Special Feature:  Dr.  Robert Skversky

“Tired of Being Overweight?”   You’ve come to the right place!  Read on!

Being overweight is a disease and a disorder!

Obesity is a metabolic, chronic and progressive disease with a significant genetic predisposition. Chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, etc. require long term drug therapy for control not cure. And the same is true for treating obesity.

During the past year Dr. Robert Skversky has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and has appeared on “Good Morning America,” “The Today Show,” and “The Early Show” discussing the appropriate use of medication “off label” for long term weight loss. Read more…

The Daily Pilot newspaper, which serves Costa Mesa and Newport Beach, went through three rounds of layoffs last year - they even laid off 20 year veteran Tony Dodero, who was their Director of “News and Online.”  Now their City Desk Editor, Paul Anderson, thinks he can tell us what makes for a good blogger, in a post in his own blog.

Anderson wrote today about Orange County’s new liberal blog, Orange County Progressive.  We did too, but check out what Anderson had to say about the other bloggers in the O.C.:

Too many blogs these days just deconstruct some news organization’s content and spew out a bunch of conspiracy theories. Most of the time I think, who cares what you think? And that’s because a lot of the bloggers aren’t very informed. I like the Atlantic bloggers, like Andrew Sullivan, because they’re journalists and they have informed opinions when they comment on someone else’s work. That’s called perspective.

What a pompous ass this guy Anderson is! Read more…

Geoff West, who blogs over at the Bubbling Cauldron blog, covers Costa Mesa and Newport politics and news.  His blog was selected as the best blog in Orange County this year by the O.C. Weekly.  West recently wrote about a meeting he attended where a former publisher and a former editor of the Daily Pilot newspaper spoke to the community about their plan to start up an online newspaper to cover news in that area, with perhaps a once a week printed newspaper.

Tom Johnson and Bill Lobdell are the former Daily Pilot honchos, and their meeting was very well attended, according to West.  He wrote that “In addition to Johnson and Lobdell, there were a few other former Daily Pilot staffers - Tony Dodero, who recently departed after a long and illustrious career; Lana Johnson, who has joined Lobdell and Tom Johnson in their endeavor, and former (twice) Daily Pilot columnist and public relations consultant Byron de Arakal.” Read more…

I have often written about the travesty that is the City Line newspaper.  For years this public relations gimmick has been published by the organization formerly know as the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce.  They used to do that with money provided by their buddies on the Santa Ana City Council.  Then they would turn around and endorse them.

Supposedly the City no longer pays to publish the City Line, although I am sure that by now Santa Ana City Manager Dave Ream has found a way to throw money at the Greater Santa Ana Business Alliance, which used to be our Chamber of Commerce.

Now the O.C. Weekly’s Gustavo Arellano has written about the City Line’s latest goof.  Here is an excerpt from his post: Read more…

I should be used to this by, but I was still shocked to find out that the City of Irvine charges LESS for a dog license than the City of Santa Ana.

Santa Ana charges $24 for a dog license.  Irvine charges only $20 - and if you buy a three year license it costs only $50.  That comes to $16.67 a year - about 30% less than what Santa Ana charges.  And Santa Ana does NOT offer a multi-year discount. Read more…

Santa Ana is one of the most expensive Orange County cities to do business in, “according to the 14th annual Cost of Doing Business Survey from the Rose Institute of State & Local Government at Claremont McKenna College and Kosmont Companies in Los Angeles,” as published in the O.C. Register.

Santa Ana also has some of the highest property taxes in the O.C. due to the passage of numerous SAUSD and Rancho Santiago Community College District bond measures.

Isn’t it interesting that some of the BEST cities in Orange County charge the LEAST for business licenses?  Irvine, Tustin, Yorba Linda and Costa Mesa all rank amongst the cities with the LOWEST business costs.  Even Newport Beach has a much lower cost than Santa Ana.  What is up with that? Read more…

“Airports across the country are shelving or downsizing planned expansions because of a sharp drop in passengers, yet John Wayne Airport in Orange County is proceeding with a $652-million terminal project — its first major improvement since 1990,” according to the L.A. Times.

Airport officials and the O.C. Supervisors are saying that we need this expansion in order to “meet future demands for air travel and maintain the airport’s position as an attractive alternative to the much larger Los Angeles International Airport, which handled more than 61 million travelers last year.” Read more…