Look What I Found!

I loved this movie back in the day, and had the opportunity to meet Steve Via a few years ago.

Kitchen Polka Won!

As I talked about here, a co-worker of mine was up for winning a new kitchen.

According to the OshNW, they won!

Oshkosh family wins a new kitchen
BY AMANDA M. WIMMER of The Northwestern

Kelley Hansen said she’s never won anything in her life.

CBS’s Early Show changed that this week. Hansen was announced as the winner of the Early Show’s Homemade Memories contest, which she entered with an essay about a month ago.

“I’m pretty excited but it hasn’t really sunk in yet,” said Hansen, who listened to the results via telephone from the east coast one hour before the program aired in Wisconsin.

“They told us we were going to have to watch the show to find out and they wouldn’t tell us anything ahead of time,” she said. “It was horrible waiting to find out.”

Hansen entered the contest about a month ago on a whim. Her essay told a story of her mother, Kay Keough, dancing the polka in their kitchen when she was a child. Hansen’s entry was picked as one of five finalists and a CBS film crew came to her Oshkosh home to film a segment, which aired on the Early Show Nov. 13.

Voting took place on the CBS website for four days. Hansen said she won by a 5 percent margin. As the winner, Hansen will have her kitchen renovated beginning the first week of December.

Read Thursday’s Northwestern for more on this story.

Here is the family website.

Watchdog Milwaukee Praises McCue

Here is the post.

I merely point it out because Ryan and I were rugby team mates when he was at UWO.

Good to hear he knows what he is doing.

Buy It Local

The OshNW is right on here:

That's just one reason Oshkosh residents who bemoan a lack of retail options in their home city should keep their cash local this holiday season. Consider it consumer activism: Know thy numbers.

This idea is nothing new. Northwestern columnist Streetwise offered similar observations on Sunday.

But, since the greatest shopping day of the year time is nigh, it bears repeating on this page.

Consider yourself dared to do most or all of your holiday shopping in the Oshkosh area this holiday season.

Let's face it: Appleton, the Fox Cities, Oshkosh and Fond du Lac are on a development course to, some day, become Foxkoshdulac -- if not in name, then in concept.

However, until that era when their development fringes converge or collide, each
community is vying for industrial and commercial identity. That's healthy. And when the cities do meld, they'll each have something unique to offer.

Note: Just don't do the local shopping at Wal-Mart.

Did Van Hollen Break Federal Law?

Crawford's Take has the goods here.

Long story short. In a blog post, one of his election workers admits to dropping lit saying, in essence, it is OK to vote for Doyle and Van Hollen.

The money quote:

We targeted Doyle donors who were already likely to go to the polls.

That is illegal. Donor information is public for the purpose of disclosure only. It is illegal to use that for your own targeting and fund-raising.

I hope someone looks into this.

Another Success for Janitors for Justice

Houston janitors ended a monthlong strike today against the city's five major cleaning companies after reaching a tentative agreement that will guarantee higher wages, more work hours and medical benefits.
"No one thought that a group of poor Latinos from Houston would be able to win anything, but today we can lift our heads up very high," Flor Aguilar, one of the janitors and a member of the bargaining committee, said in Spanish to a crowd of about 2,000 people after the agreement was ratified tonight.
"Where I come from there is a saying and it goes, 'Don't mess with Texas.' Today I can say don't mess with Houston janitors."
The settlement was hailed as a major victory for the 5,300 janitors who last year organized under the Service Employees International Union. It is the first citywide union contract since janitors formed a union last November.
Under today's agreement, the SEIU janitors will get a 50.5 percent pay raise over the two-year contract. On Jan. 1, pay will increase to $6.25 an hour, a 21 percent increase over current wage of $5.15 an hour. That will go up to $7.25 an hour on Jan. 1, 2008, and $7.75 on Jan. 1, 2009.

Hat tip to What's Left.

An Argument for Dollar Coins

Playground Politics has an interesting take here. This is something I have never thought about.

Democrats = Better Healthcare

Insurers propose to close gap
With Democrats' rise, the industry crafts a plan for 47 million who lack health coverage.

With Democrats vowing to make healthcare a top priority, the insurance industry Monday unveiled a proposal to extend coverage to nearly 47 million uninsured persons.

The move by America's Health Insurance Plans, which represents companies that provide coverage to more than 200 million people, focused attention on an issue politicians have shied away from for more than a decade.

We haven't even been sworn in yet and they are afaid of us...

A Problem With Democracy

From the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign:

Political Ads Account for 2.5 Times More Air Time Than Election Coverage on Local TV Newscasts

In the month leading up to the 2006 mid-term elections, local television news
viewers got considerably more information about campaigns from paid political
advertisements than from actual news coverage, a new University of Wisconsin
analysis shows. Local newscasts in seven Midwest markets aired nearly four and ahalf minutes of paid political ads during the typical 30-minute broadcast while
dedicating an average of one minute and 43 seconds to election news coverage.

The new post-election analysis also shows that most of the actual news
coverage of elections on early and late-evening broadcasts was devoted to
campaign strategy and polling, which outpaced reporting on policy issues by a
margin of over three to one (65 percent to 17 percent). These findings come
amid studies consistently showing that voters look to local television
newscasts as their primary source of information about elections.

Other bullets from the press release:

41 percent of the election stories were aired in the final week before Election
Day.

There was a political ad “echo effect.” One in ten election stories mentioned,
pictured or focused on a specific campaign ad.

In coverage of elections, 57% of stories in Milwaukee focused on strategy and
horserace, while 23% of stories focused on issues. In Madison, 59% of stories
focused on strategy and horserace, while 27% of stories focused on issues.