YouTube is full of crap, and I’d no sooner watch rah-rah-Democrats videos on YouTube than I’d watch Bill O’Reilly on Fox News. That said, this “I’m Voting Republican” video is very funny, and I think a good message for Democrats this year. It’s not entirely fair, of course, but that’s more than compensated for by the humor. BTW, the comments on YouTube make me suspect the internet has failed. (Pity Tom Paine.) There’s a reason why YouTube comments power StupidFilter. (Via RK)
Here’s something I hadn’t realized: Democrats are fielding a candidate in all eleven Virginia congressional districts. That’s great. I wish it would become the norm, established by the RPV and the DPVA, that the local party chairs put their name on the ballot as the nominal opponent of otherwise unchallenged incumbents, for state and federal races. I think there would be a lot of benefits to that.
I was 11 years old when Upper Deck baseball cards were first sold, and I quickly moved from being suspicious of them (too slick, too fancy, too expensive) to loving them for those very reasons. My prized possession was UD ‘89 #01 — Ken Griffey Jr.’s rookie card. Darren Rovell explains the importance of that card. I still like Topps best.
An evolutionary biologist has watched a colony of E. coli evolve a stunning new capability, right in the lab. He let a single bacterium reproduce for 44,000 generations in twelve populations. It was just one of the populations that, around the 31,500th generation, suddenly developed the ability to metabolize citrate, thus doubling its available food sources. As a result, these mutants thrived in comparison to the other eleven populations. Cooler still, he saved samples from every 500th generation, so now he’s going back and replaying the process over and over again, to find out how they evolved it and how likely that it was to take place. Next time somebody tells you that “nobody’s ever observed evolution,” tell ‘em to stick this in their pipe and smoke it. (Via /.)
This is why I love Apple: the next version of their OS will have (almost) no new features—they’re just going to streamline the current version. They promise to make it require less hard drive space, make it require less RAM, and the whole affair will be faster than the current version. This is precisely the opposite of the approach taken by every other software company under the sun. Given that they’re also a hardware company — they’re in the business of selling people newer, zippier computers — this is a particularly impressive move on Apple’s part. The speculation is that the upgrade will run $29, which I think is a reasonable price. It comes out in a year.
Remember those ridiculously cute kittens we were fostering? They’ve got a person now. A fellow in Staunton saw those photos of ‘em here, and he took them home on Thursday. It’s nice that these sisters will stay together. Lady Bird is awfully glad to have them gone — our poor beagle is terrified of cats.
I’ve helped put together a forum about the Charlottesville and Albemarle water situation for the evening of Tuesday the 10th. It’s Left of Center’s monthly meeting, and we’ll have Charlottesville Tomorrow executive director Brian Wheeler, C’ville TJS&WCD representative Rich Collins, and Artisan Construction owner Doug Lowe (builder and owner of the area’s only LEED Platinum home) explaining what the deal is with the debate over the reservoir, the history of the region’s water woes, and the non-obvious steps that you can take to reduce your own water usage. The reservoir debate really is mystifying, and I recommend attending to learn about how the outcome will affect you. It’s at Maya, on West Main Street. The snacks and social time start at 5:30 and the discussion runs from 6:00-7:00. Do come.
Jim Gilmore, one week after his nomination for U.S. Senate, is having a bit of trouble gaining support from his party’s top men in Virginia. The Hill reported on Wednesday evening that Sen. John Warner and Rep. Tom Davis are both unwilling to endorse Gilmore. Sen. Warner’s refusal to endorse Gilmore would be pretty stunning if it wasn’t so predictable — a U.S. Senator not endorsing his party’s nominated successor has got to be pretty unusual. Davis even offered a parting barb: “Jim needs to do outreach. Jim doesn’t talk to anybody.” Ouch.
Del. Bob Marshall, in his glorious, glorious refusal to endorse Jim Gilmore for U.S. Senate, makes the hilarious claim to Tim Craig that “he put 215,000 miles on his car during his Senate campaign this spring.” Let’s generously say that “spring” began January 1, giving him five months of driving time. That’s an average of 1,430 miles per day, an average of 80 mph, assuming he drives 18 hours per day without stopping. (It’s no wonder that he’s opposed to those abusive driver fees.) Between Marshall’s elite driving skills and Pat Robertson’s superhuman strength, I see now that Virginia Republicans are truly a force to be reckoned with.
One of the ways that the state screws over localities, funding-wise, is keeping convicted criminals in local jails, shirking the state duty to pay for housing convicts. Which is why it’s so galling that Virginia is selling bed space in its prisons to neighboring states. Why? Because it pays, and that helps make up for the chronic lack of funding from the General Assembly. Does anybody think that this is a good arrangement?
Quite a narrative is emerging in attorney general Bob McDonnell’s handling of Gov. Kaine’s transportation plan. Kaine has proposed a tax increase to address the enormous, systemic transportation funding shortfalls. Republicans have proposed nothing. McDonnell, as the presumptive Republican nominee for governor next year, has taken the lead in proposing nothing. But check out how his nothing plan has developed recently:
March 25: “I don’t have a particular plan or vision.” May 19: Bob McDonnell’s 740-word treatise on transportation “doesn’t contain a single word about his own ideas.” May 31: Powerful Republican leaders in Hampton Roads plead with McDonnell to do something about the transportation crisis. June 1: McDonnell endorses a tax hike to fund transportation: “legitimate funding gaps can be closed.”
So, just to be clear: Bob McDonnell has no plan or vision for transportation, but he does support raising taxes. He wants higher taxes, but doesn’t know for what purpose.
On the other hand, Gov. Kaine has a clear plan, which also involves raising taxes. He also wants higher taxes, but knows precisely why.
That 2009 election just looks sunnier and sunnier.
I’m speaking at the Virginia State Democratic Convention. The event will be held at the Hampton Roads Convention Center. It’s a panel discussion with Secretary of Administration Viola Baskerville and Prof. Quentin Kidd, moderated by Joel Rubin. The topic is “Battleground Virginia,” discussing the role that Virginia will play in deciding the presidential election. I hope I’ll see some of you there.
From the just-calling-it-up category, I’ve joined a pair of political/government boards that warrant disclosure. The first is Advocates for a Sustainable Population, a group trying to figure out how big of a population that Albemarle can support and how to go about stopping growth at that point. The second is The Virginia Coalition for Open Government. I’ve long been a big fan of VCOG, and I’m flattered that they’d ask me to join. It’s not clear to me that joining these boards biases me in any way (generally it’s the receipt of money or relation by blood that leads to conflicts of interest, not the volunteering of time flowing in the other direction), since my membership reflects my interests, rather than vice versa, but one never knows.
Last October I forecast open rebellion in the Republican Party if they nominated Gilmore to run against Warner. Between now and November, let’s see how accurate that proves to be. I think it will be even more pronounced than I’d predicted. Hager, having served in Warner’s cabinet, would be understanding of Republicans who choose to endorse Warner. I’ll bet that Frederick will show zero tolerance for it, driving Republicans out of the party and into the DPVA’s waiting arms.
In a wish come true, Delegate Jeff Frederick has been elected RPV Chairman, replacing Lt. Gov. John Hager after less than a year on the job. The 32-year-old Frederick is considerably to the right of Hager — your stereotypical angry Republican — and he’s all but promised to accelerate his party’s plunge off the cliff.
Given Frederick’s pledge to surrender his HoD seat if he won, Democrats can safely notch this up as yet another special election won, making it easier still to secure the majority come the November 2009 elections. Frederick’s last serious challenge came from Democrat Hilda Barg in 2005, and he squeaked out a victory with just 51% of the vote. The 52nd district is deep in Democrats’ territory in Northern Virginia. It’s quite possible that the RPV won’t put any resources towards retaining Frederick’s seat.
The pattern is rather like a guy who tells his new girlfriend that all of the women that he’s dated turned out to be tramps. A smart woman knows that she’ll be one of the “tramps” before long. Frederick may hold on longer than Hager (assuming that the base doesn’t want to switch horsemen in the middle of the apocalypse), avoiding getting tossed out until Republicans entirely lose control of the General Assembly come November. Then the incredible shrinking party can select somebody still farther to the right, and continue to wonder why they’re losing. Repeat as necessary.
Jim Gilmore was nominated (by a 66-vote margin) by Republicans for U.S. Senate just an hour ago, and already Mark Warner’s campaign has a TV ad that excoriates Gilmore, while managing to stay upbeat and positive:
That’ll be the theme of the race between now and November. Warner is going to club Gilmore over the head with his record and there won’t be a thing that Gilmore can do about it.
If you want your blog entries to be (almost) immediately syndicated on Virginia Political Blogs, set your blogging software’s list of “update services” to include http://www.vapoliticalblogs.com/xmlrpc.php. Ditto for Charlottesville Blogs, at http://www.cvilleblogs.com/xmlrpc.php. Your blogging software may not support update services, in which case you’ll just have to wait for my software to get around to rechecking your blog for new entries.
The Republican Party of Virginia is having their state convention this weekend. I’m excited about it. The theme of this blog for the past few years has been that, given a choice, Virginia Republicans will always choose wrongly. Not wrong in hindsight, but wrong like should I pick up some dinner on the way home, or drive off a bridge? They’re presented with two choices this time around: who to make RPV chair and who to nominate as their candidate for U.S. Senate.
John Hager, the incumbent and former lieutenant governor, is a nice guy. He’s got the gravitas and the experience to try to hold together his party, and he’s clearly slowed its collapse, as I expected. He’s only had the job for a year. His challenger is the far-right Del. Jeff Frederick. He’s polarizing, inexperienced, and kind of a tool. Though Hager’s reelection seemed a cinch a few months ago, Frederick seems to have a real chance of winning. That would surely seal Republicans’ fate as a minority party in Virginia come next year’s elections.
The other decision that Republicans are presented with is considerably less consequential. They’ll be selecting between Gov. Jim Gilmore and far-far-far-right Del. Bob Marshall for the nomination to run against Gov. Mark Warner for Sen. John Warner’s seat. Short of a dead-hooker-or-live-boy scenario, Republicans may as well be nominating Mickey Mouse. Gilmore is way to the right fiscally, having left the state in a financial shambles at the end of his term as governor (apparently convinced that was a good thing), while Marshall is way to the right socially, being fundamentally opposed to sex for any purpose other than baby-makin’. The nomination of either would be terrible for the party. The citizens of Virginia well remember how badly Gilmore screwed up localities’ coffers, and will rightly interpret Gilmore’s nomination as an endorsement of Gilmorenomics on the part of Virginia Republicans. And giving Bob Marshall a platform is always a mistake, because nobody knows what’s going to come out of that man’s mouth (including, I suspect, Bob Marshall), and nobody but the dwindling base is going to like what he’s got to say. At best, these guys will go unnoticed by the public. At worst, they’ll be noticed.
This convention will certainly be a net loss for the RPV, but it may prove to be a staggering loss if Frederick defeats Hager. I know who I’m rooting for.
I got an e-mail from John Hager’s reelection campaign today:
Conservative icon Ollie North has joined the Hager team sending an important letter endorsing John Hager. Conservatives in Virginia know that Ollie North stands firm on his principles and won’t allow his friends to be attacked and maligned without standing to defend them.
The really interesting thing is that I got this e-mail at all. The only Republican mailing list I’ve ever signed up for is the RPV’s.
