My first guest blogger!

In response to a rather bizarre post over at Ben’s blog, Chip Hairston has agreed to post his thoughts on racism, George Wallace, why dogs are better than cats….. I truly don’t know what he’s going to say.  I sent him the password to this Site and we can all read it for the first time together…..  Stay tuned!

We can no longer hide our head in the sand and tell ourselves that the ideology of our free fathers is not being attacked and is not being threatened by another idea . . . for it is. We are faced with an idea that if a centralized government assumes enough authority, enough power over its people, that it can provide a utopian life . . that if given the power to dictate, to forbid, to require, to demand, to distribute, to edict and to judge what is best and enforce that will produce only “good” . . and it shall be our father . . . . and our God. It is an idea of government that encourages our fears and destroys our faith . . . for where there is faith, there is no fear, and where there is fear, there is no faith.

In encouraging our fears of economic insecurity it demands we place that economic management and control with government; in encouraging our fear of educational development it demands we place that education and the minds of our children under management and control of government, and even in feeding our fears of physical infirmities and declining years, it offers and demands to father us through it all and even into the grave. It is a government that claims to us that it is bountiful as it buys its power from us with the fruits of its rapaciousness of the wealth that free men before it have produced and builds on crumbling credit without responsibilities to the debtors . . . our children. It is an ideology of government erected on the encouragement of fear and fails to recognize the basic law of our fathers that governments do not produce wealth . . . people produce wealth . . . free people; and those people become less free . . . as they learn there is little reward for ambition . . . that it requires faith to risk . . . and they have none . . as the government must restrict and penalize and tax incentive and endeavor and must increase its expenditures of bounties . . . then this government must assume more and more police powers and we find we are become government-fearing people . . . not God-fearing people. We find we have replaced faith with fear . . . and though we may give lip service to the Almighty . . in reality, government has become our god. It is, therefore, a basically ungodly government and its appeal to the psuedo-intellectual and the politician is to change their status from servant of the people to master of the people . . . to play at being God . . . without faith in God . . . and without the wisdom of God. It is a system that is the very opposite of Christ for it feeds and encourages everything degenerate and base in our people as it assumes the responsibilities that we ourselves should assume. Its psuedo-liberal spokesmen and some Harvard advocates have never examined the logic of its substitution of what it calls “human rights” for individual rights, for its propaganda play on words has appeal for the unthinking. Its logic is totally material and irresponsible as it runs the full gamut of human desires . . . including the theory that everyone has voting rights without the spiritual responsibility of preserving freedom. Our founding fathers recognized those rights . . . but only within the framework of those spiritual responsiblities. But the strong, simple faith and sane reasoning of our founding fathers has long since been forgotten as the so-called “progressives” tell us that our Constitution was written for “horse and buggy” days . . . so were the Ten Commandments.

Actually, nothing funny really happened on the way to the Forum - something funny happened AT the Forum. Funny as in ironic, not ha ha.

On Tuesday, August 21, the NAACP of Martinsville/Henry County in conjunction with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, held a Political Forum at Patrick Henry Community College. Local and statewide candidates were invited to participate and given the opportunity to answer questions posed to them by the NAACP/SCLC members. I attended this event in hopes of finally seeing Roscoe Reynolds answer some tough questions…or any questions, but that was not to be. Due to a “misunderstanding,” Senator Reynolds did not grace the Forum with his presence until almost an hour and a half late.

Roscoe read a prepared statement (off of yellow legal paper, no less) praising Martin Luther King, Jr. and acknowledging the passing of Oliver Hill, took no questions and sat in the crowd instead of the candidates’ table. If there was an apology for his tardiness made to our gracious hosts it must have been made privately. Even his campaign manager, Michael Points, was there a good thirty minutes before Roscoe. But this isn’t the funny part. This is:

Michael Points (and remember, funny = ironic, not ha ha) confronted Alton Foley, campaign manager extraordinaire for Roscoe’s challenger, Jeff Evans, in the hallway and accused him of launching a negative website - one linking Roscoe to homosexuals. Alton informed Michael that this was absolutely false AND offered to address everyone present at the Forum to denounce such an accusation if Michael Points would do the same. Michael Points, of course, declined.

I had recently learned that Roscoe Reynolds had hired Joe Stanley, of Yellow Dog Strategy, to help him with his campaign. When Jim Webb used Joe for his successful bid for the US Senate, I didn’t question his decision - Jim Webb was new to politics in the commonwealth and the internet was the new frontier. I did think it was strange for an incumbent, like Roscoe Reynolds, with twenty-two years in the legislature to require the services of Joe. Joe’s Yellow Dog logo, until recently, appeared on Roscoe’s website.

Reserving a website domain and re-directing that site to another site is a standard practice of Joe’s - he boasted about it in an article by the Roanoke Times. When Alton told me of his exchange with Michael, my impression was that IF such a negative website existed, it was probably created by Roscoe’s camp with Joe leading the charge. Typical. They would deny it and use it to muddy the waters - attempt to divert attention away from Roscoe’s lackluster performance. Typical.

Joe surprised me by going WAY beyond typical - yes, by his own admission, he did reserve a website - one in the name of the Old Dominion Blog Alliance (of which I am a proud member) and yes, he did redirect that site to another site BUT instead of linking to homosexuals, as Michael Points had suggested, he linked us to NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association) - a group that endorses child rape. This was a new low for Joe and more importantly, a new low in Virginia politics.

Thankfully, Joe has removed the link which gives more publicity to the pedophiliac group and the site now shows his pitiful attempt to justify his previous actions. Have I mentioned that in addition to being Yellow Dog Strategy, Joe is also the chairman of the Franklin County Democratic committee? I didn’t? He is. Joe Stanley is the chairman of the Franklin County Democratic committee. Is this the type of behavior Franklin County Democrats expect? Condone? Condemn?

Removing Joe’s logo is a start but it’s a far cry from explaining what part Roscoe and his campaign played in the defamation of the ODBA. The silence is deafening.

We are:

a teacher, a coal miner, a professor, mothers, fathers, attorneys; two admitted to the US Supreme Court Bar, veterans; at least one West Point graduate, at least two cancer survivors, engineers, published authors, business owners, a police officer, grandfathers, a grandmother, a nationally recognized commentator, a missionary, managers and executives, local government officials and CONSERVATIVE.

One of our founding members is currently a general district court judge.

We may admit to having leaky basements but we don’t live in them or blog out of them…

We are the ODBA.

Yes, Ben. You ARE good enough, influential enough and doggone it, people DO like you (sometimes). I want you to repeat this daily affirmation out loud each night as you push those pizza boxes aside and crawl into those star-spangled sheets of yours.

You’re not the first person to let your self-worth be determined by your ranking on a blog aggregator and ….. oh, maybe you are. Anyway, I’m doing my part to see to it that you regain your rightful position … on top of Lowell.

Now dry those tears and go get that picture of a “downstate Democrat getting a lap dance” for us. If the rumors are true, does his wife get a seat in the VA senate?

I like waking up on Sunday and checking out the most recent index of influential blogs.

I like reading the posts of the disgruntled bloggers who feel they belong at the top of the list.

I LOVE arching my eyebrow, putting my hand on my hip and saying, “Obviously you’re not aware that I’m the FIFTEENTH most influential blogger in the commonwealth!”

Thanks, Dave!

*BNN’s Virginia Blogosphere Influence Rating combines a variety of data sets to determine which blogs are most powerfully influencing the direction of the Virginia political blogosphere. The exact method BNN uses to calculate influence scores must remain proprietary in order to prevent attempts to game the system. BNN’s methodology takes into account the fact that all Internet data is profoundly limited in its reliability by using multiple data sets that, when combined, reveal a fair picture of activity in the blogosphere.

Jerry’s got the beer scoop here.  I’ll be there, will you?

Dear Corporal Tyler Rock:

The war isn’t lost but this man is:

Keep up the good fight!

Love,

badrose

Feathery hat tip to Kilo.