In a statement today, Senator Jim Webb took himself out of Vice Presidential speculation, with a rather firm, ” I have worked hard to deliver upon that commitment, and I am convinced that my efforts and talents toward those ends are best served in the Senate.” With that goes the best shot Virginians have at a slot on this year’s ticket. Former Governor Mark Warner, who took himself out of Presidential consideration with a press conference, took himself out of Vice Presidential selection at the Virginia Democrats’ State Convention in June.

The remaining viable Democratic pick, Governor Tim Kaine, is unlikely to be chosen for Vice President. Obama is unlikely to select a governor whose approval ratings have fallen below 50. On the Republican side, chatter grows louder about Rep. Eric Cantor, one of the very few Jewish Republicans. A relatively young figure (next to John McCain, of course, fossils look young), Cantor’s solid conservative credentials may serve him well in the Vice Presidential selection arena. Remember, VP nominees need to be somewhat low-key–no nominee wants to be overshadowed by their No. 2.

Since it’s quite obvious to Virginia politicos that we have no exciting elections going on this year (that little tussle over who gets to be frickin’ President fails to hold our attention), chatter within Democratic circles over the next statewide election. I, however, am baffled by the conventional wisdom that Democrats should nominate a rural candidate because he’s not from Northern Virginia.

Such an argument is based on the assumption that rural voters will not vote for urban candidates (but urban candidates will happily swallow whatever is given to them), and that Democrats need to win rural votes as opposed to driving out urban and suburban ones to win. Is potential strength in areas where Democrats have not won even relevant if such a candidate can’t fire up urban areas?

More importantly, even if the geographical argument holds water, arguing that rural beats urban is even less valid. Let’s take the last six statewide office elections, with urban candidates in green and rural candidates in yellow next to their home localities. Democrats on blue, Republicans on red:

15 of the last 18 winners of statewide office elections hailed from urban areas, or 83.3%. In those 18 races, 13 people won, 11 of which were from urban areas (84.6%). The last rural candidate who was elected Governor was Republican John Dalton in 1971, who represented Montgomery County and Radford City in the House of Delegates. The last Democrat was Albertis S. Harrison of Brunswick County, elected in 1961. This pattern seems to hold true even for Republicans, even though their party dominates in rural areas. It’s fair to say that because on both sides, urban candidates seem to come out on top, that nominating a rural candidate for the sake of having a rural candidate is a loser’s proposition.

I’m just saying that urban candidates aren’t certain losers. In fact, if one looks at the last couple of decades, our good rural prospects are electable in spite of, not because of, their residency.

They’ve included John Barasso and Mike Enzi of Wyoming, who are the two safest Republicans according to the National Journal.

They’ve included Steve Sauerberg, who is almost certainly going to get walloped by Illinois’ Dick Durbin.

They haven’t even updated their page to note they’ve picked a nominee in New Mexico (it still says you can donate to a general election fund for a primary that was on June 4th), but they didn’t wait for that to ask for money.

They are, however, content to pretend that Jim Gilmore doesn’t exist.

Hampton, VA–

Thousands of Virginia Democrats have gathered in sunny Hampton, VA for a quadrennial romp of hospitality suites and convention business (listed in order of precedence). The venue in the Hampton Roads Coliseum is the kind of venue usually seen in trade shows. The acoustics in here are awful, with noise echoing off the walls and floors. The center section of the room is unlit, perhaps not to brighten out the projector screens, or to keep the press riser in the dark. Regardless, the echoing, cavernous, dimly lit halls fails to dampen the enthusiasm of the Democrats who can taste victory, even if they can’t hear very well what is being said.

Sign Wars. Lieutenant Governor candidate Jon Bowerbank fired the first salvo, plastering the area around the coliseum with signs, in an effort to clear the field for next year. Senate candidate Mark Warner’s sign corps seem constantly hungry for places to bury in 4×6s. Rumor has it that Warner has full-time staffers dedicated to the art of constantly winning sign wars even when there are no opponents. There are so many signs here that it seems they ran out of places to put them, and they are stacked in threes up against the right wall of the venue. Neither Brian Moran nor Creigh Deeds put signs out, instead concentrating on winning the sticker primary.

12:33 PM - Wireless. Finally working.

Song Choice. For the first time in years, Democrats are fielding a candidate in all of Virginia’s congressional districts. First District candidate Dr. Keith Hummel entered to a snippet from Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping.”

I get knocked down
But I get up again
Youre never going to
Keep me down

It’s a good thing he cut it off right there, because the rest goes:

Pissing the night away
Pissing the night away

He drinks a whisky drink
He drinks a vodka drink
He drinks a lager drink
He drinks a cider drink

And so forth.

12:41 PM. Mark R. Warner, Deity. Tim Kaine is at the podium, and like nearly every speaker today, any mention that Mark Warner is almost guaranteed (face it, Republicans) to be Senator causes paroxysms of glee. With both Senate seats, the State Senate, the Governor’s Mansion, a shot at the House of Delegates, Democrats hunt down the last target–electoral votes. “There is one last political change that has eluded us,” Kaine says, and everyone here knows what he’s talking about.

12:47 PM. Never Say Die. Kaine extends olive branch to Clintonistas. Clintonistas wave Hillary signs, and then sit down when Kaine happily notes how early he jumped on the Obama train.

12:51 PM. FDR. I find it interesting that Kaine draws parallels to FDR when speaking of Obama, even going so far to say that Barack Obama would bring such momentous changes that he’s comparable to FDR in ‘33 in the middle of the Great Depression. Inspiration Kennedy-style fits Obama more than inspiration Roosevelt-style, especially considering the bottom hasn’t fallen out of the economy yet, and we are lacking a Dust Bowl.

12:59 PM. GIMME AN O! Restless Seventh District Democrats are throwing about what appear from a distance to be hackysacks, in the same manner that students at West Springfield would throw around beach balls during pep rallies. It’s all that conventions really are. One delegate appears also to have been conked in the head.

1:15 PM. Parliamentary Fun. Motion to suspend slates fails by about 2 to 1. Bad news for non-slate candidates.

1:22 PM. Election of Electoral College Electors. The two at-large electors are to be chosen.

1:38 PM. Continuing With the Election Of Electoral College Electors. Unsurprisingly, it’s been over 15 minutes, and the folks on stage are irritated at the Democratic Party’s inability to sit down and just vote without chatting. There is no provision in the convention rules allowing for time-out of delegates who refuse to stop talking.

1:53 PM. Brian Moran For President Governor. “History doesn’t make itself, you make history…you know what we’ve done here, you know why it matters…This is our time, this is our moment…you are Virginia’s ripples of hope…”

Brian signs plastered all over the 2nd and 8th district, heavy in the 1st and 7th. Scattered signs around the 3rd, 10th and 11th.

2:08 PM. Creigh Deeds for President Governor. Kennedy allusions are popular here.

Creigh signs plastered all over 5th, 6th, 9th.

2:59 PM. Trying Too Hard. Honestly, does Mark Warner even have to try so hard? After the fourth or fifth issue where he drew a contrast with Gilmore’s record, his speech was kicking a dead horse over and over again. Mark Warner could run for Official Deity of the DPVA and win.

3:04 PM. Elector Round Two. Carl Eggleston, Algie Howell, Michael Khandewal, and Sophie Salley advance to the second round of balloting.

That was Ted Kennedy speaking on a landmark piece of immigration legislation, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. That law repealed ethnic and country-of-origin quotas on immigrants. Kennedy was a leading sponsor of the bill, which after becoming law, lifted the severe and crippling restrictions those who did not hail from Western Europe faced. Without repeal of those quotas my parents would have needed quite a bit of luck to arrive on our shores. If quotas still remained law, it is also likely today that there would be far fewer Hispanic immigrants.

You might not know it, but May is Asian-American History Month. It’s less famous than its counterparts for Hispanics (September) or African-Americans (February), but it does indeed exist. Asian-American history isn’t all Kung Pao Chicken, railroad building, and dry cleaning, though.

Not many remember the days before Asian-Americans were regarded as harmless, but there was a time that attitudes towards Asian-Americans were downright hostile. Japanese-Americans, many born on American soil, were packed off to internment camps during World War II. From 1922 to 1931, a woman who married a Chinese-American automatically lost their citizenship, and most infamously, the Chinese Exclusion Act banned anyone of Chinese origin or ethnic makeup from coming to America.

I’m ethnically Chinese. I’ve also been here all my life, so such a stance is completely baffling to me. Anyone who is even remotely concerned about immigrants assimilating into our culture need only to look at how quickly first-generation Americans forget the old country and embrace the new, which is why I am troubled by the paranoia that native-born Americans have towards the great mass of Hispanic immigrants beating down our clumsily constructed virtual fences.

The same thing was feared when immigration quotas no longer favored Western European whites–and guess what? “American culture” has done fine. We still love baseball, apple pie, and mothers. We non-Western Europeans have introduced the joys of spicy foods, and have done little to grind American culture to dust. America was fine.

I see a sneering subtext to arguments against Hispanic immigrants, ideas that Pat Buchanan is never afraid to throw out. Too many Hispanic immigrants who aren’t assimilating into our culture. There’s fear out there. It’s okay if some of your kind come in–but don’t bring too many, you hear?

Rest assured as Asian-American History Month continues, that one needs only to look back at a time when we were the “Yellow Peril”, and realize that our browner brethren are going to turn out the same way.

What’s more remarkable about these numbers, depressing as they are for some of the state, is how little progress jurisdictions at the bottom of the rankings have made in the last few decades, even as higher-ranked jurisdictions have seen steady increases in lifespan. Life expectancy in Petersburg since 1979 has been stagnant–in fact, it has fallen a few weeks from 69.67 years. Meanwhile in that timeframe, Fairfax County gained 4.15 years.

At the very least, a modern, industrialized nation should make its citizens live longer–but it doesn’t always work out that way.

[PLOS]

Can I repeat that one? At this point in the 2006 campaign, Jim Webb, a political nobody up against one of the most formidable opponents in the country, had more cash on hand than Jim Gilmore, who was already governor for four years (it’s likely, however, that his previous experience as governor is the reason no one wants to give him money), in addition to an abortive attempt at the Presidency, and a summer in a boat chasing down Moby Dick, and a winter shaking swords at Spanish windmills.

It’s no wonder, then, that Gilmore will clamor for attention in any way he can grab a hold of. His latest idea is to promise to toss oil rigs off the Eastern Shore and Virginia Beach, which I am assured will win him votes up and down the coastline.

Poking holes in the ground in every environmentally sensitive area in the nation to solve our oil problems is rather reminiscent of Gilmore’s Senate bid–an exercise in futility. Our other option, squeezing oil out of stone (quite literally) through development of oil sands, is an expensive, messy proposition. In the end, we will be trading irreplaceable natural resources (untouched habitat and our coastlines) for another irreplaceable natural resource, oil–which we will promptly burn off. Which is of more value to us? Our energy policy reminds me of Dr. Zoidberg, pictured at left, who traded his 50,000 shares of Planet Express for a sandwich, which did not appreciate in value. After eating the sandwich, Zoidberg was left with nothing.

But, you know, we don’t have any better ideas.

During the late evening of April 12 and early morning of April 13, officers from the West Springfield District Station conducted a sobriety checkpoint, issuing four traffic summonses for the 893 drivers pulled over.

Which is great–893 drivers were stopped at a roadblock with no probable cause, resulting in four whole summonses (that’s batting .004). Of the four, none were actual DUIs. You’d think we’d have found a better way to find drunk drivers (such as actually looking for them) instead of plunking down a roadblock and hoping one will swing your way.

It’s as if I decided to go hunting, but instead of looking around for game, I decided I’d point my shotgun a bit to my right, close my eyes, and start firing. While a minor inconvenience for the 889 drivers who ended up without tickets, don’t we have better things to do with our police than send them on random sobriety checkpoints? Don’t we have better things to do than pulling over every car in sight without any regard to probable cause*?

*Yes I realize it has been ruled constitutional. That doesn’t mean that random sobriety checkpoints are a good idea.

It took half a second for it to crystallize in my head that outside of Northern Virginia, one is hard-pressed to find one of us Asian-Americans in their natural habitat (and it is not secretly edging out your kid on the SATs, so relax, take it from one of us). I decided to play dumb and pretend not to speak English, and merely nodded.

He continued. “Life…is a lifelong learning experience, and you see a lot of things…”

It was clear that he had either had too much to drink, or needed some more.

Finally, I spoke up. “I’m learning quite a bit about American culture…”

He began complimenting me on my English when I continued, “…because I was born here.”

His friends were laughing at this point, knowing that their friend had been bamboozled by a slick-talking immigrant type. He decided to save face by telling me that I really, really looked the part.

I finished my fried trout and walked off.

This was even better than the time I, while canvassing, was mistaken for a Chinese food delivery boy.