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….

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…

The Valley Blue Dog: The Manchurian Candidate and Eskimo Barbie

Steven Sisson

Column by Steven Sisson Is the McCain-Palin campaign fueling racism, hatred and divisiveness? Of course, the answers to the question are yes, yes, yes, but wait one cotton-picking minute, Blue Dog! Calling the Republican presidential nominee John McCain The Manchurian Candidate conjures images of a 1960s Vietnam prisoner of war being brainwashed and collaborating with…

Politics: Bogus registration claims a ‘smokescreen’ for GOP suppression efforts

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham [email protected] Republicans and their allies in the mainstream news media are stating publicly that it’s Democrats who are trying to rig the 2008 elections by submitting voter-registration applications with phony names and other such chicanery. Funny how the media is either missing out on the real story or is working in…

Harrisonburg: Are voters being disenfranchised?

Chris Graham

Column by Joseph Fitzgerald Hundreds of potential first-time voters may have been disenfranchised by the Harrisonburg Registrar’s Office as part of a pattern that increasingly looks like an active campaign to limit voting by college students in the presidential election. The campaign began with unsubstantiated warnings to students about financial repercussions from registering; it is…

Local Politics: Ready to RockDem in Harrisonburg, Rockingham County

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham [email protected] The ballot in Harrisonburg on Nov. 4 is mighty crowded, with two dozen or so names covering races from the White House to Harrisonburg City Council promising to keep voters inside the curtain for a minute or two or more on Election Day. The crowding means that you…

The Valley Blue Dog: Notes from the dirty campaign trail

Steven Sisson

Column by Steven Sisson Our presidential campaign has sunk lower than the Wall Street stock index. Down, down, down … Republican operatives have historically gone negative in losing campaigns to drive down voter participation and denigrate their Democratic opposition. Guess what? Dinosaur-like GOP president nominee John McCain is losing to a first-term senator. The Blue…

David Reynolds: Looking back and beyond

David Reynolds

Column by David Reynolds First, a look back at last week. I argued that a cause of the current economic turmoil was a clash between a social policy, racial affirmative action, and economic reality, the current housing market. The column was based on several sources, including quotes from Washington officials and leading newspaper accounts. As…