Winners and Losers: Obama, Gilmore
August 26, 2008 by chrisgraham
Compiled by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
NO BOUNCE: Obama, McCain still even in polls
My suspicions toward the end of last week’s breathless speculation about who Barack Obama would name as his VP were that the process was playing out for far too long for it to have the effect that I suspect that the Obama team desired in terms of a pre-convention bounce.
The dead heat that we’re seeing now in the national polls reflects that I was more on than I had thought at the time.
Advice to those breaking big campaign news in the future - don’t break it over a six-day period, and sure as hell don’t have the unveiling on a weekend. Whoever schemed that one up oughta be out on their can now schlepping for fame and rent money with the rest of us.
THROWING THE WORD ‘LIE’ AROUND TOO MUCH FOR MY LIKING: The people that want Jim Gilmore to be your next U.S. senator
Today’s version has the Gilmore folks on YouTube with a video entitled “Notorious Politicians and Their Lies.”
You know, that word, “lie,” means something to me. It means a willful effort on the part of someone to get you to believe one thing when their intent is to do something else pretty much the opposite of what they’re saying.
It doesn’t mean running for governor saying you’re not going to raise taxes and then getting into office and seeing state troopers and sheriff’s deputies getting food stamps and schools underfunded to the point of not being able to adequately educate their kids and then calling for a half-cent increase on the sales tax and a bigger increase on cigarette sales makes one a liar. No more than running for governor promising to “end the car tax” and then not getting that job done before you leave office makes one a liar.
We devalue too many important words in this postliteral day and age. It’s time that we all agree to end the hyperbole and try to stick to accepted meanings again soon.
Chris:
You’d be more credible as a journalist if… oh this is an op-ed? How can anyone ever tell the difference?
Try this on for size, Warner promised to finish phasing out the car tax.. spending went up $5.9 billion during his watch, and I reluctantly give him credit for $303 million towards reducing the Car Tax, just because the largest portion of that happened his first year in office, where it came from Gilmore’s two year budget….
He really only put about $80 million towards the relief before he negotiated a freeze altogether.
That would be two lies in fifteen seconds.
Actual facts, some thing you may want to work into your articles… Tim Kaine has seen spending in just two years go up 9.7% and 9.3% or a total of $5.8 billion dollars, yet finding $300 million to phase out the Car Tax is impossible?
We can’t afford our government…. and you do have the option of paying your full car tax to Virginia on their web site.. have at it
The governor that first promised the car-tax cut was Jim Gilmore. And the guy failed to make happen what he promised would happen. He spent money as prodigiously as his supposedly more liberal successor did, and when it came time for his Republican friends in the General Assembly (the House and the Senate) to sign off on finishing out the car-tax relief that he himself couldn’t finish, they wisely decided to forego taking that route.
That is a hard fact that Mr. Green can’t seem to be able to accept. Unfortunately for him, he is one of the few Republicans out there having that problem. Gilmore’s support statewide is registering below McGovern- and Mondale-level numbers, and it’s largely because Republicans are abandoning ship in favor of Mark Warner because unlike his predecessor, he knows how to get Virginia moving forward.
But hey, if Gilmore’s small base of supporters want to keep crowing about this “tax cut” that is nothing more than us taxpayers writing a check to Richmond that they can write back to us for a slightly smaller amount and saying that’s the crowning achievement of his favored candidate, more power to them.
To address the subject of “credibility” before we move on from this silliness, how in the world can a guy who has a partisan blog offer criticism to another for being partisan and not look like a major-league hypocrite? I don’t expect you, Chris, or anyone else, for that matter, to agree with anything I say or think or write, but I do expect you to demonstrate the basic rules of civilized debate.
Personal attacks are not going to be tolerated here. I do not at all want to stifle serious debate, but neither do I want our commenters subjected to personally-directed harangues. Stick to the issues, stick to the facts. There’s plenty there to keep us chatting.
Thanks,
Clarification point for Mr. Green regarding the Winners and Losers column:
The column is archived under our Winners and Losers category, which is tabbed under our Opinions and Observations main category. It is also linked under the Opinions and Observations header on the front page of the AFP.
Should you need any further assistance on whether or not Winners and Losers is an op-ed, feel free to write or call.