Connected Nation and your human right to get the Travis McGee Reader free and fast.

Take a hundred Iowans.*

Ask them about their internet connections. You will be told -- or at least an outfit called Connect Iowa says you'll be told -- that 37 of them lack broadband. Round the numbers and call them the deprived third.


This amazes me because more than a year ago my president announced an end to the horror. Some  $7 billion in economic recovery money  was being printed --strike that  -- was being dispatched to ensure that very Montana line camp had instant  access to freakysheep.xxx.  (Okay, If you insist on quibbling, His Obamaness  took Charlie McBiden out of the suitcase and spoke through him. But you must admit you could see presidential lips moving.)

The underbuzz in the Connect Iowa report is a wail of anguish about our poor deprived rurals stuck with something between zero and 56k downloads. To be fair, however,  the group did ask the 37 "why?" and published the answers.


"(Shrieksperson Amy) Kuhler says the largest reason given for not having broadband access was they didn’t feel it was relevant and they didn’t need to have access. ...16% said they didn’t have a computer, 15% said security was an issue, and 10% said broadband was too complicated to figure out. "


That is,  they don't want it.

That leaves just seven bucolic souls out of a hundred who might want to get your blog megabytally but can't.

So, of course, "Kuhlers says they will use the survey results to address some of the connection issues."  Translation: We intend to soak you for the money to buy high speed for Gus Porcina, 85, who lives over on Hogpoo Creek.


I wonder if Connect Iowa has really pondered the  amazing free-market truth revealed in its own study:  "Kuhlers says the top reason Iowans gave for using broadband is they realized it was worth the cost." 


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Why so many words on what might seem a minor topic?

Because Connect Iowa is a bucolic appendage to the national Connected Nation, which is coy about who's paying the propaganda bills. I mean, good shriekspeople like Amy don't come cheap.

In a profile prepared for journalists, Connected Nation poses as one of its "Frequently Asked Questions" "How is Connected Nation funded?" it cryptically responds that "Connected Nation is primarily funded through public-private partnerships." It provides no details of what exactly the partnerships are or who they are with.


I am winging it here,  based on some personal experience with these 501c(3) oufits who  "partner " their tax-free donations with your compulsory tax donations.  Often, a private firm or trade group  wants a nice income, but can't  actually sell products. They could, however, give them away if they could solve the cash-flow problem that creates. And they do, quite creatively. They lash together a "non-profit"  and hire Amy et al. to create the illusion of a pressing social need. And doesn't government exist solely to meet pressing social needs? 


Ergo,  government must buy the product and give it to the customer, making it free. What a good idea, especially if that  part about the seven billion dollars sort of slips your mind.




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* Let me pick the hundred, and I mean the statement quite literally.

Hey! Which way is there, and are we almost there yet?

A jealous rage has gripped me ever since the more dependable truck took up residence at Camp J.  Most of my peers own vehicles equipped with magic boxes they call GPS. I had none. Action was required.

It is one of the large, heavy old Airguides with many good features. The only bad one  is the difficulty of mounting without drilling ugly holes in the more dependable dash board. That is temporarily solved with gaffer's tape. The primary delights are: (1) Absence of a shrill old crone yelling at me to turn right or left or park the SOB and go back to driver's ed. (2) Knowledge that the satellite where the magical Turn-Left-NOW! witch lives will likely fall from the sky before Gentle Gaea changes her magnetic corset.

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It is possible to go too far in adapting perfectly good retrotechnology to land-borne vessels. But it would be fun to try.

Yes, THAT Kelvin.

For precise navigation, of course, a speed input is necessary.

Still, I am willing to concede that the bitch in the electronic box arranges for my buddies to get lost with far greater precision than is possible for me. For instance, there was this time in Sioux Falls when my pal followed her directions to the digital letter en route to a big loophole festival. We ended near a sheep pen, in a Superfund site I think, not too far from the state prison. There were no guns to loophole in the immediate area, but we knew within  three yards just where we were. Lost. At.

Obama lite sidebar; the Candy is Dandy guy

The snippit  in the previous post is from Nash's "Kindly Unhitch That Star, Buddy." It's funny in a laid-back 19 30s/40s sort of way. Like a lot of other Nash stuff, it extends some Mencken ideas in rhyme and meter so atrocious you will at least giggle.

In a sense, Nash the poet (or scribbler of doggeral to academic anals who don't like him) parodies poetry.

Obama lite

Yes, that's a confusing headline. Obviously it refers to someone other than Obama who, himself, has set a liteness record which ought to send all competitors scurrying.

I speak here of  "lite "only in the mental and moral senses. The president's ambition is heavy beyond belief. That is, he wishes to continue being president. Outsized ambition is depressingly common. As the great sociologist Ogden Nash reported, everybody wants to be a wow.

...all the little process-servers hope to  

    grow up into great big bailiffim and sheriffim.

One lite competitor who won't scurry is Mitt Romney, subject of a short and cogent item in the Washington Examiner.


Writer Douglas MacKinnon offers samples of Romney policiy differing from Obama policy in ways detectable only by advanced science using the most sensitive instruments. If at all.

And then he wonders:

Are you kidding me?  Is anyone in the GOP paying attention to what is going on here?  Is the Republican establishment so desperate to hold on to its power that it will continually look the other way as a chameleon-like candidate not only dreams up the ideas used by far-left Obama White House, but praises one of the people most reviled by the conservative movement?


The short answers to "Are you kidding me?" and "Is anyone in the GOP establishment paying attention...?"  are "no" and  "no."  They are also the long answers.
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