And will people take advantage of the choices offered?

I recently went to the Thursday meeting of Drinking Liberally (Phoenix Chapter) at The Florists Cafe in Phoenix and had a good time talking with Stuart Dollar and the other folks that showed up. Stuart, as usual, tries to convince me that "government isn't all bad" and I give my customary response, bad government is bad enough. Several present seem to be able to sleep nights with the idea of voting for a yellow dog for United States Senator from Arizona. I will be voting for a candidate I have confidence in - Richard Mack. He believes in less government, not more. I hope that those people searching for an alternative come November will notice that there is more than one alternative to Jon Kyl.

Newspapers or blogs - is it an either or decision?

I went to the Arizona Breakfast Club yesterday and had a fervent gun rights advocate ask my opinion on, Should he spend time writing letters to the editor or blogging? I think he should spend time on both. While it has been several weeks since I have read a newspaper, I still do read them from time to time. In the same time frame I have read several hundred posts from the 15 or so blogs I follow. I think that newspapers are an effective way to connect with people who might never have heard of you. Blogs and the internet are great but blog readers are self selecting which limits the audience for a particular message. From what I see Google AdWords are slowly but surely gaining percentages of advertising budgets as well as banking money that would never have made it to a newspaper advertising department due to transaction costs. Luckily I don't worry much about either the internet or the newspaper business, I have faith the market will provide.

I was also able to hear John Verkamp, a candidate for United States Senate (and Democrat primary opposition to Jim Pederson), speak about his reasoned and deeply felt opposition to continued US government involvement in Iraq. It is hard to make a rational case made for staying in Iraq that couldn't be restated as "stay the course". When the Iraqi opposition is lobbing bombs at you as fervently as well I don't see that "more of the same" is any more likely to get different results that it did the first year of the invasion or the second year of the invasion or the third year of the invasion. I sincerely hope the enough people can break free of this mindset by November 7, 2006 because I for one don't want the US to be the doe in the headlights when a car plows into it.