President Obama began his news conference today with a public service announcement for all American men, reminding them that today is Valentine's Day and telling them to “go big”. Possibly an underlying  message urging spending to boost the economy?

This weekend I traveled to Washington D.C. for CPAC, the annual conference held by the American Conservative Union and billed as the nation's largest yearly gathering of conservatives. I was there to work a booth for an independent film and to see some of the conference's speakers, but as it turned out, some of my other experiences in Washington were just as enlightening as my time at the conference, including my run-in with the DEA.

78% of Californians in a recent survey said they didn’t know what the Bay Delta was. This strongly implies they also don’t know, depending on where they live, that some or most of their water may well come from the Delta and that food they eat has been irrigated by Delta water. Southern California was even worse, with a whopping 86% saying they’d never heard of that Delta thingee.

Coinciding with the next two presidential election cycles in 2012 and 2016, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is projecting Hispanics to have a significant presence in the nation’s labor force over the next ten years.  As reported by the Pew Research Center, Hispanics are expected to account for three-quarters of the growth in the nation’s labor force from 2010-2020. The data was taken from 2010 Census figures.

You may be startled to learn that California ranks at the very bottom in spending on education as compared to other states. It is 50th in the nation, dead last, in students per teacher and librarian, 49th in students per guidance counselor, and not above 45th in other categories. Clearly, California has been going the wrong on education for years. It needs to change.

According to the media, President Obama’s actions on women’s contraceptives have been either:  (1) an exercise in amateurism, or (2) a brilliant strategy that has co-opted the issue for the President and his party.