The Pensacola Beach Blog has a piece on the Pensacola News Journal article comparing the two candidates for the First District Congressional race.

As I said in comments: Jeff Miller is running as a “Republican” because that’s his total claim on the office.

He hasn’t done anything on his own; he hasn’t pushed anything; he’s not an expert on anything.

He’s wrong on Veterans’ issues; wrong on oil drilling; wrong on disaster preparedness.

Where was he after Katrina, because that sucker could have swung into the Florida Panhandle and we could look like the Mississippi coast?

He is a Republican vote, not a vote for the First District of Florida.

Joe Roberts would be new to Congress, but it looks like he would be in the majority caucus and might get a chance to do something. It’s about time we had a Congresscritter that represented us, not the Republican Party.

The BBC notes that the Pentagon gears up for new media war:

The Pentagon’s new effort to influence media coverage of the war in Iraq is an example of how governments react when a war is not going too well.

They begin to think it is not the war that is the problem, but the presentation of it.

The media, being the messengers, get the blame, not the message itself.

While probably not the most egregious error the Shrubbery and Company make, yesterday NPR had a nice piece on one of the “media problems”:The War on the Word ‘Jihad’.

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CNN reports: Critical congresswoman lands on no-fly list.

TSA wouldn’t put Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D CA-47) on the no-fly list just because she is one of the most vocal Congressional opponents of the list and has been complaining to TSA about the appearance of the names of some of her constituents on the list. This was just a little confusion because “Loretta Sanchez” is such a common name among Islamic extremists.

That was the same reason Edward Kennedy appeared on the list.

It was interesting that her Congressional identity card wasn’t good enough to prove she wasn’t the person on the list.

I was down for a while because of a kernal panic on the primary MySQL server at my hosting site. They say nothing has been lost, and it won’t be much because I backed up two days ago and can resurrect anything that is missing.

These are my remembrances of Halloween.

In the Celtic/Anglo-Saxon tradition there was a ritual placation on the evening before All Saints Day. People made offerings to evil spirits, Soul Cakes, to quiet them before the celebration of the Holy Day. It was a kind of insurance. The priests said there were no spirits, but it couldn’t hurt to make a little offering just in case the priests were wrong and the folk lore was right. This changed into an excuse for games. If some expected mischief, others were more than willing to provide it, often exacting small revenges for perceived injuries.

In its continuing evolution in the United States we ended up with Halloween, which I personally preferred to Christmas as a child. There were too many adult things involved with Christmas, and while the toys were nice, the food was better, from a child’s point of view, at Halloween.

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