• Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: May 23, 2012

    May 23, 2012 /

    Mitt Romney campaigning in Florida – May 16, 2012

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

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

      3. Chris Matthews is having a meltdown.

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

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

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

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

    The Morning Flap: May 22, 2012

    May 22, 2012 /

    Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court John Roberts

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

    • Targeting John Roberts – The left tries to intimidate the High Court on ObamaCare– You can tell the Supreme Court is getting closer to its historic ObamaCare ruling because the left is making one last attempt to intimidate the Justices. The latest effort includes taunting Chief Justice John Roberts that if the Court overturns any of the law, he’ll forever be defined as a partisan “activist.”Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy recently took the extraordinary step of publicly lobbying the Chief Justice after oral argument but before its ruling. “I trust that he will be a Chief Justice for all of us and that he has a strong institutional sense of the proper role of the judicial branch,” the Democrat declared on the Senate floor. “The conservative activism of recent years has not been good for the Court.”
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Day By Day May 22, 2012 – Choice – Day By Day May 22, 2012 – Choice
    • Men Should Skip Common Prostate Test, Panel Says – WSJ.com – RT @WSJ: Influential health panel recommends against PSA prostate cancer tests for men –
    • Romney and the Right– This November, millions of conservatives will find themselves in the familiar position of holding their noses to vote for a problematic Republican presidential candidate, because the alternative is far worse.Although conservatives don’t exactly have fond memories of the candidacies of Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole in 1996 and Senator John McCain in 2008, the almost certain nomination of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has its own sting.In 2010, tea-party energy swept a new generation of conviction conservatives into statehouses, governors’ mansions, and the U.S. Congress. Many on the right held out hope that the big payoff would be putting a principled conservative in the White House.
    • Timing May Be Key in Romney’s VP Announcement– t Romney deliberates on his most important pre-convention political decision, the identity of whomever he selects as a running mate isn’t the only choice he and the vetting team must make.The timing of that vice-presidential unveiling can have a major impact on the race, as the experience of his 2008 predecessor demonstrated fully.
    • Obama Thinks He’s the Fairness Czar– Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J., came across as a moderate, sensible Democrat when he said on “Meet the Press” Sunday that negative political ads are “nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright.”Booker, a Barack Obama surrogate, later tried to walk back his comments. He posted a video in which he explained that he was expressing his frustration with negative campaigning when he spoke out, effectively undermining the president’s re-election narrative. (Booker also referred to the biggest non-story in politics last week, about a political consultant who recommended that a super PAC use Wright in an anti-Obama ad. That ad didn’t get made.)
    • Obama Campaign Does Damage Control After Dems Question Anti-Bain Strategy– The Obama campaign is in full damage-control mode one day after Newark Mayor Cory Booker publicly derided Democrats’ assault on presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney over his record at Bain Capital.Chief Obama strategist David Axelrod today publicly rebuked Booker, a popular and high-profile surrogate for the campaign, saying he was “just wrong.””I love Cory Booker. He’s a great mayor. If I were, if my house was on fire, I’d hope he were my next door neighbor,” Axelrod said on MSNBC, referring to Booker’s rescue of a neighbor last month.

      “I agree with what he said later. I think this was a legitimate area for discussion,” Axelrod said of Booker’s subsequent comments clarifying the issue.

      As for the criticism that the Team Obama’s Bain attack is part of “nauseating” political discourse with which Booker has become “very uncomfortable,” Axelrod said, “on this particular instance he was just wrong.”

    • ABC/WashPost Poll: Obama Still Under 50 – Among Adults – By Jim Geraghty – The Campaign Spot – National Review Online – RT @jimgeraghty: In ABC/WashPost poll, married women swung heavily towards Romney in the past month:
    • Hamid Karzai blows top over Dana Rohrabacher– Afghan President Hamid Karzai says Rep. Dana Rohrabacher will be banned from entering his country until the congressman “changes his tongue” and stops criticizing Afghanistan.“A democratically elected congressman of the United States of America should not be talking of an ethnic divide in Afghanistan, should not be interfering in Afghanistan’s internal affairs, should not be asking the Afghan people to have a federal structure as against what the Afghan constitution has asked for, should not be speaking disrespectfully about the Afghan people or the various ethnic groups in Afghanistan,” Karzai said in an interview with CNN. “If an Afghan did that from Afghanistan, how would you react to him in America?”
    • Medscape: Medscape Access – RT @Medscape: Vitamin D Supplementation and the Allergy Pandemic
    • Sarah Palin: ‘Shame’ Cory Booker backed down– Sarah Palin is applauding Cory Booker’s criticism of the Obama campaign’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital as “candid,” adding that it was a “shame” that the Democratic mayor retreated from his initial remarks that have touched off a firestorm.“It was a shame to see Cory kind of back down from what his answer was, which was so candid,” Palin told Sean Hannity of Fox News on Monday
    • Poll: Obama, Romney in Dead Heat – Steven Shepard – NationalJournal.com – RT @HotlineSteve: .@ABC/@washingtonpost poll shows Obama, Romney tied overall and on handling the economy:
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-22 – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-22
    • El Monte school district moving to dismiss employees who have been on paid leave for months– After 10 months of investigation, the local high school district is winding down its inquiries into a dozen employees accused of stealing.Four of the El Monte Union High School District employees no longer work for the district, for undisclosed reasons, and the school board is still figuring out what to do about eight other employees, according to Superintendent Nick Salerno and Thomas Madruga, the district’s attorney.Most the workers in question were on the district’s maintenance/facilities staff.

      Several of the 12 employees have been on paid leave since late June or early July of last year. Officials would not reveal exactly how many.

      The school board was briefed about the workers during a closed-session portion of a May 2 board meeting, according to Madruga. And resolutions for the remaining employees could come soon, he said.

      Sources inside the district said the board rejected a proposal that would have let two of the employees come back to work, after facing a few days of unpaid leave as discipline.

      Madruga and Salerno said the charges relate to accusations of theft that were brought to the attention of the district at the end of the last school year.

      Some of the allegations were small, such as taking home the last few sheets of a roll of paper towels, according to Salerno and Madruga.

      But others involved using the district’s lines of credit to acquire personal property.

      “I mean costly equipment, major equipment,” Salerno said.

      Some of the employees were accused of using district finances to buy a motor home.

      Salerno said that district officials learned that a culture of taking things from the district had taken hold among a handful of employees in the district’s maintenance staff.

      He said as far as he knew, the practices had been going on for decades.

      “There seemed to be this small circle who accepted this stuff and thought it was OK,” he said.

    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Washington Dental Service’s CEO James Dwyer Apologizes for Calling Dentists Not Working Hard Enough – Washington Dental Service’s CEO James Dwyer Apologizes for Calling Dentists Not Working Hard Enough
    • Home – SGVTribune.com – Annual Pasadena Marathon comes off without a hitch –
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Obama’s Bain Capital Attacks on Romney Backfiring? – Obama’s Bain Capital Attacks on Romney Backfiring?
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: The Morning Drill: May 21, 2012 – The Morning Drill: May 21, 2012
    • Annual Pasadena Marathon comes off without a hitch – SGVTribune.com – RT @SGVTribune: Annual Pasadena Marathon comes off without a hitch
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » The Morning Flap: May 21, 2012 – The Morning Flap: May 21, 2012
  • Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: May 21, 2012

    May 21, 2012 /

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

    • Romney nearly matches Obama in April money-grabbing– No reported fundraisers for President Obama during this past weekend of G-8 and NATO summits. European leaders have enough trouble passing the beret for Greece.But we did get some new fundraising numbers that reveal a newfound money momentum for Republican Mitt Romney and the grassroots strategy of the Democrat who’d like to win reelection so he could have more flexibility offering missile defense concessions to the Russians.In April, with his  party’s nomination tied up, Romney and the Republican National Committee could focus on money-raising for the general election. They increased his money haul to $40.1 million, suddenly not far behind the $43.6 million that Obama and the Democratic National Committee raised. The incumbent’s total fell about $10 million from the previous month.

      Obama campaign officials naturally chose to distract attention from the drop and emphasize instead the large number of small donors he got, more than 430,000.

      But the decline appeared to confirm rumors and anecdotal evidence that Obama’s large-sum donors were less enthusiastic this time around and holding back the checks or reducing their size. One California Democrat said bundlers, who simply stacked the free-flowing checks in 2008, were now having to convince many to give.

    • Cory Booker walks back criticism of Obama tactics as ‘nauseating’– Newark Mayor Cory Booker released a Web video Sunday emphasizing his support for President Obama and clarifying remarks he made earlier in the day where he criticized the president’s campaign tactics as “nauseating.”“I used the word ‘nauseating’ on Meet the Press because that’s really how I feel, when I see people in my city struggling with real issues,” said Booker in the video. “I get very upset when I see such a level of dialogue that calls us to our lowest common denominators and not the kind of things that can unify us as a nation and move us forward as a nation.”“I also expressed on Meet the Press my profound frustration with the kind of campaigning which I think is becoming too much of the norm in our nation, which is generally negative campaigning,” Booker continued.
      On NBC’s Meet the Press earlier on Sunday, Booker had strongly criticized an Obama campaign ad which attacked presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s tenure at private-equity firm Bain Capital.

      “This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides,” Booker said.

    • Cory Booker commits the classic Washington gaffe – n Washington, there’s an old cliche: A gaffe is when a politician is accidentally honest.
      That’s what happened to Newark (N.J.) Mayor Cory Booker during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. Booker, who is widely regarded as a fast riser in Democratic politics, veered badly off message when he defended Bain Capital — the longtime employer of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney — and described the negative tone of the campaign as “nauseating”.
    • Bain Capitalism 101– Watching Obama campaign ads or MSNBC, one could easily come to the conclusion that Bain Capital makes money by destroying the companies it owns. So for voters unsure about the business that Mitt Romney founded but still reluctant to trust the financial analysis offered by community organizers, some perspective might be helpful.The basic Obama-liberal critique goes like this: Bain buys a company, loads it with debt and then sucks out cash before foisting the wounded business upon an unsuspecting buyer or a bankruptcy court. In the risk-taking world of private equity such a scenario can certainly happen, and it’s true that Bain likes management fees and dividends as much as the next partnership
    • How Another Electoral Split Decision Could Divide America – In looking ahead toward the November election, Republican strategists should take proactive steps to avoid a damaging, dangerous conclusion to the presidential race and to prevent the very real chance that Mitt Romney will win the Electoral College even while losing the popular vote badly to Barack Obama.
    • Hillary Clinton will be the 2012 veep candidate – Washington Times– Show of hands: Who here still thinks Vice President Joseph R. Biden will be on the 2012 ticket?Really? All of you? So wrong. The Great One, Sir Barack Hussein Obama, will replace the bumbling, buffoonish Mr. Biden with Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, maybe at the Democratic convention, maybe just before, in a last-ditch effort to win re-election.The wild and crazy move is all the talk outside the Beltway. One state Democratic leader even tells me the bumper stickers are already printed, sitting in a warehouse in (where else?) Little Rock, Ark. Another party bigwig says she is “99.9 percent sure” the increasingly desperate president planned the whole thing from the beginning. (“C’mon, Hill, be Secretary of State for one term and I’ll make you veep the next!”)
    • Obama Pursues Higher Tax Rates, Growth Be Damned– Over the past three years, Obama has pursued the goal of higher tax rates as relentlessly as Captain Ahab pursued the great white whale.Never mind that by some measures the United States, even with the “Bush tax cuts,” already has the most progressive tax system in advanced economies. About 40 percent of federal income tax revenues come from the top 1 percent.And we know from experience that when top rates are increased above Bill Clinton’s 39.6 percent, the intake is always less than projected. Since World War II, federal revenues have never risen much over 20 percent of gross domestic product, whether the top rate was 28 percent or 91 percent.

      The reason is that when rates get high enough, investors’ animal spirits (John Maynard Keynes’ term) are directed less at increasing productivity and creating wealth and more at avoiding taxes. And without increased productivity, you don’t get robust economic growth — which hurts everyone.

      There’s another problem. High tax rates mean a volatile revenue stream, as California Gov. Jerry Brown is finding out. When times are bad, revenues dry up just when government needs money. California’s budget deficit has zoomed from $9 billion to $16 billion in a few months.

    • Will Harvard Law School Condemn Elizabeth Warren for Pow Wow Chow Plagiarism?– Breitbart reported on Friday that two of Elizabeth Warren’s recipe contributions to the 1984 Pow Wow Chow cookbook edited by her cousin included word for word copies of a 1979 article written for the New York Times News Service by famous French cook Pierre Franey. Sunday morning, attention turned to Harvard Law School, where Ms. Warren has been employed as a professor since 1992.Plagiarism of an academic paper while employed by Harvard Law School, or while employed previously at another law school, would clearly be grounds for her dismissal under Harvard University’s code of conduct for professors. But does plagiarism of a 1984 cookbook when she was 35 years old and employed as a research associate and teacher at the University of Texas Law School constitute grounds for dismissal?
    • Obama super PAC slump continues– The pro-Barack Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action is still struggling to keep up with GOP super PACs preparing to unleash millions of dollars in independent advertisements.Priorities USA Action raised $1.6 million in April, according to federal records released late Sunday. It’s the smallest haul the group has pulled in since the meager $59,000 the group raised in January.
    • Hernandez faces two challengers for 48th District Assembly race– Two challengers are hoping for a chance to unseat incumbent Roger Hernandez, a Democrat who is running for re-election as a representative for the state’s 48th AssemblyDistrict.Hernandez previously represented the 57th District, before the 48th District was created under redistricting.Running against Hernandez is Republican Joe Gardner, a 57-year-old West Covina resident, and Covina resident Mike Meza, 60, who is running with no party affiliation.

      The 48th District,which hasa population of about 460,000, covers Duarte, Azusa, Glendora, Covina, West Covina, Baldwin Park, Irwindale, part of El Monte, and the unincorporated communities Charter Oak, Bassett and Valinda.

      The top two vote-getters in the June 5 primary election will advanceto the November election.

    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-21 – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-21
    • Untitled (http://getglue.com/Fullosseousflap/stickers/amc/the_killing_sayonara_hiawatha?s=ts&ref=Fullosseousflap) – I unlocked the The Killing: Sayonara, Hiawatha sticker on @GetGlue!
    • Finished the Pasadena Half Marathon with a PR! YAY! on Twitpic – Finished the Pasadena Half Marathon with a PR! YAY!
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-20 – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-20
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-19 – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-19
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » CA-26: Is Linda Parks a Republican? – CA-26: Is Linda Parks a Republican?
    • Did Elizabeth Warren Plagiarize Her ‘Pow Wow Chow’ Recipes?– The credibility of Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren took another hit today as Boston radio talk show host Howie Carr released evidence that appears to confirm Ms. Warren may have plagiarized at least three of the five recipes she submitted to the 1984 Pow Wow Chow cookbook edited by her cousin Candy Rowsey.Two of the possibly plagiarized recipes, said in the Pow Wow Chow cookbook to have been passed down through generations of Oklahoma Native American members of the Cherokee tribe, are described in a New York Times News Service story as originating at Le Pavilion, a fabulously expensive French restaurant in Manhattan. The dishes were said to be particular favorites of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Cole Porter.The two recipes, “Cold Omelets with Crab Meat” and “Crab with Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing,” appear in an article titled “Cold Omelets with Crab Meat,” written by Pierre Franey of the New York Times News Service that was published in the August 22, 1979 edition of the Virgin Islands Daily News, a copy of which can be seen here.

      Ms. Warren’s 1984 recipe for Crab with Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing is a word-for-word copy of Mr. Franey’s 1979 recipe.

    • Youngstown News, Biden snubs are getting old– For the past several months, editors and reporters with The Vindicator have asked the campaign of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to provide us access to the two officeholders if/when they come here.Our ultimate goal was an editorial board meeting, but even a few minutes for a one-on-one interview would be something.With Biden coming to Youngstown, the requests were made again, and politely denied — as they were during the 2008 campaign.

      I was told Biden couldn’t spare three to four minutes even though he ended up staying at M7 Technologies for about 90 minutes after his speech before going to his next campaign stop.

      Consolation prize

      As a consolation prize, the campaign offered me the job of being the local pool reporter.

      I initially declined because the job’s main responsibility is to spend a lot of time covering a secondary event — in this case, Biden’s visit to the Salem Fire Department — and share all the information you obtain with other reporters.

    • California’s legislative analyst says deficit may be even higher – latimes.com – RT @LATPoliticsCA: California’s legislative analyst says deficit may be even bigger
    • Flesh-Eating Bacteria Consumed Man’s Penis After Surgery, Says Lawsuit | Fox News Latino – Really! | RT @GayPatriot: DUDE!!!! –> Flesh-Eating Bacteria Consumed Man’s Penis, Says Lawsuit
    • Jerry Brown to unveil $14-billion water project – latimes.com – Where is the money coming from? | Jerry Brown to unveil $14-billion water project #tcot #catcot
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » The Morning Flap: May 18, 2012 – The Morning Flap: May 18, 2012
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Mitt Romney Unveils First General Election Television Ad – Mitt Romney Unveils First General Election Television Ad
    • Dental Abuse Seen Driven by Private Equity Investments- Bloomberg – Dental Abuse Seen Driven by Private Equity Investments
  • Dentistry,  Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: May 18, 2012

    May 18, 2012 /

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Morning Flap: May 17, 2012

    May 17, 2012 /

    These are my links for May 16th through May 17th:

    • Romney presses Obama on debt with aid of prop clock– Mitt Romney continued to drive a debt-oriented message here on Wednesday morning, extending his “prairie fire” of debt metaphor with the assistance of a prop.In a nod to the independent voters who pushed the Sunshine State into the Democratic column in 2008, Romney noted that both parties were responsible for pushing the debt to the “incomprehensible” levels – which were represented on a giant prop debt clock behind him.
    • Harvard’s ‘woman of color’– The curious case of the Native American roots — or lack thereof — of Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren just keeps getting curiouser.Now the New England Historical Genealogical Society, which originally announced they found evidence of Warren’s Cherokee heritage, has revised its finding.Tom Champoux, spokesman for the society, said “We have no proof that Elizabeth Warren’s great great great grandmother O.C. Sarah Smith either is or is not of Cherokee descent.”
    • Dems in despair on Wisconsin– On Monday, local party officials began complaining bitterly about the lack of resources national Democratic groups are committing to the recall effort in Wisconsin. “We are frustrated by the lack of support from the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Governors Association,” a top Wisconsin Democratic Party official told The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent.Back in January, the complaints were coming from the other end: National Democrats were irked that labor unions and others planned to spend tens of millions of dollars to recall Gov. Scott Walker —leaving less for President Obama’s re-election drive and congressional contests.But amid increasingly poor polling numbers for Walker’s challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Democrats and their allies at the national level seem to be re-thinking their commitment to the Wisconsin race. NBC’s Chuck Todd asked recently if the DNC would be sending more cash to help Barrett; the answer from Stephanie Cutter, Obama’s deputy campaign manager, was strongly noncommittal: “I don’t know the answer to that question, on the money.”

      A new Public Policy Polling poll shows Walker up on Barrett by 50 percent to 45 percent, the same margin PPP found a month ago, and similar to other recent polls.

    • Why I Think Obama Is Losing– So what’s the answer? Obama’s big problem, I think, is that he is no longer the president he said he would be. Above all, he’s stopped trying to be that president.The astonishing enthusiasm for Obama in 2008 rested heavily on his promise to change Washington and unify the country. You can argue about whose fault it is that Washington is even more paralyzed by tribal fighting than before–in my view, it’s mostly (though not entirely) the GOP’s fault. For whatever reason, Obama failed to bring the change he promised. That would be forgivable, so long as he was determined to keep trying. But he isn’t determined to keep trying. His campaign message so far boils down to this: You just can’t work with these people. I tried, they’re not interested, so it’s war. If they want bitter partisan politics, they can have it.My instinct tells me this is a losing strategy.
    • Health care reform: GOP preps plan for ruling on law– House Republican leaders are quietly hatching a plan of attack as they await a historic Supreme Court ruling on President Barack Obama’s health care law.If the law is upheld, Republicans will take to the floor to tear out its most controversial pieces, such as the individual mandate and requirements that employers provide insurance or face fines.
    • Senate Democrats Achieve a New Standard of Irresponsibility– The Senate voted on five budgets today, at theinsistence of Republican senators. The result was revealing: no Senate Democrat voted in favor of any budget. This is consistent, of course, with the fact that the Democrat-led Senate has refused to adopt a budget, in violation of federal law, for the last three years. Still, it is a little shocking to see that not a single Democrat was willing to vote in favor of any budget, even the most irresponsible.President Obama’s budget fared the worst; it lost, 99-0. This means that the presidents FY 2013 budget has now been rejected by the House and Senate by a combined vote of 513-0. Earlier today, as Paul noted in a post a little while ago, Obama demanded a “serious bipartisan approach” to the nation’s budgetary crisis. Bipartisan? He can’t even get a single Democrat to support his radically irresponsible proposals.
    • Obama budget defeated 99-0 in Senate– President Obama’s budget suffered a second embarrassing defeat Wednesday, when senators voted 99-0 to reject it.Coupled with the House’s rejection in March, 414-0, that means Mr. Obama’s budget has failed to win a single vote in support this year.Republicans forced the vote by offering the president’s plan on the Senate floor.

      Democrats disputed that it was actually the president’s plan, arguing that the slim amendment didn’t actually match Mr. Obama’s budget document, which ran thousands of pages. But Republicans said they used all of the president’s numbers in the proposal, so it faithfully represented his plan.

    • Republicans Weigh Rev. Wright Attack Against Obama– A group of Republican strategists and a conservative billionaire have devised an advertising attack on President Obama that highlights his connection to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a controversial figure in the 2008 campaign, The New York Times reports.The $10 million plan, which is still being weighed, was overseen by Republican media consultant Fred Davis and was commissioned by Joe Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade, who is increasingly using his fortune to impact this year’s election. A super PAC affiliated with Ricketts played a major role in Nebraska’s Republican primary on Tuesday.“The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way,” reads a proposal by the group, which was obtained by The Times.
    • Scott Walker leads in new Wisconsin recall poll – The Washington Post – RT @FixRachel: Walker leads in new Wisconsin recall poll, GOP has edge in enthusiasm
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Flap Listed as 2012 Top Dentist in Social Media – Flap Listed as 2012 Top Dentist in Social Media
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » The Morning Flap: May 16, 2012 – The Morning Flap: May 16, 2012
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: Gregory Flap Cole Named Top Dentist in Social Media for 2012 – Gregory Flap Cole Named Top Dentist in Social Media for 2012
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Day By Day May 16, 2012 – Board Meeting – Day By Day May 16, 2012 – Board Meeting
  • Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: May 16, 2012

    May 16, 2012 /

    These are my links for May 15th through May 16th:

  • Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: May 15, 2012

    May 15, 2012 /

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

    • Obama campaign: New York Times poll is ‘biased’– Obama campaign deputy manager Stephanie Cutter dismissed today’s CBS/New York Times poll showing that 67 percent of people believed Obama made his decision on gay marriage for political reasons. Only 24 percent said that Obama did it “mostly because he thinks it is right.”Host Chuck Todd asked Cutter about the poll, admitting that the methodology of the poll was different, because it was a callback poll. “Put those caveats aside thats a lot of people saying that he did this for political reasons,” Todd said, noting that it was a 3-1 margin.”We can’t put the methodology of that poll aside, because the methodology was significantly biased.” Cutter insisted on MSNBC this morning.
    • Cell Phone Ban Keeps Obama Fundraisers Secret – In the latest attempt to crack down on potentially embarrassing digital leaks from presidential fundraisers, President Barack Obama’s campaign has begun asking donors attending small fundraisers with the president to turn over their cell phones before entering.
      Pool reporter David Nakamura of the Washington Post reported that at a $35,800 a head fundraiser at the home of Blackstone COO Hamilton “Tony” James in New York City Monday night, the 60 attendees were asked to place their phones in plastic bags by the door.
      An Obama aide called the move it “standard operating procedure,” but veterans of a range of other campaigns said they’d never heard of the practice, which is common in secure White House spaces where there are concerns of espionage, but unknown in contexts in which only political secrets are discussed. The new prevalence of sophisticated audio and recording capacities in mobile devices owned by virtually anyone wealthy enough to write a check to a political campaign, however, has put a new pressure on campaigns concerned with staying on a public message.
      The fundraising sessions are one of the last vestige of privacy for the president outside of the White House, and a rare opportunity for top donors to hear relatively unscripted remarks by the most powerful man in the world, and to ask him questions. Obama’s prepared remarks at the events are open press and covered by a small group of reporters, but the “press pool” is escorted out of the room before the Q&A period.
    • Brace, brace. Dark times ahead as Greece heads for the exit – Mistakenly, they have convinced themselves that it won’t much matter if Greece leaves, and indeed that it might even help resolve the wider crisis to get rid of this persistent thorn in the flesh.
      Bring it on, they mutter callously; it will be a lot worse for them than for us. On one level, this is just bravado. It’s an attempt to put as nonchalant a face as possible on the now apparently inevitable. But they also seem to believe in their validity of their own analysis – that they have indeed used the past two years well, and are now fully prepared for a Greek exit.
      Believe it if you will. The ineptitude to date of the eurozone’s crisis response strongly suggests a different conclusion – both that the likely contagion from an exit has been hugely underestimated, and that by prompting a wider breakup, thereby tipping Europe into depression, it may end up as bad for everyone else as it is for Greece.
      The Greek problem has been consistently misdiagnosed and mismanaged right from the start. First there was the suggestion a year ago from Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy that if Greece didn’t buckle under and agree austerity it might be chucked out. Markets reacted logically by selling bonds in any country that looked vulnerable, thereby making it much harder for all periphery governments to fund themselves.
    • Jerry Brown vs. Chris Christie– In his January 2011 inaugural address, California Gov. Jerry Brown declared it a “time to honestly assess our financial condition and make the tough choices.” Plainly the choices weren’t tough enough: Mr. Brown has just announced that he faces a state budget deficit of $16 billion—nearly twice the $9.2 billion he predicted in January. In Sacramento Monday, he coupled a new round of spending cuts with a call for some hefty new tax hikes.In his own inaugural address back in January 2010, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also spoke of making tough choices for the people of his state. For his first full budget, Mr. Christie faced a deficit of $10.7 billion—one-third of projected revenues. Not only did Mr. Christie close that deficit without raising taxes, he is now plumping for a 10% across-the-board tax cut.
    • One by One, Obama Targets ’08 Coalition for Boost– President Obama is attempting to shore up the 2008 coalition that helped him achieve a decisive victory over John McCain, but he is doing so in a more piecemeal way this time around.As an incumbent, Obama’s method is to target various constituencies — albeit ones that supported him four years ago — and make the sale with this argument: On the issues they care most about, he has advanced specific policies to help them, programs opposed by the Republican Party and its presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney.
    • How Romney will respond to Obama’s Bain attack –
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-15 – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-15
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » CA-26: Democrat Super PAC Spending More for Julia Brownley – CA-26: Democrat Super PAC Spending More for Julia Brownley
    • Paul won’t campaign in any more states – The Hill’s Ballot Box – RT @StevenErtelt: BREAKING: Ron Paul calls it quits. Suspending campaign.
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Scott Walker Leads in New Poll: 52% Vs. 43% – Scott Walker Leads in New Poll: 52% Vs. 43%
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » The Morning Flap: May 14, 2012 – The Morning Flap: May 14, 2012
    • The Left Is Getting Clobbered on Twitter– We are in the early stages of the 2012 campaign season, with a lot of battlespace preparation going on. In the skirmishing so far, one perhaps surprising media advantage has become clear: the right is clobbering the left on Twitter.Maybe it’s because Twitter puts a premium on brevity and cleverness. I don’t know. But for some reason, it seems to be a natural medium for conservatives. We saw it when the Hilary Rosen interview (“Ann Romney never worked a day in her life”) prompted a Twitterstorm. We saw it again when #ObamaEatsDogs exploded, and when #Julia blew up in the White House’s face like an exploding cigar. Currently, the White House is promoting #AskMichelle, where loyal Democrats can go to ask the First Lady a question. Only nearly all of the questions have come from conservatives.
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: All Smiles Dental Files for Bankruptcy – All Smiles Dental Files for Bankruptcy
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Day By Day May 14, 2012 – Knockout – Day By Day May 14, 2012 – Knockout
  • Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: May 14, 2012

    May 14, 2012 /

    These are my links for May 10th through May 14th:

  • Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: May 10, 2012

    May 10, 2012 /

    These are my links for May 9th through May 10th:

    • Gay Marriage Reversal Means Cash For Obama– President Barack Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage carries a political cost, but it also means floods of cash from wealthy gay donors and disillusioned young people eager to be inspired by him again.After three years of political compromise on issues from health care reform to spending cuts, Obama delivered a surprise gift to what many of his core supporters view as the civil rights issue of the day, simply by saying what everyone assumed he believed. But the distinction between implying a change and saying it outright will more than symbolic in the crucial area of campaign fundraising. Already, gay donors, mostly men, reportedly constitute 1 in 6 of Obama’s top fundraisers known as bundlers. And in the first 90 minutes after the news broke Wednesday, the campaign received $1 million in spontaneous contributions, a Democrat told BuzzFeed.“This is beyond unifying — it’s electrifying,” said Eugene Sepulveda, a former top bundler who withdrew to take a non-political job early this year. “This man stands for right, despite the political consequences.”

      And for a class of disillusioned progressive mega-donors, many of them gay, the completion of Obama’s “evolution” is an invitation reason to return.
      “I think the people who were disappointed by the president’s failure to support marriage quality will now have that barrier removed for them,” said Jeff Soref, a longtime Democratic activist in the gay community.

    • A gay marriage political crisis, not ‘evolution’– There is a lot of fawning media coverage of President Obama’s new support for gay marriage. There is serious discussion of how he “evolved,” and there are serious timelines being prepared by the Obama apologencia that earnestly track his “evolution.” The only problem is they don’t put “evolution” in quotation marks to highlight the cynical doubts that Obama’s conversion deserves. There is every reason to believe that this decision was made because Obama thinks it serves his current selfish political interests. He characterizes his politically expedient flip-flop as a theological “evolution.” The reality is, his political trajectory has stalled and he “evolved” into a desperate political situation.The path to his final “evolution” and telling the truth about how he really feels about gay marriage don’t ‘t just reveal his changed thinking, it perfectly matches his political needs at every step of his ambitious career. Let’s pause before we do any planning for an expansion to the eventual Obama monument on the Mall.Reality check: Obama manipulated gay voters, kept them at a distance and hoped they would settle for the occasional wink and a nod. But he has found himself in a campaign with dwindling enthusiasm and a narrowing electoral map; he needs this group’s enthusiastic support and high turnout in November.
    • Obama gay marriage support seen as world precedent– President Barack Obama’s announcement Wednesday that he supports gay marriage boosted the hopes of gay rights groups around the world that other leaders will follow his example, though opponents denounced his switch as a shameless appeal for votes.Several countries, including Canada, Spain and Argentina, allow same-sex marriage, but far more countries ban it and dozens even prohibit consensual same-sex relations. Gay-rights groups hope Obama’s views will inspire more change.”This is incredibly important, it’s excellent news. The United States is a global leader on everything, and that includes gay rights,” said Julio Moreira, president of the Rio de Janeiro-based Arco-Iris gay rights group. “This will force other nations like Brazil to move forward with more progressive policies.”

      Vatican and other religious officials didn’t comment, but political leaders and others opposed to gay marriage excoriated Obama. In particular, politicians tied to Pentecostal and Catholic churches have spoken out strongly against same-sex marriage in Latin America.

    • The Facts: Gay Marriage Didn’t Tilt 2004 Election – President Obama’s stand today in support of gay marriage has unleashed much conversation surrounding the political impact of his statement and the effect it could have on the electoral map and election this November.   And part of this discussion has repeated a myth that I have tried to dispel before and will try again.
      The gay marriage initiatives in 2004 on the ballot in 11 states had no discernable effect on turnout among conservatives.  Yes, that’s right,  none.  Not even in Ohio, which was a swing state in 2004 won in a close contest by former President Bush.
      Today, the myth is repeated over and over that Bush beat Kerry in Ohio in part because of the gay marriage initiative on the ballot.  The facts and data simply do not support that conclusion.
      Yes, conservative turnout was up in Ohio by five percentage points.  It was also up five percentage points nationally.  And if you look at the conservative turnout increase in the 11 states verses the other 39 states that didn’t have gay marriage on the ballot,  the conservative turnout was up exactly the same.
    • President Obama jumps off the gay marriage fence– President Obama’s announcement Wednesday that he was done “evolving” and now supports same-sex marriage was, in retrospect, inevitable. Vice President Joe Biden made it so Sunday, when he remarked almost casually that he had grown “comfortable” with gay marriage.Biden’s comfort level made Obama the nation’s least comfortable politician, tied up in a knot of convoluted positions that he had hoped voters on both sides would overlook.He opposed state laws like the one passed in North Carolina this week denying same-sex couples the right to wed. But even as he opposed anti-marriage laws, he didn’t support pro-marriage laws.
    • Biden blamed; politics drove timing– Joe Biden just might go down in history as the guy who forced Barack Obama to publicly announce his private support for gay marriage.But the vice president is no hero in the West Wing, and administration officials are struggling to cast Obama’s truly historic — and risky — announcement as something more than an election-year shotgun wedding.
    • Romney stands by his opposition to gay marriage– Mitt Romney on Wednesday reaffirmed his view that marriage should be restricted to one man and one woman, highlighting a sharp contrast with President Barack Obama.Obama declared his unequivocal personal support for same-sex marriage during an interview with ABC News. Reporters asked Romney about the issue after a campaign event in Oklahoma City.”My view is that marriage itself is between a man and a woman,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee told reporters. He said he believes that states should be able to make decisions about whether to offer certain legal rights to same-sex couples.
    • Obama’s Marriage Act– Congratulations to President Obama for matching his public policy with what everyone already knew were his private beliefs. His statement Wednesday that he supports same-sex marriage spared the public the ruse of waiting until after the election to state the inevitable.First his Justice Department refused to defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, and then Mr. Obama had said his views on the subject were “evolving.” The Beltway chatter now is that Vice President Joe Biden’s public support this week for gay marriage had cornered Mr. Obama into his own change of heart. But as with pretty much all Presidential actions lately, you don’t have to be a cynic to wonder about Team Obama’s political re-election calculations.Everyone agrees that the election’s number one issue is the U.S. economy. Insofar as it’s not really possible for Mr. Obama to change that subject, he can at least give the chattering classes something else to write about. This qualifies. During a political cycle when few besides Rick Santorum wanted to talk about social issues, Mr. Obama has now reinserted one of the hottest into the debate.

      One school of political thought holds that gay-rights issues typically hurt the person who raises them first. But perhaps the Obama campaign calculates that in a close election he will need a passionate base and that this will drive liberal and youth turnout in such important and evolving states as Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire and New Mexico. On the other hand, Mr. Obama looks like he has just solved that problem Mitt Romney supposedly has with rousing cultural conservatives.

    • Obama gay marriage stance could win younger voters, lose others –– President Obama’s unexpected announcement on Wednesday that he supports gay marriage ignited his political base but risks a backlash with independent voters in swing states.Supporters on the left were particularly fired up by Obama’s shift, but political observers pointed to Tuesday night’s vote in North Carolina, where voters overwhelmingly opted to define marriage as legal only between one man and one woman, as proof the decision could come back to haunt the president.
    • Another Ohio Poll Shows Obama, Romney Tied– In its second look at the presidential race in the pivotal battleground state of Ohio this month, a Quinnipiac University poll released early on Thursday confirms that President Obama and Mitt Romney are in a virtual tie in the Buckeye State.Obama leads Romney in the poll by a single point, 45 percent to 44 percent, well within the poll’s margin of error. Twelve percent of voters would vote for another candidate, would not vote at all, or are undecided. In last week’s poll, Obama led Romney, 44 percent to 42 percent.
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-10 – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-10
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: American Dental Association: Dentist Incomes Are Falling – American Dental Association: Dentist Incomes Are Falling
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » President Obama Evolves and Now Supports Gay Marriage – President Obama Evolves and Now Supports Gay Marriage
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » The Morning Flap: May 9, 2012 – The Morning Flap: May 9, 2012
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » CA-26: Julia Brownley Flip Flops on Support for Israel? – CA-26: Julia Brownley Flip Flops on Support for Israel?
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: The Morning Drill: May 9, 2012 – The Morning Drill: May 9, 2012
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Day By Day May 9, 2012 – Language – Day By Day May 9, 2012 – Language
  • Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: May 7, 2012

    May 7, 2012 /

    These are my links for May 4th through May 7th: