In case you somehow missed it:

ABC Political Punch: "You know what I enjoyed the most?" McCain said in Cederburg, Wisconsin, according to ABC News' Bret Hovell. "She took the luxury jet that was acquired by her predecessor and sold it on e-Bay. And made a profit!"

And:

washingtonpost.com: The video tribute to Palin that aired at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night made the same claim. "She signed sweeping ethics reform legislation, auctioned the governor's jet on eBay," the narrator said, citing it in a list of Palin's achievements.

Fact check:

CNN Political Ticker: But it turns out the twin-engine Westwind II was a tough sell on the Web — and the state eventually pulled it offline and sold it through an ordinary brick-and-mortar brokerage, for a loss, a spokeswoman said Friday.

But don't feel sorry for Gov. Palin:

www.azstarnet.com: Tucson-based Global Aircraft Solutions Inc. on Thursday delivered Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's new campaign plane, an Embraer 190 regional jet complete with the Republican ticket's campaign logo on the fuselage.

My (soon-to-be) Wife sent me this video originally with my name in it as a joke. You can put in any first and last name, and it will incorporate them into the video. I found many humorous combinations of first and last names, but this one I thought seemed most appropriate considering recent media coverage of McCain's VP Pick:

John McBush / Sarah Palin '08

With so much at stake, there is one candidate that may be able to make the difference. Sarah Palin has surprised both Democrats and Republicans with a grass roots effort. This candidate has made many wonder: Who is John McBush / Sarah Palin?
See the Video!

Link...

According to a source close to the McCain Campaign John McCain will announce that Knox County Tennessee Republican Mayor Mike Ragsdale will join him on the national GOP ticket for November. The anonymous source claims McCain feels Ragsdale shares his values and will offer a true representation of the kind of leadership McCain wants to bring to the White House.

Many of McCain's top aides were unhappy with the choice do to Ragsdale's scandal filled tenure as Knox Co. Mayor. Despite their misgivings McCain was adamant and reportedly shouted down all objections at top-level campaign meeting about the vice-presidential choice held at his newest mansion in Arizona. In fact McCain was so upset he climbed the oil rig in the back yard and refused to come down, shouting at the worried campaign aides gathered below, "You kids get off my lawn!" Ragsdale was unavailable for comment, but a spokesman for the Mayor released the following statement on the Mayor's recent travel schedule:

"Mayor Ragsdale will be campaigning in Dayton, Ohio with Senator McCain on Friday, but it is most definatly not to avoid prosecution in Knoxville."

Randy, and anybody else planning a trip to or thru Kansas,
Here is something you have got to see to truly appreciate:
The Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kansas.
Official Website Link...
Roadside America's Website Link...

My wife and I visited this place on a sightseeing tour/vaction we took during a summer break (and before our divorce) from classes at KSU. It looks really guady and wierd, and to a certain extent it is, BUT up close you can really see the strange form of genius at work. Mr. Dinsmoor did all of this on his own, in concrete. There's a weather vane that weighs a ton (?, maybe more, I forget) that is so perfectly balanced that it actually works!

Of course, there's also the Mausoleam where, for a few extra bucks, you can enter and actually see the body of Mr. Dinsmoor laid out in his eternal glory in his custom concrete coffin with glass viewing plate. Rather creepy but the visit really isn't complete without seeing it.

UPDATE & FIX:
Randy, I apologize! I confused your last name with your first name and just noticed it while I was showing off KnoxViews to my brother. I have fixed it.
I wrote the original message after getting off work (Midnight to Eight AM) and had not yet had my nap. Please accept my most humble apologies for my screw-up.
SteveMule

I wanted a small camera for times when I didn't feel like toting the big one around so ordered this little Nikon yesterday.

This evening I found a pool on Flickr of several pictures shot with this model and I stumbled on NCinDC. He has some pretty nice photos made around the Washington DC area.

The caption on this one caught my eye.

Dumpers aren't the brightest bunch.

Yesterday's News Sentinel had the most amazing letter to the editor that I have read in a while. In a love letter to Bush entitled "Many thanks given to Bush administration," the writer enumerates all the reasons he's thankful, including gems such as:

• "Thank you for the freedom to choose not to have health insurance. All 47 million without health insurance do have access to health care."

• "Thank you for creating the business environment that has led to unprecedented prosperity for seven years. It is disappointing that your administration has not opposed the Democrat-driven spending spree."

• "Does anyone remember The New York Times, commissioned unofficial recount that showed the Florida margin for Bush to be much larger than the official count?"

It's difficult to imagine a more uninformed citizen, even if said citizen were to be fed a steady 7/24/365 diet of Fox Limbaugh News only. Take that last one about the Florida election, for example:

NYT

A statistical analysis conducted for The Times determined that if all counties had followed state law in reviewing the absentee ballots, Mr. Gore would have picked up as many as 290 additional votes, enough to tip the election in Mr. Gore's favor in some of the situations studied in the statewide ballot review.

[..]

If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards, and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won, by a very narrow margin. For example, using the most permissive "dimpled chad" standard, nearly 25,000 additional votes would have been reaped, yielding 644 net new votes for Mr. Gore and giving him a 107-vote victory margin.

But yeah, if you just read the Fox News crawl that the limited recount requested by Gore wouldn't have helped him, then sure, you might get a different impression.

As for the seven years of prosperity, we're not sure what planet this guy has been living on but here in Tennessee we just recorded the highest unemployment rate in over 20 years (and that's based on books cooked by the Bush administration), and foreclosures are up nearly 30% in Tennessee and 55% nationwide. As for the "Democrat-driven spending spree," remind me again who turned a $250 billion surplus into a trillion dollar deficit? The stuff about health insurance is just way over the top, even by the craziest wingnut standards.

I can't figure out if the letter was a parody, or if the KNS just published it to be all edgy and stuff. Either way, it was certainly entertaining. The problem is, this same kind of bullshit propaganda regarding the 2008 election is polluting the brains of otherwise rational people and clouding their thinking. Not sure how any candidate is supposed to overcome that.

So much for McCain's claims that he possesses the superior background and experience in foreign affairs.

Paris Hilton issues tart rebuttal to McCain ad

BlountViews has the exclusive...

KNS: County OKs TIF funds for project

After a lengthy discussion, commission on a voice vote approved the $814 million tax increment financing for developer John Craig and partners in 500 Block LLC - funding that will be considered by the Knoxville City Council tonight.

Say what?

A real, honest-to-God nashville recording studio -- Dualtone, the same outfit that's releasing the Redstate UPdate CD -- is redoing John's CD and releasing it this summer. Here's a promo they've put on Youtube. I really, really like it. You'll see some familiar faces here, and one that might surprise you.

Link...

Belmar, NJ, just south of Asbury Park, is an apparent party town in the summer. The mayor has been blogging in order to get the word out to renters "about what is and isn't allowed in Belmar".

He included "humorous" comments about specific incidents:

like the group who left their marijuana-smoking water pipe out on the table while police responded to a noise complaint at their address.

Another entry regarded a fight between two ladies, one from Staten Island who kept holding her drink while fighting.

"Now, we're not sure if the glass was stuck to her hand cause of all the hair spray, or if this is a technique Staten Island girls learn in Brownies, but we are thankful she left her brass knuckles and straight razor in her other purse."

The mayor will be blogging no more. He has issued an apology, sort of. Guess he needed Rodney Dangerfield's help writing the jokes.

So I'm enjoying my cup of freshly brewed coffee (Dunkin' Donuts Original Blend medium roast drip grind, available at your local grocery store) and reading Joe Powell about this customer v. coffee shop blog war.

It seems some guy got an extra serving of harsh with his non-standard espresso order and blogged about it, prompting a response from the coffee shop owner at his blog.

Which led to an article about the blowup in the Washington Post and the money quote: "You have to fight blog with blog," Cho said with a laugh.

Which led me to, and I'm not making this up, the Starbucks Gossip blog ("Monitoring America's favorite drug dealer") and this extended discussion of the ghetto-latte'.

I need to get out more.

Click here for audio commentary. Via

Scott McNutt's cutting satire and wit go mainstream at his new Knoxville News Sentinel blog Snark Bites. An instant classic, check it out!

John McCain, posting on his blog

The AP is spreading misinformation about McCain, saying he was "born before computers."

This is simply not true. Herman Hollerith invented the punched card tabulating machine (and those 80 column cards you keypunched your FORTRAN programs onto in college) in 1896. His company eventually became IBM in 1911, twenty-five whole years before John McCain was born in 1936.

Also, 1936 was the same year German inventor Knoran Zuze invented the Z1 electrical binary programmable computer in his parents' living room. It was programmed using punched paper tape, just like Bill Gates' first version of BASIC that launched Microsoft.

So AP, McCain's not THAT old. He's just, uhm, "experienced," and has, uh, "witnessed a lot of technological advancements" first hand.

when you see the price at the pump.

I guess you break the little capsule and inhale deeply.

Trust me, this is the funniest thing you will see today.

(By way of fortsanders.net)

This week in MetroPulse, Frank Cagle opines on Knoxville sloganeering, suggesting a rocking chair and "Welcome Home" will do.

Ummm, no.

Ktowndownlow has joined the fray, sponsoring a contest encouraging local hipsters to subtitle our fair city with a hip, insiders-only moniker. (hat tip to Knoxville Talks.)

I took a moment to reflect.

Who can forget such previous slogans as

• "Knoxville. It's all around us." (Just not in Knoxville)
• "Knoxville. Where Nature and Technology Meet." (images of a deer being splattered on the inside of a superconducting supercollider at the Spallation Neutron Source come to mind with that brilliant juxtaposition.)
• "Knoxville. Naturally." (Knoxville is now a name brand laxative?)

Going back another century, Parson Brownlow, pro-Union publisher of the Knoxville Whig, had two slogans for the masthead of his paper: "Cry Aloud and Spare Not," and "Independent in All Things, Neutral in Nothing." These two are just as apt today in Knoxville and Knox County's heated political climate.

Such thoughts reminded me of a conversation I had a few years ago with someone from the State Economic Development Office.

"Memphis is Eeyore," this official described to me. "Woe is Memphis, the sky is falling."

"Nashville, however, is Tigger. Nothing but blue sky in Nashville."

"What about Knoxville?" I asked.

"Knoxville is Pooh," the person continued. "This is my honey pot. You get your own damn honey pot."

"Perfect. Captures the essence, doesn't it?"

"Yep."

Knoxville. Get Your Own Damn Honey Pot.

or

Knoxville. Full of Poohs.

Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.
Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park.The baseball park!
Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying.

In football you wear a helmet.
In baseball you wear a cap.

What can you say about George Carlin? He entertained us. He could make you laugh until you cried. His irreverent behavior was hilarious. His "Seven Words" went all the way to the Supreme Court. He will be missed.

The East Tennessee Society of Professional Journalists presents their annual Front Page Follies dinner, auction, and show at the Knoxville Convention Center on July 19, 2008.

This year's production is "The Sunshine Boys," featuring KNS editor Jack McElroy and attorney Richard Hollow, plus other hilarity ripped from the local headlines.

Tickets are $100 and all proceeds go to a U.T. endowment that funds journalism and broadcasting scholarships. Press release after the jump, and more info at the ETSPJ website.

(Click for bigger)

Source: Link...

Vandergriff is running for county clerk, not "county court clerk."

A county clerk in California says if she is forced to perform weddings for gay couples she ain't marryin' nobody. She'll give couples a license, but they'll have to go somewhere else to get hitched. Link...

Cartoonist Kenny Be at the Denver Westword alt-weekly writes:

I have been working on a web feature for Westword. It is part field guide and part travel guide for the upcoming 2008 Democratic National Convention to be held in Denver in August of 2008. It is a field guide to help Denver residents identify the delegates from the 56 states and territories of the US. It is part tour guide in that it helps delegates to find the Colorado bars, restaurants and day trips most like home. It is a project that allows me to make fun of/pay homage to everyone in America, while I make fun of/celebrate the city of Denver.

I started the project in July of 2007, and have added a delegation every week since then. The final delegation of Wyoming will appear two weeks before the convention begins.

The most recent entry is, you guessed it, Tennessee:

How to Recognize a Tennessee Delegate:

There is no greater state then Tennessee. America's fascination with the Volunteer state has been nothing short of all-encompassing and everlasting. Even the derogatory jokes -- duct tape is "Tennessee chrome," and fashions from Lane Bryant are "Tennessee shower curtains" -- are just the clumsy swats of envious Ohioans and Michiganders wishing to relocate. From Mountain Dew to Miley Ray Cyrus, every backwoods brainstorm that Tennessee touches turns to gold.

It gets better from there. And lest you think we're being singled out, start here and scroll down. Pretty funny stuff. And it actually might come in handy.

heelarious [he-lair-ee-uhs] - noun:
extremely funny, completely soft, fully functional high heel crib shoes for babies. Not intended for walking (heel will collapse with weight).
Not intended to harm children in any way.
WARNING: May cause extreme smiling and hysterical laughter when in use (this is completely normal).

Here's a way to spend $35.00 of that rebate check.

Alrighty then.

Laura Bush travels to Afghanistan, gives major foreign policy address.

(There was no update on the progress of her anti-gang initiative. To our knowledge, there has been only one prosecution.)

Sundown in the City, Market Square, April 21, 2005