According to the BBC the campaign of President Obama received a jolt from the result of the West Virginia democratic primary with a surprising 41% of the vote going to a Texas convict serving a sentence for extortion. The president has never been popular in border state, which he lost to Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary and John McCain in the presidential election. The coal industry has serious issues with the incumbent’s environmental policy against clearing mountain top and democrats there just plain don’t like Obama.
The Washington Post also reported that Race might have been a factor in West Virginians voting for anyone, but Obama, noting that the president only scored 57% in the Oklahoma primary.
POLITICO listed 10 facts for Obama’s rival, Keith Rudd.
1. Better known as prisoner number 11593-051.
2. Currently resides in a low-security prison in Texas — Federal Correctional Institution Texarkana — where he’s serving a 210-month sentence for extortion connected to making threats at the University of New Mexico in 1999. His projected release date is June. 24, 2013.
3. Says he has run for president in every election since 1996.
4. Finished third in the 2008 Idaho Democratic primary with 734 votes, or 1.7 percent.
5. Got on the ballot in West Virginia by paying a $2,500 filling fee and sending in a notarized certification of announcement.
6. Among the many things on his resume: “Member, Federation of Super Heroes, 1976-1982,” “Recording Musician/Writer/Producer, Nadine’s Music, Hollywood, California, 1968-1998” and “Agent/Individual Contractor, New York Society of Reproductive Medicine.”
7. Favorite athlete: Gary Skidmore, a pro bowler. Favorite actor: Gene Hackman. As for his favorite food, he writes, “I forgot.”
8. Lists his religion as Rastafarian-Christian.
9. Mozart ranks as the person he’d most want to meet. “He was cool,” Judd writes.
10. Favorite president: Richard Nixon. “He got us out of Vietnam, and began world peace with China and the Soviets.”
INDECISION FOREVER also came up with a Top Ten.
1. Just like the president, Judd will have issues with his birth certificate. He lists his mother as Lillian Russell, a silent-film star who died in 1922.
2. …and his father is reported as “Homer T. Judd. He designed the first Atomic Bomb and worked for the Atomic Energy Commissions 30 years.”
3. He’s a movie star, having played “Charlie” in Heaven’s A and O, a video produced at Allenwood Low Security Federal Prison.
4. Though perpetually unsuccessful, Judd has more campaign experience than the president, with runs for the White House in every election cycle since 1996, plus campaigns for mayor of Albuquerque and governor of New Mexico.
5. The only person not surprised by Keith Judd’s strong showing in West Virginia is Keith Judd. “ESP, Telling the Future” is listed among his “Special Talents.”
6. Religion:”Rastafarian-Christian”
7. Puts the president’s educational background to shame, as he’s “attended” The Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, UCLA, the University of New Mexico and Bethany Nazarene College.
8. Judd calls for the elimination of all federal taxes while increasing spending on defense and domestic welfare, a policy made possible by creative use of the Mint: “The Federal Government can merely operate on its own self produced money rather than pretend to borrow it to pay private banks to store it and regulate interest rates, and then tax it.”
9. Actually, he’s well in tune with the West Virginia electorate: “Homosexuality does not exist anywhere else in Nature. No other creature or aminal on earth are Homosexuals. I do not condone crimes or attacks on Homosexuals, but We do not have to place Our Seal of Approval of Same Sex Marriages.”
10. He’s a member of the “Federation of Super Heroes, 1976-1982”
How he got $2500 is beyond my ken, because the State of Texas does not pay its working inmates for their labor and money doesn’t grow on trees in jail, because there are no trees in prison. At least none that I could find on Google.
ps Keith Rudd has a ponytail hanging down to his ass.