Maxfield Parrish illustration

Knickerbocker's History of New York (1899)

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Some kind of blog: 

The Irascible One

'Tis the season --- First off, Happy Independence Day!  If you're in a community that celebrates the occasion, take part.  Join or watch.  Celebrate something only Americans can celebrate.  Too many communities don't put on Fourth of July parades any more.  Why?  Don't use the cost game, not with all the waste that pours out of council chambers.  An old friend of mine used to get so angry, he started forcing the issue by carrying a flag right down the centerline of the main drag in the little town he called home.  Cops got upset.  Oh, dear.  City Council said he couldn't do that.  He did.  The upstart of the whole thing, that community now has a Fourth of July parade followed by fireworks every year.  Forward March.

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Are you surprised --- Big money wins again.  Despite considerable opposition, the Washoe County Regional Planning Commission folded under pressure from developers and construction companies.  We may yet see that population explosion and loss of wildlands in northern Nevada.  Most thanks should go to Reno Mayor Bob Cashell, the richest mayor in the world. (How's that Oscar?)

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Countdown to who cares --- Early voting gets underway in just three weeks and it seems the attitude is, "Who cares?"  There is no real fight in the Republican Primary, at least it seems that way if you take a quick look at the polls, and the Democrats are in that vast wasteland known as tweedle-dee-dum, tweedle-dee-dee.  Maybe we'll have to wait till the general before we play hard ball this year. 

Even the race for the Second Congressional District has taken on the "let's take a nap before we start" attitude.  Sharron Angle is calling everyone around her, I mean everyone, a flaming liberal.  Dean Heller is playing with his toy racecars.  Dawn Gibbons is traveling all over the state campaigning against her sleepy head rivals.

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Where's the money --- Apparently it is in a big paper sack handed to Democrat Jim Gibson several months ago.  This really shouldn't surprise anyone.  If someone wants something special, the best way to get noticed is through campaign donations.  Big ones.  Under Nevada's horrible campaign finance laws, one does not have to labor under the impression that one can only donate $10,000.  With good friends, many LLCs, co-conspirators all, one can gather hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then donate in one swell little bundle making the necessary impression on the candidate.  It's the law and we all know politicians must follow the law.

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North being left out --- Gibson and Titus are concentrating their big guns on the southland where most of the votes are.  Democrats aren't easy to come by in the north and rural counties, so why waste your time, effort, and money on them?  In Nevada, and Jim Gibson should surely know this, party isn't always at the heart of a vote.  Ask his daddy.  Titus has always had a hard time getting along up north, but Gibson is just enough of a fiscal conservative that he could be very strong.

In the south, so-called pundits are pooh-poohing his commercials, but in the north those same commercials are having an affect.  Titus is just now starting to make some noise on the airwaves and through the cables.  She's out to gun down Gibson no matter what she has to say. 

These two are diametrically opposed politically, but at heart, they are both tax and spend Democrats, and we're just now finishing up with a monster tax and spend governor.  Do we need another?

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