Red County/San Diego Debuts… As Matt Cunningham posted Thursday, San Diego in now the third GOP county in the state with a Red County blogsite. I am honored to join a "blogpen" including some great folks like Congressman Brian Bilbray, Senator Mark Wyland, Assemblyman Martin Garrick, Jennifer Jacobs of Coronado Communications, John Nienstedt of Competitive Edge Research & Communication, Encinitas Councilman Jerome Stocks and Jimmy Valentine, the producer of the Roger Hedgecock radio show.A few other anonymous "pseudonymed" bloggers as well (bawwwk, bawk, bawk, bawk).

A mutual synergy exists in both the FlashReport and Red Countyproviding links to the news and offering right-leaning perspective, as well aslinking toeach other. The current Red County sites in Orange County, Riverside and SD are able to offer some narrowed, localized news and comment. One of the masterminds (if not the mastermind) behind Red County is… Read More

Today, a quiet Sunday of a holiday weekend, is a good day for me to take some time off. So there is no Commentary today, though the main page has been updated with all of today’s news (check out what Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer, had to say). I will take this opportunity to make one last request for anyone with suggestions for our upcoming ‘Winners and Losers of the CRP Convention’ column. Because I was busy running for Party office much of the weekend, I may have missed to great awardees! Have a great Sunday!… Read More

Apparently it is hard to fathom for many politicians in Sacramento that when a majority of Californians voted for Proposition 140 back in 1990, they actually liked the idea that there would be turn-over in legislative seats fairly frequently. Survey after survey have revealed that voters in the Golden State do not want to repeal term-limits, nor do they want to weaken them. They want a legislature where their representatives leave from the private sector for a time, and then return back to a regular job. One of the major reasons that people I know voted for Proposition 140 was to end the era of the ‘career politician’ who would serve decades in office. It is somewhere between laughable and tragic that Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (who faces an end to his legislature tenure next year after serving three two-year terms in the state house) actually has the nerve to say that the measure that he has submitted for approval to pursue signature gathering somehow ‘strengthens’ term limits. The current law on term limits says that you can only serve in the Senate for eight years, and the Assembly for six. One of the major ideas… Read More

FR readers benefit from my borderline-obsessive need to know what is going on in California politics (okay, not so borderline). But only my closest friends know that I keep almost as much of an eye on politics in Florida as I do ours here in the Golden State. Actually, the developers who created the FlashReport website are in Florida, and this site is a spin off of programming they did for the Florida news-portal site of my friend, Justin Sayfie.

As you may know, Florida is also looking seriously at moving up their Presidential primary. There were several articles yesterday about how their move might cause Florida Republicans to lose as many as half of their delegates to the Republican National Convention next summer. I was curious if we are in a similar state of risk, given our plans here to move up the primary. Fortunately the Treasurer of the Republican National Committee, Tim Morgan, is a Californian. So I spoke with him, and he provided the following insight, to reassure us all:… Read More

"The only poll that counts is the one taken on election day." Not quite, there’s the pole day atDaytona. It’s racing season, yessssss!

Amidst all the talk of legislators getting others to do their term limit extension dirty work for them, while they allow Federal courts to do their dirty work of shortening terms for imprisoned criminals, and proposals for new Kevorkian Jr’s are being spawned to end terms of the living, let’s talk about something fun.

At the risk of incurring an ‘electronic towel snap’ from our FR chief, for talking about non-political stuff, I’ll mention what’s up this weekend in Florida. [I think Jon is out of town anyway, maybe he won’t notice]

Speedweeks at Daytona culminates with the running ofNASCAR’s Daytona 500 tomorrow… Read More

Apparently it is hard to fathom for many politicians in Sacramento that when a majority of Californians voted for Proposition 140 back in 1990, they actually liked the idea that there would be turn-over in legislative seats fairly frequently. Survey after survey have revealed that voters in the Golden State do not want to repeal term-limits, nor do they want to weaken them. They want a legislature where their representatives leave from the private sector for a time, and then return back to a regular job. One of the major reasons that people I know voted for Proposition 140 was to end the era of the ‘career politician’ who would serve decades in office. It is somewhere between laughable and tragic that Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (who faces an end to his legislature tenure next year after serving three two-year terms in the state house) actually has the nerve to say that the measure that he has submitted for approval to pursue signature gathering somehow ‘strengthens’ term limits. The current law on term limits says that you can only serve in the Senate for eight years, and the Assembly for six. One of the major ideas… Read More

A friend sent this to me, and I wanted to share it with FR readers…

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat, and was very much in favor of the redistribution of wealth.

She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch Republican, a feeling she openly expressed.

Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.

One day she was challenging her father on his opposition tohigher taxes on the rich and the addition of more government welfare programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father.

He responded by asking how she was doing in school.

Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which… Read More

Since my commentary yesterday on statesmanship in the GOP, and those candidates during last weekend’s California Republican Party convention who had offered public congrats to their winning opponents, the comments and emails have been fast and furious.

This includes some added remarks of congratulations, although no coincidence between the following and my FR post of yesterday is implied or intended:

Dear Republican Leader,

I want to congratulate Laura Gadke on her election as the California Republican Party Vice Chairman for the Central Valley Region.

I believe both Laura and I ran a campaign based on wanting to help Republican Central Committees and volunteer organizations in our region. Our goals are the same: to help our Central Committees build better registration programs, expand Republican volunteer programs and our donor base.

I pledge to help Laura in her efforts and I look forward to working with her and our Central Committee members and volunteer organizations throughout the… Read More