UPDATE: Congratulations to Daily Whackjob’s own Phil Chroniger, who guessed Delegate Bob Marshall would win 49% of the votes at today’s RPV convention (Marshall won 49.68%). Special mention goes to friend of the blog Scott Nolan, who was actually closer to Marshall’s total with his guess of 50.025%, but went over just slightly.
Thanks for playing.
Governor Kaine, we’re through. Done. Finished.
You told me you would deliver land use reform, but you caved to the developers instead. You could have been our first environmental governor, but you caved to Dominion instead. You could have vetoed the transportation compromise last year and made the Republicans eat that disaster, but you caved instead. You could have been a real force for progressive values in Virginia, but you repealed the estate tax, made compromises with the Republicans on 2 budgets and have nothing to show for a legacy regarding the environment or education.
But not endorsing Leslie is the last straw. Connelly is bought and paid for by the same people who bought and paid for Tom Davis. We will have another corporatist Democrat representing a safe seat where instead we should have a real fighter against executive power and an advocate for progress. Instead of following a progressive conscience, you followed the money.
And that is unforgivable. Adios, governor. I’m sure you’ll find a nice cushy executive position waiting for you on the other side. Maybe it will compensate for the loss of your soul.
Make a contribution to Leslie’s campaign at ActBlue. We’ll show the governor who really runs this party.
The Family Research Council, a group founded by Dr. James Dobson to lobby for Dominionist principles tax-free, has endorsed Delegate “Sideshow Bob” Marshall for U.S. Senate.
As I said earlier today on a blog of ill repute, in Harrisonburg yesterday Mark Warner took the stage in light drizzle, spoke to the Almighty, and in a few minutes the clouds left and the sun came out and shone down upon him.
Apparently someone upstairs called Dr. Dobson on his special direct line from heaven and told him what happened, prompting the quick endorsement. This can only mean that the Republicans’ last hope of retaining divine support is to nominate Marshall.
Republicans must now choose between Jim Gilmore, who did not receive the FRC endorsement and must therefore be in league with Lucifer, or Marshall, who was prevented from meeting the pope last month in order to prevent two densely righteous people from colliding and instantly casting into damnation the entire population of Arlington, a known sanctuary city for unnatural and un-Biblical behaviors.
Will the FRC endorsement affect the GOP Senate nomination? Cast your vote for how many votes Bob Marshall will receive in our May Madness competition!
That’s right folks - in just as long as it takes for someone to let me know how many votes will be cast at the May 31 Virginia Republican Convention, we will have ourselves a little contest.
(Seriously, I looked all over and I couldn’t find an exact number of delegates. Gilmore has claimed to have enough to win, and I’ve seen the number 6,000 floated, but I couldn’t find anything authoritative.)
Please leave the number of delegates at the May 31 Virginia Republican Convention in the comments and you’ll get a karma boost. If you don’t believe in karma, this good deed will erase the damnation you will suffer due to that sexy thought you shouldn’t have had last week. If you didn’t have any sexy thoughts last week, check your pulse and use Google Image search, then leave the number of delegates to atone for what you did.
Andrew Sullivan on the Democratic race:
[...] what is striking in the exit polls is the polarization on three lines: gender, race and age. It was dead even with men; but a massive advantage for Clinton among women. The racial difference is obvious as well. But what really leaps out is age. Obama lost every cohort over 40; Clinton lost every cohort under 40. Race also affects the generations in turn: 67 percent of whites over 60 voted for Clinton - a massive 24 point advantage. Among the younger generation, there is much less racial polarization: under 30, whites split evenly. This is a fascinating result. It appears to me as the future struggling to overcome the past. On the process, I stick to my view that she needed double digits to have reason to stay in. Right now, she doesn’t have it. But she won’t leave. She will never leave. Ceding to someone younger is unthinkable to her. It’s a form of death for her.
But here’s what she does have: total shamelessness, and an absolute belief that she is the rightful nominee. Shamelessness: the appropriation of the message and even the words of her opponent; the portrayal of one of the most privileged and advantaged candidates in memory as an insurgent underdog; the eager embrace of the tactics - and message! - of the Rove right if it could help in any way; the picture of a candidate who saw a 20 - 25 point lead dissipate into single figures as a candidate for momentum. What sustains her is this deep, deep sense of entitlement and an absolute refusal to let the next generation take over. She will take this to the last day of the convention if necessary.
If Obama thinks he has a right to actually be nominated by the Clinton Democrats because he has won more votes, more states and more delegates, he is sadly mistaken. They will never let such a person win without a death struggle. And that is where the Democrats are now headed.
Do I think a Democrat has to win working-class votes to win a general election? Yes. Do I think America is more racist than sexist? Yes.
But am I 25 years old and convinced the baby boomers have to get off the stage before we can fix anything? Absolutely. Go Obama.
Dear Pennsylvania Voters,
Today is my birthday. A quarter-century ago I was born in Lancaster, so I’m a native of the Keystone State. And I’m asking you, those who stayed, for a big favor today.
Make it end.
Only an absolutely crushing defeat for HRC will end this campaign. You can make it happen. Vote for the tall skinny guy with the funny name. Make the craziness end.
However, if you absolutely have to vote for HRC, be sympathetic to the birthday boy and give me some beer money* to cope with the crushing realization that we’ll be fighting until Denver.
Thanks,
Adam
*It’s Paypal, so send it to politicl(dot)animal(at)gmail(dot)com. No guarantees, but the karma bonus should be enough to upgrade your next life from a polar bear to Paris Hilton’s chihuahua.**
** I prefer receding necklines to receding ice shelves. If you differ, you can still be a polar bear. The breaststroke will be larger part of your routine, but I’m sure you’ll manage.
April 14, 2008
Dear Senator Obama:
May I call you Barack? I don’t know you and you don’t know me, but you are following me on Twitter now, so perhaps we can have a friendly conversation. It won’t take long.
Barack, after 2004 there was one Democrat I wanted to be our next president and one I absolutely did not want to be our next president. You aren’t either of them. Al Gore is the first one and by now you’ve probably figured out who the other one is.
I looked at you, Bill Richardson, Mark Warner and John Edwards. Then Warner dropped out and I decided to back Edwards. But he and Richardson have dropped out too. So really, Barack, you’re my fifth choice at this point. But you’re not, you know, the other one.
Until Pennsylvania you were doing great - big wins in Virginia and Maryland and hanging close in states you were supposed to lose by huge margins. But something happened in the Keystone State, and now you and I, well, we have problems.
Seriously, this is so much better than living at realclearpolitics for another 5 hours:
Super Tuesday Twitter Map (by Google)
Those who know me understand that I am slightly obsessed about politics. National, local, state, world … whatever. If it involves government and elections (or the lack thereof), I’m paying attention. I don’t burrow into the numbers as much as some other unnamed know-it-alls, but I follow the digits pretty well.
That’s why it was so satisfying to see that I am ranked #8 in the 2008 Presidential Punditology Challenge.
We have had to not only predict winners, but the 1-2-3 rankings in each state’s caucus or primary so far, Democratic and Republican. We’ve also predicted who would drop out and we just completed our picks for Super Tuesday.
So if you’re looking for hot air, move along. If you’re looking for commentary worthy of national recognition, stick around.
P.S. Yes, the contest is predominantly among Democratic and progressive bloggers. (Here are the aggregated answers to all Super Tuesday questions.) Is there a Republican/conservative equivalent?
[Editors note by Whackjob: For those of you who may be concerned, Daily Whackjob will continue to provide its usual brand of crass humor and insults no matter how big of a horse Adam climbs up on. You should also know that Adam doesn't have nipples, he was born with udders.]
Staunton City Councilman Bruce Elder, the sponsor of the original local resolution to cap payday loans at 36% APR, will speak before the Senate Finance Committee Monday.
Senator Saslaw wisely only gave Elder 2 minutes to speak; otherwise, we might all find out exactly what Elder thinks of Saslaw and other Democrats who support payday lenders.
After months of cheering against them, after weeks of being forced to endure Mrs. Sharp’s repeated reminders that her strategy of going with the favorite was beating my “emotional” support for “losers”, and after finally seeing my last hope for beating the New England Patriots, Brett Favre, go down in the tundra, I didn’t even watch more than 10 minutes of the Super Bowl. I even took the recycling down to the town bin when the Giants were driving to take the lead.
Balance has been restored to the football universe.
The football gods have been appeased.
Good defense can still beat good offense.
Football pundits are as mortal as political pundits.
And pitchers and catchers report in ten days.
Life is good.
So let’s say you’re a Democrat in the House of Delegates. Your party just finished a massive attempt to win majorities in the House and Senate, spending millions of dollars in the process. You’ve also seen your party win back-to-back gubernatorial elections and look likely to win back-to-back Senate elections. One of your leaders in the House has all-but-announced his candidacy for governor, and others will run for LG and AG. Not a bad hand … how do you play it?
How about sponsoring a bill that will could either cost your colleagues labor’s financial and volunteer support and risk primary fights, or lose business support, major contributions and perhaps elections?
Doesn’t sound that bad? Well, if you don’t have a majority in the House, and House Republicans are simultaneously furious at your party’s audacity and petrified they’ll lose the majority, they might use their lock-step party discipline to, I don’t know, f@#$ you over (safe for work, not for squeamish Democrats).
Democrats, let me speak frankly to you, OK? A lot of trends are going your way, especially in NOVA and the general area east of Richmond (what am I supposed to call it, Tidewater? Hampton Roads? Virginia Beach? Southeast Virginia?). Your party has a bad habit of throwing a lot of money at the same races over and over again, but you’ve won races in spite of yourselves. If you can put together a good budget in lean times without raising taxes, show leadership on the environment and conservation, and do something substantial on immigration, you’ll win all the statewide races and the House of Delegates in 2009. The Republicans are demoralized, divided and desperate.
Here’s what you should do: DON’T SCREW IT UP. Stop handing the House Republicans rope - they know how to tie nooses (don’t ask me where they learned to that, they’re just really good at it). If your bill will in any way embarrass your colleagues, especially colleagues who won with less than 55% of the vote, withdraw it immediately. Now is not the time to show your slavish devotion to the myriads of special interests who sent you questionnaires during your campaign. Now is the time to sit back and wait for the Republicans to self destruct.
The Republicans are the anti- party - they are only united when they are fighting against something. If you would stop giving them opportunities to beat you up, they might have to come up with their own ideas - and while they try to do that, the 2009 elections will have come and gone and you’ll be in power. So stop self-destructing and let them remind Virginians why they voted for you last year.
P.S. One more piece of advice, completely free. Find the meanest sonofabitch in the party, teach him (or her) every arcane procedural rule in the House of Delegates (steal Bob Marshall’s book if you have to), and pay him/her to text message objection ideas to Ward Armstrong during session. There’s no reason you can’t make Speaker Howell’s life miserable like the Republicans made former Speaker Moss miserable. If they want to get nasty, retaliate by challenging every single ruling and make the House slow down to a crawl. Sure, you might miss your precious legislative receptions because the House stays in session until midnight. But in 2010 you’ll be in the majority and you can do whatever the hell you want. Just don’t screw it up, OK?
He can still win. Rick Gray explains how.
UPDATE: Apparently I wasn’t very clear and made it sound like Rick is supporting Edwards. He’s not - he thinks the Democrats should wait another four years.
UPDATE: They sent it to everyone with a blog. Pride, fall, trombone. Exit.
This is astroturf: a slick, sophisticated campaign from a “diverse group of Americans.” I’m posting this e-mail as a lesson to younger bloggers who might not be able to tell the difference, and because I was flattered because they figured out I “write frequently about politics” on this blog, which means they paid enough attention to know the fart jokes and indecent pictures are from other people. They also sent it to the dailywhackjob.com address, which means they were targeting me as a writer, not me as a donor or activist.
Never misunderestimate the power of flattery.
For the record, I do not support Mike Bloomberg for president. I generally do not support (obscenely) rich people for political offices since I want to live in a republic, not an oligarchy. Also, I don’t support any New Yorkers running for president as a matter of principle, and even the chance of having more than one in the race in September is unacceptable.
The Draft Bloomberg Committee draftbloomberg.com
You give some people a 0ne vote majority in one house of the General Assembly, and they start acting like we live in Massachusetts.
The shootings at VA Tech last April were tragic and preventable; not by Tech’s administration, who can not be expected to shut down a 30,000 student campus, but by Virginia’s mental health system. If the General Assembly finishes the 2008 session without reforming and improving (not all reform is improvement, after all) our mental health support structures, our lawmakers’ inaction will be immoral. The shootings exposed problems that can and should be fixed now.
Yet like many organizations, the families of the victims of the Tech shooting have already experienced “mission creep.” Mission creep is what happens when, for example, an army designed for winning a war takes over peacekeeping and construction duties. Or when a force intended for domestic defense is stationed overseas. Or when a group of families who have lost loved ones decide to force private sellers at gun shows to run background checks on gun buyers.
Did the Tech shooter get his guns from a private seller at a gun show? No. Have there been any recent shootings involving weapons purchased from private sellers at a gun show? I can’t remember any. Is anyone being harmed by private sellers not running background checks at gun shows?
Anyone?
Again, the families who have lost loved ones deserve our sympathy and support. They are right to demand changes to Virginia’s mental health system because it failed them and all Virginians. But in allowing mission creep, they risk losing their goodwill among Virginians who use guns, own guns or know more than nothing about guns. There may be good arguments for making private sellers run background checks at gun shows, but they don’t have anything to do with the Tech shooting and using the emotional appeal of the memory of the victims politicizes their deaths and cheapens the tragedy.
Would arming all college students have prevented the shooting? No. Would forcing private sellers to run background checks at gun shows prevented the shooting? No. So let’s stop using the Tech victims as political pawns and let them rest in peace while we fix the one thing that could have prevented the shooting: Virginia’s mental health system.
I spent lunch at the Mimslyn Inn, a fine establishment in Luray, with a little under 100 old Democrats, elected officials and community leaders, and one “unemployed former governor.”
Don’t smirk: that line got the biggest laugh.
Warner didn’t have a stump speech, he just re-introduced himself and took questions. The questions were tough - mental health, Iraq, I-81, immigration - and Warner gave wonky, long-winded answers that rarely demonstrated bold ideas (other than on energy). And neither Jim Gilmore nor Bob Marshall had anyone taping him.
Now I’m not saying Warner appeared to be a flaming liberal; in fact, other than his calls for energy independence, he never once sounded like a progressive. When he talked about climate change, he specifically said he was more like Arnold Schwarzenegger than Al Gore. Were he still running for president, he’d be to the right of Hillary and just to the left of McCain.
No, the reason Gilmore or Marshall should have been taping Warner is his indecisive answer on immigration. Continue Reading »
Editor’s Note: This is a new series which will present easy to identify signs that a husband, boyfriend or significant other is “whipped.” As the most experienced, Adam will be our guide.
If your wife/girlfriend/significant other/boyfriend/husband/partner (I’ll say this for Bob Marshall, he’d sure make writing relationship commentaries easier) tells you that the two of you will be drinking tea instead of soda, and you say you don’t want to drink tea, and s/he says you don’t have a choice, and you say you’re not going to drink tea, and later that evening you have a cup of tea, you might be whipped.
Never leave me again, boys. Never leave me again.
Apparently left-of-center The New Republic is so bored with the Democratic presidential nomination process they had time to give Ron Paul advice.
What’s more, since he isn’t listening to him they read 20 years of old newsletters and declared him to be … a Texan:
The New Republic is set to publish on Friday an damaging expose on Congressman Ron Paul (R), portraying him as a virulent racist and anti-Semite. Appearing on Tucker Carlson’s show on MSNBC on Monday evening, TNR reported Jamie Kirchick detailed a litany of allegations against Paul. Kirchick said most of his information came from articles published over the past 20 years in the subscription-based Ron Paul Survival Report newsletter. Kirchick said he will detail a two decade history of newsletter articles filled with “racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic invective.” Further, Kirchick alleged Paul has openly referred to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a “gay pedophile” and was once a featured speaker at a Confederate “pro-secessionist conference.” In a statement published on Paul’s campaign website on Monday evening, Paul wrote that he expects “the attacks and even smears [on me] will increase as we do better.”
First of all, when a librul publication attacks a Republican, that makes him stronger. So don’t do that. Secondly, this is the kind of stuff that proves journalists should never, ever, ever get into politics.
If I had this kind of information on an opponent, it would not see the light of day until October. All they’re doing now is attacking the only anti-war Republican in the race, which is stupid. The longer Paul stays in the race, the more Republicans realize their party is divided on the war, and the more likely Republicans in the Senate stop filibustering timetables.
Third, I can now safely predict that, with this new information being made public, Ron Paul will win the South Carolina primary.
How do I block certain sponsored links from appearing in the “Web Clips” box above my e-mails? Because I’m really tired of seeing this ad appear every 3 seconds:
Brian Moran - www.brianmoran.com - Democratic Leadership for Virginia’s Future
(I copied that straight from Gmail, so if you click the link it will probably cost Delegate Moran money. Just a thought.)
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