Republicans Needed in Danville, Virginia

Not all Tea Parties are affiliated with the Republican Party, but this one is (announcement shared by Patricia Evans):

"

2013 Republican ticket: Cuccinelli, Jackson and Obenshain

Let's go win, and win big!

We will have a table/tent at 2 events in Danville coming up in July and we need volunteers to man the table for 1-2hrs at a time.

July 4 at the Crossing: 6-9pm

July 12-13 Tractor Pull at Fairgrounds 5:30-9:00 each night

Also I still need volunteers to come in the office to make phone calls and knock doors.

If you can help, please contact:


Josh Puccio at  434- 466- 5329  or email  jpuccio@rpv.org              

                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

--
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."  - Thomas Jefferson   Virginia Tea Party Patriots  www.virginiateapartypatriots.com   Danville Patriots   http://danvillepatriots.com/  "

Fair disclosure: Although I live a long way from Danville, I've been planning to vote for Cuccinelli since 2011. However, if I had been undecided, the ad that popped up alongside this e-mail would've pushed me to vote for Cuccinelli.

Why? Because Yahoo is selling "targeted ads." Ads aren't just popping up on the screen the way they do on television. Somebody at Yahoo, even if it's only a computer, is reading my e-mail and trying to match these ads to keywords in my e-mail. That's always an icky, nasty, creepy thought, and would turn me against just about anything advertised on Yahoo these days.

All people marketing anything should remember: I don't like ads. Period. I believe that things worth buying don't need much advertising. If what you're selling can't be advertised as a brand on a sale sheet from a local supermarket, then the more you spend to push it, the less I'm going to want it.

But this ad for the Democratic Party candidate is particularly icky because the People of the Burro have managed to figure out that I'm a woman (duh) and so, in their view, the statement that Ken Cuccinelli opposes abortion counts as negative advertising. In their view, no woman could possibly oppose abortion too.

In real life, this issue is much too complicated and too icky to be used to polarize voters, or any group of voters.

I think women have a right to choose whether or not they want to be pregnant. I think women need to make that choice before there's any chance of their becoming pregnant, and communicate it clearly, and enforce it in a more reliable way than merely buying some product that this web site wouldn't advertise in any case. So if women are "choosing" abortion, something has obviously gone very badly wrong, and I don't really want to know about it. They're entitled to their choices. I prefer that other women not ask me to pay for any of their choices...including abortion, and also including food for babies they can't afford to bring up, actually. We don't hear nearly enough about a woman's real choice--to "Just Say No" to any risk of unwanted babies.

Meghan McCain said in her first book that "it's so easy not to get pregnant." She's right. She's also younger and hotter and richer and better known than I am, which makes her more likely to be chosen as a role model by young girls. She also can afford to maintain a web site without signing a contract to avoid vulgarity such as mention of body parts. All young girls wondering what choices they have are hereby referred to Meghan McCain.

So, Ken Cuccinelli opposes abortion. Surprise? That ethnic-cultural stereotype you weren't going to make turns out to be applicable to him? Some people of Italian descent are Catholic? This is news that you need to annoy people by jamming up against their e-mail? I don't think so.

I also don't think Future Governor Cuccinelli is going to succeed in doing a great deal to prevent abortions, in his capacity as governor. He can rant about them, which many voters, like me, won't like, and which may reduce his popularity. Or he can be quiet about them. State governors can't overturn Supreme Court rulings, and if state governors did manage to make it hard to get an abortion (or do whatever else) in one state, they'd merely encourage travel to other states. So I think the choice that will do most for Ken Cuccinelli's career will be to talk about topics that are a little more relevant to the overwhelming majority of Virginians, to nearly all men and to the majority of women voters who are over age 35, rather than abortion.

And I also think that it goes beyond "burro" all the way to "jackass" when people who rally around that emblem assume that all women want, politically, is tax-subsidized abortion. I have told Democrats this since the 1980s and I'm tired of saying it. These people just don't learn. I should vote for someone advertised as One Of The Party Who Just Don't Learn? ???

Memo to Democrats: real donkeys aren't that stupid.

What do women want from our government? I mean, real, full-grown women who know how and when to say no. (And who aren't unlucky enough to find out that what we're hoping to bring up as a child is going to be, say, born without a head--now if that had happened to me I'd feel entitled to ask for a subsidized abortion.)

Well, some of my e-friends want less red tape to interfere with their small business ventures and working from home. Lower taxes is also something many women want. These things used to be Republican rallying cries, but in the present century they've not been a priority for Republican candidates, which is why we have a Tea Party Movement. Anything Future Governor Cuccinelli can do in the direction of cutting red tape and taxes would be counted in his favor.

Privacy and property rights are also prime concerns of several women I know. In the current administration I can't imagine how Democrats might try to address these concerns, but still, even so, trying to recapture the votes they've lost on these issues by blethering on about abortion feels to me like adding insult to injury.

Women I know generally are in favor of peace. Since this web site works from a presupposition that the President and the State Department have information we don't have, I won't go into details about peace with whom, on what terms, but I will say that the reason why we have a President Obama is that virtually all women like peace.

Women also tend to like justice, although our definitions of justice have huge differences in priorities. Personally, for reasons regular readers already understand, I think ensuring that contractual obligations are met, workers are paid, and rightful heirs receive their rightful inheritances is a much, much higher priority than any attempt to extend the benefits of marriage to same-sex couples could hope to be. I think the real benefits of marriage are a gift from God to just a few couples who get their own acts together while single and thus focus completely on making each other glad that they've become couples, and government has nothing to say about that. I think the merely legal benefits of marriage should be available to all people on equal terms, and legalizing same-sex marriage is a long step away from where most of us are actually going to be at the ends of our lives.

And, based on their correspondence with me, I'd guess that priority number five for women who e-mail would be children. (Not necessarily our biological, adoptive, or even foster children; if we don't have those we have nieces, nephews, students...) Again, there are some differences of opinion about the priority issues that need to be considered on behalf of children. I think school choice, whether that's interpreted as freedom to operate public schools or freedom not to attend public schools, is a high priority; some Tea Parties think school choice is a low priority or even something they don't support. I think freedom from any form of dependence on tax-subsidized handouts, or even on private church-managed handouts, is also a high priority for women who want to give children a fair chance in life; some people (often kindhearted people who've never thought much about the issue) think keeping the handouts flowing is a high priority.

Women aren't a single-issue voting bloc, and as I forget whether Phyllis Schlafly or Gloria Steinem said first, expecting all women to vote the same way makes as much sense as expecting all men to vote the same way.

But, whatever we vote on, and why, at least even the People of the Burro could remember that nobody actually wants abortion.