Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove, District 46) just went from Yes vote to Undecided column on the Health Care debate in the U.S. House of Representatives according to Capitol Hill newspaper "The Hill".

How much pressure and phone calls did the Congresswoman get in her district and Capitol Hill offices?  Is she afraid of a tough re-election against Assemblyman Van Tran (R-Costa Mesa, District 68)?

Over at the Press Release Juice blog, proprietor Admin Pedroza galloped fancifully down the conspiracy trail, speculating that Democratic Anaheim Councilwoman Lorri Galloway is behind the 34th Senate District candidacy of Republican Sue Perez. Challenging OC's tax-hiking state Senator is simply impermissible to Correa's Renfield.

Dan Chmielewski over at TheLiberalOC.com helpfully dialed a few digits and asked Lorri Galloway directly if she had anything to do with Perez runnning:

“The speculation that I was involved in recruiting Sue Perez to run against Senator Correa is absolutely untrue. I was just as surprised as others when I heard she was a candidate. Although, Sue and her husband Ed are friends whom I hold in high regard, I have not had a conversation with them about her candidacy.”

As Dan points out in his post, it toook him less time to track down Admin Pedroza's rumor than it did for Admin to cook it up.

I found this bit of news in the Local section of the OCR yesterday.  On Saturday, Nov. 7th, at 10:00 a.m., Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez (retired) will be speaking at the Student Union building at CSUF.  He will make the keynote speech at the event to honor veterans that have served in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Following the speeches, the General will be available to sign his book starting at noon.  The book is entitled, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story."  Sanchez was the first coalition forces commander in Iraq following the invasion and liberation of Iraq.  He was succeeded by Gen. Casey, then Gen. Petraeus, and now Gen. Odierno is the current commander.

Latino Advocates for Education and CSUF are jointly sponsoring this event.  For more info, call 714-225-2499, or you can research the event at latinoadvocates.org.  The Student Union is located at 800 N. State College Blvd., in Fullerton.  God bless our military veterans.

Yes, THAT Jeff Flint! The founder of Red County Placer... you see, Jeff is a partner in the leading political consulting firm in America defending family values.

The MSM gives Schubert-Flint PA (the 2009 Winner of some consultant award - the equivalent of the MVP in Baseball, though) some grudging praise.

Their article points out repeatedly that people really believe in Gay marriage until Frank Schubert figured out in some right-wing focus group that running ads depicting the homosexual children's books was the ticket.

You can read the article here

Far be it from me to say - but the people that wrote/edited this article seemed irritated. I wish I could have been there when they finally decided to include the sentence about how Gay Marriage has lost all 31 times it has gone to the ballot. Of course, they leave out that the Courts (again, like with abortion, rights that nenver existed before for criminals/terrorists/illegal aliens) were and are the only way to force Gay Marriage on society.

But, I digress - oh and notice that this article gets buried in the late friday wire.

Thank you Schubert-Flint for defending the fabric of society.

It's a long-time member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, it has been pushing hard to join the European Union, it has been viewed as a model for secularism in the Muslim world, and it's .... planning to host an indicted war criminal next week.  It's Turkey.  This morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, wanted for war crimes over the genocide in Darfur, will visit Turkey ("Turkey Set to Host President of Sudan").  I can assure you Turkey won't be pressuring Bashir to stop the killing in Darfur.   

Turkey and Sudan say their relationship is all about their economies.  And trade has quadrupled over the past three years.  But deeper currents are connecting.  Next week's visit is the latest sign of Turkey's shift away from the West and towards political Islam.  Radical Islam is integral to the ruling party in Khartoum, Sudan.  Last month, Turkey pulled the plug on a routine military exercise with NATO and Israel's air force.  Exercises with Syria are planned though.  Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose Islamist AKP party came to power in 2003, recently called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "our friend."  Ahmadinejad will be in Istanbul too, by the way, as part of the one day Organization of the Islamic Conference meeting.  As Darfur will be ignored, so too will Iran's nuclear drive.    

This isn't just my hunch.  One Middle East analyst recently noted, "the AKP's foreign policy has not promoted sympathy toward all Muslim states.  Rather, the party has promoted solidarity with Islamist, anti-Western regimes (Qatar and Sudan, for example) while dismissing secular, pro-Western Muslim governments (Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia)." (WSJ editorial: "The Turkish Temptation").  Present-day Turkey's embrace of rogues abroad shouldn't surprise, given that Ankara has moved to "tax" domestic independent media and jail political opponents.  Readers of this space know that aggressive attitudes abroad and bad behavior at home closely track (see North Korea, Iran).

This isn't some two-bit country with a growing radical population.  This is Turkey: a country of 77 million strategically sitting between east and west.  This is a NATO ally, with the accompanying security commitments and access to military technology.  We don't need any more foreign policy headaches, but Turkey's political and social trends are quite troubling indeed.  

In recent days the news has been filled with tales of carnage inflicted upon innocent victims. From the serial murderer registered sex offender in Cleveland to the 13 killed and 31 injured at Fort Hood by a deranged gunman to the 1 killed and 5 injured in Orlando by a disgruntled former employee.

This morning, after hearing the news of the Fort Hood massacre, I went down to my local blood donation center and donated blood. The brave men and women who protect us with their lives ask nothing from us. The least I could do was to give some of my blood to those who offer up theirs on a daily basis.

Red Cross of Orange County is the place to start. They take blood donations, cash donations, offer first aid and CPR classes and are always looking for volunteers.

With Veterans Day upon us next week, lets all take a minute this weekend to honor those brave souls who serve us by thanking a veteran, attending an event to honor veterans or maybe even hiring a veteran.