A Vision for Victory for Virginia

I was able to make it last Friday to Williamsburg for the Virginia Institute's Vision for Victory in Virginia. It was an excellent event. I wish I could have been there all three days.

On Friday former Congressman Dick Armey, Senator Ken Cuccinelli, Delegate Rob Bell, and others from the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute spoke. Additionally, there was a Thomas Jefferson reenactor Friday evening. He was excellent.

I hope to post some comments over the next week about what was talked about (and I still hope to post some more about the Senate Leadership Summit as well).

Many thanks to VIPP for putting this on.

Cantor Calls on Webb to Stop Religious Attacks and Focus on Issues

This was put out today by the Cantor campaign. It is worth posting in its entirety. I don't understand the bizarre fascination on Allen's genealogy by the Webbites.

Richmond, VA—Responding to attacks by the Jim Webb campaign, Congressman Eric Cantor (VA- 07) released the following statement.

“Throughout his career and campaign, Senator Allen has been a leader focusing his energy and efforts on making our Commonwealth a great place to live, work, and raise our families.

“I applaud Senator Allen’s efforts to stay focused on the issues that matter to Virginians throughout this campaign.

“In the primary, Jim Webb produced and mailed a cartoon of his Jewish opponent depicting him with a long nose and money coming out of his pockets, calling him the anti-Christ of outsourcing. His Democrat opponent rightly condemned this anti-Semitic ploy.

“Now, we learn that Jim Webb’s campaign operatives, on his behalf, have been pushing a story that George Allen has Jewish relatives.

“In some perverse way Jim Webb believes that this will cost Senator Allen votes.

“Jim Webb is dead wrong. The people of Virginia are fair minded, honest, and moral. Appeals to bigotry fail in Virginia, because Virginians look to a person’s integrity and character. Jim Webb is failing this test of integrity. It is time for Mr. Webb to start talking about the real issues facing the Commonwealth and America.

“I am proud to have Senator Allen as Virginia’s Senator and my friend; he has made Virginia a better place to live.”

Paid for and authorized by
Cantor for Congress

Senate Leadership Summit

I was fortunate enough to attend the Senate Leadership Summit for Young Professionals today. Over the next couple of days I plan on covering what some of the speakers talked about, my take, and what I heard from others.

The list of speakers and panelist was impressive. They were:

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (who was the summit chair)
Senator Lisa Murkowski
Senator John Sununu
Senator John Thune
Senator Lamar Alexander
Secretary of Labor Elaine Chow
Carly Fiorina - Former Chairman and CEO, HP
Dan Mitchell - Heritage Foundation
Dr. John Goodman - President and CEO, National Center for Policy Analysis
Charles Miller - Chairman, US Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education
Stig Leschly - Founder and Managing Partner, SRL Capital Managment LLC
Rosie Mauk - Former Directory, AmeriCorps
Bill Taylor - Co-Founder and Founding Editor, Fast Company Magazine
Mark McClellan, M.D., Ph.D - Administrator, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, US Department of Health and Human Services

I've got a lot of notes. I'm glad I was able to take the day off and go to DC today and while I certainly didn't agree with everything I heard, it was well worth it.

Webb's good politics, bad policy tax cut proposal

The good people at the Tax Foundation have a post up about Jim Webb's proposal to cut taxes for veterans. The proposal would give a 5% tax break for veterans. On the surface it sounds like a good idea, one that I might support. However, it deserves a little more scrutiny. Webb claims one of the things it would do is:

And one of the things that that would do, by the way, in my view, is to bring more people from across class lines into the military.

I suppose that may be true, but as the Tax Foundation points out

There are better ways to accomplish that goal rather than via the tax code whose complexity makes it to where you may not actually help those you are intending to help.

The best point made is this:

If the purpose of this proposal is to reward veterans for the value of their service that they have provided to society, why is the value of one veteran’s service a function of his/her current income?

Good question. To illustrate if veteran A makes $100,000 and veteran B makes $30,000, who is going to see the most benefit? Obviously veteran A. As the left would say, this is a tax cut for the rich. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see a 5% reduction for everyone (including the "rich"), but when you're trying to help veterans, income should not play a role. The only difference in reward should possibly be based on length of service and rank.

I would rather see our veterans rewarded in other ways. Cut them a check, raise their pay, increase benefits, but increasing the tax code complexity and rewarding only those who make enough to actually notice a benefit is the wrong way to do it.

The Weakly Webb Woundup

In the event you haven't seen it, the first edition of the Weakly Webb Woundup is up over at I'm not Emeril. Good stuff. I'm a proud member of the B-Team. If there was a C-Team I'd probably be on it, but I'll happily ride the pine on the B-Team.

Do Virginians wear cowboy boots?

Over the weekend I went to Field Day of the Past and I can confirm that, indeed, Virginians do wear cowboy boots. Ward has his thoughts here.

Webb claims that "there are no cowboys in Virginia." Fortunately there won't be enough voters for Webb to make him Senator.

Random Friday Thoughts

• The Reds are no longer in a tie for first and it looks like they won't make the playoffs. At least the Bengals will win the Super Bowl and the Buckeyes will win the BCS Championship this season.
• My wife and I go to the Y four times a week. Last week I heard the Spin Doctors on the radio twice. Don't think that had happened since about 1993.
• Golf announcers are the worst in sports. And that's without Brent Musburger in the booth.
• Mohawks are making a big comeback. I'm not sure who was first, but SR Sidarth had one (it was a mohawk, or close enough), Chad Johnson (whose mohawk cap you can buy), other football players, and a kid I saw the other day have had mohawks. I've just got one thing to say - I pity the fool.
• Ok, one other thing, "I ain't gettin' in no plane, Hannibal."
• This is old, but Ralph Sampson (he's like the new old Shawn Kemp), like the founder of the university he attended, wants also to be known as a father of the country.
• More proof that Hollywood is full of short people comes from the Smoking Gun picture of Haley Joel Osment. 5'4" and 115 pounds. A good gust of wind would blow him down.

Webb on the 2nd Amendment

When it comes to protecting our 2nd Amendment rights there is only one Senate candidate I trust - George Allen. Jim Webb claims he supports the 2nd Amendment, but would he support another infringement on our rights by working to enact another Assault Weapons Ban?

From a recent VCDL alert regarding the large Webb contingent at the Roanoke gun show comes this:

MOST [Webb supporters] stated Mr. Webb would not vote for any more gun laws restricting our gun rights. One spokeslady talked to us for quite some time--she stated Mr Webb supported our rights--then she made an eye opening statement--- she stated Mr Webb was like President Clinton, and would not be a part of any new gun laws------when I asked her--"What about the assault weapons ban of 1994?", she did NOT know what I was talking about!

Renewing the the AWB (aka Clinton gun ban) may be popular among leftist (Neal supports it, RK does too) and Webb has publicly stated "That's the difference between, between self protection and military style weapons and I wouldn't have a hard time saying that the people don't need fully automatic weapons."

Whether he means people shouldn't have machine guns or any "military style weapon" (by style is he talking aesthetics?) doesn't matter. I should have the right to own a machine gun if I want one (I think I just heard an "OH MY"). Someone tell me, how many crimes have been committed with legally owned machine guns since 1934? Also, I wonder, without looking it up, can you tell me what the Assault Weapons Ban did? The items that were outlawed, what crimes did they prevent? Anyone? Despite all the cries about blood in the streets, the sunset of the ban has not caused an increase in crime.

The ignorance of the RK crowd is amazing. This statement regarding AK-47s cracks me up:

Hell you'd prolly kill half your family by firing the damn thing in your home if you didn't know what you were doing and were startled by a burglar.

Uhhh, ok. Please tell me, how exactly would that happen? A startled homeowner is going to start randomly firing into the dark and kill their family? You've got a nice imagination, but in the real world things like that don't happen.

From Lowell on the Webb for Senate blog we find this little gem posted on August 4, 2006:

On guns, Webb is a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment. He has never changed his position on this issue since I've known him (12/05).

Let me get this straight. Lowell had at that time known Webb for 9 months and is holding that up as something to be proud of. Check out this post to see Webb's history of endorsements. He doesn't seem to have a history of keeping a position for long (unless, of course, it may be regarding women in the military).

So, first off, I don't believe Webb will be as strong a 2nd Amendment supporter as Senator Allen and, even if I did believe it, I would also believe that his position would change depending on which way the wind was blowing.

One more bit from another VCDL alert:

Quote for the day from "Lord of War" with Nicolas Cage, who plays an arms broker, "There are over 550,000,000 firearms in worldwide circulation. That is one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is ... how do we arm the other eleven?"

Lastly, today is my birthday (I'll give anyone who can correctly guess my age a nice round of applause), I've been wanting either an AK-47 or an SA58. Maybe I'll actually order one.

Also posted here.

The Democratic Party is not the answer

South of the James is definitely one of the top blogs in Virginia. It is well written, always respectful, and Conaway seems like a genuinely good guy. One of my regrets about Sorensen is not having met him.

That said, I do not think he could be more wrong about which party is best for improving our Virginia, country, and world. Conaway recently posted

….it is quite clear that one political party best reflects my values and works hard to create the kind of Virginia, America, and world that I want to live in. That organization, my friends, is the Democratic Party.

If all Democrats were like Mr. Haskins it would be much more difficult to say that the Democratic Party is not the answer. But they aren’t. And it isn’t.

I have volunteered in the past and will continue to volunteer for Republicans in the future. The Republican Party is not perfect, but it happens to be that one party has the car in park while the other has it in reverse. There are exceptions, but for the most part the few elected officials in Washington and Richmond who do not have their head in the sand (or elsewhere) are Republicans.

Maybe I don’t pay enough attention, but what are the Democratic Party ideas? What are their solutions to important issues? When it comes to reform, they are nothing more than the party of no. For instance, if I were to say, we need to reform _______ (fill in the blank). The answer would be NO. If I were to replace reform and say, we need to create a government program to fix _______ (fill in the blank). The answer would be yes. Absolutely yes.

The answer to education issues is always to spend more money. The suggestion of school choice is nearly enough to send a democrat into hysteria. The answer, I suppose, is more money. Well, money has been flowing into education like crazy lately. What have we ended up with? Taj Mahal like schools and highly compensated teachers. Are our kids any smarter? Not according to anything I have read.

The Democratic answer to health care problems? Government health care – because the public is too dumb to decide what they need. According to Hillary Clinton people would buy beer and cigarettes rather than get their kids medical attention.

Social security? It may need fixed, but if by fixed you mean you might let people put a small portion of the money they earn into a personal account then you have lost your mind. Let people keep their own money? Privatization? Ridiculous.

The list could go on and on. When it comes to taxes, spending, national security, and nearly all of the important issues the Democratic Party is in the dark. Someone let me know when they decide to turn on the light.

Remembering 9/11

I don't have any particularly interesting story from 5 years ago, but it is a day I'll never forget. I walked into work just a few minutes before the the second plane hit. Everyone was in the kitchen watching the tv when it did. It was hard to really grasp what was happening.

My wife and I had been married for a month, lived in Virginia for three weeks, my wife's birthday had just passed, my birthday was coming up, and my friend had just joined the Army on September 4th. There probably isn't a time in my life that I remember so well.

I don't have any particular connection to New York. At that time I had never been to NYC and I had only driven past the Pentagon and not been inside. What I will always associate with that day is the sight of people jumping out of the towers. The sound will always stick with me too. The French filmmakers who happened to be in NYC that day whose film was shown again on CBS last night cemented that sound. It is hard to imagine feeling that hopeless.

I'll also never forget the story of Flight 93. Heroes.

We should never forget what happened five years ago. I continue to pray that our elected officials will have the strength and courage to do what is right to defeat our enemies.