Virginia Virtucon Makes McCain Campaign List of Top Conservative Blogs

Posted on June 4, 2008 by Riley

This shocked even me when I saw Virtucon listed among these national heavy hitters on the McCain campaign’s website.  Of note is the heavy VA presence on this list that includes Bearing Drift, Mason Conservative and Shaun Kenney also making the cut.  Congrats to all.

 

 

Conservative

A Bama Blog

Ace of Spades HQ

Alaska State Politics

Anchor Rising

Ankle Biting Pundits

Arena of Ideas

Bates Line

Bearing Drift

Bearing Drift Ohio

Bill Hobbs

Blackfive

Bluey Blog

Boots and Sabers

California Conservative

Claremont Conservative

Club for Growth

ConservaBlogs

Elephants in the Blue Grass

Flashpoint Blog

Freedom Dogs

Frugal Hoosiers

Grassroots PA

Hot Air

Hugh Hewitt (Townhall)

Human Events

IlliniPundit

JeffEmanuel.net

Katy’s Conservative Corner

Keeler Political Report

Little Green Footballs

Make Blue Red

Mason Conservative

Michelle Malkin

Michigan Conservative Dossier

Montana Headlines

Mount Virtus

NC Republican Roundtable

NW Republican

Okie Campaigns

On Life and Lybberty

Oregon Commentator

Patrick Ruffini

Power Line Blog

Red Jersey

Red Mass Group

Red State

Residual Forces

Riehl World View

Right Angle Blog

Right Michigan

Right Wing News

Save the GOP

Say Anything Blog

Shaun Kenney

Stay Red Kansas

The American Mind

The American Scene

The Corner

The Right Track

The Volokh Conspiracy

ThinkRight Arizona

Townhall.com Blog

Urban Elephants

Victory Caucus

Virginia Virtucon

Voluntarily Conservative

Weapons of Mass Discussion

Western Word

Wizbang Blog

Wizblog

Filed under: 2008 Elections, Blogging, Conservatism, John McCain

« Are you an Obama or Anti-Obama? McCain Proposes Kennedy-Goldwater Style Town Meetings for ‘08 »

7 Responses

  1. J.R., on June 4th, 2008 at 1:46 pm Said:

    You rock!

  2. Anonymous, on June 4th, 2008 at 3:41 pm Said:

    That’s pretty frickin sweet.

  3. Riley, on June 4th, 2008 at 10:31 pm Said:

    Right back at ya, J.R.

  4. Andy, on August 25th, 2008 at 2:19 pm Said:

    Check out this new site. Solid!
    http://www.redcounty.com/virginia.

  5. Anne Kilkenny, on September 6th, 2008 at 5:50 pm Said:

    The real Sarah Palin — What the Republican Party has tried to pass off on us is both frightening and insulting.
    I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child’s favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99 percent of the residents of the city.
    She is enormously popular; in every way, she is like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and will not vote for her cannot quit smiling when talking about her because she is a “babe”. It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months. She is “pro-life”. She recently gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby. There is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby.
    She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym. She is savvy. She does not take positions; she just “puts things out there” and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit. Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin’s kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her life-style ever been anything like that of native Alaskans. Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters. She is smart.
    Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents. During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings, which had given rise to a recall campaign.
    Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative”. During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33 percent. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38 percent. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax, which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents. The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration were not enough to fund everything on her wish list though; borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked or a new library? No. $1 million for a park. $15 million-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn’t even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later–to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing. While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once. These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

    As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor she proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state. In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today’s surplus, borrow for needs.
    She is not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that were not generated by her or her staff. Ideas were not evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them. While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla, she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin’s attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.
    Sarah complained about the “old boy’s club” when she first ran for Mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of “old boys”. Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as Governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal–loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the State’s top cop (see below).
    As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla’s Police Chief because he “intimidated” her, she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska’s top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every leg al right to fire him, but it is pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he would not fire her sister’s ex-husband, a State Trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than 2 dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.
    She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. The City Council person who personally escorted her around town introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council became one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal City administrator; even people who did not like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness. Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.
    When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job, which paid $122,400/yr, she was complaining in the press about the high salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, and the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this Commission (who was also the State Chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job s he hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the “old boys’ club” when she dramatically quit, exposing this man’s ethics violations (for which he was fined).
    As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the “bridge to nowhere” after it became clear that it would be unwise not to. As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, and then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects–which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance–but with the unobservant, she had gained a reputation as “anti-pork”.
    She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative. Around Wasilla, there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her “Sarah Barracuda” because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah’s mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.
    As Governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of legislation known as “AGIA” that forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum. Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global warming. She campaigned “as a private citizen” against a state initiative that would have either a) protected salmon streams from pollution from mines, or b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who you listen to). She has pushed the State’s lawsuit against the Dept. of the Interior’s decision to list polar bears as threatened species.
    McCain is the oldest person ever to run for President; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being President. There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she. However, there are a lot of people who have underestimated her and are regretting it.
    WHY AM I WRITING THIS?
    First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years, I put on student voting programs in the schools. If you Google my name (Anne Kilkenny + Alaska), you will find references to my participation in local government, education, and PTA/parent organizations.
    Secondly, I have always operated in the belief that “Bad things happen when good people stay silent”. Few people know as much as I do because few have gone to as many City Council meetings.
    Third, I am just a housewife. I do not have a job she can bump me out of. I do not belong to any organization that she can hurt. Nevertheless, I am no fool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will cost me somehow in the future: that is life.
    Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah’s attempt at censorship.
    Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to say anything because t hey were somehow vulnerable.
    Anne Kilkenny
    annekilkenny@hotmail.com
    August 31, 2008
    P.S. – I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase in spending & taxation 2 years ago (when Palin was running for Governor) from information supplied to me by the Finance Director of the City of Wasilla, and I cannot recall exactly what I adjusted for: did I adjust for inflation? For population increases? Right now, it is impossible for a private person to get any info out of City Hall–they are swamped. Therefore, I cannot verify my numbers.

    You may have noticed that there are various numbers circulating for the population of Wasilla, ranging from my “about 5,000″, up to 9,000. The day Palin’s selection was announced a city official told me that the current population is about 7,000. The official 2000 census count was 5,460. I have used about 5,000 because Palin was Mayor from 1996 to 2002, and the city was growing rapidly in the mid-90’s.

  6. VA Patriot, on September 6th, 2008 at 7:22 pm Said:

    Thanks for reposting this from Snopes. I find this “letter” to be pretty unbalanced on the whole and at best incomplete.

  7. Riley, on September 6th, 2008 at 10:12 pm Said:

    Wow, Anne. I had no idea that Wasilla, Alaska computers have Texas IP addresses. Are you in Dallas or Plano because those were the two locations your post traced to.

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