Transitioning from blogger to candidate

Well, it’s been a busy week.  Two nights ago, I was officially nominated by the Spotsylvania Republican Party for the Lee Hill seat on the Board of Supervisors.  Today, I found out who would be above me on the Republican ticket: Bob McDonnell (Governor), Bill Bolling (Lt. Governor), Ken Cuccinelli (Attorney General), and Robert Orrock (House of Delegates – although that’s been known for a while now).

Among other things, this has led me to put McDonnell – after a long delay – in the right-hand column (although that would have happened today whether I was running or not, as I consider McD far superior to any of the three stooges).  I have an email to the Orrock people asking for a widget; I may need to send another one.

Meanwhile, as spreading my message of stopping tax increases and bringing local spending under control to the Lee Hill voters takes up more and more of my time, odds are I’ll be blogging less frequently until November.

It’s already been quite a ride, and I’m looking forward to an exciting five months!

It’s the Shaq ex-press Finals

Orlando kept Cleveland at arm’s length all game, and they’re going to the finals to face the L.A. Lakers.

The subtexts are numerous: Shaq’s first team against the club that Shaq helped bring three titles.  Phil Jackson going for ring ten against Patrick Ewing (long the Knick center, now a Magic assistant coach) again reaching for his first.  Kobe trying again to win a ring without Shaq.

Oh, and with both teams punching their ticket with statement Game 6′s, the basketball should be pretty good, too.

Lakers back in the Finals

This is the Lakers team that should scare everyone.  They went into the other guys’ building and wiped the floor with them.  This was a Class A whoopin’.

When LA laid an egg in Game 6 against the Rockets, I didn’t think the Lakers had the heart of a champion.  I’m not fully convinced yet, but I’m open to a reassess after tonight.  Wow.

Now playing at Virginia Virtucon (also)

A few hours ago, I was invited to join Riley, VA Patriot, Scott Hirons, Ignatius, Jay Hughes, and the whole gang over at Virginia Virtucon.  I am delighted and honored to be a part of the veritable VV crew.  I only hope I can uphold the reputation!

What if you read that the shooters at Kent State were KGB agents?

That is the equivalent of the stunner dropped on the German people (Wall Street Journal via NRO - The Corner):

On June 2, 1967, a West German policeman fatally shot an unarmed, 26-year-old literature student in the back of his head during a demonstration in West Berlin against the visiting Shah of Iran. Benno Ohnesorg became “the left wing’s first martyr” (per the weekly Der Spiegel). His dying moments captured in a famous news photograph, Ohnesorg galvanized a generation of left-wing students and activists who rose up in the iconic year of 1968. What was a fringe soon turned to terrorism.

To them his killer, Karl-Heinz Kurras, was the “fascist cop” at the service of a capitalist, pro-American “latent fascist state.”

. . .

Now all that’s being turned on its head. Last week, a pair of German historians unearthed the truth about Mr. Kurras. Since 1955, he had worked for the Stasi, East Germany’s dreaded secret police. According to voluminous Stasi archives, his code name was Otto Bohl. The files don’t say whether the Stasi ordered him to do what he did in 1967. But that only fuels speculation about a Stasi hand behind one of postwar Germany’s transformative events.

Wow.

Still, the Communists have a history of maneuvering Germany – to the dismay of the rest of the world.  As Whittaker Chambers noted in Witness, it was Stalin himself who ordered the German Communist Party to refuse a coalition with the Social Democrats in 1933 – and thus ensure a minority government under one Adolf Hitler.  The rest is tragic history.

For Herr Ohnesorg - contrary to the assertion of Marx – history repeating itself was a second tragedy.

For those interested in the Korea kerfuffle

Sadly, in mostof the discussion about North Korea, one important player in all this has been missed – which is exactly what said player wants.  That player is the Chinese Communist Party.  To see why, look here.

Dwight Howard takes over

A guy picked his team up by the scruff of the neck and dragged it to victory.

Yet it wasn’t LeBron (although, to be fair, if he hits that three from Disneyworld at the buzzer . . .), it was Dwight Howard for the Orlando Magic.

Orlando now leads 3-1, but the Cavs have two games at home (5 and 7), and I remember the Miami Heat (with the help of a bunch of suspensions) coming back from the same hole against the Knicks in 1997.  Patrick Ewing (Orlando assistant coach) does, too.

All in all, this is already a great series.

Live by the three; die by the three (UPDATE: get resurrected by the three)

The Orlando Magic managed to come from eight down in the third to eight up in the fourth by shooting lights-out from three point range.  Yet in the last few minutes, they went cold, and gave Cleveland the chance to come back.

With 6 seconds left, it’s Cleveland by 1.  If the Magic want to win (and they have the ball on the inbound), they’d better put the ball in the paint.

UPDATE: Never mind; Rashad Lewis just hit – wait for it – a three with 4.1 seconds left.  Cleveland has the ball on the inbound.  As Drudge would say, developing . . .

FURTHER UPDATE: LeBron gets two free throws with half a second left, and gets both (the second one did a little dance on the rim before it went down).  Orlando’s ball on the inbound . . .

EVEN FURTHER UPDATE: We’re going to overtime.  See you in five (well, maybe ten, or fifteen, or . . .).

What RedStormPAC means to me (and you)

Jason Kenney, the Executive Director of RedStormPac, is out searching for funds in its effort to “support conservative candidates with an avenue for small dollar donations, organized by committed conservative activists who want to help fellow conservatives utilize the ‘long tail’ of online fundraising.”

Among the many folks who (I presume) will be helping Jason pull in funds, I may be unique (or at least in rare company) in that I myself am a candidate for office this year (see the top of the right-hand column).  That said, I do think it would help if more folks were aware of just what RedStormPAC does, from one who knows (namely, me).

Thanks to RedStormPAC, I was able to raise funds within days of my announcement for Supervisor in Spotsylvania County.  The account they set up for me (which can be found here, for those who would like to help out my campaign – OUCH!  I hate it when I drop hints on my foot!) was responsible for nearly half the funds I raised in the first two months or so of my campaign.  Believe me, that makes a difference: the difference between desperately scrounging for money and confidently asking for it, the difference between worrying about getting your initial message out and making the first investments toward victory, the difference between delaying actions for lack of funds and getting to the front porches with material in hand for the voters to remember you better.

RedStormPAC has been a great help to me, as I’m sure it has been to other local and statewide candidates trying to rein in government spending and runaway tax increases (some places – like Spotsylvania, with seventeen tax increases in twenty-two years – are worse than others, but I digress).

One other thing RedStormPAC does is absorb all the processing costs of the donations.  When a donor give $100 to a candidate – all $100 goes to the candidate.  The internal cost (which may not be much, but it sure isn’t zero) remains just that – internal.  It is not passed along to the candidate.

For those of us running, the benefit can add up over time.  I can only imagine what the cost does for Jason et al.

So . . . if you happen to have any excess funds (and, ahem, you’ve already maxed out on your contribution to Friends of D.J. McGuire), please send at least some of it RedStormPAC’s way.  The tax bill your money would keep from going up may be your own.

Deeds writes yet another McAuliffe and Moran ad for them

Fresh of his Washington Post endorsement and polls showing him moving up in the polls, Creigh Deeds admits he doesn’t know what the minimum wage in Virginia is (CNN’s Peter Hamby via Jim Geraghty).

The opposition research folks at the McAuliffe and Moran campaigns better be careful; Deeds is making them look very unnecessary right now.