Shaun Kenney

One has to admire certain British MEPs for their candor.  In this instance, I’m pretty certain Farage missed wildly…

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.

February 19th, 2009 — the day Rick Santelli kicked off the movement:

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.

Just finished a conference call with the HRCC regarding their FY 2011 budget proposals.  Lots of good news in here, mostly regarding the fact that the Senate version of the bill is structurally close to the House version.  McDonnell’s “secret meetings” did their job, eh?

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.

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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…

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This is an Atlas V rocket on 11 February breaking through the sound barrier (fast forward to 1:40 if you’re a boring person):

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.

If one regards the rule of law as critically important to the American experiment, there’s a showdown brewing in Richmond between the rule of law and the interpretation of those rules.

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.

The NRSC hits this one out of the park:

That’s just well done.

Kenton Ngo over at NDP is throwing in the towel, one of the many blogs that spun off of the old Raising Kaine blog:

I’ve been at this for a few years now, which makes me a veteran in the ever-changing world of new media. I’ve seen the Virginia political blog world grow from its infancy in 2005 to the chaotic juggernaut it is now. But as time has gone on, my daily updates slowly became weekly, and now fortnightly. I find myself with less time to write, and since this is a labor of love, when it stops being fun it’s not worth doing anymore.

I started as a defiant kid who really, really wanted to run his own show and didn’t like playing second fiddle anywhere–but I think I’ve outgrown that, mostly. I’d like to thank everyone who followed me through the years, from jeremiads at 750 Volts to photoblogging here. Truly, it’s been great. Thanks to your loyalty and readership I’ve been able to go places I never would have gone. But like all good things, it must end.

Best of luck to you, Kenton.

This is about how it was at church today, without the Russians:

Good news is that tomorrow will be 41deg and (mostly) rain.  Enough snow already!

Doubling the car tax is the fix for all the Senate Democrat’s woes!

Great idea guys!  No new solutions, just higher taxes when McDonnell sets the boundaries.

Pathetic.  2011 can’t come soon enough.