We all know that for RWers, the simpler you spell it out, the better. Here we go:

Republican Lt. Gov. nominee E. W. Jackson with his axe | Courtesy Roanoke Tea Party

The last time we featured Bishop E.W. Jackson on this humble blog, it was as a caption contest back when he was running for the GOP nomination to the U.S. Senate from Virginia. I asked you to replace the slogan on the axe and put some thoughts in the clergyman’s head.

We had two winners for that. One was:  Axe The Tax, ‘I’m starving,’ by Uptheriver.

Another was TEA PARTY PROPERTY! ‘I’m really the one that’s the tool. Hope they don’t notice,’ by Miriam.

Now that Jackson  is the official GOP nominee for lieutenant governor. And the Roanoke Tea Party is taking some credit for that. 

And, some of his real-life utterances are getting a lot of press.

Allow me to run down some of his greatest hits:

On the odd and racist notion that black Americans  should be counted as 3/5ths of a white person, for census purposes: “The 3/5ths clause was an anti-slavery amendment. Its purpose was to limit the voting power of slave holding states.” Read more »

Watch Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County and Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, as he rescues Attorney General Eric Holder from bizarre and rambling questions by Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas and a Tea Party favorite. And yes, Gohmert really did say what’s in the headline, right around 8:58.

h/t to Scott M!

AP Photo

A Guest Post — May 20, 2013

Note from Dan: The Irishman who wears a Panama hat writes for his blog, Wednesdays Wars. Below is his latest entry.

By Tom Callaghan

Our Republican friends think they have President Obama between a rock and a hard place on the issues of Benghazi, the IRS, and the Justice Department review of some phone records of a number of Associated Press reporters. In my opinion, there is less there than meets the eye.

Let’s look at these issues one at a time.

Benghazi. On September 11, 2012, the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya was attacked. The US ambassador and three other Americans were killed. The next day, President Obama referred to what had happened as “acts of terror.”

UN Ambassador Susan Rice described the situation on the Sunday talk shows four days after the event. She referred to a 14 minute video ridiculing Islam that had just recently been translated into Arabic. The video caused an outbreak of violence in Cairo, and her preliminary assessment was it had contributed to a volatile situation in Benghazi that “heavily armed extremist elements” exploited.

Anyone who was in Washington DC when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 could relate to how an event could cause a spontaneous reaction, which is then exacerbated and prolonged by heavily armed extremists with an agenda. I was there, and saw it happen. Ambassador Rice’s description of events in Benghazi, which she clearly described as “preliminary” made sense to me.

The Right goes nuts if something happens and is not called “Islamic terrorism” immediately. Obama likes to gather facts, and proceed based on what is known. The country prefers that approach. If they wanted impulsive bluster, they would have taken McCain-Palin. If they wanted someone who would do what Sheldon Adelson wanted, they would have taken Romney and the Marathon Man.

Read the rest here.

AP Photo

The Benghazi “scandal” is not going to stick, and neither is the IRS/Tea Party “scandal” or the tracking-the Associated Press-phone calls “scandal.” That’s because they rely on the silly notion that President Obama is an omniscient presence who knows everything that’s going on at all times in the federal government.

But Umbrella-gate may be another matter. There is no way the president can claim he didn’t know a U.S. Marine was holding an umbrella for him during a speech in the rain. Obama directed it, after all, and it’s a clear violation of law.

From The Daily Caller:

The commander in chief of the American armed forces today forced a violation of Marine Corps regulations, so he wouldn’t get wet.

According to Marine Corps regulation MCO P1020.34F of the Marine Corps Uniform Regulations chapter 3, a male Marine is not allowed to carry an umbrella while in uniform. There is no provision in the Marine Corps uniform regulation guidelines that allows a male Marine to carry an umbrella.

Nevertheless, during a press conference under a light drizzle with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan this morning, President Obama allowed the First Head to be protected from the elements by an umbrella held by a male Marine corporal.

Oh, man! Looks like they’ve finally got the president dead to rights now, eh? He’s too good to hold his own umbrella! And he forced the military to do it for him! And he violated federal law to boot! Will Umbrella-gate finally lead to Obama’s impeachment? Republicans in Congress must be drooling in anticipation of the next hearings.

Not so fast . . . Read more »

Wikimedia Commons

Post of the Day — May 19, 2013

Note from Dan: In the missive below, posted to this thread, Roanoke Tea Party activist Bill Gregory describes how greenways are part of the Agenda 21 / ICLEI conspiracy in a larger battle waged by the climate change crowd. Problem 1: Agenda 21 was ratified in 1992. The development of greenways (not in the Roanoke Valley, but in many other places across the country) predates Agenda 21 by at least two decades. Problem 2: Many of the longest and best known greenways in the nation, such as the Great Allegheny Passage Trail and the C&O Towpath (together they link Pittsburgh with Washington D.C.) have little to any commuter value. Problem 3: Many people who care not a whit about climate change vote with their feet for greenways every day.

“Climate change activists expect the Greenway system to be used more and more like an alternative commuter highway as the years go by. They want commuters to switch from motorized to non-motorized work commutes.

This is one of the main reasons the Greenway is being developed. VDOT funds are being diverted from conventional vehicular road maintenance / new roads to greenway systems in metro areas across the Commonwealth. Its all about reducing man-made CO2 emissions, which we all know is the main cause of global warming (debate on the subject is over, according to the Climate Change Alarmists). Read more »

Mike Bailey (left) and Al Bedrosian

In case you were napping over the weekend, there was a cliffhanger Republican primary in the Hollins district for the party’s nomination for Roanoke County Supervisor.

Mike Bailey, the former county GOP chairman, tied with Al Bedrosian, whom the Roanoke Tea Party considers a almost the perfect candidate. Bedrosian ran for public office before and one year almost knocked off Del. Dick Cranwell,D-Roanoke County the then-House Majority Leader.

The Bailey-Bedrosian tally was 389-389, and the party is going to resolve the tie at 9:30 Tuesday morning, at the Roanoke County Administration Building, by drawing lots from “a dark bag.” Whichever name is drawn will get the nomination.

Why “a dark bag?” That’s the mystery. The term conjures many images, not least of which is a tool in a magician’s repertoire of gimmicks and trickery. There also are some black magic implications.

Bedrosian, who apparently believes nonChristian faiths should prohibited in the United States, might be unsettled by that. Why not a coin flip? Is that too simple? Would the candidates squabble over who got heads and who got tails?

Jesus, who cares?

Why not a game of rock/paper/scissors? They could video that, which would be a hoot. Or a contest of mumblety peg?  Or maybe an arm wrestling match — or mud wrestling!

In the newsroom, we wondered aloud about settling it with a game of Jenga. That was the game Mitt Romney played with his sons on election night back in November, before his campaign came tumbling down.

On this blog, one wag suggested resolving the tie with the game Say’n taters. Don’t ask me what that is. It sounds vaguely dirty.

What about a duel, at 30 paces, in Green Hill Park. The founding fathers were in favor of those. And we know guns are allowed there — remember the picnic last summer by Virginia Citizens Defense League? It’s just that firing guns is unlawful in Green Hill Park. Drat! Maybe they could use paintballs as ammo instead.

The funniest suggestion I heard all day Monday came from a colleague in the newsroom. I’d give him credit, but I’m not sure he wants it. It had a few of us almost on the floor, holding our sides.

“They should have a kid-slapping contest!” he exclaimed. I laughed so hard I got dizzy.

That would be unfair, though. Al Bedrosian, the ex-college bodybuilder and Xerox salesman, is far more experienced at that than Mike Bailey, the milquetoast insurance salesman.I can’t wait to see who wins.

Rep. Eric Cantor | AP Photo

When right-wing Republicans like House Majority Leader Eric Cantor begins talking up worker “rights,” it’s time to open your eyes and check your pockets. Because that’s about as likely as the Ku Klux Klan beating a drum for affirmative action.

In this case it’s all about overtime pay. Since 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act has required, for most hourly employees, time-and-a-half pay for each hour beyond 40 that are worked in a week.

Cantor, R-Virginia, and his cohorts last week introduced something called the “Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013″ with a slick sales pitch: private industry workers, they argue, should be allowed to take compensatory time off rather than extra pay, an option many government workers already enjoy.

The legislation would give hourly employees the ability to earn comp time (at a rate of 1.5 hours for every hour worked beyond 40 in a week) and take that as paid time off down the road. Each employee would be able to earn no more than 160 hours of comp time a year. Read more »

Created by Dan

The Post of the Day — April 30, 2013

Note from Dan: Raymond Flory is leaving town, to relocate far from Roanoke, right around the same time that Al Bedrosian makes another run at public office, this time for the Hollins seat for Roanoke County supervisor. Below is Flory’s parting shot at the semi-perennial candidate, which came in as a comment posted Monday.

“It warms my heart to see that after so many years of wandering blindly in the wilderness, that a great arbiter of culture and morality “Brother Al” Bedrosian is back in the spotlight to grace us lost sheep with his profound guidance.

It might predate Mr. Casey’s arrival in Roanoke, but around the turn of the century Mr. Bedrosian was in the news for whacking a toddler that was misbehaving. Notwithstanding the fact that the incident did not take place in WalMart where this is common, it was newsworthy because the child was not his. Not recognizing that Mr. Bedrosian is one of those rare people who never has to say “I don’t know”, the parent took exception to this.

A few years later Mr. Bedrosian wrote an editorial in the Roanoke Times where he stated that since the culture of the United States is rooted in Christianity, the United States should be a Christian theocracy where being an infidel would be a crime. Read more »

This video is hilarious as hell and definitely NSFW because of the language the narrator uses in heaping derision on a cameraman from Alex Jones’ website InfoWars. Why? Because Jones is a principal propagator of the paranoid theory that the FBI was behind the Boston Marathon bomb plot.