Shaun Kenney

I’ve seen maps like this before when talking about demographics… that Virginia is not suffering from a NOVA vs. ROVA split, but rather an Eastern vs. Western Virginia split.

D.J. McGuire has a post that all others posts in March 2008 should aspire towards, an independent analysis of why the Virginia GOP needs to bring itself home to economic conservative values, despite critics who suggest Virginia Republicans have veered too far to the right:

The fact is, economic conservatism – to use the popular term – has been in very short supply here in Virginia. It is the party’s appeal in the eastern part of the state. The more westerners ignore this, the less they will understand us.

Fair point, and as the values of the Golden Crescent (from Richmond, I-95 North and I-64 East) continue to dominate and shift the old coalition within the Republican Party of Virginia, it will be Eastern Virginia values that come to dominate the next 20 years.

Courtesy of Vivian Paige, we hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth about Democratic party discipline:

OK, but if the D majority doesn’t act like one, what good does it do?

Comments about irony and just desserts aside, Colgan took a principled stand. After Kaine yanked abstinence funding due to a “budget shortfall”, it only stands to reason that Planned Parenthood of Virginia funding should go with it.

Of course, the question is whether or not the House and Senate conferees will have the courage to stick to their guns… or whether the Senate Democrats will prove themselves hypocrites on which special interests get to line up to the government trough.

Time will indeed tell

UPDATE: Craig’s Musings doesn’t quite appreciate the comparison of special interest funding on the right and special interest funding on the left:

The difference between the two is, not that it would matter to social conservatives like Kenn[e]y, that study after study has shown that the abstinence only sex education programs don’t work where as Planned History has decades of proven results.

Craig doesn’t say what those “proven results” of Planned Parenthood really are (nor does he offer evidence to support his claims), but “results” such as fewer abortions, more economic opportunity, and less government spending really aren’t benchmarks amongst the extreme left.

Of course, more “results” sadly translates into more abortions — particularly amongst lower class and minority women. Some might coldly assess this as a positive, but most reasonable people understand that society’s answer to poverty and lack of opportunity shouldn’t be a set of forceps held by an abortionist.

Possibly

, though I would argue that we do a terrible job (disservice?) by not reaching out to the Hispanic community more constructively.

This isn’t exactly the nicest way to get the point across, but it does show the juxtaposition between wishy-washy “find ways to deal with your guilt constructively” modernism and absolute truths; the contrast between accomodation and forgiveness.

Heck yeah! From About.com’s Desktop Publishing Blog:

Is it really cheaper to pay one person instead of two? If both the print designer and the Web designer charged the same rates there could still be an advantage to working with just one person because there would most certainly be overlap of time/brainstorming/design of common elements that would apply to both the print and Web projects, whether it be discussion of wix vs wordpress or other elements. If the client was hiring just the single designer who then contracted out part of the work, there would likely be a markup that’s passed along to the client.

However, if you’re doing the work of two people you should be getting paid accordingly, right? If, in your area, the rates for Web design are generally more (or less) than for print work you’re possibly shortchanging yourself if you don’t adjust your rates to reflect those differences. The client may still be getting a bargain by hiring a double-duty designer. On the flip side, if each portion of the project required a great deal of specialized expertise is the client the one being shortchanged by working with a “jack-of-all-trades” designer?

Of course, this is written from the perspective of a consultant or self-employed designer… but I have always been a huge fan of multitasking for projects such as these. After all, why specialize when you know your work could very well be used in another medium — or even better be part of a comprehensive campaign?

This is a great blog for us “do it yourself” types of grassroots activists. The more you can do yourself, the less you have to rely on others. However, web design is far from easy and so, if you don’t know what you’re doing, it is best to leave it to a web design company. But if you don’t like one of the designs you find, don’t worry. You can always find another one out there! There are many web design companies (such as Web Designer Cardiff) that offer a professional service at a reasonable price. The importance of good web design cannot be overstated. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 94% of internet users consider web design the main reason for why they mistrust or bounce off a website. You cannot afford to lose 94% of your potential customers due to poor web design, so contacting a company like Expedition Co. can save you from this. However, if you are a “do it yourself” type of person and, more importantly, you can actually do it, then by all means save yourself some money.

Courtesy of the Hillary Clinton campaign, that’s precisely what we have here.

The photo is one of Obama in traditional Somali dress. The insinuation is the reader’s to decide.

Oddly enough, one gets the feeling (as a Republican anyhow) that many of us are rushing to the defense of Obama more and more often — not because we see his politics as worthwhile, but because the electorate as a whole is tired of the cynicism, the false alarm, and the constant state of panic the Clinton-style politicos tend to cultivate.

This is pointless, though those from the “politics of personal destruction” school are sure to be humored. Sheesh.

Looks like it’s true… though I really wonder whether this would make any sense if the Democratic nomination goes to Barack Obama.

Perhaps it’s just me, but the politics of the two men seem rather similar.

As I’m watching (sort of) the Wisconsin and Washington primary results via Politico, I can’t help but look ahead at Ohio and Pennsylvania — both with double-digit leads for Hillary.

Obama will more than likely carry Wisconsin tonight. But with that win, the wave has all the momentum it can carry. Does it crash against the rocks the Clinton’s have built as a firewall?

I say yes. Obama needs a win in Ohio or Pennsylvania to knock this one out. Otherwise, the heavyweight in this race is going to put “Comeback Girl” above the fold of every newspaper in America in a week or two.

Brian McNeill over at the Charlottesville Daily Progress does a quick survey of the Charlottesville market, and all indicators seem to be pointing towards a slowdown, but not a bust:

Over the previous two years, the number of new residential homes in the region fell by a whopping 42 percent, as the number of permits fell from 3,452 in 2005 to 2,423 in 2007. Building permits are the last hurdle of the approval process before homebuilders can begin construction on a residential unit. Many are already buying premade homes created by commercial construction firms however, with their work kept on track with help from https://www.rakenapp.com/ and other monitoring software options. This, in turn, keeps the housing marketplace alive and well, growing near continuously.

…

“There’s energy in the marketplace right now,” said Dave Phillips, chief executive officer of the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors. “The market is oversupplied. We’re in a buyer’s market. We’d like to see some balance restored.”

For the time being, the housing oversupply is good news for homebuyers, particularly because mortgage interest rates are currently below 6 percent.

“There’s some incredibly good deals out there right now,” Willer said.

2,423 permits is nothing to sneeze at. In fact, that’s still pretty damned hot.

The good news for buyers is there’s a bit of a glut on the market. Whether the market has bottomed out is yet to be seen, but whether or not the deals will remain on the market forever is not.

In short, can anyone really argue that housing prices are going to dramatically fall? I doubt it seriously, as housing prices (1) seem to have remained quite stable, and (2) builders continue to build at a rather furious pace.

The only real “crisis” seems to be with the lending industry itself… at least amongst the more unscrupulous ones. Still, as banks have shored up their reserves and books come clean, I wonder what precisely has changed from the old formula that drove housing prices skyward in the early part of the decade?

French President Sarkozy proposed allowing schoolchildren to “adopt” a victim of the Holocaust, so they could learn about the history.

The reaction? Not what you’d expect… or sadly, precisely what you’d expect from the reactionary leftists in France. From Reuters:

In a speech praising faith that also drew fire from secularists, Sarkozy told France’s Jewish community on Wednesday that every 10-year-old schoolchild should be “entrusted with the memory of a French child victim of the Holocaust”.

The proposal unleashed a storm of protest from teachers, psychologists and his political foes who said it would unfairly burden children with the guilt of previous generations and some could be traumatized by identifying with a Holocaust victim.

More than 11,100 French Jewish children were deported from France to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps in eastern Europe during the German World War Two occupation.

“The emotional burden can have negative consequences for a child who is developing,” Gilles Moindrot, general secretary of the Snuipp-FSU trade union which represents most primary school teachers, said in a statement.

“One can not place on a child of 11 the responsibility for what happened back then.”

The EMDH children’s rights group said: “No educational project should be constructed on death.”

But Sarkozy, speaking in Perigueux in central France, brushed off the uproar.

“It is ignorance that produces abominable situations. It is not knowledge,” he said in a speech. “Let us make our children, children with open eyes who are not complacent.”

The issue of anti-Semitism has been all the rage in France in recent months, stemming from recent murders to comparisons of Sarkozy’s critics in the press as Nazi collaborators.

Last year during the presidential elections, Sarkozy was the target of several outrageous attacks from the Socialist Party and their backers… most of which the French press allowed to pass unnoticed.

But I digress.

Sarkozy is on to something, and regardless of the secular left’s instinctive hatred for all things Sarkozy, this is a proposal that is entirely worthwhile. Those who forget the past are indeed doomed to repeat it, and what better way to refresh the minds of the future than by assigning such a project, however small it may ultimately be?