Ask any Orange County political insider or elected official what reporter they talk to at the LA Times and they will shrug and say no one. It is painfully clear that the LA Times has abandoned any hope of having a viable Orange County operation. They canceled their Orange County section years ago and rarely print oped submissions regarding OC public policy.

I did a poll in the city of Garden Grove a couple years back that showed the LA Times was the fourth most popular local news source among resident after the OC Register, the local Garden Grove Journal, and even the local Channel 3. The rest of Orange County would probably show similar results.

The Times’ last respected OC-based journalist left several months ago. Jean Pasco was the dean of the OC press corps when she packed it in to join the staff of the Orange County Clerk-Recorder.

**There is more – click the link**

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Yesterday, Oakland’s KTVU interviewed me about who is the real Arnold Schwarzenegger (not just me, SF Mayor Gavin Newsom too). The gist of their story was, given the left-leaning bills the governor has been signing lately, Republicans and Democrats alike are wondering what to expect from the Schwarzenegger Administration in its second term. When KTVU’s Randy Shandobil asked me if I was a Schwarzenegger supporter early on, I replied that I was because, although I knew that he’d be middle-of-the-road on social issues, I liked his focus on dealing with the state budget’s structural… Read More

In light of Adam’s post below on the L.A. Times, here is some news that casts into doubt the objectivity of another major California newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News…

When I got an e-mail yesterday from the San Jose Mercury News entitled, "Governor, It’s Time To Set A Date" — I opened it right up. That is and of itself if notable because I get over a thousand e-mails on any given day, and many, many mass-emails go unopened. But it is unusual to get e-mail from the Merc, and even more intriguing because it sounded to me like this large, reputable newspaper was laying out a challenge to Arnold Schwarzenegger! Right under the large, reassuring logo of the Mercury News (I lived in the San Jose Area for a couple of years so logo adorned by front doorstep on a daily basis) was this HUGE logo of the Phil Angelides for the Governor campaign, and then a sarcastic letter that basically attacks the Governor for only… Read More

Democrat elected officials and candidates just slay me sometimes. They consider themselves intellectually and morally superior than all of society, yet their political strategies are just idiotic. Now Phil Angelides, probably the worst Statewide candidate ever fielded by the Democrats, has finally found his issue – the Iraq war! Yes! That will do it! What genius!

Memo to Democrats: you ran on the Iraq war in 2004 and lost. You are running on the Iraq war in 2006 and aregoing to lose again.

The President’s poll numbers, in my judgment, are not about any one issue. His 9-11 tribute speeches, falling gas prices, and hysterical rhetoric from the left are all important, but not the main reason his approval ratings are up. Here’s the reason:

He’s on OFFENSE. Republicans are so desperate to see their elected officials on offense, rather than the usual backpedaling, that the base gets very fired up when we go on the attack. If we stay on offense through election day, the election cycle will go well.

GOP prospects across the country rise and fall beginning with what is… Read More

San Bernardino County Republican Party Chairman Bill Postmus today announced the Republican Central Committee’s endorsements for 62 candidates and measures on the November 7 ballot.

Click here to see the list.

"We received requests from more than 80 candidates, an unprecedented number," Postmus said. "Every year our party is getting more and more successful at helping Republicans get elected to local office, and the demand for our support has grown every election."

Those candidates endorsed by the county party are included in its voter contact programs, including direct mail, telephone calls, and precinct walks. Since 2000, 85% of GOP-endorsed candidates have won their respective races. Thanks in part to the GOP’s voter contact programs and heavy Get-Out-The-Vote efforts, cities such as Fontana and Ontario, traditionally Democrat strongholds, have been swung to the Republican column.… Read More

I usually don’t read Bill Bradley, and frankly neither of us could pick each other out of a line-up. Up until the last 10 minutes or so, I had no idea what his background was.

But I happened to check in on www.rtumble.com and noticed Bradley’s comments about the decline of partisan registration and partisanship in general. In short, he states the real fact that Decline to State Voters have increased in number, and then attributes to them a series of ideological beliefs.

Here is the problem: it’s actually much, much more complicated than that.

Here’s what I’ve gathered from my polling and voter identification of DTS and American Independent voters (they don’t think George Wallace… they think they are ‘independent voters’): there are distinct subgroups you can’t ‘average’ together unless you want to screw up voter contact.

In short, and I’m looking at data (both polling and voter ID and this is average) from 5 Assembly Districts, a Congressional District, and several cities, about 1/3 of this Independent bloc are closet Republicans who pretty much vote the ticket.… Read More

Today, we got another startling glimpse of what the “Speaker Pelosi” (scary isn’t it) and the Democratic agenda would look like if they took over Congress. The latest revelation came from Charlie Rangel (D-NY), the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee and the would be Democratic chairman. Congress Daily PM highlighted some of his remarks at a press conference today, “Asked whether tax increases across the income spectrum would be considered, [Rangel] replied, ‘No question about it.’" This is on the heels of remarks he made last week in another article published in Bloomberg News, “Rangel’s accession to the chairmanship of the committee would likely end six years of tax cuts by the Republican- controlled Congress. He said he ‘cannot think of one’ of President George W. Bush’s first-term tax cuts that merit renewal.”

The millions of Americans are benefiting from tax relief that has lowered marginal tax rates, reduced taxes on capitol gains and dividends, created the largest ever child tax credit, and reduced the death tax among others. These tax… Read More

I feel really bad for every partisan Democratic activist in California.

I can only imagine that they must all be moping right now. When they aren’t complaining about how much they hate George Bush, they must be spending all of their time bemoaning the fact that their nominee for Governor has to be the worst candidate ever in the history of the Golden State. As a matter of fact, and I really do mean this with all sincerity, if the Democrats had Bozo the Clown as their nominee, they really couldn’t be any worse off than they are now. As a matter of fact, they would be better off. Because while neither Phil Angelides nor Bozo the Clown have any real clue on how to run for, let alone competently occupy the job of Governor — at least Bozo the Clown is funny. Watching Phil Angelides campaign since the primary has actually … Read More