Referencing Matt Cunningham’s complaint below, I have increasingly noticed the failure of the mainstream media to give any appropriate due, instead opting to imply "you heard it from them first."

The media like to ignore the blogosphere as a "credible news source," but love to utilize it as a superb yet non-credited and faceless "information source."

A completely upstanding media entity would understand the two are one in the same…and give credit where credit is due.… Read More

I waited until today to write this in the hopes that one of the candidates for vice chairman of the California Republican Party would have gotten their act together enough to engage in a real campaign including a genuine effort toward getting the job.

But alas at this point none of them have.

The election is Feb. 11 at the CRP Convention in Sacramento. Campaigning for party office is very different than running for say city council or water board, even if the town or district is very small (the CRP is made up of 1600 members). However, a campaign for CRP office can be just as expensive or even more so. Smart candidates raise funds, do direct mail, have volunteers and run operations at the convention where voting takes place. Those who are well funded, hire staff. For instance, even though he is running unopposed, current CRP vice chairman Ron Nehring who is up for the job of chairman, has a paid campaign manager–the best there is, Jimmy Camp.

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

As liberal a city as San Francisco is, one would think the left-wing bleeding-heart political leaders there who so loudly advocate for the homeless would by now have solved the problem of homelessness and also dealt with the City’s asocials and aggressive panhandlers in a consistent and caring way, getting these folks the help they need and off the streets. Indeed, it seemed like some progress had been made in recent years — at the insistence from the hotel association. But judging from our recent vacation interlude in downtown S.F. this weekend, the unfortunate, and the freaks, are stillmasters ofthe streets, day and night on weekends, in stronger numbers than ever. This sad situation can’t be good for business in San Francisco, and it demonstrates how heartless liberals can be in insisting on peoples intangible rights above all rather than delivering tangible, substantive programs to actually improve people’s situations.

We decided to take a long weekend in San Francisco to "recharge the batteries." My grandmother and father were born in The City, and I grew up in the Bay Area, so we have some history there. We thought it… Read More

With only two weeks to go, there is one issue the candidates for CRP officehardly seem to talk about and yet it affects every other aspect of whattheir ability to finish their campaign promises. The CRP is in debt! Not just a little debt, but I’m told and have seen figures that amount to $4.6 million. This is unprecedented for the CRP. Yet, no one is really talking about it. The CRP has clearly earned the "Biggest Party Debt Award". To give some perspective the RNC with all their spending ended $3 million debt. See here. It has now been paid off. When will the CRP’s? … Read More

The special election to fill the 1st Supervisor District seat here in OC — a consequence of Lou Correa’s election to the state Senate — has been an interesting one.

This weekend, however, it really took a turn for the weird.

One of the candidates is Garden Grove school board trustee Trung Nguyen, who’s being backed by the formidable political operation of Assemblyman Van Tran and more than a $100,000 of his own money.

This weekend a Trung Nguyen for Supervisor campaign ad appeared in the Vietnamese-langauge newspaper Vien Dong, inwhich Trung has obviously been Photoshopped into a photo with Gov. Schwarzenegger at a Lynn Daucher for Senate rally last year.

There’s been no comment yet from the Trung Nguyen campaign.

Here’s the Photoshopped picture:

Compare it with other photos of the rally — including what Trung was really wearing — here on Red County/OC Blog.… Read More

Term Limits, on balance, have been good for California. Term limits have been around long enough now that there are actually a lot of people involved in politics who really don’t remember what it was like before they were voted into place by the California electorate back in 1990. What we had before term limits was the era of the career politician. You know how your local Congressman has been in office for what seems like a lifetime? Well, that is how it used to be for members of the Senate and the Assembly. In many cases, members of the legislature never had any other career before leaping into state house. Once they got there, legislators would serve in office for decades (or even longer). This created a system where the personal relationships became the dominant factor in the Capitol — which ended up primarily serving the ends of crafty politicians like uber-Speaker Willie Brown. Now there is a healthy turn-over of legislators that insures that those who are elected do not lose touch with those that put them in office. Unfortunately, because of the grossly unbalanced legislative districts crafted by a politician-drafting redistricting… Read More

For those wondering what happened to the staple of Sunday San Diego…hey, I didn’t post yesterday, ok? Fleischman said he was going to half my pay as a result. I went to public schools, and (not but) I can figure 50 percent of zilch. So, what do you want for free?

Speaking of real media sources, however, which have real deadlines that can’t be missed, let’s take a look at the San Diego Union-Trib’s increase in blogging.

As noted previously, Chris Reed’s America’s Finest Blog has been a welcome addition to the U-T, utilizing a sometimes acerbic opinion style that the more stoic newsprint editorial pages can’t – or won’t – even begin to touch. Bottom line: Chris’ no-holds-barred writing is an entertaining must read.

Without getting into the unknown legal nuances between the U-T’s broadsheet and the on-line SignOnSanDiego.com, the editors do want to… Read More

If you take an Internet stroll to the Democratic Party of Orange County’s web site you find the typical party RA-RA and fund raising appeals and smartly a big pitch for Dem endorsed supervisorial candidate Tom Umberg.

Down at the bottom of the page is one of those rolling straw polls for the Democratic Nominee for President. It’s been operational since Nov. 28, 2006 and over 1200 people have responded to the on-line poll.

I thought it would be fun to put in a vote for Kucinich in the straw poll. I assumed it would be one of only a handful for the guy. Surely Hillary or Obama would lead the pack. I thought maybe Bill Richardson would be high on the list, after all Orange County is a conservative place, maybe our Democrats would prefer a more moderate Dem.

I was embarrassed for my local rival party when I saw that my shill vote for Kucinich was joined with hundreds of others.

No political professional considers Kucinich to be a real candidate for anything other than perhaps re-election and certainly a good shampoo and hair cut. Yet it seems that the Dems in OC are excited about his… Read More