Susan's 2014 Midterm CA Voting Guide

Here is how I cast my ballot for the all-important 2014 Midterm Election.
While the top of the ticket is a foregone conclusion here in the People's Republik of Kalifornia, you must vote if only to retain your right to complain later.  No excuses.

Very few people will bother to vote for the judges because many do not know much about them.  Below I list who I think will do a good job wearing a black robe.

This year's voting guide list is dedicated to my friend, Melissa B. who called to tell me that she relies on my voting guide every election cycle.  I wouldn't have done it but for her encouragement.

Governor:           Neel Kashkari
Lt Gov:               Ron Nehring
Sec of State:       Pete Peterson
Controller:          Ashley Swearengin
Treasurer:           Greg Conlin
Atty General:     Ronald Gold
Ins. Commis:     Ted Gaines
St. Bd of
  Eqaulization:    G. Rick Marshall

U.S. Representative 28th District:          Steve Stokes
Member State Assembly 43rd District:  Todd Royal

Judicial --- Supreme Court Justices.  These are "YES" or "NO" Votes.

NO - Goodwin Lu
NO - Marianio-Florentino Cuellar
NO - Kathryn Mickle Werdegar

Judicial --- Court of Appeal Justice

YES - Frances Rothschild
YES - Jeffrey W. Johnson
YES - Brian M. Hoffstadt
NO --  Lee Anne Edmon
NO --  Audrey B. Collins
YES - Nora M. Manella
YES - Paul A. Turner
YES - Kenneth R. Yegan
YES - Dennis M. Perluss
YES - Laurence D. Rubin
NO -- Madeleine I. Flier

Judicial - Judge of the Superior Court

Office No. 61:  Dayan Mathai
Office No. 87:  Tom Griego

School Superintendent:  Marshall Tuck
County Assessor:  John Morris
County Sheriff:  Jim McDonnell

STATE MEASURES (I voted "NO" on every one).

No. 1:  NO
No. 2:  NO
No. 45:  NO
No. 46:  NO
No. 47:  NO
No. 48:  NO

County Measure P:  NO


Below is TEAPac's recommendations.  TEAPac is a grassroots conservative organization I trust.  If you don't live in Glendale, this will provide you with information about your particular local races:

"TEAPAC recommends naval military officer and law enforcement veteran, Dr. Paul Chabot for the 31st Congressional Seat.  We apologize for not including him in our initial recommendations."

Congressional Candidates
District 23	Kevin McCarthy
District 25	Steve Knight
District 26	Jeff Gorell
District 27	Jack Orswell
District 28	Steve Stokes
District 29	William Leader
District 30 District 31	Mark S. Reed Dr. Paul Chabot
District 32	Arturo Enrique Alas
District 33	Elan Carr
District 34	No Recommendation
District 35	No Recommendation
District 37	R. Adam King
District 38	Benjamin Campos
District 39	Ed Royce
District 40	No Recommendation
District 43	John Wood, Jr.
District 44	No Recommendation
District 47	Andy Whallon
Statewide Candidates
Governor	Neel Kashkari
Lieutenant Governor	Ron Nehring
Secretary of State	Pete Peterson
Controller	Ashley Swearengin
Treasurer	Greg Conlon
Attorney General	Ronald Gold
Insurance Commissioner	Ted Gaines
State Board of Equalization, District 3	G. Rick Marshall
State Senate Candidates
District 18	Ricardo Antonio Benitez
District 20	Matthew Munson
District 22	Marc Rodriquez
District 24	No Recommendation
District 26	No Recommendation
District 30	No Recommendation
District 32	Mario A. Guerra
District 34	Janet Nguyen
State Assembly Candidates
AD 36	Tom Lackey
AD 38	Scott Wilk
AD 39	No Recommendation
AD 41	Nathaniel Tsai
AD 43	Todd Royal
AD 44	Rob McCoy
AD 45	Susan Shelley
AD 46	Zachary Taylor
AD 48	Joe Gardner
AD 49	Esthela Torres Siegrist
AD 50	Bradly S. Torgan
AD 51	Stephen C. Smith
AD 52	Dorothy Pineda
AD 53	No Recommendation
AD 54	Glen Ratcliff
AD 55	Ling-Ling Chang
AD 57	Rita Topalian
AD 58	No Recommendation
AD 59	No Recommendation
AD 62	Ted J. Grose
AD 63	Adam J. Miller
AD 64	No Recommendation
AD 66	David Hadley
AD 70	John C. Goya
County Offices/Measures
Superintendent of Public Instruction	Marshall Tuck
County Assessor	John Morris
Sheriff	Paul Tanaka (NP) or Jim McDonnell (NP)
LA County Supervisor, District 3	No Recommendation
County Measure	NO

World War E: Obama’s Political Strategy of Appeasement

With potential World War E looming over the Ebola outbreak, Obama has adopted a Neville Chamberlin appeasement approach.  Obama now declares Ebola under control and that the U.S. will lead the global response in Africa.  Peace in our time.  Simultaneously, however, WHO has sounded the alarm and admits it has already botched the global Ebola response.  The biggest danger of appeasement, of Obama’s political dithering over the Ebola outbreak, is with the math, and I’m not talking Common Core.  We may witness a global Ebola death toll rivaling total deaths in WWII.

According to the CDC, the number of infected victims in this Ebola epidemic doubles every 2-3 weeks.  One great worry is the virus spreading to Southeast Asia.  But in apparent appeasement to potentially angry foreign governments, the CDC and President Obama tell us that air travel bans will not work because they hinder the ability to track disease carriers who would otherwise sneak across borders.  Air travel bans might work in the U.S. with its highly sophisticated healthcare system, but how can we expect poor, primitive public health systems to “track” Ebola carriers internationally?  In the U.S. over 800 people are being tracked from a single passenger flight taken by the second infected nurse in Dallas.  How can third world nations to do such comprehensive tracking when there are dozens, hundreds or thousands of patients?  It’s all in the numbers, and they don’t look good.

The doctor who helped originally identify the Ebola virus is "especially worried" about its spread to the 1.2 billion inhabitants of India, describing it as “a particularly dreadful scenario” because of the primitive state of public health in India where, for example, “doctors and nurses often don’t wear protective gloves.”  WHO expects Ebola infections to rise to 10,000 cases per week in West Africa.  What happens when Ebola travels to a poor nation like India with 300 times the population of Liberia?  Could that 10,000 weekly number in West Africa be multiplied by 10, 50, 100 or more in densely populated India?  Crunching the numbers is terrifying.

As WHO says, “Ebola does not respect borders.”  Neither does Obama for political reasons. It has been suggested that Obama won’t force travel restrictions out of Ebola hot zone countries because he fears it would endanger his Africa political legacy.  Appeasement.  Obama won't protect our borders from Ebola carriers because he fears alienating critical voting blocs.  Appeasement.  After his political manipulations led to disaster in Benghazi, Obama dismissed American deaths as mere “bumps in the road”.  Will thousands or more Ebola deaths in India, Asia and other parts of the third world be so many more bumps in Obama’s road to political legacy?

With just two weeks until critical midterm elections, Obama seems to approach Ebola less as a medical crisis and more as a political crisis.  If Ebola’s worst damage occurs outside the U.S., will Obama depict himself as another FDR who successfully led America through a global Ebola crisis, to spin a “World War E” scenario in the most favorable political light possible?  Is that what’s behind Obama’s appointment of Ebola Czar Ron Klain, the veteran Democrat political hack with absolutely no medical training?  Obama’s political appeasement strategy throws Americans under the bus, and perhaps the world along with us.

Originally published at PolitiChicks.com October 21, 2014.

Ebola Invasion Across Our Borders: The 5,000 Pound Elephant in the Immigration Reform Room

“Porous borders!”  CDC Director Tom Friedan warned Congress that porous borders threaten to spread Ebola into America.  But Friedan later said he meant only the porous borders between African nations, not between United States and Mexico.  Translation: our southern border will remain - deliberately - a gaping hole in America’s hazmat suit, as Obama bitterly clings to his political obsession to impose mass amnesty aka “immigration reform”, and to hell with Ebola and spreading death to Americans.

Friedan explained his logic to Congress: shutting down air travel from Ebola hot zones - and thereby preventing infected people from traveling by air - will cause them to travel over land, which makes it more difficult to track the disease.  Never mind that Thomas Duncan’s case highlights the folly of that model.  The CDC approach portends disaster for the our country.

Within the past year alone, Americans witnessed as President Obama lured tens of thousands of desperate Central American families to send their children into the U.S. and then promptly spread them throughout all 50 states with NO medical or criminal screening.  Enterovirus is the suspected result and a foreshadowing of things to come.  Who needs a Typhoid Mary when we have Typhoid Barack recklessly depositing potential disease carriers in every corner of our country?  Worse, just think what would happen if Ebola spread from Africa to Central America, for example, an outbreak of Ebola in Mexico City.  A mass migration to America for health reasons would dwarf these numbers.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is predicting that new Ebola cases will climb to 10,000 a week.  “When […] a million people are in quarantine in West Africa right now, and 10,000 people leave West Africa a day, it’s just a matter of time before [Ebola] gets to every third-world country, and it’s going to devour them,” Dr. Gil Mobley said.  Our troops in Benghazi had similar warnings to act, to escape, to mitigate the crisis, 

For weeks President Obama and the CDC have been assuring the public that the chances of Ebola actually to the United States was exceptionally low.  When America’s best and brightest in the medical community cannot prevent the accidental spread of the disease using best known protocol, protection and medical devices currently available, the average John Q. Public doesn’t stand a chance when Ebola victims wade across the Rio Grande.

The CDC classifies Ebola as a “category A biological agent”.  In laymen’s terms, this means the CDC considers Ebola as far more deadly than either tuberculosis or AIDS because Ebola is much more infectious that other diseases, requiring many fewer organisms to transmit to disease to another person.  The CDC actually prioritizes Ebola’s unique characteristics as a “potential…biological terrorism agent” requiring “intensive public preparedness efforts due to the potential for mass causalities, public fear, and civil disruption” precisely because Ebola has no known cure or reliable effective treatment, a very high mortality rate, and can be easily disseminated.  

In the face of Ebola, President’s Obama’s political duplicity on the issue of immigration will lead to the deaths of Americans.  As the President himself has said, “if there’s even one thing we can do, if there's just one life we can save, we've got an obligation to try.”   To save American lives, we must close the border now and secure it with military troops with orders to kill any who attempt to cross.  Fortuitously, Homeland Security already has a massive stockpile of ammunition for such purpose. 

Once we have secured the southern border from an Ebola invasion, for humanitarian reasons, the President could coordinate with the Mexican government and FEMA to create a massive Ebola buffer zone within Mexico with temporary housing and portable triage centers where Dr. Friedan’s special traveling CDC protocol experts can provide training and medical care to the dying.   

Absent swift and decisive military action to close our southern border to all immigrant traffic, illegal or otherwise, it’ll be too late.  We won’t know it is coming until we see the blood dripping from their eyes.  

Originally published at Politichicks.com on October 18, 2014.