Yesterday, I almost coughed up my cereal as I saw, before my eyes, in black and white, that the Los Angeles Times in a Sunday Editorial endorsed the Paycheck Protection measure. Stranger things have happenned, I suppose — but not many!

Today’s featured story on the FlashReport home page is about a publisher from San Diego named James Holman. Holman publishes a thick (over 200 page) alternative weekly paper that goes to almost 200,000 recipients.

His ‘crusade’ is the passage of Proposition 73, the measure on the Special Election Ballot that would require that the parents of a minor seeking an abortion be notified 48 hours prior to a doctor ending the life of the child.

A close and dear friend wrote to me over the weekend, asking why I haven’t said more about Proposition 73 in the FlashReport. She was correct to call me… Read More

Orange County has its own measures on the ballot in November. The most politically charged is ‘D’ which would take Prop. 172 (the statewide half-cent sales tax for public safety) dollars currently allocated to the Sheriff and DA and send some of the new tax increment increases to the Fire Authority. Its a generally boring topic of little consequence. Unless there is a raging forest fire in which case we all want the firefighters to have what ever they need or if there is a kidnapping and we want the Sheriff to have the resources necessary to find the kid alive, or if Robert Blake decided to move to OC and not kill his wife again we would want the DA to have the money to hire expert witnesses.

Basically, on a regular day it really doesn’t matter, only I trust the elected Sheriff and the elected District Attorney and dare I say the elected five member board of supervisors over the appointed couple-dozen member Fire Authority board of directors who are hardly accountable to the public, to spend our… Read More

Lost among the hoopla over the University of Southern California’s 28-game winning streak is this little factoid: the last time the Trojans lost a game, Gray Davis was governor and not Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Trojans’ last loss occurred on September 27, 2003, at Berkeley. A week later, the Trojans began their current wining streak. Three days after that victory over Arizona State, Schwarzenegger won the recall vote. So either USC is Arnold’s good-luck charm, or vice versa.

With the President in California this week — and the governor not by his side — the question is whether Schwarzenegger supports the Administration.

The answer’s obvious: Arnold is pro-Bush. Reggie Bush, that is.… Read More

As I type, Howard Dean is in the Bay Area, preparing for a union-hall rally over in Hayward.

If I were running the no campaign against Schwarzenegger, I’d probably want Dean out here too. You know he’s good copy, so he’s guaranteed earned media today and tomorrow. Besides, labor’s going down hard on Nov. 8 unless it gets all the usual suspects to vote against the reform slate — that includes Deaniacs who walk a fine line between indifferent and incensed.

I highly recommend to the media that they approach Dean events the same as the Bob Newhart drinking game from my college days (you’d chug a beer every time someone on that sitcom said "hey, Bob").

So be on the lookout for these predictable rants:

1) Arnold is a buffer, Teutonic buffer version of Tom Delay;

2) There are almost as many letters in "reform" as there are in… Read More

There is no new commentary today.

But did you catch some of these commentaries?

Take care, and enjoy your Sunday!

Jon… Read More

Annoyed by fundraising solicitations for the 2006 elections before the special election of 2005 is over. No worries. 2007 elections are just around the corner. Kevin Milton filed to run for Los Angeles City Council in 2007 against Bernard Parks. Read it here.Hey, I’m up for election in 2007. Maybe I should announce, but then again 2008 is just around the next corner.

Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamonte has been located. Repeat, Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamonte has been located.

His own ambitions having been thwarted, he is now busy meddling in the San Diego City Council for "overachiever" (yup… that’s actually one of the campaign slogans) professional student, Democrat staff member and candidate Lorena Gonsalez.

Hint, Cruz: if you want to keep meetings with labor bosses a secret, don’t go to known GOP hangouts to have them. Better yet, don’t let known GOP operatives sit at the table next to you and take notes. Make sure that San Diego Democrat Party money gets spent only on Democrat membership communication, Cruz.

By the way, missed you last night at the Republican Party fundraiser that hit 700k, net.… Read More

You may turn on your television set and see an ad in support of Redistricting. "Who is that man, you might say, that definately is NOT Arnold Schwarzenegger?"

If that is the case, you likely live in the Central Valley, where your local Congressman, Devin Nunes, has started running his own Yes on Proposition 77 commercials.

Kudos to Nunes both for stepping up to the plate and supporting the measure, and for going the extra mile to create TV spots!

Lately, there has been a lot of disappointment from grassroots Republican activists and donors, who cannot believe that over half of the California GOP delegation has either come out against 77, or is cowering behind their office doors, refusing to take a position.

It doesn’t take too much of a look back in history to see that right after the last census, when it was time for reapportionment, all of the legislators in Sacramento (encouraged by some in our Congressional delegation) signed off on what has been called an ‘incumbent protection… Read More