More Newspaper Endorsements for Deeds

Not only has The Washington Post endorsed Creigh Deeds for Governor of Virginia, so has The Virginian-Pilot, The Roanoke Times, as well as the state’s largest African-American newspaper, the Richmond Free Press.  In my neighborhood in Fairfax County, the Deeds campaign is already touting The Post endorsement with yard signs, just as they did leading up to the Democratic primary when Deeds was endorsed by The Post.

President Obama in new ad for Creigh Deeds

Watch this and remember what last year was like and ask yourself what do you want to feel like on the day after the election when we know who our next Governor will be. Now ask yourself, what are you going to do to ensure our next Governor is Creigh Deeds.

Washington Post: Deeds has “Good Sense and Political Courage”

Creigh's for me!

The Washington Post has endorsed Democratic State Sen. Creigh Deeds as its choice for Governor of Virginia. The Post’s editorial highlights Sen. Deeds’s biggest strength in his campaign against right wing Republican Bob McDonnell: only Deeds has a workable plan to fix Virginia’s transportation problem.

The Post writes that Deeds, “has the good sense and political courage to maintain the forward-looking policies of the past while addressing the looming challenge of fixing the state’s dangerously inadequate roads,” while McDonnell, “offers something different: a blizzard of bogus, unworkable, chimerical proposals, repackaged as new ideas, that crumble on contact with reality. They would do little if anything to build a better transportation system.”

On President Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize

Like many around the world I was surprised to hear the news that President Obama was named this year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. But unlike the President’s unrelenting critics, I was pleasantly surprised.

But I do think it’s worth noting that many of the President’s supporters, indeed the President himself, joined Obama’s critics in saying that the honor was not deserved. In my view, they are all missing the point. What the Nobel committee’s decision recognizes is that the world changed on November 4, 2008. The rest of the world never thought we would elect a one term black Senator in his 40s. Given our history of racial and ethnic discrimination, they didn’t believe we had it in us.

Most Americans still don’t fully understand the level of disregard and disgust that the rest of the world viewed America prior to President Obama’s election. Almost overnight, in one November day, that hatred dissipated. In its place, the world began to take a second look at the U.S. and Americans.

In my view, when we  elected President Obama we sent the signal to the rest of the world that America was pressing the pause button on the trajectory that President Bush had our country on. We said to the world we want a new direction. And most importantly, we confounded those who hate our country, who never thought we would elect the candidate who called for an end to the war in Iraq and an end to the prison in Guantanamo.

But now, with this Nobel prize, the awards committee is laying down a challenge to the President and to our country. Make good on your promises. Use your potential. Do the good things you have in you.

Some say this decision to give the President the Nobel Peace Prize was a mistake. Perhaps. But not if it spurs the President to use his extraordinary leadership and communications skills to lead the U.S. and the world to a more peaceful coexistence.

Rev. James Dobson: Only GOP “Can Save America from National Disaster”

Wayne Slater, a reporter with the Dallas Morning News, has a shocking blog post and video of the Rev. James Dobson speaking to the super-secret Council for National Policy. What’s the Council for National Policy you ask? Basically it’s a club for right wing nut job preachers and right wing social conservative political activists.  Bob McDonnell’s friend and mentor, Rev. Pat Robertson is a member. (Maybe if Robertson can pull enough strings to get McDonnell elected Governor of Virginia, McDonnell would be eligible for membership.)

Rev. Dobson warns that only a resurgence of Republican power can “save America from national disaster.” Watch. If this doesn’t scare you, you’re not paying attention.

Bob McDonnell Gets Political Advice from Nancy Pfotenhauer

Recently, Bob McDonnell, the GOP nominee for Governor of Virginia, went out to Oakton, Virginia to see Nancy Pfotenauer, the Republican activist and former spokeswoman for John McCain’s failed presidential campaign.

Readers will remember that Ms. Pfotenhauer is my muse and the inspiration for this blog. She’s been staying out of the spotlight since her declaration that “real Virginians” were people who supported McCain and who didn’t live in Northern Virginia. (Obama supporters like me were “Fake Virginians” in her mind.)

Since McCain’s defeat, Ms. Pfotenhauer is still active behind the scenes. (Currently, she’s working to defeat efforts to reform health insurance because she believes affordable health insurance will be bad for women — I am not making this up.)

Anyway, Ms. Pfotenhauer wants to help McDonnell get elected. My “hidden cameras” captured this footage from their meeting at Ms. Pfotenhauer’s Oakton home. Check it out.

What Politico Won’t Tell You About Jonathan Martin

I am a big fan of Politico and of the work of their reporter, Jonathan Martin. But I do question the decision of Politico’s editors to require (or continue to allow) Martin to write about the Virginia Governor’s race. Politico should disclose to its readers Martin’s history in Republican politics and in Virginia and Connecticut politics.

Since they won’t, I will.

Shocking Hidden Camera Footage of Bob McDonnell and Sheila Johnson!

Since yesterday’s “speech breach” involving Bob McDonnell’s campaign supporter Sheila Johnson where she mocked the stutter of Democratic Sen. Creigh Deeds, Ms. Johnson has apologized. But in this new hidden camera footage obtained by Fake Virginia, it’s clear Ms. Johnson’s actions were planned and it’s also clear that. Mr. McDonnell has no intention of ever apologizing.

Watch.

Bob McDonnell Has a Secret

Bob McDonnell has a secret he doesn’t want you to know. I captured him on hidden cameras interacting with a real life Virginia voter. Check it out.

If You Read One Op-Ed Column This Week, Read This One

David Brooks always makes me think when I read his New York Times column. But with his latest column about Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh and their impact on the Republican Party, I wonder if it will make his Republican readers do the same.

Brooks’s words jumped off the page. He writes in part:

Just months after the election and the humiliation, everyone is again convinced that Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the rest possess real power. And the saddest thing is that even Republican politicians come to believe it. They mistake media for reality. They pre-emptively surrender to armies that don’t exist.

They pay more attention to Rush’s imaginary millions than to the real voters down the street. The Republican Party is unpopular because it’s more interested in pleasing Rush’s ghosts than actual people. The party is leaderless right now because nobody has the guts to step outside the rigid parameters enforced by the radio jocks and create a new party identity.

The party is losing because it has adopted a radio entertainer’s niche-building strategy, while abandoning the politician’s coalition-building strategy.
The rise of Beck, Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and the rest has correlated almost perfectly with the decline of the G.O.P. But it’s not because the talk jocks have real power. It’s because they have illusory power, because Republicans hear the media mythology and fall for it every time.

What Bob McDonnell’s Supporters Have to Ignore

The more I learn about Bob McDonnell, the GOP candidate for Governor of Virginia, the more I see what a cynical politician he really is.

His latest ads defending any criticism of his 18 year legislative record with feigned outrage are a good example. McDonnell claims any question about his record is “insulting” or an “attack on his character”.  Then he trots out his wife and daughters to say he has a strong record on issues important to women — ignoring his sponsorship of 35 bills to take away women’s rights to an abortion or his belief that working women are a “detriment” to the family. He also has written that gays should be “punished” by government, so I supposed soon we will see an ad with a Log Cabin Republican saying McDonnell would have remembered that blow job if had been done right.

But if you don’t think “Fairfax’s own” is being cynical on social issues, take a look at this morning’s Washington Post editorial about McDonnell’s transportation plan. The Post points out that all the sources of revenue McDonnell proposes to pay for the roads, rail and subways Virginia needs to solve our traffic problems aren’t realistic.

Much of the plan relies on wildly optimistic assumptions, brazen exaggerations, gauzy projections and far-off scenarios: budget surpluses and revenue growth that may not materialize; interstate tolls that the federal government may not approve; royalties from offshore oil and gas wells that may not be drilled; borrowing that the state may not be able to afford anytime soon. Lump all that in a file called “Don’t Hold Your Breath.” Insert some of his other proposals — such as diverting some sales tax revenue from schools, public safety and human services statewide to pay for Northern Virginia road improvements — into a file called “Politically Dead on Arrival.” Quite simply, much of what Mr. McDonnell has in mind would almost certainly not come to pass during his four-year term as governor, if ever.

Yet my Republican friends in Northern Virginia have convinced themselves that this is workable. It’s the same tortured exercise that women voters must go through to justify voting for someone who called them a “detriment” or gay voters must do to vote for someone who calls for the government to “punish” them.

Doesn’t anyone remember the disastrous governorship of Republican Jim “Repeal the car tax” Gilmore? Gilmore’s gimmick managed to get him elected but it wrecked Virginia’s finances. Thankfully Democrats Mark Warner and Tim Kaine have done a great job in fixing the mess Gilmore left behind.

But can we really afford to risk trusting another cynical Republican who’s selling gimmicks and platitudes?

 

President Obama Calls Kanye West a Jackass

In an off the record interview today, President Obama was asked about Kanye West’s rude behavior at this weekend’s MTV Music Video Awards show where he grabbed the microphone from Taylor Swift as she was accepting her award.

The President called West, a “jackass”.

We know this because ABC News’ Terry Moran tweeted about it, breaking the “off the record” terms of the interview. Already, the President’s critics are claiming he was unpresidential.

You know what? They’re right.

But it’s helpful to have some perspective.

President Obama isn’t the first president to use crude language when he thought no one would find out or when he was speaking to media off the record. We know that then candidate George W. Bush called a New York Times reporter a “major league asshole” and Dick Cheney, once he became Vice President told a Senator to “Go fuck yourself.”

Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon were recorded on tape speaking in vulgar language. I’m sure the same could be said for President Clinton and Reagan. (I’m not as certain about Presidents Ford and Carter.) Bush, Sr. as Vice President said he tried to “kick a little ass” in his Vice Presidential debate opponent, then-Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro.

But what kills me is that those on the right wing are criticizing President Obama’s remarks as if no other previous President ever uttered a vulgarity. They ignore Kanye West’s behavior and the fact that President Obama’s remarks were made off the record. They, in a bizarre attempt to defend Congressman Joe “You Lie” Wilson, say that the President’s remarks were worse.

I’m not so sure.

In fact, I’d say most of them are jackasses, too.

My line of thinking was expressed this morning by Austin Goolsbee this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. He said that the GOP was playing the role of the East German judge in the Winter Olympics. Obama could complete a triple lutz and the Republicans would give him a 2.0 out of 10.