Shaun Kenney

File this one under objectivity and the MSM. As McQ so eloquently puts it:

But hey, they have those vaunted three layers of editors, so they have to be right, no?

Indeed.

Limited edition too… seats two, with some nice crash-test features:

The car reportedly has anti-lock brakes, stability control and airbags. According to Canadian Driver, “Volkswagen says the One-Liter Car is as safe as a GT sports car registered for racing. With the aid of computer crash simulations, the car was designed with built-in crash tubes, pressure sensors for airbag control and front crumple zones.

Nice.

Volkswagen always make such amazing cars, they can really do no wrong in my eyes! One of my best friends who lives in Washington drives a Volkswagen Polo and it is always so reliable. His car is only a few years old so he has not had to have any repair work taken out on it just yet. The only time he has ever had to take it to a Volkswagen repair Kirkland specialist is when it was due a service. Even then, his car was given a clean bill of health!

What are some of your favorite car manufacturers? Let me know in the comments.

Let me go back to that dinner, 21 years ago. There I was, shut off from this wise, amazing old man. Then he zaps me with one of the top 5 pieces of information I’ve ever received in this life, and all I was thankful for was how it benefited me.

I completely ignored the deeper lesson which is do not judge, and get outside yourself, and realize that everyone and everything has its own story, and something to teach you, and that they’re also trying – consciously or unconsciously – to learn and grow from you and everything else around them. And they’re trying with the same passion and hunger and confusion that I was feeling – no matter where they were in their lives, no matter how old or how young.

I’m not saying that you guys shouldn’t go out there and see and do everything there is to see and do. Go. As fast as you can. I don’t know how much longer this world has got, to be honest.

All of you have been given a harsh gift. It’s the same gift the graduating class of 1917, and 1938, and 1968 and now you guys got – the chance to enter adulthood when the world teeters on the rim of the sphincter of oblivion. You’re jumping into the deep end. You have no choice but to be exceptional.

The entire speech is well worth reading, and Patton Oswalt

is indeed a Virginia (well… Northern Virginia) native.

So now the Securities and Exchange Commission is gearing up for an investigation on the rank speculation going on inside Wall Street, speculation that almost tipped Lehman Bros. over and is threatening to do to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae what the speculators did to the housing market and Bear Stearns — seed rumors, pick up the pieces, and profit hugely.

If there’s an investigation to be done, start there. I’ve screamed about this before

in August 2007 (and take some small conceit in being right), but this is out of control — and getting worse.

That’s a new one.

The post is about Richard Vigeurie blasting John McCain… how Hispanics made it in there is a different question, but it does leave the question open as to how *you* would like to be pandered to.

Since I’m Irish-Lebanese, deep Virginia roots, and a Republican… perhaps a Guinness?

Another great installment of “The Pulpit Speaks” over at Vivian Paige’s blog

, an article that has long been a Sunday routine.

Jerry Fuhrman over at From on High comments on the Roanoke Times editorial blasting Raising Kaine and other bloggers “on the take” for campaigns.

Obviously full disclosure is key. While bloggers on the take from politicians are one thing, pseudonymous bloggers that are actually reporters seeding stories are quite another (and yes, they have existed in the past).

Caveat emptor indeed. The best insurance? A blog, with a name behind a good reputation, that demands full disclosure.

Transparency. Authenticity. Confinement. It’s a framework I’ve discussed before at a previous Sorenson Blog Summit, and it bears repeating over and over again. The first two are the responsibility of the author — it’s that third criteria where the reader needs to be able to take what they read for what it is, and confine the information in the package it’s presented.

The Roanoke Times editorial is worth reading, save for the fact that political bloggers truly interested in the survival of the medium need to understand that cozying up to, abetting, or imitating the hired guns only waters down the medium.

Sadly, there’s many on both sides that still don’t get it.

Yes folks… that Cynthia McKinney.

TIME magazine’s annoyingly (yet precise) opinion of you on the internet:

A random example: on June 11, a user called way21337 uploaded a video to YouTube. It’s titled My new gerbil, and it shows, in fact, a black-and-white gerbil snuffling around cutely in somebody’s hand. It is 11 seconds long. By press time, it had acquired 102 comments. Let’s take a look! They begin with NewTyhuss, who writes, “sweet!” Things start going south with comment No. 4: “id hit it.” (Good one, ZRace67!) After a week, we’re down to eldergod: “why dont u shove that gerbil up yur ass and quit posting stupid videos.” bwalhof writes, “kill yourself. fast.” And so on.

Most people will wrongly judge the popularity of a website based on comment sections without really considering that the bloggers themselves will often say outrageous things on their own — called “sock puppetry” to mimic one person talking between… himself. Other times, two people can banter back and forth 30 times on a website, and the casual observer will see 60 comments.

Must be popular.

On this blog, I have often received criticism for not opening up my comments section to anonymous bloggers. Still, the readership remains relatively high for Virginia-based blogs, and unlike most sites when comments are made, they do add to the conversation rather than detract (or distract).

The endgame results in two types of bloggers thus far. The old school, in it for the free exchange of ideas. Then there’s the drama queen, splash-and-trash, attention-whoring folks that never quite overcame their obscurity in high school. And yes, if you take offense, you are clearly in the second category.

Better question: Does that make me basically mean? Perhaps… but at least I’m not being anonymous about it.

Most notable is where they do not reserve time in Virginia, as opposed to where they are reserving time elsewhere. VA-11 makes the cut, but Drake, Goode, and Wolf all are viewed as long-shots (read: unwinable) for the D-Trip.

Welcome to hard-nosed political reality.