Hey, little miss!

Looking for a gun that doesn't look macho and have "lethal weapon" written all over it?

Jim's Gun Supply in Baraboo, Wisconsin has just the thing: A hot pink "Hello Kitty" AR-15, pictured above, also available in AK-47 and other models to accessorize any outfit.

It'll be the talk of the cafeteria, and you can be the first in your school to have one.

Looking for something a little less bulky, to fit in your purse? Try this model.

The "Hello Kitty" model seems to be missing from the shop's website today, perhaps because of this news report:

So a bank takes a widow's life savings - - because it can. How do you feel about this story, and let's use it as a test of whether you have Empathy Deficit Disorder, or EDD.

Elderly Woman Shafted By Big Bank: Let's Submit It To The Empathy Test

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Wisconsin hosted a Great Lakes governors' energy summit this week that produced lofty promises to coordinate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

A few hours later, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation released the schedule to spend a record-setting $1.9 billion to add another north-south traffic lane on I-94 between the Mitchell interchange near the airport for 35 miles south to the Illinois state line.

So we're inducing more driving at a time of record oil prices, knowing that driving releases greenhouse gases?

And we're spending this money on highway expansion based on gasoline costing $2.30 a gallon, when today's price is more than 25% higher and only going higher?

And the funding sources for this giant sop to road-builders aren't even nailed down, as Gretchen Schuldt points out on her blog?

These contradictions make a mockery of the Governors' energy summit and the state's commitment to sound fiscal and environmental stewardship.

According to one business writer, water sales from our region to Texas and beyond are predictable and calculable.

And separately, the Chief Executive of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange thinks there could soon be a lucrative market in trading futures contracts to deliver bulk water.

With billions of dollars to be made from very willing (parched) buyers, are the pending Great Lakes Compact and existing, but relatively weak US Water Resources Development Act effective enough to prevent such sales?

Will the Wisconsin legislature move forward and ratify the Compact, or will it continue to be cowed by anti-regionalists like State Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin), who, along with states' rights allies in Ohio, torpedo the Compact and make bulk water exports away from the Great Lakes even easier?

Kitty Welch, co-owner of the wonderous Cafe Carpe, has helped put the City of Ft. Atkinson on the map again, this time with a model energy-saving community diet.

I'm always glad to plug my favorite small-town music club/restaurant/dessert Mother Lode, and the effective politics of the owners.

Done it before, glad to do it again.

People dying in Iraq, war on terror, government funding in crisis, children dying from lack of health care -- So - what is congress concerned with?  Making sure the entertainment industry can make more money.  Could this have something to do with campaign donations?? Nahhh---

College officials have been aware and wary of growing Congressional
interest in student file sharing of music and videos — a practice many
students consider normal and that the entertainment industry views as
tantamount to theft. Colleges, generally feeling caught in the middle,
have worried that Congress might try to impose an unworkable solution.

 

And that’s what they fear could happen this week — with the Senate
majority leader (needless to say someone with whom colleges do not want
to pick a fight) largely responsible. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada
announced his plan to prevent “campus based digital theft”
through a series of requirements that he is expected to try to attach
to the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, when the Senate
takes up that legislation, most likely in the next day or so.

New Web site with information on AT&T's push for cable television deregulation, and the fake grassroots movement involved in it.

Location(s)

Wisconsin's 'minimum markup law" that requires gas stations to artificially raise gas prices makes our state's highly-taxed gasoline even more costly at the pump.

Originally adopted to help independent gas stations compete against national chains, but now just another way take money from our pockets, the law is getting some national, incredulous publicity.

The story in the Wausau paper is out on the AP wire.

Okay, this isn't political - but what the heck, it's my web site and sometimes you just have to say what you have to say. There's always something going on here at the farm - at the moment I'm furiously working on a new project called Chippewa Guide . Chippewa Guide is intended to be a complete guide to the Chippewa Valley, built on a Web 2.0 model - I want to build a guide that will primarily be built from community input. 

At the moment I'm trying to get input from the business and arts community in the Chipewa Valley, which is why I'm posting here about it.  If you have any  interest in forming the design of a guide to the Chippewa Valley, you can sign up for a mailing list to discuss the guide.