Virginia Foxx's Standard Reply to Constituents

This is the second e-mail from Virginia Foxx to one of her constituents that has been forwarded to me, and they are virtually identical (so far as the boilerplate content), which of course indicates automation in the reply. Which is to say, Virginia Foxx doesn't have time for your sorry ass, and has one reply that fits all. To wit:

Dear __________:

Thank you for your email in support of [in opposition to] ___________. I appreciate your taking the time to share your concerns with me.

So far this Congress over 5,600 bills have been introduced and I have not had a chance to become familiar with _________. However, it is important to let you know that whether ________ comes to the House for a vote is completely in the hands of Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat majority. They control what we are allowed to vote on and the number of cosponsors has no impact. We have some bills with 300 cosponsors which the Speaker refuses to bring up for a vote. Rest assured I have duly noted your support for this legislation.

Please continue to contact me on any issues of concern. Thank you for visiting my award winning website, www.foxx.house.gov. We update our site daily and it is a great resource to learn about constituent services, legislative updates and my work in Congress. I hope you will continue to utilize the website and let me know what you think about it.

Sincerely,
Virginia Foxx
Member of Congress

The voter who shared this message with me this morning added this commentary to his forward:

This is so typical of what The Madam writes when one contacts her: first, I don't know what you are talking about. Second, I can't do anything about it anyway because Nancy Pelosi is in charge of making any laws. So I really have a great excuse to do nothing. Such a negative woman! Why should we return to office this kind of placeholder? This is a great reason why one should vote for Billy Kennedy!

An Upside to the 2nd Primary?

Not my usual line of thought, but Gary Pearce, with loads more experience in this venue, has a valid point.

More on the Soucek Smear of Goss

One of the accusations against Steve Goss in the Dan Soucek e-mail smear (printed in its entirety down-column) is that Senator Goss was "caught" billing his campaign $19,000 for mileage. The implication is that Mr. Goss did something criminal and, further, that he could not possibly have driven that much around his district.

Sen. Goss admitted that he had incorrectly filed for reimbursement in 2009 for campaign travel going back to 2006, because under N.C. rules he was supposed to claim the mileage reimbursement "when the expense is incurred." He made a mistake. But he did the travel. Here's his travel log going back to 2006.

The Dan Soucek e-mail smear isn't interested in these facts, of course. It's interested in wringing out innuendo, which is certainly the Christian thing to do in the alternative, holier-than-thou Universe of the Perverted Jesus inhabited by Mr. Soucek and his allies in the NC Republican Party.

Fact is, Sen. Goss has traveled more than 75,000 miles in his service to the 45th Dist. Yes. (Stuff that in your pipe, Mr. Soucek!) Sen. Goss has traveled and spoken and listened and helped solve problems and consulted with voters like no other senator in the N.C. General Assembly. He's arguably the hardest working member of that body.

Which sort of begs the question of Mr. Soucek, who wants to mock such hard work rather than acknowledge it as a virtue: "Just how much time are you going to be able to spend serving the people of the 45th Dist., Mr. Soucek, should we be unlucky enough to be saddled with your more than enlightened leadership?" How many miles are you willing to drive on your own (or anyone else's) dime, for a job that pays exactly $13,951 per annum?

What Kind of a Christian Is Dan Soucek?

The garbage-hauling kind, evidently.

The intercepted e-mail below is going out from the NC Senate Republican Caucus to benefit Mr. Soucek, and it might conservatively be called a rotten smear of a good man. Mr. Soucek ought to disavow it, but he won't.

Dear Supporter,

I am writing to ask you to support Dan Soucek our candidate in Senate District 45.

Recent polling shows Dan tied with incumbent Democrat Senator, Steve Goss. Senator Goss is one of the top Republican targets in 2010.

Steve Goss is a perfect example of what's wrong with the Democrats in the State Senate. He runs around his district telling the voters that he is a conservative -- virtually a Jesse Helms -- but when he gets to Raleigh you'd have a hard time seeing a difference between Goss and Nancy Pelosi.

Goss has voted for over $1 billion in new taxes. During his campaigns he plays up his background as an ordained minister but in Raleigh he's refused to sponsor a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in North Carolina even after promising to do so. And after getting caught billing his campaign $19,000 for mileage -- enough to drive around the world at the equator -- over four months he had the gall to sponsor an "Ethics Reform" bill.

Every dollar Dan raises will go towards funding advertising and get out the vote efforts to achieve victory in November.

We are asking you, one of our most loyal online supporters, to make a generous contribution to Dan's campaign before the June 30th campaign reporting deadline.

Dan's campaign needs to sell another 103 tickets to his June 29th fundraising raffle. Here are a few ways you can help:

Dan is hosting a reception and raffle on June 29th in Blowing Rock, NC. Tickets are $100 and the grand prize is a trip for two with Templeton Tours valued at $8,000! You don't have to be present to win.

If you'd like to contribute by check, please make checks payable to Soucek for NC Senate and mail them to PO BOX 2573, Boone, NC 27607.

Thank you for your continued support of Republican efforts to win a State Senate Majority; we cannot win a Republican Majority without your help.

Sincerely,
Heather Dickson
Finance Director, NC Republican Senate Caucus

PS: Please help Dan reach his fundraising goal by donating any amount you can afford.

Let's see: Pelosi and gay marriage. That's the sum total of issues that this bunch is willing to pin on the heroic Mr. Soucek's puffed-out chest.

Fer Gawd's sake, can't these people deal with anything that remotely touches the economic realities of the working people of the 45th Senatorial District?

And by the way: we're still waiting to learn what business it is that "businessman" Dan Soucek practices. Other than smear tactics.

Unity and Disunity

Me likee the slide show of the Democratic senatorial unity rally on Wednesday in Raleigh following Elaine Marshall's decisive 2nd primary win.

Compare and contrast with Machine Gun Tim D'Annunzio's attitude toward the man who beat him in the Republican 2nd primary in the NC-8 and toward the Republican Party generally (not to mention the godless Democrats!). Apparently, the apocalypse is upon us.

Elaine Marshall Surges Against Burr

Rasmussen polling -- Rasmussen! -- finds that Elaine Marshall got a big bounce from that awful, hideous, wasteful 2nd primary. She is now dead even with Sen. Dick Burr. Whaaa?

Dick Burr's got all that money. But sometimes buckets of money can seem like exactly what they are ... proof that a politician is bought & paid for.

Sez Rasmussen:

Another concern for Burr is that incumbents who earn less than 50% of the vote at this stage of a campaign are considered politically vulnerable, and no incumbent has been reelected to the seat [Burr] holds since 1968. The incumbent may benefit, however, from the fact that the political environment is very difficult for Democrats this year.

That last point is a pretty blunt instrument, Mr. Pollster, when the actual "political environment" might more accurately said to be "very difficult" for incumbents. Most of whom are Democrats, granted. But not in the case of North Carolina's senior senator.

Just sayin'.

2nd Primary

Cal Cunningham lost to Elaine Marshall. No surprise.

Machine Gun Tim D'Annunzio lost to Harold Johnson. No surprise.

But Bernie Reeves lost to Bill Randall in the NC-13 Republican run-off, which was something of a surprise to those of us who read Carter Wrenn. Wrenn, who was a major synapse in Jesse Helms's brain trust, had been railing against Randall as a fake, a man who plagiarized and fluffed his resume. We knew Randall as the dude who suggested that the Deepwater Horizon disaster was planned by Barack Obama and BP. Randall was the darling of religious conservatives and tea partiers.

If Carter Wrenn represents in any way the old Republican establishment in NC, then the Tea Party defeated the Republican establishment yesterday in giving Bill Randall the nod to go up against incumbent Congressman Brad Miller in November.

Fritter Fest

Thank Gawd it's over today, this monumental waste of time, energy, and money.

Solstice

We get our Northern Hemisphere winter and summer from the wobbling of the earth on its axis, the tilting of the earth's halves toward and away from the sun. The moments when the tilt shifts back the opposite direction have always carried heavy significance for the human race. The exact measurement of those moments is why Stonehenge was built. It's why the celebration of Jesus' birth got placed on the old Roman calendar at the Winter Solstice.

The Northern Hemisphere reached its maximum tilt toward the sun this morning at 7:28 a.m. At 7:29 it had begun to tilt back toward what will ultimately give us (dare we say it?) ... winter.

I was in my garden at 7:28 to feel the earth move.

Now I'm going to go plant a tree.