Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em

I thought I’d give politics a rest this week.

I’m sick of the health care mess and there doesn’t seem to be any point in talking about the General Assembly until they start getting serious about what they are going to cut to make the budget balance.

So I thought I’d talk about something more personal.

Over the last several weeks I’ve been trying to quit smoking.

That’s sort of a big deal for me. I’ve smoked for nearly 40 years, since I was 12 years old. This is the first time I’ve ever tried to quit.

Well, voluntarily tired to quit. They didn’t let us smoke for the first week of basic training in the Air Force. When they finally said “Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em,” I inhaled the first in one long drag.

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Fools rush in

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to the news lately, there was a terrible earthquake in Haiti.

That’s big news.

And then Pat Robertson said something stupid about it.

And for some reason that was big news as well.

The details of what he said are that Haiti is cursed because its founders made a deal with the devil to free themselves from slavery to the French. But the details really aren’t important.

There was a disaster. And Pat Robertson said something stupid about it. Pat Roberson says something stupid after every disaster. How is this news?

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When ‘No Tax’ pledges come home to roost

In 2005 Bob McDonnell won an attorney generals race that went to a recount.

By the time the 2010 session of the General Assembly is over, he might want a recount of the 2009 governor’s race that he won in a landslide.

Because Virginia’s new governor faces a no win situation.

McDonnell campaigned on a pledge not to raise taxes. And he’ll honor that promise. He comes form the branch of the Republican Party that believe any tax, at any time, is evil. He’s a believer in the Gospel according to Ronald Reagan. (St. Ronnie, like my Dad, was apparently from the old “Do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do school. Both as governor of California and as president, he raised taxes when he thought it was appropriate.)

So there won’t be any new revenue to plug the $3 billion hole in the state’s next budget.

And, the commission that monitors the state’s debt just informed the governor and the General Assembly that they can’t borrow any more money, either.

Actually, McDonnell and the legislature could raise the state’s debt ceiling. But that’s not exactly a conservative way to begin one’s administration. And it could put the state’s AAA bond rating at risk. McDonnell certainly doesn’t want to be the governor who lost Virginia’s AAA rating, which it has held for more than 70 years.

If you can’t raise taxes and you can’t borrow money, the only thing left is to cut the budget.

Theoretically, that’s not a bad position for a Republican governor to be in. After all, the Republicans are supposedly the party of small government. They could see this as an opportunity to scale back state government.

Except they’ve been beaten to it. Liberal Democratic Gov.