West Virginia Blue
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My little brother still lives in the very RED California county of Kern. The home of Nashville West and the Buck Owens Recording Studio. The home of Merle Haggert, whom I have to say he does sound a little different now than when he recorded Okie from Miskogee. He is in CA-22. To see yet another eggresus example of computer gerrymandering, look at his district.
Before McCarthy, his representative was Bakersfield Congressman Bill Thomas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. My brother now thinks McCain is naive about pork. A senator's responsibility is to represent his state, not then entire nation, and on this pint he thinks McCain is too idealistic. Edwards Air Force Base is in this district and so is the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at China Lake, where my dad used to work, and now my brother works. I used to take all kinds of flack over our King of Pork.
I decided to jump into the fray of electoral politics in 2005 and am on my local town council. My brother is currently on his local planning commission, like I started out, and he is one of six running for one of the three at large open seats in the next city council election.
He described two candidates as being ones who will draw from the Democrats in the city. He described two other candidates as ultra-conservative, but disputed that label when someone tried to apply it to him. The others want to downsize city government to only water, sewer, streets and police. My brother is not in favor of getting rid of the city parks, recreation, senior services, etc. He described himself as an independent. I had never heard him use that before.
He thought that the co-worker that laid her Harley down last week was a fool for not having a full face guard helmet. When the mandatory helmet law originally passed in California, he was against it as impinging on his freedom. He is very disappointed that energy deregulation was a give away to Enron, and not a choice for renewable power like wind that they were lead to believe.
By the end of the two days of conversation about the only thing I could glean that would keep him from voting for Obama was that he was genetically opposed to having the House, the Senate and the President all be from the same party. It is genetic because I have felt that the tension that divided government produces (re: lemmings 2000-2006) may be best for democracy at some point in my electoral life.
Having him not self-identify as a Republican is a step forward. Not having him spend all our political talk bashing Democrats was a big step forward. Having him see that Senator Byrd was doing no harm in representing his state to the best of his ability was a big step forward.
His group made special delivery JDAM items for the quick response bombing in Iraq. He now thinks the war was a mistake. I will take any light in the tunnel I can see from under the basket.
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