my contribution to the world

I'm not going to wait for Christmas to come early. I'm going to ask Santa Claus for a Democratic Congress every day until November.


http://greedisgoode.blogspot.com/

Virginianapoliticians say the darndest things two

I've signed up for e-mail alerts from the Al Weed campaign. They gave me a heads up to a few choice things Virgil Goode had to say for himself at a recent candidate forum. According to the Daily Progress, this is how Virgil Goode explained his illegal campaign contributions, "He said I got nearly $100,000 in illegal contributions. Not so. It was about $46,000 that was straw contributions..."

The subject/verb agreement aside ("was" + "contributions"), Goode is using the "I robbed the bank with a toy gun" defense. And what, praytell, is a "straw contribution?" The website doubletongued.org explains, "His solution was to have his employees and their spouses make contributions …under their own names, then reimburse them—a technique known as 'straw contributions' that is a felony under federal election law"

Hmmmm...so what Virgil Goode is telling us is that he should be our congressman one more time because he draws a careful moral line between a $46,000 felony and a $100,000 one. What about $86,754? Where does that fit into your moral calculus, honorable Mr. Goode?

Of course, all of this is compounded by the fact that the city of Martinsville, which is already taking it up the unemployment hind end, gave MZM (the felonious "straw contributor") millions of dollars to locate its defense contracting bait and switch program in their area. A dishonest program that went belly up, costing not only the good people of Martinsville money, but, as Mr. Weed points out, taking away money from properly outfitting our good soldiers in Iraq. (Anyone remember the whole, "You go to war with the army you have?") Of course, all of this is made more mind-numbingly ridiculous by the fact that it is possibly the sole responsibility of Mr. Goode to keep this kind of FUBAR garbage from happening in the first place.

However, Mr. Goode has a smart@$$ play on Mr. Weed's last name to distract us. Mr. Goode's assertion that Mr. Weed, "must be smoking something like what he’s named for," makes me feel so much better about having a representative who is either a felon or has his head so firmly up his hind end that he can't tell a snake-oil salesman from a defense contractor. Shouldn't the whole "I was too dumb to know that I was doing something unethical and illegal" defense mean that one is too dumb to be an elected representative?

However, enough about politics, Liz and I took a delightful drive down to Lynchburg to get our history on without our less than historically inclined partners. Of course, associating that fair city with Rev. Falwell et al. is a natural tendency. However, the city fathers have really cleaned up the downtown nice. They are putting up lofts in old (and by old I mean Civil War Era) warehouses along the James River. There is an excellent historical tour of the Battle of Lynchburg. We bought the CD narrated by James Wobinson (Robinson for all us Yankees who can pronounce an "R" correctly) of Virginia Tech. The Battle of Lynchburg came right on the heels of the Battle of New Market, which Jalaila and I explored over Memorial Day.

It was a perfect day to drive through Lynchburg, which has a delightful pre-Civil War city center thanks to Jubal Early's bold defense of the city. However, the CD tour took us to some wonderfully quirky historical sites, which would never remind one of religious intolerance or bigotry. For instance, we visited the Sandusky House—yes, it is actually named after the city in Ohio where its builder was held captive by the First Nations of Ohio. (Apparently his six months in captivity were so delightful he decided to name his estate after it.) The house itself was only recently purchased by a historical foundation which is slowly but surely making it into a bona fide historicalic attraction. However, a visit now teaches one much more about how the "history" itself is made.

The house itself has a sign that says "Tours: Sunday 1-4 or by chance. Knock or ring the doorbell." The curator, a delightful man named Mr. Starbuck, welcomed us inside and gave us a lovely tour, showing us archeological items that had been recently dug up—they were still inside the standard issue archeological Kroger bag—and gave us a sneak preview of footage he shot for the house film on the Battle of Lynchburg (during which the house was used as the Union headquarters).

Continuing on the tour, we visited several other interesting spots, but the best was the City Cemetary, which contained the Potters Field—the indigent cemetary, the Confederate graveyard, a train station relocated from 20 miles north timber by timber, an exhibit on 19th century underwear, an exhibit on 19th century hearses, and several historic caskets. The last stop through the park was a lily pond located across from the location of one of the few bona fide Confederate Equine Hospitals. This particular hospital did research into the Great Glanders Epizootic (as opposed to Epidemic—"demos"="people," "zoon"="animal."

All in all, I'm looking forward to coming back to Lynchburg and riding my bike on the downtown bike trail, and possibly visiting Teej's cottage out at Poplar Forest.

positive, constructive ideas

Thanks to Nevsky for this movie. And, I probably should give a thanks to George Allen Jr. for enlivening our poker night discussing his crazy racial slurs.



For a thorough explanation of the event, we can turn to the Daily Press of Hampton Roads, VA.

The volunteer, a 20-year-old Fairfax County native of Indian descent named S.R. Sidarth, had been filming Allen last week at public appearances around the state for the Webb campaign. Sidarth said Allen should apologize for singling him out and calling him a name that sounded like "Macaca" at a campaign stop Friday.

Of course, all of this is meaningless without context. Daily Press, how nostalgic is George Allen for the "Old South?"

Allen once hung a Confederate flag in his home as part of what he described as a historical flag collection. As a young lawyer in Charlottesville, he once hung a noose in his law office, which he said was part of a collection of Western memorabilia. As governor in the mid-1990's, Allen issued a Confederate History Month proclamation that made no mention of slavery.

And last spring, Allen acknowledged a new revelation about his past when the liberal-leaning New Republic magazine unearthed a high school yearbook photo showing a young George Allen wearing a Confederate flag pin on his shirt collar.

It is truly tragic when your own racism comes out in the open by using a racial slur your staff throws freely around the office. Hmmm...how about the right-leaning editorial board of Charlottesville's own Daily Progress? Are they going to buck their party stripes by failing to justify the senator's comments?

“Let’s give a welcome to Macaca here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia,” Allen told the GOP campaign rally.

What’s wrong with Mr. Allen’s comments?

To start with, why is Mr. Allen saying “Welcome to America” to an American citizen from Fairfax County who is attending UVa?

Could it be because of the gentleman’s skin color?

Of course, Daily Kos points out that George Allen should have known better.

UPDATE: Atrios notes that "makak" (and variations) are recognized racial slurs aimed at North Africans. According to Wikipedia, Allen's mother is of European and Tunisian extraction.

Hmmm...so, we're saying that George Allen should have known better. As Nevksy opined tonight, "Ockham's Racist Razor" demands that either George Allen is a racist or a total idiot. Either way, do we want him representing us as our senator? If Jim Webb can't make political hay out of this, then he doesn't deserve to be elected senator.

αυτογνωσιςself-knowledge

So, I've learned several important things about myself today. Let's go in reverse chronological order. Last of all, Will Ferrell is within ½ an inch of my height (ish). I discovered this today, because I wanted to tell anyone who reads this—Joel and, maybe, Tom—that I really do look like Will Ferrell. Random undergrads at UVa tell me this all the time. That's why Jalaila said that I should do my facial hair like Ricky Bobby. So, as I was cutting my sideburns in NASCAR chic this morning, I realized that my right ear is slightly higher than my left. I could never get my sideburns even before, and now I know why, my face is lopsided. Why, God, why! At least I look like one of the most successful actors at portraying arrogant unself-critical man-children in America.

On top of that, I learned today that I can take the recycling to the McIntire Road Recycling Center on my bicycle. All I needed was a trash bag and two bungies. It wasn't nearly as heavy as carrying groceries home either. (By the way, I think that having two local government organizations acronymed almost exactly the same—RSWA and RWSA—is very confusing.) The only thing we use the car for anymore is driving up 29N, to go see movies like Talladega Nights.

eco dreams

So, I've been thinking a lot lately about our next car. Not that the Corolla is giving us any problems. I'm expecting it to take us to 2015. (This is very much like I fantasize about my next cell-phone. This will off course be some variety of smartphone, maybe something like this model.) Of course, one would expect hovercars to available by then. However, I'll settle for a more practical version of this car. I might even go back to buying Fords if they actually come out with a model like this.


All they have to do is lose the lame@$$ "reverse butterfly" doors and maybe add some of these new nanotech solar cells to the roof.

Of course, since our friends Mara and Doug are moving into co-housing, it has reinvigorated my imagination. I just thought that it would be really cool, instead of building a co-housing development out on a piece of land outside of town, why not build an apartment building right in the middle of a low-rent neighborhood (read, gentrification). In my imagination on the first two floors there would be parking garages, storage units, and a store front. The store front operator would get subsidized housing in the building, and the co-housing association would own a piece of property outside of the city where tenant farmers would receive subsidized housing in return for working the land and operating a CSA. The CSA could sell fresh produce out of the coffee shop/whatever store on the first floor. On the next floors would be common areas such as a laundry room, theater room, cafeteria and kitchen, work-out room, nursery or day care center, etc... Then, on top of this would be apartments which would use the used shower water to flush toilets. The whole building would be made out of energy-efficient or recycled materials. It would have energy efficient features throughout. On the roof, there would be a community garden and whatever rainwater wasn't collected in the green roof would also be used to flush toilets (especially on the top floor). There would be solar water heating on the top floor as well. Possibly there could be a wind farm and even solar cells for electricity. There would be a few outdoor spaces for hybrid electric plug-in vehicles with solar panels. These would be community cars. Okay, I'm done fantasizing, back to work.

the only white man in America

When Michael Moore proclaimed on TV Nation that he believed OJ didn't do it, he was probably the only white man in America to be willing to make that statement publicly. Of course, Moore has little to fear from the establishment. Even if they sent him to Gitmo, he could hunger strike for weeks before resembling a normally overweight person. Forget about Celebrity Fit Club, that would be the greatest thing to happen to him since the first secretary did her job and called security on him.

However, I would like to say that I believe Floyd Landis. Of course, this will open me up to charges of racism--Why didn't I defend O.J., Kobe Bryant, or Barry Bonds in their hour of need? I would suggest, though, that these allegations against Floyd Landis are quite incredible? In his own words...

"I put in more than 20,000 kilometers of training for the Tour. I won the Tour of California, Paris-Nice and the Tour de Georgia," Landis said. "I was tested eight times at the Tour de France, four times before that stage and three times after, including three blood tests.

"Only one came back positive. Nobody in their right mind would take testosterone just once. It doesn't work that way."

Of course, being presumed innocent until proven guilty never really worked, not even if one hired Johnny Cochran. However, Landis seems to be the only one making sense. Floyd, tell us more.

"I don't know exactly what the truth is," Landis said on NBC's Today show. "The problem here, though, from the beginning was the fact that the people doing the testing didn't follow their own rules and their own protocols and made this public before I had a chance to figure out what was going on, and I was forced in the press to make comments before I could get educated on this."

Of course, I may be backing the wrong horse on this one, but if Floyd is wrong, then I don't want to be right. What I mean is if he's lying he deserved what he gets, but it just doesn't make any sense. It's the most ridiculous allegation of doping I've ever heard, and I hope that at some point we learn why and how it was made.

The greatest website ever

So, thanks to Snotty's ever-loving links, I discovered a website that quite possibly holds the greatest appeal ever to my tastes in the sheer minutiary legalism of grammar. Of course, don't try and find the link directly, but I like to think of the web as one giant scavenger hunt wherein every single human on earth with an internet connection is leaving clues, but there is no agreement whatsoever as to where the scavenger hunt concludes.

However, I'd like to put in a good word for this website. (Thank you Wait, Wait and Language Log!)