Liberia is a nation suffering from a 20-year civil war that stands on the brink of re-emergence at any given time. It is also the 4th poorest country in the world, and one a very direct history with the United States.

If Liberia had oil…

For those not familiar with the antics of Virginia’s House of Commons Delegates, this is wholly appropriate.  Whether or not Ward Armstrong will ever be able to sell himself as something other than a socialist remains to be seen.  For those who remember, Armstrong defeated Frank Hall for the spot of House Democratic leader in 2007 after some bruised feelings and a bit of contention.

Three years into the role, it seems as if Armstrong would like to follow Brian Moran as the next failed Democratic statewide candidate to hail from the House of Delegates.  Bon voyage!

…I mean, I get that pendulums swing and all, but do the House Democrats really think this environment is going to propel any liberal/progressive into statewide office in 2012?  2013?  That’s four years, I know, but that’s an eternity to be counting chickens.

(h/t Mason Conservative)

So what was the point of this exercise?  Certainly no one would talk to the British Prime Minister or the President of the United States like this… or any other foreign dignitary for that matter.  Which of course could very well be the point for Mr. Farage — hold the EU President in the highest degree of contempt in order to emphasize the weakness of the European Union.

Still… what was the point?  The UK Guardian offers a tiny bit on insight:

Elected an MEP in 1999, he resigned as party leader (while remaining head of the 13-strong Ukip group in the European parliament) in order to try to unseat John Bercow – the Speaker of the Commons – as MP for Buckingham.

As you must have gathered by now there’s a lot going on here. What Nige would call the “three social democratic parties” in Britain – Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats – don’t contest the Speaker’s seat by tradition, though Bercow shows a little Brown-like insecurity by suggesting there should be a non-seat (Westminster Central?) set aside for Speakers.

But Farage knows that a lot of Tory voters are hacked off with politics in general, the Cameroons in particular and Bercow, his Labour wife, and his promotion quite intensely. He has seen an opportunity to make trouble for the Tories and get himself a Commons seat. Go for it, Nige.

…and there you have it.  A little splash of the Tea Party movement on the opposite side of the Atlantic.  It’s not quite the dressing down Daniel Hannan gave Gordon Brown last year, as that was a far superior effort, but just to see the consternation even with the Conservative Party in Britain is indicator enough the ideas of the British and Scottish (and dare I say, American?) Enlightenment are still alive and well in this world.

This moment really took off when Santelli turned away from the camera and towards the traders (get to 1:00 for the real McCoy).  Give props to the traders on the floor of NASDAQ… if Santelli was the tap, those traders were the barrel.  One year later, an entire movement of dissatisfaction with the status quo has arrived in force.  Not sure what they want, but they sure know what they are against.

House Republicans were able to close the $2 billion gap in the budget in part by:

* Suspended one of the SOQs (planning period) saving $185 million
* Putney bill saved $270 million this year
* Net is a $50 million cut to revenue to the VRS, but substantial structural changes were made in biennium, $720 million in cuts
* Did not touch higher ed (already cut by 29% — 2006 funding levels)

The Senate did the car tax much like the House, but were a bit more generous with K-12.

Additional highlights:

* $3 billions in savings by reforming the VRS over the next 10 years; employees benefit in better times with raises (no raises over the last 4 years).
* Did not play with car tax relief.
* No state park closures.
* Specific cuts to educations are replaced with flexibility/block grants.
* No cut to personal care.
* Fewer cuts to PPA’s — taking advantage of leveraging.
* House budget did not ratchet down eligibility for FAMIS (Family Access to Medical Insurance).

House restored 80% of the loss from LCI — which is a sigh of relief for localities.  House leadership also signaled that it was they — not McDonnell — who approached the Governor’s office about coming to terms with the budget.  Governor McDonnell was providing direction and leadership… happens all the time (at least when it’s asked).  Apparently, with the Senate budget coming into such close sync with the House budget, bringing the two budgets together will not be the once-Herculean task it was feared to be about a week ago.  As for a timeline, everyone is looking towards a 13 March adjournment due to the car tax issue being resolved.

Things that conservatives should be looking for:  the budget is balanced without a tax hike or the Kaine fees, there are structural change that will pay dividends down the road, rebuilding the rainy day fund, still some pork spending in the budget still, but the majority of the problems with the Governor’s (Kaine) Budget have been resolved.

As for 2011… we have addressed all those issues in the House budget, and the “cliff effect” for 2012 is largely resolved in the House budget.  With the Senate budget and the Governor’s budget, we’ve smoothed out those problems for FY 2012, with $550 million saved in VRS adjustments/reforms in 2012.

On jobs and the economy — about 10 to 12 bills came through Appropriations, and $50 million was set aside for economic development, which will enable the Governor to reach out to businesses to either relocate or find new ways to expand within the Commonwealth.

(crossposted at BearingDrift.com)

So after the Bearing Drift presented some Technorati numbers, followed by the leftosphere’s howls and Virginia Virtucon’s touche on the matter, I did myself the benefit of actually looking at my Google Analytics numbers…

…and discovered that they were disabled after the recent WordPress upgrade.  Great.

SK.com has come a long way from its heyday in 2005-2006.  Back then, SK.com could boast a readership in the neighborhood of 1,000/day and somewhere north of 10K unique visitors a month.  Not bad for one man show.  Sadly, when you are someone else’s voice, you really can’t be your own.  Readership slid, new methods of measuring readers came into view, and what worked for an Atom feed is not replaced by Feedburner, what worked for server stats was replaced by Google Analytics, and what served for an interested readership was replaced by Twitter.

Heck, I have more people reading my thoughts on Facebook and Twitter than I have reading this blog.  140 characters trumps detailed thought.  Go figure…

Of course, there’s no real way for me to validate any of that information.  My stats were kept server side, and I never liked or trusted SiteMeter (it tended to inflate the traffic numbers, so I discontinued using it), and frankly I was much more concerned with quality content rather than racking up readership.  ”Influence the influentials” was the mantra of the post-macaca blogosphere… and so most of the “Old Guard” as we were labeled then drifted into the application side of Web 2.0, while another subsection got slick and branded themselves as “new media experts” to find jobs after the 2006 elections.

Some were successful, though I doubt many deserved the transition.  A mere handful made the transition well — Jason Kenney, Ben Tribbett, and a small handful of others whom I will gladly not mention because… well, they’re actively employed and probably don’t want the attention.

There are others who sold the sizzle without selling the steak.  One of the great mistakes anyone can afford to make in any business is to mistake mere activity with results — I don’t care if it’s flipping burgers or marshaling armies.

Remarkably, there are a great number of managers, politicians, and leaders comfortable with the image of activity.  It offers the appearance of motion, of vitality, of any number of things you may imagine yourself to be — or want to accomplish.

What’s worse, new methods of social media offer precisely the tools to offer prospective clients, bosses, or others the mirage of success.

Allow me then to introduce you to the world of slacktivism.  Slacktivism offers the chance to show support while doing absolutely nothing to advance the cause — much akin to the “wear a ribbon” movement in the 1990s.  Does “awareness” (whatever that means) go up?  More importantly, does anything get done?  Heck no… but you have 5,000 people following you on Twitter, 100K people signing your petition, 6,000 people on your Facebook fan page, and 2,500 people a day reading your blog!

Isn’t that success?!

Of course it’s not.

So then why do we sell it as success?

Very early on, after serving as campaign manager on Rep. Marilyn Musgrave’s 2006 campaign win, I served on a panel for the Virginia Young Republicans on blogging (social media had not truly come into the limelight) and online activism.  One participant raved about blogs.  How blogs were the next frontier, how it was the most important thing one could do for a political campaign, and those who did *not* get on board were on their way out.  In fact, we should drop everything and make blogging our primary focus.

I countered quickly.  Direct mail was more important than blogging.  Phone banking was more important than blogging.  Personal contact was more important than blogging.  A whole litany of traditional media methods that were more important than the internet.  I compared the readership of certain Virginia blogs to the readership of Virginia’s MSM outlets — the influentials were (and are) still MSM reporters.  Even with the advent of dynamic online media vs. static online media (presaging the advent of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube) that “blogging” and online media will only work if it is a component of a whole.

That outraged my fellow panelist.  To this day, he now runs a financially successful online media firm.  To be sure, he has a handful of successes… but they are not metrics based, they are not repeatable, and they are entirely conditional on environment.  Whether this expert has learned the hard lessons of traditional media as king, I have no idea.

So what the hell am I driving at?

Let me give you a tiny bit of insight as to what I would consider a successful social media campaign, otherwise known as the “bra meme” that found women posting the color of their bra on that particular day:

A few things I learned from the Facebook wardrobe malfunction:

- Awareness does not mean action
- It’s possible to have too much awareness and not enough action
- There seems to be a growing backlash against the breast cancer movement

but, I have to say…. the number one thing I learned from the FB meme:

Awareness doesn’t necessarily translate into Activism

The post is worth reading in its entirety.  How does a “social media expert” — which more often than not is a self titled anachronism — plan to keep those hundreds of thousands of slacktivists engaged?  What is the next step?  How does the one time “money bomb” translate into continued giving?  Does the MSM care?  Are they talking about it?  Reaching out to the millions of people they have collected around them by reputation and time?  What other ways are you touching this newfound audience?

Or are these “social media experts” simply forking over the views, visits, friends, tweets, and hits of an action?  Where is the money, new volunteers, returning visitors, conversion rates, new clients, a shift in poll numbers, MSM reaction, the chance to turn slacktivists into activists — or even donors?

Are we replacing activity with results?

Getting back to raw numbers and last week’s comparisons of who-is-the-top-dog-in-Virginia contest… readers and hits, Technorati and SiteMeter; these are all wonderful tools.  But who is driving the conversation?  Who is talking to these outlets?  Of these intangibles of access and resonance, who is linking and commenting?  Is the voice of a particular outlet tabloid or respectable?  Moreover, what is the effect of this particular outlet?  Is the MSM more fooled than aware of your influence?  Are your clients/candidates/superiors fooled?

Or better, do they know because you can show them more than just stats.  You can show metrics impacting the real world.  Which means a large degree of integration with traditional forms of media and the courage to try it.  After all, 70% of all social media campaigns will fail.  That means for ever 10 efforts, only three will find some degree of success, and while the returns are huge if successful… can you capitalize on it when success comes?  I wonder how many efforts actually do, or are even prepared to do so.

These are all questions that self-styled experts and more modest geeks and wonks who simply enjoy the game (and I’d place myself in that category) get to answer.  The ongoing one-upsmanship in the Virginia blogosphere is symptomatic of greater issues, and depending on what certain outlets want to be, get, or do with online media there are always different measurements of success.  Same with the entire “social media expert” industry.  Most success stories have no idea how they got there, and if they explain it — it’s never in terms of activism, just slacktivism.

This isn’t to say the brave new frontier of social media isn’t worth exploring — I’ve routinely argued that 5% of any political campaign budget should be devoted to SocMedia —  but it requires both a strong and fearless commitment to the new medium united with realistic and measurable expectations for success, and a plan to follow through with traditional methods.

What you’re seeing is a sonic boom rippling the water vapor in the atmosphere.  The cool factor on this approximates 10 really darned quick.

Dr. Holsworth over at Virginia Tomorrow calls the new “Cuccinelli Doctrine” a sort of conservative reaction to the federal leviathan.

Not sure if it’s a precedent I would want to hand to revisionists, but the concept is interesting:

In essence, the Cuccinelli Doctrine says this:

It is the job of the Virginia Attorney General to identify and counter instances where the federal government may be unconstitutionally or illegally extending authority over the states.

Dr. Holsworth goes on to describe climate change and national health care as two instances where Attorney General Cuccinelli has stepped forward and challenged federal overreach.

I certainly applaud him for redefining the role of Attorney General — and it keeps with Cuccinelli’s campaign promises to do just that.  That’s why I voted for the guy!

I do wonder though… in different hands, is this a good thing?  How would this have worked during Massive Resistance?  Jim Crow?  Or on the flip side of the coin, the New Deal?  Socialized medicine?  Great Society?

Which means we have four years  – four years before this doctrine conceivably falls into the hands of an Attorney General who does not share Ken’s principles and would ostensibly turn a blind eye in an instance where federal overstretch is apparent, yet by the omission of the AG’s office such an overstretch would be given the benefit of plausibility.

Keep your eyes on this one, folks… it’ll get more interesting in the months to come.

That’s just well done.