Say Anything Blog

Get the full story, including debate about compact flourescent bulbs in the comments section, by clicking here.

I’m not a rifle guy, although I am in the process of tricking out a new custom AR-15.  I did, however, perk up at the news that Winchester is about to discontinue manufacturing many of its trademark firearms here in the United States.

Collectors, now’s the time to scarf ‘em up!

From this link to a London Times article I found this interesting quote:

Russia is awash with cash largely because of soaring revenues from its oil and gas.

Wait a minute...I thought that only rich Republican fatcats were making “unfair” amounts of money by selling oil.  Isn’t that what Senator Dorgan and his cronies want us to believe?

I suggest we send our oddly-coiffed Senator over to Russia to get to the bottom of this!

Tonight while watching the news, I heard something that really stood out to me. KXMB was running coverage of the sentencing of 17-year old Jeff Brown Otter for a crime spree a while back. What caught my ear was not the report, but what I heard on the 911 recording. It was played for the court, and a portion of it aired during the KX report. The women who he carjacked had run to a nearby house and called 911, and during the call they exclaimed that it was “Indians” outside.

I’d just like to ask a quick question: if someone forces you to take them somewhere against your will, using a shotgun, and firing a shot in the air as they leave...what does their race matter?

Stating someone’s race to help identify the perpetrator of a crime is prudent, but the voice on that 911 recording sounded to me like they were especially traumatized that the person who had just fired a gun while stealing their car was of Native American descent.

Click here to read the rest on the Bismarck-Mandan Blog.

Here's an angle you won't get from the ND media. I'm not talking about the combover, but I do recall the local media stays clear of that too, in order to preserve their access to the Senator.


I saw this article yesterday talking about how Kildeer Mountain Manufacturing ("Manufactuing" according to KX News) is looking forward to “sharing the award” of a big defense contract with U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan.

According to this press release, KMM’s “director of business development” is one Kristin Hedger, who tried a horribly misleading campaign against Secretary of State Al Jaeger last election cycle.

According to this post on the official ND Dem-NPL blog, Kristin Hedger offered as proof of her ND citizenship: “a letter from the North Dakota Tax Department and also the form that shows she lists North Dakota for tax withholding during her time working in Senator Byron Dorgan’s office, starting in May 2001.”

Is there something the Hedger family and Dorgan should be disclosing?

Upon visiting the KXMB website this evening (a website which syndicates my blog content, by the way) I was met with the top story: a dramatic accident on I-94 in north Bismarck. Complete with video and a slideshow, KX viewers are treated to a dose of sensationalism, KX style. Let me quote anchor Donnell Preskey:

“This is video we just got into our newsroom, and because the accident just happened, we don’t have very much information about it.”

How’s that for journalistic responsibility?

Shots included in this story are of a stretcher with someone’s foot protruding from under a blanket, and the front of the “mangled” (in the words of Ms. Preskey) SUV. While she goes on to say that “initial information” is that there are no life-threatening injuries. Way to wait for solid information, folks.

If I sound pretty ticked about this, you can read my original post about this type of “reporting” by KXMB in an earlier post by clicking here. That article got me threats of a lawsuit from Darrell Dorgan last year, by the way. Regardless, I stand firm in my stance that this kind of reporting is unnecessary and unprofessional.

How would you like to catch a news story about one of your loved ones on TV like this? Since my original post I’ve been contacted by others with similar horror stories of seeing loved ones in media. It isn’t a trivial matter.

While turning on my TV just now I caught the tail end of a KFYR-TV story on this same accident. Apparently their cameras were there, too. But did they run to get it on the air before details were known? I see their website has a story on this (with a shot taken from a distance) with a timestamp of 4:35pm. That means KFYR probably had their story on their 5 o’clock news. The KFYR story has details including the speed of both vehicles, the extent of injuries, and the fact that the payloader involved was travelling legally. In other words, they WAITED.

By the way, I’m not railing on KXMB because I worked for KFYR-TV for all those years. When I watch local news, I watch KXMB. The nature of KFYR’s four-station setup means they have to focus on regional news and don’t go into much detail on local Bismarck-Mandan stories. I love Kevin and LT, tho. I will say that when I was at KFYR, we had written policy against sensationalism. Maybe I can find my old employee manual and send that page to KXMB for inspiration.

Look, folks...we’re in DMA number 158...that’s pretty much the hind end of television. There’s no need to rush to sensationalism just to say “we’re first!” Show a little responsibility. Dashing from accident scene to air doesn’t do your stations or your viewers any favors. Think of the victims’ families...please?

(This ain’t the Onion, but I couldn’t resist a little satire.  After all, it doesn’t take an intellectual giant to make these people look silly.  They do 99% of the work themselves.)

(Bismarck) The North Dakota Peace Coalition called for immediate withdrawal from North Dakota this week, after describing the situation here as “a quagmire with no end in sight.” In light of numerous homicides and other violent crimes in 2007, said NDPC representative Karyn Van Possum, “the continued cost of the North Dakota occupation in the lives and health of our citizens is exceeding our expectations...not that the deaths of North Dakotans should have ever been within our expectations.”

When asked if a resolution in the state legislature along the lines of the Mathern/Kretschmar Pacifism Resolution was being considered, Van Possum indicated, “...that’s certainly a possibility.  What better way to demonstrate support for our citizens than to get them out of harm’s way?  Staying in North Dakota will not work and is not worth the price.”

Van Possum continued: “The list of atrocities committed in North Dakota include: an asphyxiated newborn in December, the high profile killings of two college coeds in Minot and Valley City, the beating to death of a man in Grand Forks in October, and the April slaying of a Sykeston couple in which their home was burned to the ground in an effort to conceal the crime.  That’s only the tip of the iceberg.  Even now, the local news is reporting a possible kidnapping in central North Dakota.  In August, someone hit a young man in the head and tried to run him over with a pickup.  Obviously North Dakota is not safe for North Dakotans.  We need to keep our citizens safe.  We support North Dakotans, just not their mission.  It’s time to bring them home...er, well, somewhere safe, anyway.”

When not busy fighting to end all fighting, many of the ND Peace folks keep busy by forming an endless array of coalitions, councils, and other “dot orgs” to champion such causes such as deviant sexual practices and preferences, pseudo-peace through capitulation to all enemies of freedom, and the worship of the Earth rather than its creator.  Populating these organizations, attending the occasional protest and/or drum circle, and standing in black in front of the capitol keep many of them too busy to find a productive place in society.  “But we care,” stressed Van Possum, “and that’s the important part.”

While they concede that our presence in North Dakota is unlikely to diminish any time soon, the peaceniks vow to remain resolute.  “There’s no giving up on giving up,” Van Possum said.  “It takes courage to stand up for running away.”

I am a casual football fan, but I have to admit I kept an eye on the controversy surrounding Saturday night’s game.  Those who don’t have the NFL Network were peeved that such a historic game would not be available to them for free, and the matter finally aroused the interest of Congress.

I don’t know the motivations behind the whole matter, but a deal was struck to simulcast the NFL Network game on CBS and NBC.  Presumably it was to keep Congress off the back of the NFL.  I was under the impression that the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 allowed Congress some oversight authority in exchange for granting the NFL anti-trust exemption.  So the NFL made a deal with the devil, in the parlance of our times.  I was eager to see how it all panned out.

What I saw, in addition to a good football game, was something of a win-win for the NFL Network.  They turned it into a three hour commercial for their network.  Game interstitials promoted NFL-N exclusives such as draft coverage, game recaps, NFL Films presentations, and the like.  And NBC & CBS were forced to carry it!  Imagine if the NFL had tried to buy three hours of commercial time...something they got for free Saturday night.

I have NFL Network on my satellite dish, so I’m no stranger to it.  Frankly, I think Bryant Gumbel is one of the worst announcers to ever call the game.  But I do like a lot of their exclusives, and they were granted access to two national broadcast networks last night in order to promote those exclusives to millions of potential subscribers.  I bet there are NFL Network executives laughing themselves silly now that it’s done.

I couldn’t help but wonder what NBC and CBS execs must have thought while watching plug after plug for the NFL Network airing on their networks.  I had to chuckle, because I think the NFL Network has every right to do so and were “sticking it to the Man” in a way.  I hope they sent NBC and CBS a belated Merry Christmas card, because they got a heck of a freebie: 3 hours of promotional time on TWO broadcast networks during the game of the year, a game which set a historical record for the league.  At the same time they got Congress off their backs (for now) and came out looking like the good guys.  Good for them.

A while back I wrote to Senators Conrad and Dorgan about their participation in a letter sent to Clear Channel to influence political speech on their stations. You can read that original post here.

I got a response back from Senator Gaylord Kent Conrad which admitted that he didn’t know the context of Rush Limbaugh’s comments, so apparently he was simply being a good Democrat so he could continue to receive the over 90% of his out-of-state campaign contributions. You can read the post about his response letter here.

I just got my response from Senator Dorgan in the mail. He maintains that Rush Limbaugh was critical of soldiers who disagree with the war...no problem there, we’ll just have to disagree. To his credit, the letter contained the following: “However, in retrospect, I wish we had not started down this road of having the Senate involved in expressing support or opposition to various kinds of speech.” Later on he says, “...I think it would have been better had the Senate not rushed to express itself on either of these issues involving Moveon.org or Rush Limbaugh. Frankly, there will always be people on all sides of controversial issues that say things we might object to, but I think we should not have started down that road.”

While Senator Conrad gave me some sort of nonsense answer and apparently stuck to his guns on the issue, at least Senator Dorgan agrees that the Senators participating in the letter should not have done so. He’s not afraid to say so in a letter to one of his constituents. We’ll just agree to disagree on the intent of the comment on the radio that started it all. I’m fine with that.

Case closed, I suppose. I wish that our state’s Senate delegation had not signed on to the letter in the first place. It seems that only half that delegation can at least own up to it and say it was the wrong thing to do.

A while back there was a big controversy about a letter from 41 US Senators to put pressure one Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk show host who used the term “phony soldiers” on the air one day. It was in reference to people like Jesse Al-Said, AKA Jesse MacBeth, who claimed to have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, witnessing atrocities committed by US soldiers, but who actually lied about their service in the US military.

North Dakota’s delegation to the Senate signed a letter to the CEO of Clear Channel, the syndication partner of Limbaugh’s show, attempting to pressure Clear Channel to influence what Limbaugh says on the air. Doesn’t that fly right in the face of the first amendment? Here we have nearly half the Senate, acting in official capacity, attempting to influence political speech by a private citizen by bringing the presence of the US Senate to bear. This is precisely the kind of thing that the Constitution prohibits!

I don’t care if it’s Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken on the receiving end of this letter, it’s an affront to the idea of free speech in this country. And who’s jumped on board like the good little lap dogs we know them to be? Conrad and Dorgan. And you can bet they didn’t do it because North Dakotans were flooding them with complaints about Rush Limbaugh.

I wrote a letter outlining the points above, because I believe in free political and religious speech. I want to beat the crap out of anyone I see burning a flag, but I won’t...in fact, I believe it’s their right under our nation’s Constitution. I think most liberal talk show hosts are out of their skulls, but I defend their right to spout their lunacy for their dozens of listeners. So my motivation in going after our Senators is not conservative vs. liberal. It’s simply a free speech issue.

Back to Gaylord’s return letter to me. He states “I do not know what Mr. Limbaugh was thinking when he uttered the words “phony soldiers.” Okay, Senator Conrad...if you didn’t know, then why would you enter some very frightening territory, constitutionally speaking, attempting to influence political speech by using the power of the Senate as a bludgeoning tool? Because the national Democrat Party told you to, I’m sure.

Rather than behaving like a North Dakotan, Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan showed their true colors and act like east coast liberals. Maybe that way they’ll continue to get the support of the DNC to keep their Senate seats. In the mean time, this Congress has accomplished pretty much nothing while wasting its efforts on trampling the Constitution for political gain.

Why do people continue to vote for these idiots? Haven’t they run out of farmers and senior citizens to scare into voting Democrat?

It seems that, aside from a chance encounter in a Grand Forks Starbucks one chilly morning, the only time I ever see Earl Pomeroy is when there’s some sort of photo op or grandstanding opportunity.  That’s the nature of politics I suppose, since our congressmen are busy.........well, I’m sure they’re busy doing SOMETHING.

Here we see Earl the Pearl walking the Mandan July 4th Parade.  With his experience at moving BS, he should actually be working behind some of the horses!  Yet he had the guts to walk in the same parade as our brave National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers...this after voting against American soldiers on a resolution that could have boosted their morale.  Yet he pretends that never happened when he comes back to North Dakota.

Once again I caught a glimpse of good old Earl at the festivities at the State Capitol.  While they played the Armed Forces Salute, Earl took the opportunity to clap and glance around at the folks behind him (he was in the first row).  Mr. Pomeroy, you had a chance to show North Dakotans how you feel about the proud men and women who serve this country.  You failed miserably.

The PDF of the resolution he voted against, HR 861, can be found by clicking here. All the resolution did was give our troops a little morale boost by declaring that we WILL be victorious.  That was too much for a dedicated liberal Democrat like Earl Pomeroy, yet he still wants to play like he’s a good patriot when he comes back home for the PR opportunities.  That’s the perfect picture of hypocrisy.

The people of North Dakota should bounce this hypocrite out of office at the nearest opportunity.

A lot of the news linked from the Drudge Report comes from MyWay.com. Most of it seems pretty level headed, at least compared to the drivel the major TV and cable networks report.  Tonight I clicked on this link to read about President Bush granting Executive Clemency to Mr. Libby.  Note the first part of that URL if you click on it:  apnews.myway.com.  There’s also a tag at the bottom:Associated Press writer Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.

Proof that the AP had something to do with this?  How about this sentence, appearing on its own as a paragraph:

Testimony in the Libby case revealed the extraordinary steps that Bush and Cheney were willing to take to discredit a critic of the Iraq war.

The joke of the matter, although it’s not funny, is that nobody in the White House “outed” Valerie Plame.  It was a witch hunt.  But the leftists don’t want to report that.

And they wonder why we don’t believe what they report.

I got a 2007 Membership Renewal form for the National Republican Congressional Committee in the mail this weekend. I figured it took a lot of guts to send them out, since it’s really just a fundraiser after they really didn’t perform at all since 2000, so instead of a check I typed up and mailed in this reply:

To: Congressman Tom Cole, NRCC Chairman

Re: Membership contribution request

Dear Congressman Cole,

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the NRCC. I was surprised to hear that there are actually any Republicans still in the Congress. The last time I sent you money, we controlled the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. We were really going to get things done. So what happened?

You’re asking me for money to help you fight for reform in the areas of immigration, Social Security, and Medicare...yet you had six years of total control in Washington in which to advance our agenda. Who fell asleep at the wheel? The same folks who want my hard-earned money now that they’re powerless to push anything through the House at all, and can merely stonewall Democrat bills in the Senate? What was my money paying for when you guys ran the joint?

The fact of the matter is, I am not sending you guys a penny. I, like many who vote Republican, am the antithesis of the “rich, evil Republican” that the Democrats like to portray. I make a modest living and am happy doing so, and thought that sending some of my valuable money to you Republicans while you were in power would actually help you accomplish something. I was sorely mistaken, and I won’t be making such a poor investment any time in the near future.

I was not one of those voters who “sat out” the last election in order to teach you Republicans a lesson. I do understand what’s at stake here. But for you to come back to us with your hat in your hand after a shameful squandering of six years in control of everything in Washington is too much. I won’t vote with my wallet the way I will with my ballot. Either you Republicans in the Senate had better start acting like conservatives, or you won’t have any support left from people who thought you were there to advance the causes about which we care most deeply.

Good luck. Your candidates will likely get my vote in 2008, but you won’t get one red cent. This time you earn it first.

PS: The same applies to Presidential candidates in 2008. At this point I remain firmly resolved to write-in Ronald Reagan.

I really don’t think anyone in Washington truly represents the people who vote for them any more. Look at the Democrats, for instance. The ones who ran on an anti-war platform don’t dare defund the war, because they know that’d be political suicide. So the crazy leftists who helped them raise money are going to be mad as heck. On the other side, our Republicans had six years to get things done, and had the power to do it, and still produced nothing.

This simply reinforces my long held belief that nobody in Washington is there to solve problems. What would the Republicans do if they couldn’t dangle the abortion or immigration carrot in front of us voters? Especially in this age where you’re only as important as your last five minutes’ performance, they’re just simply afraid of having no crisis handy with which they can rally the voters.

The letter I wrote pretty much says it all. I wish everyone who got the NRCC fundraising request would do the same thing. If nobody with an (R) by their name has any sack anymore, then they don’t deserve to be in national politics. Period.

Once again, the cowardly Earl Pomeroy shows that he’s more devoted to trying to defeat Republicans than he is to defeating America’s enemies. While many on his side were calling for an increase in troop levels a while back to criticize the President, now they’re doing the opposite. But we shouldn’t be surprised.

You see, the cowardly Representative Pomeroy has always been clear on where he stands on this issue. As I pointed out in this post a while back, he voted against House Resolution 861 less than 24 hours before showing up at the funeral of a fallen Bismarck soldier, where he proudly looked all patriotic. This two-faced, cowardly liar had the nerve to wave and greet North Dakota soldiers and those there to support them less than a day after voting against a resolution supporting victory in the War on Terrorism.

The troop surge makes sense: let the rest of the soldiers in place in Iraq continue their operations as usual, while bringing in a force designed and deployed to root out the insurgency. But if we do that, then we don’t enable the Democrat party mouthpieces to cry “Civil War! Civil War!” But the fact of the matter is, they’re merely using this war as a means to attack Republicans here at home. That’s so cowardly, apparently Earl needed to be deployed back to Washington from ND to carry the mantle for the Democrats. He’s doing a bang-up job.

I’ve covered the text of the House Resolution in this post so I won’t get into it again. Let it suffice to say that I’m not surprised to see cowardly Earl taking his five minutes to bravely stand the Democrat party line, trying to insure that our fighting men and women are not given the resources they require, hoping eagerly for a defeat to hang around the neck of a Republican president while paying for it with the blood of American soldiers. Way to go, Earl...you make me sick.

I’d like to point out to those African Americans who buy into the racist stereotype that Republicans are bigots who don’t represent anybody but the white guy:

There will NEVER be a black Democrat who will be the first black US Senator, first black US Representative, first black American to preside over a session over the US Senate, first black National Security Advisor, first black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, first (or second) black Secretary of State, or the first black Supreme Court justice.  That’s right, those milestones have all been accomplished by black Republicans.

In fact, the first black US Senator and US Representative were elected to Congress in 1870s, long before the Democrats stuffed their white hoods in the dumpster and finally quit voting against civil rights legislation.

With all these Obamagasms going on, I just thought I would clarify that the stereotype of the Republican party as a white party is hogwash.  While the Democrats talk a pretty tough game when it comes to racism, the Republicans have been quietly electing African Americans to political office for over 130 years.