Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
The local Sioux Falls paper notes that the voting percentage in the most recent school board election was 3.55% in an editorial asking for voting to be made easier by eliminating precinct voting in favor of at-large polling places scattered around the city. Personally, I think that’s more likely to confuse the heck out of [...]
…is only indicative of local situations, really – with two caveats. If you run a crappy candidate and a nasty, dumb campaign, don’t be surprised when you lose. If you spend a lot of money and should have won or just barely won, that says more about your campaign and your candidate than anything else. [...]
(taken from the teabagger protest in DC this weekend) Lesson #1: Anyone who is not a Republican is not a Marxist. Really. Lesson #2: The last Czar in Russia gave up the throne in 1917, and the Russian Communists took over Russia in 1918; I don’t think you understand that there were no Czars in [...]
I have been listening to enough rants, hate and nonsense in the last year and a half to last me a lifetime or more, and I’ve been more than fed up with it all. But I started realizing that this sort of crud is endemic; uninformed people who choke off their sources of information to [...]
I am frequently dismayed by various Truthers out there who insist on a Grand Conspiracy theory of the universe; stories about how the moon landing was faked, the world is flat, that 9/11 was an inside job and how Obama is some kind of Manchurian candidate smuggled into the country as a very small baby [...]
Rush Limbaugh: Sanford was probably driven in desperation to cheat on his wife and get some small pleasure out of life by Barack Obama’s efforts to destroy America, as in what-the-heck-it’s-all-over-I’m-just-going-to-have-fun. Full quotes at the link. At the other end of the world, Congressman Michelle Bachmann is suggesting that the Obama Administration is going to [...]
Feel free on this series to add your captions (photos are under the cut) for the images in your comments. My caption set (in order) is as follows: “They said – come to DC – we can get you a good job with the new administration…they really need guys like you. It’s very different work [...]
Senate hearings today on GM and Chrysler dealerships being closed; sounds like there’s going to be a how dare you cut our constituents’ dealerships fuss. Such as: Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who met with the GM and Chrysler executives on Tuesday, said Congress would not try to “go through the administration to get them to [...]
Iraqi PM to Obama: If you release those unreleased photos from Abu Ghraib, my electorate will go up in blue flame and demand that the US get out yesterday.
Interesting observation on the coming Supreme Court selection (which I am otherwise ignoring all the thrash over) in this blog; in short, the base demands that hell be raised and impossible demands be made on Obama to appoint another Scalia, which will never happen. Nor will he appoint a pot-smoking hippie. But the level of [...]
Here’s a map from AP of the major stimulus projects on a county-by-county basis. Zoomable flash. In my case, the big project in my area is the resurfacing and repair of a major nearby road that we use on a daily basis that is pothole city (which is unfortunately a widespread problem in the Chicago [...]
Making business cards out of beef jerky using a frickin’ laser beam. Pundits in National Review that are concerned that Obama is going to appoint someone who will be ready to establish a constitutional right to be cloned. Jim now breaks out his top hat and cane, and becomes a singing, dancing star of the [...]
Well, the Senate can filibuster a Supreme Court nomination. And I have no idea who Obama will pick. But you can rest assured that the confirmation will be messy no matter who he picks, considering what’s been going on over the last little bit. I’m not looking forward to it at all.
I will freely admit that I’m astonished at the about-face in the attitudes of the US public about gay marriage. A couple of years ago, we had several states stomping on the idea via pumped-up public referenda; now we have far greater acceptance of the idea and state after state legalizing it. The greed of [...]