Shaun Kenney

So I decided to cut myself on the hand/wrist the other day with an incredibly sharp object in my wife’s junk closet.

Sadly, I have no idea how I managed to do it, but it was worth a trip to the emergency room yesterday evening and a day at home whimpering in pain every time I extended my index finger to type. The cut it seems is on the meaty part of my wrist underneath my thumb and just below the base of my left hand. I have no idea what part of my central nervous system resides there, but it’s constantly reminding me of its aggreived status.

In English, it hurts.

I am more upset about not being able to get back into the yard and get things ready for planting last weekend. My truck having been finally repaired (ignition module and tune-up, sparkplugs were fine) I was looking forward to getting more good dirt and filling out my semi-raised beds. No such luck, it would seem.

I also had some ambitious plans to clear out our home office which have unfortunately been put on hold indefinitely. It is a shame really, as I have ordered some new office chairs which should be arriving very soon as well as some other pieces of new office furniture. I suppose our home office will just have to stay as it is for a little longer. I do hope I recover pretty quickly though as I miss being able to spend time working in our home office and it is too messy to go in there at the moment.

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Seems as if the Obama White House is calling out Santelli for instigating the near-revolt

at the Chicago Board of Trade this week.

Nixonian is just about right.  If this is how the Obama Administration intends to react to criticism, they’re going to have more than just a tea party on their hands.

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Probably the best explanation of the current credit crisis I’ve seen so far:

Michael Kinsley writing at the WaPo discusses what the real plan may be to repay the stimulus:

But even if the stimulus is a magnificent success, the money still has to be paid back. The plan of record apparently is that we keep borrowing, spending and stimulating, faster and faster, until suddenly, on some signal from heaven or Timothy Geithner, we all stop spending and start saving in recordbreaking amounts. Oh sure, that will work.

There is another way. If it’s not the actual, secret plan, it will be an overwhelming temptation: Don’t pay the money back. So far, even as one piggy bank after another astounds us with its emptiness, there have been only the faintest whispers about the possibility of an actual default by the U.S. government. Somewhat louder whispers can be heard, though, about the gradual default known as inflation. Just three or four years of currency erosion at, say, 10 percent a year would slice the real value of our debt — public and private, U.S. bonds and jumbo mortgages — in half.

Anyone who regards the prospect of double-digit inflation with insouciance is either too young to have lived through it the last time (the late 1970s) or too old to remember. Among other problems, inflation works only as a surprise or betrayal. It can never be part of any public, official plan. Plan for 10 percent inflation, and you’ll get 20. Plan for 20 and you’ll need a wheelbarrow to pay for your morning Starbucks. But if that’s not the plan, what is?

Now that is a truly frightening concept.

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This pretty much sums up the sentiment of most of the opposition to Porkulus.

At palatial Kenney Manor, we have recently acquired four rather productive chickens delivering about one egg a day each. That means in the course of about two weeks, we are getting at least two dozen eggs. In a family of seven, it’s not hard to figure out how quickly we can dispense with a couple dozen eggs.

The investment isn’t terribly bad either — 50lbs of feed runs about $8.00 and lasts for weeks. If you figure eight weeks of feed vs. 16 weeks of feed, and the math works out pretty well.

What’s more, the chickens have several excellent by-products. Not only do we get eggs, we get four bug eating and grass-mowing machines! Even more, we get free fertilizer, which while not good for immediate use it is great to add to the compost heap and help amend some terrible, terrible soil out here in Fluvanna.

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This is a fascinating article on how a refutation of St. Robert Bellarmine’s political philosophy actually helped write the Declaration of Independence:

In most American colleges and High Schools, the development of Constitutional law is traced along lines that begin in ancient Greece and Rome lead to the philosophies of Algernon Sydney (who was executed for treason in 1683) and John Locke. It is undeniable that Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and George Mason, author of Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, were intimately familiar with the classical and contemporary scholars from Aristotle onward. And it is not unreasonable to conclude they were familiar with writers who opposed popular sovereignty and defended the absolute power of kings.

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Looks as if whoever was peddling the “Cuccinelli isn’t a Marine” story just got rocked . From the Cuccinelli campaign:

Ken successfully completed OCS and was commissioned a Marine Corps Officer. He was deactivated to complete law school, and the Marines never reactivated him, as they had over-recruited lawyers and they refused his request to switch to the infantry. So, aside from OCS, Ken never served on active duty.

Earlier, Loudoun Insider on the Northern Virginia blog Too Conservative

(the blogmaster of which is Bob McDonnell’s New Media director Vince Harris) had made the following allegation:

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D.J. McGuire is raising the red flag on the sales tax hike in the General Assembly; some good news, some bad news:

The good news: 

Delegate Christopher Peace (R-97th, which includes a precinct or two in my home county of Spotsylvania) wrote about the proposed versions of the sales tax hike in the Richmond Times Dispatch , and actually made it clear how damaging the House version was.

The bad news: Peace himself shows little passion for this.  Even in this op-ed piece, he can’t seem to bring himself to say that no tax increaseis acceptable.

That said, he didn’t endorse any tax hike either.

This may be the first movement of House Republicans away from the nonsense the Appropriations Committee cooked up.  There may yet be hope that a sales tax hike will not make it out of conference committee –if  we Virginians make clear that no tax increase is acceptable, period.

Not only is this idea abysmally wrong headed, but during and economic crunch a sales tax hike cloaked as some sort of pre-paid accellerated chip shot deal is boneheaded at best.

Virginia Republicans need to ask this:  How hard is it to come out of just one session

without a tax hike?

In part one of the look, pseudonymous VA Blogger destroys the idea Cuccinelli is “too conservative” for the job, namely with Brownlee’s own rhetoric:

So according to the Brownlee campaign and their supporters, Ken Cuccinelli is too conservative to get elected, and John Brownlee is as conservative on life issues and more conservative on the death penalty, but is still electable? If the mainstream media will “have a field day” with Cuccinelli, isn’t Brownlee setting himself up for the same treatment?

Indeed.  

In fact, Brownlee’s inability to gain endorsements within his own back yard, his lack of involvement with the GOP (even locally), and the fact he has never been elected to public office are all red flags for many conservatives across Virginia.