I realize that this place has been sort of a ghost blog for a while, mainly due to distractions and the ratio of increasing time to keep up with a quality blog and the seeminly decreasing rate of any kind of return on the investment.

I hope you don’t think, however, that I’ve simply stopped caring about what’s going on. Far from it! In fact, I’ve found in the past six months that Twitter has been a good way to both comment about the news of the day and interact with others about it. Throw in a healthy dose of humor and you have my Twitter feed in a nutshell.

If any of you are inclined, please follow me-  @jonathanrwells on Twitter. I’d be glad to have you as a follower.

As for this blog, stay tuned, there may be some new things coming down the pike very soon to make things more interesting …

Ciao!

It seems the issue at hand isn’t Tebow’s style of play – though that has assuredly been atrocious at times. It isn’t the wins and losses of his team – though his team’s comebacks in the fourth quarter have been more than entertaining for the casual sports fan. No, what seems to irk people the most about Tebow is that he is an unapologetic evangelical Christian.

The hype about Tebow began during his college days at Florida when he led his team to a national championship as a junior, winning a Heisman along the way. The massive sports media complex (ESPN, I’m looking at you) then spent the next year telling us what a quintessential college player Tim Tebow was. As part of the hype package designed to drive ratings, the human interest angle was also played to the hilt, emphasizing that Tebow wasn’t just a good young man (and I’m sure he is) but a virtuous ambassador of the sport and indicative of all things SEC (the greatest football conference in the land as any good SEC fan will drone).

The sappy lovefest was too much, culminating with broadcaster Thom Brenneman intoning during the SEC championship that literally spending fifteen minutes with Tebow would change your life forever. With such a saccharine and cloying pitch being shoved down sports fans’ throats, it was natural for the majority, myself included, to root against him and find some smug satisfaction when Florida was defeated in Tebow’s last regular season college game.

But as soon as the college season was over and the NFL draft loomed, pundits and analysts went from praising Tebow to bashing him as terrible on his throwing mechanics and forecasting that he would never be even an above-average NFL quarterback. I must admit that I was quite astonished at the quick about-face in the national sports media, a shift I can only surmise was hastened by the realization of  sports media that they couldn’t push the positive Tebow angle anymore.

It was at this point than I began to really feel a little sorry for Tebow. None of this was a firestorm of his own making. Like all media darlings, even in the sports world, he seemed to exist in broadcasters’ minds only to be built up and then torn down again. Through all of the negative reporting and analysis, Tebow, to his credit, remained quietly positive, even after being drafted by the Broncos and at one point being the 3rd-string quarterback, all breathlessly reported by the national sports media.

Running through all of this was Tebow’s open faith in Jesus Christ. Whether you share his belief is largely irrelevant – for Tebow, it appears to be genuine and, like most evangelicals, he does not shy from sharing his love for the Lord. In and of itself, this is not remarkable – athletes from across all sports and spanning decades have given thanks to God after victories and before contests, including Coach Tony Dungy saying after his Super Bowl victory that his Colts won the Lord’s way. This is just people expressing their faith, something that’s done every single day without inviting the controversy that would ensue here.

It seems where the real trouble for people began was when Tebow finally got a chance to start and inexplicably began winning games during a stretch of the 2011 season. Maybe it was the way he and the Broncos did it – after playing miserably for three quarters, Denver rallied from deficits to win six games in a row.

Now the crazy season begins. Sensing another feel-good human interest story, the national sports media began re-hyping Tebow and his “miraculous” wins, really playing up the religious angle. It was at this time the knives started to come out, starting with former Broncos QB Jake Plummer saying he wished Tebow would just shut up after games.

When the Broncos finally lost to the Patriots, I’ve never witnessed such an outpouring of glee at the defeat of a quarterback. “Guess God doesn’t love Tebow so much after all,” was the refrain with multiple variations on forums ranging from ESPN forums to political sites to Facebook. Yes, this is how out of control the “controversy” has become – the story has ceased to be about sports and football and has now become a referendum on religion and its role in society.

Naturally, you can guess where this leads. Political pundits are now being drawn into this fray with Bill Maher, always valued for his insightful sports opinions, getting heat for tweeting giddily that Jesus Christ just f*cked Tim Tebow.

At the center of all this is Tim Tebow, with whom I increasingly empathize, because in a very real sense this whole maelstrom is less about him and more about media hype and societal views on “public religion”. In so many ways, Tebow didn’t ask for any of this attention, and it truly is ridiculous how Tebow has somehow become a Rorschach test on how we individually feel about evangelism. Think about this – Tebow doesn’t preach on Sundays, he doesn’t have a radio show or a newspaper column, hell, he hasn’t come light years near any hot-button social issues like gay marriage or abortion (the closest he came to the latter was a milquetoast Super Bowl ad he did with his mom containing no references to abortion that still drew the ire of those who profess freedom of choice, as long as that choice isn’t life). Really, the only religious thing he’s done to piss people off is … be religious.

I get the sense that Tebow really just wants to play football and witness for his Savior in the way he deems fit. That should be what America is about, but in these religiously polarized times it’s clearly unacceptable for those with a Christian faith to be outspoken about it. In many ways my faith doesn’t follow the same track that Tebow does, but I certainly don’t begrudge him his views or that he wants to talk about them when reporters shove microphones in his face and practically invite him to spout them.

As an athlete, I won’t be rooting for Tebow and the Broncos to win out and get in the playoffs as some religious vindication against his critics. What I will be rooting for is that people recognize that freedom of religion doesn’t equate to freedom from religion, and if it’s controversial to simply be a religious public figure, then we’re in a pretty bad state.

The whole thing was started with a someone posting a panel of Captain America saying to stand your ground and captioning the picture something along the lines of “Not saying I support OWS but everyone should keep this in mind.” The first comment by, let’s call him “Jeff,” simply stated he had no use for OWS and thought they were pretty useless.

The next 59 comments were basically two or three other people taking Jeff to task for not standing with such a noble group. It was painful to read, but for some reason I kept coming back to it. Jeff tried, I mean really tried, to make his point about OWS being similar to Communism and about a general libertarian view with analogies and facts with supporting links.

What did he get for his trouble? “I thought I smelled the stench of tea,” was one Facebooker’s first response before proceeding to work in “teabagger” into every subsequent reply. Jeff was then accused of parroting Fox News and right-wing radio talking points (Jeff said he doesn’t listen to radio and found Sean Hannity boring). He gets called a right-wing extremist who “doesn’t listen to the other side” and finally gets the exhortation to “just go ahead and blow me up.”

Mind you, this was only a few people out of the many friends the original poster had that kept this back-and-forth going. And mostly the argument seemed more based on emotion than facts – indeed, at one point one of Jeff’s detractors, after repeatedly being beseeched for any kind of fact-based argument, said “I could give you facts, but you’ve already made up your mind.” What a total cop-out.

This illustrates to me the utter failure of social media to bring us closer together, especially when it comes to politics. Instead of some sort of thoughtful discussion, the entire exercise quickly degenerated into a rhetorical gang-tackle, blaming the one guy who dared to have a different opinion than his friends of not being amenable to debate.

I recently watched a TED conference excerpt where the speaker, whose name escapes me, warned that social media would only allow us to insulate ourselves further in a bubble of like-mindedness, an echo chamber where all of our current positions and thoughts are buttressed by digital yes men who tell you that everything you think is right and everything anyone else thinks is not only wrong, but mean-spirited, inhuman, and probably dangerous.

Social media – ultimately it may do more to drive us apart than to bring us together.

Never fear, it’s not quite that bad – though to say blogging’s been slow would be the understatement of the year.

In any event, I’ve been thinking about what direction I should take if I want to meaningfully express myself in a public way.

To that end, I’ve been kicking around the idea of doing a weekly podcast – something between one and two hours covering the week’s events, not limiting commentary to politics and the news, but some pop culture sprinkled in as well. In addition, I’d like to try to interview guests from around the blogosphere and in different areas of expertise.

So, any thoughts from the folks that still hang around or lurk? Is a podcast a good idea? Or should I just get back to blogging? Or both?

I’ll anxiously hold my breath until a consensus is reached …

Conservative lawmakers already balking at the deal are going to surely increase their pushback at a deal that looks like we got pretty much nothing accomplished. The danger is still real, then, for a government shutdown to occur if the deal gets scuttled in the House or the Senate. Speaker Boehner has put the GOP in a difficult position – it looks like he caved to Democrats, and if his members revolt, his party gets blamed for the shutdown.

What looked at first like a less-than-desirable situation – but one that could be stomached while looking at the bigger picture – is taking on a different cast. The details look like they’re really going to piss off a lot of the newly elected Republicans, and rather than looking like a statesman, Boehner is beginning to look ineffectual and incapable of recognizing the big strategic picture. Either way this thing turns, Democrats can claim victory and Republicans will be left feeling snookered and frustrated.

At this point, I don’t think scuttling the deal is the best option. For whatever reason, the public is giving Democrats more credit for solving the budget crisis – even though it was clearly they who were in favor of a shutdown for political reasons. We’re just going to have to take the hit on this one and hopefully move forward with more robust cuts in 2012 budget – although at this point, I don’t have a lot of faith in Republican leadership to shepherd such a thing through, especially one as far-reaching as the Ryan budget.

NASA Administrator Charles M. Bolden made the announcement at an afternoon press conference, tearing up and saying this had been a “rough day.” Two shuttle destinations are no surprise – the Smithsonian and Kennedy Space Center, both worthy homes for an orbiter. The other two shuttles are going to the California Science Center in Los Angeles and the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York City.

Local politicians were flummoxed and disappointed by the announcement:

U.S. Reps. Mike Turner, R-Centerville and Steve Austria, R-Beavercreek, called the decision a slap in the face.

“New York and L.A. don’t make a lot of sense. They didn’t make contributions to the program,” Turner said, referring to the shuttle program. “No one in the Midwest is going to have a shuttle.

“We’ll never be New York, we’ll never be Los Angeles. But we’ll always be home to the Wright Brothers, to all things aerospace,” Turner said.

Austria called the decision “a disservice to the Midwest and the Air Force,” but added “we will respect the decision and move on.”

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, called for a federal investigation by the General Accountability Office on the site selection process.

“NASA ignored the intent of Congress and the interests of taxpayers. NASA was directed to consider regional diversity when determining shuttle locations,” Brown said. “Unfortunately, it looks like regional diversity amounts to which coast you are on, or which exit you use on I-95. Even more insulting to taxpayers is that having paid to build the shuttles, they will now be charged to see them at some sites.”

Obviously, some of this is sour grapes from people who would have gained political points if they had scored a shuttle for the region. But looking deeper, it’s hard to argue with the feeling that many in the Miami Valley and Ohio got the shaft.

The role of the Air Force in early space exploration cannot be denied, and the Air Force Museum already houses the vehicles for some of those early efforts. And as the home and workplace of the Wright brothers, Dayton seemed like a natural fit for the machine that served as the ultimate extension of the brothers’ first work into powered flight.

Unfortunately, it appears that the thing that Dayton had against it is that it’s not a major metropolitan area. I don’t agree on too much with Sen. Brown, but I think he hit the nail on the head in his comments above, and if you believe Rep. Austria’s contention that Dayton was fifth on the list (i.e. just losing out to the other contenders), then population size is clearly the deciding factor.

That’s not to say I begrudge the other musuems for winning out. No doubt they are justifiably excited and will surely be good stewards of these storied spacecraft. But as a citizen of the Miami Valley and a space enthusiast, it’s hard not to feel a little disappointed and more than a little cheated over the lack of rationale offered for the choice that was ultimately made.

The complaint (found here) was filed by the Thomas More Law Center on behalf of the Common Sense Patriots of Branch County, Michigan. The Tea Party group had held a few rallies at the public park before, but according to the complaint, before a July 2010 rally, the city initially rejected a request to fly a banner before reversing itself and allowing the banner while a “banner policy” was worked out.

The policy, according to the complaint, was to ban the “display of banners or other signs of any type” from the park, recommended by City Manager Budd and accepted by the city council on a close, split vote. Among the reasons cited by Budd are the “administrative headaches” involved in deciding who gets to have a banner. Methinks he just got the mother of all administrative headaches by inviting a federal lawsuit down on his city.

This just seems like a really dumb move by the city, especially in this litigious society when you had to just know somebody would call you out on this. It’s a public park, and if the courts are going to allow the KKK and Nazis the right to assemble and fly whatever signs they want, then they have to let the Tea Party – a group that, despite many attempts to liken them to the former two groups, are worlds removed and far tamer and civil than the real hate groups with whose names they are unfairly smeared – do so as well.

I can see one legitimate concern where security over overtly political or controversial assemblies (see KKK and Nazis above). But again, despite a massive effort to say otherwise, Tea Partiers just aren’t a security risk. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but I have to think this little town really stepped in it.

Dayton is home to the United States Air Force Museum, part of Wright-Patterson AFB, and the addition of a shuttle would be a major boost to the prestige of the museum and the region in general. The Smithsonian is already guaranteed one orbiter, leaving the Air Force Museum to lobby for one of the other three. Seems like they’ve set their sights on Atlantis, a shuttle which flew a few missions directly for the Air Force, but honestly, any of them would be fine with me.

I’ve been a space geek since a very young age, and the chance to have a shuttle in my hometown thrills me to no end. Despite that bit of homerism, I think the Air Force Museum deserves a decent crack, especially when you consider the pivotal role that the Air Force and its test pilots played in the early space program and sending men to the outer reaches of the atmosphere.

I think Houston is guaranteed one, as is Florida. That still leaves one orbiter that can find a home in the birthplace of the Wright brothers. A fitting end, but we’ll have to wait and see.

When we think of a tsunami, images of towering walls of water breaking across the surf spring to mind. What this video shows is, I think, much more frightening – a powerful and inexorable force that in minutes rushes in and wipes out anything in its path.

The death toll for the Japanese tsunami is nearly 12,700. They can still use your thoughts, prayers, and donations.

Obama and the Democrats, after slamming any measure of cuts as heartless and cruel, will now be stumbling over themselves to take credit for “the biggest spending cut in history” and being the heroes that stopped a government shutdown. The whole thing was a bunch of hype over nothing, if you ask me, and the people propagating the hysteria about closing national parks and idling the IRS would have been better served directing their anger at spineless Democrats who didn’t want to pass a budget in an election year.

Conservatives are going to be upset with Speaker John Boehner for only getting $39 billion in cuts, and for caving on defunding Planned Parenthood and Obamacare. He’s in a tough position, though, since whatever he passes is going to get shot down by either Harry Reid or President Obama. I’m not thrilled by the low level of cuts – remember, we had a $260 billion deficit in February alone, so this budget wouldn’t even cover one-eighth of a single month’s overruns.

But this drama is going to play out again in a few months when the House takes up the matter of the 2012 budget. The GOP are going to be in a stronger position having gotten the Democrats to agree that fiscal discipline is indeed a priority, and part of the solution has to be reducing spending and entitlement reform, something that Paul Ryan’s newly unveiled budget attempts to do.

So while I’m not ecstatic about this particular deal, I think in the long run this is the first step on the path toward fiscal sanity in Washington. But just look at the simply ugly rhetoric over such a small amount of spending cuts – Republicans want women to die of cancer according to Sen. Harry Reid, want to kill women according to Rep. Louise Slaughter, and are basically “bombing innocent civilians” according to Eleanor Holmes Norton.

These are just a few choice quotes in the overall atmosphere of casting the GOP and conservatives as villainous cartoon bad guys rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of a shutdown that would make old people eat cat food and young women die from back alley abortions – when in reality, the Dems were the ones quietly rooting for a shutdown so they could further demonize Republicans. (Don’t take my word for it, just ask Howard Dean.)

If you thought this fight was contentious, you ain’t seen nothing yet. But it’s a battle we need to have if we hope to get any sense of long-term economic stability for America. It’ll probably be, though, one of the worst political debates in history. Get ready.

Needless to say, the campaign got ugly, including the Kloppenburg campaign running commercials suggesting Prosser favored child molesters over their victims – a charge so heinously spurious that the victim in the case in question wanted the ad pulled. The unions, it was said, were coming out in force as all of Wisconsin was turning out in anger over Walker/Mubarak/Hitler’s passage of public employee union reform.

On Tuesday, they voted in the Badger state. For all the rhetoric, the initial votes indicated an insanely close race, with Kloppenburg showing a 204-vote lead Tuesday night. Kloppenburg and the left declared victory, and concerned media pundits dissected what a razor-thin victory in a statewide judicial election meant for the GOP across the nation.

Now today comes the most delicious part – the votes of one town were left out of the initial preliminary vote totals due to a computer error. These totals aren’t the official ones that are ultimately certified, but the ones used by the media to call victory for one side or the other. The discrepancy swung 7,500 votes to Prosser’s side, giving him a clear lead that is seemingly outside of the realm of fraud.

Of course there are now cries of shenanigans since the local election official is a Republican. The only snag is that the Democrat on the Waukesha election board, Ramona Kitzinger, said the numbers jive, and to her credit, said she was “not going to stand here and tell you something that’s not true.”

There’s no doubt this saga isn’t over, but right now the irony is just too thick after watching the jeers of self-righteous victory turn into disbelieving stammerings of shocked defeat. I’m sure the courts are going to get involved, but even if Kloppenburg had still won by a measly 204 votes, I think it still tells us something about the mood of the electorate.

After the unions were galvanized into voter organization, after tons of money was poured into the race to ensure victory, after scores of polls were spun to show the left would be righteously triumphant against an overreaching and evil GOP regime – the best case scenario is a razor-thin squeaker of a win. And the actuality is a loss. What that tells me is that too often polls push the narrative instead of the other way around, and that the vaunted anger of the unionized left isn’t something to be feared, even in Wisconsin.

Senate Bill 5 shares much in common with the collective bargaining bill that passed with much national fuss up in Wisconsin, but for some reason with almost zero national coverage compared to the swarm of cameras in Madison. There have been protests and much gnashing of teeth, but nothing approaching the union-induced mayhem that reared its ugly head in the Badger State.

That’s surprising because SB5 goes farther than the Wisconsin bill does, extending collective bargaining reform to wages and including police and firefighters in the scope of the legislation. In addition, it will force public employees to contribute more towards their health insurance and pensions, and ends the practice of automatically deducting union dues from public employee paychecks.

I know there are a lot of hard-working public employees out there, and I fully support all the good teachers, police, firefighters, and other administrative officials that keep government services running – I just don’t have much love for the unions that claim to represent them. When you’re talking about public employee unions, it’s important to realize that all the money being tossed around isn’t eating into the profit margin of a Fortune 500 company, it’s coming out of taxpayers’ paychecks. It’s not the state’s money, it is the money of the people of Ohio who are on the hook for whatever benefits and pay scales the unions negotiate with the politicians they campaign for.

There seems to be a lot of talk that this will absolutely impoverish public employees going forward. First of all, it’s true that many will have to take a pay cut – but so have a lot of people in the private sector, who will still pay more for their benefits than public employees will under this bill. But more importantly, regardless of the political power of the unions, it will always be in the best interests of a community to have the best police, fire, and school systems they can afford, and therefore will still have to pay their people competitive wages to keep up with other localities.

This is especially true when you consider that collective bargaining for public employees has only been around in Ohio for 27 years. It wasn’t as if police and firefighters were eking out poverty-level existences prior to 1983 and only the advent of collectively bargained union contracts saved them. Public employees were paid fairly before collective bargaining, and they’ll be compensated fairly afterwards.

Even after Gov. Kasich signs the bill, the fight will most likely not be over, as union opponents will be launching a ballot initiative to overturn the law. Make no mistake, the opposition has less to do with protecting workers than it does protecting the muscle of public employee unions, who scream bloody murder at the thought of any kind of money-saving concessions. I want Ohio’s police, firefighters, and teachers to be paid what they deserve, but I don’t think you need all-powerful unions to achieve that.

Former Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio), the head of the Alliance to End Hunger, told The Hill Friday that Democrats are not doing enough to ensure the cuts do not become law, and he is fasting to give a “voice to the voiceless.”

He will be joined in his water-only fast by Rev. David Beckmann, the president of Bread for the World; Jim Wallis, the president of Sojourners; Ritu Sharma of Women Thrive and Ruth Messinger of American Jewish World Service. Beckmann said in an interview that so far 350 others have pledged to join the fast and the groups are seeking more support. While in office, Hall protested 1993 budget cuts to food programs through a 22-day fast.

A lot of the uproar over the Republicans proposed $60 billion in budget cuts seems to me to be much ado about nothing. After all, we’re talking about cuts that represent less than 2% of the annual budget, cuts that would only have accounted for one-fourth of the budget deficit of February 2011.

But every program is sacred and has a place in the vast pantheon of government programs. I agree with Rep. Hall that foreign aid represents a much smaller portion of government spending than many Americans think – but I also believe that we need to fulfill our obligations here at home before engaging in worldwide government charity. (Not to say that there aren’t worthy targets for private charity – there is quite a distinction to be made.)

In any event, I’m glad Tony Hall has decided to do something constructive and head up an anti-hunger organization, no doubt a worthy cause. But fasting to protest budget cuts seems like too much of an overkill for me. Despite what demagogues will have you think, women and children aren’t going to be starving to death in the streets as a result of almost miniscule cuts, and besides, that charge has almost lost any sting due to constant overuse.

Heads-up from Gateway Pundit.

Of interest on the list is the level of intensity of partisan cash flow. All of the top 25 donors that donate more to Democrats do so at levels of at least 90%, and you have to go down to number 78 on the list (The Club for Growth) until you get a comparable level of partisan cash flow in the Republicans’ favor.

Also, in the area of no f-ing surprise, unions make up 12 of the top 25 big donors, and all of them contribute 95-98% to Democrats (except the Carpenters and Joiners Union, who apparently need to get with the program since only 89% of their money goes to Democrats).

In total, there are 44 Dem-leaning groups and 41 GOP-leaning groups, with the rest splitting their donations roughly equally between the two parties. If you looked just at the number of donors, you would say it’s a wash, but, again, the top most donors skew blue, and GOP-leaning donors don’t seem to tilt with the same intensity that their more liberal counterparts do.

In any event, keep this chart in mind the next time someone starts preaching about all the evil right-wing money in politics. The truth is that the big money goes to Democrats and their progressive money more than their opponents – but that’s not evil money since it’s for a righteous cause, I suppose the thinking (or its reasonable facsimile) goes.

Heads-up from Weasel Zippers.

When I first started doing this blogging thing back in November of 2009, I wanted to give my take on what was going on in the world. Part of the reason was a sort of cathartic release of issues that had been roiling around in my head regarding the hot topics of the day. But even though a desire for personal expression remains a big part of why I started, in the back of my head I knew that I didn’t want this blog to just become some sort of personal political diary; that for a continued drive to carry on, I’d have to try to build something in terms of relevancy to the rest of the blogosphere.

I had some modest success at first, it seemed. Pageviews seemed to steadily increase, and I got the attention of the managing editor of The Moderate Voice, who offered me the chance to guest post over there occasionally. Still, something seemed to be missing. Most of the traffic seemed be driven by search engines, meaning that new eyeballs were getting to the site – but weren’t sticking around. In addition, the people who did come back didn’t comment or argue, making it impossible to build any kind of community of readers.

Obviously that’s my own fault. I had in my head that I wanted an approach that was a kind of hybrid of Hot Air and Ace of Spades – a blogging style that relied not on red-meat name-calling but on arguments and facts with a healthy dose of levity and, yes, a bit of unapologetic confidence in conservatism.

The only problem is that Hot Air, Ace of Spades, and many others do this a lot better than I do. So, in a sense, if others are doing it better and with more success, what’s the point?

Another factor is despite the fact that I started a political blog, I don’t enjoy hostile confrontation. Discussion is one thing, and I fully recognize that disagreements should get heated with the scope of issues that are involved, and I totally get that and embrace that. But this means that writing posts that by their nature must be adversarial and confrontational in order to present a point of view that is often under attack takes more of a deliberate effort than other bloggers who I think relish the opportunity to forcefully argue their case.

This is an effort that, after a full day of work and seeing to my family, is hard to sustain without some sense of building accomplishment. So after one and a half years of work with little else to show but a moderate increase in pageviews, my motivation waned. There’s quite frankly other stuff I want to do when my daughter goes to bed, and while I’ll gladly invest the time and effort, it’s only if it seems like I’m making a small difference.

This feeling may have been sadly exacerbated with my experience at TMV. I have nothing but thanks for Joe Gandelman’s graciousness in extending an opportunity at that site, especially for an amateur no-name blogger like me. Yet despite the name, the vast majority of posters decidedly skew left, and being one of the very, very few right-leaning posters left me feeling isolated and really questioning the point of continuing over there when for every one piece of opinion I wrote, thirty others would counterbalance my “Fox News talking points,” as one commenter put it. I’m not quite sure I fit in with the rest of the community.

So that brings us to this post. I’m not really sure what I’m trying to say with this post. I’m not folding up shop and calling it quits, not entirely. This may seem like a lot like whining, the sort that a lot of small-time bloggers do when things don’t progress as quickly as they’d like. This is probably the most candid I’ve been on this blog, and I’m sorry if it sounds petulant or petty or naive, but I simply had to write how I felt.

Some might say I just need to find a better niche – do local, Dayton-area stuff, or focus more on strictly Ohio matters. Doing a local politics blog seems like a real losing proposition with little appeal outside this county, and while there are certainly a lot of things going on inside Ohio right now, I don’t think I could do it justice with my limited time and total lack of connections with any in state government.

So there it is. I’m going to continue to post and write here. But some explanation of what’s been happening needed to be published here. I thank any of you that frequent this place, and I urge you to speak up with any criticism or suggestions that would help to make this place better.

We’ll speak again soon.