Last night around 7pm I started to get a flurry of emails from FlashReport readers — they couldn’t get onto the website! I tried it out myself and, sure enough, it was slow as molasses. I quickly reached out to our ace team of programmers at Cloudspace (they are located in Orlando, Florida so it was a bit later there) — and they got on it right away.

Their first report to me was that the site had ground to a virtual standstill because of a massive volume of traffic coming to the site. I thought this to be a little odd, for a Thursday night.

Soon after that first report, the answer came back. It turns out that in a commentary I wrote for FR a couple of weeks ago I had a graphic image of the cover of Michael Jackson’s 1984 "Thriller" album — and for some reason, when one did a Google images search for this, the image on my site came up number two! Anyways, as folks around the web sought out that particular graphic they would start to link from their websites and emails to that file. This then led to others grabbing the link and so on and so on. The exponential effort led to a site overload.

The problem has… Read More

I am sure most California politicos didn’t miss the above-the-top "I love Meg Whitman" piece penned a couple of months ago by Fred Barnes in the Weekly Standard. I think it is ironic that one of the most prominent advertisers on the Weekly Standard’s website is now eBay. I know because every day that I compile links for the FR’s main page, the Standard’s website is one of my stops.

This morning I had to refresh my browser on their page exactly once to ditch the Joe Scarborough ad, and get the eBay ad you see below. Now to be fair, perhaps they were there before the cover-story puff-piece on eBay’s former Chief Executive Officer — and I just wasn’t looking for them.

My favorite theory is that the eMeg story gets forwarded around to all of Whitman’s former employees and such, and someone in advertising says, … Read More

My apologies — I am running around a bit today and not by the computer much. A quick data-download. The Senate and Assembly passed out two bills today, on votes of 54-0 in the Senate, and 69-0 in the Assembly, which include a few billion in cuts. No where near the $24 billion that needs to be cut to see California State government not end up back in a crisis-mode sometime in the upcoming fiscal year.

The argument that Assembly Republicans make in supporting these particular bills is that they represent cuts that need to be made in the current fiscal year budget (so within the next five days). Cuts made to some areas, such as education, have extra impact as the required levels of funding for some areas in next year’s budget are based on what those areas received this year.

The argument against these bills made by the Governor (who has pledged to veto the bills) and State Senate Republicans (except for a couple who bolted the caucus to vote with the Dems) is that it is imperative that we pass a comprehensive solution only, and nothing that allows Democrats to push out the tough cuts until later — when it is harder to have the impact of… Read More

Today the Democrats will put up some bills calling for cuts in state government spending — but cuts that are far short of what is needed to get us through the 2009 – 2010 fiscal year. Or put another way, if we approve only these cuts, this Spring will find us back in a crisis. But, of course, in the Spring, the ability to make cuts to resolve the shortfall will be significantly more difficult — it takes some time to realize the savings from reductions — time we will have with cuts adopted now, but necessarily in the Spring.

There are a lot of cuts that literally need to take place by the end of this fiscal year (such as cuts to education) or else it would mandate even more spending due to funding formulas set in the State Constitution. I get that. But the top priority of Senate and Assembly Republicans, like by a factor of ten, is to avoid a short-term fix that will have us all staring down the barrel of tax increases this Spring.

The politics of the State Capitol is confusing to me. And I have to admit that perhaps my advice to GOP legislators would be different on this subject if I hadn’t, to my disbelief, watched… Read More

This morning, Congressman Kevin McCarthy sent over a link to a new video created by House Republican Whip Eric Cantor — McCarthy serves as Chief Deputy Whip. Here is an intro to the piece by McCarthy, followed by the video…

FROM CONGRESSMAN KEVIN MCCARTHYAs unemployment climbs, Speaker Pelosi’s top priority is passing a cap and trade bill, which imposes a national energy tax (aka “cap and tax”) that is predicted by economic experts to result in more American job losses and cost all Americans more in utility and energy bills. Now is the time to focus on job creation and cutting spending. There is also a better energy approach called the American Energy Act that does not impose a burdensome national energy tax on American families and small businesses, helps create American jobs, and puts America on a path towards energy independence by producing more American… Read More

During the entire tenure of Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines, longtime GOP strategist Joe Justin served in the role of "going point" on the ground for his political efforts to retain Republicans in the Assembly, and to work to increase numbers.

With Sam Blakeslee’s election as Assembly Republican Leader, many people were wondering who would be filling this critical role for the new leader.

That person is going to be none other than Kevin Spillane. I had an opportunity to get to know and to work with Spillane for a long time now — and I think that this is an outstanding hire by Blakeslee. Kevin brings a lot to the table. Not only with a lengthy political resume, but he also, like Joe Justin actually, is a straight shooter who will be very realistic in approaching this position.

Many FR readers will recognize Kevin’s name because he has been the "public face" as it were — a spokesman (and much more) — for many high profile causes. Among those were the successful effort last year to stave off the naked attempt by Fabian Nunez to thwart term-limits. Currently you’ve seen him affiliated… Read More

I am looking to create a FlashReport/Twitter users list, specifically because we’re in the process of doing some exciting new programming integrating Twitter into the FlashReport, and I want to get input and advice from Twittering Politicos. If you are interested in helping out (not much time involved – mainly contributing ideas and such) — just drop me an email here. We’ll probably cut off the group fairly quickly since I don’t need thousands of helpers, maybe a dozen or two.… Read More

The session has ended. The vote on the Democratic budget failed to get a 2/3rds vote. The vote was 48-29. Of course today was political theater. The Governor had promised to veto the bills. For those interested, Democrat turned Independent Juan Arambuladid not vote.… Read More