Program host Rob Port was kind enough to ask me to hang out with him on the air during his show tonight. The show airs from 7pm to 9pm. I’m grateful for the opportunity – thanks, Rob!
Night at the Museum — well, capitol, actually — Part Two

If you watched any of the local news stations, you probably know that the ceremony held for the lighting of the capitol Christmas tree took place today. Now when you drive by the capitol at night you’ll see the big tree lit up in the windows of the Great Hall.
I couldn’t help but whip together a quick post akin to my first “Night at the Museum” type post from a while back. Here’s a shot of what the tree looks like at night when nobody’s around, from inside the Great Hall. It needs a Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack in there…the acoustics would be really cool!
Christmas is in full swing in my family. Both of our little boys are two years old now, which means they can actually understand what’s going on. That makes Christmas even more enjoyable! I love watching them in their excitement, and I love driving them around town to look at the lights. Taking them places to see and experience different things is one of my greatest joys in life. Yes, they did get to see the giant capitol tree tonight, too!
One way to clean your camera…

The signal gets a little fuzzy when it rains…

Kinda reminds me of thereIfixedit.com 🙂
It is well

element: motion


Flyby

The ISS traversed the sky overhead for several minutes before fading into the dark night sky. Then I hopped in the truck, ran back to town and perused the Bismarck public library for a bit, then brought home a Lightning McQueen toddler bed for one of my two two-year-old boys. Ka-chow!
That last step is a doozy…will our Senators take it?

Oh…wait a minute. There’s something we need to do, or our nation will be stepping off a figurative, dangerous version of the top step in the photo above. The Senate plans to vote on their monstrosity of a “health care reform” bill this Saturday. We need to urge our Senators to vote NO.
Once again, they have thousands of pages of bureaucracy waiting for us, stripping us of our freedoms and turning your body into a budget item. Oh, and it gets worse:
This bill will require everybody to pay for publicly funded abortions, regardless of their convictions on the matter. Funds will be collected from all participants in the public “option” and dispersed to provide abortion services. This is not elective.
It’s amazing, considering that every poll out there shows that the people do not support the government takeover of health care. Opposition to abortion is at an all time high as well. Yet they continue to plow forward! This is not a representative form of government with the current bunch of idiots in office. Force them to listen; make your voice heard!
Have you ever called one of our congressmen to voice your opinion? It’s easy, it takes about thirty seconds, and their staff will note your call. They have to. You don’t have to argue your opinion or debate with the person on the other end of the phone; you simply tell them how you want the senator to vote. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s a shame it doesn’t get used more.
For reference, the bill in question is HR 3590. You can read it by downloading the PDF here (free Adobe Reader required).
You can find out the contact information of our senators by clicking here but I’ll give you the phone numbers as the senate website is already kinda slow.
Dorgan: (202) 224-2043, 250-4618 locally or email him at http://dorgan.senate.gov/contact/contact_form.cfm.
Conrad: (202) 224-2551, 258-4648 locally or email at http://conrad.senate.gov/webform.html
Don’t wait to to do it. Like I said, it takes thirty seconds, and they need to hear from us! Don’t let them strip us of our liberty in this unconstitutional power grab!
What if your balloon soared up to the sky…and got stuck?

Earl Pomeroy cries about “out of state special interest group” to ND media, needs to review own financing (UPDATED)

Yes, there are a lot of out-of-state interests advertising in North Dakota. How about, for instance all the unions that are advocating the government takeover of health care by their Democrat conspirators, so they can offload union pensions onto the US taxpayer? Apparently those are okay with the Congressman.
With that in mind, I decided to see how much evil “out of state” money Congressman Pomeroy is stuffing into his pockets for his political campaign. A quick web search brought me to this page on opensecrets.org, which as of the time of this post indicates that 90% of Earl Pomeroy’s campaign money comes from outside of North Dakota! Does that officially make Congressman Pomeroy a hypocrite for appearing on ND television stations, whining about “out of state special interests?” It seems, sir, that it is out of state special interests funding your campaign for re-election!
It’s interesting…in the lists of Top Metro Areas and Top Zip Codes of his contributions, only Grand Forks makes the list. Otherwise, North Dakota doesn’t even appear on the page! Congressman Pomeroy, you’ve got a LOT of explaining to do.
Update: Perhaps he’s not the only one, however. Did it not ever occur to any of the KXMB News staff, not even once, to question the Congressman’s source of funding? It took me thirty seconds to find this information. The local TV stations make a very large portion of their revenue from the three Democrats every election cycle, and I think it’s having an effect on the newsrooms. They look the other way when ever one of them goof up (such as Byron Dorgan’s connections to Jack Abramoff or Kent Conrad’s ethics investigation in the Countrywide Mortgage scandal) and then act like cheerleaders and stenographers whenever granted an opportunity by the congressmen’s public relations staff. Perhaps it is because they are the final beneficiaries of much of those Democrats’ out-of-state campaign money!
Updated 3/3/2010: According to this POLITICO article, the unions are funneling $700,000 into advertising in favor of Earl Pomeroy and his Democrat cronies. Do you suppose Earl will be decrying this use of “out of state” money as well? Call his office and ask him!