Are Ventura voters so agitated that they will reshuffle the city council with newcomers, or are they mostly satisfied and reelect the incumbents?

One would have to suspect that in this political climate, anything is possible. The flagging economy woke many people up from their civic slumber and now the traditional political calculus is no longer reliable. The city council, struggling to make ends meet, resorted to some ill-advised policies that may come back to haunt them.

For starters, there was the 911-fee fiasco. You could pay the monthly fee or you could opt out and pay almost $18 if you were dumb enough to call 911 after that. The money -would go to the fire and police. Credit Neal Andrews for being against this fee. His reward is to be pummeled by the police unions.

While we're speaking of unions, we might as well talk about Measure C, the measure that would stop Wal-Mart from...oh wait, nevermind.

Then there's Measure A, a half-cent sales tax increase that the council supports (minus Andrews again--pattern?) The challenge here is that the city is dying for more money, but raising taxes is politically unpopular, so the council hopes that voters will approve the sales tax measure whilst not voting them out of office.

It will find out Tuesday. Ventura voters may very well be in the mood to clean house, but they should be careful not to throw any good incumbents in their haste.

Military historians generally regard the Battle of Saratoga, where the ragtag Continental Army surrounded and defeated General John Burgoyne's well-trained and professional British troops, as the turning point in the Revolutionary War. Within days of hearing news of the surrender, the French King Louis XVI, now seeing that the rebels were capable of victory, formally entered into an alliance with them, sealing the fate of British rule in the New World.

Sixty miles away and 232 years later in New York's 23^rd Congressional District, conservatives hope for a similar watershed victory in a fight that is being billed as the battle over the soul of the GOP. And just as the 18th-century superpowers France and England used the American colonials as proxies in their storied rivalry, opposing political forces are descending upon the quiet, rural district in upstate New York, setting the stage for a pitched battle that may very well alter the field of presidential candidates in 2012. But before this battle got under way, a cadre of conservative bloggers fired the opening shots they may have already proved decisive.

The proxies in this particular fight are Democrat Bill Owens, liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava, and Conservative Doug Hoffman. It's the latter's candidacy that's heightened the importance of a race that's already significant as an early public opinion bellwether of President Obama's young presidency. Obama and the Democrats are pouring massive resources into this race to prevent an upset that would trigger a stampede to the center by 2010 Democratic congressional candidates. A resounding victory in the 23^rd would allow Obama to reassure his party that his radical policies enjoy support with mainstream America, something the Republican Party will do everything in their power to stop--including running Scozzafava, a candidate that is further to the left than her Democratic opponent.

Which brings us to Hoffman's significance. Hoffman is a lifelong conservative Republican who was forced to run as an independent after his party decided Scozzafava had a better chance of winning. An outcast conservative pitted against a moderate Republican establishment isn't anything we haven't already seen in the last year--just look at the grassroots Tea Party movement that was borne out of conservative frustration at George W. Bush and John McCain for supporting stimulus packages and corporate bailouts.

But what is new is that those very same conservatives are impacting a federal election, thanks in large part to a group of bloggers who raised such a hue and cry that it's captured the attention of politicos across the country.

Consequently, if Hoffman wins the election on Tuesday, we may look back at a day two weeks earlier as the day when the conservative blogosphere came of age.

That's when I was sitting in a sushi bar in Huntington Beach listening to Chip Hanlon, CEO of the conservative blogsite Red County, describe his idea to coordinate the efforts of twenty or so influential bloggers to simultaneously call on Scozzafava, who a few days earlier didn't win any friends by calling the cops on the Weekly Standard, to drop out of the race the following day. He said it was an experiment to see what kind of heat the blogs on the right could generate by concentrating their firepower on a particular target. Hanlon, with the help of Quin Hillyer, rounded up their blogging brethren, each of whom agreed to hold their fire until exactly noon.

Then at noon, Eastern Time, on Thursday, October 22^nd, they unloaded simultaneous broadsides that are still ringing in the ears of Dede Scozzafava. What started with conservative blogs such as Red County, Red State, Michelle Malkin's Hot Air, Breitbart's Big Government, and The American Spectator spread to the conservative pundits like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, then led to big-name conservative politicians lending their support to Hoffman. Even Sarah Palin emerged temporarily from self-imposed exile to endorse the third-party candidate, potentially tipping her hand for 2012. And while Mike Huckabee declined to officially endorse either candidate, he "proceeded to profusely praise Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman," according to Talking Points Memo. 

Meanwhile, rumored 2012 candidate Newt Gingrich is still under withering fire from bloggers for endorsing Scozzafava, particularly from Red State's Erick Erickson who said that Gingrich effectively destroyed his chances of winning the presidency by abandoning conservatives in this crucial race, a race that Dick Armey described as "the eye of the storm", adding, "This country is at a crossroads."

Today, Ventura County's hometown-hero-turned-Congressman Tom McClintock also announced his support for Hoffman, who saw his war chest double virtually overnight and his poll numbers rocket past his opponents.

If Hoffman emerges as the winner of the three-way race on Tuesday night, both parties may be forced to dramatically adjust their positions for next year's congressional elections and the outcome might influence who will run against Obama in 2012--in short, it may ultimately affect the direction of the entire nation.

Not a bad day's work for a handful of conservative bloggers.

Godwin's Law is a tongue-in-cheek observation about ad hominem attacks in the Information Age, and how the improper use of them harms all of us by diluting the original meaning of the intended insult. It states that the longer an online discussion continues, the "the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." Godwin felt that the overuse of these words gradually desensitizes people so that their impact is diminished. I believe you can substitute "fascist" and the law will still apply, because that personal attack is so overused against conservatives that few stop to realize that not only do these terms not apply to conservatives, but that they are almost polar opposites of the true nature of those that are saddled with this pejorative.

Prior to World War II, fascism was a recognized political movement, even gaining a following in the United States. After seeing millions of people die fighting fascists, however, the term became synonymous with evil and tyranny. While the new definition was deserved, it nevertheless served to obscure its real meaning for the last six decades.

"Fascists and Nazis (and there are important differences) are generally cited as Right," said Dr. Herb Gooch, political science professor at California Lutheran University, "because the models they espouse phrase themselves as in terms of the glories of the past (resurrection of the Reich & Roman Empire) and their anti-intellectualism and authoritarianism.  

"But many forget that they arose out of socialist backgrounds--Mussolini had been a socialist newspaper editor and Hitler joined the National Socialist party.  Rather than class, they emphasized the corporatist and the racial bases (respectively) of states.  But they both, like socialism, stressed the activist role of the state as the supreme representation of the body politic."

It would seem that modern-day "big government" liberals have more in common with the fascist governments of the 20's and 30's than small-government conservatives, for example:

• Fascists advocated nationalized businesses
• Fascists emphasized the group over the individual
• Fascists emphasized racial conflict
• Fascists forbade opposition to the fascist government
• Fascists were anti-capitalist
• Fascists advocated abortion
• Fascists increased spending on social welfare and healthcare
• Fascists were wary of organized religion

A coalition of 20 surgical organizations recently sent a letter to Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, notifying him that it will not support the America's Healthy Future's Act of 2009.

The organizations do not feel that the act "provides the necessary provisions to secure a solid foundation on which to build comprehensive health reform" and advised the following:

• Reform Medicare payment system
• Preserve surgeon reimbursements
• Tort reform
• Don't create Medicare Commission
• Don't make the problematic Physician Quality Reporting Initiative mandatory
• Don't create duplicate Physician Fee Schedule

I saw a panel of physicians address healthcare recently and most of them said that 20 percent of their overhead is for malpractice insurance. It doesn't seem that any real healthcare improvements can occur without tort reform. 

The entire letter to Baucus is here: Doctors - ACS response to Baucus Bill.pdf

Sean Hannity mentioned my Barbara Boxer article on his show on the Fox News Channel today. The conservative commentator cited the article and paraphrased that only three of Senator Boxer's sponsored bills have been enacted by her colleagues--a 99 percent failure rate over her 17-year career.

Hannity didn't have time to mention this, but of the three bills that did get enacted, two were of the "naming bridges after people" variety. The reason why almost 400 of Boxer's bills have been ignored is because she is too liberal even for members of her own party, which my article articulates.

See a clip of Hannity referencing my article on YouTube.

Planned Parenthood is more than happy to help young, scared, pregnant women through an abortion. School counselors can refer pregnant students to the omnipresent non-profit organization, which services them through clinics in almost every community.

There is a lesser known organization that reaches out to the same set of girls. But this group is the anti-Planned Parenthood--it counsels them through the entire pregnancy and birth as an alternative to abortion. It's called the Avenues Pregnancy Clinic. Read more...

Eric Golub jokes that he has three fatwas against him: one from a Palestinian group, one from the Daily Kos, and one from the National Organization for Women. Fortunately for him, this dynamic individual's next speaking engagement is not with NOW, but instead at the Conejo Valley Republican Women Federated at their next monthly meeting. Read more...