As if Obama and his Team Left cadre aren't enough to mangle what remains of our economy, the bastions of American individualism, rural conservatives, are now looking for another way into your pockets.

It's the ethanol shysters again, and their PR operation won this front-page lead in the Des Moines Register :

"Now that its losses have ended, the ethanol industry needs the federal government to increase the amount of the corn additive in gasoline, industry leaders say."

What the boys are after is a federal law requiring gasoline sellers to boost the pecentage of ethanol from ten to 15.

The ethanol backers, already firmly ensconced at the public trough, concede that drivers are not demanding more booze in their tanks and therefore the state should use its police function to make them. They find logic somewhere in that statement.

The big player here is an outfit called POET of Sioux Falls, and the company brass showed up at its big plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa, yesterday with former General Wesley Clark in tow. Spurned for a high policy position by the Democrats he's been sucking up to since his retirement, the general is supplementing his pension by hawking positions and products, as in:

""We want you to stand up and tell Washington that we need E15," Clark told about 250 farmers and implement dealers gathered in a chilly tent beside Poet's plant Tuesday. "If the EPA won't make the ruling, then Congress should do the job."

Makes a fellow glad Wes is no longer commanding armed Americans.

For Glenn Adams and David Crary of The Associated Press

Gentlemen,

May I relate a short tale? Thank you.

The world was younger and I was covering a legislative session for the AP that we three all cherish. Republicans outsmarted minority Democrats on a parliamentary maneuver. I wrote that the Democrats "howled angrily" at the ruse. It never occurred to me that gratuitous figurative language in straight reporting might rightly be considered editorial comment.

My bureau chief, Dan Perkes, later head of AP News features, called me into his office and gently corrected me. I say gently because the bleeding was well controlled with a tourniquet improvised from used Model 15 ribbons.

Glenn, David, I wonder if you could keep that in mind next time you are tempted to write something like dealing the gay rights movement a heartbreaking defeat in New England, when reporting an election result. I'm sure you would bristle at a challenge to produce for public inspection a gay movement (which I suppose could consist of as few as two gays, but that would be damned lame) whose hearts are demonstrably broken. But that is precisely what good editors did to green reporters in the days when we still had and deserved a little respect.

"Jim," Bureau Chief Perkes said, "next time you write shit like that you'd better have a picture of Democrats on their knees, their eyes raised to the moon, and a tape."

Heartbreaking my ass, boys. In the first place the voters' decision was so widely expected that the heartbreak would have taken place weeks ago and hence been old news. In the second, heartbreak is, by definition, a subjective condition of the innermost soul, a place hardly ever revealed, even to crack wire service men.

If you really wanted to use the term, all you had to do was dial a couple of your gay contacts and quote them as saying they were suffering heartbreak. Then you would have been reporting, not emoting.

Cordially,

Jim

Important Edit: Or did some dim desk jockey insert the word into your copy?

Election Day

Go vote no. Unless unusually special circumstances apply, an anti-incumbent vote counts as a "no."

In Strictly Speaking Edwin Neuman conducts an election-day interview with a man on a London street. The citizen tells the reporter he anxious to vote and Neuman asks why.

"To get the buggers out," he replies.

If those aren't words to live by I'll kiss your arse on top of the U.S. Capitol dome and loan you a telephoto lens to boot.

Gun Show Report

Windom was the gun show of diggable boxes. Seems everyone in Minnesota decided to tidy up the gun room and peddle the detritus to gullible outtastaters. TeeHee. I am please to enjoy a few castoffs of Lutefiskia

An excellent 1981 air crew sheath knife, $3 including a light patina, now removed to reveal Camillus 1981. I had assumed the makers spoke Oriental. It was part of a package deal with a Kabar USN Mk 2, same price, The K has PTS as bad as you'll ever care to see, evilly pitted with marks barely readable and about half the leather rings missing. This will become the base steel for a custom.

How 'bout .452 -- 230 grainers FMJ, 100 for three bucks, loose in a baggie from a seller who said he sorta thought they were for a .45 but wasn't sure. Also two factory .257 Roberts at $10 per box. This caliber is getting a little hard to find.

The Queen of the Hop is Miss High Standard, a pumper in perfectly fine shape save for the remnants of a Bubba varnish job. At $75 I'll always find room for a spare 12 gauge.

Couple other goodies, but this is probably already more than you want to know.

I can't offer you an interesting Windom history fact because there isn't one.

EDIT: The prices in general were unremarkable, about the same as we've become used to, but I think everyone selling has become much more willing to negotiate.