A few months ago I published a popular blog about the drive times between cities in California during one of my wretched drives from San Diego to Sacramento. I must have gotten 100 responses with various anecdotes and personal travel times, so I thought I’d post on the topic again today.

Yesterday evening my wife, our daughter and I left downtown Sacramento at exactly 3pm… bound for San Diego. There was stop stop and go traffic for a bit in Sacramento and outside of Stockton, but we reached Stockton at 3:45, Modesto at 4:15, and Fresno at 5:30. My average speed was probably 70mph. We stopped at one of the innumerable and ersatz food stops for 15 minutes in Tulare County to grab a burger and jump back in the car. My 2 year old preceded to eat 3/4 of the burger then got a kick out of throwing the rest at the back of my head. Outside of Fresno my speed was closer to 80 or 85mph – we reached Bakersfield at 7:15, 4 hours and 15 minutes after we left Sacramento. Interestingly, I drive a Volvo and I had only used 2/5 a tank of gas at this point.

My next jump was over the Grapevine and along the 5 past downtown LA, which had little traffic. I passed… Read More

The Long Beach election of April 11th is over…almost. As FR readers know the election came down to the last ballots in several races. See previous post here.The one race local Republicans werestill watching was Council District #3. In that race long time GOP activist Norm Ryan was in a battle to get to the June run-off. It looks like he came up short….but of course there is a recount going on. Read the story and results here.… Read More

Just when folks thought the recall of the pro Wal-Mart was finally over the Ninth Circuit may decide in one way to bring it out. As FR readers recall (get it?) the a panel had ruled the recall petitions needed to be in various languages. A judge then stopped the recall election from taking place using this case has his reason. This casemay also effect initiatives. See last post on this hereand you can see FR’s own political law expert Mike Houston’s take here. Now that case is going to be heard by an en banc panel off 11 judges. See the article here.… Read More

The following from Ken Moser, a perfect voter in CD 50. This, of course, addresses nothing about the quaility of the pieces or the mail universe, but it does (except perhaps for Kaloogian) reflect somewhat of a correlation between the numberof pieces and outcomes….that’s probably a "DUH," but it is interesting to see the numbers:

I just went through the pile of mail I had gotten for the election to do a count and here it is:

Bilbray – 20 pieces of which two were in letter format one of which was from Mayor Sanders

Roach – 19 pieces of which six were in letter format two from his wife and one from former Congressman Packard

Uke – 10 pieces of which two were in letter format

Morrow – 9 pieces of which two were repeats of the same mailer and one letter format from his mom

Kaloogian – 4 pieces

Hauf – 4 pieces

Earnest – 3 pieces

CRA – 3 pieces hitting Bilbray

NRP – 1 piece asking GOP voters to… Read More

**While the main page today has been Guest-Edited by Nicholas Romero, the FlashReport is pleased to welcome as today’s Guest Commentary Author Adam Probolsky. A regular FR contributor as an Orange County correspondent for the FR Weblog, Adam is penning today’s Commentary as Jon Fleischman, the site’s publisher and regular author of this column, is out of town.**

In today’s news… Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials conducted raids throughout the country rounding up 1,187 illegal aliens from the workplace including two locations in CA (Bakersfield and San Bernardino). The announcement yesterday was hailed by some and condemned by others.

I am unimpressed.… Read More

First a quick thank you to FlashReport publisher and friend Jon Fleischman for allowing me to be the guest commentator for today.

In today’s news… Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials conducted raids throughout the country rounding up 1,187 illegal aliens from the workplace including two locations in CA (Bakersfield and San Bernardino). The announcement yesterday was hailed by some and condemned by others.

I am unimpressed.

The Department of Homeland Security is playing games–shucking and jiving–to make it look like they are doing something when they are falling down on the job. I can walk into the kitchen of… Read More

Some rumblings and grumbling, as the President’s visit to Stanford is a few hours away.

1) Good article in this morning’s Chronicle _http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/04/21/BUGGKICDG41.DTL_ (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/04/21/BUGGKICDG41.DTL) on the various tech programs floating around in Congress. Watch and see if Reeps and Dems can come together and hammer out a deal that includes more federal spending for math and science, visas for foreign tech workers, and making permanent the federal R&D tax credit.

2) Such a deal underscores an urgent White House need: the President calling a meeting with congressional leaders and delivering a lecture that falls somewhere between Robert DeNiro swinging a baseball bat Moe Howard slapping around Larry and Curly. The clock’s ticking at the both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to get something before the midterm elections and the topic’s are stacking up: tax cuts, immigration reform. The President shouldn’t let tech fall between the cracks.

3) The President is at Cisco in a short while. Last month, Treasury… Read More

I would rather not report outside my assigned San Diego bailiwick, but there appears to be a news blackout from my OC peers (both in the FlashReport and OCBlog) in re the Harkey – Harman race and the ongoing hand recount requested by the Harkey campaign. Why the blackout from both very connected news sources, I can’t imagine – the coverage up until the morning after the election was blow by blow – down to the republishing of press releases, website foibles, mail, and chamber of commerce straw polls.

Both camps have been camped at the OC Registrar of Voters for a week and a half now. As of this morning approximately 75% of the Election Day ballots have been recounted by hand. That’s about 20% of the total votes. Harkey won on Election Day, so if she were going to pick up some votes, this would be the place. Her campaign challenged some 46 ballots, which were reviewed this morning by the Registrar of Voters. Not one of the Harkey campaign’s challenge to any ballot was upheld. Not one. You see, OC isn’t Kansas City under Pendergast, and it isn’t Tammany Hall under Tweed. The Orange County Registrar of Voters is fair,… Read More