What’s next for the General Assembly? Many have made noises that transportation will be the next battleground between rival groups on taxes. Though I think higher education, specifically the increasing difficulty Virginia students are having getting into the state’s premier institutions, will be a key issue, there’s no doubt the state faces a road and transit crisis.

A new “public awareness” campaign is being developed. Though no mention is made of the Foundation for Virginia, the tactics reflect the Foundation’s work on behalf of education during the last session. And the Foundation originally said it would tackle transportation next.

It will be interesting to see where this goes.

The idea for a broad-based coalition that would aggressively promote the issue started before the overtime assembly ended in June. Advocates hope to bring transportation to the forefront of next winter’s session.

“Once transportation was dropped, it became obviously clear we were going to have to do something soon,” Daugherity said yesterday.

The groups plan to wage a grass-roots campaign that will include town hall meetings and “underscore the importance of transportation” in the everyday lives of voters, according to the letter.

The respected pollster John Zogby has added Virginia to the list of “purple” states.

Zogby International will begin tracking polls in Virginia. There was no indication why Zogby put Virginia in play. Zogby also added North Carolina, Arizona and Colorado, raising his total of closely watched states to 20.
Democrats have not won a presidential race in Virginia for 40 years.

An Ohio professor conducted a one man experiment (second item) to see which campaign tolerated dissent. The result should be no surprise. Kerry’s campaign allowed the professor to enter an event with a Bush for President t-shirt that while the Bush campaign first made him turn his Kerry-Edwards t-shirt inside out, then made him take it off and finally threw him out of the rally.

OK. If he’d just get some cycling shorts and a cooler shirt, he’s got my vote!

Thanks to the Daily Kos for pointing out Dan Froomkin’s online column yesterday. Seems Bush not only no longer mentions Osama bin Laden, who Bush has been unable to catch, but that Bush said, “So I don’t know where he is. You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. . . . I truly am not that concerned about him.”

Not that concerned about him? I feel much safer now.

The Washington Post’s Mike Wibon has seconded my opinion of the NBA.

Anybody who wanted to see this defeat coming could see it as clear as an onrushing train. Teams from San Juan to China have spent the past 12 years creating clever strategies and exploring every nuance of the game’s fundamentals, while Americans obsessed over dunking and reassured each other we were keepers of the global game.

Well, apparently not this time, not this tournament and not with this team. The Puerto Ricans didn’t just win, they were better. The U.S. players and Larry Brown talked predictably afterward about not wanting it enough, about being flat at the beginning of the game. And it’s all such a bunch of junk. It’s just easier to use that excuse than to face the fact that the other team is better, that its pieces fit better and function with a smarter purpose.

…The U.S. team’s problem isn’t lack of effort, it’s lack of skill.

And he continued today.

It should be more obvious than it is to some that the quality of play in the United States has declined. Players come from high school to the NBA without having any knowledge of fundamental basketball….

Two bloggers for whom I have great respect – Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum believe that John Kerry’s views on the Iraq War have been consistent and even admirable. Today, Fareed Zakaria and E.J. Dionne defend the Democratic nominee.

Though I’m firmly in the Anybody-But-Bush camp and will support Kerry’s election, I disagree. I can see how they may argue that his votes and statements are consistent. And I could, if I were Kerry’s advisor, provide a plausible defense of his vote. But I can’t forgive him his vote to give Bush the authority to go to war. And it’s incumbent upon those who plan to vote for Kerry to let it be known that we expect a little more accountability when he takes office.

I’m trying to catch up on a week’s worth of stories while I was on vacation. (I had access to only USA Today in print and a painfully slow and limited dial-up Internet access. Plus, it was a vacation remember. This blogging is work.) One article I need to read is Howard Kurtz’s story that looks at The Washington Post’s coverage of WMDs before the war. But I think Kerry supporters need to somehow make him see what news people refused to recognized during the build-up to the war: There was a sizable anti-war movement before the invasion. It was largely ignored by the press. The Post ran the article about the 100,000-strong demonstration in Oct. 2002 in the Metro section. NPR so undercovered the demonstration that it later apologized to its listeners.

Like the media, Kerry should have recognized and acknowledged that opposition and he should have voted accordingly against the war.

Without convincing evidence that there were WMDs and other rationales the Bush administration presented, Kerry should have voted no. Perhaps most importantly, if he felt there was significant evidence, Kerry should have demanded a declaration of war from Congress.

In my lifetime, Congress has never declared war. The last declared one was WWII. These resolutions giving presidents the power to go to war have supplanted Congressional declarations of war. Kerry now argues that all he was giving the president was the authority to go to war once all other avenues were explored and proven untenable. But now he tries to hide behind the lies of Bush administration. That’s a copout. Without proof, he should have voted no, and if he felt there was significant evidence, he should have demanded a declaration of war. Barring that, he should have voted No.

Congress is relinquishing its powers because members want to have it both ways: able to say they supported the war when it’s successful and when it’s not, to say it’s not our fault that the prez misled us.

I repeat from earlier posts: Iraq was the right war at the wrong time. It is morally right to come to the aid of oppressed people. But we can’t do it without considering the implications. In this case, tying the Iraq war to the “war on terror” was such a loose knot that Muslims worldwide were suspicious. Maybe the war was a “crusade,” as Bush first described the Afghan invasion, against Islam.

Removing our troops from Saudi Arabia, brokering a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians and pressing and obtaining democratic reform in at least a few Arab states before attacking Iraq would have been a better strategy.

Rather than being “nuanced,” when John Kerry voted yes to the war resolution, he recognized none of complexities of the situation and ceded his authority to declare war to a president who clearly has been incapable of waging it.

I’m on vacation, but probably best I’m not posting much this week because Kerry is driving me crazy. He still thinks going to war in Iraq was the right thing! Mercy.

Even though no specific data supports this story, the reporter makes a broad claim.

John Kerry (news – web sites) shelled out $80 million over five months to plaster television screens with campaign ads trumpeting his biography and priorities. So what did all that money get him? An even race.

Kerry’s ads largely neutralized the campaign ad wars, giving him cover from President Bush (news – web sites)’s onslaught of critical commercials and carrying the Democrat through his most vulnerable period when he was the party’s newly minted standardbearer.

“His ads gave him enough ballast to help weather the Bush attacks. Given the redundancy behind those messages, you would have expected really sharp drops,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an expert in political communication. “Bush’s attacks should have taken hold, and would have, in the absence of Kerry’s advertising.”

Even with such a respected source as Jamieson, the assertion is hard to prove. Was it the ads? Or his convention speech? Or the general coverage Kerry has received on free media? Or is it because people think less of Bush on these matters?

But let’s suppose it’s true: it supports an assertion I made earlier in the campaign: Money and ads can be overrated. If you have enough money to neutralize your opponent, the race then comes down to something else. Is that retail politics? I’m betting on it. Which bodes well for Kerry as his campaign stops seem to at least one reporter on the Diane Reem show this morning to be attracting larger and more enthusiastic crowds.

In case no one has mentioned this: Get out and vote — and bring a couple of friends along.

Jim VandeHei is a Washington Post reporter who, to his credit, often includes what the CJR Campaign Desk refers to as “real-time” reality checks: assertions such as “this is not true” within a story if the information being given to a reporter is misleading or factually incorrect.

But VandeHei – or perhaps it was Peter Slevin whose byline is also on the story – sometimes takes cheap shots, such as this one in a report about Kerry’s appearance at the Unity convention of minority journalists.

The blue-blooded Democrat from Massachusetts, competing against an equally well-heeled president raised in Connecticut, told Unity he is the candidate who can best connect with minorities in the United States.

“Above all, who is truly committed to bridging the divides in this country that continue to separate, sometimes willfully, intentionally and politically . . . race from race, group from group, region from region?” Kerry asked. “I am also aware — how can you live in America and not be aware? — of the special challenges facing people of color.”

In our history, we’ve had many wealthy presidents; in fact, most of them were. To suggest that somehow such people cannot be sensitive to the needs of minorities is a slur.

The reporters also make a judgment about Kerry’s remarks concerning comedian Bill Cosby’s admonition for minorities to take more personal responsibility.

Kerry measured his words carefully…

“I understand exactly where Bill is coming from in his comment,” Kerry said. “It may be excessively exclusive in the breadth of it, in the sense that it sort of targets just the responsibility side, but that’s an important side.”

Kerry said government and society are to blame, too, for not providing adequate assistance and protections to minorities.

“We also need to do the things we need to do as a society to empower those people, have plans for those kids, to make the world safer,” Kerry said. “It’s all of us together.”

Is it measured because he believes the issue is not simply one of personal responsibility or government inaction? I think most people would agree that both can play a role. And I’d bet they’d say that without measuring their words.