Jack & Jill Politics

Dear MoveOn member,

All year, FOX has worked 24/7 to block President Obama's agenda—repeating lies about "death panels," promoting Tea Party protests, and whipping up fake political scandals.1
Now, President Obama is fighting back. The White House communications director said FOX is a "wing of the Republican Party...let's not pretend they're a news network."2 To draw attention to its biased coverage, President Obama will not appear on FOX for the rest of this year.3

It's about time Democrats stood up to FOX! Can you sign this petition asking Democrats to support President Obama's stance by staying off FOX as long as he does? We'll deliver it to Democratic leaders. Clicking here will add your name:
http://civic.moveon.org/foxobama/o.pl?id=17604-...
The petition says: "Democrats should support President Obama's effort to call out FOX. Please stay off FOX for as long as he does."

Democrats often appear on FOX in hopes of reaching out to conservative viewers. But FOX cuts off their mic, distorts what they say, or runs biased headlines at the bottom of the screen.4 In the end, Democrats always lose on FOX.

FOX insists there's a difference between its news shows and its right-wing opinion shows with Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and others.
But in August, FOX's so-called news shows "aired 22 clips of town hall meeting attendees opposed" to Obama's health care plans and zero in support. CNN and MSNBC were more fair and balanced.5
In another "news" story, FOX passed off a GOP press release as its own research—typo and all.6
FOX executives now describe the channel as "the voice of opposition" to Obama's agenda. FOX president Roger Ailes—a former adviser to Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush—said, "I see this as the Alamo."7
But a Capitol Hill newspaper reports, "In the House and Senate, Democrats who pledged to follow the administration's near-boycott of Fox were hard to find, although many expressed support for Obama's stance."8
Democrats will only find the courage to join Obama if they hear from enough concerned voters. Sign this petition to ask Democratic leaders to stay off FOX. Clicking here will add your name:
http://civic.moveon.org/foxobama/o.pl?id=17604-...

Thanks for all you do.

–Noah, Nita, Michael, Kat, and the rest of the team

Great Public Option CBO Score Fuels Pelosi Push
by mcjoan
Share this on Twitter - Great Public Option CBO Score Fuels Pelosi Push Wed Oct 21, 2009 at 10:12:04 AM PDT
Moderate Dems are running out of reasons to oppose a robust public option. The CBO, which deficit hawks like Kent Conrad and various House Blue Dogs esteem as a demi-god, says the robust public option saves money, according to preliminary reports. The CBO will release the analysis today.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A preliminary estimate from the Congressional Budget Office projects that the House Democrats' health care plan that includes a public option would cost $871 billion over 10 years, according to two Democratic sources.

CBO also found that the Democrats' bill reduces the deficit in the first 10 years.

This new CBO estimate, which aides caution is not final, is significantly less than the $1.1 trillion price tag of the original House bill that passed out of three committees this summer. More importantly, it comes under the $900 billion cap set by President Obama in his joint address to Congress last month.

CBO analyzed what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls a "more robust" public option -- one that ties reimbursement rates for doctors to current Medicare rates, plus a 5 percent increase.

Deficit reduction. Suck on that, Kent Conrad. But the bill does even more, by covering "96 percent of all Americans, providing greater bang for each federal dollar spent."

The new numbers have Pelosi renewing her push for votes.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has been tallying support for a public insurance option tied to Medicare reimbursement rates over the last several weeks. According to people in the room Tuesday night, Pelosi told her members that the caucus is close to the 218 votes needed to pass the bill. She went on to say that the few remaining undecideds - or undeclareds - needed to let Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) know by Wednesday where they stand.

The caucus will meet again Wednesday evening to retake the Democratic temperature. If the 218 votes are there, the party will plow forward and go to conference committee negotiations with a strong hand.

The last report from the House had the whip count at "about 200," this news, and some strong leaning on the part of leadership, should round up those remaining votes. A robust public option--that scores almost as well as the Finance bill while covering more people--in the House bill will give Reid needed leverage in his negotiations. If he'll use it, and if he has White House backing.

At this point, there's no common sense reason for any Dem to oppose the House bill with a strong public option. It meets the White House's fiscal target and gets more people covered, ostensibly the goal of this whole project. The majority of Americans support it, the Democratic base is energized by it (and will be equally de-energized come next November if Dems fail on this), and even the CBO likes it. It sure looks like a win-win for Dems from where I'm sitting.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/21/79...

The Happy Tax! Proposed $3500 tax deduction for pet owners...

http://inventorspot.com/articles/tax_deductions...

Alrightey now!

Hey. A while back, someone was looking for a recipe for "fried" green tomatoes that were NOT fried. I belong to a site called veggie ventures and occasionally get email recipes and this morning's was "(un)Fried Green Tomatoes." Hope whoever was looking for that recipe is lurking. . . smile:

http://kitchen-parade-veggieventure.blogspot.co...

Sarah Palin booked for The Oprah Winfrey Show November 16, the day before her new book is due out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2009/oct/21...

I don't know if y'all have gotten this info already and so I hope this is not a dup.
Get ready GreenLady!

I hope Sister to Sister is right about this.

BET does pick up The Game!
http://www.s2smagazine.com/node/1821

I admit I didn't watch the show on the CW but I got all caught up thanks to BET and torrents. And I found myself enjoying it! I hope they put the Monique show with the cast online somewhere!

Creigh Deeds is walking back his idiocy on the public option.

From TomP's diary on Kos :

Statement from Deeds' campaign.
In the aftermath of Creigh's controversial comments at last night's debate regarding whether Virginia might "opt out" of a public option under a Deeds governorship, the Deeds campaign has issued a statement on health care reform and the public option.

Like President Obama, Creigh Deeds is committed to reducing health care costs and providing coverage for the 1.1 million Virginians without insurance. If the public option proves to be the best way to reach those objectives, he’d support having Virginia participate. He’ll examine all of the proposals on the table and choose the option than provides Virginians with the most affordable and quality coverage.

Creigh’s approach is eminently more responsible that Bob McDonnell’s. Last night, McDonnell put ideology ahead of Virginia’s best interests when he said he’d oppose a public option – which he previously said would cause a "government takeover" of health care -- even if it’s proven the best way to control health care costs.

SMDH!!

still looking for a link to Obama's message to OFA from last night.

thank you in advance.

http://www.empowernewsmag.com/

Interesting topics. New edition each Wednesday

Another great column by Bob Herbert.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/opinion/20her...

Peace.

Well...it seems that Creigh Deeds is following the "how to suppress democratic turnout" campaign strategy.

He said:

I'm not afraid of going against my fellow Democrats when they're wrong," Deeds said. "A public option isn't required in my view."

What an idiot!!

I was just coming to post that. I think he just signed his political death warrant with that one.

Sorry to say, but Terry McAuliffe would be wiping the floor with McDonnell right about now.

The Merwyn King of the Bank of England acknowledges that the trading operations of banks most be seperated from bank functions to prevent a repeat of last year. Can President Obama and Fed Chief Bernakee engage in a joint action?

WOMEN NOT HOPEFUL ABOUT 'GREEN' FUNDING

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33212547/ns/busines...

Oh thanks! We have been working very hard so that poc and people living with low incomes benefit from investments in the green economy here in Boston. However, I know I have not been thinking as much about how women fit in the mix. So this was a good wake-up. I have passed it on to folks I know who are also working on green economy access issues here!

Generally speaking, have you seen any low income, minority women vying for these funds?

Not so much. However, I know of at least two grant applications that are working to get young woc into green economy.

We have applied for a Pathways out of Poverty grant from these funds to create a Green Power Training Program for entry level jobs in new alternative energy fields and one group of folks we plan to recruit especially are young woc in our community who are single parents.

YouthBuild has applied for grants and they do a lot of outreach to get young woc into building trades and now into weatherization and green building certifications as well.

VOLCKER FAILS TO SELL BANK STRATEGY

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/business/21vo...

So much for my idea above.

The WH favors heavy regulation. I'm not sure sure how effective that will be. Generally, when the fox is watching the hen house, it doesn't work out.

We need teaching materials. We need to be able to make copies and not have to ask the parents of our students to buy us materials as basic as copy paper. You want us to teach them to read but we have no money left to buy books. You want us to have current research-based curriculum but don’t give us the money to purchase it.

We need clean, safe schools. Currently in my school district if a custodian is sick, the district will not provide a substitute custodian until the fourth day of absence.

That means that we will have a dirty classroom for three full days. Three. How often is your office cleaned Mr. Duncan? I’d be willing to bet you’d find it unacceptable for it to be left unclean for half the week and you don’t even have a classroom full of students in there trying to work and learn every day.

We need time to teach, stop tying us up in paperwork. Get rid of assessments whose only purpose is to generate numbers for a computer to eat. Let us do purposeful assessment so it can be the blueprint for our instruction. Give us qualified substitutes who can either teach our classes while we do these assessments or actually do them for us.

We need time to improve our practice. We need to be able to select professional development that is appropriate for us and our actual needs. Give us follow up support after trainings. One day trainings with no follow-up leave us bitter and resentful and serve little purpose in the long run. Make sure trainings are provided for all staff members so we can be on the same page.

Help us get current technology. We are past the overhead era; get us smart boards and ELMO projectors. How about computers that were made sometime after our students were born? How about computer monitors that don’t break from being turned on and off too many times? Is that really so much to ask? Why not give companies that manufacture these products a hefty tax break for providing them to schools?

Make sure our schools are up to code, have working air conditioning and heating and functional furniture and equipment. A school’s appearance is a reflection of it, make sure it looks nice. Give us the funds to maintain our grounds and buildings.

Don’t ask us to teach in moldy, rotting portable buildings and then shrug your shoulders when we turn up sick or with cancer a few years later.

Mr. Duncan, I invite you to come and tour around the nation’s schools. Take an inventory of what we are lacking. Read the curriculum. Look at the states’ standards and curriculums. Find out what programs are already in place and are working. Please, please don’t start your tenure in this position in such a harmful way. We’re all in this together- it’s our future at stake.

EdGov - Townhall with Teachers

http://www.edgovblogs.org/duncan/2009/09/town-h...

---

This is an excerpt from a teacher's long, yet, informative letter to Sec. Duncan. The teacher's conversation extend beyond schools are broken because of bebe's kids and their parents. Its a good read.

preach it.

Good points by the teacher. As a teacher I concur. The ironic thing is I have had to work in situations where things were that bad or worse, and my students got good test scores and they actually learned. It shouldn't be that hard, but if it is, we are charged with the task to persevere anyway.


I got my kids to pass a state computer test and they didn't have access to computers at home, and they only saw me for 45 minutes a day for 9 weeks. it can be done, but unfortunately it is a thankless unlucrative job. If it were not for the children, I don't know why I would continue to do it.

I know its not enough but can only say "thank you" for your dedication.

Morphus, I have my dad to thank for my ability to do more with less. he told us that we were the exception to the rule. That meant that he didn't care what we had going on we better make it work. I think that is why I miss him soooo much. He had a you better pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality. And he had no problem telling anyone anything.

Video of Obama's OFA speech last night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzqJUKFMa10&feat...

He starts talking about 9 minutes in

thank you

Just in time for Halloween.

The logic about how the war in Iraq would pay for itself from oil revenues never did pan out in spite of the fact that it’s an oil-rich country. How much worse is the situation in Afghanistan, then, where there is no oil industry and the very cost of getting fuel to U.S. forces – buying, shipping and hauling – has become embarrassingly high?

About $400 per gallon worse.

That’s the figure the Pentagon has come up with after crunching all the costs related to getting gasoline into the tanks, Humvees and helos operating in the Afghan theater, according to the Pentagon.

The number emerged after the Pentagon’s comptroller was directed to spell out why the Afghan war costs about $1 billion for every 1,000 Americans deployed there, according to a report in The Hill newspaper, which said the Obama administration uses that number in estimating costs of sending the up-to-40,000 new troops requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The reasons given for the overall high price for fuel – what the Pentagon calls the “fully burdened cost of fuel” – is the lack of infrastructure in Afghanistan and a geography that’s unforgiving of ground transport bound for remote bases in mountainous regions.

Gas Costs $400 a Gallon in Afghanistan

---

Gotta keep those war profiteers with fat dividend checks.

"War is a RACKET" -- US Marine Corp Major General Smedley Butler (1933)

Now we need an audit of all the principals who are avocating the "surge" just to see how much money they are making.

I suggested that also. I think the list is long and full of both Dems & Repugs.

We can start with this:

"In 2006, the investment portfolios of 151 current members—more than a quarter of Congress—had between $78.7 million and $195.5 million invested in companies that received major defense contracts (over $5 million). The portfolios include holdings in companies paid billions of dollars each month to support America’s military. These companies provided almost everything the military uses, from aircraft and weapons to medical supplies and soft drinks. "

The "members" not only invest directly with the defense companies, they also "invest" their campaign money on WallStreet to get a "boost" on their dollars.

In the 2005 movie V For Vendetta, a film about a totalitarian society ruled by a fascist government with an iron surveillance fist, there’s a scene where state spooks drive down a residential street with a gadget that records the conversations people are having inside their homes and gives them a rating on how antagonistic towards the authorities they are.

A frighteningly similar scenario is now on the horizon with the news that the CIA’s investment arm In-Q-Tel is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a company that monitors the output of social media, in order to “Read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon,” reports Wired News.

Of course, the fact that the U.S. government and the military have been overloading the Internet with pro-war propaganda and trolls who are paid to cheerlead for the war on terror and attack critics is an admitted part of their cyberwarfare agenda, and Israel has done the same.

However, the prospect of the CIA closely monitoring social networking websites, whose content largely comprises of inane gossip and sophomoric blabber, shows just how afraid the establishment is of rising popular opposition to their agenda.

“Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords,” according to Wired.

The software scores whether each post is positive, neutral or negative on a particular topic and can judge who the most influential poster is in a conversation, for example on a comment board or forum.

CIA To Monitor Internet Chatter For Anti-Government Sentiment

In the brief age of Obama, we have had "truthers," "birthers," tea party activists and town-hall dissenters.

Comes now, the "Oath Keepers." And who might they be?

Writes Alan Maimon in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Oath Keepers, depending on where one stands, are "either strident defenders of liberty or dangerous peddlers of paranoia."

Formed in March, they are ex-military and police who repledge themselves to defend the Constitution, even if it means disobeying orders. If the U.S. government ordered law enforcement agencies to violate Second Amendment rights by disarming the people, Oath Keepers will not obey.

"The whole point of Oath Keepers is to stop a dictatorship from ever happening here," says founding father Stewart Rhodes, an ex-Army paratrooper and Yale-trained lawyer. "My focus is on the guys with the guns, because they can't do it without them.

"We say if the American people decide it's time for a revolution, we'll fight with you."

(Pat Buchanan) Traditional Americans are losing their nation

Did you see Stewart Rhodes on Hardball? One thing Chris Matthews doesn't understand is that people like this destroy their own crediblity if you would just let them speak

if they twitch wrong, they need to be dropped like a bad habit.

These people make their own reality. They affirm each other with the new groupthink of the day and do not care whether the mainstream support their goals or objectives.

Acclaimed nonfiction author and teacher Jonathan Kozol spoke Monday on the Tempe campus about the problems and inequalities facing minority students in America’s school systems.

In an event put on by the Canon Leadership Program, hundreds of students, staff and community members attended the lecture at the Memorial Union to hear Kozol’s theories on why many minority students have problems in the education systems and why schools that focus heavily on testing aren’t preparing students enough.

Kozol explored the various issues he has seen through his teaching career in several award-winning books.

“Black and Hispanic children at this moment are more isolated intellectually and segregated physically than they have been since 1968, when Dr. King was taken from us,” he said.

...

In going to what he called the “black side” of Boston, he was greeted by overcrowded classrooms of children who rarely had a teacher stay with them for a full school year.

It was up to him to figure out how to gain the trust of these students who were rarely given a personalized education because the curriculum was too heavily focused on improving standardized test scores, he said.

Kozol said he was fired from his first teaching job for bringing in a Langston Hughes book of poetry in an attempt to reach out to his African-American students. The school’s reasoning was that the book was part of the eighth grade curriculum instead of fourth, which he was teaching.

Now, Kozol said, he’s speaking out.

“I’m 73 years old, and I’m too old to bite my tongue,” he said. In today’s schools, he still sees the heavy focus on testing as a problem.

“The child is the product of the school,” Kozol said, when students should be viewed as individuals.

When the students are pumped full of standardized tests, they become value-added products, he said.

“If you ever talked about the kids in Beverly Hills as products, the parents would have the principal fired,” Kozol said.

Teachers in these test scores-obsessed schools are so afraid of running out of time to teach the curriculum that they are hesitant to let children interrupt to ask questions, he said.

“[Kids] love to interrupt and ask spontaneous questions,” Kozol said.

By stifling these questions, teachers will never know what lies within that child’s heart, he said.

Kozol said teachers are his heroes, especially those who work with little children.

Educator discusses minority issues in schools

Hersh: Military waging war with White House
The U.S. military is not just fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s most renowned investigative journalist says.

The army is also “in a war against the White House — and they feel they have [President] Obama boxed in,” Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh told several hundred people in Duke University’s Page Auditorium on Tuesday night. “They think he’s weak and the wrong color. Yes, there’s racism in the Pentagon. We may not like to think that, but it’s true and we all know it.”
Read More
http://www.heraldsun.com/pages/full_story/push?...

“They think he’s weak and the wrong color."

That's why there needs to be a military coup against him, right?

I don't think this is a surprise to anyone.

Ignoring the racism angle how do you negotiate w/ people whom support other people who want to kill you period? What do you negotiate for? Is it realistic to expect that the Taliban will turn over AQ to us?

Hersh is arguing, when he suggests negotaitions, that this is Viet Nam. Recall the US decided, after funding Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh(Communist party) during WWII against the Japanese, the Viet Minh should be ignored and their goal of overthrowing French colonialism denied. The argument being that world wide communism was the threat not nationalism.

While Pushtun nationalism is a portion of the Taliban's goal the over riding goal is their fundamentalist interpetation of Islam. Here they stand foursquare w/ AQ.
Do you really want AQ getting a hold of Pakistans nuclear weapons?

What you will have to do is provide a government that can provide services and goods that allows Pushtuns to be pulled away from the extreme views of the Taliban? It will be hard because there are cultural norms in the Pushtun community that do not allow them to "snitch" So American money or soldiers are going to be committed. allowing AQ anotheer strike w/ our and the worlds economy in this shape will literally bring it to total collapse

Good Morning.Your Mid Week Jam.Enjoy
Here We Go - Minnie Riperton (full version)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmD95FUFKvI

Minnie had the voice. This was our wedding song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE0pwJ5PMDg&feat...

I apologize for jumping what you have been doing but it just brought back memories.

No need to apoligize.The young people on this board should hear how great classic soul and RnB sound.Maybe thats patronizing but when I hear music today I just shake my head.

I am one of those young folks and I can't listen to it.... It is sports radio or talk radio.

she died far too young.

thanks dj

If you come to Philly for No Night without a Telescope look up the Franklin Institute. Derrick Pitts is the head astronomer there. I will post it if it happens but I can't imagine he will not be speaking somewhere.

For a treat if you can stay awake is the Orionid meteor showers are occuring

An early morning poll:

McDonnell 59%, Deeds 40%

31% African American support for McDonnell.

D, I do have experience voting for some Illinois Republicans, but believe me, they weren't right-wingers. I voted for Edgar, because he was middle of the road GOP, and Crook though he was,Ryan because he said he wouldn't stiff Chicago, and he kept his word - he was the least hostile Governor towards Chicago that we had seen in my lifetime.

I'm completely convinced that a lot of the blacks who do vote for McDonnell will do so with noses held, pinched, etc. For me, that's fine....this isn't about converting people.

A good portion (51%) of the Commonwealth says he's "about right" ideolgically.

Hell, I'm not a big social conservative...and he and I don't agree on everything.

honest question that you haven't answered...

why would 31% of Black folks support McDonnell. what would be the reason? when Black folks support a Republican candidate past the usual 8-10%, there must be a reason...something in McDonnell's past that would get Black folks to come vote for them.

There is NOTHING in McDonnell's past that warrants him getting 31% black support. The pollsters must be asking D, Sheila Johnson and Doug Wilder along with the other 6 black people in VA they polled because NOBODY black is checking for McDonnell like that. BLACK REPUBLICANS (when there were some) didn't even get that level of support.

Nobody's asked here. All anyone wants to talk about is his thesis, "Jihad for Jesus University," and what I'm getting out of the deal.

When McDonnell was AG, he administered a federal grant (2.5M) called the Gang Reduction and Intervention Program (GRIP). The program's been credited with taking Richmond from the ninth most-violent city in the country to the 49th. As governor, he wants to expand it statewide.

Beyond that, and beyond all the transportation/jobs/education policies, he's actually got ideas and policies that will benefit us, specifically those in the inner city. I posted them a few weeks back, and I know there was one person who actually was a fan of a couple.

We've gotten out and given people a reason to vote FOR McDonnell...not a reason to NOT vote for Deeds.

Personally, I'm not sure that 31 will hold...I'm expecting 20-25%.

If you keep repeating the same tired talking points maybe you can convince yourself that your guy is good for the black community cuz you aren't convincing anyone around here.

So tell me why Deeds is better. Someone make his case...cause he damn sure isn't doing it himself.

Someone say what ideas of Deeds' are better than McDonnell's.

And if that can't be done-or all there really is are reasons not to vote for McDonnell-then just say that. Not gonna knock you. I gave up trying to convince anyone here a long time ago.

Its been a busy week. Did I miss you poo-pooing that washington post Deeds endorsement/McD indictment?

Nope. Just said he got it...and that water was wet.

I thought you'd have more to say on it. You disappoint me, yet again...

I'll tell you straight up that I'm voting for Deeds against McDonnell & Friends and I will tell you why. I know I've never made any pretense of actually listening to McDonnell's ideas:

1) McDonnell hasn't, like Deeds, actually said what he's going to do in his ads. It's all been "Lookit my family, don't listen to that thesis, don't vote for Deeds because of taxes." It's all been filled with vague ideas like "I'm gonna be the jobs governor." Well, who ISN'T going to be the "jobs governor?"

2) McDonnell & Friends will use their Christian faith to remake Virginia into how they think people should be. If you thought Jim Gilmore stepping in and preventing that woman from taking her husband off life support because of Christian beliefs was bad, McDonnell will be worse. And what's worse, freaks like Marshall out of Prince Wm will see a McDonnell election as license to continue their cultural assault on Virginia--Marshall, who thinks college students shouldn't have sex and wants to remove all birth control including condoms from college campuses.

3. I wouldn't give McDonnell any credit for reducing Richmond's crime rate --that credit should go to the former police chief Rodney Monroe and his police tactics.

4. McDonnell hasn't given any intelligent response to the transportation crisis besides "let's sell the ABC stores." After they are sold, then what? How is the state going to raise the revenue to fix the roads? Tax cuts? Tax cuts is why the state is in a jam now with the roads, with Jim Gilmore's "No Car Tax" plan --- a car tax which we are STILL paying for which I knew we'd still be paying for back in 1997 when I voted against him because there would be NO accountability for his campaign promise.

5. This Cuccinelli dude is down with teabaggers. Enough said.

6. Bolling is up on the TV saying "Re-elect me and I'm gonna do this and that." Well, this fat bitch has been the Lt. Governor for 4 years, how come he HASN'T been doing this or that?

Don't think for a second that because McDonnell wins that Virginia thinks he so great for Virginia. We don't --it's that Deeds was so much worse.

Either way, we're getting a dud for the next 4 years. But a Deeds dud would be better for Virginia than a McDonnell dud. Just my humble opinion.

Break it Down TOWN! Preach.

No one is enthused about this campaign because either way we lose. Besides everyone in VA knows you can't count Deeds out just because some poll says he's behind.

We will see if Deed can actually get voters to hold their noses long enough to make the most intelligent decision available.

Well, that's how he won the primary. LOL

I respect that, Town.

Don't agree with all of it, but I at least know where you're head's at...and why you never came to any of our events. :)
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

I am more concerned about McDonnell & Co.'s social agenda than I am about his economic agenda, to be quite honest. And it's not so much McDonnell himself as it is the other wackjobs in the Republican party who will see a McDonnell election as license to put in place their social agenda. I don't want the GOP deciding women don't need birth control or college kids don't need condoms and contraception or women needing to be reported to the police for having an abortion or miscarriage. Jim Gilmore "Terri Schaivo'ed" that woman up in Northern Virginia, George Allen shanked the public black colleges with the funding (over and beyond the white schools, if I recall clearly)...then you have GOP officials claiming that only certain parts of Virginia are "real Virginia"...

I appreciate that McDonnell has at least shown up in the black community, and it may pay off for him with maybe a 15% return (31%? --ya dreamin' lol), which is certainly better than most GOP officials in the state.

I just don't want VA to go back to the "let's blame blacks and gays" days of the Allen/Gilmore eras...

Can I at least get 25%?

And I don't want to back to those days, either. I grew up in that.

Well, that's what I'm afraid will happen. Not so much with McDonnell himself but with the people around him and the GOP in general.

That's why I don't think McDonnell will get 25%+ of the black vote, because the GOP brand in general is just synonymous with KKK, teabaggers, hate of Obama and racism in general.

That 25%-or whatever we get-will be a lot of independents who are just looking at the issues.

We've done well at trying to beat those stereotypes back.