Reggie Bush and Trojans Are Cheaters

Busted! It looks like Reggie Bush is in heap big trouble with the NCAA. He's going to the Pros, but the Trojans are going to left holding the bag with all of Reggie's NCAA violations. His family was living in a million dollar house rent free for the last year. The agent was also giving his family money to travel to SC road games and who knows what else. If you're not cheating, you're not trying, but just don't get caught. He got caught and now it will time to pay the piper. Depending on the PAC 10's investigation, they might make the Trojans forfeit all their games last year that Reggie played in. Reggie may be forced to give up his Heisman too. Dooooo. Reggie doesn't care though because he's outta there and will be the number one overall pick in the NFL Draft this weekend. I hope the NCAA crucifies SC with this.

Jubal Has Revealed Himself

I have to hand it to Matt Cunningham aka "Jubal" as we now know, for keeping his name a secret for as long as he did. He runs a great blog in OC Blog. I speculated early on that Jubal was Jon Fleischman in an earlier post, but evidence started to mount that Jubal was none other than Matt Cunningham. He pretty much outed himself in my view by going on Rick Reiff's show and trying to hind behind a horrible shadow that revealed Matt's signature goatee. That's when I knew for sure who Jubal was. Like Matt says, his secret identity was soon becoming about as secret as Area 51. I can sympathize with him at the start of not wanting to reveal his real name, but if I had to guess, I would bet that all the publicity that OC Blog now receives has been a nothing but a boon to Matt's consulting business, at least I hope so. He can now charge a lot of money for ads on his site since he is getting so much traffic flowing to the site. He deserves it.

Shame On Mater Dei

This is going to be a difficult post to write, but it has to be said so here it goes. A lot of you readers know that I graduated from Mater Dei High School back in 1988. Joelle Casteix graduated with me in 1988. She was molested by the choir director at the time back then and she has since become a victim's rights advocate for all the people over the years that have been molested by church personnal. Well it seems that Bishop Brown was all talk last year when the diocease settled with sexual abuse victims of the church for over $100 million dollars. New cases of abuse have come to light at Mater Dei and what is the Bishop doing....that's right, he's stonewalling! Steven Greenhut has good write up of the situation over at OC Punch. Suffice to say that the Bishop was totally disingenuous when he said that he would have a zero tolerance policy of new abuse cases. I guess what he really meant was that he won't tolerate letting any new cases see the light of day and he will fight every case tooth and nail. Sick.

Joelle and a few other people are going to be outside of Mater Dei tomorrow night protesting during Freshman orientation...hehe. Nothing like a few protesters showing up to scare new parents about the gauntlet their sons & daughters might face at ole MD. I'm sure the school would like all this "stuff" to just go away, but unfortunately for them there is a pesky thing called justice that is being seeked by abuse victims. I applaud Joelle for for her courageous leadership in prodding the school to drop their ridiculous stalling techniques in court.

Arnold Is A Hypocrite

Here's another amusing story quoting our RINOy(new word) California governor. He says that building a wall on the border would amount to "going back to the Stone Ages". What a freakin hypocrite. I wonder if he told Israeli citizens that their wall that they have built was "going back to the stone ages" , what they would say. This is a man who lives in heavily guarded gated community for himself, but it's wrong for us to build a physical barrier along our southern border. Got it. John Sieler of the OC Register gets this issue also. Here is his money quote..."So, it's walls and guards for the elite, an open borders invasion for the common citizens who pay the taxes and whose lives the elite ruins". Yep, you nailed it John.

Welcome To The OC Mr. President

I hear you're giving a speech this morning at the Irvine Hyatt on immigration. Let me tell you a little about what is happening in southern California right now regarding this issue. We are pissed off that your administration isn't doing a damn thing to address this issue except give speeches on how best to give amnesty for the 20 million or so that are here illegally. You better wake up and smell the coffee on this issue because the GOP is poised to become the minority party in Congress next year because of this and other reasons. I don't think you want your last two years to look like Clinton's last two years with Congressional investigations as far as the eye can see, but that is what's going to happen if you don't get your ass in gear on this issue. Have a nice day. BTW, congrats to Flash, Jon Fleischman, for talking his way into the event. I just saw his mug on CNBC televising part of the speech.

**************4/24 Afternoon Update******************

I have to comment on this quote by the President today at the Hyatt....

"Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic - it's just not going to work," Bush said. "You know, you can hear people out there hollering it's going to work. It's not going to work."

My support of you Mr. President is could become "unrealistic" also if you keep thumbing your nose at the base of the party like this. How do you like that? Oh yeah and nice approval rating...32% according to a new CNN poll. (fast forward to next January...Bush speaking) "Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, I look forward to working with you".

Arnold Is PO'd At President Bush About Levees

I read with amusement this story because I was laughing thinking that why isn't he getting this pissed at President Bush for controlling the southern border? It's okay if half the citizens of Mexico stream into our country illegally, but damnit we really need federal money for those levees. Selective outrage on Arnold's part. Memo to Arnold: why haven't you declared an emergency yet on the border? I'd say it's kinda important to make sure we control who's coming into this country.

R.I.P John William Bartlett

This has been a rough week for the Bartlett clan as you can imagine. My uncle John finally passed away late Tuesday afternoon at Huntington Memorial up in Pasadena. We laid him to rest Friday after a beautiful yet heart wrenching funeral mass at Holy Family in South Pasadena. I have so many great memories of my uncle growing up. He is one of the strongest most courageous men I have ever known. I will never forget him. I will be back posting this week after my self imposed hiatus to spend time with my family reflecting on my uncle's life this week.

A Request....

I'm going to ask a small favor of my readers to please say a prayer tonight for my uncle John Bartlett who is dying from colon cancer. The doctor has given him 24 to 48 hours to live on this earth. He has been a courageous fighter against this insidious disease for the last three years, but it has taken its toll on him. It is affecting my father the most who has been his caregiver for most of this time. I will be out of hoc probably for the next couple of days to be with my family.

I'm Taking Off For The Weekend

I hope everyone has a great Easter/Passover weekend holiday. I'm off to Santa Barbara to visit my in-laws. I'll be back posting things on Monday. I have few interesting stories developing about the recently completed election here in the 35th SD. You won't want to miss that. Until then, I'm out.

Another Carona Sexual Harassment Lawsuit...Ho Hum

This is becoming routine for Sheriff Carona these days. Another day, another embarrassment for the county. Sandy Trujillo, a secretary in the Sheriff's office, was allowed by the state to file a lawsuit against the Sheriff for sexual harassment. I wonder if that money the County Supervisors gave to the Sheriff for legal expenses is going to pay for Carona's lawyer in this matter. What a loser. This story reminds me of the Clinton era and all the "bimbo eruptions" that he used to have. Unfortunately for the county, this one looks like it going to cost the taxpayers a bundle. I hope the Central Committee members are taking all this in. They will be asked to drink the Carona kool-aid again at the meeting Monday night. I will be there watching it all.

It's Fourth Down and Long For Team Harkey

The final tally in the race for the 35th Senate District is due in a few hours at 5pm local time here. Team Harkey needs a "Hail Mary" to coin a football term to win this thing. She's down by 289 votes and needs to win the remaining 600 provisional ballots by more than a 2 to 1 margin. It ain't gonna happen. If somehow the gap is narrowed to say within a few dozen votes, I think she should go ahead with a recount. I'm not sure what the law says about this if it's automatic or if the trailing candidate has to request one and pay for it. Short of that, I think Diane needs to give a dignified concession speech and try again in two years to take Harman out in a closed GOP primary. We already know how Mr. Harman is going to vote if he wins this thing so there should be plenty of ammunition to use against him.

*****************5:01 PM UPDATE*******************

Tom Harman is the unofficial winner of the race for the 35th Senate District by 236 votes. Ouch. This one hurts bad.

Here is the final tally

Ann Coulter On Illegal Immigration

I really like Ann Coulter's opinions. She does still need to eat some more food, but I love her opinions. She nails the illegal immigration situation as usual with her latest column:

By Ann Coulter
Wed Apr 12, 8:05 PM ET


This is the only country on Earth that thinks it's not sporting to consider our own interests in choosing immigrants. Try showing up in any other country on the planet, illiterate and penniless, and announcing: "I've seen pictures of your country and it looks great. I think I'd like to live here! Oh, and by the way, would you mind changing all your government and business phone messages, street signs and ballots into my native language? Thanks!" They would laugh you out of the country.

What seems not to have occurred to the "NO HUMAN BEING IS ILLEGAL" crowd is that this is a country, not a public park.

There are more than 6 billion people in the world, many of whom apparently like the idea of living in the wealthiest democracy on Earth. But if the billions of people of the world did live here, it wouldn't be "here" anymore. America is special for a reason that must transcend the right to vote -- or everyone would be trying to immigrate to Iraq right now.

America has a seller's market in immigration, but thanks to Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law, we no longer favor skilled workers from developed nations, but instead favor unskilled immigrants from the Third World. Kennedy's bill promptly cut the number of European immigrants in half and increased Third World immigrants to 85 percent of the total.

Not surprisingly, post-1965 immigrants have sharply higher levels of poverty and welfare dependence. Europeans may not seem like ideal new immigrants, but the truth is, if what they want is welfare, they'll stay in France.

It's as if we've got the last Xbox 360s available on Christmas Eve and instead of doubling the price, we're entertaining low-ball offers. Or more accurately, we're paying our customers to take the darn things off our hands -- and the customers are still indignant with us.

On CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on Monday, Dobbs was interviewing Nativo Lopez, president of the Mexican-American Political Association about his demand for "full immediate, unconditional legalization for all persons currently in the United States."

Dobbs posed this innocuous question about Lopez's planned boycott, "You're talking about a boycott of all illegal aliens in this country?"

Lopez exploded: "Well, first off, I refute your terminology. You don't say 'kike,' 'patty,' 'WOP,' OK. You don't say "nigger"! ... You're using language that's offensive to me and offensive to my people! ... You pollute the air every day, Dobbs. ... That language is offensive, it's derogatory, it's denigrating, and don't use that terminology to me again, referring to my people!"

Dobbs eventually ended Lopez's Tourette's episode by calmly asking him what he expected the impact of the boycott to be.

An hour later on MSNBC's "Hardball," Dave Rodriguez, of the League of United Latin American Citizens, leapt in to denounce Rep. Tom Tancredo for using the word "amnesty." He said: "There isn't any such thing as amnesty in this law. I don't understand what this debate is. That's your own terminology on it ..."

Bank robbers and drug dealers ought to start claiming that the words "bank robber" and "drug dealer" are akin to the N-word. They could accuse lawmakers of "criminalizing felonies" and claim they don't understand what the word "jailbreak" means.

At the same time on CNN's "The Situation Room," Maria Elena Salinas, an anchor at Univision, was informing Wolf Blitzer that "all Hispanics feel offended by what has been going on, by the rhetoric, the level of the negativity that you hear coming out of Capitol Hill and also on some television stations and by some journalists."

So it's really more like we've got the last Xbox 360s available on Christmas Eve and the customers are not only demanding money to take the hottest sales item off our hands, but are verbally abusing us and acting petulant. I'm offended that you would even think about asking me to pay for the Xbox 360! You say it has a "20 GB detachable hard drive"? Well, would you use the word "kike"?

As hardworking as illegal immigrants are when they come here, they are immediately demagogued by liberals into adopting the victimhood pose so popular on college campuses. Everybody wants to act like his ancestors were brought here on slave ships.

Consider this e-mail from Michele Waslin, La Raza's director of Immigration Policy Research, to her members denouncing Sen. Lamar Alexander (news, bio, voting record)'s proposal to provide government grants to immigrants who want to learn English and American history and to organizations offering those courses. (I'd be happy with a law that simply trained new immigrants not to be "offended" all the time.)

Even though this potentially meant free money for La Raza, Waslin -- of the Guadalajara Waslins -- ominously warned that while the amendment "doesn't overtly mention assimilation, it is very strong on the patriotism and traditional American values language in a way which is potentially dangerous to our communities."

Meanwhile, Americans aren't allowed to consider whether millions of immigrants refusing to learn English and American history is "potentially dangerous to our communities." Here, please -- we'll pay you, just take the whole Xbox 360 factory

About That Congressional Race To The South...

It appears that the race for the GOP nomination for the 50th CD will go to Brian Bilbray. I congratulate him on running a good race. I support him for the general special election in June to serve out the rest of the term for the seat. I also want to say that it's time for the man I supported, Howard Kaloogian to hang up his spikes and throw his support to Eric Roach. The same goes for Bill Morrow. Conservatives now need to coalesce behind Eric Roach and urge him to run in the closed GOP primary on the same June ballot for the GOP nomination for the full term. I'm sick and tired of Democrats getting a chance to have a say in who we nominate for our candidates running for office. It's obvious that Democrats crossed over to vote for Bilbray and probably provided him with his margin of victory over Eric Roach. If you add up the votes that all the conservative candidates got(Roach+Kaloogian+Morrow,etc) versus votes for the moderates(Bilbray+Uke,etc), it's obvious that voters in the 50th prefer a conservative over a moderate for their DC representation.

Jon Fleischman stole my thunder on this because he just posted basically the same thing that I'm saying.

My Thoughts On Last Night

Lynn and I attended the Harkey party over at Tentation Ultra Lounge last night in Newport Beach. We got there at about 8pm and the place was already filling up with the who's who of the OC political scene. As I was making mental notes of who I saw and who was talking to whom, the time had arrived to know what the score of the game was after the first round of absentees. The fact that word was not spreading through the crowd by 8:15pm about the results had me concerned. Things must not be going our way. I finally was able to introduce myself and speak with John Lewis about some numbers over at the bar. He was somber. When I first learned of the results, I was a little dumbfounded myself. Diane was down by about 800 votes. Armed with those numbers, I knew it was going to be a long night. Fast forward to this morning...Diane is still down by over 500 votes with about 5000 absentee votes left to post. In the words of Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell....Houston we have a problem. I hope the difference can be made up, but my gut is telling me that my new Senator is Tom Harman.

We did have a fun time last night though. It's amazing what starting this blog has turned into for me. Someone told me at the start of the party that people I had never met, would know who I am because they have read Powder Blue Report. I just kinda laughed and thought no way. Well as the night wore on, it turns out that a lot of the party intelligencia have been reading my blog! Damn. I just want to say thanks to everyone who thinks I have something worth reading and clicking on every now and then. Anyway, I had a chance to put a voice and a face with a lot of names that I have known about for a while. I especially want to give a shout out to "Commie Girl" or errr Rebecca of the OC Weekly. She was there mingling with everyone and it was great to get to meet her finally.

Finally, this is a partial list of people that I saw and/or spoke with at the party: John Campbell & some of his staffers(Lou Penrose, Chris Palmer), Pat Bates, Cassie DeYoung, Mike McGill & his wife, Chuck & Diane Devore, Frank Mickadeit, John Lewis, Ed Royce, Jim Righeimer & daughters, John Moorlach, Bill Campbell, Mark Bucher, Matt Harper, Jon Fleischman & fiancee Maureen(congratulations by the way to the two on their engagement, Maureen was sporting a nice sized rock on her finger), OC NRA guru Howard Hull, Nicolas Romero, Ryan Gene Williams, Jeff Coreless & his finacee Virginia, Sergio Prince, Ron & Charlene Hatakeyama-Wildermuth, Chriss Vliss, Keith & Terry Short, and many more.

Just Got Back Home From The Harkey Party

It looks like Diane is only down 440 some odd votes as I write this. This one is going overtime. They still have over 10,000 absentee ballots out there to count and the majority of the precincts. We won't know the winner until tomorrow. Good night all. I'll post about the Harkey party tomorrow.

35th Senate District Results

Here is the link for the results of the election

Turnout Update For The 35th SD Race

My wife just went to vote over at our polling place during her lunch break at 12:30pm and she was only the 17th person to have voted out over 2000 in the precinct since the poll opening. That is pathetic! This is going to be a super low turnout election in my estimation. Whoever wins the absentee vote will be the winner IMO. I predict 16% overall turnout with these numbers. Really sad.

*****************4:30PM UPDATE**********************

I was lucky number 44 when I went and filled in my ballot for Diane Harkey. That's right, we've got about three and half hours until poll closing and I was only the 44th person to vote out of over 2000. This is great news for Diane Harkey because we all know that Dave Gilliard is the best at the absentee ballot chase. This race is over. Game, set, match Tom Harman. Only 3 or 4% of the vote is going to be walk-up votes out of the total turnout percentage. I'm disappointed that more people can't get off their ass to go vote. It only takes a few minutes out of the day.

BTW, what's up with going back to the paper ballots? I liked the electronic voting machines. I liked em because it it has always tweaked the liberals and their conspiracy theories about Diebold stealing elections for Republicans, etc. They were very user friendly too.

A Couple Of Big Local Elections On Tap For Today

The first one is in my neighborhood for the race to fill the vacant 35th Senate District. This race is going down to the wire with Dana Point Councilwomen Diane Harkey poised to claim the seat against RINO Republican Tom Harman. I did some calling over the weekend for Diane and from the responses I got, she is going to win this thing from her huge absentee ballot effort. I didn't have one Republican tell me they were voting for Mr. Harman. There will be a victory party at Tentations tonight in Newport Beach.

The other big race is down south in the 50th Congressional District. This is the seat vacated by Duke Cunningham because he abused his office and resigned in disgrace. Normally this would be a slam dunk race for the GOP, but Duke's scandal has made this thing competitive. No one is probably going to receive the 50%+1 needed for outright victory tonight. The intrigue is really on the GOP side. Can squishy Republican Brian Bilbray eke out a victory? Is newcomer Eric Roach going to shock the establishment with his showing? Can Howard Kaloogian, who by the way I am supporting, put together a great ground game and shock the pollsters and everyone else with a huge grassroots effort to pull out a win? All these questions will be answered tonight. It should be fun viewing for political geeks like myself.

Dallas Is Overrun With Illegals Aliens

If anyone thinks we don't have a full scale invasion happening in this country, I point you to the latest news today out of Dallas, Texas where half a million illegal aliens are currently marching in the streets for amnesty. Are you watching this US Senators? Do you care about your oath to the US Constitution to defend the country from all enemies foreign and domestic? If you do, please give up on your fantasy of giving amnesty to 20 million illegal aliens currently here in the US according to Bear Stearns. Please vote to uphold the current law. That is your job.

This is a Masterpiece

Jubal has just posted over at OC Blog the latest mailer on illegal immigration to be sent out by Diane Harkey and it is a doozy! Please check it out here. Congrats to Dave Gilliard for thinking up this idea. I knew you were good Dave, but damn. Oh and Tom Harman, have fun defending your vote on illegal alien tuition. This is what you're encouraging by voting for that crap. Maybe they could carbon copy it to Cardinal Mahony as well.

Senate Agrees To Amnesty For Criminal Illegal Aliens

Here is the story from Reuters. The fix is in on the Senate immigration bill. Now that they have caved in, it will be interesting to see if the House is able to stand their ground. All this Senate bill is, is amnesty plain & simple. It rewards lawbreaking. They might as well give amnesty to every single felon in the US because "they have compassion" and we the people who want the laws enforced are just wacked out. Just go ahead and empty the prisons. There is no point in having laws if you won't enforce them. The other sides logic on this issue is just breathtaking. The one good thing about this from my point of view is that we will soon know all the Republican Senators who support the rule of law and those who don't. I already know how the Democratic Senators are going to vote on this so there's no suspense there.

Michelle Malkin has an excellent roundup here of this debacle.

Hugh Hewitt thinks the compromise bill is going to be a great thing for Bill Frist. Take another sip of that open border kool-aid Hugh. Start painting the map blue Hugh if this horrible bill sees the light of day. We know the details and they ain't pretty. Quit pretending this is a good thing.

I posted this over at California Conservative as well.

*********4/6/06 Evening Update********************

Reuters is now reporting that the so called compromise has fallen apart for the time being. It seems Democrats didn't want to let any amendments be offered by Republicans. This is fine with me. No law is way better than what the Senate is proposing. I have a feeling if no bill gets out of the Senate tomorrow, it's not going to improve the prospects for amnesty two weeks later when the Senators are going to get an earful from their constituents on the two week Easter recess.

Gold Futures Over $600/ounce

This post is going to sound like a broken record for those of you you who have have read my blog frequently, but gold futures have risen to above $600/ounce for the first time since 1980. Silver also hit above $12/ounce today. You may ask yourselves what the significance is of all this. Luckily for you guys, you have me to give you the straight scoop. The scoop is....is that we have inflation rearing its ugly head and the price of these commodities is going to keep going higher in the future in my opinion. I sure hope some of you guys took my advice and bought into some form of gold/silver instrument.

Tom Delay is Out

Tonight is not turning out into a very good night. As I was watching my Bruins get schooled on the finer aspects of the game of basketball, I flipped the channel to MSNBC and Fox News during one of the timeouts to find out that Rep. Tom Delay will not be running for re-election. This is not a good omen of things to come in November. Granted, Delay has been slipping in the polls lately, but this announcement to "spend more time with God and family" is totally disingenuous. He didn't want to lose in November. It was a cold political calculation. Like Gingrich before him, it seems that high ranking House Republicans have a fairly short shelf life in power before they start to get stale and it becomes time for a change. In that sense I think Delay is doing the party a favor, but I have no allusions of what we face in the midterm elections. If I had to guess right now, I'd say the GOP Congress is in for a good old fashioned ass whipping come November. I sure hope I'm wrong, but my gut says otherwise. We have had all the power for over five years and there are not many accomplishments to speak of. Budget discipline, spending, illegal immigration, are just issues of the top of my head that we have totally abdicated leadership on. It will be near impossible to turn things around IMO in the few short months left until elections. As far as I'm concerned, if Bush signs any guest worker program before giving border enforcement a chance to work first, that will be the final nail in our return to the minority.

Bruins Take Care Of Business And Rout LSU

My gutty UCLA Bruins are one win away after opening up a can of whup-ass on the LSU Tigers last night. It was such an all around beating that it would have made even Saddam Hussein proud. The east coast bias reared its ugly head before the game even started. I was reading and watching all the analysts & so called experts say that LSU was way more talented than the Bruins and they all picked LSU to win. It's funny how fast they changed their tune by halftime. This team is one victory away from raising a record twelveth national championship banner in the rafters at Pauley Pavilion. Florida is obviously an excellent team also and tomorrow's game should be a classic.