Further, McDonnell is statistically tied with Deeds among women, a traditional bulwark for Democrats. Deeds has tried to invigorate female voters by spotlighting portions of the thesis in which McDonnell, among other things, criticized working women as a threat to families. McDonnell now disavows such views.

Deeds’ attacks on McDonnell apparently have backfired, with the Democrat’s unfavorable rating, at 42 percent, exceeding his favorable score. McDonnell has a 51 percent favorable rating.

The Times-Dispatch Poll suggests that Deeds might not have been helped by President Barack Obama’s visit to Norfolk a week before the election.

The appearance, which roughly coincided with the poll, was intended to drive up support for Deeds among Obama’s key constituents, including African-Americans. However, the poll shows that black support for Deeds, at 82 percent, is virtually unchanged from early October. Deeds also is slipping in Hampton Roads, site of the Obama visit and McDonnell’s home base.

A bad omen for Creigh is that High Chancellor Barry O himself couldn’t boost the floundering campaign’s numbers. If the numbers ring true at the polls, this is going to be a blowout election.

Good riddance.

This is one Mr. Deeds who apparently isn’t going to town. The collapse of the Democratic campaign for governor of Virginia speaks volumes – chapters, anyway – about what the body politic is trying to tell Barack Obama’s Democrats.

They’re learning, painfully, that campaigning without George W. Bush is baffling, frustrating and scary. Worse, it offers a preview of what the congressional campaigning will be like next year. One Obama doorbell ringer, working neighborhoods in Northern Virginia for Creigh Deeds, says even the promise of free pizza can’t lure faithful Democrats to a rally.

For weeks, The Washington Post, the house organ of the national Democratic Party, pounded away at Bob McDonnell, the Republican nominee, for having written politically incorrect term papers in graduate school, citing his master’s thesis, which decried abortion, gender-bending and radical feminism, as proof that he doesn’t like women very much.

Only a month ago, Mr. Deeds, the Post’s horse in the race, wouldn’t talk about anything but the McDonnell graduate-school thesis – maybe a boon to master’s and doctoral candidates who can’t get anybody but a professor to read their wit and wisdom, but, as it turns out, a bore to voters in Virginia. The public-opinion polls continue to show Mr. McDonnell ahead, despite all the Post’s ineffective deeds, and with a lengthening lead.

…

Bill Clinton, accustomed to speaking to cheering thousands at a hundred grand a pop, was dispatched the other night to a Deeds rally to set the throng on fire with one of his late-October stumpwallopers. The rally, such as it was, was held not at an arena or a hotel – not even a Motel 6 – but in a campaign office in the Washington suburbs. The “throng” was counted in the dozens, about the size of a PTA meeting. Not even Bubba could dispel the gloom of a wake.

“These polls are either accurate, or they’re not,” he said, delivering an insight worthy of a Harvard political science professor. “So are the polls right? The answer is yes, no, and maybe.” But what else could he say? Dispatched for mortuary duty, Bubba could only sympathize with the preacher called on to say something nice over the grave of the town bootlegger.

…

Mr. Deeds’ friends are bitter about the anonymous voices peddling the discouraging word from the White House. “These ‘anonymous voices’ have decided those hard-working [down-ballot candidates] are just collateral damage in their effort to tell the world that if [Mr.] Deeds doesn’t win, it is because he ignored advice,” Paul Goldman, a former chairman of the Virginia Democratic Party, tells Politico, the Washington politics daily. “This isn’t change we can believe in, but the same old, same old we voted out of office. Do they really believe their attempts to shield the president from blame is going to distract [Mr.] Obama’s critics, much less change the arc of today’s politics?”

Of course it won’t, and that’s what makes the Virginia race so scary for the president’s men. Voters will use whatever club is available to “send a message,” and sometimes, as any number of polls could tell you, the club is big, rough and means business.

Gosport Conersative, a contributor to Bearing Drift, recently made a post saying that the Deeds event with Czar Obama is a flop. He posted a picture (below) of how 50-100 McDonnell-ites have outnumbered Deeds’ people with signs 3 to 1 along Hampton Blvd.  Check here for more picture updates later tonight.

Governor: Bob McDonnell (+7)
Lt. Governor: Bill Bolling (+5)
Attorney General: Ken Cuccinelli (+8)

House of Delegates:

SurveyUSA Poll
Bob McDonnell +17 (58 to 41)
Bill Bolling +14 (56 to 42)
Ken Cuccinelli +16 (57 to 41)

Public Policy Polling
Bob McDonnell +15 (55 to 40)
Bill Bolling +12 (50 to 38)
Ken Cuccinelli +16 (52 to 36)

As a local McDonnell radio ad said, “Deeds has no plan.” I’d like to add “Deeds has no chance.”

The two main issues over the next term will undoubtedly be jump starting the economy and fixing transportation:

With McDonnell in the Governor’s mansion, the emphasis will (obviously and as his campaign has repeatedly stated) be on limiting rates of business and individual taxation in order to stimulate the economy, get people spending again, and creating new industry and jobs in the Commonwealth.  While most confidence needs to be regained at the national level, I think that McDonnell (being a businessman, among many other things) can instill the confidence in business to bring many a company to Virginia over the next four years…at least, much moreso than Deeds could.  This recession won’t last forever and as long as McDonnell keeps Virginia on the leading edge of industry, cuts the budget, doesn’t drive us deeper into debt like the two previous Democratic Governor’s have, then voter will most definitely have more confidence to vote R in 2011 and on.

The other key to Republican victory is fixing transportation.  Since Kaine gutted HB3202 way back when and then SCOVA ruled it partly unconstitutional, no one has delved to create a driving coalition that fixes the state’s transportation needs.  I don’t see a re-hash of 3202 coming around any time soon, since that would merely create more government to get in the way and only add to the problem.  The solution is obviously going to be a stable, equal basis of revenue with proportional allotments and perhaps locally based revenue sources (like ports and airports) going to fund the excess and much-needed projects in Northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads area.  But the key won’t really be in what we do to fix it, but how we do it.

The main thing, at least for a continued Republican victory, will be in the strategy they encompass to solve the problem.  McDonnell has experience with bipartisan support (again…much more so than Deeds has) and will be able to potentially garner a few votes for a plan to pass in the Senate. Bolling could help the Republicans out there as well if a tie vote should happen.  However, mere compromise won’t regain a GOP Senate majority. The House GOP and Governor McDonnell will need to propose a plan to solve transportation right off the bat that is very Republican-principled in nature…in other words, one that will be tough for a D to sign their name to and then go back home after the legislative session.  After that, either Democrats will get on board for fear of voter backlash in 2011 or not sign on and, quite frankly, be doomed in their next race.

With that said, hopes are high that:
1) government will spend far, far less
2) transportation will become a top priority
3) redistricting will sway some seats towards the R persuasion
and 4) the Virginia GOP will grab a few more seats the next go ’round.

Bob McDonnell

Washington Times
Sun Gazette Arlington
Sun Gazette (McLean, Vienna, Oakton and Great Falls)
News & Messenger (Prince William County)
Daily Press (Newport News)
The Winchester Star (no longer a working link)
Loudoun Times-Mirror
Harrisonburg Daily News-Record
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star

Creigh Deeds

Washington Post
The Roanoke Times
Virginian Pilot

As a young Army lieutenant stationed in Germany, Bob McDonnell made the Guinness Book of World Records.

He organized his hospital unit to carry a 120-pound woman on a stretcher on a record-breaking trek — 93.4 miles in 32 hours.

Thirty-two years later, McDonnell is doing a different kind of heavy lifting, as he seeks to break Democrats’ eight-year hold on Virginia’s governorship.

Since word surfaced seven weeks ago of his controversial graduate-school thesis, McDonnell has sought to focus the campaign on jobs creation in an economy battered by a deep recession.

That strategy appears to be working. Recent polls show McDonnell with enough of a lead over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds, a state senator from Bath County, that he is cautioning supporters against overconfidence.

“I’ve told my staff to forget the polls,” McDonnell said in a recent interview in Verona, at a picnic sponsored by U.S. Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte, R-6th.

“We’ve got a hard-working opponent. We are opposed by President Obama and Tim Kaine,” the governor and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, “who have considerable resources. The only way we are going to win is to stay focused on our message and do an absolutely A-plus get-out-the-vote effort.”

. . .

On the campaign trail, the former attorney general is cool and unflappable, traveling the state in a Ford Expedition with a McD4VA license plate.

In his trademark button-down shirt and khakis, he moves slowly through a crowd, pausing to shake hands and make conversation with each prospective voter. He also exhibits a keen sense of humor.

In February, during a dinner with reporters who cover state politics, McDonnell poked fun at one of his formative political alliances. He said he was so worried about the Democrats’ media coverage and fundraising that he “called Pat Robertson and asked if he could direct a hurricane” to their Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner.

McDonnell, 55, caught a break in his quest for governor when Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling decided not to challenge him for the Republican nomination, but instead run for re-election.

It wasn’t the first time good fortune blessed McDonnell’s family. In 1912, according to family lore, one of McDonnell’s grandfathers got sick and missed a voyage — on the Titanic.

McDonnell was born in Philadelphia but grew up in the Mount Vernon area of Fairfax County. A Roman Catholic, he attended Bishop Ireton High School, where he played wide receiver and defensive back for the football team.

In November 1971, McDonnell’s Bishop Ireton squad faced off against the undefeated T.C. Williams High School powerhouse team memorialized in the film “Remember the Titans.”

Ireton lost 26-8, but McDonnell scored his team’s only points, on a 63-yard touchdown reception and a two-point conversion.

Scott O’Brien, quarterback on the Bishop Ireton team, says McDonnell was a “tough and feisty” football player. When he scored the two-point conversion against T.C. Williams, McDonnell “was hit so hard that he vomited on the sidelines, but he was back in the game on the next play,” O’Brien said. “He probably didn’t weigh 150 pounds dripping wet.”

Now a high school administrator in Myrtle Beach, S.C., O’Brien also remembers McDonnell’s sense of humor.

“He had a nickname for everyone,” O’Brien said. McDonnell called O’Brien “Sonny” after Washington Redskins quarterback Sonny Jurgensen.

“He had great people skills,” O’Brien said of McDonnell. “Everybody congregated around him.”

. . .

McDonnell received an ROTC scholarship to the University of Notre Dame, where he earned a degree in management.

He spent 21 years in the Army, 4½ years on active duty and the rest in the Army Reserve. He retired as a lieutenant colonel.

While in the Army, he attended night school at Boston University and received a master’s degree in business administration.

Out of the Army, he went to work for American Hospital Supply. He managed operations in Atlanta, Chicago and Kansas City. By 1985, the hospital-supply industry was hit by turmoil and McDonnell’s GI Bill benefits were about to expire.

McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, a former Washington Redskins cheerleader, decided to return to Virginia and make their home in Virginia Beach.

They had come to like the area while he was stationed at Fort Eustis in Newport News. McDonnell also was attracted by Regent University, then called CBN University after founder Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network.

“I had gone to a Catholic school as a kid and to Notre Dame as an undergraduate,” McDonnell said. “I liked the fact that Regent was focused on values and ethics, also that the public-policy area was focused on looking at the traditions and history that our Founders brought to the nation. I was particularly interested in the Judeo-Christian traditions of America.”

McDonnell studied public policy and communications and then added a major in law the next year when the university opened a law school.

In 1988, McDonnell got a summer internship on Capitol Hill working with the Republican Policy Committee led by Rep. Jerry Lewis of California.

Although the GI Bill paid for McDonnell’s graduate-school tuition, he held several jobs to help support his family, which had grown to include three daughters. Among the jobs, he worked in sales for The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk.

In 1989, McDonnell submitted his 93-page master’s thesis, titled “The Republican Party’s Vision for the Family: The Compelling Issue of the Decade.”

Deeds has seized upon the document, terming it demeaning to working women. In campaign stops and television ads, the Democrat has hammered McDonnell, saying the thesis crystallized a brand of social conservatism that is out of touch with Virginia values.

In much of the thesis, McDonnell explored the tension between what he saw as a governmental interest in preserving the traditional family and the Republican tenet of limited government.

Forty pages in, McDonnell criticized the notion of additional tax credits for child care.

“Further expenditures would be used to subsidize a dynamic new trend of working women and feminists that is ultimately detrimental to the family by entrenching a status-quo of non-parental primary nurture of children.”

McDonnell says he has discarded the view, arguing now that the contributions of women are important to the workplace and politics. He cites, among other things, his eldest daughter’s career in the Army. She is a combat veteran of Iraq who now works for a high-tech defense contractor.

He says that as governor he would hire on merit and that he did so as attorney general, pointing out that half of the deputy attorneys general he appointed were women.

. . .

Out of law school in 1989, McDonnell was hired as an assistant prosecutor in Virginia Beach. There, he became interested in politics.

“I thought victims weren’t treated very well and criminals were let off too easily,” he said.

In 1991, Kenneth W. Stolle, then the Republican Party chairman in Virginia Beach, was seeking Republicans to run for General Assembly seats.

He recruited McDonnell, who knocked off Democrat Glenn B. McClanan, who had held the House of Delegates seat since 1972. Stolle also ran for office and won a state Senate seat.

“We won the seats going door-to-door,” McDonnell said. “We had very little money. We outworked them. I only raised about $23,000.”

Because of his prosecutorial experience, McDonnell spent his first few years in the House of Delegates introducing law-and-order bills.

He also sponsored social legislation, including several anti-abortion bills. Rising swiftly through the ranks, he became chairman of the House Courts of Justice Committee and became a co-sponsor of then-Gov. George Allen’s welfare-reform bill and a bill to abolish parole.

Running the courts panel “takes a lot of patience and a lot of attention to detail,” said Del. David B. Albo, R-Fairfax, who succeeded McDonnell as committee chairman.

“I’ve never seen him lose his temper,” he said. “I think it’s his military background.”

. . .

By 2005, McDonnell was running for attorney general. He defeated Deeds by 360 votes in the closest statewide election in Virginia’s history.

It was not until a recount was finished on Christmas Eve 2005 that he was declared the winner.

“It was a tough time,” McDonnell said. “My daughter [Jeanine] had just left for Iraq five weeks before Election Day. On Election Night I was ahead by 3,200 votes, but by the next day it was down to 1,500 votes.”

Marla Graff Decker, who served as deputy attorney general for public safety under McDonnell and holds the same job under his successor, Bill Mims, said she was impressed by the way McDonnell “went native” when he became attorney general.

“They took the time to learn about the office and the agencies that we serve,” she said. “They spent a lot of time walking the floors getting to know people, the ins and outs of this office.”

As attorney general, McDonnell cracked down on drunken drivers, drug dealers, identity theft and child sexual predators. McDonnell said the General Assembly passed 83 of the 94 legislative proposals made by his office.

He resigned in February to run for governor.

Whoever is elected governor will take office at a time when state revenue is likely to continue to fall. Kaine, as governor, has had to cut $7 billion in state spending since April 2007 because of declining tax revenue.

“I am hopeful that within a year this economy turns around and we will be back at a reasonable budget,” McDonnell said. “I don’t want to have to face four years when I only have to think about what I am going to cut.”

The governor, who under Virginia law cannot serve consecutive terms, should function as the chief executive officer of a major corporation, with a $75 billion biennial budget and 105,000 employees, he continued.

“You’ve got to have vision, you’ve got to be a leader, you’ve got to be decisive, and you have to make sure that the people that drive state government are taken care of.

“I realize that you’ve got a very short time to make a difference.”

Let’s start with the preamble:

“We the People  of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

To me, the preamble is the shining example of Lincoln’s phrase “of the poeple, by the poeple, for the people.”

The founding fathers, representing the whole population of the colonies, felt to need to establish a “more perfect” union.  The fact that they had just fought a war against an ages-old oppressor and won led to the fact that there was, indeed, a union already in place, albeit technically a confederation a colonies.

The purpose of this union is clear and specific: to provide for fair and swift justice, keep all citizens safe from enemies foreign and domestic, take care of country as a whole, and secure the trapping of liberty.  In recent days, some have misconstrued this phrase to mean that majority must suffer to take care of the few.  In my opinion, it’s quite the opposite…the minority must sacrifice for the good of the whole.  Promoting general welfare (the good of the country) is something far different from promoting individual welfare.

The purpose is to provide a grounding, a floor, a stable support for any and every individual to secure justice, safety, and liberty.  Nothing less, nothing more.

Alienating his base. He’s already begun to do it with his comments about Virginia maybe opting out of the ‘public option’ in the health care bill attempting to move through Congress.  He will continue to do so with idiotic comments like that which will fail to turnout his base on Election Day.

Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Deeds has failed to do any rural stumping anywhere other than his district (Bath/Alleghany/Rockbridge).  Instead, he’s gravitating towards the swing suburbs of northern Virginia and attempting to grab those votes from McDonnell.  He’s banking that, in addition to the votes he can garner in the NoVA suburbs and just the Ds in general across the Commonwealth, rural Virginia will support him in droves.  Well, rural Virginia doesn’t support someone they never see.  I doubt he’ll see the turnout for him in rural areas either on ED.

Being lame. Watching Deeds during a debate is like watching a train wreck in slow motion…a stuttering, stammering train wreck that reference FactCheck.org every 7 seconds.  Generally, Deeds just isn’t a candidate that everyone (socialites, laymen, intellectuals, youth) can get behind. McDonnell is.  Southern comfort only gets you so far.  Deeds has no substantive policy stances except for exponential increases in spending and taxes and is finding that most of his party is hesitant to support him and most that did are now dropping like flies.

So, in conclusion, Deeds’ campaign is doomed and there’s really nothing he can do about it.  I only see it getting worse over the next week and a half.

PPP’s Oct. 16-19 survey gives him a 12 point advantage over Dirty Deeds. PPP’s survey three weeks ago had McDonnell up by just five points.  SurveyUSA also has McDonnell up by an overwhelming number of 19 points…the highest so far if I’m not mistaken.

Deeds continues to be hampered by a high unfavorable rating at 48 percent in the SurveyUSA poll and his only leg to stand on at this point is the Washington Post.  He’s losing supporters daily with his comments that alienate the only votes he probably had. I guess the best ally is a dumb opponent.

The fact that endorsements are flipping and poll numbers are surging for McDonnell lends well to the fact that Deeds’ campaign is the textbook definition of what one would call a “lame duck” candidate. Heck, Barry O won’t even touch come off his ivory tower in Washington to lend a hand.  What an epic fail.

But keep your eyes peeled over the next 11 days because “with desperate times come desperate Deeds.”

No…I didn’t fly away in a balloon.

No…I didn’t die.

I know I haven’t posted in a while. It was mixture of vacation/connectivity issues/work. Hope you like the new theme…it’s a work not yet finished. New posts to come daily from now until Election Day.

This is just another vile attempt by Deeds’ struggling campaign to sling some mud and attempt to label McDonnell more of than he actually is and pick off some of the swing voters.

The truth is that it’s not working how they expected it in the least bit. While his paper at a right-wing religious university may have contained some items stemming from the tumultuous times, with divorce rising and welfare beginning to burden the economy, and from the pressure of mixing faith with education, most of it is no more than that…mere words.

McDonnell has refuted most of the items on that thesis and has (rightly) stated that his tangible political record has more than made up for simple words in a paper written 20 years ago. McDonnell held a conference call earlier today and Riley at Virtucon has a great outline of the call posted.

The Democrats are quick to tell you otherwise though. Tim Kaine stated earlier today that the thesis was an “accurate reflection” of McDonnell’s views.  He also said it “raises serious questions about his plan for Virginia if elected.”  Additionally, both Deeds and Kaine have called into question McDonnell’s 20-year old views on contraception, women in the workplace, and gays and furthermore the Democrats would have you believe that McDonnell is “backpeddling”.

However, what they both fail to point out that Kaine shares those same views on life, death and marriage and Deeds voted the same as McDonnell 98% of the time while they both served in the legislature.  Sounds like they’re both grasping at straws at this point in their failing political careers.  The only good thing is that both wont be in public office a year from now.

But, quite frankly, I’ve had just about enough of the bullcrap that Democrats are full of.

If I do recall, during the two presidential terms from 2000-2008, the Democrats did nothing except hound on the smallest of mistakes by the Bush administration.

Now with the tables turned in 2009 and the Democrats in power, they can’t take ANY criticism on their unpopular socialized proposals.

They can’t stand that the Republican party and interested parties in the healthcare debate have used the same tactics and like resources as Obama used to gain the White House to kill healthcare reform.  They can’t stand that grassroots demonstrators across the country have turned socialized medicine on it’s head and essentially made the country mad at Democrats.

Now the interesting thing is to watch a Democrat when you back him into a corner.  It’s like a cat that will gnaw and claw and say just about anything to get out of that position. Just among the few insane things they’re throwing out there are that these people at town halls are staged and that bills being introduced in Congress don’t have specifics like death panels, government takeover of healthcare, and rationing of healthcare.  They believe it won’t raise the deficit even though the CBO says it will.

From comments on CNN article attempting to fact check the failing plan and numerous Dem blogs, apparently people’s opinions on healthcare and such are just a concealed way to say “get rid of the black President.”  The fact that people even believe that is just insane.  They will label and attempt to spin anything towards racism.  Don’t like healthcare? You’re racist.  Don’t want Obama in the White House? You’re racist.  Have doubts about where Barack was born? You’re a racist. Think the stimulus was wasted money and has done nothing to help our economic status? You’re a racist.  Watching their party self-destruct from in the inside out over such an unpopular issue is funny as hell.

This is hypocrisy at it’s best.  The Dems are just turning into zealots for a lost cause and the end game will be Barack NOT sitting in the Oval Office in 1252 days from now. How glorious.

Section 1233 authorizes advanced care planning consultations for senior citizens on Medicare every five years, and more often “if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual … or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility… or a hospice program.” During those consultations, practitioners must explain “the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice,” and the government benefits available to pay for such services.

Section 102 states “Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1.” and, even further, “Subject to paragraph (3) and except as required by law, the issuer does not change any of its terms or conditions, including benefits and cost-sharing, from those in effect as of the day before the first day of Y1.” This means you can keep your coverage if you have it on Day 1 of this bill passing, but after that you can’t change, modify, switch, or sign up for a new policy. What a load.

My suggestion:

Go here and copy the text of H.R. 3200, the healthcare reform bill.

Then, email the full text to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Sheila Jackson Leigh being on the phone while a cancer survivor asks her about death panels.

BeeBopp Obama and the Ds generally failing in general and the country starting to hate them.

This commentator at NBC.com couldn’t have put it better regarding the supposed guy outside of a town hall meeting that was “a rightwing activist”…

This man was a plant. He will disappear soon after the point is made… (That how they do ya’ll ! Remember the townhall “doctor” that turned out to be not a doctor, but a Soetero operative? Really, do they think we are that dumb?) Many, if not most, of the posters here expressing outrage about “racism” and being appalled over death threats are ACORN, and SEIU part time employees, paid to deluge websites with scripted posts–timed after each of these events. It’s all part of a very well funded, “community organized” propaganda effort to dismantle our system, encourage division among Americans, and drain us of every last tax dollar. The problem for Soetero and Co. is that the taxpayers have had enough of their corruption and the lies of the complicit media and are pushing back. Mr. Soetero and his monied handlers are facing the unexpected opposition of informed, concerned AMERICANS who love their republic and their Constitution and are tired of seeing it ignored while our “dear leader” feasts on lobster and Wagyu beef, and personally enriches himself and his henchmen with our hard earned money. Anyone who loves their way of life must challenge every leftist statement, every dirty politician, every misleading reporter and editor. Keep the pressure on! Don’t let up! Don’t ever quit, or these statist gangsters will steal everything–even the future prosperity of your children.

1. People are trading in older rarely used cars for cars they are FAR more likely to drive more, faster, longer…thus offsetting the emissions savings the program was supposed to achieve…not to mention it barely makes a dent in our total emissions.
2. So much for American car makers.  The top 10 “clunkers” are American made and cheaper, foreign cars are the ones being purchased.
3. Barack Obama is an idiot.

Unlike me, Not Larry Sabato has been relentlessly posting in an attempt to sling mud at the McDonnell camp and make it stick.  His beef is with a Confederate flag at a gun show in Richmond that happened to be next to the McDonnell table.

It’s sad how low NLS will stoop to make up, spin, and inflate stories just to gain readers. I, for one, read his blog for amusement and a good laugh at how idiotic and so inherently wrong one individual can actually be.

To rebut this story, I’d like to point out the number one fact that people should realize…we live in Virginia. Less than 150 years ago, that flag was flying from the capital building and the capital of the entire Southern world was right here in our current state capital.

Second, the flag was NEXT to the McDonnell table and not associated with the McDonnell table or even brought by or put up by the McDonnell volunteers.

Third, you were at a gun show…what do you expect, Nigel Pennington III flying the Union Jack?

In case there are some unedumacated people reading this, its common fact the Civil War started out over states’ rights…in general, as did the revolutionary nearly a century before.  Slavery was placed at the forefront of the war by Lincoln to rally Union troops behind one, clear, cultural cause to fight for.

Ever since, it seems as if a stigmata has been placed on the ‘ole Stars & Bars to the point where anybody flying it these days is a racist.  Well I, for one, cannot stand idiots who think this way.  As one of NLS’ commentators noted, a person at the table where the flag was being flown was wearing a shirt that said “Heritage, Not Hate.”  People fail to understand that flag represents a long line of family history, cultural heritage, and governmental ideologies for many people across the southern United States.

While I understand the flag may be a sore subject for most people of color in today’s society, does the fact that some call the people flying it “rednecks” not make those people, in turn, just as racist as the supposed “racists” flying the flag?

I can almost guarantee you that if you were to ask “Why do you fly the Rebel flag?”, then 9 out of 10 people would respond, “I’m from the South.” and not “I hate everyone that’s not like me.”  My belief that the flag is a sign of heritage and has been mistakenly labeled as a symbol of oppression and I think that most people that fly it would agree.

I hope people that read this will actually thoughtfully think this issue through and clearly analyze the facts before coming to a decision unlike NLS who beats it down until people just get annoyed with the story and jumps to conjecture and operates on assumptions. What a joke.

• Page 16 : States that if you have insurance at the time of the bill becoming law and change, you will be required to take a similar plan. If that is not available, you will be required to take the gov option!
• Page 22 : Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!
• Page 29 : Admission: your health care will be rationed!
• Page 30 : A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)
• Page 42 : The “Health Choices Commissioner” will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.
• Page 50 : All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.
• Page 58 : Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.
• Page 59 : The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.
• Page 65 : Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (example: SEIU, UAW and ACORN)
• Page 72 : All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange.
• Page 84 : All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)
• Page 91 : Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens
• Page 95 : The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.
• Page 102 : Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.
• Page 124 : No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No “judicial review” is permitted against the govern ment monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed.
• Page 127 : The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages.
• Page 145 : An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives.
• Page 126 : Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families.
• Page 149 : Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll
• Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2 to 6% tax on payroll
• Page 167 : Any individual who doesn’t have acceptable healthcare (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income.
• Page 170 : Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them).
• Page 195 : Officers and employees of Government Healthcare Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records.
• Page 203 : “The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax.” (Yes, it really says that.)
• Page 239 : Bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors and the poor most affected.”
• Page 241 : Doctors: no matter what specialty you have, you’ll all be paid the same (thanks, AMA!)
• Page 253 : Government sets value of doctors’ time, their professional judgment, etc.
• Page 265 : Government mandates and controls productivity for private healthcare industries.
• Page 268 : Government regulates rental and purchase of power-driven wheelchairs.
• Page 272 : Cancer patients: welcome to the wonderful world of rationing!
• Page 280 : Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions.
• Page 298 : Doctors: if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government.
• Page 317 : Doctors: you are now prohibited for owning and investing in healthcare companies!
• Page 318 : Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval.
• Page 321 : Hospital expansion hinges on “community” input: in other words, yet another payoff for ACORN.
• Page 335 : Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing.
• Page 341 : Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs, etc.
• Page 354 : Government will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS in dividual s.
• Page 379 : More bureaucracy: Telehealth Advisory Committee (healthcare by phone).
• Page 425 : More bureaucracy: Advance Care Planning Consult: Senior Citizens, assisted suicide, euthanasia?
• Page 425 : Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. Mandatory. Appears to lock in estate taxes ahead of time.
• Page 425 : Government provides approved list of end-of-life resources, guiding you in death.
• Page 427 : Government mandates program that orders end-of-life treatment; government dictates how your life ends.
• Page 429 : Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patient’s health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT.
• Page 430 : Government will decide what level of treatments you may have at end-of-life.
• Page 469 : Community-based Home Medical Services: more payoffs for ACORN.
• Page 472 : Payments to Community-based organizations: more payoffs for ACORN.
• Page 489 : Government will cover marriage and family therapy. Government intervenes in your marriage.
• Page 494 : Government will cover mental health services: defining, creating and rationing those services.

MCDONNELL LEADING BY 14
BOLLING LEADING BY 14
CUCCINELLI LEADING BY 13

This is a sure fire shot in the heart for an already struggling Creigh Deeds, a defensive Jody Wagner, and a foresight-lacking Steve Shannon.