Harrisonburg: Obama rallies Valley Dems

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham [email protected] One news organization estimated that there were 28,000 people all told in and around the Convocation Center on the campus of James Madison University for the Tuesday campaign rally featuring Democratic Party presidential nominee Barack Obama. I don’t know that I could dispute the figure, based on the queue, or…

Harrisonburg: Laughter and lamentation

Jim Bishop

Story by Jim Bishop When we allow ourselves to laugh, the possibility opens up to experience and accept God’s grace. Local actor-playwright Theodore K. (Ted) Swartz will build on this precept through “comedic exegesis” as resource person for fall spiritual life week at Eastern Mennonite University. Swartz will introduce the theme for the week, “Laughter…

Chris Graham: A funny thing happened on the way to socialized medicine

Chris Graham

Column by Chris Graham [email protected] Read Bruce Kesler’s column, “The Fannie-ization of Health Care.” As a small-business owner, I think I know why our country is falling behind our competitors in the rest of the industrialized world where some version of universal health care is not the exception, but the rule. We in the business…

Bruce Kesler: The Fannie-ization of Health Care

AFP

Column by Bruce Kesler Health care could be the next Fannie Mae-type disaster. Similar forces are at work. Anxieties over the financial meltdown may increase Democrats’ power to further their statist agenda via appeals that exaggerate need and rights among the poor and feed greed by many of the rest of us. The forces worked…

Harrisonburg: Obama to rally Valley on eve of historic election

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham [email protected] Why in the world, you’re asking yourself, is Barack Obama spending half his day on Tuesday in the Central Shenandoah Valley that went 70 percent for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004? A better question, given a look at the ’08 poll numbers, might be, Why in…

The Valley Blue Dog: Sarah Palin is a Closet Socialist

Steven Sisson

Column by Steven Sisson Yes, Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin is a Closet Socialist. The governor’s state of Alaska receives more federal dollars, in subsidies and earmarks and government assistance, than any state in the USA. The Blue Dog says Palin is a tried and true socialist. Like I wrote in the Blue Dog column…

Waynesboro: Will her first vote be counted?

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham [email protected] Sonja Hoge was very much looking forward to voting in her first presidential election. A Waynesboro High School graduate and Virginia Commonwealth University sophomore, Hoge submitted an absentee-ballot request in August before she went back to school and got it in the mail back to Waynesboro last week….

Jim Bishop: The (Financial) Times, They Are A-Changin’ …

Jim Bishop

Column by Jim Bishop It’s rather easy to get caught up in the apprehensive spirit that seems to permeate society these days. The word on the street is that the rocky economic path we’re traveling will only become strewn with more fiscal casualties. An economics professor in my church small group said to us just…

White House ’08: Barr talks with AFP about campaign

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham [email protected] It had seemed for a time back in the summer that former Republican congressman Bob Barr might end up playing a spoiler role in the ’08 presidential election by siphoning off a couple of percentage points from the vote total of Republican John McCain in what had been expected to…

Harrisonburg: Gen. Clark talks up Obama on national security

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham [email protected] The approach of the Bush administration to foreign policy is a solution looking for a problem. Wesley Clark learned that on a visit to the Pentagon in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. A former colleague who had worked with the retired general told him in late…