Virginia School District Can't Quit Their White Supremacy

The school board in Shenandoah County, Virginia, did the right thing a few years ago by trying to catch up to modern times by losing the Confederate names to their schools. It was more than their feeble minds could handle.

Mountain View High School will go back to the name Stonewall Jackson High School. Honey Run Elementary School will go back to the name Ashby-Lee Elementary School. 

The board stripped their names after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, fueling a national racial reckoning. The calls for racial justice and equity inspired some communities to remove Confederate symbolism and statues of Confederate generals. 

But in Shenandoah County, the conservative group Coalition for Better Schools petitioned school officials to reinstate the names of Jackson, Lee and Ashby. “We believe that revisiting this decision is essential to honor our community’s heritage and respect the wishes of the majority,” the coalition wrote in an April 3 letter to the board, according to a copy posted online. The board considered a similar motion in 2022, but it failed because of a tie vote.

So they're claiming that their heritage is white supremacy? Pretty soon their heritage will be unemployment. The only thing shocking about this story is that Rick Esenberg and WILL weren't involved.

Another Day, Another Shooting

By Jeff Simpson

While the shooting of the reporter and her cameraman was horrific, I found how the station covered it to be very interesting....

"We are choosing not to run the video of that (the shooting) right now because, frankly, we don't need to see it again. And our staff doesn't need to see it again," Jeffrey Marks, WDBJ's president and general manager, said on air soon afterward. "But we will do full reporting on it later. Our teams are working on it right now, through the tears."

 Personally, I watched the original video once, before we knew what was happening.   I almost watched the "selfie" video, but then decided I did not have any interest in watching two people die.  

I think it is interesting however, because I wonder if this was two people vacationing from Wisconsin, who they did not know, how many times would they have run with all of the videos?

I hope that this causes news outlets around the country to think about that.

I agree they didn't need to see it again....quite frankly when something bad happens to any of us, we don't need to see the gory details, over and over and over again. You can report a story without the blood.

I doubt however that anything will change.

One last piece, there were warning signs.....how did he get possession of a gun?

Yes Virginia There Is A Santa Claus!

 

This never gets old to me. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you!  Thank you for reading and commenting all year.   

In 1897, the New York Sun received a letter from a girl, Virginia O’Hanlon, asking if Santa Claus exists. It is probably the most famous letter to the editor ever published. Francis P. Church of the Sun replied with an editorial that is now a seasonal classic:

“I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says if you say it in the Sun, it is so. Please tell me the truth — is there a Santa Claus?”— Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little.
In this great universe of ours, man is a little insect and an ant is his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus.
It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginia. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment except sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus.
The most real things in the world are those that neither child nor man can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on a lawn? Of course not. But that is no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men who ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glories beyond.
Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus! Thank God! He lives, and he will live forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

The Virginia Impasse

By Jeff Simpson

Today Virginia held a special election.  The choice was simple in this solidly red state ....

1. A Democrat who could possibly be the worst possible democrat to run since Dan Rostenkowski!  McAuliffe is a former head of the DNC and is an awful person and terrible politician.    I personally can not think of a possible scenario of a way that I would vote for McAuliffe.

His loss should be a sure thing....until you meet his opponent!

2.  Republican candidate and full on "tea party" hero Ken Cuccinelli, who ran on the ultra right wing, tax cutting platform.  

“On the other hand, you have a candidate who says he will lower taxes by $700 per family. That will allow the economy to grow and allow your kids to move out of your basement.”

“My opponent believes government is the answer to everything, and he can’t walk in a room without promising something,” Cuccinelli said.

He reminded the crowd that he was the first attorney general in the country to file suit against the federal Affordable Care Act and that he opposes a key piece of the health care overhaul that is unresolved in Virginia: expansion of the Medicaid health insurance program for low-income people. McAuliffe supports Medicaid expansion.

Noting the technical difficulties that have beset the rollout of the federal law, Cuccinelli said: “Why would we expand failure? We knew it would fail.”

This race was so bad, that the local paper endorsed - None of the Above! However that did not stop our very own Governor to spend a weekend(and our tax dollars) helping his good friend campaign.

Terry Mcauliffe pulled it out tonight!

In a very red state,  the Democrats just pulled out a major victory with the message of "I know our guy is horrible but the other guy is tea party" and now will be in charge of the Governorship.   

In Wisconsin, our guy not only hitched his wagons to this losing train, Scott Walker calls himself "the Original tea party". 

"When people ask me, 'How do you appeal to Tea Party folks?' I say: I was the original Tea Party in Wisconsin." -- Scott Walker on CNN.

When you pair Wisconsin, which leans to the left, and just came off overwhelming victories to Tammy Baldwin and President Obama, with nationwide disgust for the "tea party", should mean a change of faces in the Governor's office.  Let's see if the powers that be, have the ability to make that happen!  

Cucciker? Walkinelli?

 

By Jeff Simpson

Scott Walker this weekend is doing the one thing he has mastered since becoming Governor of Wisconsin - leaving the state to campaign.   This time, its for one of the more extreme right wing people you have ever seen - Ken Cuccinelli.  

Cuccinelli is sort of a combination, if you took all of the bad from Steve nASS, Andre JAcque and Glenn Grothman and then took a step to the right!

Let's take a quick peek at Cuccinelli(since that is about all anyone can handle):

He is amazed that God has not punished America more for allowing abortion:

But in his speech to the Christian Life Summit last year -- unearthed Monday night by NBC12 -- Cuccinelli said he is surprised that God has not yet "imposed" more judgment on America for allowing abortion to be legal.
"Really, given that God does judge nations, it's amazing that abortion has run as far and foully as it has, without what I would consider to be a greater imposition of judgment on this country," Cuccinelli said. "Who knows what the future holds?"
Cuccinelli also criticized the Catholic church for its "soft and weak" leadership on social issues.

Has declared war on oral sex:

 Ken Cuccinelli wants to keep kids safe from sexual predators by banning oral and anal sex—between consenting adults. On a website his campaign just launched, Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, paints himself as the only real protector of children, because of his efforts as Virginia attorney general to reinstate a law banning all naked fun-time acts besides vaginal intercourse

And Hates the LGBT community:

 Politico reports on how Cuccinelli responded to a question by moderator Judy Woodruff in which she asked if he still agreed that homosexuality was “against nature and harmful to society":

“My personal beliefs about the personal challenges of homosexuality haven’t changed,” he said at one point. “What I want to do as governor is create an environment, including an economic environment, where every Virginian has the opportunity to succeed.”

“The notion that because I believe marriage ought to be protected, because I believe life begins at conception — just like hundreds of thousands of independents and Democrats — this isn’t just me, it isn’t just Republicans,” he said. “There are lots of Virginians, millions, perhaps, of Virginians, who share my sincerely held beliefs.”

With a guy this far to the right, no wonder Scott Walker is spending our taxpayer money and heading out of town to campaign for him.  When you align in goals so closely, why not help his good friend win?

There is only one problem though!   The Virginia republican party worries that Scott Walker will make Cuccinelli look bad because he is so extreme and divisive! 

Walker, the Wisconsin governor, will make two stops with Cuccinelli on Saturday. He is popular on the right for taking on unions in a blue state and then beating back a recall, but his trip risks giving Democrats an opening to argue that Cuccinelli will govern in a similarly divisive way. McAuliffe promises a bipartisan cabinet and a knack for deal-making.