No more can they keep us in. Listen damn it, we will win

So...
A) I'm alive. Still.
and
B) Looks like Rick Santorum opened up a can of whoop-ass on Mittens in Iowa. At press time here in Hammistan, he's leading in Iowa. Granted, it's only by four - that's 4 - votes, but still... I'm suitably impressed with his performance, to be honest. He's made appearances in every county in Iowa, and at this point, probably qualifies for in-state tuition, should he develop an overwhelming urge to become a Hawkeye.
More so than that, the guy's got ... I dunno ... "pluck" sounds corny, but that's the best word that fits. He's been running an optimistic campaign when nobody's given him much of a chance, and even less credit. So my hat's off to Sen. Santorum for that.

Fox has a great county-by-county map that shows just how vast Santorum's support is throughout the state. It looks a lot like the election maps we see every four years, with vast swaths of red, and blue clusters where cities are.

That being said, Rick's screwed in New Hampshire - that's Mittens territory, with the bluebloods and RINOs. As long as he polls well enough to pace Herr Doktor Paul, he'll be in great shape for South Carolina.

As an aside, I have to say to my reader(s) that this shouldn't be taken as evidence that I'm returning to blogging. This may be a one-off, or this may mean something. Most likely, it's the former. I just don't have spare time sitting around in buckets that I can throw at a blog. My time's already pledged to a much more important project.

Happy New Year to everyone, especially you Iowans - you just might have kept yourself politically relevant for another 4 years. Way to go, corn pirates!

For if the road were easy, your faith would not be needed

Right off the bat, you'll notice that I've been fiddling around with the template tonight... assuming that this is even readable on your 'puter. I've got just the one monitor to test it out with, but I'm really happy with the way the blog's looking now. It seems so much more readable than before - all the way to eleven, as far as I'm concerned. (That is, naturally, subject to change as I have the opportunity to test-drive it on differing sizes of monitors.)

You mileage, of course, may vary. If the blog is just flat-ass broken for anyone, drop me a comment or email, and I'll dial it down a notch.

This all started because of my discovery today of Fred Thompson's exploratory committee's website: I'mWithFred. I tried to put up their donation widget in the sidebar, but it kept hijacking the text and turning it solid black. (which puts readability at around .8 if you must know) So instead of having a massive landslide of cash credited to my wicked communications network, I'll just have to settle for a button and a link.
I haven't really talked much about this weirdly-early start to the campaign, primarily out of apathy towards the current crop of candidates. Fred changes all that in a heartbeat. Can you imagine Fred at the next debate? Hell, he'll rip that wackjob Ron Paul's throat out with his teeth, then piss down his neck... and that's just his scripted introduction! Just wait until he really gets rolling with some questions. No matter who you eventually vote for, that's just good television any way you slice it.