FR readers will be happy to know that starting last Friday and going through early this week, the programming team over at Cloudspace (the folks who created this outstanding site for me) are working hard to retool every page of the site to significantly increase how quickly the site loads into your browser.

In addition, we’re changing the loading priority so that the site content comes up first, followed by our premium advertisements (across the top) and then our regular advertisers (down the right side of the page).

As I post this, the main page has been finished. Look for the blog, blogscan and the other pages to be ‘sped up’ in the next day or two…… Read More

Brian Jones, Casey Gwinn in CD 52 Fray?… If you missed it, Santee City Councilman Brian Jones has filed committee paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for an open Duncan Hunter seat (see Friday’s post).

Following the Jones news, Red County/San Diego reported that former San Diego City AttorneyCasey Gwinn is also looking at the seat. Casey moved to East County a few years back (having lived in San Carlos, pretty close already, as in a couple of blocks) and some at the time were anticipating he’d be running for Jay La Suer’s termed out 77th AD seat in 2006. That clearly didn’t happen. Has enough time elapsed since his SD days?

I consider Casey a friend and a stand-up guy. I have to urge caution here,in the extreme sense. East County is not the… Read More

From the onset, I always thought Tim Escobar was a front runner for this distirct. Very Popular with GOP folks. Name ID and fundraising experiencefrom taking on Linda Sanchez for Congress. He has great ties to the LA part of the disctrict, but also the OC part. Some tried to recruit him for the Dunn seat.Respected. Conservative. An awesome person and candidate.

I have confrimed he is not running. He recently returned from a 17 month tour of Iraq (he was called up) and places a premium on time withhis family. While I’m not completely shocked, he would have been my personal pick. I hope there isnext time.… Read More

After years of effort and prodding from Supervisors Roberta MacGlashan and Susan Peters (and a looming budget shortfall) the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors finally tackled a multi-million dollar budget problem by eliminating costly “extra” benefits for future retirees.

It’s a start — but it’s not the only budget busting pension issue: Sacramento County has nearly $950 Million in pension obligation bonds that have to be serviced from the General Fund – at the same time they’re facing significant budget cuts.

The scary thing is, Sacramento is not alone – all across California, bloated and under-funded (how did they manage to do both?) pensions have spawned a financial monster; and with few exceptions, no one is dealing with it. Public employee retiree pensions and benefits threaten to swamp already stretched budgets – throwing taxpayers into a fiscal nightmare. It’s the monster under the bridge everyone tries to… Read More

After years of effort and prodding from Supervisors Roberta MacGlashan and Susan Peters (and a looming budget shortfall) the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors finally tackled a multi-million dollar budget problem by eliminating costly “extra” benefits for future retirees.

It’s a start — but it’s not the only budget busting pension issue: Sacramento County has nearly $950 Million in pension obligation bonds that have to be serviced from the General Fund – at the same time they’re facing significant budget cuts.

The scary thing is, Sacramento is not alone – all across California, bloated and under-funded (how did they manage to do both?) pensions have spawned a financial monster; and with few exceptions, no one is dealing with it. Public employee retiree pensions and benefits threaten to swamp already stretched budgets – throwing taxpayers into a fiscal nightmare. It’s the monster under the bridge everyone tries to… Read More

In an effort to emulate my colleague Duane, and post something up on this blog that has nothing to do with politics, I thought I would throw out there my new dilemma.

Recently I picked up a new LG "Chocolate" cell phone. I have only been using it for a few days, and we’ll see if it is an improvement over the RZR or not. I won’t go into any more of that for fearing of being too "Duane-like" in this post.

While monkeying around with the phone, I found out how to download ring tones from the ether — and after spending nearly an hour listening to snipets of cool music, ultimately settled on downloading "What’s Going On?" by the amazing Marvin Gaye (pictured), whom I consider to have been one of the most amazing contributors to the music industry of all time (despite his left-wing politics).

There was also some irony my phone ringing out with "What’s Going On?" when someone… Read More

A judges decison this week to shut off the Delta pumps that 25 million Californians rely on has sent a shock wave through the water user community, [which is everyone in California]

This additionalbit of judicial policy making, was ostensibly to save the all so handy species du jour, a fish calledthe Delta Smelt.

Thankfully we Californians can draw from reservoirs, such as San Luis,that store water for when situations that affect available water supply, such as drought caused by weather or by activist judges. 50 years ago, leaders had a vision for providing for future needs with our State Water Project. The elected legislatures reaction weeks ago when this possiblejudicial action first came public?

Why, it was to vote down a bill in Senate Water Committee that would build more of the reservoirs that store water that a million Californians, new to this stateeach 2 years, will need!

Maybe we’ll luck out and have a ‘climate change’ that causes it to rain more in the summer. What was it Albert Hammond said about it back in… Read More

The College Republicans continue to be the major voice of clarityagainst the Jihadists on campus.

Thursdaynight the College Republican club at the University of California, Irvine, sponsored an unforgettableevent… It was held at the Bren Center withover 1300 paying to get in. It featured excruciating stories of three former terrorists [PLO and an early Hezbollah]. Each man is marked for death. One carries wounds of one assassination attempt. I have never heard such realistic and credible evidence spoken in public.

UC Irvine boasts the largest number of Muslim students in California, estimated to be several thousand. Naturally it has a militant Muslim Student Association. Hamid Algar, a Western Muslim scholar of impeccable academic credentials, who is quite hostile to Israel, still charged the MSA as being similar to Comintern financed by the Saudi government.

**There is more – click the link**… Read More