3 Up, 3 Down

3 Up
FALL: This weekend is the big kickoff for a time of year like no other in the Shenandoah Valley: Autumn. The Virginia Fall Foliage Festival in downtown Waynesboro is the official launch of the annual rite and the reminder that it’s time to take to the highways along the Blue Ridge to catch a glimpse of the season’s splendor. Go ahead. Try to think of a better place on Earth to savor fall.

DEVELOPMENT: Fourteen months after Meghan Williamson quit as Waynesboro’s economic development director, the city finally has a list of finalists for the job to replace her. Well, gee, that didn’t take long, did it? Maybe by year’s end, officialdom can get round to actually making a hire.

CAPITALISM: Michael Moore, a guy who’s feasted on capitalism and many other things (hey, are you gonna eat that?), makes money making movies disparaging the very economic system that feeds him (no small task, that one). Is this a great country or what?

3 Down
DEEDS DOWNER: Having exhausted, ostensibly, his repertoire of attack strategies, R. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath County, awakened this week to find he’s still 9 percentage points behind Robert F. McDonnell, R-Virginia Beach, in the gubernatorial race. Maybe Deeds will pull off another one of his late rallies. Barack Obama, for one, isn’t counting on it – maybe he’s noticed Deeds’ 21-percentage point gap among independents. The president is taking a hands-off approach to Deeds’ campaign. Question is, if he didn’t, who would be hurting who?

SORRY, CHARLIE: Oops. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., failed to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in income and assets. Funny, some people, like the House Ethics Committee, think that’s a bit of a problem.

SAY IT AIN’T SO, JOE: Here’s how bad it is. Rather than put Vice President Biden on that one-way trip to Guam, Obama has ol’ Joe pitching in on the Deeds campaign.  “I hope to God you understand this race is winnable,” Joe says. Uh, yeah. And the stimulus, that’s working out just fine.