Waldo’s Virginia Political Blogroll

GALLUP: What Americans Would Like to Tell Bush About Iraq

By E&P Staff

Published: May 31, 2007 7:55 AM ET

Gallup concludes: “The majority of Americans, as measured in a number of Gallup Poll surveys this year, believe the initial decision for the United States to become involved in Iraq was mistake. Research also shows a majority of Americans favor a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that Americans — if given the chance to talk with President Bush about Iraq — would be most likely to tell him to figure out a way to get U.S. troops withdrawn from that country.

“The president maintains the loyalty of a smaller group of Americans — one in four — who are supportive of his current actions or would even want him to be more aggressive.”

Do the math.

I had suspected that Ken Cuccinelli was raising a higher percentage of his campaign contributions non-locally than was Janet Oleszek. But that turned out to be untrue. Both Cuccinelli and Oleszek raise almost identical percentage of their funds from Northern Virginia donors.

Hurricane Forecast for 2007: 17 Major Storms, 9 Hurricanes, 5 of Them Intense
FoxNews.com
FORT COLLINS, Colo. —  With the official start of the 2007 hurricane season only hours away, the bad news is that researchers backed up their prediction Thursday that nine hurricanes will form in Atlantic this season, and that five of them could be major.

The good news?

There’s only a 50-50 chance that one will hit the east or gulf coasts.

Read more.

But the bad news is…

Poll: Most along U.S. coast not prepared for hurricanes
CNN
MIAMI, Florida (AP) — Most people along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts still lack a hurricane survival plan and don’t feel vulnerable to storms, despite Katrina’s dramatic damage and pleas from emergency officials for residents to prepare before the season starts, according to a poll released Thursday.

Read more.

Are you prepared? 

Living in Richmond, we don’t always get the worst of it.  Isabel in 2003 certainly did a number on Virginia, but it was nothing like we saw with the destruction of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast in 2005.  Katrina was one of the costliest and deadliest hurricanes in our nation’s history.

For me, Isabel was bad enough.  She was just beginning to die down when she passed over our house.  And a tornado tore a path through our neighborhood downing dozens of trees into the neighbor’s houses.  We went 8 days without power.  And ice.  I missed ice most of all.

After about 3 or 4 days I remember going to work and this especially cheery co-worker asking “did you get your power back yet?”  I’d just look at her and ask “Do I SMELL like I’ve had a shower?”

But c’mon, 8 days was pretty reasonable comparatively speaking.  And we were fortunate to have no damage.

In 2004, my family managed to hit the jackpot the next summer and schedule our week in Nags Head for the arrival of Hurricane Alex.  We weren’t evacuated and basically just spent the day indoors.  But I still have the t-shirt.

Nags Head, NC
8/3/2004, 7:00 p.m. after Hurricane Alex blew thru.

 

I’m always fascinated with the names for hurricanes.  They’re picked years in advance.  The names are recycled, except for the worst ones.  You can see the names for both Altantic and Pacific Storms through 2012 here.

Are you prepared for a hurricane?  I mean, it’s not like a snow alert.  It’s a little more than rushing off to Ukrops for bread, milk and toilet paper.

The American Red Cross offers information for hurricane preparedness.

VDOT offers a Hurricane Evacuation Guide and recently completed the Interstate 64 lane reversal exercise on May 20, 2007.

Of course, you can do what some folks do and laugh it off.  In that case, you’ll need this recipe:

1.5 ounces light rum
1.5 ounces dark rum
1 ounce orange juice
1 ounce fresh lime juice (NOT Rose’s or RealLime)
1/4 cup passion fruit juice, or 1 tablespoon passion fruit syrup
1 teaspoon superfine sugar
1 teaspoon grenadine
Cherries with stems, and orange slice to garnish
Ice cubes
In a cocktail shaker, mix the rum, passion fruit juice or syrup, the other juices and the sugar until sugar is dissolved. Add the grenadine, and stir to combine, then add ice and shake. Half-fill a hurricane glass with ice, then strain drink into glass; add ice to fill. Garnish with orange slice and cherries.

 

Get the latest storm updates from the National Hurricane Center.

Publisher aims to teach kids right from left
A Torrance publishing exec says he sees too many children’s books with liberal views. His titles aim to tilt the shelves the other way.
By Stephanie Simon, Times Staff Writer
8:44 PM PDT, May 31, 2007

Eric Jackson’s first foray into children’s books was a cartoon tale of two brothers and a lemonade stand.

Hoping to earn money for a swing set, young Tommy and Lou squeeze lemons until their little hands ached. But they are thwarted by broccoli-pushing, camera-hogging, Jesus-hating liberals who pile on taxes and regulations and drive the boys out of business.

The book, “Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!” came out two years ago. Jackson said it sold nearly 30,000 copies, which in the publishing world made it a bona fide hit. That success reinforced Jackson’s view that the nation’s bookshelves had tilted way too far left and that a correction was in order.

Kindergartners these days can leaf through a picture book promoting the virtues of medical marijuana. They can read a fairy tale about two princes who get married — to each other.

But where are the children’s books denouncing affirmative action? The fairy tales promoting gun rights?

“You don’t hear a lot of umbrage out there about conservative books being foisted onto kids,” Jackson said. “There’s a need in the market for books that show the other side of the equation.”

Jackson’s small independent start-up, World Ahead Publishing, staked its first claim on that market with the tale of the rapacious liberals and the lemonade stand, marketed under the imprint Kids Ahead. Two other (far less successful) cartoon books followed, taking on Hollywood and “activist” judges.

Now, World Ahead is expanding into more sober-minded children’s books — and is going head-to-head with Scholastic, the powerhouse of children’s publishing.

Scholastic will be coming out in September with “The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming,” a 176-page call to action aimed at children ages 8 and up. World Ahead will counter with its own book intended to debunk global warming and discourage environmental activism.

Kicking back in his Torrance office on a recent afternoon, under a giant poster of Ronald Reagan, Jackson glanced at a press release touting the Scholastic book. The cover illustration shows a child sitting cross-legged in the grass, cradling Earth.

“It’s just so — so — what’s the word?” marketing director Judy Abarbanel asked.

“Nauseating,” Jackson suggested.

Children, he complained, are bombarded with tree-hugger propaganda: SUVs are bad. ExxonMobil is worse. Polar bears are drowning. The planet needs saving, and fast.

Reality does have a liberal bias. Teach your children to deal with it.

Talk to people raised Catholic if you think this is going to work.

The guys at Too Conservative are having a conniption over the fact that Brian Withnell is challenging Gary Clemens for the Republican nomination for Loudoun County Clerk of Court.

The gist of the argument seems to be "How dare he!"

While I will admit, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I seem to be on the other side of pretty much every political contest from the TC folks, I think there is room for objective discussion here.

[More full disclosure: My totally non-political wife, a couple months ago, said this about TC following her initial naive surfing of the blogosphere: "I thought 'Too Conservative' meant they exposed people they thought were too conservative." Heh. From the mouths of babes...]

Anyway, whatever the relative qualifications of the two men, let's examine a simple fact about the Clerk of Court:

The Clerk of Court gets elected for an eight-year term, and the salary is $130,000 a year - and as some insiders have said, it's not exactly a brutal job.

Interesting factoid: If you state the above sentence to anyone in Virginia, 99% of respondents will reply "reeaally??"

So I would say: Considering all the calculations that go into deciding whether one should run for office, this Clerk of Court deal has the added bonus of being a pretty friggin' good job. Better than the governor's or your average congressman's, in fact.

Yeah, it is "public service." But it is also pretty sweet public service.

The outrage at TC, I would therefore submit, is misdirected. I would say, in fact, that if there is any job that we should expect to see contested every eight years, it might be this one. It's a little surprising to me that people are not falling over themselves to line up for the primary.

Hell, it would be an upgrade for me, that's for damn sure.

I wish I had more information on the issues of the campaign. So far, Brian Withnell has established he is a nice guy but has not made it exactly clear why he would be the better man for this cherry position. Gary Clemens has made it clear he is also a good guy, and who can blame him for wanting another eight-year stint.

While I respect Loudoun Insider much of the time and read his posts pretty regularly, I have to think he is overdoing it a bit to hyperventilate over the fact that Withnell is trying to get this job. We do have a democratic process in this country, and oftentimes it is fought over jobs far less remunerative than the Loudoun County Clerk of Court. Supervisor, for instance. I think Gary Clemens should expect a challenge once every eight years and be ready to defend his position.

Brian Withnell is a tech-wonk guy - this is one of the things he did communicate the other night at the LCRC meeting. A lot can change in eight years, and in a data-intensive environment as a court oversees such a person has solid standing to say he should be considered for the position.

In the WaPo's On Faith, there was recently a debate on whether belief in God is wishful thinking or the sign of an innate desire for the divine. I said a few things at the outset but here is what I posted yesterday.

The alternative to believing in the reality of God is believing that He exists only in human speaking. See the work of Daniel Dennett for more on this.

This creates a big problem for atheists.

Why is this a problem? Because if God only exists in language every time you talk about Him furthers His existence.

You can't kill God. Once you talk about Him, He is. Even if He exists outside the universe, which I believe he does, he exists within it because we talk about him (since spirit is an aspect of language).

Why again is this a problem for atheists?

When they talk about not believing in God, that discussion calls the concept into existence. The Soviets tried to kill God. They lost. You can't persecute religion away. You can't tell people not to talk about it. That is like trying to tell people not to talk about sex.

The only way you can kill God, or at least end his existence on earth, is for no one to talk about Him. Fat chance doing that. The conversation on God is the ultimate catch-22. Even the term atheist includes the root for God. This is why some atheists call themselves Brights. However, being bright is also a function of language. No one is really bright independent of their ability to use language. There is no such thing as pure thought without reference to words. Again, the problem is, the language is laden with God talk. There is no escape.

I stayed officially neutral in the 51st district race. I will support whichever candidate wins. The post-convention period will be much harder though because of the actions of a few loud voices sewing discord and vindictive personal and unsubstantiated attacks on just about anything that moved that could be associated with a man they hate with a passion.

But while Virginia Virtucon fell a bit with some misleading stories about convention delegates, I wanted to give them credit for their endorsement, which they actually made back in February and have repeated today. Like me, they are not in the 51st district. But their post is one about positives, not negatives.

And while I am not endorsing their assessment or conclusion, I wanted to highlight a paragraph I do agree with:

We are faced with two solid Republican candidates with excellent conservative credentials. More than that, most of us have known both Faisal Gill and Julie Lucas personally for quite some time. In an ideal world, we would not be faced with deciding between these two individuals. It is truly unfortunate that Prince William County cannot be served by both of them in the General Assembly.

I too wish there could have been two contests for these two candidates.

The also say this about Gill:

Faisal has supported and encouraged Virtucon contributors over the years and we truly wish that circumstances were different this year and we could return the favor right now.

Make no mistake, though, that if Faisal wins the nomination, we will do everything in our power to help get him elected in November.

Faisal Gill is a good person and, having been exonerated of all charges, we feel that Faisal could be a very good candidate. He is, in our opinion, receiving very poor treatment by others in the mainstream media and elsewhere.

Whichever candidate wins, we will all need to work hard to beat the Democrat. The job will be much harder because of the invective of the Gill-haters, which has now spilled over into them hosting attacks on Lucas as well. So whichever candidate wins, the opposition will have a stream of trash at BVBL to use (unless BVBL wises up and deletes it).

Things may (or may not -- I'm bringing the MacBook) get a little quiet around here for a couple of days.

I'm going to attend my 25th class reunion at Kenyon Kollege, traveling tomorrow, coming home Sunday. I'm going alone; when I broached the topic of attendance with Wonder Woman (an alumna; we met and fell in love there), she pointed out that the kiddoes have their final exams this week, and that somebody needs to crack the whip on that. With no detectable malice in her voice, she waved and said, "Have a good time!"

Fellow Chump of Choice Will Divide (hey! Guess what! That's not his real name!) is a fraternity brother, although I've never met him -- he graduated the year I matriculated. He'll be there, and I'm very much looking forward to finally meeting him.

I checked the list of my classmates who've registered. One name in particular stood out -- somebody I've always wished I'd smashed his lights out back in 1978, '79, and again in 1981. I will have a very hard time being in the same room with him, having relived the memory over and again of the casual assholery he was wont to display. (JC, remember TW?)

As an adult, I've become rather less fearless than I was as a callow youth. I'm now far more willing to call an asshole an asshole. I do hope our paths don't cross.

Other than that, I'm rather looking forward to this. I may post some photos of the campus -- it is unspeakably pretty.

That photo above is of Old Kenyon, a building I was privileged to occupy for two years. There is an acoustic tile ceiling in the third-floor bathroom that, if pushed, affords access to the ordinarily locked bell-tower. A tale that still makes me laugh 26 years later is inherent in that fact. There are two people in the world who will laugh with me at that observation, and at least one of them is registered for this reunion.

That's why I'm looking forward to this.

The “community” oversight board for CenterStage has been announced by the mayor’s office. Looks like Friday’s No BS Brass Band will be playing a funeral march after all. For $23 million dollars (at first) of your tax dollars. Mayor Appoints Performing Arts Board For ‘Richmond CenterStage’ in Downtown Mayor L. Douglas Wilder today announced today that [...]

Summer came early to DC and I turned on the A/C weeks earlier than I used to (but there is no global warming….) I’m looking to meals that need no heat. Here is one that I like a lot.

Genoa Salami with Manzanilla Olive Cream Cheese Finger Sandwiches
Makes 20 sandwiches and serves about 8 as part of a buffet or potluck

1/4 cup finely chopped manzanilla olives (about 12 to 15 olives)
1/2 cup cream cheese, at room temperature
10 slices very thin white bread (recommended: Pepperidge Farm)
1/4 pound thinly sliced Genoa salami

Mash the olives into the cream cheese with a fork. Spread 5 slices of the bread with half the olive spread and top with salami. Spread the remaining 5 slices of bread with the remaining olive spread and top the sandwiches. Cut off the crusts, then cut the sandwiches into 4 pieces.

As I always say, use Peppridge Farm’s very thin white sandwich bread, crusts removed, for finger sandwiches. This is a fine accompaniment for gazpacho.

Americans work more hours than European workers. What is wrong with this picture? We also have nearly 50 million with no health insurance. And this is supposed to be the greatest country in the world?

That shitty GDP is starting to catch up to flat wage earning and the American consumer being tapped out.

There is a diary posted here that is a rehash of a thread that has been percolating in the Staunton area blogs for the last few days.  I am not promoting it to the center column, because it is almost prurient in its efforts to sensationalize something that is at most a marginal question.  But it is at least somewhat newsworthy, just as a train wreck can be newsworthy.

In the 24th Senatorial District, which includes Augusta, Highland, Greene, Waynesboro, Staunton, and parts of Rockingham, Rockbridge and Albemarle (3 precincts), incumbent Emmett Hanger is being challenged by Scott Sayre.  Sayre is a hard-line conservative.  Hanger is conservative, but he also believes that a state government has a duty to provide a balanced budget that includes a source of funds for its programs.  That realistic view of the world has caused him to be targeted by the "baby-and-the-bath-water" crowd in the Republican Party; Sayre is one of them.

Sayre and Hanger are faced off in a primary on June 12, and whatever semblance of Republican brotherhood may once have existed is certainly long gone.

A group of bloggers who support Hanger have put out some posts on their blogs trying to draw attention to the fact that a Mary Brandt Sayre, whom they say is Scott Sayre's wife, had a DUI in Rockbridge County in 2003 and another DUI in Staunton in 2006.  Online records confirm those convictions, though the case numbers cited by the diaries are wrong.

The point that is of some interest to Democrats is that the Republicans are not merely debating policy vociferously -- they are getting viciously personal as well.  And historically, the candidate whose supporters have so completely alienated the supporters of the other candidate may find his primary victory to have been Pyrrhic.  I love the image of the "circular firing squad," though given the nastiness, it may be more appropriate to speak of a circular bomb-throwing party.

On top of the intra-Republican furor, there is other news on the 24th -- David Cox is running as a Democrat.  Cox ran for the 24th House District seat two years ago, and lost to Ben Cline.  He is a retired minister, moderately liberal. 

To make things more interesting, there is a Libertarian candidate as well.  Arin Sime describes himself as both a "conservative libertarian and a Goldwater Republican." He summarizes his positions succinctly: "I am pro-life, pro-gun, pro-school choice, pro-farmer, pro-property rights, pro-small business, anti-eminent domain abuse and anti-tax hikes. In short, I believe in keeping government as small as possible, and I trust the average citizen over the average bureaucrat." Sime owns a software development consulting firm and is a 1997 graduate of UVA. He is a member of the Jefferson Area Libertarians, the Virginia Civil Defense League, and the NRA. 

Unfortunately for Cox, the district is pretty Republican, voting 62% Allen, 56% Kilgore and 65% Bush.  But if Sime is running to Hanger's right, and Cox can get traction, there might be room for a surprise.

As of March 31, Hanger had $144,457 on hand, Sayre had $67,203, Sime had $23,103, and Cox hadn't even announced. 

Have the Gill-haters ran out of bad things they could make up about him?

It seemed so, since they started attacking people who weren't even running for office. They've worked hard to convince us not to vote for Alamoudi, or Asim. Of course, neither of them are running. But tonight, things took a bizarre twist, as GoodByeKen (won't link to it, find it yourself) repeated an attack on Julie Lucas that BVBL is hosting at his blog, from an anonymous commenter.

When I still had to read that blog, most of the so-called "Gill supporters" were actually Gill haters pretending to be Gill supporters to say stupid things. Now it seems they've moved on to trashing their own candidate.

You know things are getting bad when you host attacks on your OWN candidate just so you can blame the opponent for them. For the record, the only place I've read any personal attacks on Julie Lucas is at BVBL's blog (and now JM's place).

And as you all know, BVBL CAN and WILL delete posts and ban commenters. That makes BVBL an editor, and responsible for what is written in his blog and his comments.

So, one must conclude that BVBL WANTS these attacks on Lucas in his blog. And since he's banning pro-Gill posters, you can figure who it is that's posting these Lucas attacks.

BVBL should just pull the posts if they are offensive (I mean offensive in the normal sense, not offensive in the BVBL sense of containing factual refutations of absurd charges).

Or he could just ban everybody from reading his blog. Then we'd all be better off.

Meanwhile, if you are wondering whether anything you read at BVBL should matter, let this sink in. BVBL banned me and deleted my comments because I was correcting his errors and posting factual refutations of the more outrageous and unsubstantiated claims.

But when an anonymous blogger posts trash about his own candidate, BVBL leaves it up for the world to read. BVBL has put his own political ambition above the personal well-being of his chosen candidate for office.

This "do anything to win" mentality will be the death of civility in our culture. Meanwhile, what's Help Save Manassas doing to stop the Senate Immigration/Amnesty bill, while BVBL's owner and their president is taking all his time attacking a candidate who opposes the Senate Bill and would be a strong voice of support in the fight against illegal immigrants in our state?

Tonight’s the Night: Iraq’s Leader Had Told Reporters U.S. Could Start Pullout By June 1

By E&P Staff

Published: May 31, 2007 4:30 PM ET

NEW YORK Last November 30, as the Iraq Study Group was about to release its report — and talk of a U.S. escalation still a few weeks off — the press gave a lot of weight to the words of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki when he vowed that his country’s forces would be able to assume security command by June 2007, which could allow the United States to start withdrawing its troops.

“I cannot answer on behalf of the U.S. administration but I can tell you that from our side our forces will be ready by June 2007,” Maliki told ABC television after meeting President Bush in Amman, Jordan.

Maliki had replied to a question about whether U.S. troops could start withdrawing at that time.

As his promised deadline approached this month, the handover was as far from reality as ever and the U.S. suffered its highest rate of casualties in years.

What’s the next Friedman Unit? Should we start calling it a Maliki Unit now?

Maybe the jobs of tomorrow don't require spelling skills...

All I can say is…..enough said:

 While no stone should be left unturned in seeking to discover the nature of man’s origins, we can say with conviction that we know with certainty at least part of the outcome. Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order. Those aspects of evolutionary theory compatible with this truth are a welcome addition to human knowledge. Aspects of these theories that undermine this truth, however, should be firmly rejected as an atheistic theology posing as science.

In other words, disagree with the Book of Genesis and you’re wrong in Sam’s book.

Not exactly the kind of man I want anywhere near the Oval Office.

I've been using Anconia's RocketPost for quite a long while now when I compose my blog posts. It's not bad - certainly it was the best and most versatile program *I* had encountered - but it had its, erm, quirks, which have sometimes caused me major irritation. But EveryThing TypePad has posted that Windows Live Writer has added some new features since the last time I tried it. In the interest of fairness, I thought I'd give it a go again... So, what kind of fonts do we have available? Hm. Not bad. I'm seeing an upload picture icon... (That's...