Back Rigell? Tea party probably won’t endorse

Tea party activists lean toward GOP House nominees

Opposing stories from the Pilot and the Times-Dispatch suggest, respectively, that the Tea Party won’t and will back Scott Rigell, winner of Tuesday’s VA-02 Republican primary. “Tea-party activists appeared yesterday to be coalescing around Republican nominees in Virginia’s 2nd … district,” said the Times-Dispatch. “[T]he Hampton Roads Tea Party probably won’t endorse anyone in the 2nd Congressional District’s November election,” said the Pilot. The Tea Party likes Scott Rigell, and Scott Rigell is anathema to Tea Party values.

Aristotle’s law of noncontradiction states that “One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time,” but Aristotle didn’t live to meet Sarah Palin. In fact the unwittingly oxymoronical message here exemplifies Tea Party philosophy: claim all along to be independent stewards of liberty, then vote for whatever wealthy pro-business Republican buys his way onto the November ticket. Chances are that candidate will be wildly reactionary anyway, despite his establishmentarianism.

Irrational though the Tea Party may be, it’s unfair for me not to admit that this is also how the Democratic Party operates, as evidenced by its unvarnished support for Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln in her primary fight against Bill Halter. Lincoln, a Democrat, threatened to filibuster the health care bill if it had a public option in it. This corporatist shill has been instrumental in defeating card-check (i.e. she hates unions), and she’s a chickenhawk in favor of any war any Decider can dream up. Clinton and Obama campaigned vigorously for her. Hours after her victory on Tuesday, a “senior White House official” gloated anonymously that organized labor had flushed ten million dollars down the toilet.

If President Obama had ever honestly wanted a public option, he could have threatened to support Lincoln’s primary opponent. He didn’t. To continue with Aristotelian logic, we can assume by syllogism that Sen. Lincoln was doing the White House’s bidding. She threatened to filibuster because the White House wanted her to. To thank her, our socialist president (that enemy of the well-to-do) campaigned energetically for her against her progressive primary challenger.

So again, while most of the Tea Party platform is incoherent, there’s nothing crazy about wanting to flush out the incumbents and replace them with outsiders. The Pilot is perhaps right that the Tea Party won’t endorse Rigell in the race against Glenn Nye. I doubt it, though. Tea Partiers like to think they’re anti-establishment, but more than that they’re just anarchically crazy. Rigell, knowing this, has dipped his fingers into the teapot to manipulate would-be libertarians into trusting him. In AltDaily’s Q&A with Rigell earlier this week, the candidate makes astonishingly false claims like “We have the second highest corporate tax rates in the world.” He says, “In 2009… I really started to see our country lose its footing, financially,” implying against economic logic that deficit spending is harmful rather than helpful. I would like to have seen some follow-up questions in response to those answers of Rigell’s.

Just in case, Virginia, N.C. prepare for oil cleanup

Experts Double Estimated Rate of Spill in Gulf

The philosopher Avicenna proved the law of noncontradiction thus: “Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as to be burned.”

Our first set of irreconcilable headlines was set half-right by the inconsistency of the Tea Party, but here the counterpart to the Tea Party is natural science. The Pilot tells us that “The gooey blobs and slicks of oil soiling Gulf state beaches probably won’t reach this far north [but] … state officials are forming plans just in case.” Meanwhile the New York Times reports that the government has “essentially doubled its estimate of how much oil has been spewing from the out-of-control BP well.” We must thus divide probably in half. Get out your calculators, state officials—just in case.

We learn in the Pilot story that tarballs are “more of a nuisance than any type of ecological disaster.” This from Coast Guard Cmdr. Brian Thompson, who may or may not have been asked a follow-up question. Meanwhile the Times calculates that “an amount equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could be flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every 8 to 10 days.” We’ve had at least five Exxon Valdez equivalents so far. We can therefore determine that this oil spill will constitute at least five times the nuisance of the one in Prince William Sound. How annoying!

5 accused of selling untaxed cigarettes from Norfolk, Beach

I’m not done talking about the Tea Party, but let me step back a moment. Five suspects have been arrested in Norfolk and Virginia Beach for allegedly running a smuggling ring that buys cigarettes wholesale in Virginia and sells them in points north where tobacco is heavily taxed. The group is accused of smuggling up to 500 cases of cigarettes per week, which is profitable because “At 30 cents a pack, Virginia has the country’s third-lowest tobacco excise tax.”

I’ve learned a lot in the last few months about how to sniff out a good Pilot comment thread, and all your favorite ingredients are stewing in the angry bouillabaisse of this one. Taxes! Light rail! If you’re still smarting over a speeding ticket some years back, you’ve probably posted a comment. Triple-taxing! It’s exhilarating, almost fetishistically so, to believe things that don’t make sense. To write them down triples that thrill and to click “submit” triples it again. So I hate to spoil the fun. But would the flat-taxers like to advocate an abolition of the federal system in favor of central control? We have federal, state, and local governments. They could all just print new money for themselves daily on the money machines, but the economists tell us that—oh, never mind. Let me just say I look forward to the anti-taxation activists’ boycott of the fire department and electrical grid and the public roads. Post office lines will shorten drastically. The rest of us will be rescued sooner in hurricanes.

If we had the parks, trails, trains, and recreation centers that the more highly taxed enjoy, my argument would be yet easier: I could look forward to a boycott of the Elizabeth River Hike-and-Bike Trail, or of the ODU/Naval Base light-rail extension. Where’s the pleasure in civic bankruptcy? Thirty cents a pack seems a meager tax to levy on a deadly and addictive drug. If this tax were quadrupled, it would yet remain a mere fraction of what New Yorkers pay. If it were octupled, crime syndicates might still continue trafficking in illegal untaxed cigarettes, because it would remain quite low in relation to northern states’ tobacco taxes.

Norfolk scaling back access to rec centers, pools

All but two of Norfolk’s recreational centers will be closed on Saturdays from now on. Norfolk’s pools will close at least two days a week, maybe more. Citizens can learn about the changes at www.norfolk.gov/goodtimes, which wins this week’s Euphemistically Named Website Award unless the name comes from the aforementioned “good times equals no government” sentiment, in which case it’s not meant as a euphemism.

Va. Beach bistro owner wants to be area’s World Cup HQ

For the next five Saturdays it won’t matter that the pools are closed, because we’ll all be at bars watching the 2010 FIFA World Cup. This greatest of sporting events begins today with Uruguay vs France and Mexico vs South Africa. Since I’ve flown the coop once more, I must leave it to commanders on the ground to decide where best to watch the games, but you could do worse than Jack’s Bistro on Laskin Road. The owner tells the Pilot that “The doors will be swinging open as early as 7 a.m. whenever there’s a big Cup match on the telly.”

Having spent the 2002 World Cup in Ireland, I can attest that seven is not too early to drink and watch soccer. That year’s games were played in Japan and South Korea, and some start times were pre-dawn where I was lurking on the rugged Beara Peninsula. At six o’clock on Sunday morning every man woman and child in Castletownbere was at the pub clutching a Guinness and cheering on their national team that came a penalty kick away from the quarterfinals. Afterward I stayed at the pub while they all went to church. To think a whole month of this lies ahead of us!

Jack’s serves “Scotch eggs, Cornish pasties, beef Wellington, shepherd’s pie, ploughman’s lunch, [and] proper fish and chips,” so it sounds like a good spot if you plan to root traitorously for England and against the U.S. tomorrow at 2:30.

McDonnell among 10 governors behind wind consortium

Bob McDonnell has joined the governors of eight other states in creating an “Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy Consortium” which “intends to promote the development of wind resources on the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf—a first step toward broader coordination among the Atlantic states and federal agencies.” Although that’s the kind of unambitious language that has us setting benchmarks for the year 2030 rather than 2013, I’ll take the Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy Consortium over the Atlantic Offshore Oil Drilling Consortium.

Lawmaker warns “Don’t Ask” repeal means talking to kids about homosexuality

Finally, the parade of fatuous arguments against repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell marches on apace this week with an assist by Congressman Ike Skelton. “What do mommies and daddies say to their 7-year-old child [if DADT is repealed]?” asked Skelton despairingly, warning of the dark day when America’s second-graders, innocent no longer, turn their fearful eyes upward to implore, “What if DADT undermines military effectiveness, Daddy? How can sixty days be enough to review the implementation policy once it’s certified, Mommy?”

When I was seven, life seemed full of gentle kindness until that fateful night in 1984 when Mondale lost to Reagan. “How can the middle class vote as a bloc against its economic self-interest, Mommy?” I cried. “How does our president’s friendship with the Argentine junta pass muster with our electorate, Daddy?” My parents, having assured me there was a moral nucleus to the universe, could only look away in shame. My favorite William Blake poems suddenly seemed facile, naďve. I turned to other, darker ones to shepherd me through the ruins of that thwarted childhood.

To any seven-year-olds who are now reading, I thank you for paying such close attention to the DADT repeal. You surely know too about Operation Iraqi Freedom, which Ike Skelton voted for, as did many other armchair warriors who don’t give a shit that you’re growing up in a country permanently at war. Assuming the average first memory is of age three, kids born in 1998 have never known a time when we were at peace. In all likelihood we’ll still be at war in six years when those kids reach the age of majority. Eventually we’ll all be parroting the brainwashed populace in 1984: “We have always been at war with Eastasia.”

How depraved, then, to adopt policies that might cause kids to hear the word gay.

In fairness to Reagan, he tried his damnedest for another three years to keep the children’s souls innocent, but he finally uttered the word AIDS in 1987, six years into that epidemic. I’m surprised Rep. Skelton didn’t start advocating mandatory abortions after the Great Communicator let that one slip.

In closing I should mention that Skelton is named after Isaac Newton.