Countdown: Perriello on the state of the race

Video: Perriello on hoping to beat the odds in Va., posted with vodpod

Rep. Tom Perriello Opens His Farmville Office; Supporters Excited

The Farmville Perriello office opened officially last Friday at 6PM. Around 100 people came to see Tom and listen to what he had to say.

Rep. Tom Perriello opens up his Farmville Offic…, posted with vodpod

National Geographic Video: Hobet Mine MTR Effects

more about “Hobet Mine MTR Effects“, posted with vodpod

Taken between 1984 and 2009 by NASA’s Landsat 5 satellite, the true-color pictures document the evolution of the Hobet mine in the Appalachian Mountains.

Mountaintop miners use heavy construction equipment—up to 40 stories tall—to get at the “layer cake” of coal seams underneath the surface, according to NASA. The resulting coal pits, which can be up to 800 feet (244 meters) deep, are seen in off-white against the dark green forests in the pictures above.

Calls To Tom Perriello’s Office Last Thursday Were 88% From Outside the Fifth District

LAV, the two person political influence organization, one of them being slime merchant Dick (Dick) Morris, has been mobilizing a campaign to derail health care reform in the last few weeks. An email campaign and a television ad (find it yourself) targeted to certain Democratic members of the House have resulted in a situation where the telephone calls are interrupting normal business in the offices and have caused constituents to not be able to reach their representative’s offices.

TPMDC writer Eric Kleefeld wrote a story yesterday concerning this situation, and Rep. Tom Perriello’s office was mentioned as one of the offices targeted.

Morris has also been operating an e-mail campaign to have people across the country call members of Congress. One staffer for an unnamed targeted representative said that the office has been inundated with calls from outside the district, including at least one caller from another state who specifically cited the Morris e-mail campaign as the reason for their call.

If anything, the staffer said that the volume of calls from outside the district have led to a different perspective on the calls from inside the district, which have been a mix of both positive and negative comments about the bill. “Looking back on the last few days, it’s actually the impression for us that our district is much more moderate than we thought,” the staffer said, also adding: “I think people who inundate us from outside the district aren’t terribly effective to make their argument. Maybe there are people from inside our district who have tried to call us, but the phone lines are jammed up.”

Jessica Barba, press secretary for Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA), said that on the office’s tally from this past Thursday, 88% of calls to the office came from outside the district. “We believe that we have had more calls in support of health are from inside our own district,” said Barba.

Barba also said that the phone calls from outside the district are interfering with the real business of the office: “We’ll get a constituent calling in the middle of all the phones ringing off the hook and say, ‘I’ve tried a few times, and I’m trying to talk to somebody about Social Security.’ So they’re getting caught in the mess.’” [my emphasis]

The League of American voters did not return our requests for comment.

In my opinion, this sort of operation should be illegal. Obviously, voters from both political parties (three parties if you count the teabaggers) are interested in calling their representatives. However, masses of calls, mostly from outside the district sounds more like undue harassment to me.

Morris, who once worked for Democrats and is now the darling of the right-wing press (think Fox News and Newsmax), is someone who is mainly interested in what happens that can be beneficial for Dick Morris. He is a shameless self-promoter who evidently will stop at nothing to lie to the American people to try delivering the message his financial backers and handlers want to be delivered. The funding sources and/or backers of LAV (League of American Voters) are unknown at this time.

Thanks for nothing, Dick.

Rachel Maddow: What is Bart Stupak Up To?

more about "Rachel Maddow: What is Bart Stupak Up To", posted with vodpod

VA-05 Republican Debate in Lynchburg Saturday Night

more about "ABC 13 – To Go", posted with vodpod

What Matt Yglesias Said

Jamelle, over at the United States of Jamerica, has hit on something I think is lost in all the hand-wringing and clod-kicking as some look down in shame over the election results in MA earlier this week. In that regard, Matt Yglesias’ article today from Think Progress says what I and a few others are saying.

An objective setback is an objective setback. It can’t be spun away. But the good thing about the availability of these tracking polls is that if we want to know what people think about Barack Obama we can look it up very easily. We don’t need to draw inferences from how Creigh Deeds or Martha Coakley does, we can look it up. Something that I think congressional Democrats haven’t really grasped since November 2008 is the full implications of the fact that Obama polls radically better than either “Congress” or “Congressional Democrats.” They could cooperate, and try to bask a bit in his relative popularity. Or else they can do a lot of screwing around, pulling him into prolonged congressional negotiations and letting some of their unpopularity rub off on him.

Of course, the Congress can make the President look good, but the President can hardly do all the work in making Congressional Democrats (House and Senate) look better. Senators and Congressmen and Congresswomen can only pass along some of their ridiculous actions and poor popularity to the President.

Go read the whole article.