While I’m a firebreathing libertarian-conservative with a few touches of paleocon mixed in for good measure, I break with conservatives on a couple of issues.

The big one is capital punishment.

Don’t get me wrong – I support capital punishment for every reason there is…

…except one; the simple fact that people, science, procedure and law are all imperfect, and that until they are it is inevitable that we will execute an innocent person.  And executing the innocent is a double crime; it kills an innocent person for a crime he didn’t commit, and it virtually ensures the guilty will go forever free.

Now, Laura Ingraham is almost right; modern science has, theoretically, made it much more difficult to execute an innocent person.  But in some cases, modern, exculpatory science has gotten hindered by police and prosecutorial misconduct. 

And in others – including, it seems, at least one execution that looks increasingly likely to have killed an innocent man – science looks to have evolved enough to have made a verdict look very sketchy:

[Cameron Todd] Willingham was executed for the 1991 arson murders of his three children. The Chicago Tribune investigated the case in December 2004 and found that the fire investigation was flawed, with the local investigators relying on indicators of arson that had been disproved by advances in fire science.That does not mean Willingham was innocent. But in the absence of other evidence, it shows that he was executed for a fire that might well have been accidental.

A very, very long article in New Yorker, however, makes a pretty compelling case that Willingham was innocent, and that the Texas state government, including governor Rick Perry, would rather not examine the possibility.

There are people out there who deserve to die for their crimes.  But that must never trump the right of the innocent to live.

Never.

Even if the absolutely guilty pay for their crimes with the dubiously-better option of life in a Supermax with no possibility of parole – barring, of course, reversal of their convictions.

The Willingham case adds to a growing body of evidence that the only morally acceptable means of capital punishment is legally-justified self-defense.

…but he doesn’t write about it.

At least not on Nick Coleman | Unbound and Unbowed blog, which is also Unupdated.

Home.

It’s one of the most powerful words in the English language.

And it’s one of the most powerful feelings there is – as an observer or as a participant.

The soldier returns home.  The young runaway comes back to home and family.  The prodigal son walks back up the sidewalk.

But…er…this?

With bright white lights, a hushed atmosphere and chunks of steel twisted into impossible shapes, it feels more like a museum than a garage.

A hometown National Guard unit, back from Afghanistan, meets its family at the armory?

An unjustly-imprisoned man is released to his family in the garage of the courthouse?

But it is the new home for crucial remnants of the old Interstate 35W bridge.

Oh.

I mean, looking for a local angle is part and parcel of what the news business does.  I know that.  But wreckage?

The piece in the Strib is called “Remnants of 35W Bridge Come Home” or some such.

The story is actually interesting, if you have any interest in engineering, the law, forensic sciences and the like:

The bridge’s many pieces are all in Minnesota again — now that the National Transportation Safety Board has returned the parts it needed for its investigation. The bridge parts arrived from the East Coast over the weekend and are being housed in a 5,000-square-foot warehouse in Oakdale built especially for that purpose. There the parts will be protected from wind and water so that lawyers and engineers can examine them for the many lawsuits related to the bridge’s collapse.

All well and good – and useful news.

But is it just me, or is that just about the longest stretch to imbue sentiment into a story that we’ve ever seen?

The Strib has been covering the twentieth anniversary of the kidnapping of Jacob Wetterling. 

Today, they interview Aaron Larson, the boy who went walking to store with Jacob Wetterling and his brother on that Sunday night.

I was a little less than two years away from having kids myself, back then.  And Wetterling’s was one of a series of kidnappings that shocked the region at the time; Jeanne North disappeared in Fargo; a young girl was kidnapped, molested and murdered in a Northeast Minneapolis second-hand store by a fat, long-haired loser who canoodled with Satanism and whose mug shot alone could have been used as dispositive evidence that he was a child-rapist/murderer; another little girl in Cottage Grove was abducted and killed by his mother’s boyfriend.

And as they got older, the examples didn’t get any less fresh; Dru Sjodin was abducted and killed about the time my kids got into their teenage years, tempering my joy about their growing independence and giving me a date to take a quick vacation from my opposition to the death penalty for the party I’ll throw the day they finally stick a needle in Alejandro Rodriguez’ arm.

The story stuck with me as a new parent – especially stopping by Saint Joseph almost exactly a year later, when the posters were still up and the place still oozed hope for the boy.

“The first thing I remember was the flash of the gun, and a guy saying, ‘Stop, I have a gun,'” Larson recalled. “I caught my breath. I thought it was a high school kid pulling a joke on us. … Then it hits you: this is happening, it’s no joke.”

The man ordered them to lie face-down in the roadside ditch.

Larson remembers his heart “going 1,000 beats a minute,” but having no clue what was happening. “You didn’t hear about people being kidnapped or abducted. It didn’t cross my mind.”

The man asked Trevor to look at him, then asked his age. He did the same with Aaron, then Jacob.

“Then he told Trevor to run as fast as he can to the woods. Trevor was not gone that long, maybe 10 seconds, and he said the same to me or he’d shoot,” Larson said. “I ran as fast as I could to catch up to Trevor.”

After running 100 yards, Larson looked back — and saw nothing but darkness.

Frantic, the boys ran to the Wetterling house. The baby sitter called her father, who called 911. Within minutes, the cul-de-sac lit up with squad cars.

Petrified, Larson looked out a living room window and kept telling himself he would see Jacob again. “Sooner or later, he’s going to come and he’s going to get out of the car and this will all be over.”

Twenty years later, there’s a part of him still looking out the window, waiting for his friend.

It seemed incredible at the time; kidnappings, especially in little towns like Saint Joseph, just didn’t happen as bolts from the blue.

The kidnapping popped an awful lot of bubbles. 

I’ve told my kids ever since then; if someone pulls a gun on you, run; moving targets are harder to hit; a 9mm slug has about a 17% chance of killing you even if it does hit you, even if the shooter does opt to shoot (because nothing screws up a hush-hush stealth crime like ekidnapping like, y’know, gunfire).  That’s an 83%-plus chance to survive if you run and run fast, as opposed to about a .1% chance of surviving at a secondary crime scene.

Kids disappear every day, of course.  Most of them turn up again.  The Wetterling case swept Minnesota 20 years ago, and is still virtually synonymous with “kidnapping” in the minds of most Minnesotans old enough to remember the case.  It was especially traumatic in rural Minnesota, which got dragged out of the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder and into the cold, windy real world. 

The case still reverberates, of course.  Some good did come of it; it launched a raft of child safety legislation; Patty Wetterling went on to found the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is the single most important group on the issue.  And the realization that Minnesota, even its vast hinterland, wasn’t as safe as it used to be helped erode support for the DFL’s traditional “catch and release” policies, and built support for reform of Minnesota’s paternalistic, racist handgun permit laws over the following decade.  Being a child molester got a little more dangerous in Minnesota after the Wetterling kidnapping.

I do urge you to read the interview with Aaron Larson.  He’s 31, now; it’s a fascinating look at a survivor, and what that means.

Someone – frequent commenter BillC, if memory serves – sent this around on Facebook a while ago.

The idea?  Pick an artist or band, and then answer the questions using nothing but song titles from their discography.  The source album is included in italics (I add this mainly because if I don’t, one of the entries is going to look kinda weird…)

I chose…: 

Pick Your Artist:  The Who

Are you male or female?  “I’m A Boy” [Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy]

Describe yourself: “The Punk meets the Godfather” [Quadrophenia]

How do you feel about yourself?  “I Can See For Miles” [Who Sell Out]

Describe where you currently live:  “Amenia, City In The Sky” [Who Sell Out]

If you could go anywhere, where would you go?  “Tommy’s Holiday Camp” [Tommy]

Your best friend is: “Baba O’Riley” [Who’s Next]

Your favorite color is:  “Red, Blue and Grey” [Who by Numbers]

You know that:  “The Music Must Change” (Who Are You)

What’s the weather like:  “Heat Wave” (yes, it’s a cover of Martha and the Vandellas, from A Quick One)

If your life was a tv show, what would it be called?: “Won’t Get Fooled Again” [Who’s Next]

What is life to you?  “Faith In Something Bigger” [Odds ‘n Sods]

What is the best advice you have to give?  “Bargain” [Who’s Next][used as a verb in the imperative, naturally]

If you could change your name, what would it be?  “Doctor Jimmy and[/or] Mister Jim” [Quadrophenia]

Your favorite food is:  “Heinz Baked Beans” [The Who Sell Out, and yes, I know, it’s not technically a song – it’s one of the fake ads from the album, which was in its entirety a face radio broadcast.  But the game just says titles, not “songs”.  I think]

Well, that was fifteen minutes I don’t have to figure out how to occupy…

It took the GOP the better part of four years to piddle away the goodwill that it won during the early 2000s.

Congrats, Dems; between your heavy-handed antics, your amateurism, your ineptitude and your obvious hunger for absolute power, not only are the actual people realizing the Change they Hoped for is never coming, but even some of the people who were painting your toenails six months ago are having second thoughts; your ideas are turning off the people you suckered in last year.

For October 20:

1. Find a new design template for the blog. Check.  Looks cool so far, fits my basic design requirements (I’m a usability guy), shouldn’t tax my limited CSS knowledge too badly and yet can be customized fairly easily.
2. Get my server password figured out so I can actually get onto my server to do the fix.  Check.  I’ve gotten to be on a first-name basis with tech support at my hosting provider, so that helps.
3. Get all the various collaterals I need – images, ads, etc – together in once place to get the job done – Incomplete.  But that’s OK.  It’s an iterative project, as we say in the IT business.  However, unlike most “iterative projects”, it’ll get done…
4. Find four or five hours of free time to get the job done – Not Started.  Epic fail there.

Soon, though.  Very soon. It’s an “iterative project”, as we say in the IT racket.

Unlike most “iterative projects”, it’ll actually get done.

So why is the left – not just the the media and the attack-PR-osphere and the left’s lumped horde of chattering classes, but indeed the Administration itself – so invested in attacking the informational lynchpins of the opposition, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News?

Not to mention slandering the motivations and character of every single dissenter to their polities, on a national, media-wide and systematic basis?

Because the opposition just keeps growing.  The April 15 tea parties drew 600,000 people; the 9/17 parties, millions. 

Dissent from Hope n Change isn’t going away.

And they’d so hoped that it would.

Four years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 elections, a slew of radio consultants made a zillion dollars telling talk-radio program directors that conservative talk radio was dead.

It was wishful thinking, of course.  And now that conservatives are the underdogs again, we have entered – as I predicted during our election-night broadcast – a second Golden Age of Conservative Talk Radio.

The I Hate The Media blog R unpacks the latest Arbitron ratings nationwide in head-to-head competitions between Rush Limbaugh affiliates and affiliates carrying Ed Schultz and/or Stephanie Miller, the closest the left’s come to “successful” programming so far.

And it’s not a pretty picture – unless you like conservative talk radio.  Then, it’s a very, very pretty picture. 

Note that the ratings below are for the stations as a whole, not for Limbaugh (or Schultz/Miller):

1. New York
WABC Rush 3.7 (8th in market)
WWRL Ed/Steph 0.2 (50th in market tie)

2. Los Angeles
KFI Rush 5.0 (1st in market)
KTLK Ed/Steph 0.4 (48th in market tie)

Catch that?  In two of the nation’s largest and most liberal markets, the conservative talk leader not only beats liberal talk, but does it by an order of magnitude and more.

8. Washington
WMAL Rush 2.7 (17th in market)
WTNT Ed only 0.3 (33rd in market tie)

This, not long after Washinton’s “Obama 1260” all-leftytalk station bit the dust.

16. Minneapolis
KTLK-FM Rush 3.6 (13th in market)
KTNF Ed/Steph 1.1 (21st in market)

It’s not “libtalk’s” best performance – that’d be in Seattle, where the Rush affiliate only gets 2.5 times the ratings the FastEddie/MiniIngraham station gets.

But Rush is hampered by the fact that he’s on KTLK-FM, a station that only recently adopted conservatism as a driving format motif, and has otherwise made a royal botch of things until fairly recently. 

Now, there’s a fair point to be made here; liberals don’t need to listen to talk radio; they already have the mainstream media, plus National Public Radio, plus MSNBC, CNN and CNBC, plus the Big Three, plus their real news standardbearer, Jon Stewart.

Andt that’s true.  The real point of this post isn’t so much “how bad is conservative talk clobbering liberal talk” – everyone in their right mind knew it would – as it is “how wrong were the consultants four years ago”, and “how does that inform the Administration’s current campaign to demonize all dissent?”

Very wrong, and very much, which is providing both a mission for the Administration and an inconvenient truth for its mainstream media supporters:

Yes, the release of Arbitron radio ratings for August 2009 created quite a stir in Los Angeles last week when it was revealed that AM news-talk giant KFI had moved into first place.

But judging by the coverage in the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register and Los Angeles Business Journal, this feat was somehow accomplished without the help of the medium’s star performer, Rush Limbaugh.In covering the achievement, the latter two publications didn’t even mention Rush, while the Times noted Limbaugh only in passing deep into one story and left him out of another entirely.Is it really that hard to admit Rush could be so popular in their own backyard?

Here’s what we know about Limbaugh’s contribution to KFI’s feat, along with some new details on his performance elsewhere during August: The Rush Limbaugh Show gained a full share point overall, from 5.9 to 6.9 to take first place with a weekly cume of 635,700 listeners. With men 35-64, the jump was from 4.7 to 5.6. In the 11am hour, Rush pulled in a mammoth 6.3.

These results are cropping up from coast to coast (read Maloney’s entire piece).

Which tells the media that the peasants are revolting.

And that is why the White House and the media it keeps in its hip pocket have switched into full-blown smear machine mode.

TANGENT:  During the Bush years, the left clutched at its pearls and accused Karl Rove of running a “smear machine” through any number of right-leaning groups – the Swiftboat Vets, Fox News, you name it.  But can you imagine what’d happen if there’d been the faintest hint of Bush Administration involvement in leaning on media dissent – which, unlike the current Administration, was omnipresent and utterly vicious?

Something for all you conservatives (and people who care about free markets and being able to get decent health care in this country) on Twitter:

I’ve been @ messaging folks but hopefully you can give this some
traction: Suppose you tweet the following:

Please RT — select any number of pages from health care bill
http://is.gd/4rxIr, read them, & post results at #crowdread

Nobody said it would be easy, of course:

I already have a (half-a**ed — I can’t read that s**t!) entry…

This would be one of those areas where conservatives’ domination of Twitter could be a very good thing.

I may do it on the blog, here, too.  Presuming I can make heads or tails of any of it.

To: President Obama

From: Mitch Berg

Re:  The War That Matters

Mr. President,

You’ve been extremely lukewarm about supporting General McChrystal’s proposal for a troop surge to support his counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq.

You basically abdicated the US policy of support for missile defense, selling out our allies in Eastern Europe in the face of Vladimir Putin.

When the Soviets Russians pounded the uppity Georgians, you sent the plucky, pro-Western, freedom-loving Georgians a ship full of Hope and Change, and nothing else.

And of course, when the Iranians were shooting protesters in the streets, you made concerned noises and went quietly away.

Little did the world’s despots and tinpots know that you were just saving your energy for the real battle:

The White House is calling on other news organizations to isolate and alienate Fox News as it sends out top advisers to rail against the cable channel as a Republican Party mouthpiece.

Attaway, Mister President.  Because even if it were true, and even if Fox were a GOP “mouthpiece” – and as far as its news-gathering goes, it’s not – well, goodness knows that our country doesn’t need at least one group of contrary journalists keeping big government accountable, do we?  Because your Administration has abolished the laws of human behavior and created a government that doesn’t need to be held accountable?

As visibly as you crave the approval of European elites, you do realize that most private European news outlets actually are partisan in editorial stance?  That while The Guardian and Die Zeit and Le Monde lean left, the Times and the Frankfurter Allgemeine lean overtly to the right, and are open about it?  And that each of them rides their “opposition” pretty hard, which makes the “opposition” sad, but occasionally trips up some big scandals?  Hence holding government accountable…

…Aaaaaah.  I get it now.

That is all.

P.S.:  When does the 2008 campaign end, anyway?

This past week Keith Ellison issued a breathless, well-worn and blatantly specious (if not utterly ignorant) monologue to justify the further distension of the bowels of the federal government via yet another bloated agency. As I read his drivel, in my ears rang the sultry voice of classic SNL fixture Jane Curtain, warbling on and on and on; aptly blunted by Dan Ackroyd’s signature catchphrase.

the American dream of home ownership, and borrowing generally, washed up on the shores of a financial disaster — the most serious since the Great Depression.

One cause (there were many) was the failure of our system of consumer financial protection. No one was there to review transactions or protect consumers. The proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency provides the lifeline that consumers need.

Oh, someone was there. Federal regulators were there, telling banks they couldn’t borrow funds at the best rates unless they met certain ratios of mandated risky sub-prime transactions to the prudent and secure deals banks would normally seek.

A free market cannot be held culpable if it is not free.

These so-called predatory lenders Keith, were not only incented to push unqualified home buyers into loans they couldn’t afford, they were strong-armed to do so via quotas and measures put in place during the Carter administration and given teeth during the Clinton administration. Sadly, G.W. Bush failed to preemptively unwind the brewing disaster despite the behest of Senator John McCain, among others.

The government-inflated and guaranteed demand for housing and all the furnishings that go inside created a bubble with all the periphery that usually comes with one. It ended as they usually do – otherwise we’d not know it was a bubble, now would we?

If anyone needed regulatin’ it was the regulators.

The American Dream is just that, Keith. Home ownership, while beneficial to all of us, is not a Government-Given right. With rare exception, when liberals act with politically motivated and self-serving mandates under the auspice of a “lifeline”, disaster follows close behind.

…and that disaster, our Great Recession, is the direct result of exactly the same type of programs Mr. Ellison and his ilk offer as it’s “solution.”

Rejoice, because you are alive: An asteroid named 2009TM8 just passed only 216,000 miles from Earth, racing at 18,163mph. That’s closer than the moon.

I’m pretty much live-and-let-live when it comes to other peoples’ spiritual choices.  I figure people are adults, and can figure out what matters – or for that matter does not matter – in their own lives on their own.

Which isn’t to say that I don’t think some Westerners who adopt some radically non-Western forms of spirituality aren’t doing it to get back at Mom and Dad – but again, that’s just me being catty.  In some cases.

Which I say to separate myself from those who will get their yuks over this story; a Minneapolis woman has died in a Native American sweat lodge ceremony-gone-bad:

An Arizona homicide investigation now includes three deaths after a woman died more than a week after participating in a sweat lodge ceremony that hospitalized nearly two dozen people.

Liz Neuman of Minnesota died Saturday at a Flagstaff hospital, Yavapai County sheriff’s spokesman Dwight D’Evelyn said.

The 49-year-old suffered multiple organ damage during the Oct. 8 ceremony at a resort near Sedona, a resort town 115 miles north of Phoenix that draws many in the New Age spiritual movement.

Which is awful, and I do direct any prayers, wishes or imprecations your particular worldview call for to Ms. Neuman’s survivors.

And by all means, pick your own spiritual path.  But I just want to point out…:

Ray [the organizer of the fateful retreat] had rented the Angel Valley Retreat Center for his five-day “Spiritual Warrior” event that culminated in the sweat lodge ceremony. Participants paid between $9,000 and $10,000 to attend the retreat.

…that you don’t see Presbyterians charging $10K for this sort of thing.

Or at least, they won’t pay it…

Bear walks into liquor store, falls asleep in the beer cooler:

The bear stopped Friday night at Marketplace Foods in Hayward, about 140 miles northeast of Minneapolis, sauntering through the automatic doors and heading straight for the liquor department.

It calmly climbed up 12 feet onto a shelf in the beer cooler where it sat for about an hour while employees helped evacuate customers and summoned wildlife officials.

Officials from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources tranquilized the animal and took it out of the store.

So far, it’s almost like when Pack fans come to the dome – the “getting tranquilized and led out” bit, anyway.

But there’s evidence it wasn’t a Wisconsin bear after all:

Store workers say the bear seemed content in the cooler and did not consume any alcohol.

Also didn’t curse Brett Favre.

I traveled to The Badlands in South Dakota this past week where you can literally see millions of years of earth’s history locked in a lava parfait; most of which took place without our existence, let alone our negligible impact

…and UK PM Gordon Brown, who has no scientific basis and of course no political agenda to further, says we have had 50 days to save Mother Earth.

Gordon Brown said negotiators had 50 days to save the world from global warming and break the “impasse”.

Mr Brown warned that negotiators were not reaching agreement quickly enough and said it was a “profound moment” for the world involving “momentous choice”.

“So we should never allow ourselves to lose sight of the catastrophe we face if present warming trends continue.”

Sorry, Sir. You mean cooling trends, right?

See, if I were Brown, I’d use even more syllables that that…to underscore the behemothic endangerment; the precariousness of our posterity.

What an amateur.

Meanwhile venues from Australia to here in the Twin Cities have experienced the coldest first two weeks in October on record.

HT John H

To:  Jon and Kate Gosselin, tiresome fake celebrities

From: Mitch Berg, blissfully above it all.

Re: The Lowered Bar

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Gosselin,

I’ve never watched Jon And Kate Plus Eight, because I think you are a couple of whores – or worse, pimps, whoring out your children to the pathetic, toothless johns that are our celebrity-stricken, illiterate, slackjawed, drooling media.  I think that the relentless publicity you seek is going to leave you with eight Dana Platos and Todd Bridges(es) one of these days.  I think you have only begun to see a reckoning for your invincible stupidity.

But after the events of this past week, and the whole “balloon boy” media frenzy teed up by a couple of your fellow idiot celebrity-wannabe parents…:

The parents, Richard and Mayumi Heene, met with Larimer County investigators for much of Saturday afternoon amid lingering questions about whether he perpetrated a publicity stunt when his 6-year-old son Falcon vanished into the rafters of his garage while the world thought he was zooming through the sky in a flying saucer-like helium balloon.But Sheriff Jim Alderden didn’t say who would be charged or what the charges would be. His deputies later showed up at the Heene’s Fort Collins home with a search warrant and at least three of them began a search. Sgt. Ian Stewart declined so say what they were after.

Alderden on Saturday didn’t call Thursday’s hours-long drama a hoax, but he expressed disappointment that he couldn’t level more serious charges in the incident, which sent police and the military scrambling to save young Falcon Heene as millions of worried television viewers watched.

…I’ll tell you for the record that you two are no longer the single most stupid, tiresome excuse for a “story” to obsess our media.

No, all is not forgiven, per se; I’m just saying that as much as I despise the two of you, there is at least one couple on this planet I wish were eaten by mice (after being tied in a sack with every single media figure that’s given your pathetic, exploitive saga breathless coverage) even more.

Does being an Ivy-Leaguer endow one with an intellectual reach that exceeds one’s grasp?

Case in point, the storied chaps at Harvard bet their billions that they were smarter than the market: Wrong

Harvard University’s failed bet that interest rates would rise cost the world’s richest school at least $500 million in payments to escape derivatives that backfired.

Further, Barack Obama bet that his Harvard-acquired education and billions in taxpayer dollars “invested” under the guise of economic stimulus would be enough to lead a nation and create millions of new jobs: Unsurprisingly, wrong.

Data published Thursday showed contracts from the $787 billion economic stimulus created or saved 30,083 jobs…

And finally the highly respected Harvard graduate Matt Birk, who many thought would finish his NFL career with the Minnesota Vikings, left in favor of a substantially similar offer from the Baltimore Ravens earlier this year. Birk ostensibly bet his chances of winning the Super Bowl would be greater in Baltimore: Surprisingly, wrong.

MINNEAPOLIS – As Steve Hauschka’s potential game-winning kick sailed wide left, nearly all of the Ravens on the sideline dropped their heads in unison, feeling another last-minute punch in the gut in a season that continues to veer off course.

It just goes to show a Harvard education is no guarantee of success. In the now legendary words of Forest Gump’s momma: “stupid is as stupid does.”

For a few years now, people have been asking “when the heck is Katie Kieffer going to start doing a blog?”

And by jinky, Kieffer – “the Laura Ingraham of Saint Thomas” –  finally is!

And she’s writing from a slightly different perspective than the typical conservative blogger.

Worth a read!

Five and a half years ago, the Northern Alliance Radio Network was the first all-blogger, all alt-media radio show in the world.

I’ve been waiting to see if other radio stations would give it a try – indeed, as desperate for free content as they are, I’m mildly shocked that the Twin Cities’ AM950, our token liberal station, hasn’t snapped up a bunch of leftybloggers to try to do for their schedule what the NARN did for AM1280.  There was a station in Boston that had a blogger-run show a few years back, but I think it’s no more.

But it was gratifying to note that Rob Port – proprietor of the excellent Say Anything , North Dakota’s foremost political blog – is on several nights a week at Fargo’s excellent AM1100 “The Flag”.

Port has also put together some regional syndication with at least one other station in central North Dakota – making him a real network!

Tune in!

Drug violence is  mighty bad in Rio:

Suspected drug traffickers shot down a police helicopter and set fire to five buses and a school in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday, killing two policemen, police and media said.It is one of the worst recent outbreaks of violence in Rio and comes two weeks after the city was awarded the 2016 Olympic Games, despite worries over its high levels of violence and poor security.

Word that the International Olympic Committee responded to the news by saying “it’s still better than Chicago” are utterly unconfirmed.

Long story short – something in my old code was messing with the page load.

In order to fix things, I’ve substituted this new (and, let’s face it, not especially inspiring) design template while I try to diagnose the problem.

I’ll be tinkering with things all weekend and, likely, into next week.

Upside:  No ads for now!

Downside:  No ad revenue for now 🙁

The adventure continues.

There’s some sort of problem going on with this blog, at the ISP level.

Tech support is working on it, but we currently have no clue as to what’s going on.

I will resume normal publishing next week, if only to keep a presence on RSS…

Pigs from the Minnesota state fair are being tested by the government for what may be the first U.S. cases of swine flu among domestic livestock.

That’s why I never go to The Fair.

So why did Olympia “Oly” Snowe vote for Obamacare?

Because she’s a statesmanlypersonly visionary who is looking beyond party politics?

Or because her own state’s socialized-medicine boondoggle is rapidly going broke?

Steven Spruill notes at NRO:

Obamacare would relieve a handful of northeastern states, including Maine, of the burden of funding their broken, heavily regulated and subsidized health-care systems while imposing new burdens on the South and Midwest in the form of expanded eligibility for Medicaid. Of course Snowe voted for this bill. It’s a bailout for Maine.

Glenn Reynolds http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/86770/”>adds> “I just admire the name “DirigoChoice.”  I like it, if only because with my monitor (set to really high resolution), it reads “Dingochoice”, which is really funny.

I’ve been pondering lately; what if John F. Kerry had won the 2004 election?  Where would we be now?  What’d be going on in the world?

If you smell one of my self-indulgent multi-part series – well, give your nose a cookie.