The Beatrice Fiddler

Mike Johanns works for me

Mike Johanns. I'm leaning in his direction over Bruning.

The Nebraska Senate race continues to attract much out-state commentary.

I could not possibly have a lower opinion of Mike Fahey. Kleeb at least would bring a little glitz to the race.

Whether it is Bruning or Johanns, they will pummel Fahey mercilessly. That would be fun to watch.

For a more competitive race that really tests the campaign skills, staff and messaging abilities, it'll have to be Kleeb for the Dems. Since he is the fair-haired boy of the national left-o-sphere, and since the right-o-sphere will be thrilled to support either Bruning or Johanns, such a match-up will bring out the blogospheric big guns on both sides.

Civil rights initiative coming to Nebraska?

According to this article from a Michigan newspaper, anti-affirmative action activist Ward Connerly is seriously thinking about a petition drive in Nebraska.

News from Beatrice

Sometimes we get overlooked. But gosh darn it, we are protecting our groundwater better than you're protecting your groundwater.

No one here has been arrested for gang activity.

Our main problem is getting the crops in when there's too much standing water in the fields.

Nebraska's tax burden hurts business investment

The Tax Foundation has released its annual New State Business Tax Climate Index.

Nebraska ranks at 43 out of 50, nestled in between Minnesota and Vermont.

The tax burdens that are weighed in creating the index are: corporate tax, individual income tax, sales tax, unemployment tax and property tax.

4-page executive summary of report.

The Rush Smear

I'm glad to see Newsbusters getting out the facts about the Rush smear.

Chambers v God

Ernie Chambers sues God.

He says he is trying to prove a point about frivolous lawsuits. 

Since Ernie himself has been filing frivolous lawsuits for years against the term limits approved over and over against by Nebraska voters, maybe he should be suing himself, instead of God.

Back in the saddle

Wow, crazy few weeks with no blogging. I look forward to resuming in the near future.

Bill Gates, american pigdog

Following up on this post, I'm looking at Wikipedia edits whose IP addresses match the domain associated with this Nebraska website.   I hope it's the students.

The right-hand column contains the edits from that domain (the esu3 domain):

Someone doesn't like Bill Gates.

Someone thinks George H.W. Bush is a FAGGETT.

Someone thinks Warren Buffet is the greatest invester alive.

What's that you say about Nebraska?

That's not very nice. No supervision in computer lab?

I didn't know Ronald Reagan was...well, maybe not.

Here are some edits from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln associated domain.

Whoa. Chill.

Using Wikipedia as a source of traffic. Not supposed to do that.

Local knowledge. That's what Wikipedia is all about.

Endless Wikipedia edits from Nebraska residents

The big news in the tech world is that a college student has created a program that scans the online, user-edited Wikipedia for any and all edits made by people who did not sign up with a user name, but simply submitted an edit from a naked IP address, and compares those IP addresses to IP addresses from dedicated domains.

The program is called Wikiscanner. The good news for bloggers in the doldrums of August is that this great little program yields the result that over 5,000 edits have been made to Wikipedia using IP addresses that match Nebraska's dedicated government domains.

2,218 edits were made from the esu3.org domain alone.

1,426 from unl.edu.

Creighton's been busy, too, with over 100 Wikipedia edits from their dedicated domain. In one of those, someone at Creighton commented on the Wikipedia article about Fabian Bruskewitz:

"This article is incredibly biased. Bruskewitz is an incredibly controversial figure, yet this bio only praises his actions."

Here's another edit from someone at Creighton. (The right-hand column contains the changes; the left-hand column is what was changed. Just a slight spit-and-polish to Creighton's image.

A Creighton student or employee is tired of Nebraska.

"This is the zealotry and intolerance of the auto-da-fé."

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby weighs in with a good summary of the recent acts of extreme intolerance from the hard left on global warming:

This is the zealotry and intolerance of the auto-da-fé. The last place it belongs is in public-policy debate. The interesting and complicated phenomenon of climate change is still being figured out, and as much as those determined to turn it into a crusade of good vs. evil may insist otherwise, the issue of global warming isn't a closed book. Smearing those who buck the "scientific consensus" as traitors, toadies, or enemies of humankind may be emotionally satisfying and even professionally lucrative. It is also indefensible, hyperbolic bullying. That the bullies are sure they are doing the right thing is not a point in their defense.

The parts of Jacoby's column where he goes back to Newsweek from 1975--when they thought the Big Chill was coming down the pike and explain that the scientific consensus is completely behind that idea--are priceless.