north america? never heard of it.

Forget about Michael Phelps, what a day for Argentinians. Yesterday, they picked up their first Olympic gold medal in 52 years. Twice. First it was the men's soccer team, beating Paraguay 1-0 for the gold. Then hours later, their men's basketball team walloped Italy 84-69 in the gold medal game to take their first ever Olympic medal in basketball. Two gold medals in the two most popular (and probably most played) sports in the world. Check out the Argentine daily La Nacion here. Even if you don't know Spanish, you can still tell how proud Argentina is of her athletes.

Spinsanity!

Just wanted to give ya'll a heads up about on of my favorite websites as of late, spinsanity.org. These guys continually skewer the left AND the right, often taking the time to consider nuances (little white lies) that might not sound sexy enough to gain TV time, but can only be explained in print. Some recent headlines include:

Small business, big spin
The President misleads about the effect of Kerry's tax proposal on most small businesses.

CBO report spun by both sides
The Kerry and Bush campaigns both mislead on an analysis of the Bush tax cuts.

The myth of Kerry knowingly volunteering for dangerous duty lives on
Swift boat duty wasn't as dangerous when Kerry signed up.

From technically true to blatantly false
The Bush campaign's dishonest gas tax ad.

The phony attack on Bush's stem cell research "ban"
President Bush didn't ban research on stem cells.

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See? Equal opportunity attackers! The only real example of "fair and balanced" I've been able to find in this campaign. Possibly the most important website of the 2004 election. Especially if the word gets out. (The only downside are the frequent ads for their anti-spin/Bush book. But they gots to make money somehow.) So tell everyone you know. Even your pharmacist!

making mountains out of molehills

I'm getting closer and closer to the end of my time here in Montana. And I'm not too sure how I feel about that.

For the past four or five weeks, the kids here have been devising plans and hatching schemes to keep me here in Lewistown. It doesn't matter that we've already found an AmeriCorps replacement for me, they continually coax and cajole, offer me heated arguments and puppy dog stares. Sometimes cold shoulders, other times hugs. And it's hard to argue.

But then I remember that I need to finish school. And pay off debt. And find the perfect wife. And balance the national budget, And I can't do these things from Lewistown. But tonight, things happen, like running into a couple of 4th graders on my walk back from the grocery store, who were having a hard time finding a house where they could eat dinner, because one of their moms is an alcoholic, and the others mom just doesn't know how to be a parent, only getting custody of her daughter less than a year before. And I read stories from newspapers about how charter schools are failing, right along with mainstream public schools. And I know facts, like how the Bush administration cut federal funding for after school programs (p5), while over half of the Bush tax cuts will go to the wealthiest 5% of Americans. And I just want to cry.

But then I get these half-cocked maybe-brilliant ideas. About how maybe (just maybe), conservatives might begin to see the global corporation as a new form of collectivism, just like they saw the State after the socialist failures in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. And maybe (just maybe), they might see the differences between big business and small business, allowing for a more state control of the big business (deterring the "new collectivism"), while keeping their hands away from small business. This isn't making sense because tonight is the first time I thought of it in this way. And this is an issue for doctorate theses and academic debate. Not blogs read exclusively by ones parents and....oh, who am I kidding. There is no "and."

But all I can think of is how I'm leaving these kids, and their rotten parents, and hoping (valiantly) that no one else is leaving them behind. And then I realize that I'm just kidding myself again. Everyone is leaving them behind.