it could only mean one thing: It’s time for the Womenless Beauty Pageant! Yes, the “Divas of the Night” aka the police, deputies & firemen of Martinsville and Henry County gathered tonight in a fierce competition for the coveted crown as well as to raise over $10,000 for The American Cancer Society.

Never again can Martinsville/Henry County be accused of not having a sense of humor… I’ll post more pictures tomorrow - if I can stop laughing by then!

Wherever you go in this world, you’re bound to meet at least one person with ties to Ferrum College.

That’s all I remember the admissions guy saying the day I went to look at the little school nestled in the beautiful Blue Ridge. Not only have I carried his words with me all these many years later, I’ve also carried some of my most cherished friendships - those formed at Ferrum.

Today, we all wait for the next update - hoping the rumors and early fears of a gunman on campus are unfounded. And remember, with only the fondest of memories, the special time in our lives she gave us.

John McCain 50% over Mike Huckabee’s 41%

-Congratulations to Sen. McCain and to Del. Chris Saxman, co-chairman for McCain’s (successful!) Virginia primary campaign!

Great job, gentlemen!

He’s been in the Virginia House of Delegates, farmed asparagus, emceed a blog conference, served on the Southside Virginia Development Authority, written articles, columns and blogs, co-authored a book, served on the Patrick County Board of Supervisors, received his B.A. from UNC and a M.B.A. from Duke, was project director for the Tri-Area Health Clinic, owned a store, served on bank, hospital, library and nursing home boards and killed himself a bear (talked it to death).

Currently, Barnie Day is Vice President of River Community Bank and seeking to fill the empty judgeship seat on the State Corporation Commission. He would be the first non-lawyer to serve on the SCC. He has the backing of the Virginia Senate as well as the endorsement of Rep. Virgil Goode, who believes that Barnie would bring enthusiasm, independence and good experience to the SCC from his banking and public-service background.

The Virginia House of Delegates is favoring Bernard L. McNamee II, a Republican lawyer-lobbyist who withdrew his nomination in December. Apparently, he was reluctant to face varying degrees of legislative opposition as well as questions about his professional, political and personal ties to industries regulated by the SCC. He lobbies for State Farm Insurance Co. (hmmmm…..)

Seems like a no-brainer to me but you know our General Assembly. If they fail to fill the empty seat by March 5th, Gov. Kaine will make the appointment. Contact Speaker Howell and/or your delegate and let them know, we want Barnie!

UPDATE: Jerry directs me to today’s editorial in The Roanoke Times. He’s right. The Times, whether they realize it or not, has endorsed Barnie:

Virginia does not need to balance its courts and commissions with right- and left-wing jurists. Splitting a commission between polarized parties would create only another venue for partisan bickering.

There’s a better way. Senate Democrats and House Republicans should realize their dream appointees will never fly in the other chamber. Instead, they should seek moderate individuals to serve on these commissions.

Neither side must cave to the other, but surely they can find qualified Virginians willing to serve the commonwealth without first running everything through a partisan filter. Such people could bring a spirit of working together and striving for practical solutions that has been sorely missing in Richmond lately.

No way all four of us could be wrong! Or how ’bout:

Steve Forbes or Jack Kemp or Henry Kissinger or Fred Thompson or U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg or U.S. Rep. Candice Miller or former Navy secretary William Ball or George Allen or U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn or VA Del. Chris Saxman or VA Atty. Gen. Bob McDonnell or U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert or U.S. Sen. George Voinovich or U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter or U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran or former homeland security secretary Tom Ridge or former U.S. Solicitor General and conservative legal icon Ted Olson or VA blogger Jim Hoeft or Professor of Law at Northwestern University and co-founder of the premiere conservative legal organization, The Federalist Society, Steven Calabresi or former state senator Marty Williams or VA blogger DJ McGuire or editor of The Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol or Former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Robert Mosbacher or former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm or U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor or VA blogging brothers Jason and Shaun Kenney or U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham or Newt Gingrich . . . . .

This Republican party is a party for free men. Not for blind followers and not for conformists. Back in 1858, Abraham Lincoln said this of the Republican party - and I quote him because he probably could have said it during the last week or so - it was composed of strained, discordant, and even hostile elements.

Back in 1964, Barry Goldwater said this of the Republican party - and I quote him because he probably could have said it during the last week or so - it was composed of strained, discordant, and even hostile elements.

Obviously, neither Goldwater nor Lincoln said this during the last week or so (although they probably could have). They said this about the Republican party almost 44 and 150 years ago, respectively. Republicans are carrying on a time-honored tradition of discord among the ranks but more importantly, a time-honored tradition of being a party not for blind followers and not for conformists.

Barry Goldwater defined the elements of the Republican equation as: balance, diversity and creative difference.  He defined the cause of Republicans thus:

~ to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people….
~ to restore a clear understanding of the tyranny of man over man in the world at large.
~ to dispel the foggy thinking which avoids hard decisions in the delusion that a world of conflict will somehow resolve itself into a world of harmony, if we just don’t rock the boat or irritate the forces of aggression - and this is hogwash.
~ to remind ourselves, and the world, that only the strong can remain free: that only the strong can keep the peace.

Many have suggested that Barry Goldwater secured the foundation necessary for Ronald Reagan’s conservative movement to take hold and flourish. Few have stated it as eloquently as our own Rick Sincere:

“In your heart, you know he’s right.” So said Barry Goldwater’s supporters during the Senator’s ill-fated 1964 presidential campaign. Many people disagreed, resulting in a landslide victory for Lyndon Johnson. But as we now know, Goldwater may have lost the battle, but over time, he won the war.

Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign transformed American politics. He galvanized two generations of political activists, and germinated both the modern conservative movement and the libertarian movement. He took a Republican party that was ideologically indistinguishable from its Democratic opponents and gave it a philosophical edge with ramifications that are still unresolved. Some of his supporters went on in 1971 to found America’s third-largest political party, the Libertarian Party, and the rest in 1976 almost denied a sitting president, Gerald Ford, the GOP nomination. By 1980, Goldwater Republicans were in the ascendant and elected Ronald Reagan as president.

John McCain completes the trilogy started by Goldwater and Reagan. This is one of many reasons why I’ve decided to support him in his bid for the presidency. Goldwater said:

Anyone who joins us in all sincerity, we welcome. Those, those who do not care for our cause, we don’t expect to enter our ranks, in any case. And let our Republicanism so focused and so dedicated not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels.

I’ll let others decide if John McCain is a conservative, Republican, Libertarian, moderate, maverick, liberal, Democrat, etc. What matters most to me is that, like Goldwater and Reagan, he’s honorable, steadfast and still adheres to a “code of conduct” that others may not comprehend. He doesn’t “go along to get along” forsaking what he knows to be right for that which is popular or politically expedient.
Thirty-five years ago, John McCain wrote a heart-breaking yet inspirational account of his five and a half years as a POW in North Vietnam. That he survived is nothing short of miraculous and that, as the son of the commander in chief of all U.S. forces in the Pacific, he could have come home… he didn’t. He stayed:

But I knew that the Code of Conduct says, “You will not accept parole or amnesty,” and that “you will not accept special favors.” For somebody to go home earlier is a special favor. There’s no other way you can cut it.

When it must have seemed that all was lost, he relied on his faith:

I was finding that prayer helped. It wasn’t a question of asking for superhuman strength or for God to strike the North Vietnamese dead. It was asking for moral and physical courage, for guidance and wisdom to do the right thing. I asked for comfort when I was in pain, and sometimes I received relief. I was sustained in many times of trial.

He was put into solitary confinement for months at a time:

As far as this business of solitary confinement goes—the most important thing for survival is communication with someone, even if it’s only a wave or a wink, a tap on the wall, or to have a guy put his thumb up. It makes all the difference.

It’s vital to keep your mind occupied, and we all worked on that. Some guys were interested in mathematics, so they worked out complex formulas in their heads—we were never allowed to have writing materials. Others would build a whole house, from basement on up. I have more of a philosophical bent. I had read a lot of history. I spent days on end going back over those history books in my mind, figuring out where this country or that country went wrong, what the U. S. should do in the area of foreign affairs. I thought a lot about the meaning of life.

His advice to members of our military:

If you don’t know what your country is doing, find out. And if you find you don’t like what your country is doing, get out before the chips are down.

Once you become a prisoner of war, then you do not have the right to dissent, because what you do will be harming your country. You are no longer speaking as an individual, you are speaking as a member of the armed forces of the United States, and you owe loyalty to the Commander in Chief, not to your own conscience.

And when he returned home:

I think America is a better country now because we have been through a sort of purging process, a re-evaluation of ourselves. Now I see more of an appreciation of our way of life. There is more patriotism. The flag is all over the place. I hear new values being stressed—the concern for environment is a case in point.

Yes, the environment. Thirty-five years ago he recognized a concern for our environment. How this differs from Al Gore reaching the bottom of a dough nut box and while scratching through the remaining crumbs decides to create a “crisis” for his own personal gain….

It’s gonna be great having a man with a code of conduct and a moral compass back in the White House. One that doesn’t march in lockstep with anyone.

Yes, I support John McCain because in my heart, I know he’s right.

In this world no person, no party can guarantee anything, but what we can do and what we shall do is to deserve victory, and victory will be ours. The good Lord raised this mighty Republic to be a home for the brave and to flourish as the land of the free - not to stagnate in the swampland of collectivism, not to cringe before the bully of communism. terrorism

Now, my fellow Americans, the tide has been running against freedom. Our people have followed false prophets. We must, and we shall, return to proven ways — not because they are old, but because they are true.

We must, and we shall, set the tide running again in the cause of freedom. And this party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom.

Freedom made orderly for this nation by our constitutional government. Freedom under a government limited by laws of nature and of nature’s God. Freedom balanced so that liberty lacking order will not become the slavery of the prison cell; balanced so that liberty lacking order will not become the license of the mob and of the jungle.

Now, we Americans understand freedom; we have earned it, we have lived for it, and we have died for it. This nation and its people are freedom’s models in a searching world. We can be freedom’s missionaries in a doubting world.

But, ladies and gentlemen, first we must renew freedom’s mission in our own hearts and in our own homes.

…Failures proclaim lost leadership, obscure purpose, weakening wills, and the risk of inciting our sworn enemies to new aggressions and to new excesses.…we are tonight a world divided. We are a nation becalmed. We have lost the brisk pace of diversity and the genius of individual creativity. We are plodding at a pace set by centralized planning, red tape, rules without responsibility, and regimentation without recourse.

Rather than useful jobs in our country, people have been offered bureaucratic make-work; rather than moral leadership, they have been given bread and circuses; they have been given spectacles, and, yes, they’ve even been given scandals.

Tonight there is violence in our streets, corruption in our highest offices, aimlessness among our youth, anxiety among our elderly; and there’s a virtual despair among the many who look beyond material success toward the inner meaning of their lives. And where examples of morality should be set, the opposite is seen. Small men and women seeking great wealth or power have too often and too long turned even the highest levels of public service into mere personal opportunity.

…Simple honesty is not too much to demand of men and women in government. We find it in most. Republicans demand it from everyone. They demand it from everyone no matter how exalted or protected his or her position might be.

…History shows us, demonstrates that nothing, nothing prepares the way for tyranny more than the failure of public officials to keep the streets from bullies and marauders.

Now, we Republicans see all this as more - much more - than the rest: of mere political differences or mere political mistakes. We see this as the result of a fundamentally and absolutely wrong view of man, his nature and his destiny.

Those who seek to live your lives for you, to take your liberty in return for relieving you of yours, those who elevate the state and downgrade the citizen, must see ultimately a world in which earthly power can be substituted for divine will. And this nation was founded upon the rejection of that notion and upon the acceptance of God as the author of freedom.

Now, those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny.

Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions, ladies and gentlemen, of equality. Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

Fellow Republicans, it is the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism.

It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people — and, so help us God, that is exactly what a Republican president will do with the help of a Republican Congress.

It is further the cause of Republicanism to restore a clear understanding of the tyranny of man over man in the world at large. it is our cause to dispel the foggy thinking which avoids hard decisions in the delusion that a world of conflict will somehow resolve itself into a world of harmony, if we just don’t rock the boat or irritate the forces of aggression-and this is hogwash.

It is further the cause of Republicanism to remind ourselves, and the world, that only the strong can remain free: that only the strong can keep the peace.

…We know that the misunderstandings of centuries are not to be wiped away in a day or wiped away in an hour. But we pledge, we pledge, that human sympathy - what our neighbors to the south call an attitude of simpatico — no less than enlightened self-interest will be our guide.

…I know this freedom is not the fruit of every soil. I know that our own freedom was achieved through centuries by unremitting efforts by brave and wise men. And I know that the road to freedom is a long and a challenging road, and I know also that some men may walk away from it, that some men resist challenge, accepting the false security of governmental paternalism.

My fellow Republicans, we do no man a service by hiding freedom’s light under a bushel of mistaken humility. I seek an America proud of its past, proud of its ways, proud of its dreams, and determined actively to proclaim them. But our examples to the world must, like charity, begin at home.

In our vision of a good and decent future, free and peaceful, there must be room, room for the liberation of the energy and the talent of the individual, otherwise our vision is blind at the outset.

We must assure a society here which, while never abandoning the needy, or forsaking the helpless, nurtures incentives and opportunity for the creative and the productive.

We must know the whole good is the product of many single contributions.

And I cherish the day when our children once again will restore as heroes the sort of men and women who, unafraid and undaunted, pursue the truth, strive to cure disease, subdue and make fruitful our natural environment, and produce the inventive engines of production - science and technology.

This nation, whose creative people have enhanced this entire span of history, should again thrive upon the greatness of all those things which we - we as individual citizens - can and should do.

During Republican years, this again will be a nation of men and women, of families proud of their role, jealous of their responsibilities, unlimited in their aspirations nation where all who can will be self-reliant.

We Republicans see in our constitutional form of government the great framework which assures the orderly but dynamic fulfillment of the whole man as the great reason for instituting orderly government in the first place.

We see in private property and in economy based upon and fostering private property the one way to make government a durable ally of the whole man rather than his determined enemy. We see in the sanctity of private property the only durable foundation for constitutional government in a free society.

And beyond all that we see and cherish diversity of ways, diversity of thoughts, of motives, and accomplishments. We don’t seek to live anyone’s life for him. We only seek to secure his rights, guarantee him opportunity, guarantee him opportunity to strive, with government performing only those needed and constitutionally sanctioned tasks which cannot otherwise be performed.

We Republicans seek a government that attends to its inherent responsibilities of maintaining a stable monetary and fiscal climate, encouraging a free and a competitive economy, and enforcing law and order.

Thus do we seek inventiveness, diversity, and creative difference within a stable order, for we Republicans define government’s role where needed at many, many levels — preferably, though, the one closest to the people involved: our towns and our cities, then our counties, then our states, then our regional contacts, and only then the national government.

That, let me remind you, is the land of liberty built by decentralized power. On it, also, we must have balance between the branches of government at every level.

Balance, diversity, creative difference - these are the elements of Republican equation. Republicans agree, Republicans agree heartily to disagree on many, many of their applications. But we have never disagreed on the basic fundamental issues of why you and I are Republicans.

This is a party — this Republican party is a party for free men. Not for blind followers and not for conformists.

…The task of preserving and enlarging freedom at home and safeguarding it from the forces of tyranny abroad is great enough to challenge all our resources and to require all our strength.

Anyone who joins us in all sincerity, we welcome. Those, those who do not care for our cause, we don’t expect to enter our ranks, in any case. And let our Republicanism, so focused and so dedicated, not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels.

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!

The beauty of the very system we Republicans are pledged to restore and revitalize, the beauty of this federal system of ours, is in its reconciliation of diversity with unity. We must not see malice in honest differences of opinion, and no matter how great, so long as they are not inconsistent with the pledges we have given to each other in and through our Constitution.

Our Republican cause is not to level out the world or make its people conform in computer-regimented sameness. Our Republican cause is to free our people and light the way for liberty throughout the world. Ours is a very human cause for very humane goals. This party, its good people, and its unquestionable devotion to freedom will not fulfill the purposes of this campaign which we launch here now until our cause has won the day, inspired the world, and shown the way to a tomorrow worthy of all our yesteryears.

Emphasis and editing courtesy of badrose. Where am I going with this? Stay tuned…

Maybe it’s because I have a degree in psychology (would you like fries with your order?) or maybe I’ve come to believe that everything has more than one meaning or maybe I’m just overdue for a “makeover” BUT:

Has anyone else noticed this?  Coincidence or clever subliminal marketing?  There’s the obvious visual allusion in the CHANEL black/white logo and the more subtle psychological allusion:  the CHANEL style and fashion is described as having five essentials:  audacious, perfectionist, unique, passionate, and visionary.  All desirable qualities in a candidate, wouldn’t you say?

So, are we supposed to choose our next president much like we choose our Spring wardrobe?  Then I’m voting for the candidate that: doesn’t wrinkle easily, hides dirt, makes me look twenty pounds thinner, won’t go out of style or cost me more than a hundred bucks.

Barack Obama’s marketing people are brilliant and well worth every penny he pays them.  Every time I thought of Obama, I subconsciously thought perfect mix of black, white, elegance, audacity, perfection, uniqueness, passion and vision (that I can’t afford).

Unfortunately, Ted Kennedy smashed the allusion.  Audacious? Possibly.  Costs more than I can justify?  Definitely.

In fairness, I’ve looked for subliminal messages from the other presidential contenders and have yet to find anything profound.  I have, however, eaten lots of chocolate.