassment allegations that Bialek made against Herman Cain, saying at a Monday press conference that Cain did in fact know the Chicago woman, something he has repeatedly denied.

      Victor Zuckerman, who identified himself as a pediatrician and a registered Republican, said that Bialek spent time with Cain, and that he remembers her saying that she was seated next to Cain at a dinner, and ”had opportunities to speak to him at length.”

      “She told me I needed to meet this man of warmth, of wit,” he recalled, adding that Cain later told them about the release of his gospel album in 1997.

      After Bialek lost her job at the fundraising arm of the educational foundation at the National Restaurant Association, it was Zuckerman who advised her to reach out to Cain, the former head of the NRA in the mid 1990s, for help.

      Bialek claims that during her trip to Washington for job advice, Cain groped her in a car.

      “I can confirm that when she returned, she was upset, she said that something had happened and the Mr. Cain had touched her in an inappropriate manner,” Zuckerman said. “She said she had handled it.”

      Zuckerman said that more recently, he and Bialek talked about Cain after the allegations came to light, and Bialek said that the accusations didn’t surprise her.

    • foursquare

      :: Gregory Flap @ Starbucks – Going to a comedy club in Pasadena after Alice gets off work. (@ Starbucks)

    • foursquare

      :: Gregory Flap’s Badges :: Fresh Brew – I just unlocked the “Fresh Brew” badge on @foursquare! Coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee.

    • CA-25: Rep. Elton Gallegly to Face Off Against Rep. Buck McKeon? | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – CA-25: Rep. Elton Gallegly to Face Off Against Rep. Buck McKeon? #tcot #catcot
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: Run for Her 5 K Race Report: November 13, 2011 – Run for Her 5 K Race Report: November 13, 2011
    • Want to Lose Weight? Don’t Tell Anyone! | Smiles For A Lifetime – Temporary (Locum Tenens) Dentistry – Want to Lose Weight? Don’t Tell Anyone!
    • President 2012 California Poll Watch: All Obama – All of the Time » Flap’s California Blog – President 2012 California Poll Watch: All Obama – All of the Time
    • Isakson introduces bill to reverse NLRB decision – U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson has introduced legislation that would reverse a recent decision from the National Labor Relations Board on collective bargaining.
      The board in August said that as few as two or three employees could form micro-bargaining units, or “mini-unions,” to engage in collective bargaining with employers. Isakson said the administration’s decision to allow micro-bargaining units “recklessly disregards the long-standing principles of collective bargaining” and said President Barack Obama’s appointees at the NLRB are tipping the scales in favor of unions.
      Isakson’s legislation would reinstate the traditional standard for determining which employees make up an appropriate bargaining unit.
      The Georgia Republican’s bill -The Representation Fairness Restoration Act – has 28 cosponsors.
    • Boeing: Union Reneged On Deal; NLRB Emails Shed Light – Newly released documents regarding the National Labor Relations Board complaint vs. Boeing reveal that extensive, though ultimately futile, efforts were made to avoid litigation.

      Boeing (BA) officials say the documents relate to a settlement that they thought they had made with the International Association of Machinists, the union that brought the complaint.

      The aerospace giant claims IAM revoked the offer after Boeing had accepted it. If true, that would suggest that IAM was interested in pursuing the case as a test of the NLRB’s power under the Obama administration.

    • Despite Senate victory, court battle looms for net-neutrality rules – Advocates of the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules celebrated a major victory on Thursday as the Senate rejected a Republican bid to repeal the rules.
      But with a lawsuit pending in the D.C. Court of Appeals, the victory may prove to be short-lived.

       

      The rules, approved by the FCC in December, prohibit Internet service providers from slowing down or blocking access to legitimate websites. Supporters of the rules say they preserve competition and consumer choice, but opponents argue they are an unnecessary burden on businesses and amount to government control of the Internet.

    • President 2012 GOP Iowa Poll Watch: Cain 20% Vs. Gingrich 19% Vs. Romney 14% Vs. Bachmann and Paul 10% | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012 GOP Iowa Poll Watch: Cain 20% Vs. Gingrich 19% Vs. Romney 14% Vs. Bachmann and Paul 10% #tcot #catcot
    • President 2012 California Poll Watch: All Obama – All of the Time | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012 California Poll Watch: All Obama – All of the Time #tcot #catcot
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: The Daily Extraction: Dr. Tommy Murph’s Costa Rica Extraction Courses – The Daily Extraction: Dr. Tommy Murph’s Costa Rica Extraction Courses
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: The Morning Drill: November 14, 2011 – The Morning Drill: November 14, 2011
    • Day By Day November 12, 2011 – Word | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Day By Day November 12, 2011 – Word #tcot #catcot
    • The Morning Flap: November 14, 2011 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – The Morning Flap: November 14, 2011 #tcot #catcot