I went to the Virginia Tech Young Democrats officers’ meeting this evening. It was quite disappointing. I’d anticipated a meeting of eager young liberals, all believing that they could take over the world through leadership, politics and activism. That’s the sort of enthusiasm that has historically been the lifeblood of the Democratic Party. If that’s …
Category Archives: Politics
VA Republicans closing in on birth control.
It’s no secret that Delegate Bob Marshall (R – Manassas) is one of the looniest bastards in the Virginia General Assembly. A devout Catholic, Marshall thinks that everybody else ought to be forced to follow the same belief structure that he does. In early 2002, citing the September 11th attacks, he introduced a bill requiring …
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Aggregated Congressional roll call voting data.
I’ve been working for weeks to parse Congressional roll call votes. Because most Congressmen are horrible, horrible people, this data is only available on a vote-by-vote listing, and not in any aggregate format. Consequently, I’ve had to write incredibly complex regular expressions to parse this data. I’ve spent hours on it, and I’ve gotten perhaps …
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$.5T Deficit
The Congressional Budget Office will reveal tomorrow that our deficit is about to expand further still, from $401B this year to $500B — half a trillion dollars — next year. They forecast a total $6.3T deficit in the next decade. That’s not including $2T tax cuts planned by the White House. Tax cuts that will, …
The best election money can buy.
I’d forgotten just how brazenly that Bush manipulated the 2000 presidential election, particularly with regard to Florida. A reminder.
Rob Schilling as Satan.
July 23, 2003, 6:12pm. Corner of 2nd NE & Market.
Another Republican defeat.
We Charlottesville/Albemarle Democrats have our time-honored tradition of beating up on Republicans, with yesterday’s occasion being the annual charity softball game between the two. We won by 20-15, having led by as much as 11 runs at one time. The whole thing was particularly worth it to see Delegate Rob Bell and Councilor Rob Schilling …
Buh-bye, Prez.
The world is collapsing in on the Bush White House, and I am loving it. The phrase that pundits and politicans keep using is “a pattern of lies,” a phrase that I truly relish. But I don’t relish that nearly as much as I do the increasing references to Bush being a single-term president. Politically …
Suggested changes to the Charlottesville Democratic Party.
Be Welcoming It is the great lament of the Charlottesville Democrats — as well it ought to be — that minority involvement in the party is far from representational of the city’s population. Many methods of determining the source of this problem have been suggested, though few of them have been attempted. A glance around …
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Went to see Ralph Nader speak. Wow.
Amber, her brother, her father and I all went to see Ralph Nader speak at Cabell Hall at UVa last night. I made my mind up to vote for him a few months ago, but last night certainly cemented things. Amber and her father didn’t expect to vote for him (Cory is too young to …