NLS provides the full letter from Cooch, which among other things, promises that “[t]ogether, we can and will defeat the socialist legislation and prove that it is an unconstitutional overreach of Federal power.” If that doesn’t get your blood racing, not to mention your hand reaching for your credit card to donate to Cuccinelli for Attorney General, I don’t know what will! 🙂
h/t: The Richmonder and Not Larry Sabato
I think Bill Maher speaks for most of us today when he says, “Every asshole who ever chanted ‘Drill Baby Drill’ should have to report to the Gulf Coast today for cleanup duty.”
Oh, and let me just add: f*** you Sarah Palin!
Finally, just remember, if “drill baby drill” (or should we call it “spill baby spill?”) afficionados like Bob McDonnell gets his way, the following photos could be coming to the Virginia coastline sometime in coming years. Let’s all tell him, “no thank you!”
UPDATE: According to Reuters, “White House says no offshore drilling will be allowed in new areas until review of oil spill off La. coast.” Great, but how about offshore drilling in current areas using similar types of drilling equipment and techniques, such as failing to use acoustic valves as part of blowout preventers, as is done in other parts of the world? Oh, and how about we make getting off of oil our #1 priority? Until we do, disasters like this will happen again and again. Needless to say, that is completely unacceptable.
Several dozen Fairfax City Democrats gathered at PJ Skidoo’s on Route 29 for their annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner.
Keynote speaker Brian Kennedy, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Congressional & Intergovernmental Affairs, shows off GDP growth under the Obama Administration.
More below the flip. Big versions here.
Elliot Benham of Burke after singing for the crowd.
State Sen. Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax)
Rep. Gerry Connolly
Teddy Goodson examines her raffle winnings–four lottery tickets netting her $10.
Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA) poses with some Fairfax City Democrats.
A daughter of Virginia, Dorothy Height, was laid to rest today. Born in 1912 in Richmond, Dr. Height, after moving with her family to Pennsylvania, was admitted to Barnard College after winning a four-year Elks scholarship in an oratory contest. She was denied the right to register for classes because the college had a policy of admitting only two black students each year. She didn’t give up. Instead, she went to New York University with her Barnard letter of acceptance.
Height ended up attending New York University, earning both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. Dr. Height first worked as a caseworker for the welfare department in New York City. Later, she became active in the YWCA. In 1957, she was named president of the National Council of Negro Women, a position she held for forty years.
Height was at the side of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the March on Washington in 1963. During the 1960’s, Height organized “Wednesdays in Mississippi,” meetings that brought together black and white women to work for peaceful change.
At her funeral mass, held today at the National Cathedral in Washington, President Obama said, “The lesson she would want us to leave with today – a lesson she lived out each and every day – is that we can all be first in service We can all be drum majors for a righteous cause. So let us live out that lesson.”
Dr. Height was immensely important in the fight for civil rights and women’s rights, but it is a tribute to her grace and lack of ego that few Americans today recognize her name. However, her list of accomplishments is long and varied.
As an executive of the YWCA, she oversaw the integration of its facilities in the 1940’s in areas outside the South. She was a founding leader of the National Women’s Political Caucus. She fought beside the leaders of the civil rights movement to fight lynching in the South, to gain the right to vote for all Americans, and to integrate America’s public facilities – from schools to buses to college classrooms.
Some have speculated that Dorothy Height remained relatively unknown because she had to fight through her life a double discrimination, as a black and as a woman. I don’t disagree with that.
After the victories that changed the face of America forever, Dorothy Height finally received her due. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton in 1994. President George W. Bush awarded her the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.
Today, the first African-American President of the United States gave a eulogy for Dorothy Height at National Cathedral. She lived to see that dream fulfilled. Indeed, she was an honored guest on the dais as President Obama took the oath of office last January.
What you believe is behind the extremist AZ immigration “reform” bill is only the half of it. The more obvious reasons (ramped-up fear, xenophobia, ignorance, and chaotic current immigration law) are of grave concern. But I will leave my discussion of those causes for tomorrow. For now, please suspend your disbelief for a moment as I tell you about some real reporting, the kind few American journalists do anymore, at least not in the corporate media. You see, Jan Brewer has been at the heart of a massive voter disenfranchisement effort. Greg Palast reports that it also turns out that Brewer is the Katherine Harris of AZ. She did much damage as Sec of State. Now she’s in charge altogether. Had Janet Napolitano been there she would have vetoed the bill. We know this because she did so, at least twice. But the President named her to head DHS. The rest is history.
(The vote suppression tale is below the fold.)
First a necessary aside: Although immigration reform is necessary, there is also the rather untidy fact that without the bill, police around the state of AZ, who encounter undocumented persons while solving crimes, do turn them over to the border patrol, whence persons must deal with ICE.
Let me pause here and ask a simple question: Can you immediately, as in right now, prove that you are a US citizen? Are you in the habit of carrying your birth certificate and/or passport with you at all times? If you immigrated to the US, the documentation is far more complex. Do you have the bundle with you at all times? Do you have the pile of documents from international adoption on your person at all times that you and your child are in public? If you do, it would be risky because you cannot afford to lose these documents. Should you lose them, your life could quickly become a living hell. The sheer audacity of this bill is staggering. Only despotic regimes do this to their citizens. (Remember that when Jan Brewer thinks, in her delusions, that she should be president.)
No, what this bill is about isn’t just about immigration “reform,” but rather creating a climate of fear among brown-skinned people. It’s designed to make even, and probably especially, US citizens with brown skin to be afraid to be in public, register to vote or actually exercise their right to vote.
Rewind to Jan Brewer. Beginning in 2004, this governor, who claims God put her in this position (does this sound familiar?) unjustly dropped 100,000 voters from the voting rolls. By 2005, according to research by reporter Greg Palast, one in every three Phoenix residents, mostly Hispanics, found themselves disenfranchised–unjustly dropped from the voter roles. (Palast, by the way, has done some of the best reporting anywhere on the dirty election tricks of Republicans against Democratic voters.)
Now, if someone registered illegally, the names must be turned over to the federal government. Funny thing is that Jan Brewer did not turn over a single name. That’s because she had none. She was just dropping (mostly) Democrats from the voting rolls. The name David Iglesias is familiar to most of you. He was the federal prosecutor ordered to find “evidence” of voting fraud and prosecute people guilty of such. Despite an extensive investigation, he could not find a single person to prosecute. And so he was fired by GWB’s inJustice Dept. Welcome to Jim Crow 21st Century.
So here we are. Many American are rightly outraged at what AZ has done. But, as I said, many AZ residents don’t know the half of it. I have told you the underlying half. I will address the rest in Part 2 tomorrow.
And here’s a post script: Given Karl Rove’s alleged involvement in the vote suppression tactics I have discussed, it is rich that he now thinks Brewer’s bill is unfortunate. “I wish they hadn’t passed it in a way,” he said. In a way, indeed. It’s unfortunate because it may put the spotlight on him and what the GOP did. Remember the name: David Iglesias. And, do not forget what Jan Brewer did.
Click on the image for the full letter from the Jewish Federation communities of the Commonwealth. The key paragraph, blasting Bob McDonnell’s reversal of nondenominational requirements for State Police chaplains.
“It leads us toward unnecessary religious clashes, demeans our Commonwealth’s Jeffersonian principles and creates an unwelcoming environment for the Commonwealth’s Jewish citizens and other religious minorities,” six representatives of the groups wrote. “A final concern is the likelihood that revisiting this guidance would ultimately lead to litigation costly to our Commonwealth.”
Once again, Bob McDonnell proves that he is at least as interested in pushing his divisive, Pat Robertson-inspired social agenda on Virginia, rather than focusing laser-like on jobs, jobs, jobs. And that’s not even taking his “bad cop,” Attorney General Ken Kookinelli, into account. As always, elections have consequences. Unfortunately, in this case, those consequences are largely bad ones.
I am not a stellar sports fan, but even I knew that Washington, D.C.’s hockey team, the Capitals, were something to marvel at. I can even spell Alex Ovechkin. That’s why even I thought game 7 was a major downer, not to mention a nasty surprise. Hey, given the limp performance of our other sports teams, the Caps were such a relief after the ‘skins went downhill, depriving this partisan town of one thing we could all agree on. Then came the Caps and Ovechkin, and this was to be the year the Big Red Caps went all the way, but a funny thing happened on the way to the Stanley Cup.
Being a political if not a sports junkie, a funny thought occurred to me, looking at the November elections and our other Big Red (no, not the Commie Rooskies, that’s another story). Here we have the Republicans, who, like the Caps, have had a pretty good season. They certainly have had all the publicity and some remarkable (as contrasted to distinguished) players who have torn victory after victory from the jaws of their 2008 defeat—– except for an occasional razor-thin save here and there by seemingly dispirited Democrats. Republicans have been licking their chops in anticipation of a blowout in November.
Sort of like the Caps, come to think about it. How is it the Caps lost? Injured player? Over-confidence? Outstanding opposing goalie? Evil incantations or dumb luck for the opposing team? These things happen, and the same thing could very well happen to the Republicans in the November election that Conventional Wisdom says they are destined to win. The Canadiens fought back from a 3-1 deficit; they obviously did not buy into the Conventional Wisdom. If the Democrats, especially the grass roots, refuse to believe the Conventional Wisdom which says “it’s just the time for the fired-up Republicans to win,”and “the President’s Party always loses seats in the off-year election”—- Like h**l! Democrats can pull a Canadien, and make a funny thing happen. I’d like to hear Michael Steele, Newt Gingrich, Fox, and Palin say something like Coach Boudreau in a post mortem: “…Sometimes the other team takes you away.”
Bob McDonnell likens the draconian Arizona immigration law to “other regimes that were not particularly helpful to democracy and civil rights.” McDonnell is correct in this case (for once!), but I can just imagine how his comment – comparing the Arizona immigration law to…what, apartheid? fascism? – will go over with “the base.” Apparently, McDonnell has decided to side with Meghan McCain over John McCain on this one. Heh.
UPDATE: In related news, it looks like the superb film on the Prince William County immigration resolution, 9500 Liberty, will be opening this Friday at theaters in the Phoenix, AZ area.
9500 LIBERTY traces the rise and fall of “The Immigration Resolution” in Prince William County, Virginia. Come find out why a Virginia county repealed the same police mandate Arizona just passed. view the 9500 Liberty trailer No one wants Arizona to suffer the same negative economic impact, negative public safety impact, expensive lawsuits, and higher taxes suffered by the people of Prince William County. This weekend, you can help support an award-winning film that, if successful, will inspire Arizonans to take action, and send a message to the Arizona legislature.
This sums up pretty much everything that’s wrong with Bob McDonnell.
Gov. Bob McDonnell said this morning that the fatal oil well accident off Louisiana’s coast was a “catastrophic event,” but it will not deter him from trying to make Virginia the first state on the East Coast to begin drilling for oil and natural gas.
“This is certainly a setback, but I certainly continue to be dedicated to making us first to drill, 2012 at the latest, and over the next couple years these safety and environmental issues will be addressed,” McDonnell said on his monthly radio show on WRVA.
Tone deaf. Clueless. Completely uncaring about protecting Virginia’s environment, beaches, tourism, fishing, etc. Wildly irresponsible. Ideologically driven. Arrogant. Ignorant. And those are some of Bob McDonnell’s better qualities! Hey, who cares about that 200,000 gallons per day of oil leaking in the Gulf of Mexico (and threatening to decimate wildlife refuges, fishing, tourism, etc.)? Who cares that the same thing could easily happen right off the coast of Virginia Beach? Bob McDonnell certainly doesn’t give a rat’s hindquarters. Instead, McDonnell says, “meh, it’s a minor setback; drill baby drill!”
Bob McDonnell: giving new meaning to the phrase “natural disaster.”
UPDATE: Florida Governor Crist (R) has this to say about the oil spill. “It’s clearly not clean enough after we saw what we saw today — that’s horrific — and it certainly isn’t safe enough. It’s the opposite of safe.” Why does Charlie Crist understand this but Bob McDonnell seems incapable of doing so?
Originally Posted at SumofChange.com
With a poor economy, new technology offers the ability to create new jobs as well as progression for companies large and small. Combining this with the global need for clean energy creates a viable opportunity for economic alleviation.
To continue our “Green Thursdays”, here are some clips from a panel at the 2010 PA Progressive Summit, held this last January in Harrisburg, PA. Michael Fedor, the Pennsylvania state director for Repower America, and Adam Graber, PennEnvironment, discuss the current job environment and how clean energy “green jobs” are essential for the future for most companies.
In the first video, Fedor (along side Adam Garber) explains the realistic ways green jobs can fix unemployment. Once more green jobs have been established, Fedor in the second video describes the ways green jobs can become green careers. In the final video, Fedor illustrates how to make Pennsylvania the leading green jobs state in the nation.
For more info on the Pennsylvania Progressive Summit and it’s organizer, Keystone progress, please go to paprogressivesummit.org and keystoneprogress.org
